Download or read book Windows onto Jewish Legal Culture written by Hanina Ben-Menahem and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book opens windows onto various aspects of Jewish legal culture. Rather than taking a structural approach, and attempting to circumscribe and define ‘every’ element of Jewish law, Windows onto Jewish Legal Culture takes a dynamic and holistic approach, describing diverse manifestations of Jewish legal culture, and its general mind-set, without seeking to fit them into a single structure. Jewish legal culture spans two millennia, and evolved in geographic centers that were often very distant from one another both geographically and socio-culturally. It encompasses the Talmud and talmudic literature, the law codes, the rulings of rabbinical courts, the responsa literature, decisions taken by communal leaders, study of the law in talmudic academies, the local study hall, and the home. But Jewish legal culture reaches well beyond legal and quasi-legal institutions; it addresses, and is reflected in, every aspect of daily life, from meals and attire to interpersonal and communal relations. Windows onto Jewish Legal Culture gives the reader a taste of the tremendous weight of Jewish legal culture within Jewish life. Among the facets of Jewish legal culture explored are two of its most salient distinguishing features, namely, toleration and even encouragement of controversy, and a preference for formalistic formulations. These features are widely misunderstood, and Jewish legal culture is often parodied as hair-splitting argument for the sake of argument. In explaining the epistemic imperatives that motivate Jewish legal culture, however, this book paints a very different picture. Situational constraints and empirical considerations are shown to provide vital input into legal determinations at every level, and the legal process is revealed to be attentive to context and sensitive to cultural concerns.
Download or read book Windows onto Jewish Legal Culture Volume 2 written by Hanina Ben-Menahem and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book opens windows onto Jewish legal culture, by offering fourteen exploratory essays, each of which focuses on an aspect of Jewish law, broadly understood. Each chapter is a self-contained journey, as it were, into a feature of the Jewish legal landscape. In other words, rather than taking a structural approach, and attempting to neatly circumscribe and define ‘every’ element of Jewish law, Windows onto Jewish Legal Culture takes a dynamic and holistic approach, describing diverse manifestations of Jewish legal culture, without seeking to fit them into a single structure. Given this approach, readers have a number of options: they can focus on those chapters of particular interest to them; read the chapters in whatever order appeals to them; or go through the chapters in order. Reading even a handful of chapters should provide the reader with a good sense of the mind-set characteristic of Jewish legal thinking. Jewish legal culture spans two millennia, and evolved in geographic centers that were often very distant from one another both geographically and socio-culturally. It encompasses the Talmud and talmudic literature, the law codes, the rulings of rabbinical courts, the responsa literature, extra-judicial decisions taken by judges and communal leaders, study of the law in talmudic academies, the local study hall, and the home. But Jewish legal culture reaches well beyond legal and quasi-legal institutions; it addresses, and is reflected in, every aspect of daily life, from meals and attire to interpersonal and communal relations. The book gives the reader a taste of the tremendous weight of Jewish legal culture within Jewish life. Windows onto Jewish Legal Culture is divided into five sections. The opening section presents two distinguishing features of Jewish legal culture, namely, its toleration and even encouragement of controversy, and its preference for formalistic formulations. These features are often misunderstood, and been subjected to severe critique. Indeed, Jewish legal culture is often parodied as nit-picking, hair-splitting, argument for the sake of argument. Exploring Jewish legal culture’s partiality to controversy and formalism in its proper context, however, yields a very different picture. The second section, "Law and Ethics," gives readers a first-hand look at the way Jewish legal culture relates to three moral issues of importance to any society: equity, charity, and euthanasia. The third section focuses on the judicial process, a central topic in the general analysis of law, and even more so in Jewish law, where the judicial branch takes precedence over the legislative. The fourth section addresses questions pertaining to the role of the individual in the administration of justice—self help, and the individual’s obligation to defend himself and others against a pursuer. The closing section is devoted to private law, exploring the interface between Jewish legal culture and free market competition, unjust enrichment, agency, and labor law. This book will appeal to students at the advanced level, scholars, and interested laypeople; the primary target audience is academic. It is suitable for use as a textbook.
Download or read book Windows Onto Jewish Legal Culture Volume 1 written by Arye Edrei and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2024-10-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book opens windows onto Jewish legal culture, by offering fourteen exploratory essays, each of which focuses on an aspect of Jewish law, broadly understood. Each chapter is a self-contained journey, as it were, into a feature of the Jewish legal landscape. In other words, rather than taking a structural approach, and attempting to neatly circumscribe and define 'every' element of Jewish law, Windows onto Jewish Legal Culture takes a dynamic and holistic approach, describing diverse manifestations of Jewish legal culture, without seeking to fit them into a single structure. Given this approach, readers have a number of options: they can focus on those chapters of particular interest to them; read the chapters in whatever order appeals to them; or go through the chapters in order. Reading even a handful of chapters should provide the reader with a good sense of the mind-set characteristic of Jewish legal thinking. Jewish legal culture spans two millennia, and evolved in geographic centers that were often very distant from one another both geographically and socio-culturally. It encompasses the Talmud and talmudic literature, the law codes, the rulings of rabbinical courts, the responsa literature, extra-judicial decisions taken by judges and communal leaders, study of the law in talmudic academies, the local study hall, and the home. But Jewish legal culture reaches well beyond legal and quasi-legal institutions; it addresses, and is reflected in, every aspect of daily life, from meals and attire to interpersonal and communal relations. The book gives the reader a taste of the tremendous weight of Jewish legal culture within Jewish life. Windows onto Jewish Legal Culture is divided into five sections. The opening section presents two distinguishing features of Jewish legal culture, namely, its toleration and even encouragement of controversy, and its preference for formalistic formulations. These features are often misunderstood, and been subjected to severe critique. Indeed, Jewish legal culture is often parodied as nit-picking, hair-splitting, argument for the sake of argument. Exploring Jewish legal culture's partiality to controversy and formalism in its proper context, however, yields a very different picture. The second section, "Law and Ethics," gives readers a first-hand look at the way Jewish legal culture relates to three moral issues of importance to any society: equity, charity, and euthanasia. The third section focuses on the judicial process, a central topic in the general analysis of law, and even more so in Jewish law, where the judicial branch takes precedence over the legislative. The fourth section addresses questions pertaining to the role of the individual in the administration of justice--self help, and the individual's obligation to defend himself and others against a pursuer. The closing section is devoted to private law, exploring the interface between Jewish legal culture and free market competition, unjust enrichment, agency, and labor law. This book will appeal to students at the advanced level, scholars, and interested laypeople; the primary target audience is academic. It is suitable for use as a textbook.
Download or read book Polemical and Exegetical Polarities in Medieval Jewish Cultures written by Ehud Krinis and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-10-25 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his academic career, that by now spans six decades, Daniel J. Lasker distinguished himself by the wide range of his scholarly interests. In the field of Jewish theology and philosophy he contributed significantly to the study of Rabbinic as well as Karaite authors. In the field of Jewish polemics his studies explore Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew texts, analyzing them in the context of their Christian and Muslim backgrounds. His contributions refer to a wide variety of authors who lived from the 9th century to the 18th century and beyond, in the Muslim East, in Muslin and Christian parts of the Mediterranean Sea, and in west and east Europe. This Festschrift for Daniel J. Lasker consists of four parts. The first highlights his academic career and scholarly achievements. In the three other parts, colleagues and students of Daniel J. Lasker offer their own findings and insights in topics strongly connected to his studies, namely, intersections of Jewish theology and Biblical exegesis with the Islamic and Christian cultures, as well as Jewish-Muslim and Jewish-Christian relations. Thus, this wide-scoped and rich volume offers significant contributions to a variety of topics in Jewish Studies.
Download or read book Jewish Law Annual Volume 20 written by Berachyahu Lifshitz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 20 of The Jewish Law Annual features six detailed studies. The first three articles consider questions which fall under the rubric of halakhic methodology. The final three articles address substantive questions regarding privacy, cohabitation and medical triage. All three ‘methodological’ articles discuss creative interpretation of legal sources. Two (Cohen and Gilat) consider the positive and forward-thinking aspects of such halakhic creativity. The third (Radzyner) examines tendentious invocation of new halakhic arguments to advance an extraneous interest. Cohen explores positive creativity and surveys the innovative midrashic exegeses of R. Meir Simha Hakohen of Dvinsk, demonstrating his willingness to base rulings intended for implementation on such exegesis. Gilat examines exegetical creativity as to the laws of capital offenses. Midrashic argumentation enables the rabbinical authorities to set aside the literal sense of the harsh biblical laws, and implement more suitable penological policies. On the other hand, Radzyner’s article on tendentious innovation focuses on a situation where novel arguments were advanced in the context of a power struggle, namely, Israeli rabbinical court efforts to preserve jurisdiction. Two articles discuss contemporary dilemmas. Spira & Wainberg consider the hypothetical scenario of triage of an HIV vaccine, analyzing both the talmudic sources for resolving issues related to allocating scarce resources, and recent responsa. Warburg discusses the status of civil marriage and cohabitation vis-à-vis payment of spousal maintenance: can rabbinical courts order such payment? Schreiber’s article addresses the question of whether privacy is a core value in talmudic law: does it indeed uphold a ‘right to privacy,’ as recent scholars have claimed? The volume concludes with a review of Yuval Sinai’s Application of Jewish Law in the Israeli Courts (Hebrew).
Download or read book Jewish Law Annual Volume 21 written by Benjamin Porat and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 21 of The Jewish Law Annual adds to the growing list of articles on Jewish law that have been published in volumes 1- 20 of this series, providing English-speaking readers with scholarly articles presenting jurisprudential, historical, textual and comparative analysis of issues in Jewish law.
Download or read book William Shakespeare s Timon of Athens A Retelling in Prose written by David Bruce and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timon of Athens has a problem. He has been immensely wealthy, and immensely generous, but some of his debts are due, and he has no money. But he is positive that his friends, to whom he has been immensely generous, will be just as generous to him. His steward, Flavius, is not so positive that these friends of Timon will be generous.
Download or read book The Crime of Aggression written by Claus Kreß and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2010 Kampala Amendments to the Rome Statute empowered the International Criminal Court to prosecute the 'supreme crime' under international law: the crime of aggression. This landmark commentary provides the first analysis of the history, theory, legal interpretation and future of the crime of aggression. As well as explaining the positions of the main actors in the negotiations, the authoritative team of leading scholars and practitioners set out exactly how countries have themselves criminalized illegal war-making in domestic law and practice. In light of the anticipated activation of the Court's jurisdiction over this crime in 2017, this work offers, over two volumes, a comprehensive legal analysis of how to understand the material and mental elements of the crime of aggression as defined at Kampala. Alongside The Travaux Préparatoires of the Crime of Aggression (Cambridge, 2011), this commentary provides the definitive resource for anyone concerned with the illegal use of force.
Download or read book Theory and Practice in Essene Law written by Aryeh Amihay and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a novel approach for the study of law in the Judean Desert Scrolls, using the prism of legal theory. Following a couple of decades of scholarly consensus withdrawing from the "Essene hypothesis," it proposes to revive the term, and suggests employing it for the sectarian movement as a whole, while considering the group that lived in Qumran as the Yahad. It further proposes a new suggestion for the emergence of the Yahad, based on the roles of the Examiner and the Instructor in the two major legal codes, the Damascus Document and the Community Rule. The understanding of Essene law is divided into concepts and practices, in order to emphasize the discrepancy between creed, rhetoric, and practices. The abstract exploration of notions such as time, space, obligation, intention, and retribution, is then compared against the realities of social practices, including admission, initiation, covenant, leadership, reproof, and punishment. The legal analysis yields several new suggestions for the study of the scrolls: first, Amihay proposes to rename the two strands of thought of Jewish law, formerly referred to as "nominalism" and "realism," with the terms "legal essentialism" and "legal formalism." The two laws of admission in the Community Rule are distinguished as two different laws, one of an association for a group as a whole, the other as an admission of an individual. The law of reproof is proven to be an independent legal procedure, rather than a preliminary stage of prosecution. The methodological division in this study of thought and practice provides a nuanced approach for the study of law in general, and religious law in particular.
Download or read book The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization Volume 1 written by Jeffrey H. Tigay and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Posen Library's groundbreaking anthology series—called "a feast of Jewish culture, in ten volumes" by The Chronicle of Higher Education—offers with Volume 1 an exploration of the culture of ancient Israel, including its literature, legal documents, and visual arts "Readers seeking primary texts, documents, images, and artifacts constituting Jewish culture and civilization will not be disappointed. More important, they might even be inspired. . . . This set will serve to improve teaching and research in Jewish studies at institutions of higher learning and, at the same time, promote, maintain, and improve understanding of the Jewish population and Judaism in general."—Booklist, Starred Review The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 1, covers the earliest period of Jewish civilization, from the second millennium BCE through 332 BCE. Organized by genre, this book presents a collection of some of the earliest products of Jewish culture, including extensive selections from the Tanakh and the Hebrew Bible; extrabiblical inscriptions and documents by and about Israelites and Jews, found by archaeologists in the lands of Israel, Egypt, and Mesopotamia; and images representing the visual culture of ancient Israel. Combining genres that have never been presented together in a single publication, Volume 1 illustrates ancient Israel’s cultural innovations and commonalities with neighboring societies.
Download or read book Louis Jacobs and the Quest for a Contemporary Jewish Theology written by Miri Freud-Kandel and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-15 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Louis Jacobs, the quest—the process of engaging with and thinking about Jewish faith—was a lifelong pursuit. He offered a model in the 1960s, a period characterized by general religious crisis, of an observant, committed, but intellectually curious Judaism that empowered individual seekers to address challenges to faith. In Orthodox Judaism at the time a battle was under way for religious control. Generating a widespread controversy in British Jewry known as the ‘Jacobs Affair’, his thought offers a lens for examining the trajectory of Orthodoxy. In a contemporary context marked by the changing cultural and intellectual concerns of a ‘post-secular’ age, the focus of some of these debates over religious control has shifted. Yet Jacobs’ emphasis on a personal quest is as relevant as ever, perhaps more so. This first book-length analysis of his theology unpacks the building blocks of his thought. It argues that, despite its particularities and limitations, his approach can provide a powerful model for contemporary religious seekers in the context of a growing impetus away from established, denominationally bound forms of religion. Many orthodox believers across a range of faiths continue to prefer the certainty of unquestionable religious truth claims rather than pursuing a subjective search for religious meaning. For those seeking alternative models for the contemporary Jewish quest, a reconsideration of Jacobs’ theology can offer valuable tools.
Download or read book The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy written by Joseph R. Hacker and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-08-19 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of printing had major effects on culture and society in the early modern period, and the presence of this new technology—and the relatively rapid embrace of it among early modern Jews—certainly had an effect on many aspects of Jewish culture. One major change that print seems to have brought to the Jewish communities of Christian Europe, particularly in Italy, was greater interaction between Jews and Christians in the production and dissemination of books. Starting in the early sixteenth century, the locus of production for Jewish books in many places in Italy was in Christian-owned print shops, with Jews and Christians collaborating on the editorial and technical processes of book production. As this Jewish-Christian collaboration often took place under conditions of control by Christians (for example, the involvement of Christian typesetters and printers, expurgation and censorship of Hebrew texts, and state control of Hebrew printing), its study opens up an important set of questions about the role that Christians played in shaping Jewish culture. Presenting new research by an international group of scholars, this book represents a step toward a fuller understanding of Jewish book history. Individual essays focus on a range of issues related to the production and dissemination of Hebrew books as well as their audiences. Topics include the activities of scribes and printers, the creation of new types of literature and the transformation of canonical works in the era of print, the external and internal censorship of Hebrew books, and the reading interests of Jews. An introduction summarizes the state of scholarship in the field and offers an overview of the transition from manuscript to print in this period.
Download or read book Law s Dominion written by Jay R. Berkovitz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Law’s Dominion, Jay Berkovitz offers a novel approach to the history of early modern Jewry. Set in the city of Metz, on the Moselle river, this study of a vibrant prerevolutionary community draws on a wide spectrum of legal sources that tell a story about community, religion, and family that has not been told before. Focusing on the community’s leadership, public institutions, and judiciary, this study challenges the assumption that Jewish life was in a steady state of decline before the French Revolution. To the contrary, the evidence reveals a robust community that integrated religious values and civic consciousness, interacted with French society, and showed remarkable signs of collaboration between Jewish law and the French judicial system. In Law’s Dominion, Jay Berkovitz has gathered and meticulously mined a dazzling array of rich and complex rabbinic texts and records from Western Europe during the early modern period, including the pinkas of the rabbinic court of Metz that he previously rescued from oblivion. What emerges is a remarkably fresh depiction and incisive comparative treatment of central aspects of Jewish law, religion and family, which will have far-reaching ramifications for all future studies in these disciplines. -Ephraim Kanarfogel, E. Billi Ivry University Professor of Jewish History, Literature, and Law at Yeshiva University
Download or read book A Window on Their World written by Edward Fram and published by Hebrew Union College Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a manuscript that was lost for more than half a century comes new information about one of the greatest Jewish communities of all time. The court diaries of Rabbi Hayyim Gundersheim (d. 1795), a member of the rabbinic court of late eighteenth-century Frankfurt, sheds light on daily life in the Judengasse("Jewish lane"), home to over 3,000 people, including Meyer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the famous banking family. Familial quarrels, squabbles between neighbors, legal proceedings over business deals gone sour, real estate transactions, and other disputes brought before the rabbinic court offer a window onto the world of daily life in the Frankfurt Jewish community during the waning years of the city's ghetto. Rabbi Gundersheim's court diaries are more than just a prism through which to view daily life. A Window on Their World provides a transcription of over 200 cases that were brought before the rabbinic court between 1773 and 1794. Readers now have access to records that reveal not just the workings of the Jewish community but also the place of Jewish tradition in the culture. The transcription of each case in the original Hebrew is accompanied by an English language summary. Edward Fram has also prepared comprehensive indices of the names of all individuals mentioned in the court diaries as well as a glossary of non-Hebrew terms. Pertinent documents from the Frankfurt pinqas, or community record book, have also been provided in order to give readers a more complete picture. Fram's introduction to the diary includes a biographical background, an outline of Jewish legal autonomy in the early modern period, and a discussion of the importance of court documents as legal and historical sources. The volume is an indispensible source for anyone interested in European Jewish culture on the eve of the Enlightenment.
Download or read book Windows Onto Jewish Legal Culture Volume 2 written by Arye Edrei and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2024-10-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book opens windows onto Jewish legal culture, by offering fourteen exploratory essays, each of which focuses on an aspect of Jewish law, broadly understood. Each chapter is a self-contained journey, as it were, into a feature of the Jewish legal landscape. In other words, rather than taking a structural approach, and attempting to neatly circumscribe and define 'every' element of Jewish law, Windows onto Jewish Legal Culture takes a dynamic and holistic approach, describing diverse manifestations of Jewish legal culture, without seeking to fit them into a single structure. Given this approach, readers have a number of options: they can focus on those chapters of particular interest to them; read the chapters in whatever order appeals to them; or go through the chapters in order. Reading even a handful of chapters should provide the reader with a good sense of the mind-set characteristic of Jewish legal thinking. Jewish legal culture spans two millennia, and evolved in geographic centers that were often very distant from one another both geographically and socio-culturally. It encompasses the Talmud and talmudic literature, the law codes, the rulings of rabbinical courts, the responsa literature, extra-judicial decisions taken by judges and communal leaders, study of the law in talmudic academies, the local study hall, and the home. But Jewish legal culture reaches well beyond legal and quasi-legal institutions; it addresses, and is reflected in, every aspect of daily life, from meals and attire to interpersonal and communal relations. The book gives the reader a taste of the tremendous weight of Jewish legal culture within Jewish life. Windows onto Jewish Legal Culture is divided into five sections. The opening section presents two distinguishing features of Jewish legal culture, namely, its toleration and even encouragement of controversy, and its preference for formalistic formulations. These features are often misunderstood, and been subjected to severe critique. Indeed, Jewish legal culture is often parodied as nit-picking, hair-splitting, argument for the sake of argument. Exploring Jewish legal culture's partiality to controversy and formalism in its proper context, however, yields a very different picture. The second section, "Law and Ethics," gives readers a first-hand look at the way Jewish legal culture relates to three moral issues of importance to any society: equity, charity, and euthanasia. The third section focuses on the judicial process, a central topic in the general analysis of law, and even more so in Jewish law, where the judicial branch takes precedence over the legislative. The fourth section addresses questions pertaining to the role of the individual in the administration of justice--self help, and the individual's obligation to defend himself and others against a pursuer. The closing section is devoted to private law, exploring the interface between Jewish legal culture and free market competition, unjust enrichment, agency, and labor law. This book will appeal to students at the advanced level, scholars, and interested laypeople; the primary target audience is academic. It is suitable for use as a textbook.
Download or read book Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate written by Yosie Levine and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2024-11-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the social and cultural upheavals of early modern Europe, rabbis had to fight to preserve Jewish tradition. Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi, chief rabbi of Amsterdam, emerged as one of the leading halakhic authorities of the epoch, and the battles he waged would come to define rabbinic norms in the decades that followed.
Download or read book On My Right Michael On My Left Gabriel written by Mika Ahuvia and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction : angelic greetings or Shalom Aleichem -- At home with the angels : Babylonian ritual sources -- Out and about with the angels : Palestinian ritual sources -- No angels? early rabbinic sources -- In the image of God, not angels : rabbinic sources -- In the image of the angels : liturgical sources -- Israel among the angels : Late rabbinic sources -- Jewish mystics and the angelic realms : early mystical sources -- Conclusion : angels in Judaism and the religions of late antiquity -- Appendix A : table -- Appendix B : description of table.
