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Volume 19 of The Jewish Law Annual is a festschrift in honor of Professor Neil S. Hecht. It contains thirteen articles, ten in English and three in Hebrew. Several articles are jurisprudential in nature, focusing on analysis of halakhic institutions and concepts. Elisha Ancselovits discusses the concept of the prosbul, asking whether it is correct to construe it as a legal fiction, as several scholars have asserted. He takes issue with this characterization of the prosbul, and with other scholarly readings of Tannaitic law in general. The concepts of dignity and shame are addressed in two very different articles, one by Nahum Rakover, and the other by Hanina Ben-Menahem. The former discusses...
Volume 16 of The Jewish Law Annual adds to the growing list of articles on Jewish Law that have been published in volumes 1-15 of this series, providing English-speaking readers with scholarly material meeting the highest academic standards. The volume contains seven articles diverse in their scope and focus, encompassing legal, historic, textual, comparitive and conceptual analysis, as well as a chronicle of cases of interest, and a survey of recent literature. Three of the articles, one of which explores references to Genesis in (western) canon law, make up a special section on the book of Genesis. The other topics covered are: suicide as an act of atonement in Jewish law; early interpretations of the Bible and Talmud as reflecting medieval legal realia; Ashkenazic codifiers in Spain; and authority, custom and innovation in the seventeenth-century Italian halakhic encyclopedia, Pahad Yitzhak.
Volume 17 of The Jewish Law Annual adds to the growing list of articles on Jewish law that have been published in volumes 1-16 of this series, providing English-speaking readers with scholarly articles presenting jurisprudential, historical, textual and comparative analysis of issues in Jewish law. The volume contains seven articles diverse in their scope and focus. Two articles are devoted to the halakhic thought of Rabbi A. I Kook; two treat classic legal questions: breach of a promise to marry, and the legal capacity of minors; two examine aspects of the judicial process, one exploring talmudic analyses of the biblical requirement that courts be established in every town, and the other, post-talmudic views on judicial authority in cases suspected of fraudulent claims. Another article addresses the fascinating question of the epistemic-pedagogic worldviews of the rival Tannaitic legal academics, the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. The volume concludes with a section on Israeli legislation that adduces or is informed by Jewish law, and two reviews of a much-discussed recent book on a topic of considerable contemporary interest: the agunah problem.
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, demonst...
Volume 15 of The Jewish Law Annual adds to the growing list of articles on Jewish law that have been published in volumes 1-14 of this series, providing English-speaking readers with scholarly material meeting the highest academic standards. The volume contains six articles diverse in their scope and focus, encompassing legal, historical, textual, comparative and conceptual analysis, as well as a survey of recent literature and a chronicle of cases of interest. Among the topics covered are: lying in rabbinical court proceedings; unjust enrichment; can a witness serve as judge in the same case?; Caro's Shulham Arukh v. Maimonides' Mishne Torah in the Yemenite community, the New Jersey eruv wards.
Simon-Shoshan examines the neglected genre of rabbinic legal stories, arguing that this genre is crucial to understanding both rabbinic jurisprudence and rabbinic story-telling and challenging traditional distinctions between law and literature.
Introducing English-speaking readers to the parameters and scope of rabbinic authority in general, and the workings of the institution of the beit din—the Jewish court of law—in particular, this book presents 10 rulings in cases of Jewish civil law that the author handed down as a member of a beit din panel. These decisions touch on matters pertaining to employment termination, tenure rights and severance pay, rabbinic contracts, issues in the not-for-profit boardroom, real estate brokerage commission, drafting a halakhic will, a revocable living trust agreement, the division of marital assets upon divorce, spousal abuse, and a father's duty to support his estranged children. Accompanying these presentations is an examination of the notion of rabbinic authority, the business judgment rule, and an agunah's ability to recover for the infliction of emotional stress.
The book describes the three major phases of the marriage ritual (matchmaking, betrothal, the wedding), and presents thematic issues, such as the youth sub-culture, gift exchanges, the honor ethos. It is based on a wealth of primary documents, mainly manuscripts, in various literary genres.
We find ourselves in a world that reflects a tension between the totalizing discourses of global corporate capitalism and representative democracy on the one hand, and the contingent, fragmentary nature of post-colonial life on the other. How (indeed, whether) this dialectic will be reconciled in the new millennium is not merely a question for academic consideration, but has real implications for the lives of people in the 'developing' world who are caught at the interstices of these conflicting forces. What a comparative, critical sociological perspective can provide is a window into the souls of people struggling for self-determination, equality, and justice. It is in this spirit that we present this work focusing on the study of injustice and inequality in the world system.