On Tuesday, April 16, Fordham’s Institute on Religion, Law & Lawyer’s Work will host the Martin J. Hertz Lecture in Jewish Law and Culture: “How Concepts of Jewish Peoplehood Inform Legal Rulings.” The lecture will be delivered by Rabbi David Ellenson of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion:

Disputes surrounding the nature of conversion to Judaism are at the center of some of the most contentious legal debates taking place in modern Jewish jurisprudence. In this lecture, diverse rulings issued by Orthodox rabbis on matters related to conversion will be presented and analyzed. In so doing, it will be shown that these decisions do not simply present Jewish legal judgment in an instant case, Rather, these holdings are policy stances that rabbis are advancing in order to define membership in the Jewish people in an era where intermarriage is common and where the borders of the Jewish community are often porous and indeterminate. It will argued that way in which each individual rabbinic decisor views the notion of Jewish peoplehood serves as an independent and often decisive variable in informing the decisions that rabbis issue in these cases.

Details are here.