Posted on by Mark Movsesian

The Lubavitcher Rebbe

Many years ago, I asked a Hasidic Jewish colleague what prevented a mystical movement like his, devoted to ecstatic religious experience, from going off the rails. “Law,” he quickly responded, as someone who had heard the question before, and then he quickly clarified, “Jewish Law.” In my limited experience, Hasidic Jews do indeed view law as important, even for non-Jews like me. I’ve been approached once or twice on the street in New York City by Lubavitcher Jews who, when they learn I’m not Jewish, give me a card with the seven Noahide Laws I am supposed to follow. Had I been Jewish, I think they’d have given me a rather longer list!

A new biography of Menachem Schneerson, the rabbi who led Lubavitcher Hasidism to its greatest successes, no doubt discusses the relationship between law and ecstatic faith in Hasidism. The title (intended provocatively, I assume) is Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah, and the publisher is Yale University Press. The author is Ezra Glinter of the Yiddish Book Center. Here’s the description from Yale’s website:

The life and thought of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, one of the most influential—and controversial—rabbis in modern Judaism

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the world’s best-known Hasidic groups, is driven by the belief that we are on the verge of the messianic age. The man most recognized for the movement’s success is the seventh and last Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), believed by many of his followers to be the Messiah.

While hope of redemption has sustained the Jewish people through exile and persecution, it has also upended Jewish society with its apocalyptic and anarchic tendencies. So it is not surprising that Schneerson’s messianic fervor made him one of the most controversial rabbinic leaders of the twentieth century. How did he go from being an ordinary rabbi’s son in the Russian Empire to achieving status as a mystical sage? How did he revitalize a centuries-old Hasidic movement, construct an outreach empire of unprecedented scope, and earn the admiration and condemnation of political, communal, and religious leaders in America and abroad?

Ezra Glinter’s deeply researched account is the first biography of Schneerson to combine a nonpartisan view of his life, work, and impact with an insider’s understanding of the ideology that drove him and that continues to inspire the Chabad-Lubavitch movement today.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Rome & Israel: Rivals in Law

The civilizational conflict between Rome and Israel in antiquity is much discussed. A new book from Princeton, Jews and Their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel, maintains that the conflict was partly about law–specifically, whose law was superior. Looks very interesting. The author is French scholar Katell Berthelot (Aix-Marseille University). Here’s the description from the Princeton website:

Throughout their history, Jews have lived under a succession of imperial powers, from Assyria and Babylonia to Persia and the Hellenistic kingdoms. Jews and Their Roman Rivals shows how the Roman Empire posed a unique challenge to Jewish thinkers such as Philo, Josephus, and the Palestinian rabbis, who both resisted and internalized Roman standards and imperial ideology.

Katell Berthelot traces how, long before the empire became Christian, Jews came to perceive Israel and Rome as rivals competing for supremacy. Both considered their laws to be the most perfect ever written, and both believed they were a most pious people who had been entrusted with a divine mission to bring order and peace to the world. Berthelot argues that the rabbinic identification of Rome with Esau, Israel’s twin brother, reflected this sense of rivalry. She discusses how this challenge transformed ancient Jewish ideas about military power and the use of force, law and jurisdiction, and membership in the people of Israel. Berthelot argues that Jewish thinkers imitated the Romans in some cases and proposed competing models in others.

Shedding new light on Jewish thought in antiquity, Jews and Their Roman Rivals reveals how Jewish encounters with pagan Rome gave rise to crucial evolutions in the ways Jews conceptualized the Torah and conversion to Judaism.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

On Law & Ritual in Hasidic Judaism

This one is a little outside my wheelhouse, but it looks quite interesting. Hasidic Judaism is known for its ecstatic approach. And yet, ironically, it is also one of Judaism’s most traditional expressions, with a serious focus on religious law. What explains this paradox? A new book from Stanford University Press, Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism, argues (if I understand it right) that Hasidism sees law as a matter of ritual rather than rules for worshippers to work out and follow. Of course, ritual is important in most religions, and in secular law as well, and I wonder if these insights could in some way apply in other contexts, too. The author is religious studies scholar Ariel Mayse (Stanford). Here’s the publisher’s description:

The compelling vision of religious life and practice found in Hasidic sources has made it the most enduring and successful Jewish movement of spiritual renewal of all time. In this book, Ariel Evan Mayse grapples with one of Hasidism’s most vexing questions: how did a religious movement known for its radical views about immanence, revelation, and the imperative to serve God with joy simultaneously produce strict adherence to the structures and obligations of Jewish law? Exploring the movement from its emergence in the mid-1700s until 1815, Mayse argues that the exceptionality of Hasidism lies not in whether its leaders broke or upheld rabbinic norms, but in the movement’s vivid attempt to rethink the purpose of Jewish ritual and practice. Rather than focusing on the commandments as law, he turns to the methods and vocabulary of ritual studies as a more productive way to reckon with the contradictions and tensions of this religious movement as well as its remarkable intellectual vitality.

Mayse examines the full range of Hasidic texts from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, from homilies and theological treatises to hagiography, letters, and legal writings, reading them together with contemporary theories of ritual. Arguing against the notion that spiritual integrity requires unshackling oneself from tradition, Laws of the Spirit is a sweeping attempt to rethink the meaning and significance of religious practice in early Hasidism.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A New Collection on Law in the Hebrew Bible

When law professors think of law and religion, we’re apt to think of contemporary church-and-state issues: the free exercise and establishment clauses, statutes like RFRA and RLUIPA and other civil rights laws. But issues of law come up within religions as well. Not too many scholars focus on the latter question, at least in contemporary law schools, which is a pity. A new collection of essays out later this month from Cambridge, The Cambridge Companion to Law in the Hebrew Bible, is therefore a very welcome addition. The editor is Bruce Wells at the University of Texas-Austin. Here’s the publisher’s description:

This Companion offers a comprehensive overview of the history, nature, and legacy of biblical law.  Examining the debates that swirl around the nature of biblical law, it explores its historical context, the significance of its rules, and its influence on early Judaism and Christianity. The volume also interrogates key questions: Were the rules intended to function as ancient Israel’s statutory law? Is there evidence to indicate that they served a different purpose? What is the relationship between this legal material and other parts of the Hebrew Bible? Most importantly, the book provides an in-depth look at the content of the Torah’s laws, with individual essays on substantive, procedural, and ritual law. With contributions from an international team of experts, written specially for this volume, The Cambridge Companion to Law in the Hebrew Bible provides an up-to-date look at scholarship on biblical law and outlines themes and topics for future research.

Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In Forter v. Young, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a former prisoner’s complaints about the procedure used to deny his religious meal accommodation request. In seeking access to kosher meals, the former prisoner cited a Bible verse, and a prison official cited an additional verse to express his disagreement. The court found that the official’s response did not constitute an establishment of religion in violation of the establishment clause.
  • In Doe I v. Cisco Systems, Inc., the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that Falun Gong members, who were victims of human rights abuses carried out by China, can move ahead with claims against Cisco Systems and its executives for their assistance that enabled China to carry out monitoring of Internet activity by Falun Gong members. Falun Gong is a religion that originated in China in the 1990’s.
  • In Fitzgerald v. Roncalli High School, Inc., the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a suit based on the ministerial exception doctrine where a Catholic high school guidance counselor’s contract was not renewed because her same-sex marriage was inconsistent with the Catholic school’s religious mission. The court found this to be an easy case because of a recent ministerial exception doctrine decision the court issued last year. 
  • In Must v. County of Fillmore, the Minnesota Court of Appeals found that the County of Fillmore did not meet its burden of showing it had a compelling interest in requiring the appellants to use septic tanks in violation of their religious beliefs. The appellants were three members of the Amish community who brought suit against the county under RLUIPA.
  • In Britain, the House of Commons held a 90-minute debate on a current law which gives 26 bishops of the Church of England the right to automatically have seats in the House of Lords.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Guiding the Perplexed

One of the great and perennial problems in law is the relationship between “the rules” and the transcendental order (if any) that animates them. This is so in all the Abrahamic religions, which have, over the centuries, developed different understandings of that relationship. Even within a single religion, different strains emerge: the Thomism of Catholicism differs from the approach of the Christian East and from Protestant understandings. Luther burned the canon law books, after all.

A new book from Yale explores perhaps the greatest sage of Jewish law who attempted a synthesis between faith and legal reasoning: Maimonides: Faith in Reason. The author is Alberto Manguel. Here’s the publisher’s description:

An exploration of Maimonides, the medieval philosopher, physician, and religious thinker, author of The Guide of the Perplexed, from one of the world’s foremost bibliophiles
 
Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides (1138–1204), was born in Córdoba, Spain. The gifted son of a judge and mathematician, Maimonides fled Córdoba with his family when he was thirteen due to Almohad persecution of all non-Islamic faiths. Forced into a long exile, the family spent a decade in Spain before settling in Morocco. From there, Maimonides traveled to Palestine and Egypt, where he died at Saladin’s court.
 
As a scholar of Jewish law, a physician, and a philosopher, Maimonides was a singular figure. His work in extracting all the commanding precepts of Jewish law from the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, interpreting and commenting on them, and translating them into terms that would allow students to lead sound Jewish lives became the model for translating God’s word into a language comprehensible by all. His work in medicine—which brought him such fame that he became Saladin’s personal physician—was driven almost entirely by reason and observation.
 
In this biography, Alberto Manguel examines the question of Maimonides’ universal appeal—he was celebrated by Jews, Arabs, and Christians alike. In our time, when the need for rationality and recognition of the truth is more vital than ever, Maimonides can help us find strategies to survive with dignity in an uncertain world.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A New Introduction to Jewish Law

9781108421973I recently had a discussion with a student in my comparative law class who had studied Jewish law at a yeshiva. To study Jewish law, this student told me, is to enter a conversation that has been going on for millennia. One has to approach the conversation with humility, with respect for the participants — some of whom have been dead for centuries — who have been at this for a lot longer than you. It’s a nice description. To close out the week’s books, here is a forthcoming work from Cambridge University Press on Jewish Law, An Introduction to Jewish Law, by comparativist Fancois-Xavier Licari (University of Lorraine). The publisher’s description follows:

Jewish law is a singular legal system that has been evolving for generations. Often conflated with Biblical law or Israeli law, Jewish law needs to be studied in its own right. An Introduction to Jewish Law expounds the general structure of Jewish law and presents the cardinal principles of this religious legal system. An introduction to modern Jewish law as it applies to the daily life of Jews around the world, this volume presents Jewish law in a way that answers all the questions that a student of comparative law would ask when encountering an unfamiliar legal system. Sources of Jewish law such as revelation, rabbinical and communal legislation, judicial decisions, and legal reasoning are defined and analyzed, and the authority of who decides what Jewish law is and why their decisions are binding is investigated.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Saiman, “Halakhah”

9780691152110_0Ever since we started this center in 2010, one of our primary areas of focus has been comparative religious jurisprudence. It’s a fascinating subject, and one that draws little attention in the American legal academy, even in jurisprudence classes. Several years ago, a group of scholars tried to spark a Religious Legal Theory movement. Our center hosted one of the early conferences, in fact, which produced a number of excellent papers. But the movement seems to have fizzled out, sadly. The academy is a very secular place.

Still, comparative religious jurisprudence is an important object of study. Law figures, in some form, in every religion. But it plays very different roles. In Judaism and Islam, for example, law is the primary means for believers to interact with God–to learn and apply His will for humanity. In these religions, law plays the role that theology, properly understood, does in Christianity. Law is a vehicle for meditating on the divine.

I’m speaking in very broad terms; the subject is quite a bit more complicated. But I’m sure that the new book by our friend and colleague, Chaim Saiman (Villanova), will be a great and helpful addition to the literature in comparative religious jurisprudence. The book is Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law, from Princeton University Press. Here’s the description from the publisher’s website:

How the rabbis of the Talmud transformed everything into a legal question—and Jewish law into a way of thinking and talking about everything.

Though typically translated as “Jewish law,” the term halakhah is not an easy match for what is usually thought of as law. This is because the rabbinic legal system has rarely wielded the political power to enforce its many detailed rules, nor has it ever been the law of any state. Even more idiosyncratically, the talmudic rabbis claim that the study of halakhah is a holy endeavor that brings a person closer to God—a claim no country makes of its law.

In this panoramic book, Chaim Saiman traces how generations of rabbis have used concepts forged in talmudic disputation to do the work that other societies assign not only to philosophy, political theory, theology, and ethics but also to art, drama, and literature. In the multifaceted world of halakhah where everything is law, law is also everything, and even laws that serve no practical purpose can, when properly studied, provide surprising insights into timeless questions about the very nature of human existence.

What does it mean for legal analysis to connect humans to God? Can spiritual teachings remain meaningful and at the same time rigidly codified? Can a modern state be governed by such law? Guiding readers across two millennia of richly illuminating perspectives, this book shows how halakhah is not just “law” but an entire way of thinking, being, and knowing.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Wimpfheimer, “The Talmud”

9780691161846Here is an interesting-looking new book from Princeton University Press on the foundational text of Jewish law, The Talmud: A Biography. The author is Northwestern University religious studies professor Barry Wimpfheimer. The description from the Princeton website follows:

The life and times of an enduring work of Jewish spirituality

The Babylonian Talmud, a postbiblical Jewish text that is part scripture and part commentary, is an unlikely bestseller. Written in a hybrid of Hebrew and Aramaic, it is often ambiguous to the point of incomprehension, and its subject matter reflects a narrow scholasticism that should hardly have broad appeal. Yet the Talmud has remained in print for centuries and is more popular today than ever. Barry Scott Wimpfheimer tells the remarkable story of this ancient Jewish book and explains why it has endured for almost two millennia.

Providing a concise biography of this quintessential work of rabbinic Judaism, Wimpfheimer takes readers from the Talmud‘s prehistory in biblical and second-temple Judaism to its present-day use as a source of religious ideology, a model of different modes of rationality, and a totem of cultural identity. He describes the book’s origins and structure, its centrality to Jewish law, its mixed reception history, and its golden renaissance in modernity. He explains why reading the Talmud can feel like being swept up in a river or lost in a maze, and why the Talmud has come to be venerated–but also excoriated and maligned—in the centuries since it first appeared.

An incomparable introduction to a work of literature that has lived a full and varied life, this accessible book shows why the Talmud is at once a received source of traditional teachings, a touchstone of cultural authority, and a powerful symbol of Jewishness for both supporters and critics.

 

Posted on by Liam Ray

Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web: