This volume contributes to the growing field of comparative Jewish and American law, presenting twenty-six essays characterized by a number of distinct features. The essays will appeal to legal scholars and, at the same time, will be accessible and of interest to a more general audience of intellectually curious readers. These contributions are faithful to Jewish law on its own terms, while applying comparative methods to offer fresh perspectives on complex issues in the Jewish legal system. Through careful comparative analysis, the essays also turn to Jewish law to provide insights into substantive and conceptual areas of the American legal system, particularly areas of American law that are complex, controversial, and unsettled.

This volume contributes to the growing field of comparative Jewish and American law, presenting twenty-six essays characterized by a number of distinct features. The essays will appeal to legal scholars and, at the same time, will be accessible and of interest to a more general audience of intellectually curious readers. These contributions are faithful to Jewish law on its own terms, while applying comparative methods to offer fresh perspectives on complex issues in the Jewish legal system. Through careful comparative analysis, the essays also turn to Jewish law to provide insights into substantive and conceptual areas of the American legal system, particularly areas of American law that are complex, controversial, and unsettled.

This book examines biblical and rabbinic law as a coherent, continuing legal tradition. It explains the relationship between religion and law and the interaction between law and morality. Abundant selections from primary Jewish sources, many newly translated, enable the reader to address the tradition directly as a living body of law with emphasis on the concerns that are primary for lawyers, legislators, and judges. Through an in-depth examination of personal injury law and marriage and divorce law, the book explores jurisprudential issues important for any legal system and displays the primary characteristics of Jewish law. A Living Tree will be of special interest to students of law and to Jews curious about the legal dimensions of their tradition. The authors provide sufficient explanations of the sources and their significance to make it unnecessary for the reader to have a background in either Jewish studies or law.

Confront the most pressing issues of twenty-first-century America in this fascinating book, which brings together classical Jewish sources, contemporary policy debate and real-life stories.

The first and only casebook on the subject in English, Jewish Law provides insight into a legal system with a long and rich tradition, addressing issues that are relevant today in American law. Its primary focus is on the legal aspects of Jewish law, with emphasis on its historical development. The quoted materials originate from a wide variety of sources, from the Torah and rabbinic responsa, to modern authorities and court opinions written by Justice Elon while serving as a Justice and Deputy President of the Supreme Court of Israel. Jewish Law encompasses a broad spectrum of subjects, and in sufficient depth that professors can adapt the materials to their individual teaching methods. By combining jurisprudence, comparative law, and practical law in one clear and concise text, this casebook provides background and perspective for students as well as practitioners. It contrasts the treatment of various topics in Jewish law with the approaches taken by other legal systems, such as American, English, and modern Israeli, thereby offering new insights. The translations from Hebrew to English preserve the original flavor of the Hebrew text. Justice Elon is a legendary figure in Jewish law. He founded and headed the Institute for Research in Jewish Law at the Hebrew University. He was consulted by the Israeli legislature regarding Jewish law issues during the codification of Israeli Civil Law and served as a member of legislative committees. His three-volume treatise, Jewish Law: Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri, has become a classic work on the subject in Israel. As a law professor for over 30 years and an ordained rabbi, Justice Elon brings his teaching expertise to this text. His co-authors are also noted and distinguished legal scholars and practitioners, and were the translators of Justice Elon's treatise, Jewish Law (Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri), into English.

This is the first book to present a systematic and synthetic introduction to Jewish law.

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.