Category Archives: Halakhah

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An irony is that the halakhic textbook written by the most distinguished of these yoatzot turns out to be more stringent, and requires consultation with rabbis more often, than halakhic texts written by men

Another irony is that the halakhic textbook written by the most distinguished of these yoatzot turns out to be more stringent, and requires consultation with rabbis more often, than halakhic texts written by men. See Aviad Stollman’s review of Deena R. Zimmerman’s A Lifetime Companion to the Laws of Jewish Family Life in Meorot 6 (2007), p. 5. I can’t imagine that women think that there is an advantage in having halakhic works written by other women if these works actually reduce female autonomy in intimate hilkhot niddah matters and require more consultation with male rabbis.

Marc B. Shapiro, “Answers to Quiz Questions and Other Comments, part 2”, The Seforim Blog (25 March 2012) {http://seforim.blogspot.com/2012/03/answers-to-quiz-questions-and-other.html}

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The Considerable Importance of the Effect of the Extensive Commentary Tradition on the Shulhan Arukh

This extensive commentary tradition had a further effect of considerable import: By and large, the commentaries to Karo’s Shulhan ‘arukh that appeared on the printed page were written by Ashkenazic rabbis; the Sephardic commentaries did not usually appear alongside the text. In this intensified Ashkenization of a Sephardic text, one can find a larger trace of one of the central shifts from the early modern to the modern in Jewish history, a shift that has parallels in the transformation of Lurianic Kabbalah by the founders of Hasidism in the eighteenth century and one that is undergirded by a massive demographic transformation of Jewish populations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When Karo wrote the Shulhan ‘arukh, the Jews of the Ottoman Empire were among the largest Jewish communities in the early modern world. When Gombiner wrote his commentary a century later, this demographic profile was beginning to change; and when Israel Meir ha-Kohen composed his in the nineteenth century, the Jews of the Levant were but a small minority of the world’s Jewish population.

Yaacob Dweck, “What is a Jewish Book?” AJS Review 34:2 (November 2010), 371.

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Considering Nakedness in light of the “Pink Elephant Problem”

I call it the “Pink Elephant Problem”: if someone says “Don’t think of a pink elephant”; what’s the first thing you think of? A pink elephant. Same thing applies to tzeni’ut: the more that I say “This is prohibited because of tzeni’ut and this is prohibited because of tzeni’ut”, the more you take innocuous interactions and sexualize them.
“Men and women can’t socialize at a kiddush because of tzeni’ut” – implication: men and women having kiddush together is somehow sexual.
“Men and women need separate entrances to get into synagogue” – implication: same entrance, there’s something sexual there.
All of that is problematic. … You’re sort of putting it in people’s heads that it’s always sexual. … You’re implying that men – and women, too – we just can’t control ourselves, we have no self-control…. We can’t but help get sexually aroused by listening to women. That’s what you’re implying.
When you take the expansive view of erva onto everything, effectively, you’re putting more ideas into their head they may not have even had before, just by pure implication.

Rabbi Josh Yuter, “Current Jewish Questions 26: Music in Judaism“, YUTopia Podcast #106 (23 May 2013) {http://joshyuter.com/podcasts/current-jewish-questions/current-jewish-questions-26-music-in-judaism.mp3}

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When Observant People Perceive Themselves as Not Observing Something…

I’m always intrigued when individuals or groups of people who are meticulously observant of some law system – particularly Halakhah – perceive themselves as not observing something even though they understand it to be the law. They are quite observant in general and they acknowledge that the particular practice is the law, but they just but just don’t do that practice. Often, I find that if these people are really listened to and empowered with legal language, they turn out to possess some insight into that law. It’s not that they randomly disregard it; it’s that they intuit that the law is being misinterpreted or misapplied, that it shouldn’t actually be understood as the law, and that if the halls of interpretational power had better-constructed avenues of access, such that more diverse vantage points and experiences were represented, communal perception of Halakhah would be much different.

Aryeh Bernstein, “Seclusion, Intimacy, and Power: Taking the Laws of Yichud Seriously”, Jewschool (18 August 2013) {http://jewschool.com/2013/08/18/30760/seclusion-intimacy-and-power-taking-the-laws-of-yichud-seriously/}

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The differences between takkanot and gezerot

The institutional nature of the Halakhah found its expression int he terms which are used to refer to it in the earliest sources at our disposal. The halakhot from the period of the Pairs (Zugot) and the early tanna’im are referred to as gezerot and takkanot. The only difference between them is that the latter were regulations intended to correct a situation in a positive manner whereas the gezerah is prohibitive and restrictive. The gezerah is identical to the seyag (fence) in the aphorism attributed to the Men of the Great Assembly, “Make a seyag around the Torah.” There is nothing new in a gezerah, it just places a protective fence, so to speak, around a Torah commandment in order to “keep people from transgressing it” (Berakhot 1:1).
The takkanah, on the other hand, initiates something new and thus it corrects an aberration which has developed.

Ephraim E. Urbach, The Halakhah: Its Sources and Development, trans. Raphael Posner (Ramat Gan: Massada; Jerusalem: Yad la-Talmud, 1986), 7.

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The term Halakhah

The term Halakhah does not occur in the Bible; it is found only in tannaitic and amoraic literature and not even in other literary sources of the Second Temple period. In its form, Halakhah is an Aramaic noun and the verb (halak = “to walk” or “to go”) from which it is derived, serves in its various forms, to denote a person who observes the Lord’s Torah and fulfils its commandments. Thus, one “walks” not only in “the ways of the Lord” (Exodus 18:20), but also “in His statutes” (Leviticus 26:3), “in His judgments” (Ezekiel 37:24) and “in His Torah” (Exodus 16:4). Walking is parallel to observing. Just as one walks along known roads but the act of walking also lays new paths, so too, although one observes the commandments in established ways, the act of observance itself creates new forms.
The definition given by Nathan b. Jehiel of Rome, the 11th century author of the Talmudic dictionary, Arukh, which describes Halakhah as “something which came from ancient days and [will last] to the end [of time], or [alternatively] something according to which Israel goes,” accurately reflects the double meaning of the term: 1. A tradition followed throughout generations, and 2. A way accepted by the people as a whole. This definition also implies that the Halakhah is not explicit in the Bible and that, unlike the Biblical commandments, its source is not in direct revelation. The term, nevertheless, does carry the connotation of authority which is in no way inferior to that of the commandments of the Torah itself. Indeed, the parameters of the Biblical commandments – such as the place and time of their observance and who is obliged to perform them – are fixed by the Halakhah.

Ephraim E. Urbach, The Halakhah: Its Sources and Development, trans. Raphael Posner (Ramat Gan: Massada; Jerusalem: Yad la-Talmud, 1986), 2-3.

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No phenomenon more accurately reflects the life and character of the Jewish people than the Halakhah

Nothing has made its influence more profoundly felt on the course of the history of the Jewish people, shaping its way of life and giving it form and substance, than the Halakhah. There is, therefore, no phenomenon that more accurately reflects the life and character of the people than the Halakhah.

Ephraim E. Urbach, The Halakhah: Its Sources and Development, trans. Raphael Posner (Ramat Gan: Massada; Jerusalem: Yad la-Talmud, 1986), 1.

Rabbis Interpreting the Law According to the Needs of Those who Lived By It

Rabbis had a number of exegetical methods for expanding the parameters of the law while respecting the integrity of authoritative sources. Practical or inductive reasoning, or simply conjecture, could be used to reinterpret a talmudic passage, suggesting that the text is discussing something other than what it seems. The provenance of a troublesome legal text could be limited to circumstances dissimilar to what a jurist now faced, effectively neutralizing the legal impact of the original case. Precedents could be narrowed or broadened to afford such greater flexibility in dealing with a problem. If the situation was extreme, a text could even be deliberately misinterpreted in the course of developing a line of thought. A jurist had to separate a contemporary case from previous legal thought if he was to follow an independent approach. Hermeneutical methods, however, did not tell Jewish legalists when to attempt a reinterpretation of the law.
Perhaps in a simpler world, halakists could have ignored the comings and goings of daily life and let purely legal considerations shape all legal discussions. Yet, no rabbi could be oblivious to the practical implications of his decisions on individuals or the Jewish community. In each generation and in every locale, rabbis had to interpret the law in light of the needs of those who lived by it while respecting the integrity of a legal tradition that was believed to have emanated from Mount Sinai with all its details and specifications. Any ideal of searching for absolute truth was outweighed by other values and goals.

Edward Fram, “Jewish Law and Social and Economic Realities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Poland” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1991), 4-5.