Jewish Law Annual Vol 7

First Published in 1988. The Annual is published under the auspices of The Institute of Jewish Law, Boston University School of Law, in conjunction with the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies and the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. This volume concludes the symposium on the philosophy of Jewish law which started in Volume 6. It concludes with a response by the late Julius Stone to most of the preceding articles. This edition looks at natural law and Judaism, Halakhah and the Covenant; Jewish attitudes towards the taking of human life; mortality; and a study of Solomon Freehof.

First Published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 1987. This is Volume six of the annual published under the auspices of the Institute of Jewish Law of the Boston University School of Law. The symposium on the Philosophy of Jewish Law, which forms the main content of both this and the next issue, represents a major contribution to an area of investigation which has attracted increasing interest in recent years.

First published in 2004. This collection of papers is Volume eleven of the The Jewish Law Institute. Split onto two parts, it covers topics such as The Rabbinic Law on Entry and Seizure, the Problem of Priority in Civil Law, Analogical Argument in Early Jewish law amongst others. Part two entitled Chronicle, has examples of cases.

First Published in 1992. This collection of papers is Volume ten from The Jewish Law Institute. Split onto three parts, it covers the area of Parent and Child, including amongst others, offences punishable by death, child custody, Parents and Children under Moslem Law, Physical Violence and Herod’s Domestic Court. . Part two entitled Chronicle, has examples of cases and Part three includes a survey of recent literature.

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, demonstrating his willingness to base rulings intended for implementation on such exegesis. Gilat examines exegetical creativity as to the laws of capital offenses. Midrashic argumentation enables the rabbinical authorities to set aside the literal sense of the harsh biblical laws, and implement more suitable penological policies. On the other hand, Radzyner’s article on tendentious innovation focuses on a situation where novel arguments were advanced in the context of a power struggle, namely, Israeli rabbinical court efforts to preserve jurisdiction. Two articles discuss contemporary dilemmas. Spira & Wainberg consider the hypothetical scenario of triage of an HIV vaccine, analyzing both the talmudic sources for resolving issues related to allocating scarce resources, and recent responsa. Warburg discusses the status of civil marriage and cohabitation vis-à-vis payment of spousal maintenance: can rabbinical courts order such payment? Schreiber’s article addresses the question of whether privacy is a core value in talmudic law: does it indeed uphold a ‘right to privacy,’ as recent scholars have claimed? The volume concludes with a review of Yuval Sinai’s Application of Jewish Law in the Israeli Courts (Hebrew).

The volume contains ten articles, including a penetrating analysis of the application of Jewish price fraud law to the workings of the present-day marketplace. Diverse in their scope and focus, the articles address legal, historical, textual, comparative and conceptual questions. The volume concludes with a survey of recent literature on biblical and Jewish law, and a chronicle section, which discusses recent Israeli and American court cases involving issues where Jewish law is of particular relevance, thereby making the Annual a journal of record.