The Codification Of Jewish Law On The Cusp Of Modernity

Codes of Jewish law may look similar, but they represent very different ways of thinking about the law.

Contemporary arguments about Jewish law uniquely reflect both the story of Jewish modernity and a crucial premise of modern conceptions of law generally: the claim of autonomy for the intellectual subject and practical sphere of the law. Jewish Legal Theories collects representative modern Jewish writings on law and provides short commentaries and annotations on these writings that situate them within Jewish thought and history, as well as within modern legal theory. The topics addressed by these documents include Jewish legal theory from the modern nation-state to its adumbration in the forms of Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism in the German-Jewish context; the development of Jewish legal philosophy in Eastern Europe beginning in the eighteenth century; Ultra-Orthodox views of Jewish law premised on the rejection of the modern nation-state; the role of Jewish law in Israel; and contemporary feminist legal theory.

In Law’s Dominion, Jay Berkovitz offers a new history of early modern Jewry. Set in the city of Metz, legal sources reveal a robust community able to integrate religion and civic consciousness while navigating competing Jewish and French jurisdictions.

Reconsidering how early modern and modern Jews navigated schisms between Jewish community and European society.