Tikvah & Berkowitz Fellow
Academic Year 2009-2010
Rabbi Saul Berman
Rabbi Saul J. Berman was ordained at Yeshiva University, from which he also received his B.A. and his M.H.L. He completed a degree in law, a J.D., at New York University, and an M.A. in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. He did advanced studies in Jewish Law at Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University Law Schools. Since 1971 Rabbi Berman serves as Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University. Rabbi Berman was Rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel of Berkeley CA (1963-1969), Young Israel of Brookline, MA (1969-1971) and of Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan (1984-1990.) Since 1990 he has served as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University School of Law, where he teaches a seminar in Jewish Law. Aside his academic appointments, from 1997 until 2006, Rabbi Berman served as Director of Edah. Rabbi Berman is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Judaica and is the author of numerous articles which have been published in journals such as Tradition, Judaism, Journal of Jewish Studies, Dinei Yisrael, and others.
Research
Dialectic in Jewish Law Between Preserving Jewish Jurisdiction and the Achievement of Justice
My research will examine the history of how Jewish Law considered, valued and regulated the interaction between Jews and non-Jewish legal institutions. I will attempt to correct the commonly held misconception that Jewish Law was entirely antagonistic towards Jews participating either as litigants or as witnesses in non-Jewish legal institutions including courts of law. I will show the matter to have been considerably more nuanced.
Jewish Law naturally favored Jewish courts and Jewish substantive and procedural rules, because it operated out of the conviction that the Jewish legal system, based on Divinely revealed Biblical written and oral law, would bring the best possible Justice to the ordering of human affairs. This conviction led to two distinctive operational values, which could potentially be in conflict with each other. On the one hand stands the valuing of Jewish jurisdiction as an institutional interest, as the critical mechanism for achieving the valued aspiration. On the other hand stands the ultimate aspiration itself, the achievement of Justice, which under given circumstances might best be actualized by the engagement of non-Jewish jurisdiction. I will study the undercurrents of tension, and the dialectical relationship between these two values within the history of Jewish Law.
