The Master of studies in law
in
Law & Jewish Civilization

Academic Content

The degree program will be composed of the following elements:

  • Foundational Courses in Law and Judaism. These will be selected from a broad menu of courses offered as part of the normal curriculum at both NYU School of Law and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Science. The specific choices will be determined by the student and his/her advisor on the basis of his/her background and experience in both disciplines.

    To view masters-level courses at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies being offered in the Spring of 2010, as a sample of course offereings: click here.

    To view Law School courses being offered in Spring 2010, as a sample of course offerings: click here.

  • Three obligatory Core Courses.  All M.S.L. students will be required to take three Core courses in Law & Jewish Civilization that will illustrate potential connections between the two disciplines.  The first Core course, entitled “Law in Jewish Civilization, Law and Jewish Civilization, Jewish Law and Legal Civilization,” will develop a sensibility to legal theory and philosophical investigations of Jewish Law. The Second Core course, entitled “The Halakhic System and Responsa Literature: Interpretation, History, & Values,” will focus on legal process and legal realism in exploring Jewish Responsa.  The third Core course will introduce students to the sensibility of historical investigation.  For this course students will choose one of the following three options currently being offered in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies:
      • Readings in the Babylonian Talmud
      • History of Judaism in Late Antiquity
      • Modern Jewish Thought
  • Specialized Courses.  These may be selected from a menu of courses designed specifically for the Master's in Law & Jewish Civilization. The following faculty have been asked to teach and it is our hope that they will be able to do so:

    Courses with an * delineate core courses.

    From Adam and Eve to the Trial of Jesus: Justice and Injustice in Biblical Narrative

    Professor Joseph Weiler

    The students will acquire tools to differentiate and hone their normative understanding generally and the meaning of “justice” more specifically and be challenged to reconsider, both critically and creatively, their assumptions and apprehension of moral responsibility, and ultimately, their own world view and self-understanding through a rereading of passages from the Bible.

    Law in Jewish Civilization, Law and Jewish Civilization, Jewish Law and Legal Civilization*

    Professor Joseph Weiler & Professor Moshe Halbertal

    This seminar will introduce students to the central engagements between Jewish Law and legal theory, between religious sensibility and Jewish Law, and between the encounter of law in general and Jewish Civilization.

    Methodologically the texts selected for the Seminar will develop a sensibility to legal theory and to philosophical investigation of Jewish Law.

    The Halakhic System and Responsa Literature: Interpretation, History, & Values*

    Professor Maoz Kahana

    This seminar will investigate the process and design of Halakhic Jewish Law through the lens of Responsa literature, while examining its relation to the historical context, ethical values and methods of interpretation. It will begin with an overview of halakhic literature from the early modern to the post-modern era, and continue with close readings and presentations of modern responsa material that deal with historical transformations, spiritual (kabbalistic and hasidic) movements, ethical values and more.

    Religion, Law, and Morality

    Professor Perry Dane

    Religion, law, and morality are three of the most important, universal, and abiding impulses among human beings and determinative forces in human history. Yet the precise relationships among the three have been subjects of perennial doubt and debate. This seminar seeks to explore those debates. Our readings will be religious, philosophical, jurisprudential, historical, and anthropological; the religious sources will include both non-Jewish and Jewish texts.

    The seminar has three overlapping goals. The first goal is to acquaint students with some of the controversies, both historical and contemporary, regarding six distinct questions:

    1. Does morality play a conceptually necessary or merely contingent role in law and legal reasoning?
    2. Is morality itself an essentially law-like set of rules, or something else?
    3. What is the role of legal or law-like rules in religious life and thought?
    4. How has, and how should, religion figure in the development of secular legal systems?
    5. Can or should moral reasoning detach itself from religious influences and modes of thought?
    6. What is the place of morality, and more specifically of an autonomous moral sphere, in religious life and thought?

    The second goal of the seminar is to examine the resemblances, connections, and differences among these six sets of questions, and to explore whether these various arguments can illuminate each other. Throughout, the goals will also be to aim for a larger account of the respective spheres of law, morality, and religion in their various roles as historical and institutional phenomena, distinct sources of authority, and possibly profoundly distinct modes of reasoning, discursive practices, and forms of thought.

    Finally, the seminar will pay special attention to the distinctive Jewish contribution to many of the questions it will explore. The majority of the readings will not be from Jewish sources, but the course will emphasize the place of the Jewish voice in the larger conversation, and will specifically compare how the questions at hand have presented themselves in Jewish and non-Jewish texts and contexts.

    This seminar will not be able to, or even try to, deal exhaustively with any of the topics and concerns that it will cover. The hope, instead, is to clarify a set of important questions, dig deeply into selected treatments and discussions of those questions, explore points of connection and divergence, and provoke lively discussions all along the way.

    Hypernomianism and the Messianic Potential of the Law

    Professor Elliot Wolfson

    The course will explore the theme of law and the messianic potential of its overcoming, which I have called hypernomianism. By examining talmudic, philosophic, and kabbalistic sources, we will examine the limits of the law and the possibility of speaking meaningfully of a law that exceeds the law. The phenomenon of forgiveness, in particular, will be examined as providing the possibility for guilt to be transmuted into innocence. The kabbalistic doctrine of the divine indifference that effaces the difference between right and wrong, far-reaching in its hypernomian potential, is an elaboration of the rabbinic idea that God pardons human indiscretion by annulling the standard of rectitude mandated by the Torah. Simply put, in the act of forbearing, the criterion of reward and punishment sanctioned by the strict canon of law would have to be overturned. From this perspective we can enlist the Derridean idea and speak of the nonjuridical dimension of forgiveness and the implied suspension of the order of lawfulness. In the halakhic mindset, which informed rabbinic sages and kabbalists alike, interruption of law is its very foundation. The full accomplishment of this infringement is for all time postponed until the endtime but it is proleptically accessible at any time.

    The Image of God in Jewish Law and Philosophy

    Professor Yair Lorberbaum

    The seminar will survey and analyze the meaning of the idea of Imago Dei (Man created in the image of God) in a variety of Jewish sources, including: biblical literature; Jewish literature of late antiquity, especially early Rabbinic literature (in both halakhah and aggadah); and in medieval Jewish philosophy and law, especially the writings of Maimonides (Rambam). The course will focus on both Imago Dei’s mythical-philosophical dimensions and its application in the law (halakhah)

    The Seminar is text-centered. It requires the ability to read closely and meticulously texts from a variety of bodies of literature and to inquire the relations and echoing between them. All the texts will be read in English translation.

    The methodologies to be used are: hermeneutics (for mythical and theological texts) and legal analysis (for the legal texts), phenomenology and philology (after all, we are dealing with ancient texts).

    Anglo-American Legal Theory and Jewish Law

    Professor Suzanne Last Stone

    This course has three main goals.

    The first goal is to introduce students to the jurisprudential study of Jewish texts. In the modern era, the normative texts of Judaism –the halakhic tradition– generally were subsumed under the framework of religion or ethics. For many students, legal theory will be a new hermeneutical tool for reading Jewish texts and for thinking about them conceptually. The course emphasizes foundational texts of legal theory, especially those bearing on legal-theoretical questions essential for understanding halakha as a legal system.

    The second goal of the course is to construct a bridge between legal theory and other disciplinary approaches to the study of rabbinic texts, in particular, literary theory, social history, and history of religion. We will draw on legal theoretical work about the relationship of law and literature to explore the relationship of halakha and aggada. We will investigate how different assumptions about the nature of law shape the methodological premises of historians of halakha. We will examine the connections between law and religion through studying law as culture.

    The third aim of this course is to expose the divergent assumptions on which halakha and contemporary Anglo-American law rest as a prelude for mutual critique. Areas of inquiry will include: judicial discretion, legal pluralism, and duty vs. rights based jurisprudences. We will also investigate creative efforts to use the Jewish legal tradition as a resource for thinking through liberal legal theory in an era of globalization.

    Living on the Margins of Jewish Legal Tradition: The Ill, The Insane, The Criminal and Others

    Professor Ephraim Shoham-Steiner

    Jews have always valued community. The Jewish legal tradition and the adherence to the law have served as both the bonds and the building blocks of Jewish "Peoplehood", a sense of belonging and the core of Jewish identity. The legal tradition, reflected in works of the lawmakers and interpreters of the law helped Jews define themselves, throughout Jewish history, provide their sense of group identity, and distinguish themselves from other peoples. But what about marginal individuals, voluntary as well as involuntary "deviants", how did the Jewish legal tradition and the individuals that shaped it relate to them? What was the legal attitude of Halakah to the marginal and the deviant? Wrestling with cases of acute mental or physical illness with serious social and legal transgressions demanded special attention.

    From Imperial Law to Law's Empire: Transformative Phases in Early Jewish Jurisprudence

    Professor David Flatto

    Royal power dominated the jurisprudence of antiquity. A king or emperor commanded authority in all realms, including the legal sphere. In this course, we will examine the way Jewish thinkers, who were living in the midst of absolutist regimes, responded to the regnant scheme. While certain Jewish writers appropriated the prevalent conceptions of imperial law, others dramatically rejected it and instead promoted the independent rule of law, i.e. law’s empire. Against the backdrop of classic constitutional theories of Hellenistic kingship and the Roman Principate, we will carefully study passages from Qumran, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, and Rabbinic literature that were shaped by this milieu. We will also highlight the early form of core constitutional concepts that begin to manifest themselves in this literature, including an independent judiciary, separation of powers, the rule of law and theocracy.

    History of Halakhah*

    Professor Jeffrey Rubenstein

    More Information coming soon

  • Master Thesis. The thesis should be on a topic which combines law and Jewish civilization and corresponds to the interest and experience of the student.