Tikvah Scholar
Academic Year 2010-2011
Yosef Lindell
Yosef’s first foray into academic Jewish scholarship was as an undergraduate at Yeshiva University, where his senior thesis, “Beacon of Renewal: the Educational Philosophy of the Lida Yeshiva in the Context of Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines Approach to Zionism,” was published in Modern Judaism (2009). After graduating summa cum laude from Yeshiva in 2007 with a major in History and a minor in Jewish Studies, Yosef completed an MA in Medieval Jewish History at the Bernard Revel Graduate School. Now a third-year law student at NYU, Yosef is a staff member of The Journal of Legislation and Public Policy and is interested in pursuing government service, particularly at the federal level. Last year, he worked for the Litigation Bureau at the New York State Attorney General while the last summer he worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission near Washington, D.C. Yosef remains highly interested in academic scholarship and is excited for the opportunity to research the relationship between Judaism, history, and the law.
Research
Is there a Jewish Legal Science? Nineteenth Century Formalist Defenses to the Integrity of the Oral Law
(Mentored by Professor Perry Dane, Tikvah Fellow)
My research will compare movements in nineteenth century legal jurisprudence. In particular, I believe that there are strong parallels between Classical Legal Thought—a more scientific approach to jurisprudence emerging from the American legal academy—and similar novel approaches to Jewish law in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that focused on a mode of study and practice that had deeper conceptual and methodological roots.
I will begin by looking at studies of Legal Classicism, particularly the work of Duncan Kennedy. Chaim Saiman at Villanova University Law School has already noted similarities between Legal Classicism as defined by Kennedy and the “Brisker” methodology of Talmud study promulgated by Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik. Saiman noted that while the Briskers attempted to devolve halakha to its conceptual and functional principles, they did this without any sense of the role of history in the halakhic process. I wish to pursue other Jewish parallels, including the methodological works of Rabbis Isaac Jacob Reines, Chaim Tchernowitz, Zechariah Frankel, and possibly Zvi Chajes. Like the Briskers, these thinkers studied halakha conceptually, but possibly in a very different way, one that also took account of halakha’s historical development.
Methodologically, I will approach these primary sources from an intellectual history perspective, and identify similarities and differences between them and Legal Classicism in America as well as contemporary trends in European legal development. Many assume that traditionalist halakhic thinkers in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were shielded from broader trends and developments in legal theory and jurisprudence. I will argue that this is not so. Even if these rabbinic leaders were not directly involved in cross-cultural study, they may have been influenced by the zeitgeist of their times. Perhaps demonstrating this will allow for richer dialogue regarding how we conceive of the relationship between religious law and the broader legal context.
