Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T13:31:41.051Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

“Greeters of the Law”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2019

Yonatan Y. Brafman*
Affiliation:
Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Review Essay
Copyright
© President and Fellows of Harvard College 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Chaim N. Saiman, Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018) 320 pp., $29.95 hb, ISBN 9780691184364. Page references appear in parentheses within the text.

References

1 Kafka’s parable was originally published in 1915 in Selbstwehr, a Jewish weekly, and appears in several iterations. This translation is from the version embedded in Franz, Kafka, The Trial (trans. Willa, and Edwin, Muir; New York: Vintage Books, 1969) 213–15Google Scholar.

2 For a review of interpretations with a focus on the place of Judaism in them, see Vivian, Liska, “‘Before the Law Stands a Doorkeeper. To This Doorkeeper Comes a Man...’: Kafka, Narrative, and the Law,” Naharaim 6.2 (2012) 175–94Google Scholar.

3 Joseph, B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man (trans. Lawrence, Kaplan; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983) 137Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., 19–20.

5 Ibid., 24.

6 Eliezer, Berkovits, Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakha (New York: Ktav, 1983) 71Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., 81.

8 Robert, M. Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” Harvard Law Review 97 (1983) 1119Google Scholar.

9 Menachem, Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles (4 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994Google Scholar); An Introduction to the History and Sources of Jewish Law (ed. N.S. Hecht et al.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

10 Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law (2nd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994Google Scholar).

11 Ronald, Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986; repr., Oxford: Hart Publishing, 1998Google Scholar).

12 Ibid., 90, page numbers taken from the reprinted edition.

13 Ibid., 52.

14 Christine, Hayes, What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017Google Scholar); The Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law (ed. Christine Hayes; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Full Disclosure: I am a contributor to the latter volume.

15 Richard, Rorty, “Religion as Conversation-Stopper,” Common Knowledge 3.1 (1994) 16Google Scholar.

16 Rachel, Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999Google Scholar); Tamar, Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism (Hanover, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004Google Scholar).

17 Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” 44–60.

18 Robert, M. Cover, Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover (ed. Martha, Minow, et al.; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995) 175Google Scholar.

19 Adler, Engendering Judaism, 25–26.

20 Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah, 145–83.