Explore the vast range of titles available.

Jewish law forbids carrying objects between private or public areas on the Sabbath. However, rabbinic authorities deemed carrying permissible within a physical enclosure called an eruv . This book explores the rabbinic debates surrounding the creation of such enclosures in North American cities and examines the evolution of American Orthodox communities from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s. The earliest debates reflect a community with low religious observance and weak ties to local government that relied on European rabbis for authority. By the mid-twentieth century, these rabbinic disputes reveal an established, religiously observant community forming its own traditions.

This article explores contemporary halakhic debates surrounding vaccination, analyzing key responsa and rabbinic writings from a recent Or Yisra'el journal symposium. Through an examination of R. Shmuel Kamenetsky's opposition to mandatory vaccination alongside the majority view supporting immunization requirements, the discussion engages fundamental concepts including pikuah nefesh, holeh le-faneinu, and acceptable risk parameters in Jewish law. The author argues that schools retain the right to exclude unvaccinated students based on communal welfare considerations, even if vaccination carries some risk. Drawing on R. Shlomoh Zalman Auerbach's novel framework comparing defense against marauding animals to milhemet mitzvah (obligatory war), the author suggests that vaccination should be understood as a mandated communal defense against pathogenic threats rather than merely a personal medical choice.

The Talmud Bavli presents in Tractate Eruvin (104a) a controversy between two Amoraim, Ulla and Rabbah. This controversy on the topic of producing a sound on the Sabbath is the context of the present study. According to Ulla, any production of sound on the Sabbath is forbidden, and according to Rabbah, producing a musical sound is prohibited on the Sabbath but producing a sound that is not musical is permitted. The purpose of the study is to present the two approaches to solving the controversy, where the dilemma is which of them should the halakha follow. The setting of the study is a comparative analysis of two different halakhic approaches. Accordingly, this controversy created two different fundamental halakhic approaches that have implications for the authority of the Talmud Bavli compared to the Talmud Yerushalmi, that is, which of these Talmuds has more authority than the other. The research methods of this article portray the various outlooks of the poskim and commentators, from amongst the first representatives to relate to this problem, where the results show that a relative majority of the commentators follow the approach of the Rif. The article’s conclusion is that the authority of the Talmud Bavli is greater than that of the Talmud Yerushalmi.Contribution: The contribution of the article is in showing the fundamental arguments that the poskim and commentators raised to solve this dilemma, which serve as a basic foundation for all the poskim and commentators who followed them and who advocated either the one approach or the other. Furthermore, the article also contributes by providing a source interpretation of the Hebrew and Aramaic text and rabbinic literature, which fits the scope of the journal.

Semiotic theory provides a powerful set of tools for analyzing rabbinic legal reasoning. Following Saussure's distinction between the two axes of a sign's meaning, value and signification, I posit that any casuistic law acquires meaning from two distinct elements of legal discourse. The first element is analogical reasoning, that is, the comparison between casuistic laws, which is the type of sense construction implicitly reflected in the organization of the tannaitic law codes. Semiotics establishes that legal analogy is not merely a tool for adjudication but rather the essential means of constituting a cohesive discourse out of distinct legal formulations. The second element is rationalization. Scholars have traditionally conceived of legal rationales as logical antecedents or historical motivations for laws; I demonstrate that these do not reflect the way rationales are invoked within rabbinic law. Rather, based on Peirce's conception of meaning as \"the translation of a sign into another system of signs,\" rationalization is best conceived of as the association of a law with a statement from outside the network of casuistic laws. What confers legitimacy on a given rationale is its position within a conventionally accepted mode of halakhic argumentation. I use this model to account for the fact that legal rationales tend to play a relatively peripheral role in the construction of rabbinic legal discourse. Semiotics establishes that a broader legal discourse, wherein casuistic laws are explained through various types of rationales, is possible only because the network of casuistic laws constitutes a self-sufficient cultural construct.

This article evaluates the reconstruction of 4Q264a offered by Vered Noam and Elisha Qimron. While those scholars find precedent in this scroll fragment for later rabbinic and Karaitic Sabbath prohibitions regarding playing musical instruments, using fire, and reading Scripture, the current article argues that this reconstruction is anachronistic and has insufficient support in the text. Instead, this article supports previous scholars whose reconstructions of this fragment of Sabbath laws include a rule encouraging singing, a prohibition against using fire for cooking but not for other uses, and a requirement to study Scriptures on the Sabbath.

With eight cryptic words by Jesus in John 5:17, an enigma surfaces regarding God's activity in his ministry that is not easy for us to solve. Jesus, in defending his actions in healing the lame man at the pool of Bethzatha (Bethesda), makes a comparison that is simple enough on the surface: Jesus' activity finds its basis in the Father's current activity; thus, Jesus is not legally or spiritually culpable for breaking the Sabbath. What creates the enigma is the assumption that lies beneath the argument: the Father is working, and even more importantly, he is working on the Sabbath. Investigation of this assumption is the purpose of this book. Burer contributes to the discussion surrounding Jesus' Sabbath activity by augmenting current research on Sabbath work, which focuses primarily on rabbinic rules and interpretation of Torah. Burer tests the hypothesis that Jesus' actions on the Sabbath are best understood in light of the concept of divine Sabbath work and that in light of this concept Jesus' actions imply a claim to deity or a close association with God's divine plan and work. Burer does this by searching the Hebrew Scriptures, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Josephus, Philo, the Mishnah and Tosefta, the targums, the midrashim, the Palestinian Talmud, and the Babylonian Talmud in order to unearth a conceptual and cultural framework for divine Sabbath work. The results are then used in analyzing two prominent stories of Jesus' work of healing on the Sabbath in the New Testament to prove, disprove, or modify his working hypothesis. New Testament students and scholars will find Divine Sabbath Work to be a thought-provoking, enticing, creative approach to old questions.

Is the opening of the door, which leads to activation of the compressor, and in some refrigerators, of the thermistor as well, an innocuous act or is it prohibited on Shabbat? Very few modern-day halakhic issues have received as much attention as the question of opening a refrigerator door on Shabbat. The question has spawned a voluminous literature whose publication has spanned a period of decades.

In this essay, I explore how Christians can relate to the Sabbath in a way that adequately expresses Christian traditions about sacred time while showing respect for distinctly Jewish practices. My basic claim is that a Christian sanctification of the Sabbath presents an entirely new challenge for a Christianity that does not view Judaism as superseded or outdated. Thus, I ask: What should be the meaning of the Sabbath commandment for Christians? How can Christians sanctify the Sabbath while affirming it as a sign of the Jewish people’s living covenant? First, I will lay out the questions that are raised for Christian theology when affirming Jewish Sabbath observance as part of practiced Judaism, that is, as lived Torah and as a tradition passed on from generation to generation. Next, I will consult contemporary Jewish literature on the topic, then look for Christian accounts of the Sabbath in Christian systematic theologies. I will ask: What happens when Christians affirm that Sunday does not abrogate the Jewish Sabbath, while also asserting their own commitment to the Bible’s holy day? I will subsequently sketch an outline of a Christian theology of Shabbat that acknowledges distinctive Jewish legal traditions as well as its own connectedness to Biblical temporal structures.

[...]according to Rabbi Horowitz, the obligation to pay the agreed price upon the reprinting of the various volumes of the Talmud was fully binding simply because of the subscribers' undertaking, fulfillment of which is mandated by reason.28 Most surprising is Rabbi Horowitz' view regarding the binding nature of dina de-malkhuta dina, the law of the land is the law. In a brief, cryptic comment, expressed almost as an aside, Rabbi Horowitz advances the novel view that such an obligation is predicated solely upon the dictate of reason. Since he does not relate that view to a social contract theory, Rabbi Horowitz leaves the impression that it is the notion of obedience to law per se that constitutes the a priori duty. [...]both authorities assert that, absent a biblical mandate, transgressions of that nature are not subject to punishment by terrestrial tribunals; rather punishment of such infractions is reserved to Heaven alone. [...]Avnei Nezer concludes that violation of a written oath is punishable only at the hands of Heaven.32 For non-Jews, who are bound to be truthful in swearing an oath only by virtue of natural law rather than by an explicit admonition contained in the Noahide Code, there is no such distinction; violation of both oral and written oaths by Noahides is punishable only at the hands of Heaven.

This study focuses on the tension between the national, public, and social restrictions that apply to the Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) in Israel and the way that Jews from a variety of religious streams understand Shabbat as leisure time that allows for a subjective choice of practices and self-realization. Jewish law provides clear rules and instructions for behavior on Shabbat, including a prohibition on different types of melacha (different kinds of creative activity), with the goal of “remembering” and “keeping” the Sabbath. While in Israel there are many Jews who do not follow these laws, they also make Shabbat special in other ways. Since Israel is a Jewish state, there is no clear separation between religion and state; today there are laws, regulations, expectations, and customs relating to Shabbat in the public sphere. To understand the diversity of views of Israelis about Shabbat, qualitative interviews were conducted with 66 secular, religious, formerly religious, traditional, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, aged 25–50. Analysis of the survey data shows that Israeli Jews have a variety of perspectives regarding Shabbat, and do not describe Shabbat being structured and experienced as collective, homogeneous, and restrictive. Among the interviewees, religious and secular alike, Shabbat is described as a time full of variable subjective content, based on free choice and free from other obligations. On the one hand, even the religious and Ultra-Orthodox prioritize the individual and their family, sometimes more than religious faith or halachic obligation. On the other hand, even for those who do not keep the Shabbat halachically, resting on Shabbat forms an organizing principle for the weekend, lending this time its unique quality.