The Emergence of Jewish Law in Postmodernist Legal Theory

by Suzanne Last Stone

FOOTNOTES

1 Portions of this lecture are based on prior publications. See Suzanne Last Stone, T he Pursuit of the Countertext: The Turn to the Jewish Legal Model in Contemporary American Legal Theory, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 813 (1993) and Suzanne Last Stone, Judaism and Postmodernism, 14 Cardozo L. Rev. 1681 (1993).

2 Profes sor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

3 On the predominance of this idea in Jewish historiography, see Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context 79-92 (1991), and Louis H. Feldman Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World xi ( 1993).

4 See, e.g., Philo (incorporating Hellenistic philosophy and Greek modes of argument); Maimonides (incorporating the insights of Islamic philosophers and theologians).

5 On the debate in n ormative rabbinic thought about the permissibility of studying non-Jewish intellectual sources, see Norman Lamm, Torah Umadda: The Encounter of Religious Learning and Worldly Knowledge in the Jewish Tradition, passim (1990).

6 This term is used by Eliezer Berkowitz, Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakha 85 (1983), to connote the limitations imposed on the halachic process by exilic conditions, which, in his view, impede the capacity of the halacha for self-renewal .

7 As Jonathan Goldstein points out, "the concepts of Hellenistic culture and of confrontation themselves have a history", which Goldstein attributes to no later than the sixteenth century. See Jonathan Goldstein, Jewish Acceptance and Rejection of Hellenism, in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition 64 (E.P. Sanders ed., 1981). Contemporaneous sources, nonetheless, oppose Hellenists to Hebrews, Acts of the Apostles 6:1; Greek to Jew, Paul's Letter to the Galatians 3 :28-29, and Hellenism to Judaism, II Maccabees 2:21, 4:13.

8 Mishnah Sotah 9:14. Precisely why the rabbis banned the study of Greek wisdom, and what subjects are included in that ban, is still the subject of debate.

9 See Nathan Rotenstreich, Tradition and Reality (1972).

10 See Saul Lieberman, Hellenism and Jewish Palestine passim (2d ed. 1962); Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism passim (1974); Goldstein, supra no te 5.

11 For an overview of the debate between rabbinic Judaism and Christianity with respect to the observance of the law, see Law in Religious Communities in the Roman Period: The Debate over Torah and Nomos in Post-Biblic al Judaism and Early Christianity (Peter Richardson & Stephen Westerholm eds., 1991).

12 See Susan A. Handelman, Fragments of Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem, and Levinas (1991).
< BR> 13 See Feldman, supra note 1, at 429-45.

14 See Bernard S. Jackson, Legalism, 30 Journal of Jewish Studies 1 (1979).

15 Jeffrey Stout, The Flight from Authority: Relig ion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy 2-3 (1981).

16 See Jacob Katz, Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation (1986).

17 See Rotenstreich, supra note 7, at 16-18.

18 See id.

19 Compare the similar fate of Roman law in the scholastic period. See Paul Carrington, How Societies Remember 146-48 (1989).

20 See Katz, supra note 14, at 11-18.

21 For a provocative analysis of how extensively modernity has penetrated into even the most orthodox Jewish communities, see Haym Soloveitchik, Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy, 28:4 Tradition 64 (1994). Soloveitchik notes the diminution of a natural cosmology in which God's presence is palpably felt, the loss of the ascetic impulse, in favor of a this-worldly preoccupation, the discovery of the "historicity of things", and the dominanc e of texts and rules, a style of religious authority well-suited to life in a modern, bureaucratic society.

22 See Salo W. Baron, World Dimensions of Jewish History, in Simon Dubnow: The Man and His Work (Aaron Steinberg ed. 1963).

23 See notes 30-32 infra and the accompanying text.

24 See David Stern, Midrash and Indeterminacy, 15 Critical Inquiry 132, 141-46 (1988).

25 For an exten sive review of this literature, see Suzanne L. Stone, In Pursuit of the Countertext: The Turn to the Jewish Legal Model in Contemporary American Legal Theory, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 813 (1993).

26 See David Kraemer, The Mind of t he Bavli (1990); Jose Faur, Golden Doves with Silver Dots (1986) (hereinafter Faur, Golden Doves); Midrash and Literature (Geoffrey H. Hartmann & Sanford Budick eds. 1986); Susan Handelman, The Slayrs of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (1982); Jose Faur, Law and Hermeneutics in Rabbinic Jurisprudence: A Maimonidean Perspective, 14 Cardozo L. Rev. 1657 (1993) (hereinafter Faur, Law and Hermeneutics).

27 See Faur, Golden Doves, sup ra note 24, at xxix. For a fuller treatment of this position, see Suzanne L. Stone, Judaism and Postmodernism, 14 Cardozo L. Rev. 1681 (1993).

28 M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire 486 (1926), qu oted in E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety 1 (1965).

29 See Nancey Murphy & James W. McClendon, Jr. Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies, 5 Modern Theology 199, 201 (1989); Dennis Patterson, Postmodernism / Feminism / Law, 77 Cornell L. Rev. 254, 267 (1992).

30 See Pierre Schlag, Missing Pieces: A Cognitive Approach to Law, 67 Texas L. Rev. 1195, 1203-04 (1989).

31 Two useful intro ductions to postmodernist thought are Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (1987) and John McGowan, Postmodernism and its Critics (1991). For descriptions of postmodernist thought as applied to law, see The Fate of Law ( Austin Sarat & Thomas R. Kearns eds., 1991).

32 See Drucilla Cornell, The Philosophy of the Limit 2-12 (1992).

33 Bonaventura de Sousa Santos, The Postmodern Transition: Law and Politics , in The Fate of Law, cited above in note 29, at 79, 92. Santos is referring to the well-known "disenchantment thesis", which contends that the modern world replaced the previous, meaningful, humanly responsive world with the Weberian iron cage. See id. at 102. But see Ernest Gellner, Culture, Identity, and Politics 153 (1987) (declaring himself "disenchanted with disenchantment" ) .

34 For a more extended description of the intersection of modernist idea ls with poststructuralist theory, see Martha Minow, Partial Justice, in The Fate of Law, cited above in note 29, at 15, 32-48.

35 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1992).

36 See Paul W. Kahn, Legitimacy and History: Self-Government in American Constitutional Theory x (1992).

37 See id. at 213-215.

38 See Robert M. Cover, The Supreme Court, 1982 Term - Foreword: Nomos and Narra tive, 97 Harv. L. Rev. 4 (1983). For a more extended analysis of Cover's work, see Stone, supra note 23.

39 See Robert M. Cover, Obligation: A Jewish Jurisprudence of the Social Order, 5 J.L. & Religion 65 (1987), discus sed more extensively in Stone, supra note 23.

40 Babylonian Talmud, Erubin 13b.

41 Babylonian Talmud, Baba Mezia 59b.

42 For a more extended analysis of these two principles, see Stone, supra note 23, at 835-839, 855-865.

43 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, at pt. II, chs. 39-40, at 378-84 (Shlomo Pines trans., 1963).

44 See id. at pt. III, ch. 54, a t 635-38.

45 L.E. Goodman, On Justice: An Essay in Jewish Philosophy 100 (1991).

46 See Jose Faur, Monolingualism and Judaism, 14 Cardozo L. Rev. 1713, 1741-43 (1993).

47 See Cover, supra note 36, at 45.

48 See Faur, Law and Hermeneutics, supra note 24, at 1662.

49 See Robert A. Burt, Precedent and Authority in Antonin Scalia's Jurisprudence, 12 Cardozo L. Rev. 1685, 1690-93(1991); Faur, supra note 44, at 1744.

50 On this subject, see Stone, supra note 23.

51 Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity 325 (2d ed. 1963).

52 Id. at 326.

53 Dodds, supra note 26, at 3.

54 Jonas, supra note 49, at 321.

55 See Murphey & ; Mclendon, supra note 27, at 207.

56 For a discussion of this issue, see Stone, supra note 25, at 1694-95.

57 See Simha Assaf, Punishment after the Close of the Talmud 15-49 (Heb. 1922); Aaron M. Schreiber, Jewish Law and Decision-Making: A Study Through Time 402-22 (1979).

58 Santos, supra note 31, at 102.

59 See Faur, Law and Hermeneutics, supra note 24, discussed more extensivel y in Stone, Judaism and Postmodernism, supra note 25.

60 See Palestinian Talmud, Peah 2:6 (17a).

61 See Babylonian Talmud, Menahoth 29b.

62 See Palestinian Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:2.
63 See David Weiss Halivni, From Midrash to Mishnah: Theological Repercussions and Further Clarifications of "Chate'u Yisrael", in The Midrashic Imagination 23 ( Michael Fishbane ea., 1993).

64 See Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash 1-3 (1990).

65 See Moshe Halbertal & Avishai Margalit, Idolatry 152 -59 (1992).

66 See M artin P. Golding, The Juristic Reasoning of Maimonides, 3 J. Jewish Studies 42 (1973).

67 A succinct analysis of Maimonides's position is in Gerald G. Blidstein, Maimonides on `Oral Law', 1 Jewish L. Ann. 108 (1978).< BR>
68 On the nature of this codification, see notes 70-75 infra and the accompanying discussion.

69 See the discussion in Stone, supra note 25, at 1696-99.

70 See Jonathan Z. Smith, Sacred Persistence: Towards a Redescription of Canon, in Approaches to Ancient Judaism I, 11 (William Scott Green ed., 1978).

71 Joseph Caro, Kesef Mishnah to Mishneh Torah, Laws of Rebels 2:1.

72 See Jeffrey I. Roth, Responding to Dissent in Jewish Law: Suppression versus Self-Restraint, 40 Rutgers L. Rev. 31, 47-48 (1987).

73 See Ephraim E. Uhrbach, The Halakhah: Its Sources and Develooment 331-357 (1986).

74 This term, kaymu vekiblu, appears in the Book of Esther 9:27, connoting that the scroll was received and certified. That verse is quoted in the talmudic discuss ion to support the canonical nature of the Book of Esther. Babylonian Talmud, Megilla 7a. For an excellent analysis of this term as applied to scripture, see Faur, Golden Doves, supra note 24, at 107-08.

75 Thus, late r restatements of the law, such as Maimonides's Code, are viewed as interpretations of the original sense of the Talmud. Although the accepted legal norm, the p'sak, may, on occasion, differ from that set forth in the Talmud, such deviations are primarily a result of interpretation of the sense of the Talmud, perush. The halacha also confers authority on a legal decisor to decide differently from the Babylonian Talmud, provided one relies on the authority of the Palestinian Talmud or the Tosefta, in " ;exceptional" cases.

76 9 Encyclopedia Talmudit, Halakha 334-339 (Shlomo Y. Zevin ed., 1971).

77 See Hassan, supra note 29, at 168-69 (listing "fragmentation" and & quot;decanonization" as two of the most salient characteristics of postmodernism).

78 Compare Hans Blumenberg's famous description of the predicament of modernity. According to Blumenberg, although the goal of th e modern age was to "carry out a radical break from tradition", it found itself unable to do so. Hence, the current period is marked by both an urge to break radically with tradition and a reinscribing of premodern modes of activity. Hans Blumen berg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age 78 (1983).

79 Babylonian Talmud, Baba Mezia 59b.

80 Babylonian Talmud, Erubin 13b.

81 As the late scho lar Ephraim Uhrbach remarked: "[T]he distinction between Israel and the other nations. . .goes together with the distinction between light and darkness, sacred and profane, Sabbath and weekdays, as it is formulated in the Havdalah blessing. . ." Ephraim E. Uhrbach, Self-Isolation or Self-Affirmation: Theory and Practice, in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, cited above in note 5, at 297-298.

82 Sifre Deuteronomy 344; Palestinian Talmud, Baba Kamma 4:3. C f. Babylonian Talmud, Baba Kamma 38a.

83 Sifre Deuteronomy 344; Babylonian Talmud, Baba Kamma 38a.

84 On this topic, see Suzanne L. Stone, Sinaitic and Noahide Law: Legal Pluralis m in Jewish Law, 12 Cardozo L. Rev. 1157, 1192-93 (1991).

85 Babylonian Talmud, Baba Kamma 113a-b. In his codification of the law, Maimonides forbids the stolen property of a non-Jew. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilcho t Gezelah ve-Avedah 1:2.

86 Tosefta, Baba Kamma 10:15: ''He who robs a Gentile must make restitution. Robbery from a Gentile is more serious than robbery from a Jew, because of the profanation of the Name.

87 Palestinian Talmud, Baba Kamma 4:3.

88 A sensitive analysis of the narrative aspects of the story is presented in Steven D. Fraade, Navigating the Anomalous: Non-Jews at the Intersection of Early Rabbinic Law and Narrative, in The Other in Jewish Thought and History: Constructions of Jewish Culture and Identity (Laurence J. Silberstein & Robert L. Cohn eds., 1994).

89 On the process of halachic s elf-definition in light of the Christian challenge, see Reuven Kimelman, Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Prayer in Late Antiquity, and Alan F. Segal, Ruler of the World: Attitudes about Mediator figures and the Importance of Sociology for Self Definition, in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, cited above in note 5, at 226 and 245 respectively.

90 Stern, supra note 22, at 136.

91 See Stone, supra n ote 23, at 887-892.