Menachem Mendel

Haaretz is reporting a decision by the Haifa District Court that rejected a petition by Uzzi Ornan who wanted the Interior Ministry “to recognize his citizenship based on the fact that he was born in Israel, rather than on the grounds that he was Jewish.” (hat tip)

The Haifa District Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal submitted by Professor Uzzi Ornan, who sought to compel Israel’s Interior Ministry to recognize his citizenship based on the fact that he was born in Israel, rather than on the grounds that he was Jewish. Ornan, a linguist and member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, who is also the founder of the League against Religious Coercion in Israel, petitioned the Interior Ministry in 2010 to recognize him as an Israeli, not on grounds of being Jewish but because he was born in Israel. In his ruling on Tuesday, Judge Daniel Fisch said that it was without a doubt that the petitioner, Prof Uzzi Ornan, was born to a Jewish mother, and was therefore Jewish, which the law of return states as the source of his citizenship. “While the legislator’s definition of ‘Jew’ was only added to the Law of Return in 1970,” Fisch wrote, “the turn to the accepted Jewish halakhaic law is not a novelty, and an overview of the ruling preceding the amendment shows that any time that a man’s Judaism needs to be determined, that source has not been overlooked.”

Ornan was part of a larger group of petitioners whose similar case was discussed in the Jerusalem District Court a few years ago. The judge who wrote the decision rejecting their claim was Noam Solberg, who is now a member of the Supreme Court. Judge Solberg’s decision can be found here (Hebrew). Solberg’s decision can be summed up by saying that in his opinion this is not a question that is within the jurisdiction of the courts, rather, it is one that must be decided by society.

מבחינה נורמטיבית, ניתן לבחון את הנושא בכלים משפטיים, אך מבחינה מוסדית הוא איננו שפיט. האופי הדומיננטי של הנושא הוא לבר-משפטי: ציבורי, אידיאולוגי, חברתי, היסטורי ופוליטי. אין לחוות דעתו של בית המשפט בעניינים אלה יתרון על פני דעות של אחרים. ההיבט המשפטי של הנושא הוא טפל לעיקר.

From a normative standpoint, it is possible to examine the issue with legal tools, but from an institutional standpoint it is not justiciable. The dominant nature of the subject is extra-judicial: public, ideological, societal, historical, and political. The court’s opinion in these matters has no advantage over the opinion of others. The legal viewpoint on the subject is secondary to the essence.

See this article about the recent case of Yoram Kaniuk who wanted his identity card to say “no religion.”

May 15th, 2012 | Category: Israel, Israeli Culture, Israeli History, Israeli Politics | Leave a comment

The National Library of Israel has acquired a copy of the recent translation of the Talmud into Arabic that was done in Jordan. I am waiting for someone knowledgable in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, to write a review of the translation. Those with reading knowledge of Arabic can read a description of the project here.

May 13th, 2012 | Category: Talmud | Comments (4)

The new Koren Talmud is available for order from their store. If you click on this link you can see some sample pages that highlight some of its unique features, including a vocalized Tzurat ha-Daf.  Here is a helpful review.

May 13th, 2012 | Category: New Books, Talmud, Talmud Study | Comments (1)

In a few weeks there will be a new book on the shelves, and while it does not have much to do with Talmud or rabbinic literature, it is written by a former counselor of mine whom I got to know very well when I was the same age as my son is now. Deborah Kenny is the founder and CEO of Harlem Village Academies, a network of charter schools in Harlem. Her book is titled Born to Rise: A Story of Children and Teachers Reaching Their Highest Potential. While I haven’t spoken with her in many years, I have no doubt that the book is well worth the money.  I also have it on good word that our camp, Tel Yehudah, and youth movement, Young Judaea, make a few appearances in the book.

May 11th, 2012 | Category: New Books | Comments (3)

On a previous post of mine about the new Koren Talmud, Raphaël Freeman of Koren Publishers commented that there will be an iPad version of the new Koren Talmud. Sure enough, I went to the Koren website and from the photo image above you can clearly see an iPad. In the next few months we are really going to see a nice leap in options for Talmud study.

May 10th, 2012 | Category: Apple, Talmud, Talmud Study, Technology | Comments (8)

H-Judaica has a review of David M. Freidenreich’s Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law.

Freidenreich’s book, a revision of his doctoral dissertation, argues that just as sharing food is an expression of hospitality and acknowledges a common humanity, a refusal to accept or share food is a sign of rejection and hostility. This refusal may stem from commensality restrictions that prohibit sharing meals with certain groups, or from preparer-based regulations that prohibit eating food made by certain others. Religious injunctions that demand such separation construct a powerful sense of difference. Accordingly, this study “focuses on laws regulating the involvement of religious outsiders in preparing or sharing food” (p. 6). Such foreign food restrictions prove very useful for thinking about the relationship between Us and Them and, in many ways, these restrictions function similarly to prohibitions on sexual intercourse with outsiders: that is, they seek to establish non-porous boundaries in the service of self-definition. Nonetheless, Freidenreich admits, religious texts and scholarly interpretations that result in foreign food restrictions do not tell us much about the degree to which food rules were actually followed. Therefore, his study “is a history not of social reality but rather of intellectual imagination” (p. 10). Through the intellectual imagination religious authorities across the three traditions that provide the basis for his work–namely, classical and medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam–have constructed imagined or hermeneutical foreigners through their discourses on food. Although Freidenreich’s study does not extend beyond the later Middle Ages, he demonstrates convincingly the various ways in which religious authorities employ foreign food restrictions as a way of classifying humanity, differentiating those that are “not-Us, anti-Us, like-Us, or unlike-Us” (p. 25). The classifications and the food restrictions that illustrate them survive into the twenty-first century in some parts of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds. Freidenreich’s book, then, is an important contribution that will prove valuable not only for the ancient or medieval historian, but also for scholars engaged in a comparative investigation of contemporary religious cultures.

May 10th, 2012 | Category: Jewish Law, Jewish-Gentile Relations, Kashrut, New Books | Leave a comment

The Jewish Law Association’s 17th International Conference will take place at Yale University from July 30-August 2, 2012. See here for details. The program can be found here.

May 9th, 2012 | Category: Conferences, Jewish Law | Leave a comment

As Lag B’Omer approaches, on Google Books it’s possible to read some of The Bar Kockba War Revisited, ed. Peter Schäfer. Other recommendations are Negotiating Difference: Genital Mutilation in Roman Slave Law and the History of the Bar Kokhba Revolt by Ra’anan Boustan (from the above cited volume); if you are accessing the Internet from certain academic institutions, Hanan Eshel, The Bar Kochba Revolt, 132–135; and Richard G. Marks, Bar Kokhba in Traditional Jewish Literature (Google Books).

May 9th, 2012 | Category: Ancient Judaism | Leave a comment

In Law and History Review there is a review (hat tip) of Tayla Fishman’s Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Jewish Culture and Contexts). I don’t access to the full article, so if someone does I would be interested in knowing what the review wrote. [Update:  Thank you to all of the people who sent me a copy of the review.] I know that there is another review in the pipeline for an American journal specializing in Jewish Studies.

May 9th, 2012 | Category: Book Reviews, Manuscripts, Talmud, Talmud Study | Leave a comment