Band 1, Heft 2

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed the re-presentation of halakha, in which rabbis compiled and synthesized many scattered halakhic teachings and created a new category of halakhic literature. This article examines this modern re-presentation of Judaic law through an analysis of a series of six popular halakhic guidebooks compiled in the early twentieth century by Rabbi Yehuda Yudel Rosenberg (1859-1935). All Rabbi Rosenberg’s halakhic guidebooks were responses to his perception of what the Jewish public wanted and needed to know. Taken together, these popular halakhic works give us an interesting and important perspective with which to better understand the ways in which turn-of-the-twentieth-century Orthodox rabbis sought to make halakha both relevant and accessible to ordinary Jews at a time when the halakhic process was being profoundly challenged and in the throes of significant change.

Warfare was noticeably marginalized in the vast library of premodern texts that transmit Orthodox Judaism. One consequence was that even when Jews began to perform military service in significant numbers (a phenomenon that commenced in the eighteenth century and became prevalent in the Allied armies of World War II), they continued to suffer from a dearth of halakhic guidance with respect to the ritual and moral challenges posed by bat­tlefield conditions. That is no longer the case. Since the early 1950s, conscription in Israel has generated the production of an increasing number of handbooks expressly designed to serve as works of reference for the growing numbers of religiously observant men and women now serving in the Israel Defense Forces. This paper reviews that corpus, analyzing its authorship, the stages in its development, and the changes in its content.

Tsniut (modesty) is a very popular theme in contemporary Jewish religious discourse. But one significant novelty, however, lies in the recent apparition of popular halakhic guides that understand tsniut for the first time as a form of dress code for women. Until a few decades ago, no halakhic authority found it necessary to pen a book describing in painstaking detail the exact rules to which a Jewish observant woman should steadfastly adhere if she wants to dress modestly. However, as of today, tens of such books have been published, mostly in Hebrew and English, but also in other languages-such as French, Spanish, and Yiddish. In effect, we are witnesses, in a span of a few short years, to the creation of nothing short of a new halakhic genre, which so far has been insufficiently addressed by the scholars active in corresponding fields. This paper aims at partially filling this gap in the scholarly literature.

On the margins of Israeli society, in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, there is a lively and fierce debate over the status of Modern Hebrew. At the beginning of the resistance, the reservations and opposition concerning Hebrew formed part of the reaction to the innovative activities of secular Zionists. Despite the fact that it was taken as a continuation of the beloved “Holy Tongue” of the Bible, the Ultra-Orthodox viewed it as a modernist innovation. This paradoxical situation produced an extensive literature rejecting Modern Hebrew on ideological and educational grounds. Later, during the second stage of the resistance, opposition to Hebrew also acquired a pseudo-halakhic tone. This article describes the various opinions of members of the Ultra-Orthodox community regarding Modern Hebrew, the different stages of their resistance to it, and the reasons given for this resistance. The changes that occurred in the attitude of Ultra-Orthodox society toward Hebrew are not only of interest in their own right but also provide an interesting case study on the emergence of a binding norm that quickly became phrased in halakhic terminology.

The Haye Adam of Rabbi Avraham Danzig (1747-1820) was the first all-encompassing code of Jewish law published since Rabbi Joseph Karo’s Shulchan Aruch (1565). The Hayei Adam ruled on all facets of daily life and was written to assist layman in understanding and comprehending the Shulchan Aruch and its numerous commentaries. This paper analyzes the preludes to each section of the Code, which served as the means to cognize Rabbi Danzig’s implicit message and system of adjudication. Rabbi Danzig understood that he lived in a time and place in which diversity was not the sole challenge to his religious community because the new secular neo-religious and “outside” orthodox groups were a threat. The Rabbi used the platform of his book of halakhah to instruct his educated readers in the correct behavior and theology. This paper takes into consideration the Jewish social historical issues of the period that had direct influences upon the thinking and rulings of Rabbi Danzig as manifested in the Haye Adam.

One of the best-known principles of halakha is that Shabbat is violated to save a life. Who does this saving and how do we know that a life is in danger? What categories of illness violate Shabbat and who decides? A historical-sociological analysis of the roles played by Jew, non-Jew, and physician according to the approach of “medical cosmology” can help us understand the differences in the approach of the Shulchan Aruch compared to later decisors (e.g., the Mishnah Berurah). Such differences illuminate how premodern medical triage coexisted with a different halakhic understanding than that of the biomedical age.

This article analyzes the impact of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch during late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe and America. In contrast to the popular image of the Kitzur as a manifesto of Solomon Ganzfried, he compiled this compendium of Jewish law more as a user-friendly code than as an ideological tool. The comparatively limited presence of ideology in this text, coupled with a brevity that made it less expensive to publish, explains its broad appeal not only among various streams of Orthodoxy-from Ultra to Modern-but also among non-Orthodox Jews. For American Jews, in particular, the Kitzur displaced the Shulhan Aruch as the mainstream code of law.

In this article, I will explore the philosophical underpinnings behind modern developments in the halakhic approach to suicide. I will begin with a short survey of the halakhic oeuvre on the subject of suicide, with an emphasis on developments in the course of the nineteenth century, a period of significant transformation in the halakhic approach to suicide in Europe. From there, I will continue with an analysis of the philosophical trends underpinning the halakhic developments, examining the overt as well as the ulterior influences of philosophical trends and rabbinic authorities. I will conclude with a summary of the ramifications of the case of halakhic approaches to suicide on the understanding of the formation and development of Orthodox society in the modern era.