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Explores the connection between the presence of written versions of rabbinic tradition and the emergence among Galilean sages of the third century c.e. of an explicit ideological claim that the entire rabbinic tradition originated in Sinaitic revelation to Moses as unwritten Torah in the Mouth. Of great comparative interest is the Greco‐Roman tradition of rhetorical education, represented in the tradition of rhetorical textbooks (Progymnasmata), which prized memorization of written texts for exclusively oral performances that included rule‐governed transformations and revisions of texts in the performative setting. The chapter examines Amoraic traditions of Byzantine Galilee (the Palestinian Talmud, Midrash Tanhuma, Midrash Pesiqta Rabbati) for evidence that they were mastered from written versions and intentionally revised in performative settings. From this comparative perspective, the chapter concludes that the rabbinic conception of Torah in the Mouth is designed to legitimate the authority of the sage in the setting of discipleship training.

This chapter focuses on the people who enact an execution according to rabbinic law, beginning with those found in the Bible: the blood-avenger, the community, and the witnesses to the crime. It argues that the blood-avenger serves as a focal point for tensions between the individual and the rabbinic authorities. In addressing the role of the community and witnesses, it shows that the Rabbis withdraw the agency of execution from the community and deliver it into the hands of the crime’s witnesses. This transfer of power can be interpreted as a strategy for controlling the power of execution, while at the same time maintaining some distance from the execution itself.

This chapter surveys the last three decades of Jacob Sasportas's life, when he moved between Hamburg, Amsterdam, Livorno, and Amsterdam again. During this period, Sasportas continued to enter the fray of rabbinic controversy and rarely mentioned Sabbetai Zevi or Jewish messianism. The chapter then posits that for Sasportas, the problem posed by Sabbetai Zevi was actually symptomatic of a much larger issue: the rabbinate itself. Sabbetai Zevi and the Sabbatian movement provided Sasportas with the conditions of possibility to compose a book that both documented the course of events and articulated a viewpoint. Once articulated, however, many of the tenets Sasportas had expressed in an incisive formulation in response to Sabbetai Zevi reappeared in his other writings and in other writings about him. For Sasportas, the world of rabbinic learning was the point of departure for his thought. He approached Sabbetai Zevi and the question of his messianism from the point of view of rabbinic law. Indeed, the problem of rabbinic authority, and ancillary issues such as honor, respect, and jurisdiction, surfaced repeatedly in The Fading Flower of the Zevi.

This chapter discusses the philosophical leanings of Elijah ben Solomon during the Enlightenment. Historians commonly misrepresented Elijah by stating that he was a traditionalist who defended traditional rabbinic Judaism. It argues that Elijah actually questioned the canons of rabbinic authority through his hermeneutic idealism, while his opponent, Moses Mendelssohn, ardently defended the historical rabbinic tradition to German-speaking audiences.

This study addresses the project of grounding the legitimacy of halakhic-legal authorities, like rabbis or rabbinic courts. Importantly, this inquiry is distinct from, but related to, investigation into the justification of halakhic norms. I begin by exploring the work of Eliezer Berkovits. I argue that he offers a robust teleological justification of halakhic norms by showing how they are aimed at a moral purpose and how this purpose guides halakhic-legal practice. On this account, the directives of halakhic-legal authorities do not possess any independent normativity, for they only direct individuals to perform actions that they already have reason to do anyway, specifically the reasons that Berkovits indicates in his justification of halakhic norms. I offer a new model for grounding the legitimacy of halakhic-legal authorities that links it to the justification of halakhic norms without reducing it to that effort.

Chapter 2 focuses on the development of Jewish law from the standpoint of both Divine Revelation and the actions of the post-Biblical sages during the Talmudic era. It explores Revelation in the Torah, the Written Law, and the development of halakhah in the biblical and post-biblical periods. The discussion focuses on rabbinic authority in the period following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 ce and illustrates how during this period the Pharisee sect reformulated Judaism through the Oral Law by developing innovative measures with a basis in the tradition. Through this process, the Pharisees made Revelation a continuing reality in the lives of the Jews of the post-destruction era. The concluding section explores the influence of Hellenistic culture on the development of early Jewish law, illustrating that minority traditions not only borrow from, but also reinterpret, elements from the surrounding majority cultures.

This chapter identifies four distinct stages in the evolution of Jewish religious thinking about Christianity under different historical circumstances. In the first and second centuries, Jewish Christians came to be regarded as heretics (minim) or apostates from Judaism. For Jews to believe in Jesus and the ‘new covenant’ was considered avodah zarah. In the Middle Ages, when Jews lived in small communities in Christian Europe and were dependent on economic interaction with Christians, most Rishonim in Ashkenaz ruled that Christians were not idolaters, but they still considered belief in Christian doctrine to be illegitimate avodah zarah. In the late Middle Ages and early modernity, the majority of Aharonim did not consider Christianity to be avodah zarah for non-Jews. From the seventeenth century to the twentieth, when Christian toleration of Jews grew, a number of rabbinic authorities began to appreciate Christianity as a positive historical and theological phenomenon for non-Jews that helped spread fundamental beliefs of Judaism and thus advanced the Jewish religious purpose.

This chapter looks at how later generations of Jews have looked back into the talmudic texts and found therein various ideas for which rabbinic authority is then claimed. This often leads to reading later systematic ideas back into rabbinic texts. However, the Talmud and midrashim are simply not the sorts of works in which one can generally find systematic thinking and formulation. As such, there is very little if any ‘settled doctrines’ about anything, including such questions as whether or not Judaism has a systematic theology or how Judaism understands faith in God. Despite all this, the chapter contends that the examination of rabbinically ordained practices and rabbinic texts can help in formulating answers to questions such as those raised above. In particular, the chapter considers what can be learned from rabbinic texts about Jewish conceptions of faith in God.

This chapter examines the east European rabbinate. The rabbinate in modern eastern Europe was not significantly different from the rabbinate in other Ashkenazi Jewish communities up to the eighteenth century. In the following years, many aspects of rabbinical authority changed in almost every country of Europe. During the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a number of developments altered the conditions of rabbinic authority in eastern Europe in unique ways, and also made the selection of communal rabbis more complex than previously. Many of these changes contributed to a weakening of the power and status of the rabbinate — a power and status that were not exceptionally strong to start with. By the end of the nineteenth century, the patterns of the east European rabbinate were far from the traditional Ashkenazi model because the community, as a body that collected taxes and had internal authority, had ceased to exist.

This chapter describes a process where mothers are essential to the replication of a particular cultural model of authority and yet also challenge the very structure that they work to support. It refers to the Babylonian Talmud and its depiction of mother–daughter relationships in two cycles of talmudic narratives, which argues that the Talmud uses this relationship to promote the value of father–husbands leaving home to study Torah. It also looks at the centrality and power of the father–son relationship that is disrupted when sons become disciples of male rabbinic masters. The chapter discusses mothers who are portrayed as a success when transmitting to their daughters the value of sending husbands off to study with a master. It emphasizes that the mother–daughter relationship becomes crucial to the creation and replication of a society that valorizes rabbinic authority and the ideal of Torah study.

This concluding chapter states how in ancient Judaism, methods of interpretation and discourse on the nature of signs were not confined to scripture and its interpretation, but extended to the world of celestial, terrestrial, and ritual things and occurrences. The primary circles of rabbinic authorities were more likely holding to the notion of the Torah, as elaborated by scholastic tradition, as the exclusive source of revelation. But at the same time, some sectors of Jewish culture in late antiquity embraced alternatives to this worldview. This suggests that the pantextual theory of revelation was an ideological development in rabbinic thought that shared space with a more encompassing view of divine signification.