Judaism, Law and Literature

Edited by Michael Baris and Vivian Liska

1: Michael BARIS, Introduction: Fire and Face – On Reading the Sacred (1-9) 

Section One: Jewish Law and Literature: Theoretical Concerns

2: Elisha ANCSELOVITS, Encyclopedic Knowledge in Stories and Contextual Knowledge in Law: Rereading Akivean Exegesis of Biblical Laws and Akivean Law Codes (10-49)

3: Leon Wiener DOW, Indeterminate Midrash, Indeterminate Halakha (50-72)

4: Daniel REIFMAN, Revisiting Rob Cover’s “Nomos and Narrative”: A Semiotic Approach to Law and Narrative in the Bible (73-99)

Section Two: Scriptural Narrative

5: Bernard S. JACKSON, Law and Narrative in the Book of Ruth: A Syntagmatic Reading (100-139)

6: Efraim SAND, ‘The Disliked Wife’ (השנואה האשה) in Mesopotamia and Israel (140-205) 

7: John W. WELCH,  Narrative Elements in Homicide Accounts (206-238)

8: Shai WOZNER & Gilad ABIRI, The Tree of Knowledge and the Birth of Normativity (239-251) 

Section Three: Talmudic Narrative

9: Aaron ORENSTEIN, Rabbi Yehuda Ben Bava – A Pioneer Rather than a Law Breaker (252-278)

10: Yaacov SHAPIRA, Literary Means as a Tool for Halakhic Expression: Honoring Parents as a Case Study (279-307) 

Section Four: The Narrative of Halacha

11: Alyssa M. GRAY, Reading Tosafot as (Law and) Literature (308-335)

12: Ron S. KLEINMAN, “This Cannot be Allowed in Israel, Heaven Forbid!” The Approach of Contemporary Israeli Rabbinical Judges to Adopting Civil Laws and Judgments on the basis of Custom, in Light of Rashba’s Responsum:  Law and Narrative (336-356) 

ISBN 978-1-906731-31-1 (hardback), 978-1-906731-32-8 (paperback), 2017, Pp. viii + 356