Additional Projects
2019-2023: The Making of Rabbinic Halakhah within its Legal Provincial Context
This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF, personal research grant, 1026/18)
The evolution of rabbinic law into a sophisticated and detailed legal system took place during the first centuries CE in the shadow of the Roman Imperial power. The rabbis were well aware of the infiltration of Roman jurisdiction and were not immune to its control over many aspects of their daily conduct. At the same time, to date we lack an adequate assessment as to the impact of the Rome on rabbinic law-making within their social and political context.
This project offers a comprehensive assessment of the role of Roman legal environment in the creation and development of major areas of early rabbinic law. It provides a systematic comparison of rabbinic law with external legal sources on all the major branches of private law. The project includes an accessible database of all relevant parallels, accompanied by an in-depth analysis of key sources and phenomena. Publications emanating from this project offer a rich display of the ways rabbinic law-making was integrated into its Roman Imperial context. The results of this study will provide in the future the foundation for the study of the legal culture of the Roman Empire more generally, of which the rabbinic material is a major component.
LOCAL LAW UNDER ROME builds upon and expands this project
2022-2026: The History of Mishnah Composition
This research is supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF, personal research grant, 973/22)
“For our Mishnah was not created ex nihilo nor was it stitched from one parchment” (J.N. Epstein). Considering the Mishnah’s literary complexities, disjunctions and diverse forms and arrangements, no Mishnah scholar would disagree with this statement. However, currently we have no clear image of the history of Mishnah composition, and there is a pressing need to provide a new history of the composition of the Mishnah. This project seeks to provide a systematic survey of the processes of transmission and adaptation, shifting contexts, reformulation, and legal expansion that shaped the literary and legal evolution of the Mishnah up to its final form.
Ultimately, the scholarly desideratum in the field of Mishnah studies is a detailed account of the literary development of all tractates within the six orders of the Mishnah. The product of this comprehensive project on the whole Mishnah, is expected to be a series of seven volumes on the history of the composition of the Mishnah: a volume for each order in addition to an introductory volume that will synthesize the results of the interpretation of all tractates into a comprehensive history of the Mishnah. While I seek to accomplish this large-scale project in the long run, the publication of each volume is of value in and by itself.