Multiple Legal Views: A Comparison of the Methods of Early Modern Christian Legal Scholars and Rabbi Joseph Caro, Author of the Standard Code of Jewish Law (Shulhan Arukh)

Professor Edward Fram of Ben-Gurion University will discuss how legal humanists proposed to deal with legal conundrums, comparing their approaches to those used by their contemporary Rabbi Joseph Caro, who created would become the standard code of Jewish law (Shulhan Arukh).

By Roman times, it was already clear that there was a need for guidance on how to decide between multiple legal views. A solution was offered by the lex citationum, or the laws of citations, which was included in the Theodosian Code. The laws gave rules as to which views should be followed in which situations. In the late 15th and 16th centuries, with learned law assuming an ever greater role in the life of towns, European jurists too faced a plethora of legal views. This lecture by Professor Edward Fram of Ben-Gurion University will discuss how legal humanists proposed dealing with these legal conundrums, comparing their approaches to those used by their contemporary Rabbi Joseph Caro, who created what would become the standard code of Jewish law (Shulhan Arukh).

Fram’s lecture will be followed by a response by Fordham University’s Ethan J. Leib, professor of law, and W. David Myers, professor of history.

The conversation will be moderated by Tsvi Blanchard, the Meyer Struckmann Professor of Jewish Law at the Humboldt Faculty of Law in Berlin.

About the Main Speaker
Edward Fram is a professor of Jewish history at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. His research interests lie in developments in Jewish law in mid-16th century Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on attempts to codify rabbinic law. He is the author of three books, Ideals Face Reality: Jewish Law and Life in Poland, 1550-1655 (1997); My Dear Daughter: Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth-Century Poland (2007); and A Window on Their World: The Court Diary of Rabbi Hayyim Gundersheim, Frankfurt am Main, 1773-1794 (2012).

This event is cosponsored by Fordham’s Jewish Studies program and the Institute on Religion, Law, and Lawyer’s Work at Fordham Law School.

For more information, contact Professor Magda Teter, the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studie at 347-364-3472 or jewishstudies@fordham.edu.

For additional information, please visit www.fordham.edu/jewishstudies.