Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy in Early Rabbinic Law: Three Case Studies
Dr. Ayelet Hoffmann Libson
Dr. Ayelet Hoffmann Libson is a scholar of Talmud and Jewish law, and serves as assistant professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. She received a B.A. from the Hebrew University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University. She is also a graduate of the MaTaN Advanced Talmud Institute and the Beit Morasha Program in Jewish Law. In 2017-2018 she was the Gruss Visiting Professor of Jewish Law at Harvard Law School, and she has also served as a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Her first book is entitled Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
This course examines how an individual’s knowledge of their body and psyche impacts halakhah, a fact that demonstrates the tension between that knowledge and rabbinic expertise and authority. The various topics to be considered include a sick person eating on Yom Kippur, the law of Niddah and the application of the mais alai claim within divorce law.