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The Review of Rabbinic 17 (2014) 57–111

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The Haredi Reading of Jewish Law: A Review Essay of Steven H. Resnicoff, Understanding Jewish Law1

Alan J. Yuter Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding, Ohr Stone, , [email protected]

Professor Steven H. Resnicoff’s lucid, perky, and engaging introduction to Jewish law is refreshingly readable, intellectually engaging, theologically dar- ing, pedagogically presented, and well conceived. The monograph is grounded in a profound consideration, appreciation, and mastery of primary (Dual Torah)2 and secondary (early medieval and latter day Rabbinic) sources, which are presented conceptually and dogmatically, as opposed to historically and critically. Resnicoff presents Jewish law3 not as a historically evolving set of norms but as an almost Platonic, ahistoric ideal, even when dealing with solu- tions to pressing needs that emerged over time. Unlike Elon’s Ha-Mishpat ha-‘Ivri, which is a magisterial, historically con- ceived compendium inappropriate for law school students who are not famil- iar with Jewish law, Resnicoff is exquisitely judicious in his material selection, his order of presentation, and in his ability to engage and guide the uninformed but intelligent professional reader. He knows his client population well. Jewish law, like any legal system, is a normative order.4 It consists of a hierar- chy of norms, or ought to do or ought not to do command statements.5 Resnicoff reads the Dual Torah, the literary sources of law, not in order to discover and define the meaning and valence of the legal order’s actual norms, which are the legal sources of law, but to understand, accept, and apply the teachings of those designated by to be great , who comprise in real life the actual legal norm creating organ of the living, law-accepting community in

1 New Providence and San Francisco: Matthew Bender, 2012. 2 Jacob Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the ( and , 1981), pp. 14–22. 3 Resnicoff’s theory of Jewish law sounds fundamentalist but in fact is not. The religious rheto- ric masks a very flexible, if partisan, view of law, to be explicated below. 4 Hans Kelsen, Pure Theory of Law (Berkeley, , and London, 1978), pp. 30–37. 5 Supra, p. 4.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/15700704-12341262 58 yuter

Resnicoff’s system. Having studied at Princeton (B.A.) and Yale (J.D.), Resnicoff is well trained to think deeply and to write expertly. And as a former student of Lakewood and as a holder of advanced Rabbinical from the most renowned of Orthodox jurist in America, R. Moshe Feinstein, Resnicoff has earned the praise of the greatest Orthodox and Haredi6 legal scholars of his time. Unlike most Orthodox Rabbinical scholars, Resnicoff addresses non-Ortho- dox scholars with professional respect.7 This is the case even though Reform and Conservative have not as yet created demographically signifi- cant communities that view themselves as bound by or are currently compli- ant with even their own versions of Jewish law. Nor do they endorse Dual ’s basic norm,8 that in some way “authored” and commanded an entity called “Israel” in and by the Torah.9 Thus for Resnicoff, non-Orthodox Judaisms are not players in the social/theological “game” of Jewish law,10 which for Resnicoff is only played today on the living Orthodox street. Still, a paragon of pluralist integrity uncommon among denominationally partisan Orthodox scholars of Jewish law, Resnicoff appropriately cites the Conservative rab- bis David Feldman11 and Eliot Dorff12 as scholarly authorities. He does not

6 The word is Hebrew for “shake” or “tremble.” It denotes trembling before God, as in Is. 66:5, which is the outer, visual manifestation, and connotes being seen as authentically, fervently, and sincerely Orthodox. Although some regard the term “ultra-Orthodox” to be politically incorrect, because minorities have a right to define themselves, it also is help- ful, even if not as preferred as “Haredi.” In English, Haredim prefer to be called “fervent,” or those within who are taken to be the most religiously serious and spiri- tually authentic. Words have charged, ideological valences and, by the social condition- ing, compel adherents to internalize the ’s ideological system by using its insider vocabulary. 7 Resnicoff, Understanding Jewish Law, pp. 11–13. 8 Resnicoff, supra, p. 9. 9 Kelsen, supra, p. 18. 10 Resnicoff, supra, p. 13. 11 Resnicoff, supra, p. 276, n. 25. 12 Resnicoff, supra, p. 264. This citation is remarkable because Feldman’s approach to Jewish law is not distinguishable from Orthodoxy. Dorff’s approach is however consciously aware that it not Orthodox. For a recent statement, see Elliot Dorff, “Biblical Law and Rabbinic Precedents in Hard Cases: The Example of Homosexual Relations in Conservative/ Masorti Halakhah,” in Jewish Law Association Studies: Studies in Honor of Bernard S Jackson 22 (2012), pp. 44–59. For a study of Dorff’s position, see the University of Chicago A.M. thesis of Joshua D. Yuter at http://joshyuter.com/papers/JoshYuter_Conservative JudaismAndHomosexuality.pdf.

The Review of 17 (2014) 57–111