VIDEO of this Event:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/media/2011/03/29_feld.mov
Location: Langdell Hall South (on the campus of the Law School)
Cambridge, MA 02138
Presentations by Prof. Vered Noam, Goldsmith Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, Yale University
and Prof. Aharon Shemesh, Weinstock Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, Harvard University
Responses by Prof. Moshe Halbertal, Gruss Visiting Professor in Talmudic Civil Law, Harvard University and Prof. Shaye J.D. Cohen, Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy, Harvard University
Chaired by Prof. Noah Feldman, Bemis Professor of International Law, Harvard University
The second century CE witnessed an amazing development in the history of Judaism: the compilation of the Mishnah and the emergence of rabbinic Judaism. The rabbinic sages believed that the sum and substance of the Mishnah’s legal rulings could be traced back to the Torah (Pentateuch), if not directly, then indirectly via the medium of “the Oral Torah.” The rabbinic sages have thus left a great puzzle for modern historians of religion and law: do the Mishnah and related writings attest to something old, as the sages would have us believe, or something new? Were the sages conservators, the preservers of an ancient heritage, or were they innovators, the shapers of a new culture? Perhaps both. Join us for a multi-pronged discussion of the subject.
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