Spring 2025
The Judicial Overhaul in Israel:
A Political Perspective on Executive Aggrandizement
Oded Haklai
February 4, 2025
Oded Haklai, Professor, Department of Political Studies; Director, Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity, Queen’s University; Visiting Scholar, Weatherhead Scholars Program,
Visiting Scholar, Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University
Moderated by Daniel Ziblatt, Director, Center for European Studies & Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, Harvard University
Rabbis, Law, and the Talmud in the Sasanian Empire: A New History
Simcha Gross
February 20, 2025
Simcha Gross, Assistant Professor of Ancient Rabbinics, University of Pennsylvania; Starr Fellow,
Center for Jewish Studies (Spring 2025), Harvard University
Moderated by Jay Harris, Harry Austryn Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Circumventing the Law:
Rabbinic Perspectives on Loopholes and Legal Integrity
Elana Stein Hain
February 25, 2025
Elana Stein Hain, Rosh Beit Midrash and Senior Research Fellow at the
Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
Moderated by Lynn Kaye, Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature and Thought, Brandeis University
Back to Beauharnais:
Antisemitism and the First Amendment
James Loeffler
March 4, 2025
James Loeffler, Felix Posen Professor in Modern Jewish History, Johns Hopkins University
Moderated by Noah Feldman, Director Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
Bridging Divides:
A Grassroots Path to Constitutional Reform in Israel
Ronen Avraham
March 11, 2025
Ronen Avraham, Professor of Law, Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law
Moderated by Nitsan Plitman, SJD candidate, Harvard Law School
Israel/Palestine in International Law
Zinaida Miller
Salma Waheedi
March 12, 2025
Zinaida Miller, Professor of Law and International Affairs; Faculty Co-Director, Center for Global Law and Justice; Faculty Co-Director, Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy, Northeastern University
Salma Waheedi, Lecturer on Law and Executive Director of the
Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World at Harvard Law School
Moderated by Guy Priver, SJD candidate, Harvard Law School
The Halakhic Boundaries of the Hasmonean Legacy
Zvi Ryzman
March 25, 2025
Zvi Ryzman is a scholar, teacher and businessman
Moderated by Menachem Butler, Program Fellow, Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
Legal Perspectives on Attacks on Health Care During the War in Gaza
Yasmeen Abu-Fraiha
April 2, 2025
Yasmeen Abu-Fraiha, Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University and former Health Policy Director at the Task Force for Health Promotion and Equity in the Arab Society
at the Israeli Ministry of Health.
Moderated by Ioannis Kalpouzos, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Modern Responsa: An Anthology of Jewish Ethical and Ritual Decisions
Pamela Barmash
April 3, 2025
Pamela Barmash, Professor of Hebrew Bible and Biblical Hebrew, Washington University.
Moderated by Adriaan Lanni, Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship
Yael Berda
April 8, 2025
Yael Berda, Associate Professor, Sociology & Anthropology, Hebrew University
Moderated by Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School
Gendering the Eunuch: Talmudic Discourse and Trans/Queer Temporalities
Jay Michaelson
April 22, 2025
Jay Michaelson, Caroline Zelaznik Gruss and Joseph S. Gruss Visiting Professor in Talmudic Civil Law Harvard Law School
Moderated by Noah Feldman, Director Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
Fall 2024
The International Criminal Court and the War in Gaza:
the Status of the Investigation
Ioannis Kalpouzos
September 24, 2024
Ioannis Kalpouzos, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Moderated by Salma Waheedi, Lecturer on Law and Executive Director of the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World at Harvard Law School
On Constitutional Identity, Democratic Legitimacy and Judicial Review
in times of Democratic Backslide: The Case of Israel
September 25, 2024
Barak Medina, Justice Haim H. Cohn Chair of Human Rights Law, Hebrew University
Moderated by Noah Feldman, Director Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
The History of Hate Speech Legislation:
the ACLU and Antisemitism in the Twentieth Century
September 30, 2024
Laura Weinrib, Fred N. Fishman Professor of Constitutional Law
Suzanne Young Murray Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Moderated by Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor of Law at Harvard University
Critique of Halakhic Reason: Divine Commandments and Social Normativity
Yonatan Brafman
October 28, 2024
Yonatan Brafman, Assistant Professor of Modern Judaism, Tufts University
Moderated by Shaul Magid, Visiting Professor, Modern Jewish Studies, Harvard Divinity School
Distinguished Fellow of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College
Biblical Judgements: New Legal Readings in the Hebrew Bible
Justice Daphne Barak-Erez
October 29, 2024
Justice Daphne Barak-Erez, Supreme Court of Israel
Moderated by Noah Feldman, Director Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
Beyond Suspicion: The Moral Clash Between Rootedness and Progressive Liberalism
Nissim Mizrachi
November 11, 2024
Nissim Mizrachi, Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
Moderated by Walid Hammam, Director, Weatherhead Scholars Program at Harvard University
Freedom of Speech in Jewish Law: Theoretical Ideals and Practical Realities
Aviad HaCohen
November 14, 2024
Aviad HaCohen, President and Professor, Shaarei Mishpat Law School
Moderated by Menachem Butler, Program Fellow, Julis-Rabinowitz Program in Jewish and Israeli Law
Genetic Analysis of Medieval and Ancient Jews:
Scientific Findings and Ethical Considerations
David Reich
November 19, 2024
David Reich, Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School
Moderated by Noah Feldman, Director Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
Natural Law in Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed
Lenn Goodman
November 20, 2024
Lenn Goodman, Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt University
Moderated by Noah Feldman, Director Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
The Gentile as a Legal Concept in Ancient Judaism
Ishay Rosen-Zvi
December 3, 2024
Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Professor and Chair,Department of Philosophy and Talmud, Tel Aviv University
Moderated by Jay Harris, Harry Austryn Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies, Harvard University
Spring 2024
Israel’s Supreme Court and Judicial Reform:
An Assessment of Recent Rulings
Ori Aronson
February 2, 2024
Ori Aronson, Associate Professor of Law, Bar-Ilan University, Deputy Director of the Manomadin Center for Jewish and Democratic Law, Visiting Fellow, Center for Jewish Studies, 2023-2024
Moderated by Nitsan Plitman, SJD candidate, Harvard Law School
Day After Scenarios and Internal Politics in Israel
Avishay Ben-Sasson Gordis
Feburary 5, 2024
Avishay Ben-Sasson Gordis, Lecturer in Government, Harvard University
Moderated by Romy Neumark, Lecturer in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Academic Freedom and the War in Gaza:
A Roundtable for Harvard Law Students
February 13, 2024
Janey Halley, Eli Goldston Professor of Law
Jeannie Suk Gersen, John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law
Moderated by Noah Feldman
Legal Remedies to the Agunah Issue in the United States:
Intersections Between Civil Courts and Rabbinic Arbitration
Keshet Starr
March 4, 2024
Keshet Starr, Executive Director for the Resolution of Agunot
(co-sponsored with the Jewish Law Students Association)
To Be A Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel and the Jewish People
Noah Feldman
March 6, 2024
Noah Feldman
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law
Chairman, Harvard Society of Fellows
Director, Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
(co-sponsored by Harvard Bookstore, @Brattle Theater)
Talmudic Law as Play
Christine Hayes
April 9, 2024
Christine Hayes, Caroline Zelaznik Gruss and Joseph S. Gruss Visiting Professor in Talmudic Civil Law, Harvard Law School
Sterling Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, Yale University
Moderated by Noah Feldman
Isaac Breuer’s Anti-Liberal Legal Theory and the Politicization of Jewish Ultra-Orthodoxy
Itamar Ben Ami
April 16, 2024
Itamar Ben Ami, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University
Moderated by Shaul Magid, Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, Harvard Divinity School
Fall 2023
The 2023 Israel-Hamas War:
A Historical Perspective
on Causes and Consequences
a conversation with
Derek Penslar
William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History ,
Director, Center for Jewish Studies
and
Noah Feldman
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law,
Director, Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
Tuesday November 21, 2023
Wasserstein 1010 | 5-630pm
The Future of the Israeli Economy
A Conversation with
Lawrence H. Summers
Moderated by
Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis, PhD. Harvard University
Wednesday November 15, 2023
Wasserstein 1010 | 7-830pm
Postponed
The Judicial Crisis in Israel:
A Palestinian Perspective
October 5, 2023
Jonathan Kuttab, Co-Founder Al Haq and Nonviolence International Executive Director, Friends of Sabeel North America
Moderated by Rabea Eghbariah, SJD candidate Harvard Law School
Co-sponsored with Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World, Harvard Law School
Spring 2023
The Politics of Expertise in Designing the Cable Car to Jerusalem’s Old City
Guy Priver
February 1, 2023
Guy Priver, SJD candidate at Harvard Law School
An ambitious plan to build a cable car to the Old City in Jerusalem is now underway. Departing from the western commercial area of the city, it is designed to commute thousands of visitors every hour to Jewish Heritage Sites including the Western Wall. The ideological, political and distributional struggles surrounding the project are numerous. However, they become somehow veiled by the policy debates and the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss several petitions against the project, translating the controversy into a question of planning expertise. Analyzing this case study and others, my research explores the ways in which law shapes heritage preservation in the conflicted Old City and asks what is the role of international law in advancing a more inclusive and equitable approach in this field.
Litigating Palestinian Rights in the Israeli Supreme Court: Legitimation or Resistance?
(co-sponsored with the Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School)
Rabea Eghbariah
February 7, 2023
Rabea Eghbariah, SJD candidate, Harvard Law School
This talk explores cause lawyering and strategic litigation of Palestinian rights before the Israeli Supreme Court. It reflects on the fundamental question of bringing Palestinian cases before the Israeli Court: is it a strategy that ultimately contributes to legitimizing fundamentally unjust policies, or is it a medium of legal resistance? How does the Israeli Supreme Court respond to the legal claims of Palestinians? Are we witnessing a major change in the ideological composition and jurisprudence of the Court in recent years? What value and potential does bringing Palestinian rights cases before Israeli courts have? These questions will be explored from the perspective of a lawyer who led major Palestinian rights cases before the Court.
Protecting the Interests of Capital Market Investors in a Multicultural Society
Nitzan Wulkan
February 8, 2023
Nitzan Wulkan, Senior Prosecutor & Head of Financial Enforcement, Securities Department in the Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office, Wexner Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School, 2022-2023
Israel’s low-interest environment has created an incentive for “alternative investments” in online trading platforms and while these platforms raised hundreds of millions of dollars from Israeli investors in the last decade, they did so based on false promises of imaginary interest rates. The initial lack of regulatory oversight in the field created fertile ground for criminal activity, including securities fraud, theft, and large-scale international money laundering offenses. In this lecture, I will discuss the comprehensive legal measures Israel has taken to address these problems and the unique challenges of creating and implementing effective financial enforcement in a multicultural society.
A New Perspective on Israel’s Early Constitutional Debate
Aviram Shahal
February 15, 2023
Aviram Shahal, Visiting Research Fellow, Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard, SJD candidate at University of Michigan Law School
This lecture examines how demographic concerns about the political power of the Arab minority population impacted Israel’s decision not to adopt a constitution in the early years of statehood.
The Jewish Vow Between Story and Law, Bible and Mishnah
Miryam Segal
March 22, 2023
Miryam Segal, 2022-2023 Caroline Zelaznik Gruss and Joseph S. Gruss Visiting Professor in Talmudic Civil Law at Harvard Law School
The vow, or neder, is ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible, found in poetry and wisdom literature, stories and laws. Even sometime-readers of the Bible will have encountered it in the stories of Jacob, Hannah, and Jepthah; in Psalms and Proverbs, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The third century Mishnah devotes an entire tractate to it and stories and rules of vows appear in other tractates as well. But in those two important sources for Jewish law, neder’s definitions are dramatically different. This talk will explore neder in between biblical law and the Mishnah, and between rules and stories, to try to capture some of the meaning–practical, political, theological–in each of these definitions and in this metamorphosis.
Resurrecting Jewish Endowments: A Journey into History via the Rabbinical Courts
Rachel Shakargy
March 28, 2023
Rachel Shakargy, Senior Supervisor of Jewish Endowments, Gender Equality Committee of the Administration of the Rabbinical Courts, Wexner Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School, 2022-2023
The Rabbinical Jewish endowments are properties dedicated to specific public causes by individuals over the past 250 years. Among these causes are hospitals, yeshivas, synagogues, and many welfare and social causes. With the skyrocketing property value increase, the assets are now worth many billions of dollars. In 2018 I was the first female who entered the Rabbinical Courts as a senior jurist appointed to serve as the Inspector of Rabbinical Endowments. In this lecture I explore the future of these endowments and how they will be apportioned.
Was the Revival of Meir Kahane through Itamar Ben Gvir Inevitable?: Thoughts on Zionism Today
Shaul Magid
March 29, 2023
Shaul Magid, Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College, Senior Research Fellow at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions, and Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
Historical inevitability is not a popular notion among scholars. Yet there is little debate that the rise of Israeli parliamentarian Itamar Ben Gvir and his far-right party has brought Meir Kahane, maligned Jewish militant and ousted Knesset member, back into focus. Is this an aberration or can we say it was predictable? How are Kahane and Ben Gvir similar, and how are they different? How much has changed in Israel today from the late 1980s when Kahane was removed from his post by a “Racism Law” supported by Knesset members, right and left? What does this far-right government say about the state of Zionism and the future of Israel as a democratic state? These are some of the questions that will be examined and discussed in this presentation.
Constitutional Crisis in Israel?
a conversation with
Noah Feldman and Raef Zreik
April 14, 2024
Dr. Raef Zreik is a jurist and a scholar, an expert in political philosophy and the philosophy of law, a lecturer on property law and the theory of law at Ono Academic College, academic co-director of the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University, and a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.
Feeling like a Rabbi: Perspectives on State-Made Halakhah
Nitsan Plitman
April 17, 2023
Nitsan Plitman, SJD candidate at Harvard Law School. Although Israel does not have one official religion, it has constitutionally declared its devotion to Jewish values and proclaimed its nationality as Jewish. In this talk I propose that this constitutional structure, coupled with various other legal mechanisms, has led to a constant incorporation of pure halakhic materials into the state’s secular and democratic hands. I would like to explore the manners by which Halakhah is shaped and molded by the state and ask whether, in this process, state officials, parliamentarians, government members, and judges function just like Rabbis or Jewish decisors (Poskim); and whether, subsequently, the body of traditional Jewish law itself is being changed as it gains additional layers of Jewish law-making that become the presiding Religio-Secular ruling for the entirety of the state of Israel.
Israeli Law in the Age of Decolonization
Rafi Stern
April 19, 2023
Rafi Stern, Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History at NYU Law School, JD-Ph.D. candidate in History at Harvard University. 1948 saw the end of the British mandate for Palestine, the creation of the State of Israel, the outbreak of the first Arab-Israeli War, and the Nakba. 1948 was also a pivotal moment in the formal end of the British Empire and the emergence of independent post-colonial states. This talk will examine how the nascent Israeli state adopted and adapted British mandatory law and what this can tell us about Israel’s place within and without the global processes of decolonization and the emergence of post-colonial states.
Between Gender Equality and Religious Accommodation in Israel Today
Yofi Tirosh
April 20, 2023
Yofi Tirosh, Associate Professor and Vice Dean at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law
Israel’s constitutional documents define it as “a Jewish and democratic state.” One of the most challenging and contested aspects of this oxymoronic formula has always been gender equality. Recently, this tension has manifested in a new way, as sex segregation is practiced and normalized in public spaces such as academic studies, job training, the service sector, and leisure activities. Understood as a measure of religious accommodation or as an unpalatable yet necessary means to increase ultra-Orthodox participation in the labor and consumption markets, such re-introduction of sex as a relevant factor in public settings raises a new set of challenging questions about voluntariness, the legality of “separate but equal” in the context of sex, and the distinction between public and private in multicultural contexts. Prof. Tirosh will describe the dilemma from a socio-legal perspective, critically examining the dominant paradigms governing the discourse around sex segregation.
Spring 2022
David Yosef
“Training Sephardic dayanim (Jewish Religious Judges) in the State of Israel”
February 15, 2022
Leslie Ginsparg Klein
“Bais Yaakov Education and Culture Across North America”
February 22, 2022
Nota Schiller
“The Innovation of the Baal Teshuva Yeshiva”
March 1, 2022
Ari Marburger
“Heter Iska 2.0”
March 8, 2022
Yael Landman
“The Rabbis’ Four Bailees: From Cuneiform Law to Classical Judaism”
March 22, 2022
Shmuel Hain
“‘The Law Follows the Lenient View in Mourning’: A Reconsideration of the Talmudic Evidence”
March 29, 2022
Idan Dershowitz
“The Prehistory of Biblical Law”
April 5, 2022
Daniel Boyarin
“Bad Faith: Why the Jews Aren’t a Religion”
May 4, 2022
Hannah Lebovits
“From Shtetl Streets to Council Seats”
May 10, 2022
Esti Rosenberg
“Torah Learning in an Israeli Beit Midrash for Women”
May 19, 2022
Edward Fram
“The Inherent Problematics of Codifying Jewish Law”
June 1, 2022
Fall 2021
Avishay Ben-Sasson Gordis
“Militarism: The Israeli Case“
Oct 26, 2021
Event Recording:
https://harvard.zoom.us/rec/share/myoEl7XmDjpXkqdncvOStUStRcsClaEr-A558rn9Mz_FgUN-hI5I61wdM3v_lTRg.YFvCnekco_e7jRYv
Yael Ronen and David Kretzmer, “The Occupation of Justice”
Nov 2, 2021
Event Recording: https://vimeo.com/642300765
Ari Bergmann
“Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevy and the Development of the Oral Tradition
in ‘Dorot ha-Rishonim’”
Nov 3, 2021
Event Recording: https://vimeo.com/642120436
Shaul Magid
‘To Live Outside the Law You Must be Honest’: Meir Kahane and the Ethics of Violence”
Nov 10, 2021
Event Recording: https://vimeo.com/644490889
Tamar Menashe
“Between Rabbis and Lawyers: Jewish Litigants and Halakha at Germany’s Imperial Supreme Court”
Nov 17, 2021
Noya Rimalt
“Gender Segregation and Israel’s New Multicultural Legal Challenges”
Nov 23, 2021
Event Recording: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/652556232
Nomi Stolzenberg
“What Is (the) Law in Kiryas Joel?”
Dec 7, 2021
Event Recording: https://vimeo.com/654709253
Spring 2021
Fall 2020
Due to Covid
Spring 2020 events cancelled as of March 10, 2020
Fall 2019
Spring 2019
Fall 2018
Spring 2018
Fall 2017
2011-2017
