Research Fellowships – Halakha: Reading Jewish Law as Common Sense

The Halacha Fellowship in Jewish Law as Common Sense is an opportunity to familiarize oneself with the range of Halakha sources from Biblical law through Second-Temple and rabbinic literature to twentieth-century poskim. It is suited to candidates who are fluent in rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic.

The Research Fellow’s primary service is to help edit Rabbi Dr. Elisha Ancselovits’s How to Read Halakha as Common Sense – A Primer on Listening to an Author via the Text. This volume builds on Elisha’s publications that explain how Jewish law and all forms of specialized Jewish discourse (such as philosophy or kabbala) have always been at their best, only common-sense discussions of real-life human issues spoken in a range of vocabularies. And it builds on Elisha’s yet unpublished Wisdom Rules: A History of Jews and Law – 730 BCE – 1730 CE. In contrast to those works’ academic nature, this volume is a primer (step-by-step guide) on how to read.

This volume is a primer on how to hear the commonsensical insights that varied Halakha authors tried to communicate, even as they did so in specific languages. Simultaneously, the primer is arranged to clarify the original common-sensibleness of the key areas of Halakha in our times (Shabbat, Ribbit-Interest, Nidda, Kashrut, Tefilla, etc).

The research fellow may also choose for their own edification to hold regular discussions of the range of relevant humanities and linguistic disciplines that are addressed in this volume’s epilogue, a defense of the methodology. This, however, is not a requirement of the fellowship.

The Halakha Research Fellow is a full-time participant of the Pardes Year/Semester program, who has committed to a full year of study at Pardes.