Then and Now
Corporations are legal fictions, and recent ones at that. Growing out of royal and governmental "charters" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, governments gave to individuals the right to create a legal body - a legal "person" - distinct … [Continue reading] about Corporations and Covenents
I recently had the opportunity to speak at Connecticut College on the topic of poverty and its relief in Jewish thought. It was great fun, in part because the discussion helped me to better articulate something that has been bothering me for some … [Continue reading] about Poverty and its Relief
I recently read Jenna Weissman Joselitt's book Set in Stone: America's Embrace of the Ten Commandments and discussed it with my class. The book tells a story about how and why Americans made the Ten Commandments a focal point for larger issues - … [Continue reading] about Selling the Ten Commandments
The "Ten Commandments" occupy an iconic place in popular imagination. Whether as a result of Cecile B. DeMille's epic 1956 retelling or not, most of us know the basic outline of the story: Moses goes up Sinai where God gives him the Ten … [Continue reading] about What are the Ten Commandments?
A couple of months ago I attended a meeting of the Enoch Seminar in Camaldoli, Italy. The conference, which included an extraordinary range of scholars, grappled with the meaning of the word and concept of "Torah" from the biblical period through … [Continue reading] about The Meaning of “Torah”: A Report from the Enoch Seminar