A comprehensive review of practical halachic issues related to the weekly Torah portion. Presented in a thorough, decisive manner with classical and contemporary halachic opinions. From separating challah to the laws of yichud and the blessings made on various breakfast cereals, this work is an asset to every Jewish home. 2-volume gift-boxed set.

A comprehensive review of practical halachic issues related to the weekly Torah portion. Presented in a thorough, decisive manner with classical and contemporary halachic opinions. From separating challah to the laws of yichud and the blessings made on various breakfast cereals, this work is an asset to every Jewish home. 2-volume gift-boxed set.

In separate multi-volume works, the project has presented form-analytical English translations of the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli, outlined the Yerushalmi and the Bavli and compared these outlines. In this volume, the main points of the Halakhah of the topological expositions or tractates of the Mishnah-Tosefta-Bavli Hullin are set forth and the theological message of the tractate is laid out. The project yields a systematic account of the Halakhah in its documentary unfolding.

Rabbi Forst's previous works have established him as a halachic expositor of the first order. Now he turns to a topic that is at the very basis of the Jewish family and nation. Exhaustive yet clear, detailed yet easy to follow, this book belongs in every Jewish home. In addition to the vital and basic halachos, this volume deals with modern medical procedures and how they affect the halachic status of the patient.

Trial Stories in Jewish Antiquity is the first book to examine what early Jewish courtroom narratives can tell us about the capacity and limits of human justice. Drawing from affect theory and feminist legal thought, Chaya T. Halberstam offers original readings of some of the most famous trials in the ancient Jewish tradition.

Halachic authority Rabbi Binyomin Forst continues his comprehensive treatment of the laws of niddah with the publication of the second volume of his outstanding legal compendium. Not only are the underlying concepts of the laws explained, their logical halachic process is demonstrated and the various opinions regarding their applications are discussed with thoroughness and expertise. From everday practices to current medical procedures, from chapters on setting a wedding date through later life concerns, every statement is backed by significant research and abundant citation of sources. Expansive indices and a full bibliography facilitate further research. Clearly written, yet extensive in detail, the copmlete set of The Laws of Niddah is a reference vital to every Jewish home and library.

Circumventing the Law probes the rabbinic logic behind the use of loopholes, the legal phenomenon of finding and using gaps within law to achieve otherwise illegal outcomes. The logic of ha’aramah, a subset of rabbinic legal circumventions mostly defined as a tool for private life, underpins both well-known circumventions, such as selling leaven before Passover, and lesser-known mechanisms, such as designating an animal intended for sacrifice “blemished” before birth to allow it to be slaughtered for food instead. Elana Stein Hain traces the development of these loopholes over time, revealing that rabbinic literature does not consistently accept or reject loopholes. Instead, rabbinic Judaism applies categories of evasion (prohibited), avoidance (permitted), and avoision (contested) to loopholes on a case-by-case basis. The intended outcome of a given loophole determines its classification, as does the legal integrity of the circumventive process in question. Yet these understandings of loopholes are not static—instead, rabbinic attitudes toward loopholing change over time. Early works display an objective, performative understanding of the self and of intention, but evolve over time to reflect more subjective and intimate understanding of the self and intention. This evolution redefines what legal integrity means in Jewish legal philosophy. Circumventing the Law brings readers through the Second Temple period to the modern era to see how loopholing has evolved over millennia. With a focus on late antiquity, Stein Hain explores tannaitic literature, the Palestinian Talmud, and contemporaneous Greco-Roman and Persian thought to show that when warranted, Jewish rhetoric and philosophy around understandings of loopholes was a unique phenomenon that relied on changes in understanding the definition of integrity itself, a key finding for scholars of Jewish Studies and of religious and of secular law writ large.