NEWS FEATURE: Jewish Law Enters Mainstream Legal Curriculum

c. 2000 Religion News Service CAMDEN, N.J. _ Memory, for Steve Friedell, is neither arid nor abstract _ it is sensuous. And so when he leans back in his office chair, closes his eyes and makes a temple with his hands, fingertip to fingertip to fingertip, remembrances rise like steam off blacktop after a summer […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

CAMDEN, N.J. _ Memory, for Steve Friedell, is neither arid nor abstract _ it is sensuous. And so when he leans back in his office chair, closes his eyes and makes a temple with his hands, fingertip to fingertip to fingertip, remembrances rise like steam off blacktop after a summer rain.

Friedell is a professor at Rutgers University Law School-Camden and is one of just a handful of law school academics in this country specializing in the teaching of Jewish law.


For hundreds of years, law students and legal scholars have relied on American casebook law to illuminate the intricacies of our legal system. But with globalization touching every area of life _ from politics to economics to art and entertainment _ law schools are now recognizing the importance of studying non-Anglo-American legal systems and incorporating such courses as Jewish law into their curricula.

Jewish law is a subject Friedell, 50, has been studying since he was a child growing up in Minneapolis when the Talmud, the 2,000-year-old book of Jewish laws, was the center of his intellectual life.

And it is these roots, both familial and scholarly, that Friedell is remembering right now in the quiet space he’s carved out for himself between classes. It is a 40-year-old memory that he can see, even with his eyes closed. It is a 40-year-old memory that he can also smell and taste and feel, almost as if he were back in Minnesota sitting in the lambent light of Rabbi Unger’s small suburban home.

“There were three of us boys who would go to the rabbi’s for Talmud lessons every Saturday and Sunday,” Friedell says. “There was so much love and warmth in those sessions. When I’m studying now I think of those times.”

What Friedell also remembers is his love of study of the Talmud, but more specifically his love of the Talmud’s singular mysteries: “The desire to decipher, to make sense of what you’re reading, that was what was so exciting.”

Exciting, and enormously difficult. The Talmud is a towering collection of writings, 5,422 pages long, without vowels and without punctuation. It constitutes the heart and soul of Jewish civil and religious law and it consists of two main parts: the Mishna, which is the main text and dates to 200-500 A.D., and the Gemara, or commentary on the Mishna, which dates to the middle of the 11th century.

The Talmud, says the slightly graying professor, constantly challenges, constantly encourages debate, and leaves the student always looking for new insights.


In a 1992 article he wrote for the Indiana Law Journal, Friedell quoted a character from Herman Wouk’s novel, “Inside, Outside”:

“Under the opaque Aramaic surface of the Talmud is a magnificent structure of subtle legal brilliancies, all interwoven with legend, mysticism, the color of ancient times, and the cut-and-thrust of powerful minds in sharp clash. I can’t get enough of it, and I’ve been at it for decades.”

Clearly, Friedell feels likewise. Three years out of the University of Michigan Law School, he jumped at Rutgers’ offer of a position when he was told they wanted him to teach a course in Jewish law. The further he went in his traditional studies, the more Friedell had become convinced that studying Jewish law could be a powerful tool in analyzing the American legal system.

Friedell is not alone in that belief. Rayman Solomon, the dean of Rutgers-Camden Law School, is a big supporter of Friedell.

“There has been a real renaissance in the study of Jewish law,” says Solomon, “and a renewed interest in comparative law in general: Roman law, Greek law, Jewish law. … What Steve does by having his students study another legal system is to try to help them understand our own laws better _ to see how different cultures handle similar legal problems.”

In fact, Friedell believes there is a wealth of both similarities and disparities between Jewish and American law.


“People say our system of American law is overly masculine, that it promotes formal justice over fairness, strict rules over resolution of conflict,” says Friedell. “I think Jewish law developed a feminist (if not necessarily a pro-woman) concept. The ultimate goal of a legal dispute in Jewish law is not just who is right and who is wrong and to make redress, but to make peace between the parties. In American law, if you are found liable, you pay. Jewish law was founded differently. Jewish courts encouraged litigants to come together and settle their arguments. Making peace, not the administering of formal justice, was the ultimate goal.

“The course (in Jewish law) gets students to think more basically _ what is it, where does it come from, how has it developed, and why. Ordinarily we take our own frame of reference as being the only one. We assume there is no other way of conceptualizing (the law).”

Friedell, who says that more than half of his Jewish law classes are composed of non-Jewish students, holds his specialized seminar every other year at the Law School in Camden.

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Friedell attended the Minneapolis Talmud Torah, a Hebrew school, for 10 years, then majored in Hebrew at the University of Minnesota for two years before transferring to Brandeis, just outside of Boston, where he received his degree in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies.

“My senior year in college I had to make a decision,” says Friedell, as he looks around his office, from the well-worn Oriental rug under his desk, to the floor-to-ceiling bookcases where tomes on Jewish law and Jewish history sit side-by-side with the Bible and books on Latin and Greek. “Basically there were three roads open to me: law school, graduate school or rabbinical school. I thought law school could integrate all three.”

Today, Friedell, who in addition to Jewish law also teaches maritime law _ “because it’s different from land law” _ is still comparing, contrasting and integrating. And still asking questions.


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Says Friedell: “The Talmud isn’t studied for any particular reason, it’s studied just as an end in itself. It’s a boundless sea.” Then the professor, who has been a student of this ancient legal and religious text for four decades, pauses, leans slightly forward toward his visitor and adds, with a wry smile:”And I’ve just scratched the surface.”

DEA END NUTT

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