Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis

Preface

xi PREFACE This book is based on the Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies I delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, in February– March 2005. I wish to thank the faculty members of the department of Near East Studies and the Jewish Studies Program for inviting me to present my thoughts and for joining me to the distinguished list of prominent scholars in all fields of Jewish studies who previously participated in this wonderful lecture series. Special thanks to my teacher, colleague, and great friend Prof. Daniel Boyarin for challenging me with this project. The invitation to deliver these lectures, which he initiated, forced me to think of the big questions, beyond the local, particular, halakhic issues in the Dead Sea Scrolls which I have discussed in many of my earlier works. This book is an attempt to better understand the nature of the legal system of the Dead Sea Scrolls, to explore the sectarian,exegeticalprinciplesandtheirfundamentalassumptions with regard to the origin and authority of halakhah, and above all to compare the scrolls’ viewpoint on these issues with that of Preface / xii the Rabbis as reflected in the later Tannaitic literature in order to sketch the relationship between these two bodies of literature and the development of halakhah from the Second Temple period to the Mishnah. I wrote the first draft of this book in the summer of 2006 while staying as a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center, Bellagio, Italy. The month residency in Villa Serbelloni was a unique experience, combining a magnificent setting and the wonderful intellectual environment created by the diversity of scholars and artists who were there with me. Most of the work, however, was done during the spring semester of 2007 when I was Harry Starr fellow at the Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies. I wish to take this opportunity to thank the center and its director, Prof. Shaye Cohen, for granting me the fellowship and for bringing together an excellent group of scholars who were all very supportive and always willing to discuss each other’s work, in seminars and private conversations. I benefit tremendously from their wisdom; many of their comments are now embedded in this final version of the book. Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem was my second home for the last eighteen years. I wish to thank my fellows at the institute ’s Center for Advanced Judaic Studies for a long-standing friendship that emerges from love for the learning of Torah and a deep commitment to the truth. I wish also to thank my colleagues at the department for Talmud at Bar-Ilan University, and especially my students, who are always the first to hear my raw ideas in classes and seminars. Gary Anderson, Moshe Benovits, Shaye Cohen, Devora Dimant , Lutz Doering, Yuda Galinsky, Ernest Fraenkel, Yair Firstenberg , Moshe Halbertal, Shlomo Naeh, Elisha Qimron, Adi Preface / xiii Schremer, Daniel Schwartz, Yosef Tabory, Cana Werman, Yshai Rosen-Zvi, and the anonymous reader for the University of California Press read the manuscript and offered valuable comments and advice. I wish to thank them all. I also thank the Naftal Center Beth Shalom foundation of BarIlan University for their contribution towards the expenses of preparing the manuscript for publication. I dedicate this book to my beloved parents, Rachel and David Shemesh, and wish them a joyful, long, healthy life among their caring extended family members: children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Aharon Shemesh Jerusalem April 2008 Nissan 5768 This Page Left Intentionally Blank ...