Talmudic Sources Research Articles

Modern Additions to the Regular Prayers in Ashkenazic Liturgy: Rav's Prayer and "Of David: The Lord is My Light and Salvation" (Psalm 27)

The addition of Yehi Ratzon to the blessing of the new month, which originally constituted Rav’s personal prayer as recorded by the Talmud, took place in late 18th-century Prague, during R. Yehezkel Landa’s tenure as the city’s rabbi. His choice of this specific Yehi Ratzon drew on R. Amram Ga’on’s ancient siddur and the Sephardic custom it inspired, which included a set of four Yehi Ratzon sentences to be recited at the beginning of the blessing of the new month. Furthermore, R. Landa insisted that additions to regular prayers must be from Talmudic sources alone, at a time when Kabbalistic additions to prayers were becoming more common due to the emergence of Hasidism. The Yehi Ratzon, which was then recited only silently, quickly found a place in the Ashkenazic liturgy and soon became an integral component of the blessing, probably because of its origin in R. Landa’s Prague. With the birth of Hasidism, a Kabbalistic Yehi Ratzon was likewise added to the beginning of the blessing of the new month; the practice originated with R. Haim Vital, who attributed it to R. Israel Saruk. By the mid-19th century, both Yehi Ratzon prayers – Rav’s prayer and the Kabbalistic addition – appeared in Hasidic siddurim. As of the beginning of the 20th century, however, only Rav’s prayer remained. The custom of reciting Psalm 27 was attributed to R. Isaac Luria (the Ari) through his disciple Vital. This recitation was the exclusive custom of individual Kabbalists until the mid-18th century, when it was adopted by some communities. Its recitation was explained as a Kabbalistic charm for the prevention of trouble and the promise of a long life. It was first included in a siddur – Siddur Harav, which followed Lurian traditions – at the beginning of the 19th century, with the emergence of Hasidism; it soon came to be included in Hasidic siddurim. Twenty years after its initial adoption by Hasidic siddurim, it gradually found its way into the Ashkenazic liturgy, first in Eastern Europe and then in Western Europe. This process of inclusion came to an end in the 20th century. The first halakhic mention of the custom was by R. Margaliot, who served as an authority for both Hasidic and Ashkenazic rituals, in the 1830s. The emergence and growth of Hasidism in Eastern Europe turned this region into a hub for the two-way adoption of innovations in prayer. The time that passed between the origin of one ritual and its adoption by the other camp reflected competition with Kabbalistic origins or alternatives.

Reading Talmudic Sources as Arguments: The Case of Water Used by a Baker

Abstract By discussing a short sugya, this paper demonstrates how to read the components of a typical Talmudic discussion – Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi and Bavli – as arguments. In contrast to widely used academic approaches, I show that it is possible to ascribe disagreement to parallel sources without passing judgment either on their chronological order or on whether one of the sources is a direct response to the other. The appendix offers a new theoretical model for approaching the synoptic problem in rabbinic literature.

A Haredi Myth of Female Leadership: Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky

Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky (1932–2011) served as a spiritual guide for many; her prominence and influence were a unique phenomenon in the Haredi (Jewish ultra-Orthodox) community in which she grew up, where women, lacking Talmudic knowledge or other sources of authority, are generally found only at the margins of the public sphere. Her multi-faceted activity was focused on offering blessings and advice. She also innovated a few segulot (magical techniques) and religious rituals. Her leadership is characterized, on the one hand, by the preservation and even strengthening of the existing Lithuanian Haredi ethos, particularly in the context of the wife’s complete self-abnegation for her husband’s Torah study. On the other hand, it fostered emotional and experiential elements that are closer to the ethos of the Hasidic and Sephardi communities and are associated with folk piety and a quasi-magical orientation. Rebbetzin Kanievsky thus created a type of female religious leadership that can be characterized as anti-leadership, in which she embodied the Haredi conception of ideal womanhood. Consequently, she was not perceived as a threat to Haredi values but rather as their promoter. However, this model of leadership enabled her to break, almost despite herself, the limitations of the gender hierarchy of the Haredi community and serve as an almost singular female role model in that community’s pantheon.

Reading Talmudic Sources as Arguments: A New Interpretive Approach, written by Yuval Blankovsky

Reading Talmudic Sources as Arguments: A New Interpretive Approach, written by Yuval Blankovsky

‘The household snake’: Detection and eradication of pests in the home by means of snakes, as reflected in Talmudic sources

AbstractLiterary sources of the classical era (first-fifth centuries), both Greco-Roman and Jewish, indicate that snakes were used for different purposes, such as for medicine, as raw materials for manufacturing objects, and as pets. This article discusses the use of snakes to deal with pests in the ancient homes as reflected in the Talmudic sources as well as in classical literature. The Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi) brings a story of how a house snake helped a family locate a wild snake that entered the house and left its venom in the food. The impression is that the origin of the story is from a non-Jewish environment, and not necessarily from Eretz Israel. It is not impossible that the story is one version of stories about Aesculapian snakes that helped exterminate and drive away pests, as related by Pliny. This narrative variation was absorbed by the sages from their own non-Jewish environment, who adapted the story to the religious-educational messages that they sought to convey. It seems that the practice of using snakes to exterminate domestic pests was relatively limited and less common than that of small predators, such as cats, mongooses or weasels.

The Hebrew epithalamium in late antiquity: new evidence from the Cairo Genizah and beyond

Several anonymous Hebrew epithalamia (wedding poems), preserved in manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah, can be dated, in view of their specific literary characteristics, to Byzantine (and early Muslim) Eretz Israel (Palestine): noteworthy evidence of the flourishing of non-liturgical Hebrew poetry in late antiquity. The article demonstrates and analyses these poems’ affinities to Jewish Palestinian Aramaic epithalamia, in terms of subject matter and rhetoric, as well as their resemblance to classical Hebrew piyyut, in terms of language and style. They are also examined against the background of the performance of Hebrew wedding songs as reflected in Talmudic sources, and it is suggested that the influence of such non-liturgical epithalamia can be detected in the earliest known piyyut composition which marks the occasion of marriage, a Qedushta by El’azar birabi Qillir (Kalir). Some comparable characteristics of these non-liturgical Hebrew wedding poems and the epithalamium genre in Greco-Roman late antiquity are also considered. The article includes critical editions and English translations of two Hebrew epithalamia from the Cairo Genizah.

“The Rabbis Sought to Withdraw the Book of Ezekiel”: The Rabbinic Re-Authorization of the Book of Ezekiel

Abstract Several Babylonian talmudic sources call for the withdrawal of the book of Ezekiel from circulation. This article examines the development of this tradition and demonstrates how later rabbis integrated early texts in its creation and also used exegetical means to address the contradictions between Ezekiel’s stipulations and pentateuchal law. Another area of concern was Ezekiel’s prophetic status: some rabbinic texts granted Ezekiel the power of a lawgiver; others framed him as transmitting Mosaic traditions; and still others lowered Ezekiel’s prophetic status.

Negative Theology, Power, and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Ludwig Wittgenstein tells us in On Certainty: “It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back.”1 I want to begin this paper with a mini-genealogy of Maimonides's negative theology—which declares that we can only endlessly say what God is not, but not what He is—that traces it to a specific and recurring Talmudic source. I will then go on to argue that Machiavelli, who is one of the great theorists of power in the Western intellectual tradition, structures his argument about power in a…

Where Heaven and Earth Kiss

Abstract Global climate change and environmental disaster are one of the most pressing ethical and existential crises of our day. This articles examines the intricacies of rabbinic tort law (nezikin) with an eye to contemporary questions of pollution and environmental degradation. Taking up three case studies, it outlines the basic thrust of the rabbinic sources and their medieval interpreters, then demonstrating their relevance for contemporary ethical debates and considering their legal and moral implications for our industrialized and globalized economy. These sources demand behavioral changes and a reverence for the world grounded in personal and communal responsibility. The Talmudic sources—read through the lens of aggadah—offer a prescriptive vocabulary for environmental activism from the heart of Jewish legal literature.

The Function of Tradition in Talmudic Culture: The Discussion about Decapitation

AbstractThis article, following a short methodological introduction, presents an analysis of the Talmudic discussion about the decapitation penalty. This short Talmudic passage has been commented upon by many prominent scholars. However, this article suggests a different reading, one based upon posing an additional interpretive question: “what is the author doing in composing the passage in this particular way?” The valuable insights of past scholars are not dismissed by my reading, but they are placed in a different context and hence possess different meanings. At the heart of my analysis is my ambition to articulate the central issue of the particular discourse in which these Talmudic sources participate. I add an explanation of the parallel Talmudic sources that explicate why each of the source’s authors chooses to present the shared tradition in his own particular way. I demonstrate the benefits of adding this interpretive question and the techniques for answering it.

Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination ed. by Marjorie Lehman, Jane L. Kanarek, and Simon Bronner

Reviewed by: Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination ed. by Marjorie Lehman, Jane L. Kanarek, and Simon Bronner Keren R. McGinity Marjorie Lehman, Jane L. Kanarek, and Simon Bronner, eds. Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination. Jewish Cultural Studies, vol. 5. The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017. Pp. 416. Paper, $37.50. ISBN 9781906764661. Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination, the fifth volume of Jewish Cultural Studies by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, fills a scholarly void well beyond this reviewer’s imagination. An interdisciplinary collection of chapters, Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination is an impressive anthology that spans time, place, voice, perspective, relationships, genres, fiction and nonfiction, texts, and images to produce a work that offers both breadth and depth. In short: it brings multiple worlds in conversation with each other. According to editors Marjorie Lehman, Jane L. Kanarek, and Simon Bronner, the collective endeavor sought to “enhance the visibility of mothers and call attention to them as an analytic category essential for narrating Jewishness.” (vii) As such, and at this juncture in contemporary life, this book represents a unique and acutely relevant work. Although the volume as a whole is best suited for graduate students and advanced readers, the dedicated educator could adopt select chapters in an undergraduate course and the students would benefit enormously from being introduced to the innovative analyses therein. The authors succeed at upending much of what scholars thought we knew about mothers, mothering, and motherhood while simultaneously looking toward a future that includes change from within. Jewish mothers have a long history of being the focus of many stereotypes and the butt of many jokes. Without a doubt, they are lampooned to an extent and in ways that no other individual perhaps of any ethnic or religious background has endured during the history of humankind. The self-sacrificing immigrant Yiddishe Mama may have earned some of her reputation, but as Joyce Antler already proved in You Never Call, You Never Write, there is much more to her than meets the eye. Paula Hyman, z”l, complicated the simplistic narratives earlier in Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History. Now we are fortunate to have seventeen authors and their capable editors to thank for putting a new array of tints on the artist’s palette that takes seriously Jewish maternal portraiture. Collectively they teach an important lesson: rather than one cultural icon of Jewishness there are, in fact, many. Shaped by second-wave feminist scholarship, the book’s premise that culture transcends natural givens and its application to Jewish mothers is ground breaking. This framework enables the volume to cast a wide net and reel in much more dynamic and multidimensional representations of a figure that had been relegated to family life. Now, however, the Jewish mother can be understood as operating at the very heart of Judaism, Jewish culture, and transmission of Jewish identity rather than as merely an accessory to them. The organized parts, “Idealized Mothers,” “Constructions and Contestations of Mothers,” “Activist Mothers,” “Re-embodying Mothers,” and “Recasting Mothers” move the reader along from how ideas about Jewish [End Page 225] mothers and motherhood are drawn and redrawn to cast Jewish women in particular ways as wives and/or mothers. The result is both a reification of certain ideals, marriage, and procreation, and at the same time a reinterpretation that reclaims such elemental things for Jewish continuity as the Hebrew language and Torah. The scope of this particular volume is truly impressive. Beginning with the idealization of Jewish motherhood in children’s books as a form of early-childhood education about gender roles in books that won the Sydney Taylor Award, to nineteenth-century Hungarian Neolog women’s prayer books in which women’s responsibility for young children is actually for the entire Jewish people, and on to how the binary associations of mother-bread and father-meat served as a metaphor for the Afghani Jewish family in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Analysis of some talmudic sources yield new insights about the high esteem for mothers relative to women more generally by sages in Ottoman Jewish society. A clustering of rabbinic narratives yields complexity...

“Look through Your Book and Make Me a Perfect Match”: Talking about Genealogy in Amoraic Palestine and Babylonia

AbstractRabbinic literature is concerned with lineage when determining appropriate marital partners. For the rabbis, not all Jews may marry all other Jews. Some Jews have a lower lineage status and may only marry others of similar status. Scholars have assumed that the Amoraim of Babylonia were more stringent towards matters of lineage than their Palestinian counterparts. However, the talmudic sources themselves do not neatly fit with this dichotomy. Additionally, this generalization does not capture the variety of ways that the Amoraim perceived lineage. In this article, I propose a shift of focus towards the different terminologies and discourses in Amoraic sources, which provide a richer understanding of the ways in which they viewed genealogy, and wished to shape it. These terminologies reflect different ways in which the rabbis constructed the idea of a Jewish people, and its components.

TEMPORARY MARRIAGE: A COMPARISON OF THE JEWISH AND ISLAMIC CONCEPTIONS

AbstractThe Jewish marriage differs from the Catholic Christian marriage, which is an institution surrounded by the halo of a holy sacrament that cannot be nullified. It also differs from the Islamic marriage, which is closer to a legal agreement than to a sacrament, wherein the husband alone may annul the marriage, either unilaterally or by mutual consent. This is especially true of the Shi'ite marriage—themuta—which may be annulled without any divorce proceedings at a predetermined date. In this article, I present a little-known possible halakhic stipulation: temporary marriage. I consider its roots and the different applications in Talmudic sources. An example of the Babylonian application of this conditional marriage is the cry by important Babylonianamoraim, “Who will be mine for a day?” In this unique case, some of the halakhic authorities rule that there is no necessity for agetin order to terminate the marriage. I consider the early halakhic rulings on these cases and the modern version of this stipulation, which was also rejected by modern halakhic authorities. I also offer a comparative study of a possible parallel to the marriage for a predetermined period, the Shi'ite temporary marriage, which is intentionally restricted to an agreed period of time and does not require divorce to annul it. I conclude my discussion by revealing the possible common roots for the Jewish temporary marriage and the Shi'ite temporary marriage in ancient Persian law.

Judaism and the Euthyphro Dilemma: Towards A New Approach

This article attempts to utilize representative talmudic source-material that bears on the Euthyphro dilemma, and more widely, that discusses the central role of human agency in the foundations of Jewish law, in order to sketch a modified version of divine command theory (DCT), under which both horns of the traditional dilemma are grasped. That is, the proposed modified DCT, based on talmudic sources, is one in which God is properly placed at the foundation of the moral law, while simultaneously providing a central role for human moral reasoning. The first main section presents and evaluates Michael Harris’s pioneering analysis of the Euthyphro dilemma in classical Jewish sources, while the second main section attempts to sketch a new approach out of classical Jewish sources.

The Use of Codified Law in the Rabbinic Courts of Frankfurt am Main on the Eve of the Enlightenment

During the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, rabbinic scholars of law in Franco-German communities had an at best ambivalent attitude toward the codification of Jewish law. Even Rabbi Joseph Caro’s Shulḥan ˋArukh, first printed in Venice in 1565, was not well received by all. While students of the law from the lower ranks seem to have embraced the code, many leading rabbis—particularly those in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Poland—rejected it. In the course of the mid-seventeenth century, attitudes shifted, and Shulḥan ˋArukh became the place for commentaries and learned discussions of the law. By the eighteenth century, rabbinic courts were using Shulḥan ˋArukh as the basis of their legal decision making. This is confirmed, at least for Frankfurt am Main, through an examination of the legal diary of Rabbi Nathan Maas (d. 1794). In his diary, Maas not only summarized cases that he heard but also sometimes offered rationales for the court’s decisions. These precis make constant reference to Shulḥan ˋArukh and its commentaries while never entering into an analysis of talmudic sources. This cannot have been because of a lack of ability, for Maas and his colleagues on the Frankfurt court were well-known scholars who published talmudic commentaries of substance. The use of a code, even by such authorities, may have been for utilitarian reasons, that is, to speed up the judicial process.

A Note on the Chronology of the Book of Joel

Abstract This short note points to a Talmudic source that supports modern research that locates the prophet Joel in the Second Temple period, contrary to the common orthodox tradition that Joel prophesied in the First Temple period.

Flax and Linen Terminology in Talmudic Literature

Material culture data is mentioned in Talmudic (or ‘rabbinical’) literature when a relevant legal (‘halakhic’) or homiletic (‘midrashic’) context arises. Therefore, certain details may be lacking or ambiguously stated. This however is not presented in a systematic and detailed manner, such as in ‘Pliny’s Natural History’.2 Additional classical authors mention flax and linen. First and foremost: Diocletian3 in his edict of maximum prices. And in less scope and detail: Xenophon,4 Virgil,5 Strabo,6 Columella,7 Pausanias,8 and Theodosius II9 – in his codex. In some instances, these sources may be useful for comparison, contrast and clarification – to Talmudic sources. It is difficult to gauge the exact societal extent of the phenomena mentioned in this literature, however it may be assumed that they can be viewed as a representative sampling, or reliable cross-section of the material culture found in contemporaneous society in those periods (c. 2nd - 5th centuries AD) and regions (Land of Israel and Babylonia). This premise is unaffected by the academic disagreement which exists regarding the extent to which Talmudic laws were actually practiced by the general populace outside of the sphere of the Sages themselves. There is, however, academic consensus regarding those aspects of material culture which are described in this literature as reflecting Sitz im Leben. Historiography based upon Talmudic literature source material is a complex and challenging science. It will encompass aspects such as the use of various Aramaic dialects, the identities, backgrounds, times and locales of tradents10 and the legal and homiletic contexts in which the material culture data is presented. Nevertheless, these are outside of the scope of the current paper, which will focus strictly on material culture itself. The principal rabbinic works from which data is gleaned include: Mishna, Tosefta, Mekhilta, Sifra, Sifre,11 Jerusalem Talmud,12 Babylonian Talmud,13 Midrash Bereshit Rabba, Midrash Tanḥuma,14 and Aramaic ‘Targums’15 of the Pentateuch and Hebrew Bible. Each of these works embodies content originating in various periods, some of them long before the date of their respective final redactions. Pioneers in this field of Talmudic material culture research in general, and textiles specifically, were Gustav Dalman,16 R.J. Forbes,17 Abraham Herszberg,18 Samuel Krauss,19 and Saul Lieberman.20 Since then, our knowledge of Roman-era textiles has been greatly enhanced, due to research advances21 in the fields of archaeology, botany, iconography and philology. Notable among those whom have contributed to this field are Yehuda Feliks,22 John Peter Wild,23 Daniel Sperber, 24 Ze’ev Safrai,25 and Michael Sokoloff.26 All of the above will be accounted for in the current paper.

At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity among the Jews of Roman Galilee by Stuart S. Miller

Reviewed by: At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity among the Jews of Roman Galilee by Stuart S. Miller Eyal Regev At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity among the Jews of Roman Galilee Stuart S. Miller Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplement 16. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. Pp. 342. ISBN 978-3-525-55069-4 Miller's book discusses the literary and archeological aspects of purity practices, mainly bodily immersion and ritual baths (miqva'ot). It focuses on the Galilee in Late Antiquity, particularly on the city of Sepphoris. Chapters One ("Misleading Use of Terminology: The "miqveh", "bet tevilah" and other "Ritual Baths"") and Two ("The Evolving, Non-Monolithic "Ritual Bath"") deal with the terminology of miqveh and the problem of identifying a miqveh in the material record. It is argued that the rabbinic miqveh is not always a manmade stepped pool since it is also possible to bathe in natural waters. Chapter Three ("Pre-Rabbinic, Non-Rabbinic, and Rabbinic Ritual Immersion Practices in the Making") explores the different types of ritual baths [End Page 517] and modern scholarly attempts to relate them to specific groups, sects, and movements. Miller includes ritual baths with a split staircase, which elsewhere this reviewer has identified with priests or priestly maintenance of purity, and ritual baths with an adjacent pool (o'tzar), which I have identified with the halakhah of the Pharisees ("Ritual Baths of Jewish Groups and Sects in the Second Temple Period," Cathedra 79 (1996): 3–21 and Cathedra 83 (1997): 169–76 [Hebrew]). Chapter Four ("Did the Author of P. Oxyrhynchus 840 Know What a "Miqveh" Was?") deals with the so-called uncanonical gospel (P. Oxy. 840), which is dated to the third or fourth century ce(?). Miller compares its references to immersion with rabbinic notions of purity and favors the view that the priest's reproach of Jesus' immersion-purification is directed not against rabbinic purity practices but rather against Jewish-Christian purity practices. Miller also demonstrates that Jews and Christians alike understood and appreciated the life-giving properties of water and regarded them as a divinely bestowed. Chapter Five ("Further Observations on Stone Vessel Finds and Ritual Purity in Light of Talmudic Sources") diverges from the main theme of ritual baths to stone vessels, which, according to rabbinic halakhah (rules), were not susceptible to impurity. These vessels are found in large numbers in Jewish sites throughout the Israel from the early first century ce to the mid-second century. Miller reviews rabbinic legal texts and criticizes the view that stone vessels were used mainly because they are not defiled. Rather he regards these vessels as an outcome of a functional development of the stone vessels industry, which also produced ossuaries for burial. To support this view Miller refers to stone vessels found in Khirbet Qumran, even though several Qumran scrolls insist that stones or vessels made of stone are capable of impurity. Chapter Six ("The Stepped Pools of the Western Acropolis at Sepphoris") is a survey of the findings of ritual baths in Sepphoris, a city that Miller treated in a separate study (Studies in the History and Traditions of Sepphoris, 1984). He now concludes that the construction and arrangement of the Sepphoris baths did not follow rabbinic prescriptions. Chapter Seven ("Understanding the Pools: Biblical Perceptions of Purity and Habitus of the Jews of 'Eres Israel") discusses biblical perceptions of purity and their impact on Jewish practices. Miller maintains that Jews observed purity laws not because they were regulated by priests or rabbis but because they were biblically derived. Chapter Eight ("Domestic Judaism and the 'Well-Ordered Bayit': Who bathed/Immersed in the Stepped Pools at Sepphoris and Why?") is perhaps the most important chapter in this book. Miller shows that rabbinic laws of purity mainly concern household practices, such as hand washing before eating and immersion related to sexual halakhic practices. In other words, the domestic environment, rather than the synagogue, was the space most affected by the spiritual properties of water. The domestic aspect of purity laws and practices corresponds well with the fact that most of...

L’usage des traditions rabbiniques à propos de Rome dans le Talmud de Babylone

The article claims that the Talmud of Babylonia uses ancient traditions about Rome in order to create a fantasized world-system in which Rome and Israel function as two complementary and eternal rivals. The analysis of several Talmudic sources shows that the Babylonian rabbis inherited the complicated image of Rome together with the rest of the rabbinic traditions that arrived in Babylonia from Palestine during the 3rd and 4th century CE. It further shows that the Babylonian rabbis reworked the Palestinian rabbinic image of Rome and transformed it into the structural parallel of Israel. Thus, they sustained the symbolic power of the Roman empire, even though they lived outside of it. Rome became for them a mirror image of Israel, which, in turn, became a “spiritual” Empire, protected by the highest King – God.

, <br>(The Torah as the source of economic freedom institutions and as the condition for their sustainability)

תקציר בעברית : קפיטליזם דוגל בזכויות הקניין ובחירות הפרט, כפי שהתורה דוגלת בזכויות הקניין ובחירות הפרט. סוציאליזם, לעומתו, מקנה לשלטון סמכות להתערב בכל ענייני הפרט באמתלת הדאגה לאזרחים. ניתן אף לומר כי סוציאליסטים מתיימרים לתפקידו של האלוהים. הגבלות התלמוד על חופש הפרט היו לעתים מוצדקות בנסיבות הגלות, אך אין לראות בהן אות ומופת לחיי הלאום. בנוסף, הניסיון ההיסטורי מלמד: ללא ערכי הדת, אין לחירות יכולת קיום לטווח ארוך. הסיבה לכך נעוצה כנראה בתכונות הטבעיות של האדם כגון קנאה ותאווה.English Abstract: At first glance, the Torah does not address the issues of economic and social order (surely, it does not discuss distinctions between free capitalist and socialist approaches). Talmudic sources, occasionally restricting economic freedom, often reflected realities of communities which survived under pressure of hostile environment and were in permanent need of mobilization to meet external challenges. At the same time, the Torah, the Tanakh and the Talmud prescribe limited government and rule of law. But above all, the Torah provides the most powerful protection of private property and personal rights: the protection is sanctified by the Lord and based on moral imperatives, rather than being just for the sake of economic efficiency.