The
Halakha is not just a body of literature; it is also a cultural event. It
follows then that the philosophy of Halakha must address the happening of the
Halakha. Surprisingly, till now philosophers of Halakha have not addressed this
dimension of the event or the happening of the Halakha. The articles in this
book are an attempt at facing this challenge. But this is not simple because
herein lies a paradox. If the event or the happening is something that lies
outside the confines of what is captured in the written word, the effort to
write about it is one that must take us on a fascinating journey between what
is possible and what perhaps is not.
What is
the nature of the Halakha as an event? What is the knowledge contained in this
dimension of the Halakha that defies conceptualization in the written word? How
does the insight that the Halakha is principally an event dramatically affect
the philosophy of the Halakha?
As we have said, philosophers of the Halakha have not addressed this question before and the authors in this collection – scholars and researchers from a wide range of fields – are all facing it for the first time bringing to it a wide range of tools from fields as varied as philosophy, Jewish thought, performance, cinema, group dynamics, cognition, gender studies and more. Together they offer us a new discourse and framework for conceptualizing the philosophy of the Halakha.