Christine Hayes | |
---|---|
Born | December 6, 1960 |
Nationality | American |
Spouse(s) | Michael Della Rocca (Sterling Professor of Philosophy, Yale University) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Harvard University (BA) University of California, Berkeley (MA, PhD) |
Thesis | Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic difference in selected Sugyot from tractate Avodah Zarah (1993) |
Doctoral advisor | Daniel Boyarin |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Talmudic-Midrashic Studies |
Institutions | Yale University |
Website | Yale Faculty Page |
Christine Hayes is an American academic and scholar of Jewish studies,currently serving as the Sterling Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica at Yale University,specializing in Talmudic and Midrashic studies and Classical Judaica.
Before her appointment at Yale,she served as the assistant professor of Hebrew studies,Department of Near Eastern Studies,at Princeton University,where she completed her first book Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds (1997) based on her PhD work. Her first monograph was awarded the Salo Baron prize from the American Academy for Jewish Research. [1]
Her second monograph,Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities (2006),was a finalist for the National Jewish Book award,and her third monograph,What's Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives,has won three prestigious awards. [note 1] From 2017–2019,Hayes served as President of the Association for Jewish Studies.
Hayes was born to Australian parents living in the United States. According to Hayes,the family moved frequently in her early years. When Hayes was 11 years old her parents decided to return home to Australia,moving the family first to Sydney and then to Adelaide where Hayes completed her secondary education. [2]
She credits her parents' interest in philosophy,religion,literature,and world culture as instrumental in shaping her own intellectual passions,including her eventual study of Jewish history,culture,and religion. Though her work has primarily dealt with historical Jewish texts,Hayes is not Jewish. [3]
Upon finishing high school,Hayes returned to the United States to study at Harvard University and received her B.A. summa cum laude in the Study of Religion in 1984. There,Hayes relates that she stumbled into the Harvard University Hillel and began to teach herself to read Hebrew.
She interrupted her undergraduate studies in 1982 and worked as a volunteer on an Israeli Kibbutz. After two years of working in the non-profit sector,Hayes returned to academia in 1986,pursuing a doctorate in Classical (biblical and rabbinic) Judaism through the Department of Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley. She spent the 1987–88 academic year as an exchange student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. [2]
Hayes earned an M.A. in 1988,and a PhD in 1993. [4] Her PhD dissertation,"Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds:Accounting for Halakhic difference in selected Sugyot from tractate Avodah Zarah" sought to compare and account for halakhic differences between the two Talmuds.
In 1993,Hayes was appointed assistant professor of Hebrew studies in the department of Near Eastern languages and civilizations at Princeton University. In 1996,she became an assistant professor in the department of religious studies at Yale University where she gained tenure in 2002.
Hayes was awarded a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2003 that enabled her to pursue studies in legal history and legal theory. [5] [6]
In 2006,Hayes' Introduction to Hebrew Bible course was selected by Yale as a pilot for the university's Open Courses online platform allowing anyone around the world to access course materials and recordings of the lectures. [7]
In addition to publishing numerous books and publications,Hayes has also dedicated time to institutions supporting Jewish Studies research and scholarship. Hayes has been a visiting professor at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law (2015),a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2018),and a fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (2018). Since 2015,she has been a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute [4] of North America.
From 2012 to 2016,Hayes served as the co-editor of the Association of Jewish Studies Review . In 2017,she was elected president of the Association for Jewish Studies. [8]
In 2021 Hayes was named a Sterling Professor,one of the highest academic honors that Yale University bestows.
Hayes' scholarship addresses a wide range of historical,literary,legal,and philosophical topics in biblical and rabbinic literature.
Her second book,Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities:Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud,is a work of cultural history. It examines the diverse ways in which biblical,Second Temple,and rabbinic sources employ purity language to construct Jewish identity and to inscribe and police community boundaries with varying degrees of porousness.
Her most recent book,What's Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives,traces two radically distinct conceptions of divine law—Greco-Roman natural law grounded in reason and biblical law grounded in divine will—that emerged in antiquity and confronted one another in the Hellenistic period. According to Hayes,their confrontation created a cognitive dissonance for those who felt compelled to negotiate the claims of both traditions. In a series of interconnected close readings,Hayes charts the creative and conflicting responses to this cognitive dissonance. Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish authors sought to minimize the distance between classical and biblical understandings of divine law by attributing to the Torah the qualities deemed definitive of the divine natural law of Stoic tradition:truth,rationality,universality,and immutability. By contrast,Paul sought to widen the gap,representing the Torah of Moses as possessing none of the traits of the Hellenistic divine/natural law and all of the traits of conventional positive law. Hayes argues that a third path was taken by the Talmudic rabbis,whose unique and surprising construction of divine law—as dynamic,mutable,and not necessarily rational or allied with a monistic "truth"—resisted the Hellenistic and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized west.
In 1988,Hayes married Michael Della Rocca,a Sterling professor of philosophy at Yale University. They have two sons. Hayes and Della Rocca are the second-ever Sterling Professorship couple in Yale University history. [9]
Halakha, also transliterated as halacha, halakhah, and halocho, is the collective body of Jewish religious laws that are derived from the Written and Oral Torah. Halakha is based on biblical commandments (mitzvot), subsequent Talmudic and rabbinic laws, and the customs and traditions which were compiled in the many books such as the Shulchan Aruch. Halakha is often translated as "Jewish law", although a more literal translation might be "the way to behave" or "the way of walking". The word is derived from the root which means "to behave". Halakha not only guides religious practices and beliefs; it also guides numerous aspects of day-to-day life.
In Judaism, the Seven Laws of Noah, otherwise referred to as the Noahide Laws or the Noachian Laws, are a set of universal moral laws which, according to the Talmud, were given by God as a covenant with Noah and with the "sons of Noah"—that is, all of humanity.
Torah study is the study of the Torah, Hebrew Bible, Talmud, responsa, rabbinic literature, and similar works, all of which are Judaism's religious texts. According to Rabbinic Judaism, the study is done for the purpose of the mitzvah ("commandment") of Torah study itself.
Gentile is a word that today usually means someone who is not Jewish. Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, have historically used the term gentile to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is used as a synonym for heathen, pagan or any non-circumcised person, regardless of ancestry. As a term used to describe non-members of a religious/ethnic group, gentile is sometimes compared to other words used to describe the "outgroup" in other cultures.
In its primary meaning, the Hebrew word mitzvah refers to a commandment from God to be performed as a religious duty. Jewish law in large part consists of discussion of these commandments. According to religious tradition, there are 613 such commandments.
David Weiss Halivni was a European-born American-Israeli rabbi, scholar in the domain of Jewish sciences, and Professor of Talmud. He served as Reish Metivta of the Union for Traditional Judaism's rabbinical school.
Ger toshav is a halakhic term used in Judaism to designate the legal status of a Gentile (non-Jew) living in the Land of Israel who does not want to convert to Judaism but agrees to observe the Seven Laws of Noah, a set of imperatives which, according to the Talmud, were given by God as a binding set of universal moral laws for the "sons of Noah"—that is, all of humanity. A ger toshav, especially one who decides to follow the Noahic covenant out of religious belief rather than ethical reasoning, is commonly deemed a "Righteous Gentile", and is assured of a place in the World to Come .
Rabbinic Judaism, also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, or Rabbanite Judaism, has been an orthodox form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbinic Judaism has its roots in the Pharisaic school of Second Temple Judaism, and is based on the belief that Moses at Mount Sinai received both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah from God. The Oral Torah, transmitted orally, explains the Written Torah. At first, it was forbidden to write down the Oral Torah, but after the destruction of the Second Temple, it was decided to write it down in the form of the Talmud and other rabbinic texts for the sake of preservation.
Aggadah is the non-legalistic exegesis which appears in the classical rabbinic literature of Judaism, particularly the Talmud and Midrash. In general, Aggadah is a compendium of rabbinic texts that incorporates folklore, historical anecdotes, moral exhortations, and practical advice in various spheres, from business to medicine.
Noahidism or Noachidism is a monotheistic Jewish religious movement aimed at non-Jews, based upon the Seven Laws of Noah and their traditional interpretations within Orthodox Judaism.
In Jewish religious law, there is a category of specific Jewish purity laws, defining what is ritually impure or pure: ṭum'ah and ṭaharah are the state of being ritually "impure" and "pure", respectively. The Hebrew noun ṭum'ah, meaning "impurity", describes a state of ritual impurity. A person or object which contracts ṭum'ah is said to be ṭamé, and thereby unsuited for certain holy activities and uses until undergoing predefined purification actions that usually include the elapse of a specified time-period.
In Judaism, angels are supernatural beings that appear throughout The Tanakh, rabbinic literature, apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, Jewish philosophy and mysticism, and traditional Jewish liturgy as agents of the God of Israel. They are categorized in different hierarchies. Their essence is often associated with fire. The Talmud describes their very essence as fire.
Not in Heaven is a phrase found in a Biblical verse, Deuteronomy 30:12, which encompasses the passage's theme, and takes on additional significance in rabbinic Judaism.
Jewish traditions across different eras and regions devote considerable attention to sexuality. Sexuality is the subject of many narratives and laws in the Tanakh and rabbinic literature.
Impurity of the land of the nations is a rabbinic edict stipulating a specified degree of tumah (impurity) on all lands outside the Land of Israel. The demarcation lines of foreign lands effectually included all those lands not settled by the people of Israel during their return from the Babylonian exile during the Second Temple period, and was meant to dissuade the priests of Aaron's lineage from venturing beyond the Land of Israel where graves were unmarked, and who may inadvertently contract corpse uncleanness and thereby eat their bread-offering (Terumah), unawares, in a state of ritual impurity and becoming liable thereby to kareth. The declaration with respect to foreign lands includes also the "virgin soil" of those lands, and was, therefore, a safeguard meant to prevent the priests from inadvertently transgressing the Law of Moses.
Tal Ilan is an Israeli-born historian, notably of women's history in Judaism, and lexicographer. She is known for her work in rabbinic literature, the history of ancient Judaism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish historiography, Jewish epigraphy, archaeology and papyrology, onomastics, and ancient Jewish magic. She is the initiator and director of The Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud (FCBT). She received her education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently professor of Jewish Studies at the Free University of Berlin.
Yaakov Elman was an American professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University's Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies where he held the Herbert S. and Naomi Denenberg Chair in Talmudic Studies. He was the founder of the field now known as Irano-Talmudica, which seeks to understand the Babylonian Talmud in its Middle-Persian context.
Ancient Hebrew writings are texts written in Biblical Hebrew using the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
Gerald Blidstein was professor emeritus of Jewish philosophy at Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He was the Israel Prize laureate in Jewish philosophy (2006) and had been a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences since 2007.
Vered Noam is a professor of Talmud at Tel Aviv University. In 2020, she received the Israel Prize for Talmud, the first woman to receive the prize in Talmud studies.