Women’s Initiative for Jewish Studies (WIJS) at Young Israel of New Rochelle is proud to present Dr. Ayelet Hoffmann Libson on Sunday, January 24, at 11:30 a.m. on Zoom. Dr. Hoffmann Libson will be the fourth speaker in the monthly scholarly programming offered by WIJS at YINR. She will speak on the subject “Autonomy and the Value of Life in the Talmud.”
When a halachic decision must be made regarding an individual’s body, who should make the decision—the person concerned or a rabbinic decisor? This question stands at the core of many medical and legal decisions, the most difficult of which pertain to matters of life and death. Through a close reading of a Talmudic discussion concerning a sick person who must eat on Yom Kippur, the lecture will examine the range of voices in the Talmudic conversation concerning personal autonomy, rabbinic authority and the value of life.
Ayelet Hoffmann Libson is a scholar of Talmud and Jewish law, and serves as an associate professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. She received a B.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University. She has also pursued advanced graduate study in Talmud and Jewish law at the MaTaN Advanced Talmud Institute and at the Beit Morasha Program in Jewish Law, and has been a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. From 2017 to 2018, she was the Gruss Visiting Professor of Jewish Law at Harvard Law School. She teaches courses on rabbinic literature, the history of Jewish law and the intersection between religion and human rights. Her publications have appeared in journals such as AJS Review, Jewish Quarterly Review, American Journal of Legal History and Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, and she is the author of “Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud” (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
All WIJS programming is open to women and men. Please visit www.yinr.org/wijs to view the complete WIJS 2020-21 schedule. For more information or to be added to the WIJS email list, please call 914-636-2215 or email [email protected]. For Zoom information, please email [email protected].
By Tamar Croog
