Your Cart ()
cload

GUARANTEED SAFE & SECURE CHECKOUT

Spend $x to Unlock Free Shipping to  

Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Loopholes and Legal Integrity - Paperback

$60.89
Checkout Secure
Only 3 left! .. people are viewing this, and 3 recently purchased it
Order in the next to get it by

Great reasons to buy from us:

  • Image of Changed your mind? Ordered the wrong thing? Simply return your item for a prompt exchange or refund.

    30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

    Changed your mind? Ordered the wrong thing? Simply return your item for a prompt exchange or refund.
  • Image of Enjoy free shipping when you spend over $70

    Free Shipping Over $70

    Enjoy free shipping when you spend over $70
  • Image of SSL Protected Checkout & Strongly Secure for Payments

    Secure Checkout

    SSL Protected Checkout & Strongly Secure for Payments
  • Image of Every order is a priority to us. We handle your order quickly to ensure you get your product fast.

    Fast Handling

    Every order is a priority to us. We handle your order quickly to ensure you get your product fast.

by Elana Stein Hain (Author)

Circumventing the Law probes the rabbinic logic behind the use of loopholes, the legal phenomenon of finding and using gaps within law to achieve otherwise illegal outcomes. The logic of ha'aramah, a subset of rabbinic legal circumventions mostly defined as a tool for private life, underpins both well-known circumventions, such as selling leaven before Passover, and lesser-known mechanisms, such as designating an animal intended for sacrifice "blemished" before birth to allow it to be slaughtered for food instead. Elana Stein Hain traces the development of these loopholes over time, revealing that rabbinic literature does not consistently accept or reject loopholes. Instead, rabbinic Judaism applies categories of evasion (prohibited), avoidance (permitted), and avoision (contested) to loopholes on a case-by-case basis. The intended outcome of a given loophole determines its classification, as does the legal integrity of the circumventive process in question.

Yet these understandings of loopholes are not static--instead, rabbinic attitudes toward loopholing change over time. Early works display an objective, performative understanding of the self and of intention, but evolve over time to reflect more subjective and intimate understanding of the self and intention. This evolution redefines what legal integrity means in Jewish legal philosophy.

Circumventing the Law brings readers through the Second Temple period to the modern era to see how loopholing has evolved over millennia. With a focus on late antiquity, Stein Hain explores tannaitic literature, the Palestinian Talmud, and contemporaneous Greco-Roman and Persian thought to show that when warranted, Jewish rhetoric and philosophy around understandings of loopholes was a unique phenomenon that relied on changes in understanding the definition of integrity itself, a key finding for scholars of Jewish Studies and of religious and of secular law writ large.

Author Biography

Elana Stein Hain is the Rosh Beit Midrash and a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she leads research and curriculum development in the Kogod Research Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought and serves as lead faculty for the Institute's educational programming.

Number of Pages: 240
Dimensions: 0.55 x 9 x 6 IN
Publication Date: January 06, 2026
Shipping This item ships to
Delivery Estimated between and . Will usually ship within 1 business day.

Description

by Elana Stein Hain (Author)

Circumventing the Law probes the rabbinic logic behind the use of loopholes, the legal phenomenon of finding and using gaps within law to achieve otherwise illegal outcomes. The logic of ha'aramah, a subset of rabbinic legal circumventions mostly defined as a tool for private life, underpins both well-known circumventions, such as selling leaven before Passover, and lesser-known mechanisms, such as designating an animal intended for sacrifice "blemished" before birth to allow it to be slaughtered for food instead. Elana Stein Hain traces the development of these loopholes over time, revealing that rabbinic literature does not consistently accept or reject loopholes. Instead, rabbinic Judaism applies categories of evasion (prohibited), avoidance (permitted), and avoision (contested) to loopholes on a case-by-case basis. The intended outcome of a given loophole determines its classification, as does the legal integrity of the circumventive process in question.

Yet these understandings of loopholes are not static--instead, rabbinic attitudes toward loopholing change over time. Early works display an objective, performative understanding of the self and of intention, but evolve over time to reflect more subjective and intimate understanding of the self and intention. This evolution redefines what legal integrity means in Jewish legal philosophy.

Circumventing the Law brings readers through the Second Temple period to the modern era to see how loopholing has evolved over millennia. With a focus on late antiquity, Stein Hain explores tannaitic literature, the Palestinian Talmud, and contemporaneous Greco-Roman and Persian thought to show that when warranted, Jewish rhetoric and philosophy around understandings of loopholes was a unique phenomenon that relied on changes in understanding the definition of integrity itself, a key finding for scholars of Jewish Studies and of religious and of secular law writ large.

Author Biography

Elana Stein Hain is the Rosh Beit Midrash and a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she leads research and curriculum development in the Kogod Research Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought and serves as lead faculty for the Institute's educational programming.

Number of Pages: 240
Dimensions: 0.55 x 9 x 6 IN
Publication Date: January 06, 2026

Shipping

Shipping This item ships to
Delivery Estimated between and . Will usually ship within 1 business day.

Reviews

Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Loopholes and Legal Integrity - Paperback

Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Loopholes and Legal Integrity - Paperback

$60.89
Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Loopholes and Legal Integrity - Paperback

Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Loopholes and Legal Integrity - Paperback

$60.89
3 visitors right now
3 visitors have this item in their cart right now
3 people have bought this item
3 % of people buy 2 or more

Recently viewed products