Rabbi Asher Lopatin will deliver a talk split into two sections, following which he will take questions:
A) A basic overview of Jewish law—starting from the Bible to the Mishnah and Talmud, and ending with the Shulchan Arukh (Code of Jewish Law) and rabbinic responsa. The goal of this segment will be to introduce both Jews and non-Jews to the way the Jewish legal tradition has evolved over the last three thousand years.
b) A case study from the responsa of Netziv, a leading 19th-century scholar, that will illustrate the tension and synthesis between the competing ideas that the Torah is both divine and human-made
