Trial Stories in Jewish Antiquity: Counternarratives of Justice

What can early Jewish courtroom narratives tell us about the capacity and limits of human justice? By exploring how judges and the act of judging are depicted in these narratives, Trial Stories in Jewish Antiquity: Counternarratives of Justice challenges the prevailing notion, both then and now, of the ideal impartial judge. As a work of intellectual history, the book also contributes to contemporary debates about the role of legal decision-making in shaping a just society. Chaya T. Halberstam shows that instead of modelling a system in which lofty, inaccessible judges follow objective and rational rules, ancient Jewish trial narratives depict a legal practice dependent upon the individual judge’s personal relationships, reactive emotions, and impulse to care.

Drawing from affect theory and feminist legal thought, Halberstam offers original readings of some of the most famous trials in ancient Jewish writings alongside minor case stories in Josephus and rabbinic literature. She shows both the consistency of a counter-tradition that sees legal practice as contingent upon relationship and emotion, and the specific ways in which that perspective was manifest in changing times and contexts.

Chaya T. Halberstam, Professor of Religious Studies, King’s University College, University of Western Ontario

Chaya T. Halberstam is Professor of Religious Studies at King’s University College, University of Western Ontario. She works on law and literature in Israelite and Jewish antiquity, specializing in early rabbinic texts. Her research explores the limits of the law and the gestures within legal contexts toward social, emotional, and relational reasoning. Halberstam received her PhD in Religious Studies from Yale University. She has previously held fellowships at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Indiana University.