Word: talmud
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Some of Kotlowitz's set pieces are fine. Great-Great-Grandfather Eliezar, 104 years old, flatulent, pedantic, almost abstractly randy, argues minutiae of the Talmud with his 75-year-old son and dies one Friday night when he falls asleep and sets fire to himself. Kotlowitz's best creations are the Pilchik sisters, a pair of earthy, lively, possibly stupid originals from Odessa who try to convert Mendel to socialism. They disappear into the larger historical drama of the October Revolution with an over-the-shoulder verdict that Mendel "is not a serious...
...rules defining admissible trial evidence have been built piecemeal over the years until they now resemble a cross between the Talmud and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Each rule was usually added for a specific reason, but they vary from state to state, from one of the 93 federal districts to another, even, according to the judge's discretion, from courtroom to courtroom. All too often, the complexity actually impedes a court's efforts to dispense justice. Last week, exercising its administrative authority over the federal judicial system, the Supreme Court issued a 45-page set of uniform rules...
...Talmud is the great body of Jewish legal and ritual commentary recorded between 300 B.C. and A.D. 500 and continuously refined by Jewish scholars ever since. Based on the Torah (the five books of Moses that make up the beginning of the Bible), it is Judaism's most authoritative source, after the Torah, and its greatest literary achievement. *Regular kosher, for example, allows animals to be eaten whose lungs are scarred from old internal injuries: glutt kosher requires the lungs to be completely smooth...
...have religious significance to them. At the other end, a smaller but steadfast group regards Judaism principally as a strict and compelling faith, in which nothing less than exact adherence to Torah and Talmud* will do. In between are those who acknowledge the universal community of Judaism, but who trace that community to traditional roots in a common faith...
...compelling rights of "present life" (the mother), both sacred under Jewish law. The rabbi must help the conscientious Jew decide which law takes precedence in the case at hand. It must be the Law-not individual whim-that decides, but it is a flexible, not a frozen code. "The Talmud always includes a minority and majority opinion," Riskin notes, "so there is room for interpretation on specific issues and in particular situations...