128 Mark Washofsky

a discourse,” then an opinion is a“good” one to the extent that it strengthens that discourse, allowing the community to come together in sincere argument over the ideals to which it is committed.'”

It is always difficult to translate the values of one culture into the language of another. In particular, the secular, democratic legal tradition that James Boyd White represents reflects a set of cultural assumptions that the halakhah, rooted in ancient and medieval Jewish texts, does not share. Yet I would contend that there is enough similarity between the systems to make comparisons and borrowings useful, as long as we do so with the proper caution.'” Thus, I think when White defines the law as“a language, a set of resources for expression and social action... a literary(life), a life both of reading the compositions of others(especially those authoritative compositions that declare the law) and of making compositions of one’s own,”'® he could just as well be describing the halakhah. The same could be said for the observations of Peter Brooks that “discourse reorganizes stories to give them a certain inflection and intention, a point, perhaps even an effect on their hearers... (Narrative discourse is never innocent but always presentational, 2 way of working on story events that is also a way of working on the listener or the reader”;'” these words could easily apply to the halakhah. Halakhic writing and halakhic storytelling are literary acts that deserve to be studied as literary acts, as texts addressed to communities of readers, seeking to persuade them, to influence them, and to call upon them to become a particular sort of community. “Evaluation,” therefore, means that when we encounter narrative structures and sub-structures in halakhic writing, we should bear in mind that these stories are examples of artifice, the creation of a literary author, and that we should ask just what sort of change that the particular author seeks to work in the text— and in its readers— by means of this particular story.