Mark Washofsky
285-304. Daniel Sperber discusses several“metaprinciples”(ekronot"al), including k vod hab'rivot, in Darkah shel torah(Jerusalem : Rubin Mass, 2007), pp. 51-101. It is no accident, I think, that our own Nahum Rakover speaks of k'vod hab'riyot as a“metaprinciple” in the subtitle of his Gadol k’vod hab’riyot(Jerusalem : Ministry of Justice, 1998).
86. Of the many works that might be cited here, the one that deserves special mention is Menachem Elon ’s Jewish Law (Philadelphia : Jewish Publication Society , 1994). While most of that work is devoted to a comprehensive doctrinal and historical survey of Jewish law, much of its fourth volume deals with the role that the Jewish tradition does play and(in the author’s view) ought to play in the law of the state of Israel . Elon includes as well a brief history of the mishpat ivri movement and its efforts to revive Jewish law and to integrate it into the law of the
state.
87 See below. the discussion of the controversy sparked in the 1970s by Itzhak Englard’s critique of mishpativri. In general, the movement encountered opposition from all sides. Secular lawyers, who had been trained in the English common law tradition, did not relish the prospect of finding their legal training and world view rendered obsolete by a major change-over to Jewish law. Orthodox jurists and rabbis did not look kindly upon the notion that a secular legislators and judges would presume to speak in the name of Jewish law. Those on both sides who viewed the halakhah essentially as a system of religious law found it difficult to imagine its application in the life of a state that did not officially recognize the halakhah as binding. See Elon (note 86, above), pp. 1906-1914, and Menachem Mautner . The Law and Culture of Israel(Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2011), pp. 32-35. Fora“postmodern” reading of the movement to“revive” Jewish law, see Asaf Likhovski,“The Invention of‘Hebrew Law’ in Mandatory Palestine,”
American Journal of Comparative Law, 46(1998), pp. 339-373.
88. What we might term Rakover ’s programmatic statement in this regard is his L'shiluvo shel hamishpat ha ivri bamishpat hayisra eli(Jerusalem : Ministry of Justice, 1998). And see especially the books he has authored under the rubric of Sifrivat hamishpat ha ivri(The Jewish Law Library), published with the assistance of Israel ’s Justice Ministry. These titles include Eikhut has’vivah(“Quality of the Environment” Jerusalem, 1993); Z'khut hayotzrim b’'m’korot hay"hudi im (“Intellectual Property Rights in Jewish Sources”; Jerusalem , 1991); Matarah ham'kadeshet et ha’emtza'im(“Does the End Justify the Means?”; Jerusalem , 2000): Ethics in the Marketplace(Jerusalem , 2000); Hamischar bamishpat ha‘ivr
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