Register for the Halachic Left Forum: Presenting Works on Nationalism, Community, Boundaries!

Sunday, July 20, 9:30am-5:30pm, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, NYC

$25 to help cover the cost of kosher lunch. (All food is OU pareve or Chalav Yisrael.)

REGISTER HERE by Sunday, July 13 at 11:59pm to attend in-person.

If you are unable to attend in-person, you can sign up here to be emailed the link to the livestream.

Schedule

  • 9:30 AM-10:15 AM: Doors Open (Breakfast, Coffee, and Muffins)

  • 10:15-10:30 AM: Opening Remarks 

  • 10:30 AM - 12:05 PM: Session 1: Protest and Communal Norms

    • Commentator: Rabbi Avigayil Halpern

    • Rabbi Leead Staller: Bal Tashchit and the Laws of War

    • Rabbi Allen Lipson: “A Prison Without a Lock”: Halakhic Considerations on Boycotting Israel

    • Albert Kohn: “Delaying the Services”: An Exploration of Medieval Ashkenazic Protest

  • 12:10 - 1:15 PM: Lunch

  • 1:20 - 2:55 PM: Session 2: What hath Religious Zionism Wrought? / Potentialities of Nationalism

    • Commentator: Dr. Sarah Wolf

    • Rabbi Dr. Aryeh Cohen: Halakha and Democracy: Rethinking the Relationship

    • Netanel Zellis-Paley: Law at the End of History: Is Religious Zionist Halakha Antinomian?

    • Isaac Treuherz: Shelilat HaMinhag: “Negation of the Diaspora” and Flattening of Our Traditions

  • 3:05 - 4:40 PM: Session 3: Boundaries of Community and Sacred Space

    • Commentator: Rabbi William Friedman

    • Rabbi Lexie Botzum: Kashrut in Solidarity Work

    • Rabbi David Seidenberg: Ger Toshav: Stranger and Settler in Israel-Palestine

    • Dr. Raphael Magarik: Rabbinic Approaches to Accessing the Temple Mount: The Norms of Sacred Space

  • 4:50- 5:10pm: Closing Remarks

Descriptions

Session 1: Protest and Communal Norms

Commentator: Rabbi Avigayil Halpern

Rabbi Avigayil Halpern is an educator and writer who is passionate about the Torah that emerges in the conversation between our own lives and traditional texts. Avigayil is recognized internationally as a teacher of thoughtful and accessible Torah, with a focus on queer and feminist thought. She has brought her compelling and original teaching to communities across and beyond denominations, and has experience teaching groups of all ages and backgrounds. 

Avigayil was ordained by the Hadar Institute in 2023. She has been a Scholar-in-Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and was recognized as one of the New York Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” and as a “Vatichtov: She Writes” Fellow,  among other fellowships and awards. She is a co-host of the “Can’t Stop Scrolling” podcast, which recently completed its first season. Avigayil lives in Washington, DC.

“Bal Tashchit and the Laws of War” by Rabbi Leead Staller

In contemporary halakhic practice, the laws of bal tashchit govern environmentally conscious concerns of wastefulness. However, when one examines the textual origin and rabbinic development of that halakha, one is left with a series of questions and incongruencies between the contemporary eco-ethic and the original intent of the law. The law is found in Deuteronomy in the context of the laws of warfare for the impending siege of Israel, and seemingly has nothing to do with environmental concerns. Ultimately, this is because bal tashchit originated as a law of the ethical limitations of wartime siege tactics, and—as one can track from the earliest Midrashim to the later exilic works—as the diasporic Jewish community became further detached from practical questions of war and military force, laws such as bal tashchit were given new life by being transformed into personal ethics and ritual practices. An unfortunate byproduct of this process is that the original intent of the laws of bal tashchit are often lost or outright contradicted within Torah discourse today.

Leead Staller has been a rabbi in the downtown Manhattan community for the past five years, starting with long-time members of the Lower East Side, and ultimately ending his time there working with college students. Learning Torah, sharing Shabbat meals, and being in community together with the young college students of the downtown communities reaffirmed Leead’s direction and passion for young and new projects like Halakhic Left, and he’s excited to be a participant in it.

“‘A Prison Without a Lock’: Halakhic Considerations on Boycotting Israel” by Rabbi Allen Lipson

As the ghastly death toll mounts in Gaza and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians stand at the brink of starvation, liberal Jews have gradually opened toward placing political and economic pressure on the state of Israel to stop the violence. But years of demonizing boycotts divestment, and sanctions, the most effective tool for doing so, as inherently antisemitic have left Jews ill-equipped for that conversation. This paper explores the ḥerem, the Jewish social boycott, as a frame of reference for Israel-Palestine. It first offers a brief sketch of ḥerem’s history, only to focus in one relevant case: ḥerem as a “restorative” response to physical assault, a precedent spanning from the Geonic period to the present. In particular, it closely analyzes a responsum of R. Ya’akov Epstein, a religious-Zionist decisor of the 21st century, calling for ostracism of Israeli military personnel after they employed violence against settlers during the evacuation of the West Bank outpost of Amona. Finally, it considers the most forceful rabbinic objections to ḥerem—protests against its illiberalism, collective punishment, and impracticality—drawing out their relevance for today’s boycott debate.

Rabbi Allen Lipson is a community organizer at Essex County Community Organization and an alumnus of Hebrew College. His writing has appeared in the Review of Rabbinic Judaism, Jewish Currents, CrossCurrents, and Zeramim.

“‘Delaying the Services’: An Exploration of Medieval Ashkenazic Protest” by Albert Kohn

How does one bring frustrations and accusations to the institutions and communities in which one prays? This was and continues to be a challenging conundrum faced by Jews distraught with realities of Jewish life yet still committed to the strength and stability of their communities. This article engages this question through a micro-historical analysis of Medieval Ashkenaz, the Jewish community that existed in northern France and German-speaking lands in the tenth through fourteenth centuries. It focuses on the ritual of ‘Ikuv Tephilah by which community members could interrupt regular prayer services and insist that the community address their grievances. Scholars have long described this ritual as a tool for greasing the wheels of civil justice and a core feature of medieval communal life. This article highlights how medieval Jews incorporated this practice into their communal life despite their worries about it demeaning the synagogue and its liturgical life. It also emphasizes how statutes governing the practice privileged complaints relating to the community and its functioning over those which were only concerned with personalized grievances. It concludes by considering how modern Jews might use ‘Ikuv Tephilah as a model for developing effective and appropriate modes for forcing difficult conversations within their contemporary Jewish communities.

Albert Evan Kohn is a PhD candidate in the history department at Princeton University. He is currently writing a social and cultural history of Sabbath observance in medieval Ashkenaz. Before embarking on this project, he spent time studying Jewish and Medieval history at Columbia University, The Jewish Theological Seminary, Cambridge University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published articles about medieval Jewish ritual, including a history of the custom to sing Shabbat Zemirot. He currently lives in Paris where he is conducting archival research.

Session 2: What hath Religious Zionism Wrought? / Potentialities of Nationalism

Commentator: Dr. Sarah Wolf

Dr. Sarah Wolf is Assistant Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary and a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She teaches, writes, and speaks about emotion, law, gender, community, and the imaginary in rabbinic texts. She currently lives in Washington Heights with her spouse, toddler, and two cats.

“Halakha and Democracy: Rethinking the Relationship” by Rabbi Dr. Aryeh Cohen

In a groundbreaking responsum in 1918, Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn answered a question about the form of government that the future Jewish state would take. His answer was important both for his argument that there was no longer a commandment to appoint a king but there was a commandment to democratically elect a legislature and an executive, and also for his centering of the principle that “nothing in the Biblical Law and in the Halacha [is] opposed in any way to the progress of civilization or to the rule of common sense.” This statement essentially gives ethics sway over the halakhic process.

In this essay I will review the Biblical obligation of appointing a king and the Rabbinic understanding of that obligation followed by a medieval dissent. I will then explicate Hirschensohn’s decision against monarchy and for democracy; in fact, the creation, seemingly ex nihilo, of a commandment to democratically elect a representative legislature and executive. I will then explore a number of Rabbinic thinkers on the question of democracy and halakha who wrote after the creation of the state. 

In the second half of the paper I will engage the question “How should we think about the relationship between halakha and contemporary Israeli democracy?” I will do this under the shadow of the more basic question: “Is Israeli ‘democracy’ actually a democracy?”

Finally, I will suggest that a halakhic community should work to produce the kind of  “religious legislation” which has roots in the halakhic tradition and falls under the broad category of those things which are mipnei darkhei shalom/in the interests of peace; and at the same work to make the state actually democratic by fighting for equality “of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,” and put an end to the occupation and  apartheid in the West Bank. This will be a way to comply with Hirschensohn’s demand that halakha be in compliance with the demands of ethics and justice. 

Rabbi Dr. Aryeh Cohen is Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University. He serves as a commissioner on the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, and is co-convener of the Black Jewish Justice Alliance. He is the past president of the Society of Jewish Ethics. A former co-chair of the board of CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice), and the Progressive Jewish Alliance, Cohen served as Rabbi-in-Residence at Bend the Arc from 2015 to 2022. He was a member of the first Interfaith Advisory Board for the LA County District Attorney under DA George Gascon. His most recent book is Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism (Academic Studies Press). Cohen’s poetry has appeared in Kerem, Cobra Milk and Ilanot Review.

“Law at the End of History: Is Religious Zionist Halacha Antinomian?” by Netanel Zellis-Paley

Halachic literature and discourse in Religious Zionist communities take for granted that the Jewish return to the land of Israel/Palestine and the founding of the state of Israel effected changes in the significance of the land to contemporary Halacha. One such change is the elevation and prioritization of the commandment of yishuv eretz Yisrael, the settlement of the land of Israel, by Religious Zionist poskim (halachic decisors). Many poskim have endowed this commandment with halachic weight on par with that of traditionally more consequential commandments, such as the prohibitions against violating Shabbat and murder. While extant scholarship has examined the jurisprudential and theological underpinnings of this approach, to date, no study has considered Religious Zionist halacha as possessing antinomian features, rooted in rabbinic perceptions of Jewish settlement and sovereignty in Israel/Palestine as ushering in the Messianic era. The present study analyzes a seminal responsum of influential Religious Zionist posek R. Shaul Yisraeli (1909-1995) on land-for-peace deals in light of recent scholarship on the antinomian halacha of seventeenth-century false messiah Shabtai Zvi.

Netanel Zellis-Paley is a Ph.D. candidate in School Psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. His work has been published in School Psychology, School Psychology Review, and Cognitive Science, and has been presented at major international conferences in psychology. He is the founding editor of Sanctuary, a new religious magazine for the American Jewish community, and a co-founder of Havaya Collective.

“Shelilat HaMinhag: ‘Negation of the Diaspora’ and Flattening of Our Traditions” by Isaac Treuherz

Today, Israel is celebrated as being reflective of Jewish diversity. Yet global Jewish minhagim went through a conscious and ideological negation process in the formation of the State, which is now forgotten due to their reconstruction through a Western yet orientalising lens. This has massively changed religious practice, yet has seamlessly overwritten that which came before it. This facile reconstructed version of Judaism now permeates almost all religious practice. This work will look at three case studies – music and dance, the Hebrew language, and te‘amim and liturgy. All of them have been deeply affected by the ideology of shelilat hagalut, “negation of the diaspora” – a term coined by Zionist thinker Ahad Ha'am (born Asher Ginsberg) to describe the process of unlearning and quashing practices from the many diasporic regions in which Jews lived. This work will investigate the halakhic impact of what it means to follow a minhag in light of this, and where we go from here.

Isaac grew up in the historic Sephardic community of London, and is now a musician and educator, currently researching Sephardic liturgical music at SOAS, University of London. Isaac is also editor of Siddure Or, a new series of siddurim, and runs an egalitarian Sephardic minyan. In their "real job," you'll find Isaac playing cello for and teaching traditional folk dancing.

Session 3: Boundaries of Community and Sacred Space

Commentator: Rabbi William Friedman

Rabbi William Friedman is the Senior Educator of Base Lincoln Park, a faculty member at Pardes North America, and a doctoral candidate in Ancient Judaism at Harvard University, where his research explores legal reasoning in rabbinic law. He received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Daniel Landes, former director and Rosh Yeshiva of the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies, and holds an MA in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary. With a passion for deep and accessible Jewish learning, William has studied and taught at institutions including Pardes, the Conservative Yeshiva, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Jewish Theological Seminary, Academy for Jewish Religion, and Hebrew College. He lives in Chicago, IL, with his spouse, Rabbi Sarah Mulhern, and their three children.

“Kashrut in Solidarity Work” by Rabbi Lexie Botzum

International and Israeli solidarity activists in Israel/Palestine are engaged constantly in the project of “protective presence,” using their bodies and attendant privileges to protect Palestinian partners in the West Bank against the constant threat of settler and army violence, and its accompanying goal of violent dispossession. This work is premised not on transactional support, but deep, co-resistant relationships. Something that both deepens these relationships and makes possible more long-term protective presence is the sharing of meals prepared by Palestinian partners. Religious solidarity activists have had to address the question of whether it is possible, within the bounds of kashrut, to share vegetarian meals. This teshuva addresses that question, examining first ingredients-based concerns, before moving on to the broader question of preparer-based prohibitions, examining not only the mekorot but broader questions of alterity, identity, and the world we’re trying to construct. It will seek to address the question: How do we reconcile kashrut’s focus on distinction and separation with a desire to be in deep relationship with our Palestinian partners?

Rabbi Lexie Botzum is a teacher, writer, and organizer based in Washington Heights. She has studied with the Yashrut halakha shiur, the Conservative Yeshiva, Yeshivat Hadar, and the Pardes kollel; she received semikha from Rabbi Daniel Landes at Yashrut, where she now teaches Gemara and halakha. Her work has been published in Jewish Currents, +972 Magazine, Vashti Magazine, and My Jewish Learning. She has published a book of illustrated parshah poetry, Poem HaShavua, complete with mekorot.  Lexie enjoys helping people develop the tools to engage Torah on their own terms, and exploring halakha as an intricate project of world-building. While she’s been in New York for a year, Lexie spent the previous five years in Jerusalem, engaged in Torah learning and on the ground anti-occupation activism.

“Ger Toshav: Stranger and Settler in Israel-Palestine” by Rabbi David Seidenberg

Many Jews across the political spectrum put great stock in the idea that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. How we think about Jewish indigenousness to the land of Israel has a deep impact on how we think about Jewish and Palestinian rights and equality, ethics toward the other, the nature of political power, and the perverse attraction of the ethno-state and ethnic hierarchy, which arguably contradicts the best interpretation of the Torah's ethics. 

The Torah itself insists that the Israelites are not indigenous to Canaan/Israel/Palestine -- instead, the Israelites are portrayed as either strangers and immigrants (Genesis), or as conquerors (Joshua), even though archaeological evidence suggests the Israelites were in fact indigenous. In a nutshell, the indigenous wisdom of the Israelites, as detailed in Genesis and throughout much of the Tanakh, is that one should not see oneself as indigenous, but rather as a stranger, a ger v'toshav. In fact, this self-image provides the foundation for the Torah's ethic toward the stranger (Lev 19:34 and dozens of other passages) and towards the land itself (Lev 25:23).

A deeper look at the ethos and ethics of the Torah in relation to the stranger shows that halakhic interpretations that limit "ger" to Jewish converts and "neighbor" to Jews subvert the Torah's ethics and intentions. Instead, we should configure our interpretations of halakha and politics to recognize the Palestinians as having equal rights to the land, and to see the use of state power to limit those rights as anathema to an accurate understanding of Torah. This hermeneutic demands of us that we identify with the "Torah of the stranger" in Genesis, and recognize the ways in which it is incompatible with the "Torah of genocide" in Joshua.

Rabbi David Mevorach Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org and the author of Kabbalah and Ecology. He has ordination from JTS and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and has been an active advocate for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine for many decades. This has included bringing his class in rabbinical school to Dheisheh refugee camp, and participating in programs in the holy land with Sulha and with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. David was also a founding Board member of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom. Many of his writings on the land of Israel and the political state have appeared in the Times of Israel. David also writes about other issues related to ecology, to human rights, and to animal rights. David has been actively studying and teaching about the question of Jewish indigeneity since 2018. 

“Rabbinic Approaches to Accessing the Temple Mount: The Norms of Sacred Space” by Dr. Raphael Magarik

What should religious Jews’ attitude toward the Temple Mount be today? While there’s a voluminous literature relating to this question, it largely relates to restrictions on entering specific Temple sites and associated concerns around ritual impurity. I suggest that debates between authorities associated with the mainstream of the Zionist (and then Israeli state) project, on the one hand, and those to their generally messianic-radical right, on the other, are inconclusive, in part because they do not tackle some core questions. I suggest reframing the conversation around questions of property ownership, political violence, and the ongoing occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. By doing so, I hope not only to shed new light on this question, but also to excavate some potentially surprising ideas, norms, and values around sacred space and place from classical Jewish texts.

Raffi Magarik is assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago; his book, Fictions of God, is forthcoming in November 2025 with the University of Chicago Press. He studied at Yeshivat Hadar (where he also taught Talmud) and Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa and did graduate work in Bible and Talmud at the University California, Berkeley. He is also a contributing writer to Jewish Currents.