Dr. Ayelet Libson

Harry Radzyner Law School

  • Dr. Ayelet Hoffmann Libson studies the history of Jewish law, particularly in the period of the Talmud. She received her BA from the Hebrew University. She completed her Master's degree and doctorate at New York University and postdoctoral fellowships at Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University. She has recently held visiting appointments at Harvard Law School and at Penn Law School. Her first book is Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud, published by Cambridge University Press.
  • Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud, Cambridge University Press, 2018

     


    Co-editor, Dine Israel volume in honor of Suzanne Last Stone (forthcoming, 2023)

     


    Guest editor, Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies Symposium on Eric Nelson’s The Theology of Liberalism: Political Philosophy and the Justice of God, December 2022.  .


    “Jewish Law as Comparative Law: Copyright as a Test Case,” Shnaton Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri, with Adi Libson (forthcoming 2023) [Hebrew]. 


    “Talmud Torah: The Value of Study in the Rabbinic Academy and Courthouse,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law, eds. Roberta Kwall and Chaim Saiman (forthcoming 2023).


    “The Authority of the Talmud and Palestinian Narrative Traditions in the book of the Sheiltot,” in Shapir Amar Nahmani: Rabbinic Courts in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (forthcoming 2023) [Hebrew].


    “Liberalism in the Shadow of Theology,” Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies 26.1 (2022), 178-188.


    “Commandments and the Community of Law in Tosefta Berakhot,” Jewish Quarterly Review (2021). 


    “‘A People’s Multitude is a King’s Splendor:’ Communal Practices Beyond Prayer,” in Torah from the Plague, ed. Erin Leib Smokler (2021). 

     



    "Replacing God with Big Data: Personalizing Copyright,” Boston University International Law Journal 37 (2021).


    “In the Shadow of Doubt: Expertise, Knowledge and Systematization in Rabbinic Purity Laws,” AJS Review 44:1 (2020), 1-20. 


    “’Not My Fault’: Morality and Divorce Law in the Liberal State,” Tulane Law Review 93 (2019), 1-45.


    Review of Jewish Justice: The Contested Limits of Nature, Law and Covenant by David Novak, Political Theology 19:6 (2018).



    "Grounds for Divorce as Values: Revisiting Rabbinic Law,” Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 5 (2016), 510-531.


    The Heart Knows Its Own Bitterness: Authority, Self and the Origins of Patient Autonomy in Early Jewish Law,” American Journal of Legal History 57 (2016), 1-23.


    Authority, Autonomy and the Value of Life: A Talmudic Study,” Judaism, Sovereignty and Human Rights 1 (2016), 17-40, Hebrew.


    Co-author with Elhanan Naeh and David Atzmon, Tractate Sanhedrin Chapter 4: Studies on Man and Law, Yesodot, 2007.


    Editor, Literary Form and Composition in Classical Rabbinic Literature, by Abraham Goldberg, Magnes Press, 2012.