{"product_id":"going-off-script-improvisational-judgment-in-the-talmud-9780197807859","title":"Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Deborah Barer\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Oxford University Press\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Oxford University Press\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Judaism - Sacred Writings\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eGoing Off Script \u003c\/em\u003eoffers a novel explanation of what it means to act \u003cem\u003elifnim mi-shurat ha-din\u003c\/em\u003e (within the line of the law). Tracing the development of this phrase within classical rabbinic literature, the book intervenes in longstanding debates over what this phrase signals about the relationship between Jewish ethics and Jewish law. Deborah Barer breaks with previous scholarship to argue that \u003cem\u003elifnim mi-shurat ha-din\u003c\/em\u003e does not represent a particular type of moral or legal action, but rather a way of making decisions. When rabbis act \u003cem\u003elifnim mi-shurat ha-din\u003c\/em\u003e, they improvise, deviating from established norms of behavior in order to pursue a specific, case-based outcome. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe creation of this category helps the Talmudic editors make sense of otherwise confusing accounts of rabbinic conduct. It also enables them to solve apparent conflicts between their inherited sources, thus resolving a specific set of legal and hermeneutic challenges that arise in the process of producing the Talmud. Once created, however, this category takes on a life of its own. Later generations of Talmudic readers and interpreters develop\u003cem\u003e lifnim mi-shurat ha-din\u003c\/em\u003e as a particular type of moral action, rather than as a way of making decisions, and they import those assumptions back onto their reading of the Talmudic text. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBy identifying \u003cem\u003elifnim mi-shurat ha-din\u003c\/em\u003e as a mode of decision-making, \u003cem\u003eGoing Off Script\u003c\/em\u003e disentangles these later assumptions from the textual record, clarifying the extent to which, at the level of the Talmud itself, \u003cem\u003e lifnim mi-shurat ha-din\u003c\/em\u003e is a morally evaluative term. It identifies improvisation as a type of decision-making that introduces new moral possibilities, and traces how the Talmudic editors contend both with the destabilization that improvisation introduces as well as the beneficial outcomes it makes possible.","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47776096059543,"sku":"9780197807859","price":11352.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9780197807859.webp?v=1777994244","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/going-off-script-improvisational-judgment-in-the-talmud-9780197807859","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}