Professor Moshe Halbertal to Give Robert M. Cover Lecture on October 27

Moshe Halbertal, Gruss Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will present the Robert M. Cover Lecture on October 27 at Yale Law School. The lecture, “Narrative and the Limits of the Law in Talmudic Tradition,” will be held at 4:30 pm in the faculty lounge.

Halbertal’s lecture will examine the juxtaposition of narratives and legal material in the Talmud, in the spirit of Cover’s landmark article “Nomos and Narrative.” It will focus on two examples in the Talmud that address forgiveness and giving, analyzing the ways in which the Talmudic discussions speak to the complex human encounter between the harming and the harmed party and the tension between dignity and dependency.

The speaker has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His latest book is Maimonides: Life and Thought, published in 2013 by Princeton University Press. He is also the author of On Sacrifice; Idolatry (with Avishai Margalit); People of the Book: Canon, Meaning and Authority; Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Tradition and Its Philosophical Implications; and Between Torah and Wisdom: R. Menachem ha-Meiri and The Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence.

Moshe Halbertal is the recipient of the Bruno Award of the Rothschild Foundation and the Goren Goldstein Prize for the best book in Jewish Studies.

Established in 1991, the Robert M. Cover Memorial Lectureship in Law and Religion brings distinguished speakers to explore the historical, philosophical, sociological, and literary intersections between law and religion.

The lecture is a collaboration with Yale Law School and Yale Hillel and is open to the public.