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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant indeed...,
By
This review is from: Meta-Halakhah: Logic, Intuition, and the Unfolding of Jewish Law (Paperback)
How can it be that all of Halakha was given at Sinai, and yetthat each generation of rabbis is able to introduce innovations? IsHalakha "all there at once" in some Platonic sense, or does it come into existence via convention as Halakhic decisors render specific rulings on specific points?Moshe Koppel thinks questions like these are insufficiently pondered and, when they _are_ asked, all too likely to receive a toe-in-the-dirt "well-umm" sort of reply. So in this slim volume he faces them head-on -- and answers them. The sole other review on this page has already revealed where Koppel is headed with his argument. So I shall simply point out what that argument is. In essence it is this: intuition precedes formalization, and the latter can never fully exhaust the former. There is no conflict between the "Platonic" and "conventionalist" views of Halakha; indeed both of them are true. Koppel supports this contention with clear and deft discussions of certain limitative results from modern mathematical logic. And (no surprise here) he acknowledges a great debt to Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik ztz"l. Readers of the Rav's _Halakhic Man_ and _The Halakhic Mind_ will probably enjoy this book tremendously. Indeed, it is hard not to speculate that the Rav would have enjoyed it himself.(...)
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent synthesis of mathematical logic and Jewish law,
By A Customer
This review is from: Meta-Halakhah: Logic, Intuition, and the Unfolding of Jewish Law (Paperback)
This controversial book provides a wide-ranging and comprehensive view of the evolution of Jewish law, from the perspective of the modern theory of computation. This unlikely juxtaposition produces surprising results. The author combines an excellent exposition of recent results in computability theory with an in-depth survey of Jewish sources to illuminate the fundamental principles of a religion based essentially on Law, by analyzing its spiritual and social effects. The purpose of Jewish law, the author contends, is, paradoxically, to produce autonomous people living in a society of well-defined law, and in attempting to prove this point, he sheds much light on what it means to be truly autonomous and how this may be achieved. This book will appeal to any educated person interested in well-grounded philosophical speculation about the human condition
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