Professor Marshall J. Breger participated in the Opening Colloquium on Shia Islamic-Jewish Legal Reasoning in Dialogue, January 4-5, 2023. The Colloquium was sponsored by the Indiana University-Bloomington Center for the Study of the Middle East (CSME).

Breger presented in the panel on Constitutionalism together with Dr. Marzieh Tofighi Darian of Princeton University and Professor Shai Lavi, Professor of Law, head of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, co-director of the Minerva Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of End of Life at Tel Aviv University.

Breger raised the problem of the interpretation of iconic and canonical religious texts. Is the interpretation of those texts “fixed” or even “ordained,” or do they change in different geographical and political contexts? In particular he addressed the interpretation of Jewish law texts from the perspective of the needs of Zionism. He considered the opinions of law decisers like Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog and Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel, who interpreted Jewish law from the situational perspective of the state of Israel. Thus his presentation raised the problem of how iconic texts are to be interpreted in the context of time and place. This colloquium is part of a movement in legal philosophy to consider the reasoning process of religious legal systems. The colloquium considered topics as varied as gender, theocracy, clerical authority, violence, and natural law in both legal traditions. It will culminate in a volume on ‘Reasoning in Jewish and Shia Legal systems.’