Meet the Faculty

Chaya Halberstam

• Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Education

• Ph.D. at Yale University (2004)

Contact Information

Background

• Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Religious Ethics
• National Foundation for Jewish Culture Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Jewish Studies
• Member of the Society of Biblical Literature
• Member of the Association of Law, Culture, and the Humanities

My academic interests center on the Hebrew Bible as a literature within its ancient Near Eastern setting and as it is read and understood by later interpreters, particularly the rabbis of Late Antiquity. My research often takes me as well into an exploration of Second Temple Judaism (including Dead Sea Scrolls) and early Christianity. I believe that religion and culture are inherently embedded in a vast array of discourses, and the most effective way to understand the texts of our own discipline is to engage those of other fields. My interdisciplinary approach focuses on the intersections and continuities between law and the humanities, fields that were thoroughly intertwined in Isarelite and Jewish antiquity.  My current book-in-progress (working title: Evidence and Uncertainty) addresses the epistemological uncertainty the early rabbis faced when attempting to make decisions and render judgments--and the sense of freedom and anxiety that permeated a religion which was not based on absolute truth.

Research Interests

• Hebrew Bible as interpreted by rabbinic authorities of Late Antiquity
• Interdisciplinary study of the intersection of literature, law, psychology and ethics
• Place of property or possessions in negotiating the relationship between the human and the divine in biblical and rabbinic literature

Courses Recently Taught

• Poetry in the Hebrew Bible
• Monarchy, Monotheism, and the Creation of Israelite Identity
• Theologies of the Old Testament: Sin and Retribution
• Biblical Texts in English

Publication Highlights

Articles

"Encircling the Law: The Legal Boundaries of Rabbinic Judaism" Jewish Quarterly Review (forthcoming).

"Negotiating Law and Religion in Ancient Jewish Texts"Law, Culture and the Humanities (forthcoming).

"'Your Wives Shall Be Widows': a Bakhtinian Perspective on Women Readers" Feminist Theology(forthcoming).

"Was Cain Innocent? The Early Rabbis Interpret Guilt" Toward a Critique of Guilt: Perspectives from Law and the Humanities, M. Anderson, ed. (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005).

"Interpretive Freedom and Divine Law: Early Rabbinic Renderings of Divine Injustice" Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 27 (2003).