The Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law presents: The Jewish Vow Between Story and Law, Bible and Mishnah with Miryam Segal,2022-2023 Caroline Zelaznik Gruss and Joseph S. Gruss Visiting Professor in Talmudic Civil Law at Harvard Law Schoo

The vow, or neder, is ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible, found in poetry and wisdom literature, stories and laws. Even sometime-readers of the Bible will have encountered it in the stories of Jacob, Hannah, and Jepthah; in Psalms and Proverbs, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The third century Mishnah devotes an entire tractate to it and stories and rules of vows appear in other tractates as well. But in those two important sources for Jewish law, neder’s definitions are dramatically different. This talk will explore neder in between biblical law and the Mishnah, and between rules and stories, to try to capture some of the meaning–practical, political, theological–in each of these definitions and in this metamorphosis.