Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

October 29, 2020

Rabbinic Attitudes toward Uncertainty Reveal the Underlying Humanity of Halakhah

And the rabbinic commitment to upholding commercial life.

When one hears about religious discussions of doubt, one thinks about those who are unsure in their beliefs. But in his book The Birth of Doubt, Moshe Halbertal examines something else entirely: how the rabbis of the 3rd and 4th centuries CE dealt with situations of halakhic uncertainty, such as a piece of meat that might have been purchased from a kosher butcher, but could possibly have originated from a non-kosher one. Zalman Rothschild writes in his review:

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