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Despite the existence of a variety of approaches to the understanding of behavioral and managerial ethics in organizations and business relationships generally, knowledge of organizing systems for fidelity remains in its infancy. We use halakha, or Jewish law, as a model, together with the literature in sociology, economic anthropology, and economics on what it termed “middleman minorities,” and on what we have termed the Landa Problem, the problem of identifying a trustworthy economic exchange partner, to explore this issue.

The article contrasts the differing explanations for trustworthy behavior in these literatures, focusing on the widely referenced work of Avner Greif on the Jewish Maghribi merchants of the eleventh century. We challenge Greif’s argument that cheating among the Magribi was managed chiefly via a rational, self-interested reputational sanctioning system in the closed group of traders. Greif largely ignores a more compelling if potentially complementary argument, which we believe also finds support among the documentary evidence of the Cairo Geniza as reported by Goitein: that the behavior of the Maghribi reflected their deep beliefs and commitment to Jewish law, halakha.

Applying insights from this analysis, we present an explicit theory of heroic marginality, the production of extreme precautionary behaviors to ensure service to the principal.

Generalizing from the case of halakha, the article proposes the construct of a deep code, identifying five defining characteristics of such a code, and suggests that deep codes may act as facilitators of compliance. We also offer speculation on design features employing deep codes that may increase the likelihood of production of behaviors consistent with terminal values of the community.

The religious tradition of male circumcision has come increasingly under attack across a number of European states. While critics of the practice argue that the problem is about children’s rights and the proper relationship between secular and religious traditions, Jews tend to see these attacks within the longer history of attempts to assimilate and remake them according to the norms of the majority. Using the 2012 German legal controversy concerning the issue as my vantage point, I explore how contemporary criticism of male circumcision remains entangled with ambivalence toward Judaism and the Jews as the “other.” Through a close reading of the arguments, I show how opponents use the seemingly neutral language of universal human rights to (re)make Jewish difference according to the norms of the majority. I conclude by arguing that such an approach to this issue runs the risk of turning Jews once again into strangers at a time when cultural anxieties are troubling European societies.

This paper argues that Charles Reznikoff’s autobiography, Family Chronicle: An Odyssey from Russia to America, presents Jewish law as an ethical alternative to U.S. law. The autobiography illustrates how Jewish law refuses to let social and economic hierarchies compromise its emphasis on truth-finding and the speedy resolution of legal troubles. Family Chronicle tragically portrays the Reznikoff family’s inability to exert equal bargaining power with its landlords, something commercial lease law assumes they can do. Reznikoff’s autobiography suggests that the United States can better realize its democratic principles by revising commercial lease law to reflect the tenant-centered approach of residential lease law.

This chapter describes how women who work as pleaders in the Israeli rabbinic courts try to decipher the dissonance between their canonical texts and their modern sensibilities, dividing the interpretive strategies that the pleaders employ to that end into three different categories. The chapter then explores the implications of these findings with respect to theories of agency, feminist consciousness, how law is read, and identity politics (multiculturalism), as well as with respect to issues of value, power, and divorce reform.

This paper provides a political analysis of legal pluralism from a “new institutionalist” perspective. In response to question of why states recognize and incorporate non-state normative orderings into their legal systems, it is hypothesized that the decision of incorporation is made to enhance the capacities of postcolonial states with “rational” calculations. In this respect, two new categories of legal pluralism are introduced: capacity-enhancing recognition and capacity-diminishing recognition. The paper lastly assesses the implications of legal pluralism upon the state-society relations and individual rights and liberties of citizens in the case of Israel.

This lesson uses Hidden Teens, Hidden Lives: True Stories of the Holocaust, to help students explore life for children and teenagers during the Holocaust. Students utilize primary sources consisting of diary entries and World War II documents to examine life under the Nuremberg Laws for individuals of the Jewish faith. Students then examine Jim Crow laws in the South during the same era to compare and contrast various aspects of life for children and teens living under oppression.

There is an increasing recognition that health and social care professionals require the knowledge and skills to negotiate religious beliefs and cultures but as yet there is little understanding as to what this entails. The purpose of this paper is to explore what religious literacy means in regard to protecting children from sexual assault in Australia’s Jewish community and Muslim women who experience domestic violence.

Drawing on two ongoing research studies, this paper provides an overview of the diverse perspectives found in the literature on child sexual assault in Jewish communities and Muslim women’s experiences and responses to domestic violence.

Individual and community attitudes and responses to child sexual assault and domestic violence do not fit stereotypes either within or beyond religious communities. Hence, educating for religious literacy needs to ensure stereotypes are recognised as undue simplifications of the truth, and failure to understand this can result in harm. Furthermore, religious literacy is important for health and social care workers if they are to effectively engage with the leadership of religious communities to change community attitudes.

This paper draws together common issues around the need for religious literacy when working with Jewish and Muslim communities in addressing issues of abuse and violence.

This chapter discusses the extension of legal equality between male and female citizens in four states in North Africa – Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria – through one specific lens: A married woman's legal capacity to initiate and obtain divorce without the husband's consent. Building on the works of Stein Rokkan and Reinhard Bendix on the expansion of citizenship to the ‘lower classes’, it is argued that amendments in divorce law by introducing in-court divorce for women, in addition to out-of-court divorce, is a significant institutional change that extends legal equality between men and women. The introduction of in-court divorce expands female citizenship by bolstering woman's juridical autonomy and capacity in state law. Changes in divorce laws are thus part of state centralization by means of standardizing rules that regulate family law through public administrative institutions rather than religious organizations. Two questions are addressed: First, how did amendments in divorce laws occur after independence? Second, in which ways did women's bolstered legal capacity in divorce have a spill over effect on reforms in other patriarchal state laws? Based on observations on sequences of change in four states in North Africa, it is argued that amendments that equalize between men and women in divorce should be seen as a key driver for reforms in other state laws, that reduce legal inequality between male and female citizens. In all four states, women's citizenship was extended in nationality law and criminal law after amendments in divorce law gave women unilateral legal power to exit a marital relationship.

This paper aims to provide an alternative method of building quality collections for Jewish Studies collection development professionals in small and medium‐sized academic libraries with highly restricted budgets.

Sources of Jewish Studies literary awards were identified and a detailed analysis of awarded books' subjects and the publishing sources was conducted.

The results show that awarded books cover a vast variety of subjects of interest to Jewish Studies collections. Since many of them are also published by academic presses, the use of identified Jewish Studies book award sources should be considered by bibliographers responsible for building Jewish Studies collections in non‐sectarian college libraries with very limited budgetary resources.

The “one stop” access to all award sources and awarded books provides an easy access to otherwise dispersed information.

The comprehensive list of awards, nominated and winning titles, as well as the subject analysis presented herein, is the first of its kind. This can be used by Jewish Studies bibliographers to build and improve their collections and can also serve as a model for building other interdisciplinary subject collections.