Broyde, Bedzow publish book on codification of Jewish law |

Michael J. Broyde, professor of law at Emory University as well as project director and senior scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, has co-authored a new book with Ira Bedzow, who received his PhD in religion from Emory University last spring.

Academic Studies Press in Boston published The Codification of Jewish Law and an Introduction to the Jurisprudence of theMishna Berura in November.

In the book, Broyde and Bedzow investigate the Mishna Berura, Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan’s most complex canon of Orthodox Jewish Law. It’s a singular work that synthesizes Jewish traditions, laws, and mores into a practical halakhic guide to daily religious life. For all his traditionalism, Rabbi Kagan was an iconoclast, and the Mishna Berura broke from many of the traditional approaches of deciding halakhic directives. Instead, he favored studying, engaging, and asserting decisions in a nuanced, almost natural approach to how ethical people should live their daily life consistent with Jewish law.