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Description:
How does Halakhah get paskened? What are the considerations that halakhic decision makers make when they come to rule? A common opinion views halakhic ruling as the outcome of studying authoritative halakhic sources and its application by public authorities. According to this view, the central decision guiding the poskim is the suitability of their rulings to binding halakhic literature.

This book seeks to offer a different perspective on halakhic thinking and to view it as a battlefield in which struggles are held over the shaping of Jewish life. The forces that drive practical halakhic thinking are closely related to the questions of collective identity, and they involve various considerations that deviate from the requirements that arise from binding halakhic literature. The main considerations relate to the outcome of the ruling and its possible implications for the religious identity of the public. For this reason, practical halakhic thinking is one of the main sites in which Jewish tradition and life have been shaped over the generations.

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