Seventeenth Annual Caroline and Joseph S. Gruss Lecture: "Abortion: Jewish law (Halakhah), Feminism, Jurisprudence"

You are cordially invited to the Seventeenth Annual Caroline and Joseph S. Gruss Lecture “Abortion: Jewish law (Halakhah), Feminism, Jurisprudence” presented by: Professor Ronit Irshai, The head of the gender studies program at Bar-Ilan University and a research fellow at Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

Moderators:

Moshe Halbertal, NYU Gruss Professor of Law, Professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel,  

J.H.H.Weiler, University Professor, Co-Director, Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice

The lecture will be held in Greenberg Lounge, Vanderbilt Hall, NYU School of Law, 40 Washington Sq. So., New York, NY 10012 and will start promptly at 6:00 p.m.

A Kosher reception will immediately follow the lecture.

Please register here if you plan to attend or copy/paste thi slink in your browser: https://tinyurl.com/yey3bxx8

All attendees must adhere to NYU’s Covid-19 guidelines for entry.

About the lecture:

This lecture suggests a close and critical look, from a gender perspective, into the contemporary Orthodox halakhic attitudes towards abortion. One of its main claims is that there is a clear shift in the 20th century toward stringency, and that even lenient approaches reflect gender bias.

The lecture analyzes the gender implications of the stringent halakhic rulings and the ways they construct women. It asserts that the halakhic stance that takes the ban on abortion as a Torah-based prohibition (which is, halakhically speaking, not necessary at all), constricts the idea of the sanctity of life to biological terms only and thereby highlights the reduction of women to mainly an entity for reproduction.

With the argument that halakhah might reflects male points of view and the consequent gender biases taken as its starting point, the lecture examines the influence of gender concepts on contemporary halakhic rulings about abortion, in light of bio-ethical and feminist legal theories.