A Winner of the 2024 Association for Jewish Studies' Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication AwardThis book contains a collection of eight annotated translations of responsa, alongside the original Hebrew texts, focusing on the post-expulsion Spanish-Portuguese communities of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. This collection will acquaint the reader with Jews who, following their expulsion, settled in the Ottoman Empire, in Palestine under the Mamluks, in Amsterdam and in Brazil. The period of the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula was a tragic time in Jewish history, but the revitalization of the post-expulsion Spanish-Portuguese Jewish communities in new locales is testimony to the human spirit and determination. The volume includes eight chapters, each built around one responsum from one of the great halakhic authorities of the time. Topics include excommunication in Amsterdam, ʻagunot, inheritance rights of a converso son, obligatory contracts and breach of agreement, heresy and humanist scholarship, informing on someone to the Venetian Inquisition, and more.
Read a sample: bit.ly/koren-sampler

Prizes

Winner of AJS Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award 2024

“Responsa in a Historical Context is not a compendium of historical sources that examines the daily lives of conversos. Rather, Koren elaborates how the rabbis solved religious problems. As Koren observes, we should value Sephardic culture for its learning as well as its food and song.”

— Andrew Apostolou, Sephardic Horizons

“Each chapter has a helpful historical and halachic ( Jewish legal) introduction, followed by a discussion, the responsum itself (presented in Hebrew with an English translation), discussion questions, and suggestions for further readings. This collection will be of interest to the scholar and general reader alike and is highly recommended, especially for academic libraries.”

— David Tesler, AJL News & Reviews

“Through the analysis of responsa written by contemporary halakhic authorities, Debby Koren provides a deep understanding of the rejuvenation of Spanish-Portuguese Jewish communal life during an otherwise tragic period of Jewish history.”— Tradition

"In Responsa in a Historical Context, Debby Koren makes these fascinating yet extraordinarily difficult documents come alive. She succeeds admirably in overcoming the challenge that faces all who would write about responsa for an audience of non-specialists, namely to offer a sufficient explanation of the historical and halakhic (Jewish legal) context behind each submitted question without allowing that explanation to overwhelm the text and to drown out the unique voice of the rabbinical author. The book is an indispensable source of information, both on the history of the period it covers and on the ways that rabbis thought, how they utilized textual analysis, logic, and rhetoric to craft answers to the questions that Jews asked.” — Mark E. Washofsky, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Law and Practice, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati

Debby Koren is an independent researcher in the fields of halakha and responsa literature. She has lectured and taught Talmud and halakha in informal and formal adult settings. She has a Ph.D. in mathematics from The City University of New York and an M.A. in Talmud and Halakha from the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem.