In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Dr. Tamara Morsel-Eisenberg - historian and Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows - about the history of halacha.

While we take the system of halacha as we know it today for granted, many factors contributed to its current state. We discuss some of these factors, as well as some pivotal moments in halacha’s history, like the publication of the Shulchan Aruch.

- Has halacha always been as standardized and abstract a system as it is today?
- What factors have contributed to the state of halacha today?

Tune in to hear a conversation about the history of halacha.
Interview begins at 16:47.

For more, visit https://18forty.org/halacha/.

Dr. Tamara Morsel-Eisenberg is a scholar of early modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history. She received her BA from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania’s history department, where she wrote her thesis on the transmission of halakhic knowledge in 16th-century Ashkenaz. Tamara has held fellowships and prizes, including from the Center for Jewish History, the AJS, the Leo Baeck Institute. She is a Junior Fellow at Harvard’s society of Fellows and a Starr Fellow at its Center for Judaic Studies, as well as a Berkovitz Fellow at NYU Law, and lectures widely on Jewish history and law. Tamara lives in Manhattan with her husband Ori and three sons.

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