07/23/2018
Fall 2018 - new course!!
Topics in Israeli Studies
“Human Rights, Israeli Law and Jewish Tradition’
HBRJD-GA.1948.001
Thursdays, 11am - 1:45pm
(*graduate course, open to undergraduates with instructor approval)
Discriminatory religious rules and practices affect minorities worldwide and their influence goes far beyond religious constituencies and stratagems. Liberal-democratic states rooted in notions of religion-related nationality tend to be more lenient in their protection of human Rights, where abridged by religious rules. The tension between human rights and religion carries a special resonance in societies where religious law forms part of the civil legal system, as is the case in Israel. Being the nation-state of the Jewish people, as well as a democratic state, Israel situates its legal system in a uniquely challenging position needing to reconcile the state’s liberal values with its religious sentiments. Despite this duality, history suggests that traditional endeavors in both the legal and political spheres have failed to provide sufficient protection to Israeli communities whose lives are discriminatorily affected by religious rules.
This course offers a unique perspective on the lingering tension between human rights – mainly the right to equality – and Jewish religious traditions. The interplay between these two institutions, in which Jewish religious traditions constantly abridge the scope of minority groups’ right to equality, warrants elaborate creativity by the Israeli legal system, which we will explore in detail. A partial list of topics to be discussed in class includes: Women’s struggles against religious rules in the fields of divorce, worship, participation in politics; Non-orthodox Jews’ quest for equality; the Ultra-orthodox community’s arguments to impose gender segregation in public spaces and to avoid army drafts; and Muslims’ struggles for religious freedoms.
About the Professor:
Prof. Yifat Bitton is a Visiting Faculty member from Striks School of Law at Collman College (Israel). She specializes in tort law, antidiscrimination law, and critical-egalitarian theory of law. Prof. Bitton published articles extensively in Israel and abroad regarding feminist and critical approaches to tort law. She is also researching antidiscrimination law structures and theories in the US and Israel. Prof. Bitton holds a Ph.D. from Hebrew University, an LLM from Yale University Law School, and spent a year as a Fulbright fellow at Harvard University Law School. She is the Cofounder and chair of Tmura - The Clinical Legal Centre for Equality. Prof. Bitton was shortlisted twice for Israel’s Supreme Court (2016, 2018).
