The Law at UBC Distinguished Speaker Series: Poverty, Charity, and Jewish Law

Event Description: 

This talk will introduce Jewish law, through the example of laws on care for the poor. We will survey the key sources of Jewish law, including the Hebrew Bible and classical rabbinic texts, as well as the interpretative processes that are applied to derive Jewish laws on poverty, charity, and philanthropy. This talk will also raise issues and topics that seek to reach out and connect with broader topics of interest in legal studies, including welfare support, personal and collective obligations, and incentives for philanthropic giving.

Speaker:

Dr. Gregg Gardner is Associate Professor and Diamond Chair in Jewish Law and Ethics in UBC’s Department of Ancient and Mediterranean Studies, and the founding chair of UBC’s new Minor in Jewish Studies program. He has held fellowships at Michigan, Brown, and Harvard, and published broadly on classical Jewish legal literature. His books include The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge UP, 2015) and Wealth, Poverty, and Charity in Jewish Antiquity (University of California Press, 2022), which was awarded the 2022 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Scholarship.