The Importance of the Community Rabbi ─ Leading With Compassionate Halachah

The contemporary rabbi nowadays is influenced by the modern rabbinic establishments throughout the world, especially the rabbinate in Israel. This monopoly on opinions and interpretations of Talmudic texts prevents individual rabbis from creating their own independent positions out of fear of critique. The current structure gives a negative impression on the rabbinic establishment. The Good Rabbi tries to describe and delineate key requirements for a good Rabbi, i.e., one who can give socially acceptable halachic solution within the parameters of Orthodox thinking. In order to do this, Sperber points out the halachic technique and mechanisms that may be used toward this goal. These are illustrated with stories from rabbinic literature and examples from the responsa literature.

Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber is a leading scholar of Jewish law, customs, and ethics. He has taught in the Talmud Department of Bar-Ilan University, was the dean of the Faculty of Jewish Studies, and serves as the president of the Jesselson Institute for Advanced Torah Studies. The descendant of a line of distinguished Orthodox rabbis, Professor Sperber was born in 1940 in a castle in Ruthin, Wales and studied in the Yeshivot of Kol Torah and Hevron in Jerusalem. He earned a BA in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art and received a PhD in classics, ancient history and Hebrew studies from University College, London. He also serves as rabbi of the Menachem Zion Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. The incumbent of the Milan Roven Chair of Talmudic Research, he received the Israel Prize in 1992 for his research in Talmud and the history of Jewish customs, and served as the chairman of the Council for Religious Education at the Israel Ministry of Education for a decade. Professor Sperber has published thirty books and more than four hundred articles on the subjects of Talmudic and Jewish socio-economic history, law and customs, classical philology and Jewish art. Among his major works is a well-known eight-volume series, Minhagei Yisrael, on the history of Jewish customs. More recently, he has written two books on halachic methodology and rabbinic decision making in confrontation with modernity. He is the author of "On Changes in Jewish Liturgy: Options and Limitations" and "On the Relationship of Mitzvot Between Man and His Neighbor and Man and His Maker" both published by Urim Publications.