The Annual Robbins Collection Lecture in Jewish Law, Thought, and Identity was born of a partnership between the faculty directors of the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies and the Robbins Collection and Research Center, both dynamic centers at Berkeley Law. Each year since 2010, the centers have brought dynamic speakers to discuss critical topics within contemporary Jewish thought. Previous distinguished speakers have included Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Michael Walzer, Suzanne Stone, Moshe Halbertal, Susannah Heschel, and many others. Please see below for a full list of speakers and topics.
Past Lectures
2023–2024
Our Golden Age: American Judaism, In Transition
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
American Judaism is at an inflection point between the successes of the past and the anxieties of the future. The political, economic, and ideological conditions of postwar liberalism in the 20th century enabled many Jews to flourish in America, and produced a coherent American Judaism that intertwined American and Jewish values. Our changing world is testing this vitality and coherence and forcing essential questions: Are liberalism, American Jewish values, and Zionism compatible? How does American Judaism respond to the growing threats of polarization and hyper-partisanship? Can “the Jewish community” survive as a collective enterprise? Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute, will consider the calculations that produced the American Judaism that we have inherited, and offer a new framework for how American Judaism might continue to thrive into the future.
Yehuda Kurtzer, President, Shalom Hartman Institute
2022–2023
The Executioner’s Prayer: What Evolutionary Neuroscience and Talmudic Tradition Teach Us About the Roles of Punishment in Society
Thursday, April 20
Daniel Levy, Helen Diller Institute Visiting Professor Associate Professor; Former Dean, Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Reichman University
It's hard to imagine a system of justice without punishments. We might think that judicial sanctions deter potential criminals, or keep offenders off the streets, or provide the "just deserts" of illegal antisocial behavior. But perhaps there’s another reason why every legal system makes use of punishment — one deeply seated in the evolution of humankind and its institutions. Considering how judicial punishment is portrayed in Biblical and Talmudic literature, and understood by evolutionary psychology, we’ll consider new directions in finding forms of punishment that might be most effective in strengthening social cohesion today. Watch the recording here.
2021–2022
Reimagining Diversity and Jewish Belonging: A Journey Through Genesis
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
In the U.S. American context, the dominant conception of Jewish identity does not fully reckon with the diversity that exists within the Jewish people. This talk will explore that gap in conversation with the book of Genesis, highlighting the book’s potential to inform a journey to reimagining Jewish belonging in more inclusive ways. Watch the recording here.
2020–2021
Jewish Law For The Digital Age
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Does Jewish law speak to the most important issues of our day? Drawing on Judaism’s millennia-old jurisprudence of radical relevance in the face of change, Professors Bamberger and Mayse make the counterintuitive argument that Jewish law’s millennia-old approach to surveillance, communication, and information collection, sharing, and use, offer missing frameworks for the struggle to protect privacy in an age of big data. Watch the recording here.
2019–2020
From Sinai to Ethiopia, and Back to Israel: The Halakhic and Conceptual World of Ethiopian Jewry
Tuesday, February 4th, 2020
Prof. Rabbi Sharon Shalom, Ono College and Bar-Ilan University
In his talk, Prof. Rabbi Shalom delves into the history, customs, and law of the Beta Israel, codifying the ancient cultural heritage of Ethiopian Jewry and contrasting it with Orthodox rabbinic law. Navigating tensions between religion and culture, he offers suggestions for honoring Beta Israel tradition while fully participating in the greater Jewish community.
2018–2019
Jewish Law and the #MeToo Movement: A Feminist Perspective
Thursday, February 21st, 2019
Rachel Adler, Rabbi and David Ellenson Professor of Jewish Religious Thought, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles
Rachel Adler, the David Ellenson Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew Union College, will be discussing Jewish Law and the #MeToo movement, through a feminist perspective. The #MeToo movement has produced a flood of women’s testimony about a range of sexual aggression that halakhah inadequately addresses, if it does at all. Professor Adler is a pioneer in integrating feminist perspectives into interpreting Jewish texts and law.
2017–2018
The Boundaries of Judaism
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Donniel Hartman, President, The Shalom Hartman Institute
The factionalism and denominationalism of modern Jewry makes it supremely difficult to create a definition of the Jewish people. Instead of serving as a uniting force around which community is formed, Judaism has itself become a source of divisions. Consequently, attempts to identify beliefs or practices essential for membership in the Jewish people are almost doomed to failure. Aiming to go beyond the divisions that characterize modern Jewry, this talk will explore the ever contentious question of “who is a Jew.” Through a historical survey of the shifting boundaries of Jewish identity and deviance over time, this talk will provide new insights into how Jewish law over the centuries has erected boundaries to govern and maintain the collective identity of the Jewish people and will discuss creating a structure of boundaries relevant for contemporary Jewish existence. Watch the recording here.
2016–2017
American Judaism 2016: From Theory to Practice and Back
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Arnold Eisen, Chancellor, Jewish Theological Seminary in New York
Chancellor Eisen is one of the world’s foremost authorities on American Judaism. He has written several books and articles on a range of topics, including Jewish community and scholarship. Chancellor Eisen’s lecture was sponsored by the Robbins Collection and the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. Watch the recording here.
2015–2016
Jewish Scholars and the Study of Islam: Reflections on Modern Jewish Identity
April 12, 2016
Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College
Susannah Heschel will discuss how the culture of imperialism in nineteenth-century Europe affected the writing of Jewish history. She will examine the topics and methods of Jewish historians and theologians with particular attention to their description of Judaism’s role within Western civilization. Narratives of Islamic origins and specialized studies comparing the Qur’an with rabbinic texts parallel Jewish historiography on Christianity, and both contain implicit political connotations. The growth of German imperialism and colonialism brought about shifts in the study of religion, and the role of Jews in those projects. Prof. Heschel concludes that Jews created a unique European orientalism that reflects not only their fascination with Islam, but also gives us a nuanced window into Jewish ambivalence toward their projects of assimilation, emancipation, and the creation of a modern Jewish identity.
2014–2015
Maimonides on Mourning: Jewish Law and Emotion
Thursday, November 6, 2014, 5:15 pm, Bancroft Hotel
Moshe Halbertal, Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem; Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at The Hebrew University; Professor of Law, New York University. Watch the recording here.
2013–2014
What We Can Learn from the Jewish Political Tradition
November 12, 2013
Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study
2012–2013
The Future of Judaism
Monday, November 26, 2012
Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
Watch the recording here.
2011–2012
Narrating the Law: How Stories Create Complex Law in the Talmud
Monday, April 16, 2012, 5:15 pm, Goldberg Room, Boalt Hall School of Law
Professor Barry Wimpfheimer, Northwestern University
2010–2011
Law in the Nation / Law as the Nation
Monday, February 14, 2011, Boalt Hall
The Second Annual Robbins Collection Lecture in Jewish Law is delivered by Professor Suzanne Stone, University Professor of Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization at Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva University, with comments by leading jurisprudence scholar Kathryn Abrams, UC Berkeley’s Herma Hill Kay Distinguished Professor of Law.
2009–2010
The Jewish Law of Copyright
David Nimmer, Irell & Manella, Nimmer on Copyright