ḥeleḳ 1. Musar ʻatsot ṿe-hanhagot -- ḥeleḳ 2. Musre haśkel ba-Torah -- ḥeleḳ 3. Ḥidushim u-veʼurim ba-Shas.

This article focuses on the location of the duty of loyalty—a unique legal norm in Common Law jurisdictions—both actual and desirable, on the continuum between rules and standards. A rule is a relatively ‘closed’ technical norm, at a high level of specificity; it requires little judicial discretion. A standard is an ‘open’ norm, with a greater degree of flexibility, that requires the exercise of discretion. The insights from this jurisprudential perspective are used to reveal the preferred way for further developing (...) the duty of loyalty. The article explains that ‘loyalty,’ intuitively classified as a ‘pure’ standard, has been reconstructed over time as more specific rules. Moreover, it suggests that, ideally, this movement should continue; namely, when applying loyalty to a specific case, courts should include informative content that would promote predictability. It then illustrates that, unfortunately, this road is not always taken by the courts. A decision to retain loyalty as an ad hoc standard, or an inverse attempt to delineate the boundaries of this norm, has implications on the certainty, consistency, and ethical content of the law. Considering that this duty spreads across different legal fields, personal and commercial, the significance of this discussion becomes all the more evident. (shrink)

ʻEdut be-Hosef -- Derekh ʻets ha-ḥayim -- Refuʼat ha-nefesh -- ha-Tapuaḥ.

The book Chronicle of Separation is an attempt to write on Derrida, to Derrida and from Derrida on the basis of a pathetic experience, which, in various ways, describes and enacts the pathetic experience of deconstruction itself. The book tackles the weight of emotions that is at the heart of deconstructive reading, treating deconstruction's weak, fragile and parasitic mode of thinking as a deconstruction of emotion, on emotion and as emotion. Chronicle of Separation examines these themes beginning with a descriptive (...) and an analytic reading of Derrida's Memoirs: For Paul de Man and The Post Card, as embodiments of deconstruction's melancholic friendship which inscribes its disillusioned love in what it calls the 'postal condition'. The book then moves on to a feminization of Derrida, experimenting in different modes of writing. It firstly discusses Fred Zinneman's film Julia about a mournful friendship between women. Then it performs a deconstructive meditation on the anorexic person suggesting that anorexia constitutes a paradoxical embodiment of deconstruction. The concluding chapter presents a complete incorporation of Derrida into a fictional text that re-writes the biblical Book of Ruth. (shrink)

Sefer Ḳol min ḥayim -- Sefer Ḳol rinah ṿi-yeshuʻah -- Sefer Orḥot ḥayim ʻim perush Netiv ḥayim -- Sefer Zikhron ʻolam -- Maʼamar Zikhron Yerushalayim.

The essay examines Scholem's letter-confession on the Hebrew language addressed to Rosenzweig from two perspectives hitherto ignored in the ongoing interpretative consideration of this document: Scholem's repression of the literary space and his consequent exclusion of madness. The essay follows several threads in Derrida's own ‘internal’ reading of the letter, and leans on other Derridean writings such as The Monolingualism of the Other, Schibboleth: For Paul Celan and ‘Cogito and the History of Madness’ in order to suggest two distinct encounters (...) between Derrida and Scholem: In the first encounter, Scholem reads Derrida and proves to be deconstructing his own notions of secular and profane Hebrew, while fighting in vain for his sanity by clinging to liturgical practices against the grain of an ongoing ‘actualization’, politicization or else fictionalization of the sacred language. In the second encounter, it is Derrida who reads Scholem. By transforming the particular conditions of possibility of Hebrew into general conditions of possibility of every language contaminated by a theological-political tension, Derrida contributes some important insights for contemporary Hebrew speakers. (shrink)

This interview with Michal Ben-Naftali from March 2004 is one of Derrida's last. It begins with the question of the relationship between love, law, and justice and then moves on to discuss everything from the secret, hospitality, friendship, sacrifice, pardon and psychoanalysis to the relationship between deconstruction and melancholy.