Jewish Storytelling and American Law in Post-WWII America
Part of the series “America at 250: Jewish Ideas and the American Experiment”
Further Reading
Shalom Spiegel, Amos vs. Amaziah, reprinted in Judah Goldin. ed. The Jewish Expression (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), pp. 39-65. (Amos vs. Amaziah was originally published in 1958 by JTS as an independent small monograph).
Shira Billet, “Harry S. Truman’s Bible and Earl Warren’s Talmud: A Forgotten Story in the Encounter Between American Law and Jewish Studies,” Diné Israel: Studies in Halakha and Jewish Law, vol. 38 (2024), pp. 11-36.
With Dr. Shira Billet, Assistant Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, JTS
In the decades after World War II, Jewish American legal thinkers began drawing on biblical and rabbinic stories to help explore fundamental questions of constitutional interpretation. The work of Robert Cover in the 1980s, first developed in the context of the Vietnam war, is the most famous and influential example. But lesser-known figures such as Edmund Cahn and JTS professor Shalom Spiegel began developing this discourse in the context of the postwar moment in 1950s America, and the civil rights movement that emerged in its wake.
Dr. Shira Billet examines how these figures, and others, brought Jewish narrative traditions into American law schools and legal thought, shaping new ways of thinking about law, interpretation, and the relationship between law and ethics.
About the Series
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the JTS Summer 2026 Learning Series will explore the rich and surprising intersections between Jewish thought and American life. From baseball and youth culture to constitutional law, storytelling, and democratic theory, leading scholars reveal how Jewish ideas, texts, and experiences have shaped—and been shaped by—the American experiment.
