Now Published: David Hollander's Award-Winning Book

Legal Scholarship in Jewish Law: An Annotated Bibliography of Journal Articles, David Hollander's new book, is now available from William S. Hein & Co. and is heralded as a "first source of its kind" and "a must-have for scholars of Jewish Law." 

On April 18, Hollander was awarded the Judaica Bibliography Award by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) for his distinguished work. He will receive the award at the annual AJL conference in Boston, MA on June 19. 

The publication of Hollander's comprehensive book marks a unique and significant milestone for this continually growing scholarly area: "Jewish law courses, scholarship, and collections have been increasing in frequency and size in American law schools for several decades. Today several law schools house institutes and centers for the study of Jewish law. This bibliography documents the history and content of the Jewish law scholarship that is at the foundation of these institutes and collections. Entries come mostly from American law reviews, but some articles published in other countries, mainly Britain, Canada, and Israel, are also included. The literature featured in this bibliography demonstrates that Jewish law scholarship in the legal academy is rich, varied and complex, made up of multiple strands and streams—some connecting to each other, some independent, and some related to areas of treatment beyond Jewish law. The title will cover a broad range of issues: commercial law, constitutional law, criminal law, family law, medical ethics law, and many more."

Hollander, PUL's Law and Legal Studies Librarian and U.S. Documents Librarian, has been working on the project for three years. When asked how his background uniquely shaped this project, he shared, "I believe that librarians offer a valuable outlook about the bibliography of a topic that cannot be captured by a database search.  Anyone can search a database of Jewish law articles and get a list with abstracts. But a librarian can take a look at that set of articles, even if it's hundreds of articles, and make connections among lines of scholarship, identify scholarly trends, evaluate the scholarly value in context of the whole set of research, and take a view of a broad area of scholarship from a high elevation. So in addition to being a resource for someone looking for legal scholarship, this book aims to assess this scholarship area as a whole."

"Hollander’s annotations of the articles go beyond mere summaries," the publisher described, "offering both helpful digests and thoughtful comments, thereby providing the researcher with invaluable guidance as to the relevance and utility of an article toward a given research project.” 

With this major accomplishment achieved, Hollander expressed gratitude to his colleagues: "I could not have completed this without the support of David Magier and Patty Gaspari-Bridges. Also, Janet Sinder, the Library Director of Brooklyn Law School offered invaluable editing advice, and I was honored that Prof. Samuel Levine, director of the Touro Law Center Jewish Law Institute wrote an introduction to the book."

Publisher's brochure for Legal Scholarship in Jewish Law

Publisher's short listing: Hein catalog

WorldCat Record