At the seminars and workshops organized by the JLHS, we find that participants come from a wide range of backgrounds: they have been attended by the vast majority of Israeli judges (Jews, Muslims, and Druze); observant Jews side by side with secular Jews; lawyers and laymen; scholars in Jewish law and those who have never had the opportunity to study Jewish sources.

A JLHS Workshop

The aim of these seminars and workshops is to discuss the sources of Jewish law, enabling lawyers and others to find inspiration and concepts which they may put to practical use in their everyday professional activities. These seminars and workshops give the opportunity to learn how to use the sources of Jewish law such as the Talmud, Maimonidies' Code, Karo's Shulhan Arukh, and the responsa literature. The materials utilized for these seminars have been published, and are presently being used as tools in the teaching of Jewish law in schools and law faculties.

The JLHS also offers the general public a broad range of lectures, workshops, and seminars on relevant and contemporary questions, as in the programs of evening lectures offered to the public throughout Israel.

In the over thirty three-day weekend seminars and other special programs which have been well-received, several thousands of participants have attended.

The topics have included:

Human dignity
Unjust enrichment
Mistake in contract
Penal law: duress and necessity
Penal law: ignorance of the law
Penal law: mistake of facts
Contract law: defect in the contract (illegality, immorality, under duress)
Agency: acting without authority

Torts: liability of judges and other public servants for negligence
Stipulations in a contract

A JLHS Workshop

Ownership
Lease
Lease: transfer of rights
Self-defense of one's property
Transfer of Obligations

Agency, scope and charter
The Employer/Employee relationship
Code of conduct for public officials/servants
Torts: Professional malpractice
Contract: duress
Ballees
Penal law: necessity

Procedure: final judgment
Lease: transfer of rights
Guarantors: duty of the guarantor to pay a defaulted obligation

Penal Law: right to silence (compulsion of self-incrimination)

EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES IN HIGH SCHOOLS

The JLHS prepares innovative educational materials for use in Jewish law presentations in schools both public and private, throughout Israel. In 1989, the year that was dedicated in the Israeli school system to the theme “Honoring the Law and Justice,” some 25,000 students, teachers, and administrators, most with little to no previous background in Jewish law, participated in workshops on Jewish law, under the guidance of educators affiliated with the Society. The workshops presented participants with contemporary dilemmas and exposed them to classical Jewish sources bearing upon the issues. Students studied the issues by preparing to act as prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges in mock trials.

During 1994 the JLHS organized workshops on environmental protection and ecological conservation. Hundreds of schools, both religious and secular, have requested and received these seminars.

The subject matter focus of these educational workshops have included:

       Taking the Law into One's Own Hands
       Duty to Rescue under risk of physical endangerment
       Extradition
       Ecology in the Technological Era
       Peace as the Ultimate Value

The JLHS is presently in the process of producing educational materials in English to be used in the teaching of Jewish law and legal values in Jewish communities and Jewish law courses throughout the world. The first booklet published (with the financial assistance of the Israeli Endownment Fund is entitled: “Self-Defense: How Far May It Go?”