Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud

Going Off Script offers a novel explanation of what it means to act lifnim mi-shurat ha-din (within the line of the law).Tracing the development of this phrase within classical rabbinic literature, the book intervenes in longstanding debates over what this phrase signals about the relationship between Jewish ethics and Jewish law.Deborah Barer breaks with previous scholarship to argue that lifnim mi-shurat ha-din does not represent a particular type of moral or legal action, but rather a way of making decisions.When rabbis act lifnim mi-shurat ha-din, they improvise, deviating from established norms of behavior in order to pursue a specific, case-based outcome.The creation of this category helps the Talmudic editors make sense of otherwise confusing accounts of rabbinic conduct.It also enables them to solve apparent conflicts between their inherited sources, thus resolving a specific set of legal and hermeneutic challenges that arise in the process of producing the Talmud.Once created,