Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Judaism, Fiddler on the Roof, and Humanity

Author:Larry Yudelson
Posted:8/29/2000; 1:23:30 PM
Topic:Judaism, Fiddler on the Roof, and Humanity
Msg #:20511 (In response to 20507)
Prev/Next:20510 / 20512

I had a conversation about this with a rabbi friend of mine the other day, who has both an encyclopedic knowledge of rabbinic sources and recently read a major new work on the evolution of copyright law and the notion of intellectual property.

He said that it was only in the 19th century that Western concepts of authorship made their way into Jewish legal discussions. The works of the Netziv and Rabbi Zadok Hakohen provide clues to an intrinsically Jewish theory of intellectual property, he said.

Remember, classical Jewish writing was done to explicate Torah, and there was little sense of "ownership" attached to it. In fact, some of the most important Jewish writings are pseudographic, including Ecclisiastes, attributed to King Solomon, and the Zohar, attributed in the 14th century to a 2nd century rabbi.

Practically speaking any contemporary discussions of copyright in rabbinic legal sources would be based on the notion of contract, and would not be distinct from the governing copyright law.

If anyone is interested in exploring this notion further, let me know; maybe I'll coerce my friend to write something up about this.

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