ABSTRACT

Law and religion, in contemporary academic discourse, are generally seen as separate entities which may conflict, overlap, or inhabit distinct spheres of the social order. Though scholars of rabbinic Judaism have long accepted law's centrality, they have only more recently linked their work much more self-consciously to new concepts or trends in law and legal theory. In Between Heaven and Earth, Robert Orsi resists defining religion as a medium for explaining, understanding, and modelling reality. Orsi here is arguing against not a different theory of religion as much as a commonplace idea that sacred media are used to make and sustain the meaningfulness of the worlds in which humans find themselves. While Orsi's understanding of religion is extremely suggestive in terms of finding a path toward locating sacred presence, what remains an obstacle is the fact that, unlike Orsi, people are unable to gather the kind of detailed ethnographies of the everyday experiences of rabbinic religious practitioners.