Family Promise, Family Law: Three Stories in the History of Jewish Vows

Neder dates at least to early biblical times, and vows remains a part of Jewish and other traditions to this day, even as Jewish votive law has evolved. One motivation for this talk is an observation that many historical examples of neder involve family relationships, especially between parent and child.

This talk looks at three story/law moments—biblical law and narrative, a late-antiquity story of the law, and a 21st-century work of narrative fiction—and asks: how might we think about the meaning of this connection between parent-child relationship and neder? How might we think about law and story with and against each other, and over time?

Miryam Segal, PhD, is associate professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she teaches legal history, law and literature, Jewish studies and comparative literature. She is author of A New Sound in Hebrew Poetry: Poetics, Politics, Accent, co-editor of Vixens Disturbing Vineyards, editor of Jewish Law and the Family, Anatomies of Home and Disruption, as well as founding editor of the JLA Review. She is chair of the Jewish Law Association. In 2022-2023, she was Gruss Visiting Professor of Talmudic Law at Harvard Law School. She earned her PhD in comparative literature at Berkeley, and an MSL at Yale Law School.