New Heavens

Ketzot HaChoshen is a key work on the shelf of modern halakhic literature, considered a masterpiece of Talmudic scholarship and a model for the yeshiva way of thinking to this day. Sharp reasoning, incisive interpretation, innovative conceptualization and a different view of fundamental issues – all these characterize the work, which was published at the end of the 18th century, a period of revolutions and dramatic change in the Jewish and general world. The book forms a link between the literature of the “armor-bearers” – the commentaries written around the Shulchan Aruch – and the scholarly literature that developed in the Lithuanian yeshivot over the last two hundred years.
This book seeks to uncover something of the secret of Ketzot HaChoshen, and to characterize the scholarly method and thought of its author – Rabbi Aryeh Leib HaKohen Heller (1745–1812). It places Rabbi Heller’s scholarly enterprise at the center of interpretive, intellectual, social and historical circles, within and towards which Ketzot HaChoshen opened horizons of thought and learning – “New Heavens”.

Rabbi Dr. Noam Samet is Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Siach Yitzchak and head of the Master’s program in Oral Torah at Herzog Academic College.