The establishment of the State of Israel created a host of halakhic questions that previous generations had rarely, if ever, confronted: How should halakha address a Jewish army, a modern economy, national institutions, public policy, and the responsibilities of a Jewish state?
But beneath these new questions lies a more fundamental question about the nature of halakhic decision-making itself. When reality changes dramatically, should new questions simply be treated as old questions in unfamiliar circumstances? Or does the scale and structure of the new reality require poskim to rethink some of the categories through which halakhic questions are understood?
Rabbi Ziring is the Rosh Yeshiva of Migdal HaTorah in Modi’in. He studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion and continued his learning there as a member of the Kollel Gavoah. He was also a fellow at the Tikvah Fund and Center for Modern Torah Leadership’s Summer Beit Midrash. Rabbi Ziring has previously served as Sgan Rosh Kollel of the Yeshiva University Torah miTzion Beit Midrash Zichron Dov and as the Rabbinic Assistant of BAYT in Toronto. He has taught in many contexts in the US, Canada and Israel, focusing particularly on the Halachic Process.He is the author of Torah in a Connected World: A Halakhic Perspective on Communications Technology and Social Media was published by Maggid Books, an imprint of Koren Jerusalem, in 2024.
