The First Amendment to the Constitution protects the “free exercise” of religion from government interference, but courts are divided as to whether a practice must be commanded to be considered a religious exercise. This raises acute issues in the realm of minhag, Jewish custom, given questions over how binding different minhagim are. In this class, accessible to all, we will look at several court cases, as well as rabbinic texts on the development and nature of minhag, to develop a deeper conception of commandedness and custom.

Joshua J. Freundel is an attorney who works on religious discrimination and free exercise matters. A graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was a Fellow at the Julis Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, he has studied Talmud and Halakha at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshivat Eretz Hatzvi, and Drisha. He lives in Cambridge and spends many hours co-working at Lehrhaus.