Robbins Collection Lecture: Jewish Law for the Digital Age

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Does Jewish law speak to the most important issues of our day? Drawing on Judaism’s millennia-old jurisprudence of radical relevance in the face of change, Professors Bamberger and Mayse make the counterintuitive argument that Jewish law’s millennia-old approach to surveillance, communication, and information collection, sharing, and use, offer missing frameworks for the struggle to protect privacy in an age of big data.

Jewish law offers a language for understanding and addressing privacy harms that is missing from ongoing policy debates. It recognizes the interconnected nature of human interests, places the obligation for privacy protection on all members of society, and comprehends the totality of the harm pervasive surveillance wreaks on both individuals and social relations. And it provides a missing language of dignity that recognizes unequal bargaining power, rejects the aggregation of information to confine personal growth and free choice, and demands equal protection for all humans.

Kenneth A. Bamberger. The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Law, UC Berkeley; Faculty co-Director, The Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (BCLT) and the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies.

Ariel Evan Mayse, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University; Senior Fellow, Berkeley Program on Jewish Law, Thought and Identity; Rabbi-in-Residence, Atiq: Jewish Maker Institute.

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