OU Mourns the Passing of Menachem Elon
February 06, 2013
ORTHODOX UNION MOURNS THE PASSING OF MENACHEM ELON
Today, the national leadership of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America issued the following statement upon learning of the passing of the eminent scholar and former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Menachem Elon:
“The leadership of the Orthodox Union mourns the passing of Menachem Elon. A scholar, recipient of the Israel Prize and Justice on Israel’s Supreme Court, Menachem Elon was an architect of Israel’s legal system.
Menachem Elon was an advocate of the concept of HaMishpat Haivri. By this effort he sought to incorporate traditional halacha into the corpus of Israeli civil law. He felt that Shulchan Aruch, especially Choshen Mishpat, and the centuries of case law represented by our huge responsa literature, had a place in the legal system of the modern State of Israel, and indeed could facilitate the construction of a truly Jewish legal and judicial system.
Among his efforts to achieve this goal is his multi-volume work, HaMishpat Haivri, in which he combines his mastery of secular law with an astoundingly broad and deep understanding of traditional halacha. For this work alone, the world of Torah scholarship owes him a great debt.”
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