Sunday Cafe: Going Off Script: A Talmudic Approach to Decision-Making and Uncertainty

We are living in increasingly uncertain times. When the world shifts under our feet, the scripts we usually rely upon to guide our behavior can feel inadequate or even misguided. When this happens, how do we decide how to act? Do we stick to scripts that have been tried and tested, or do we rely on our own judgments? This session explores how the rabbis of late antiquity navigated these questions through a series of cases in which they opted to improvise, or act lifnim mi-shurat ha-din, rather than adhere to expected norms. While the Talmud often expresses hesitancy about these rabbis’ choices, later tradition tends to view their actions as praiseworthy. Why is this the case, and how can these rabbinic narratives help us think about decision-making today?

Deborah Barer is Senior Faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Prior to joining the team at Hartman, she was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Towson University, and she has also taught at Oberlin College and for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies (North America). She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia.  Deborah is the author of Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud (Oxford University Press, 2026), which explores how the Talmud develops the idea of acting lifnim mi-shurat ha-din (lit., “within the line of the law”) and its implications for how we think about decision-making, Jewish law, and ethics.