Halakhah and Aggadah within Rabbinic Study Culture A Response to Christine Hayes, ed., The Literature of the Sages: A Re-visioning

The section on halakhah and aggadah in the recent volume of The Literature of the Sages addresses the complex relations between legal and non-legal materials, and the ways their juxtaposition creates a richer, multilayered view of normativity. At the same time, we learn that the merging of legal and non-legal materials is a result of intentional redactional activity, while the underlying sources reflect the separation between different study frameworks. Following this textual insight this paper suggests to re-examine the uniformity of rabbinic study culture, and the varying roles of halakhah and aggadah in the construction of rabbinic instruction and transmission.