Jewish Law in Medieval Jewish Preaching

Jewish preaching is integrally bound to aggadah — the non-legal components of classical rabbinic literature — rather than halakhah, Jewish law. Nevertheless, the extant texts of medieval Jewish sermons contain abundant evidence of legal material in its broader sense, regulating all aspects of Jewish life including both the realm of ritual (prayer, kashrut, observance of the Sabbath) and topics of civil law (vows, obligations to the poor, lending money on interest). Examples are taken from sermons delivered at Toledo in 1281 (Todros ben Joseph Abulafia), early fifteenth-century Saragossa (Zerahiah Halevi), early fifteenth-century Byzantine Jewish sermons, and in Spain on the eve of the 1492 Expulsion (Isaac Aboab)