Chaya T. Halberstam is Professor of Religious Studies at King's University College, University of Western Ontario. She works on law and literature in Israelite and Jewish antiquity, specializing in early rabbinic texts. Her research explores the limits of the law and the gestures within legal contexts toward social, emotional, and relational reasoning. Halberstam received her PhD in Religious Studies from Yale University. She has previously held fellowships at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Indiana University.