Download or read book Trans Talmud written by Max K. Strassfeld and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trans Talmud places eunuchs and androgynes at the center of rabbinic literature and asks what we can learn from them about Judaism and the project of transgender history. Rather than treating these figures as anomalies to be justified or explained away, Max K. Strassfeld argues that they profoundly shaped ideas about law, as the rabbis constructed intricate taxonomies of gender across dozens of texts to understand an array of cultural tensions. Showing how rabbis employed eunuchs and androgynes to define proper forms of masculinity, Strassfeld emphasizes the unique potential of these figures to not only establish the boundary of law but exceed and transform it. Trans Talmud challenges how we understand gender in Judaism and demonstrates that acknowledging nonbinary gender prompts a reassessment of Jewish literature and law.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature written by Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-28 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume introduces students of rabbinic literature to the range of historical and interpretative questions surrounding the rabbinic texts of late antiquity. The editors, themselves well-known interpreters of Rabbinic literature, have gathered an international collection of scholars to support students' initial steps in confronting the enormous and complex rabbinic corpus. Unlike other introductions to Rabbinic writings, the present volume includes approaches shaped by anthropology, gender studies, oral-traditional studies, classics, and folklore studies.
Download or read book Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology written by Solomon Schechter and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contents of this book have grown out of a course of lectures delivered at various learned centre, and a series of essays published in the Jewis quarterly review. These essays began to appear in the year 1894.
Download or read book Rational Rabbis written by Menachem Fisch and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997-11-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " . . . a fascinating and thought-provoking book . . . " —The Jewish Quarterly "The best introduction to the talmudic literature that is available. . . . An extraordinarily important book, brilliant, and lucid." —Daniel Boyarin "Menachem Fisch has written a rich, thoughtful book. One will come away from Rational Rabbis with a deeper understanding of just what the Talmud is." —Hilary Putnam Talmudic culture is often viewed as bound by its traditions. Menachem Fisch maintains that a close reading of talmudic texts frequently reveals their authors as rabbis who, rather than conform uncritically to tradition, knowingly set out to expose and resolve problems inherent in the received traditions.
Download or read book The Talmud written by Barry Scott Wimpfheimer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Babylonian Talmud, a postbiblical Jewish text that is part scripture and part commentary, is an unlikely bestseller. Written in a hybrid of Hebrew and Aramaic, it is often ambiguous to the point of incomprehension, and its subject matter reflects a narrow scholasticism that should hardly have broad appeal. Yet the Talmud has remained in print for centuries and is more popular today than ever. Barry Scott Wimpfheimer tells the remarkable story of this ancient Jewish book and explains why it has endured for almost two millennia.0Providing a concise biography of this quintessential work of rabbinic Judaism, Wimpfheimer takes readers from the Talmud's prehistory in biblical and second-temple Judaism to its present-day use as a source of religious ideology, a model of different modes of rationality, and a totem of cultural identity. He describes the book's origins and structure, its centrality to Jewish law, its mixed reception history, and its golden renaissance in modernity. He explains why reading the Talmud can feel like being swept up in a river or lost in a maze, and why the Talmud has come to be venerated--but also excoriated and maligned-in the centuries since it first appeared.0An incomparable introduction to a work of literature that has lived a full and varied life, this accessible book shows why the Talmud is at once a received source of traditional teachings, a touchstone of cultural authority, and a powerful symbol of Jewishness for both supporters and critics.
Download or read book Rabbis Sorcerers Kings and Priests written by Jason Sion Mokhtarian and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests brings into mutual fruition the fields of Talmudic Studies and Ancient Iranology, two historically distinct disciplines. Mokhtarian offers a revisionist history of the rabbis of late antique Persia who produced the Babylonian Talmud, perhaps the most important corpus in the Jewish sacred canon. While most research on the Talmud assumes that the rabbis were an insular group isolated from the cultural horizon outside of the rabbinic academies, this book contextualizes the rabbis and Talmud within a broader socio-cultural orbit by drawing from a wide range of sources from Sasanian Iran, including Middle Persian Zoroastrian literature, archaeological evidence, and the Jewish Aramaic magical bowls"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Talmudical and Rabbinical Literature written by Adolf Neubauer and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rabbi Akiva written by Barry W. Holtz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling and lucid account of the life and teachings of a founder of rabbinic Judaism and one of the most beloved heroes of Jewish history Born in the Land of Israel around the year 50 C.E., Rabbi Akiva was the greatest rabbi of his time and one of the most important influences on Judaism as we know it today. Traditional sources tell how he was raised in poverty and unschooled in religious tradition but began to learn the Torah as an adult. In the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E., he helped shape a new direction for Judaism through his brilliance and his character. Mystic, legalist, theologian, and interpreter, he disputed with his colleagues in dramatic fashion yet was admired and beloved by his peers. Executed by Roman authorities for his insistence on teaching Torah in public, he became the exemplar of Jewish martyrdom. Drawing on the latest historical and literary scholarship, this book goes beyond older biographies, untangling a complex assortment of ancient sources to present a clear and nuanced portrait of Talmudic hero Rabbi Akiva.
Download or read book Letters to Josep written by Levy Daniella and published by . This book was released on 2016-03-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of letters from a religious Jew in Israel to a Christian friend in Barcelona on life as an Orthodox Jew. Equal parts lighthearted and insightful, it's a thorough and entertaining introduction to the basic concepts of Judaism.
Download or read book Becoming the People of the Talmud written by Talya Fishman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-01-31 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Becoming the People of the Talmud, Talya Fishman examines ways in which circumstances of transmission have shaped the cultural meaning of Jewish traditions. Although the Talmud's preeminence in Jewish study and its determining role in Jewish practice are generally taken for granted, Fishman contends that these roles were not solidified until the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The inscription of Talmud—which Sefardi Jews understand to have occurred quite early, and Ashkenazi Jews only later—precipitated these developments. The encounter with Oral Torah as a written corpus was transformative for both subcultures, and it shaped the roles that Talmud came to play in Jewish life. What were the historical circumstances that led to the inscription of Oral Torah in medieval Europe? How did this body of ancient rabbinic traditions, replete with legal controversies and nonlegal material, come to be construed as a reference work and prescriptive guide to Jewish life? Connecting insights from geonica, medieval Jewish and Christian history, and orality-textuality studies, Becoming the People of the Talmud reconstructs the process of cultural transformation that occurred once medieval Jews encountered the Babylonian Talmud as a written text. According to Fishman, the ascription of greater authority to written text was accompanied by changes in reading habits, compositional predilections, classroom practices, approaches to adjudication, assessments of the past, and social hierarchies. She contends that certain medieval Jews were aware of these changes: some noted that books had replaced teachers; others protested the elevation of Talmud-centered erudition and casuistic virtuosity into standards of religious excellence, at the expense of spiritual refinement. The book concludes with a consideration of Rhineland Pietism's emergence in this context and suggests that two contemporaneous phenomena—the prominence of custom in medieval Ashkenazi culture and the novel Christian attack on Talmud—were indirectly linked to the new eminence of this written text in Jewish life.
Download or read book The Land of Truth written by Jeffrey L. Rubenstein and published by Jewish Publication Society. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making the rich narrative world of Talmud tales fully accessible to modern readers, renowned Talmud scholar Jeffrey L. Rubenstein turns his spotlight on both famous and little-known stories, analyzing the tales in their original contexts, exploring their cultural meanings and literary artistry, and illuminating their relevance. Delving into both rabbinic life (the academy, master-disciple relationships) and Jewish life under Roman and Persian rule (persecution, taxation, marketplaces), Rubenstein explains how storytellers used irony, wordplay, figurative language, and other art forms to communicate their intended messages. Each close reading demonstrates the story’s continuing relevance through the generations into modernity. For example, the story “Showdown in Court,” a confrontation between King Yannai and the Rabbinic judges, provides insights into controversial struggles in U.S. history to balance governmental power; the story of Honi’s seventy-year sleep becomes a window into the indignities of aging. Through the prism of Talmud tales, Rubenstein also offers timeless insights into suffering, beauty, disgust, heroism, humor, love, sex, truth, and falsehood. By connecting twenty-first-century readers to past generations, The Land of Truth helps to bridge the divide between modern Jews and the traditional narrative worlds of their ancestors.
Download or read book Reconstructing the Talmud written by Joshua Kulp and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Babylonian Talmud (Bavli) is a symphony of hundreds of voices, including legal rulings, folklore, biblical interpretations, and rabbinic legends. Each of these voices was originally issued in a distinct generation but was only "captured" and frozen in time by the Talmud's editors, who lived during the fifth through seventh centuries C.E. Reconstructing the Talmud introduces the modern Talmud student to the techniques developed over the last century for uncovering how this literature developed. Opening with an extended introduction outlining the methods employed by scholars to engage in such analysis, Reconstructing the Talmud proceeds with nine examples concretely demonstrating how such methods are applied to actual passages from the Bavli. Sorting out the layers of the Bavli, understanding each layer within its cultural and historical context, and comparing it with earlier sources, reveals a dynamic world of change, debate, halakhic diversity and development far richer and more nuanced than that which is evident in the static and fixed text of the printed edition. Reconstructing the Talmud introduces the reader to the world of academic Talmudic research and opens new venues of exploration and understanding of one of the world's great literary treasures.
Download or read book Jews Gentiles and Other Animals written by Mira Wasserman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2017-05-19 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals, Mira Beth Wasserman undertakes a close reading of Avoda Zara, arguably the Babylonian Talmud's most scandalous tractate. According to Wasserman, Avoda Zara is where this Talmud joins the humanities in questioning what it means to be a human.
Download or read book written by Heinrich Walter Guggenheimer and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Introduction to Rabbinic Literature written by Jacob Neusner and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The achievement of a lifetime from one of today's most eminent Judaic scholars--a landmark commentary on the history of rabbinical teachings in the Christian era: the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Talmuds, and more.
Download or read book Swimming in the Sea of Talmud written by Michael Katz and published by Jewish Publication Society. This book was released on 1998 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear, accessible guide to reading and understanding the Talmud. This book offers a unique introduction to the study of the Talmud and suggest ways to apply its messages and values to contemporary life. Imaginatively conceived, this volume is recommended for both individuals and group study sessions.
Download or read book Narrating the Law written by Barry Wimpfheimer and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-07-19 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Narrating the Law Barry Scott Wimpfheimer creates a new theoretical framework for considering the relationship between law and narrative and models a new method for studying talmudic law in particular. Works of law, including the Talmud, are animated by a desire to create clear usable precedent. This animating impulse toward clarity is generally absent in narratives, the form of which is better able to capture the subtleties of lived life. Wimpfheimer proposes to make these different forms compatible by constructing a narrative-based law that considers law as one of several "languages," along with politics, ethics, psychology, and others that together compose culture. A narrative-based law is capable of recognizing the limitations of theoretical statutes and the degree to which other cultural languages interact with legal discourse, complicating any attempts to actualize a hypothetical set of rules. This way of considering law strongly resists the divide in traditional Jewish learning between legal literature (Halakhah) and nonlegal literature (Aggadah) by suggesting the possibility of a discourse broad enough to capture both. Narrating the Law activates this mode of reading by looking at the Talmud's legal stories, a set of texts that sits uncomfortably on the divide between Halakhah and Aggadah. After noticing that such stories invite an expansive definition of law that includes other cultural voices, Narrating the Law also mines the stories for the rich descriptions of rabbinic culture that they encapsulate.