Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings

Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings PDF Author: Stern
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004332766
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings is more than a question of legal status: it is the experience of being Jewish or of 'Jewishness' in all its social and cultural dimensions. This work describes this experience as it emerges in Talmudic and Midrashic sources. Besides the question of “who is a Jew?”, topics include the contrast between Israel and the non-Jews, the physical embodiment of Jewish identity, the 'boundaries' of Israel and resistance to assimilation. Jewish identity, it is argued, hinges essentially on the Divine commandments (mitzvot) and on Israel's perceived proximity with the Divine. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including the theories of William James and Merleau-Ponty, this study raises important issues in anthropology, as well as accounting for central aspects of early rabbinic Judaism.

Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings

Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings PDF Author: Stern
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004332766
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings is more than a question of legal status: it is the experience of being Jewish or of 'Jewishness' in all its social and cultural dimensions. This work describes this experience as it emerges in Talmudic and Midrashic sources. Besides the question of “who is a Jew?”, topics include the contrast between Israel and the non-Jews, the physical embodiment of Jewish identity, the 'boundaries' of Israel and resistance to assimilation. Jewish identity, it is argued, hinges essentially on the Divine commandments (mitzvot) and on Israel's perceived proximity with the Divine. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including the theories of William James and Merleau-Ponty, this study raises important issues in anthropology, as well as accounting for central aspects of early rabbinic Judaism.

Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings

Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings PDF Author: Sacha Stern
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004100121
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
An original study of Jewish identity or 'Jewishness' in all its social and cultural dimensions in Talmudic and Midrashic writings. Topics include the physical embodiment of Jewish identity, the 'boundaries' of Israel, and resistance to assimilation.

Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism

Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism PDF Author: Sarit Kattan Gribetz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691209804
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
How the rabbis of late antiquity used time to define the boundaries of Jewish identity The rabbinic corpus begins with a question–“when?”—and is brimming with discussions about time and the relationship between people, God, and the hour. Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism explores the rhythms of time that animated the rabbinic world of late antiquity, revealing how rabbis conceptualized time as a way of constructing difference between themselves and imperial Rome, Jews and Christians, men and women, and human and divine. In each chapter, Sarit Kattan Gribetz explores a unique aspect of rabbinic discourse on time. She shows how the ancient rabbinic texts artfully subvert Roman imperialism by offering "rabbinic time" as an alternative to "Roman time." She examines rabbinic discourse about the Sabbath, demonstrating how the weekly day of rest marked "Jewish time" from "Christian time." Gribetz looks at gendered daily rituals, showing how rabbis created "men's time" and "women's time" by mandating certain rituals for men and others for women. She delves into rabbinic writings that reflect on how God spends time and how God's use of time relates to human beings, merging "divine time" with "human time." Finally, she traces the legacies of rabbinic constructions of time in the medieval and modern periods. Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism sheds new light on the central role that time played in the construction of Jewish identity, subjectivity, and theology during this transformative period in the history of Judaism.

The Rabbinic Conversion of Judaism

The Rabbinic Conversion of Judaism PDF Author: Moshe Lavee
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004352058
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
In this volume, Moshe Lavee offers an account of crucial internal developments in the rabbinic corpus, and shows how the Babylonian Talmud dramatically challenged and extended the rabbinic model of conversion to Judaism. The history of conversion to Judaism has long fascinated Jews along a broad ideological continuum. This book demonstrates the rabbis in Babylonia further reworked former traditions about conversion in ever more stringent direction, shifting the focus of identity demarcation towards genealogy and bodily perspectives. By applying a reading-strategy that emphasizes late Babylonian literary developments, Lavee sheds critical light on a broader discourse regarding the nature and boundaries of Jewish identity.

Identity and Territory

Identity and Territory PDF Author: Eyal Ben-Eliyahu
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520293606
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Throughout history, the relationship between Jews and their land has been a vibrant, much-debated topic within the Jewish world and in international political discourse. Identity and Territory explores how ancient conceptions of Israel—of both the land itself and its shifting frontiers and borders—have played a decisive role in forming national and religious identities across the millennia. Through the works of Second Temple period Jews and rabbinic literature, Eyal Ben-Eliyahu examines the role of territorial status, boundaries, mental maps, and holy sites, drawing comparisons to popular Jewish and Christian perceptions of space. Showing how space defines nationhood and how Jewish identity influences perceptions of space, Ben-Eliyahu uncovers varied understandings of the land that resonate with contemporary views of the relationship between territory and ideology.

Religious Networks in the Roman Empire

Religious Networks in the Roman Empire PDF Author: Anna Collar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107043441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Examines the relationship between social networks and religious transmission to reappraise how new religious ideas spread in the Roman Empire.

Jewish Identity in the Greco-Roman World

Jewish Identity in the Greco-Roman World PDF Author: Jörg Frey
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047421558
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
The articles discuss various aspects of Jewish identity in the Greco-Roman period. Was there a common ‘Jewish’ identity, and how could it be defined? How could different groups develop and maintain their identity within the challenge of Hellenistic and early Roman culture? What about the images of ‘others’? How could some of those ‘others’ adopt a Jewish lifestyle or identity, whereas others, abandoned their inherited identity? Among the questions discussed are the translation of Ioudaios, Jewish and universal identity in Philo, the status of women and their conversion to Judaism, the participation of non-Jews in the temple cult, the practice of Emperor worship in Judaea, and the image of Egypt and the Nile as ‘others’ in Philo. Two articles enter the debate whether Jewish identity had an ongoing influence within early Christianity, in Paul and in the rules known as the Apostolic Decree.

Jewish Identity and Politics Between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba

Jewish Identity and Politics Between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba PDF Author: Benedikt Eckhardt
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004210466
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Based on an interdisciplinary conference held in Münster, this volume discusses the interrelation between political change and Jewish identity in the three centuries between the Maccabean and the Bar Kokhba revolt (168 BCE – 135 CE).

Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages

Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages PDF Author: David C. Kraemer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135905819
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
This book explores the history of Jewish eating and Jewish identity, from the Bible to the present. The lessons of this book rest squarely on the much-quoted insight: 'you are what you eat.' But this book goes beyond that simple truism to recognise that you are not only what you eat, but also how, when, where and with whom you eat. This book begins at the beginning – with the Torah – and then follows the history of Jewish eating until the modern age and even into our own day. Along the way, it travels from Jewish homes in the Holy Land and Babylonia (Iraq) to France and Spain and Italy, then to Germany and Poland and finally to the United States of America. It looks at significant developments in Jewish eating in all ages: in the ancient Near East and Persia, in the Classical age, throughout the Middle Ages and into Modernity. It pays careful attention to Jewish eating laws (halakha) in each time and place, but it does not stop there: it also looks for Jews who bend and break the law, who eat like Romans or Christians regardless of the law and who develop their own hybrid customs according to their own 'laws', whatever Jewish tradition might tell them. In this colourful history of Jewish eating, we get more than a taste of how expressive and crucial eating choices have always been.

The Beginnings of Jewishness

The Beginnings of Jewishness PDF Author: Shaye J. D. Cohen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520226933
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
This is a study of the notion of Jewishness from c. 200 BCE to c. 200 CE. Reasonable and well-informed people disputed whether a given person was Jewish or not; Cohen opens by discussing just such an argument, about Herod the Great.