Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?

Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? PDF Author: Shaye J. D. Cohen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520212509
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
"This book represents engaged scholarship at its very best. Cohen presents the vast range of texts at his command with brevity and wit. Elegantly written, this is a very stimulating book that is sure to provoke admiration, discussion, and controversy."—David Biale, author of Cultures of the Jews "A distinguished and wide-ranging work of scholarship. Cohen’s definitive discussion of the covenant of circumcision enhances our understanding of Jewish identity formation, women’s status in Judaism, Jewish-Christian polemic, and the impact of diverse cultural environments on the evolution of Jewish tradition."—Judith R. Baskin, author of Midrashic Women

Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?

Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? PDF Author: Shaye J. D. Cohen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520212509
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
"This book represents engaged scholarship at its very best. Cohen presents the vast range of texts at his command with brevity and wit. Elegantly written, this is a very stimulating book that is sure to provoke admiration, discussion, and controversy."—David Biale, author of Cultures of the Jews "A distinguished and wide-ranging work of scholarship. Cohen’s definitive discussion of the covenant of circumcision enhances our understanding of Jewish identity formation, women’s status in Judaism, Jewish-Christian polemic, and the impact of diverse cultural environments on the evolution of Jewish tradition."—Judith R. Baskin, author of Midrashic Women

Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?

Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? PDF Author: Shaye J. D. Cohen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 052092049X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
Why aren't Jewish women circumcised? This improbable question, first advanced by anti-Jewish Christian polemicists, is the point of departure for this wide-ranging exploration of gender and Jewishness in Jewish thought. With a lively command of a wide range of Jewish sources—from the Bible and the Talmud to the legal and philosophical writings of the Middle Ages to Enlightenment thinkers and modern scholars—Shaye J. D. Cohen considers the varied responses to this provocative question and in the process provides the fullest cultural history of Jewish circumcision available.

Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?

Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? PDF Author: Shaye J. D. Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780520244580
Category : RELIGION
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Get Book

Book Description
Why aren't Jewish women circumcised? This improbable question, first advanced by anti-Jewish Christian polemicists, is the point of departure for this wide-ranging exploration of gender and Jewishness in Jewish thought. With a lively command of a wide range of Jewish sources--from the Bible and the Talmud to the legal and philosophical writings of the Middle Ages to Enlightenment thinkers and modern scholars--Shaye J.

The Covenant of Circumcision

The Covenant of Circumcision PDF Author: Elizabeth Wyner Mark
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584653073
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book

Book Description
Scholars and rabbis examine the complicated history and contemporary challenges of the Jewish rite of circumcision.

The Life of Judaism

The Life of Judaism PDF Author: Harvey E. Goldberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520227530
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
This book offers readers an insider's view into the ways Judaism is lived and experienced. it presents narrative and ethnographic accounts of present day Jewish practices the rituals, communities, and political involvement.

Covenant of Blood

Covenant of Blood PDF Author: Lawrence A. Hoffman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226347837
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book

Book Description
Central to both biblical narrative and rabbinic commentary, circumcision has remained a defining rite of Jewish identity, a symbol so powerful that challenges to it have always been considered taboo. Lawrence Hoffman seeks to find out why circumcision holds such an important place in the Jewish psyche. He traces the symbolism of circumcision through Jewish history, examining its evolution as a symbol of the covenant in the post-exilic period of the Bible and its subsequent meaning in the formative era of Mishnah and Talmud. In the rabbinic system, Hoffman argues, circumcision was neither a birth ritual nor the beginning of the human life cycle, but a rite of covenantal initiation into a male "life line." Although the evolution of the rite was shaped by rabbinic debates with early Christianity, the Rabbis shared with the church a view of blood as providing salvation. Hoffman examines the particular significance of circumcision blood, which, in addition to its salvific role, contrasted with menstrual blood to symbolize the gender dichotomy within the rabbinic system. His analysis of the Rabbis' views of circumcision and menstrual blood sheds light on the marginalization of women in rabbinic law. Differentiating official mores about gender from actual practice, Hoffman surveys women's spirituality within rabbinic society and examines the roles mothers played in their sons' circumcisions until the medieval period, when they were finally excluded.

Jewish Passages

Jewish Passages PDF Author: Harvey E. Goldberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520206939
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book

Book Description
"Goldberg's breadth of knowledge is particularly impressive. Here is a scholar who has read everything, and has produced a rich, first-rate book that is both comprehensive and accessible, making Jewish customs meaningful even to non-specialists. A scholarly achievement that is also a great bar-mitzvah gift, with tremendous value for anyone in Jewish Studies including rabbis and members of synagogue study groups."—Jack Kugelmass, Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor and Director, Jewish Studies Program at Arizona State University "Sweeping in its reach and richly informative in its details. Jewish Passages offers a treasury of wonderfully interesting information. This is a work that will not be lost. " Samuel C. Heilman, author of When a Jew Dies

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

Get Book

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.

A Radical Jew

A Radical Jew PDF Author: Daniel Boyarin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520920361
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book

Book Description
Daniel Boyarin turns to the Epistles of Paul as the spiritual autobiography of a first-century Jewish cultural critic. What led Paul—in his dramatic conversion to Christianity—to such a radical critique of Jewish culture? Paul's famous formulation, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, no male and female in Christ," demonstrates the genius of Christianity: its concern for all people. The genius of Judaism is its validation of genealogy and cultural, ethnic difference. But the evils of these two thought systems are the obverse of their geniuses: Christianity has threatened to coerce universality, while ethnic difference is one of the most troubled issues in modern history. Boyarin posits a "diaspora identity" as a way to negotiate the pitfalls inherent in either position. Jewishness disrupts categories of identity because it is not national, genealogical, or even religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension with one another. It is analogous with gender: gender identity makes us different in some ways but not in others. An exploration of these tensions in the Pauline corpus, argues Boyarin, will lead us to a richer appreciation of our own cultural quandaries as male and female, gay and straight, Jew and Palestinian—and as human beings.

Tradition in a Rootless World

Tradition in a Rootless World PDF Author: Lynn Davidman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520075455
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book

Book Description
"[Davidman's] rich ethnographic observations and lucid prose illuminate two of the more important aspects of modern religion generally: the changing role of women and the resurgence of traditional faith."—Robert Wuthnow, author of Meaning and Moral Order