Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature

Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature PDF Author: DR. S Mira Balberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520958217
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This book explores the ways in which the early rabbis reshaped biblical laws of ritual purity and impurity and argues that the rabbis’ new purity discourse generated a unique notion of a bodily self. Focusing on the Mishnah, a Palestinian legal codex compiled around the turn of the third century CE, Mira Balberg shows how the rabbis constructed the processes of contracting, conveying, and managing ritual impurity as ways of negotiating the relations between one’s self and one’s body and, more broadly, the relations between one’s self and one’s human and nonhuman environments. With their heightened emphasis on subjectivity, consciousness, and self-reflection, the rabbis reinvented biblically inherited language and practices in a way that resonated with central cultural concerns and intellectual commitments of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature adds a new dimension to the study of practices of self-making in antiquity by suggesting that not only philosophical exercises but also legal paradigms functioned as sites through which the self was shaped and improved.

Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature

Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature PDF Author: DR. S Mira Balberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520958217
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book

Book Description
This book explores the ways in which the early rabbis reshaped biblical laws of ritual purity and impurity and argues that the rabbis’ new purity discourse generated a unique notion of a bodily self. Focusing on the Mishnah, a Palestinian legal codex compiled around the turn of the third century CE, Mira Balberg shows how the rabbis constructed the processes of contracting, conveying, and managing ritual impurity as ways of negotiating the relations between one’s self and one’s body and, more broadly, the relations between one’s self and one’s human and nonhuman environments. With their heightened emphasis on subjectivity, consciousness, and self-reflection, the rabbis reinvented biblically inherited language and practices in a way that resonated with central cultural concerns and intellectual commitments of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature adds a new dimension to the study of practices of self-making in antiquity by suggesting that not only philosophical exercises but also legal paradigms functioned as sites through which the self was shaped and improved.

The Origins of the Seder

The Origins of the Seder PDF Author: Baruch M. Bokser
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520058736
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description


The Territorial Dimension of Judaism

The Territorial Dimension of Judaism PDF Author: W. D. Davies
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520336836
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

Blood for Thought

Blood for Thought PDF Author: Mira Balberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520295927
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Introduction -- Missing persons -- The work of blood -- Sacrifice as one -- Three hundred passovers -- Ordinary miracles -- Conclusion: the end of sacrifice, revisited

Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature

Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature PDF Author: Mira Balberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520280636
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This book explores the ways in which the early rabbis reshaped biblical laws of ritual purity and impurity and argues that the rabbisÕ new purity discourse generated a unique notion of a bodily self. Focusing on the Mishnah, a Palestinian legal codex compiled around the turn of the third century CE, Mira Balberg shows how the rabbis constructed the processes of contracting, conveying, and managing ritual impurity as ways of negotiating the relations between oneÕs self and oneÕs body and, more broadly, the relations between oneÕs self and oneÕs human and nonhuman environments. With their heightened emphasis on subjectivity, consciousness, and self-reflection, the rabbis reinvented biblically inherited language and practices in a way that resonated with central cultural concerns and intellectual commitments of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature adds a new dimension to the study of practices of self-making in antiquity by suggesting that not only philosophical exercises but also legal paradigms functioned as sites through which the self was shaped and improved.

Black Fire on White Fire

Black Fire on White Fire PDF Author: Betty Rojtman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520203211
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
"A remarkable book. . . . Rojtman's analysis is very stimulating, especially since the use of linguistic notions does not prevent her from remaining sensitive to the spiritual concerns of the commentators she analyzes."—Thomas Pavel, author of The Feud of Language

Perceptions of Jewish History

Perceptions of Jewish History PDF Author: Amos Funkenstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520912195
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
"Perceptions of Jewish History scintillates with original ideas and insights. It will appeal to a broad audience."--Michael A. Signer, University of Notre Dame "Students of the Jewish past will welcome this volume; it will also attract readers with the widest possible range of interests."--Robert Chazan, New York University

The Sabra

The Sabra PDF Author: Oz Almog
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520921979
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
The Sabras were the first Israelis—the first generation, born in the 1930s and 1940s, to grow up in the Zionist settlement in Palestine. Socialized and educated in the ethos of the Zionist labor movement and the communal ideals of the kibbutz and moshav, they turned the dream of their pioneer forebears into the reality of the new State of Israel. While the Sabras made up a small minority of the new society’s population, their cultural influence was enormous. Their ideals, their love of the land, their recreational culture of bonfires and singalongs, their adoption of Arab accessories, their slang and gruff, straightforward manner, together with a reserved, almost puritanical attitude toward individual relationships, came to signify the cultural fulfillment of the utopian ideal of a new Jew. Oz Almog’s lively, methodical, and convincing portrayal of the Sabras addresses their lives, thought, and role in Jewish history. The most comprehensive study of this exceptional generation to date, The Sabra provides a complex and unflinching analysis of accepted norms and an impressive appraisal of the Sabra, one that any examination of new Israeli reality must take into consideration. The Sabras became Palmach commanders, soldiers in the British Brigade, and, later, officers in the Israel Defense Forces. They served as a source of inspiration and an object of emulation for an entire society. Almog’s source material is rich and varied: he uses poems, letters, youth movement and army newsletters, and much more to portray the Sabras’ attitudes toward the Arabs, war, nature, work, agriculture, cooperation, and education. In any event, the Sabra remained central to the founding myth of the nation, the real Israeli, against whom later generations will be judged. Almog’s pioneering book juxtaposes the myths against the realities and, in the process, limns a collective profile that brilliantly encompasses the complex forces that shaped this remarkable generation.

Alef, Mem, Tau

Alef, Mem, Tau PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520246195
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Alef, Mem, Tau also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time."

The Maiden of Ludmir

The Maiden of Ludmir PDF Author: Nathaniel Deutsch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520927974
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Hannah Rochel Verbermacher, a Hasidic holy woman known as the Maiden of Ludmir, was born in early-nineteenth-century Russia and became famous as the only woman in the three-hundred-year history of Hasidism to function as a rebbe—or charismatic leader—in her own right. Nathaniel Deutsch follows the traces left by the Maiden in both history and legend to fully explore her fascinating story for the first time. The Maiden of Ludmir offers powerful insights into the Jewish mystical tradition, into the Maiden’s place within it, and into the remarkable Jewish community of Ludmir. Her biography ultimately becomes a provocative meditation on the complex relationships between history and memory, Judaism and modernity. History first finds the Maiden in the eastern European town of Ludmir, venerated by her followers as a master of the Kabbalah, teacher, and visionary, and accused by her detractors of being possessed by a dybbuk, or evil spirit. Deutsch traces the Maiden’s steps from Ludmir to Ottoman Palestine, where she eventually immigrated and re-established herself as a holy woman. While the Maiden’s story—including her adamant refusal to marry—recalls the lives of holy women in other traditions, it also brings to light the largely unwritten history of early-modern Jewish women. To this day, her transgressive behavior, a challenge to traditional Jewish views of gender and sexuality, continues to inspire debate and, sometimes, censorship within the Jewish community.