What the Rabbis Heard: Deafness in the Mishnah

Abstract

This chapter examines deafness in Jewish antiquity as expressed in the Mishnah, the foundation document of rabbinic Judaism. Ancient Greek and Roman attitudes toward disability and deafness are surveyed in order to establish the context within which the Mishnah was formulated, and to assess whether, and to what extent, Greco-Roman beliefs may have influenced the rabbis and Jewish law on matters pertaining to deafness.KeywordsDeaf PeopleSpeech ImpairmentVaried CreatureHebrew WordDeaf PersonThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.