Women, Monsters and Rabbis

The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature, edited by Shaye J. D. Cohen. BJS 326. Providence: Brown University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 167. $60.00. Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture, by Jeffrey Rubenstein. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi + 436. $55.00. Shaye Cohen's edited volume The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature and Jeffrey Rubenstein's Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture are major contributions to the field of rabbinics, the former for its explicit attempt to deal with methodological issues pertaining to the study of this literature, the latter for the ways in which it analyzes several notable rabbinic stories in a fresh and detailed manner. While prima facie these works are different in terms of style and scholarly agenda, each nonetheless deals with the question of the extent to which rabbinic literature can be used to enhance our understanding of the rabbis, and of Palestinian and Babylonian Jews of late antiquity. The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature comprises six papers given at a small conference held at Brown University in 1998. Topics included the relationship of the Mishnah to the Tosefta, the relationship of these texts to Tannaitic midrashim and beraitot, the relationship of the Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) to the Yerushalmi (Palestinian Talmud), the relationship of the Talmuds to both the Tosefta and the Tannaitic midrashim, and the relationship of the Yerushalmi to Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Lamentations Rabbah. Given the caliber of the participants, undoubtedly this was an intellectual feast for those interested in current trends in rabbinic scholarship. While the collection covers a variety of topics and raises many methodological issues, its cohesion lies in its attempt to debunk the documentary hypothesis. As Robert Goldenberg refers to it, the Documentary Premise, espoused by Jacob Neusner, is an approach to rabbinic documents that treats rabbinic texts only on the redactional level with no serious regard for either earlier sources found within a work, or for similar sources found in other compilations. Each document must be understood on its own terms and as such tells us a great deal about the redactor of the compilation. That is to say, documents such as the Mishnah, Genesis Rabbah, the Tosefta, or the Yerushalmi are discrete works that attest to the coherent Weltanschauung of their respective redactors who intentionally shape their sources accordingly. Indeed, as Shaye Cohen avers, Much of ancient rabbinic literature is as synoptic as Matthew, Mark, and Luke; because of their extensive parallels in structure, content, and wording, rabbinic texts should be `seen together (p. vii). It should be noted, however, that the synoptic problem in rabbinic literature is in many respects more complex and unwieldy than in the Gospels. While the Synoptic Gospels are more or less contemporaneous, rabbinic literature spans several centuries. In this instance, the synoptic problem does not deal with three Gospels, a commonly recognized Q source and two other putative sources, but rather it involves numerous iterations of similar stories, sayings and dicta in more than one corpus (for that matter in more than one type of corpus), which, depending on the corpus itself, could very well have undergone several layers of redaction. Cohen's collection of essays, despite lacking a synthesizing conclusion, offers the reader access into the complicated nature of the synoptic problem in rabbinic literature. Each of the six chapters merits a more detailed treatment than space allows. With this in mind, I will discuss briefly the main thrust of each paper and occasionally will make some general observations. In the first paper of the series, Robert Goldenberg sets the stage for the ensuing engagement with and criticism of Neusner's documentarian approach, which he considers a deeply problematic stance. …

Ezekiel 28:11-19 is found in rabbinic literature exclusively in haggadic contexts: the Palestinian Talmud, which contains far fewer haggadic traditions, for example, never cites the text, whereas the Babylonian Talmud records in several places traditions that use Ezekiel 28:11-19.1. Here it is Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar who are the examples for which Hiram serves as the anti-type: The authors finds in many rabbinic texts a relatively early tradition that conflated Hiram with the figure of Ezekiel 28. Techniques The first thing to note about the rabbinic interpretations of Ezekiel 28:11-19 is that none has as its primary aim the interpretation of the book of Ezekiel. He also found in the rabbinic literature a number of traditions concerning Adam that draw on Ezekiel 28 to develop and illuminate their haggadah.Keywords:Ezekiel; haggadic traditions; Rabbinic literature

Illuminating learning from informative texts in secondary education: A switching replication design study

Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998 Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000 Tal Ilan, Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women's History from Rabbinic Literature. Leiden–New York–Köln: Brill, 1997 Cynthia M. Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002 Miriam Peskowitz, Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender, and History Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997 The impact of modern feminism on academic Jewish studies, and the widespread recognition of the importance of gender as a category of historical and literary analysis, have prompted a growing number of contemporary scholars to look seriously and in diverse ways at the status and representation of women in the complex and multi-stranded literary documents of rabbinic Judaism. [End Page 191] In this review essay I discuss five representative scholarly works of the past decade that take different methodological approaches in investigating the ways in which women figure in rabbinic literature.1 Far from monolithic in the views and attitudes expressed within its canon, rabbinic discourse preserves a variety of competing interpretations and opinions, privileging majority views but preserving minority opinions as well. Given this complicated heritage, it is not surprising that rabbinic literature is similarly diverse in its attitudes towards women and their activities. Regardless of how they are expressed, however, what unites this plethora of opinions is an underlying conviction that "women are a separate people" (BT Shabbat 62a), differing in legal and social status, as well as in inherent capacities, from men. As several of the volumes discussed below delineate, the rabbinic vision of women's appropriate place and activities in Jewish society often bore little relation to the actual realities of women's lives in the times and places in which that vision was constructed. However, the conviction of female alterity and women's secondary status to men that permeates these foundational documents became decisive in shaping and constraining female possibilities in Jewish life and practice for the millennium and a half that followed the codification of the Babylonian Talmud. A Multivocal Halakhah While most contemporary scholars affirm the androcentric nature of rabbinic writings, a growing number of sophisticated researchers have nonetheless endeavored to distinguish within this immense and multivocal literature voices supportive of expanded human and legal possibilities for women. Some scholars, reading against the grain, similarly hope to tease from selected passages evidence of women's voices and female strategies of resistance against the male hegemony characteristic of rabbinic social policy. There are those readers, as well, who seek inspiration from active Jewish women of the past for contemporary efforts to refashion Judaism in such a way as to include and value female spiritual aspirations and intellectual contributions. In Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice, Judith Hauptman focuses on the evolving status of women in Jewish law, from its biblical origins through its expansion and reshaping in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds. Hauptman agrees with most feminist scholars that the [End Page 192] rabbis whose views are expressed in these works affirmed the patriarchal attitudes of their larger cultural settings and perpetuated women's second-class, subordinate status in social, religious, and communal life. However, she also maintains that rabbinic legislation introduced numerous significant and innovative measures to ameliorate various aspects of women's lives. Hauptman's scholarly methodology is based on examining specific rabbinic passages with full attention to the larger documents of which they are a part, and in the context of prior and contemporaneous texts that discuss the same legal issues. She is committed to eliciting meanings from the passages at hand, rather than imposing meanings upon them. Hauptman is aware of the contemporary implications of her endeavor and explicitly addresses the question...

Several rabbinic texts refer to the Syrian oasis city of Palmyra and its third-century rulers, Odenathus and Zenobia. Historians, including specialists in Jewish history, have used these texts to claim that the rabbis, unlike other Jews of the time, were hostile to Odenathus, Zenobia and the Palmyra they led. This article re-examines the texts to discover what they reflect the rabbis saying and thinking about in their own terms, and reaches a negative conclusion: Rabbinic hostility to Palmyra is not found in them. The article's point is less about the past than about the present, and the way some scholars use rabbinic sources. When historians reach erroneous conclusions and include them in otherwise salutary books or articles, they mislead their students and other readers, who then include those conclusions in their own work without replicating research they assume is reliable because it was done by qualified predecessors. Instead of revealing evidence of rabbinic hostility to Palmyra, detailed examples show that these texts reveal, among other things, rabbinic concerns such as the need to reconcile inconsistent beraitot about captive women, for which purpose the rabbis used the unusual figure of Odenathus, and the problem of would-be Jews of uncertain ancestry, in connection with which the rabbis used Palmyra as a symbol of a locale inhabited by such people.

This research aims to enhance the teaching and learning of narrative texts for tenth-grade students by designing West Kalimantan Folklore Videos (WKFV) as supplementary learning materials. The study adopts a development research approach, utilizing the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) procedure to design the materials. The research consists of three phases: analyzing, designing, and developing. In the analyzing phase, an English teacher from MAN 2 Pontianak was interviewed, and a questionnaire was distributed to X IPS 3 students. The WKFV was developed using various software tools such as Canva, Vimeo, WordPress, Google Drive, and Google Forms. An internal evaluation was conducted in the development phase to assess the usability of the WKFV. The results of the internal evaluation demonstrated that the WKFV met all the required criteria. In conclusion, the WKFV proves to be a practical and effective tool for supporting the teaching and learning of narrative texts.

Early Rabbinic Judaism is the name given to the group of people who produced, from the first to approximately the seventh century CE, the post Biblical canonic texts of Judaism. This ‘new’ Judaism, which grew in parallel to early Christianity, was highly invested in the concept of law. This is reflected not only in interpreting the Hebrew Bible which is considered to be a book of laws, but also in the production of a legal codex of their own time (the Mishnah, edited in the early third century), and its interpretations (the Palestinian Talmud, edited in the fifth century, and the Babylonian Talmud, which had several layers of editing, the latest of which is in the seventh century). These legal codices still serve as the basis for any ruling on questions relating to intersex people in Jewish law, and often in Israeli law.

“Talmud” means in Tannaitic Hebrew “learning,” “study,” or more precisely “expounding.” From the Middle Ages and on, the term came to refer to two corpora of rabbinic literature from Late Antiquity, called, respectively, Palestinian Talmud, or “Yerushalmi,” and Babylonian Talmud, or “Bavli.” Even broader, the term can mean rabbinic literature in Late Antiquity in general to include corpora of the Mishnah, Midrash, and other genres of late ancient rabbinic literature as well. There traditionally has been an incongruity in thinking about “Talmud and philosophy.” Philosophy was always understood as a discipline of thinking that has developed historically from Antiquity on. However, “Talmud” has been predominantly understood as an object, a book, “the Talmud” as opposed to “Talmud” as an intellectual discipline. That understanding leads to the first rubric in this article: the Talmud as an Object of Philosophical or Theoretical Inquiry: Comparative Study. The rubric embraces synchronic and diachronic comparative studies of the Talmud (as an object) in its relationship to philosophy as a discipline at various stages of its development. Yet beginning from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, the Talmud acquired a new understanding. Now, like philosophy, it has come to be understood as a discipline of thinking (which renders in English as Talmud, without the “the”). Not totally unlike how the discipline of rhetoric has been classified by different authors as either a part of philosophy or the philosophy’s most significant other, Talmud also has been placed differently in relation to philosophy. Different authors understand it either as one among other philosophical disciplines or, alternatively, as a discipline of its own, distinct from philosophy. That translates into the second rubric of this article, Talmud as a Discipline of Thinking at different periods of its evolution from Late Antiquity to modern times. The third major rubric is thematic; it includes works in which Talmud and philosophy is a theme (“(The) Talmud and Philosophy” as a Theme). As is true for all schematic divisions, a specific work, author, or line of thinking can defy this partition. Focused as it is on relationships between Talmud and philosophy, this article does not address a related but radically different field of philosophy, that of halakhah (Jewish Law), for the latter treats the Talmud as neither an object nor a discipline, but rather as a source of law; this is a radically different pursuit belonging to a bibliography on law and philosophy, which is not treated in this article. This selected bibliography focuses primarily on individual monographs published in the last ten years, with an even more selective mention of what has proved to be influential works in this category published earlier. The compilers of this bibliography envision it as a node and invite additional entries accompanied by original bibliographic descriptions, which will be credited to the name of their authors. Rather than providing general bibliographic descriptions available elsewhere, the annotations of entries focus on the relation of each monograph to the theme of this particular article.

Narrative in the Talmud is a relatively new subject for scholarly attention. Neither the Talmud itself nor its traditional commentaries have a concept of narrative as a distinct form or genre. Instead, traditional rabbinic writings distinguish between Halakhah, or Jewish law, and Aggadah, any material within classic rabbinic literature that is not directly relevant to the determination of law. In this traditional scheme, Aggadah is a broad and loosely defined category that includes diverse forms of narrative, as well as homilies, aphorisms, recipes, spells, exegesis, and more. For much of the history of the Talmud’s reception, higher learning in rabbinical academies was focused almost exclusively on legal discussion, and all forms of Aggadah, including narrative, were either dismissed as nonessential fancy, or excerpted and repackaged for the edification of popular audiences. During the 19th century, with the rise of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement for the scientific study of Judaism, university-trained scholars began to probe rabbinic literature for evidence of Jewish life in antiquity, and read the Talmud’s narratives about the lives of the ancient rabbis as historical testimony. It was only during the latter half of the 20th century that scholars of rabbinic literature began to treat narrative within the Talmud as a subject for study in its own right. Within the last generation, critical scholarship on narrative in the Talmud has flourished. Some leading scholars have fruitfully applied the methodologies of literary criticism to the Talmud’s narrative traditions. Others have developed and refined methodologies for contextualizing talmudic stories within the diverse religious and sociopolitical cultures of late antiquity. While the particular focus of this article is on narrative within the Babylonian Talmud, conventionally designated as “The Talmud,” some of the most important studies of rabbinic narrative engage stories that appear in other works of rabbinic literature including the Mishna, the Tosefta, the Palestinian Talmud, and the classic works of midrash.

Pp. xiv, 218 . Louisville. London , Westminster John Knox Press , 2004 , $57.00. Jacob Neusner is often celebrated as one of the most published authors in history; he has written or edited more than 950 books. In general his research has centred around rabbinic Judaism of the formative Mishnaic (about 10–200 CE) and Talmudic (200–600 CE) periods. He has been a pioneer in the application of the form-criticism approach to Rabbinic texts, and for most scholars he has revolutinised the study of rabbinic literature. His work is indispensable in any attempt to use this literature in the study of the New Testament. His approach has been to study rabbinic documents as individual pieces rather than as parts of an overall single religious movement. His approach has had its critics in the academic field, but that need nor detain us here. Neusner has not merely studied rabbinic literature critically. He has made available in modern English translations most of the classics of the corpus: the Mishnah (1988), The Tosefta (1977–1986), the Talmud of the Land of Israel (The Palestinian Talmud) (1982), The Talmud of Babylonia (1984–1985). He has written a number of works exploring the relationship of Judaism to other religions, especially Christianity. His book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus (1993) attempts to establish a religiously sound framework for Judaic-Christian interchange, and has earned the praise the Pope Benedict XVI, and for Neusner the nickname ‘The Pope's Favourite Rabbi’. In his recent book Jesus of Nazareth (2007) Joseph Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI includes it in his bibliography to the chapter on ‘The Sermon on the Mount’. In his book Judaism when Christianity Began: a Survey of Belief and Practice (Louisville/London. Westminister John Knox Press, 2002) Neusner gives an overview of the Jewish belief and practice during the development of both religions over the first six centuries of our era. His work The Emergence of Judaism is another of his attempts to present and explain rabbinic Judaism to ordinary readers. This form of Judaism for him ‘emerged’ over eight hundred years of so, from 450 BCE to 400 CE. The first part of the book is devoted precisely to this, under the subheading: ‘Crises, questions and documents: 450 BCE: The Pentateuch and the Definition of Israel; 200 CE: The Mishnah and Judaism's way of life; 400 CE: The Talmud and Judaism's worldview. Definition of Israel, its way of life and worldview; Judaism now complete’; Part II covers four topics in the emergence of Judaism: the definition of Israel; the Torah's story and the Mishnah's Law: Torah: the Worldview of Judaism; God. Part III is on: Why did, and does, Judaism thrive?. Part IV. Exemplary figures in the emergence of Judaism – from God, Abraham through some twenty-two figures such as Hillel, Aqiba, Judah the Patriarch. Esther and Ruth. The final part (V) treats of fifteen primary documents: The Mishnah, Tosefta, two Talmuds, various midrashim, with informative (sometimes brief) introductions to each. Thus for the Mishnah. ‘The Mishnah is a philosophical law code. That is; it presents laws systematically, as part of a logical, coherent statement. That statement sets forth the principles for the perfection of Israel's social order. It was produced ca. 200 CE under the sponsorship of Judah the Patriarch. The Mishnah is composed of six divisions, which cover sixty-two topics, in expositions called tractates. Some of the laws are practical. They concerned everyday realities in the here and now. Others covered rules for situations not then in existence or transactions not subject to the authority of the rabbinic sages. In the former category are civil laws concerning torts and damages. In the latter are laws about the Temple, then in ruins. Thus, approximately two-thirds of the law code (that is the Mishnah) had no bearing on practical affairs at the time of the completion of that code. Viewed whole, the Mishnah was meant as a design for the restoration, which the Israelites expected at the end of days. But it also legislated for the world of the day. Practical rules governing the social order form the bulk of the third and fourth divisions (Nashim, women=marriage, family; Neziqin, Damages=civil law). In this final part the different rabbinic writings and their interrelationships are illustrated through short texts. This little work is a good treatment of the subject, and should prove useful to the general reader and students of Judaism and Christian texts. Those interested further on Jacob Neusner, his life, writings and the academic reaction to his approach can consult the relevant entry in ‘Wikipedia’, the free internet encyclopaedia.

В статье рассматриваются принципы создания учебного текста по РКИ, которыми руководствуются авторы в работе. Данные принципы были разработаны при анализе наиболее удачных об- разцов этого жанра, представленных в современных учебниках и учебных пособиях. Кроме того, даются рекомендации по при- менению рассматриваемых принципов при обучении будущих преподавателей РКИ. Приводятся примеры учебных текстов, созданных слушателями программ дополнительного образования и вошедших в текстотеку «Сайта энтузиастов РКИ». This article discusses the principles of creating an educational text for foreign learners, which the authors use in their work. These principles were developed by analyzing the most successful examples of this genre – the authors’ educational texts presented in modern textbooks. In addition, recommendations are given on the application of these principles in the training of future teachers of Russian as a foreign language. Examples of educational texts created by students of additional education programmess and included in the text library of the Russian for foreigners Enthusiasts Website are given.

It has been often emphasized that extant ancient Hebrew or Jewish literature contains no specific medical texts, in contrast to some other ancient civilizations. However, it is well-known that the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds are interspersed with statements of medico-historical interest; the classical work of Julius Preuss from 1911 gives sufficient proof of their importance. This chapter reviews some of these, as also somewhere medical instruments are mentioned. It discusses some extant texts of medical interest from rabbinic literature and from writings closely associated with it. The chapter analyses Qumran texts, the Pseudepigrapha, and the works of Josephus. It studies the Oath of Asaf and a passage from Ben Sira illuminating it. The Oath of Asaf was composed for physicians in Babylonia in the sixth or seventh century CE, whereas Ben Sira wrote for the average Jewish or rather Hebrew reader by the early second century BCE. Keywords: ancient rabbinic literature; Asaf oath; Babylonian Talmuds; Ben Sira; Jewish literature; Jewish medicalethics; Palestinian Talmuds

Abstract: This essay examines examples of the Oral Torah as a concrete, material phenomenon in late ancient rabbinic sources. The oral nature of oral Torah, both as an ideology and as a description of rabbinic textual practices, can elide some of the more evocative discussions of the nature of oral Torah. Previous discussions, such as Wollenberg (2019), have shown that the nature of the written Torah was often understood as unstable, changing, and mutable. This essay explores the other side of that equation, exploring discussions of oral Text as concrete, enduring, and unchanging. Two main examples are studied: the first from a passage in the Palestinian Talmud, and the second in a passage from the Babylonian Talmud. The Palestinian Talmud draws a dense network of connections between Torah scrolls, oral teachings, rabbinic sages, and the imagery of death and memorialization. The Babylonian Talmud similarly extends the value of rabbinic oral teaching into the World to Come, showing that while the associations between teaching, death, and eternal life manifest differently, they are still present in different rabbinic contexts. Taken together, these inscriptions of a concrete and material Oral Torah are fully realized in the body of the rabbinic sage. Other scholars have also shown that rabbinic sages become an embodiment of Torah: this essay examines the nature of rabbinic Torah, as discussed in rabbinic literature, to understand how that embodiment comes about.

Preface Abbreviations Transliterations 1: Problem and Method 2: Converts and Conversion in Mishnah 3: Converts and Conversion in Tosefta 4: Converts and Conversion in the Early Midrashic Texts 5: Converts and Conversion in the Palestinian Talmud 6: Converts and Conversion in the Babylonian Talmud 7: The Conversion Ritual 8: Marriages between Converts and Israelites 9: Converts as Newborn Children 10: Converts and the Israelite Way of Life 11: The Stranger within Your Gates Notes Bibliography Index of Biblical Citations Index of Rabbinic Literature Citations Index of Rabbis Index of Scholars Index of Topics

The paper presents the analysis of the reformed concept of mother-tongue teaching in Monte Negro. Some reasons for these alternations are given: the PISA concept of reading literacy and non-functionality of traditional mother-tongue teaching. The subject Mother-Tongue is divided into two fields: language and literature. According to this basic concept sets of separate textbooks and teacher's manuals were developed. The fundamental content of the Reader is literary artistic text while the language section is provided with various types of inartistic texts. Numerous reasons are responsible for a considerable participation of the inartistic text in the teaching of this subject. Yet, as the dominant reason we can select the one according to which in the traditional school system the students were sufficiently enabled for the reception of a literary-artistic text, but did not manage to read and understand other types of texts. The paper presents also the results of a qualitative research with teachers, realized by using the technique of group interview. The aim was to determine the views of the teachers on the use of non-artistic texts in classroom. The results show that the teachers are not familiar with the place and role of inartistic texts in modern mother-tongue teaching. Hence, the methodological approach to inartistic text does not function sufficiently in elementary school classroom.