Avodah Zarah Research Articles

Election, Favoritism, and Freedom: Towards a Modern Jewish Theology of Matrilineal Descent

AbstractThis article offers an account of the broad theological contours of the Jewish practice of matrilineal descent. I make the case that matrilineality epitomizes God's contingent preference in favoring and electing Israel. I link Mara Benjamin's recent work to recuperate asymmetrical power relations for feminist theology to the asymmetrical relationship inherent in God's election of Israel. With Benjamin, I emphasize the importance of contingency, vulnerability, and favoritism for divine and parental love. I then read the opening parable in the tractate of Avodah Zarah for one Talmudic strategy for reckoning with the contingency of election. In Avodah Zarah, election's contingency is qualified by the concept of zekhut avot—the merit of the patriarchs. From here, I turn to the work of Jon Levenson for an account of the construction of zekhut avot in the Genesis stories. I show that the merit of the patriarchs is defined by the patriarchal encounter with the trial of favoritism. For the Israelites after Genesis, a decisive consequence of zekhut avot is that all of Jacob's (Israel's) descendants become beloved of God. The contingent transmission of the covenant thus transforms from inscrutable divine choice to the still‐contingent power of ancestry. The article closes with an interpretation of the rabbinic concept of zekhut imahot—the merit of the matriarchs. The preferred or preferring matriarch is decisive for determining the next beloved son in Genesis. The article argues that matriarchal merit is not tied to any essential construction of gender, but to the capacity to exercise freedom under conditions of providential silence. I contend that the practice of matrilineal descent re‐inscribes matriarchal merit for every generation of the Jewish people.

The Talmud's Red Fence: Menstrual Impurity and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and Its Sasanian Context by Shai Secunda (review)

Reviewed by: The Talmud's Red Fence: Menstrual Impurity and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and Its Sasanian Context by Shai Secunda Alexander W. Marcus Shai Secunda. The Talmud's Red Fence: Menstrual Impurity and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and Its Sasanian Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. xvii + 203 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009421000192 The unique aspects of Babylonian rabbinic approaches to niddah, or menstrual impurity, have long been recognized, as have broader conceptual convergences regarding purity among Sasanian Jews, Zoroastrians, and others. Yet until now there have been few studies of these linkages. Shai Secunda's long-awaited monograph, developed from his 2007 doctoral dissertation, fills a significant lacuna with newly published transcriptions and keen analyses of sources related to niddah in the Babylonian Talmud. It represents an important contribution to newly robust research into the Bavli's Sasanian context, advancing scholarly conversations regarding methodological possibilities and the scope of such inquiries. Secunda situates his study around the concept of a "semiotically productive 'red fence' generating meaningful distinctions among the genders and neighboring communities in Sasanian society, and between the Babylonian Talmud and the rest of rabbinic literature" (xi). He thereby introduces us to the core proposition guiding the book: that menstruation was a potent topic for the construction and maintenance of religious boundaries precisely because it was grounded in shared landscapes of meaning. In chapter 1, Secunda expands on his thesis that the Bavli's menstrual discourse constituted "a robust and active notion of difference" in terms of purity, gender, and Jewish identity (2). He surveys scholarship on niddah and purity discourse—from Leviticus to late antique rabbinic sources in Greco-Roman Palestine and Sasanian Babylonia—and engages with the work of Mira Balberg, Beth Berkowitz, Yaakov Elman, Charlotte Fonrobert, Christine Hayes, and others. Through a close reading of the tale of Rav Kahana and the heretic (B. Sanhedrin 37a), examining its development from Palestinian midrashim and its contextual significance within the Sasanian Mesopotamian world, he identifies a "textual differentiation" between "Palestinian sources submerged in the Bavli and their fully edited Talmudic form" (7–8), setting the stage for the rigorous source-critical analyses that follow. In chapter 2, Secunda compares rabbinic discussions of menstruation to Greco-Roman and Iranian sources, respectively, focusing especially on their physiological, etiological, and demonological dimensions. He surveys rabbinic and Zoroastrian sources alongside Greek embryological traditions, noting the [End Page 447] complex, long-standing relationships between them, arguing that "the shift from an Aristotelian downplaying of menses in Palestinian rabbinic embryology to the Bavli and Zoroastrian literature's neo-Galenic embrace of the powers of vaginal blood demonstrates that in Sasanian Iran, menstrual fluid was appreciated as powerful, generative stuff" (49). In chapter 3, he broadens his purview to the local Sasanian context in which the Bavli arose. While Secunda and others have fruitfully explored this ground before—the past several decades being especially rich in such studies—his work here represents a significant theoretical and methodological advance by illuminating how Sasanian interreligious life was informed by distinctions operating within shared conceptual frameworks. Highlighting, for example, Babylonian rabbinic mobilizations of the Iranian term for menstruation—daštān—at B. Taʿanit 22a, B. Shabbat 110a, and B. Avodah Zarah 24b, he observes that "the very stuff which is supposed to distance the 'other' is a commonality" (81). Secunda returns in chapter 4 to the Bavli's distinctive approach to menstruation within rabbinic corpora. He identifies discussions that suggest the Babylonian rabbis' familiarity with Zoroastrian conceptions of purity, and he argues that their construction of "blood science in the Bavli" (96–98) as "impossibly involved" (103) reflects a world of competition and anxiety over menstrual diagnoses and stringencies. He traces textual shifts from "intra-religious competition" in the Yerushalmi and other Palestinian sources to "inter-religious competition in Sasanian Babylonia," for instance, in the tale of Rava and the Sasanian queenmother Ifra Hormiz, who sends him "bloodstains of no halakhic consequence" to examine (B. Niddah 20b), and in the "disquiet" engendered by his passing the final challenge through heavenly intervention alone (84–85, 98–103). Chapter 5 combines the approaches of the previous two chapters, utilizing the topic of menstrual distancing and...

Статуи «обычные» и «культовые»: границы художественного и религиозного в язычестве и иудаизме в начале новой эры

In the Hellenistic-Roman period the Jews faced the urgent problem of determining the permissible and impermissible in contact with other cultures of the ancient world. One of its aspects was the question of statues of pagan deities, kings and emperors. They were not only in temples, but also in public spaces — streets, markets, courthouses, etc. The Jews were faced with these sculptures both in the Diaspora and in Palestine. The prescriptions contained in the Pentateuch were, in practice, hard to follow in their totality. The Second Commandment forbids the Jews from creating idols (Ex 20, 4, Deut. 5, 8), and it was perfectly possible to observe, but other instructions were obviously impossible (Ex 23, 24; Ex 34, 13). Philo of Alexandria and Josephus Flavius informed us about the first problems connected with sacred images, and later the discussion about them would become the main theme of the third chapter of the treatise “Avodah Zarah”, which is part of the Babylonian Talmud. In our paper we consider three issues discussed in “Avodah Zarah”: the definition of a cult statue; the definition of a place that served the worship of gods; and the “desacralization” of the cult statues. Rabbis of the 2nd–4th centuries CE created a list of formal attributes that made it possible to distinguish a sacred sculpture from a decorative statue (the presence of a scepter, a bird, a ball, a snake, etc.), but in addition, the attitude of the Gentiles themselves to these statues played an important role. The fundamental role here is played by Gamaliel’s words about the permissibility of using the thermae, if it’s decorated with the statue of Aphrodite. In addition, Y. Furstenberg directly points to the parallels between the destructive actions produced by the Romans in the rituals of damnatio memoriae, the curse of the memory of the “bad” emperor, and the principles by which the rabbis are guided in establishing the permissible and unauthorized.

Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud, Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity by Yishai Kiel

Reviewed by: Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud, Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity by Yishai Kiel Judith Hauptman Yishai Kiel. Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud, Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 302 pp. Having mastered the languages and literature of ancient Iran, Yishai Kiel reads Bavli texts in their Sasanian or Iranian setting, a growing corner of rabbinics research in recent years. Kiel’s volume is a welcome addition. It neatly subdivides into two sections: part 1 presents close readings of rabbinic texts on sexuality in the context of Christian and Zoroastrian texts; part 2 focuses on the treatment of incest in rabbinic and Zoroastrian writings. The main thrust of the volume is to “put the nail in the coffin” of those who read the rabbis only internally, ignoring the culture of which they were a part. As Kiel states, a rabbinic text can be “significantly illuminated by its contextual reading against the backdrop of contemporaneous Zoroastrian practice and doctrine” (246). Babylonian rabbis, Kiel says in part 1, viewed marital sex not just as a means for procreation but as a way to extinguish desire, which they regard as a demonic force. Zoroastrian texts, he then demonstrates, show the same split attitude, which probably means that the rabbis assimilated these “dichotomous” views from contact with their neighbors. Both sets of religious texts also display an ambivalence toward the phenomenon of married scholars leaving their wives for long periods of time to go away and study. True, there is criticism of this practice in the Bavli, Kiel notes, but also romanticization, as in the story of R. Akiba and his wife Rachel, whom he abandons for twenty-four years. In his discussion of sex in the daytime, Kiel argues that although a rabbinic text in B. Niddah 17a frowns on the practice, requiring darkness for sex, the same passage then praises the members of the household of Monobaz of Adiabene, a convert to Judaism according to the Talmud, for engaging in sex in the daytime. To resolve this glaring discrepancy, the anonymous talmudic editor suggests that sex at night can be problematic. Kiel understands the discussion differently. In an innovative and insightful reading of the Monobaz text, he suggests that the Talmud chose to praise a former Zoroastrian for engaging in daytime sex in order to effectively undermine its own legislation that opposed such a practice. The reason for this shift is that the Talmud was responding to the Zoroastrian teaching that sex should ideally take place in the light of the sun or of a domestic fire. The second part of the book, which is much tighter in its organization, is even more enlightening. Kiel shows that, in sharp contrast to Jewish teachings, the founding myths of Zoroastrianism strongly encourage incest between parents and children and between siblings. By keeping good qualities in the family, incest leads to purity of the “seed.” Zoroastrianism even goes so far as to consider incest to be a religious obligation. Kiel reads the Noahide laws in the light of these Zoroastrian teachings: as presented in the Talmud Yerushalmi, the Noahide laws ban incest for Jews and non-Jews alike; when the same laws are presented in the Babylonian Talmud, they ban incest among Jews but permit it among non-Jews. This change shows that Babylonian rabbis were not just responding to the Yerushalmi’s teachings but to their own cultural context. [End Page 212] Kiel states, in a later chapter, that the Zoroastrian practice of confession of sin to a rad, a religious authority, could result in his prescribing penitential procedures, such as remorse, confession, monetary compensation (where relevant), or other punishments. The author recounts several stories from Persian literature in which these features appear. He then turns to the Bavli story about a woman who confessed to R. Ḥisda that her younger son was the result of an incestuous encounter with her older son (B. Avodah Zarah 17a). Although in Zoroastrianism incest is considered so meritorious that it cancels the most serious offenses, R. Ḥisda viewed incest in precisely the opposite way: it is so serious a sin that only death can atone for it...

Yishai Kiel. Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud, Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 302 pp.

Reviewed by: Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud, Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity by Yishai Kiel Judith Hauptman Yishai Kiel. Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud, Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 302 pp. Having mastered the languages and literature of ancient Iran, Yishai Kiel reads Bavli texts in their Sasanian or Iranian setting, a growing corner of rabbinics research in recent years. Kiel’s volume is a welcome addition. It neatly subdivides into two sections: part 1 presents close readings of rabbinic texts on sexuality in the context of Christian and Zoroastrian texts; part 2 focuses on the treatment of incest in rabbinic and Zoroastrian writings. The main thrust of the volume is to “put the nail in the coffin” of those who read the rabbis only internally, ignoring the culture of which they were a part. As Kiel states, a rabbinic text can be “significantly illuminated by its contextual reading against the backdrop of contemporaneous Zoroastrian practice and doctrine” (246). Babylonian rabbis, Kiel says in part 1, viewed marital sex not just as a means for procreation but as a way to extinguish desire, which they regard as a demonic force. Zoroastrian texts, he then demonstrates, show the same split attitude, which probably means that the rabbis assimilated these “dichotomous” views from contact with their neighbors. Both sets of religious texts also display an ambivalence toward the phenomenon of married scholars leaving their wives for long periods of time to go away and study. True, there is criticism of this practice in the Bavli, Kiel notes, but also romanticization, as in the story of R. Akiba and his wife Rachel, whom he abandons for twenty-four years. In his discussion of sex in the daytime, Kiel argues that although a rabbinic text in B. Niddah 17a frowns on the practice, requiring darkness for sex, the same passage then praises the members of the household of Monobaz of Adiabene, a convert to Judaism according to the Talmud, for engaging in sex in the daytime. To resolve this glaring discrepancy, the anonymous talmudic editor suggests that sex at night can be problematic. Kiel understands the discussion differently. In an innovative and insightful reading of the Monobaz text, he suggests that the Talmud chose to praise a former Zoroastrian for engaging in daytime sex in order to effectively undermine its own legislation that opposed such a practice. The reason for this shift is that the Talmud was responding to the Zoroastrian teaching that sex should ideally take place in the light of the sun or of a domestic fire. The second part of the book, which is much tighter in its organization, is even more enlightening. Kiel shows that, in sharp contrast to Jewish teachings, the founding myths of Zoroastrianism strongly encourage incest between parents and children and between siblings. By keeping good qualities in the family, incest leads to purity of the “seed.” Zoroastrianism even goes so far as to consider incest to be a religious obligation. Kiel reads the Noahide laws in the light of these Zoroastrian teachings: as presented in the Talmud Yerushalmi, the Noahide laws ban incest for Jews and non-Jews alike; when the same laws are presented in the Babylonian Talmud, they ban incest among Jews but permit it among non-Jews. This change shows that Babylonian rabbis were not just responding to the Yerushalmi’s teachings but to their own cultural context. [End Page 212] Kiel states, in a later chapter, that the Zoroastrian practice of confession of sin to a rad, a religious authority, could result in his prescribing penitential procedures, such as remorse, confession, monetary compensation (where relevant), or other punishments. The author recounts several stories from Persian literature in which these features appear. He then turns to the Bavli story about a woman who confessed to R. Ḥisda that her younger son was the result of an incestuous encounter with her older son (B. Avodah Zarah 17a). Although in Zoroastrianism incest is considered so meritorious that it cancels the most serious offenses, R. Ḥisda viewed incest in precisely the opposite way: it is so serious a sin that only death can atone for it...

Talmudic Angelology and the Tosafists: On Metatron in the Latin Translation of Tractates Sanhedrin and Avodah Zarah

Talmudic Angelology and the Tosafists: On Metatron in the Latin Translation of Tractates Sanhedrin and Avodah Zarah

The Christianization of Rome and the Edomization of Christianity: Avodah Zarah and Political Power

The Christianization of Rome and the Edomization of Christianity: Avodah Zarah and Political Power

When Land is God

When Land is God

Religious Lives of Image-Things, Avodah Zarah, and Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine

Abstract Drawing on rabbinic sources redacted in the early third and late fourth/ early fifth centuries, this paper tracks the intertwined lives of divine image-things and rabbis living in late Roman and Byzantine period Palestine. The paper argues that the religious image-things of others (or avodah zarah, in rabbinic terms) pressed in different ways on rabbinic notions of animation, materiality, agency, and representation, as well as on the boundaries between the thing, the human, and the divine. Additionally, the paper argues that while rabbis attempted to neutralize the claims of such image-things, in part by exposing their materiality, their excess nonetheless escaped such rabbinic efforts. Finally, the paper argues that in the fourth century, along with the “material turn” in the Roman world inspired by Christian engagement, we find not only a greater sense of the excess in the things of avodah zarah, but also a concomitant thingification of the rabbinic sage.

A Matter of Time: Writing Jewish Memory into Roman History

The Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds preserve fascinating stories about the origins of Roman festivals, through which they attempt to connect Roman history with Jewish history. This paper offers contextual readings of these narratives (Y. Avodah Zarah 1:2 [39c] and B. Avodah Zarah 8b) in light of Greek and Roman texts, epigraphical material, and numismatics, and places these rabbinic narratives within broader debates about cultural memory, Jewish historiography, calendars, and time. In one story, the idolatrous sins committed by a series of Israelite kings are blamed for the geological, mythical, and historical origins of the city of Rome, and a series of Roman imperial motifs and figures (the Tiber River, Remus and Romulus, Numa) are inverted. In another, the Romans are said to draw on the power of the Torah in order to defeat their Greek rivals. The rabbinic stories of Roman festivals and their Jewish origins can be understood as examples of what James C. Scott has called “a hidden transcript”—texts that bring to light an alternative perspective, that of the rabbis, within a Roman imperial context that they often interpreted as hostile or threatening.

Stéphanie E. Binder, Tertullian, On Idolatry and Mishnah Avodah Zarah: Questioning the Parting of the Ways between Christians and Jews, Leyde - Boston, Brill, 2012

Stéphanie E. Binder, Tertullian, On Idolatry and Mishnah Avodah Zarah: Questioning the Parting of the Ways between Christians and Jews, Leyde - Boston, Brill, 2012

I the J ew, I the B uddhist: Multi‐Religious Belonging As Inner Dialogue

I the Jew, I the Buddhist: Multi‐Religious Belonging As Inner Dialogue Mira Niculescu In the early 1990s, a delegation of Rabbis from many denominations (from Orthodox to Reform) flew to Dharamsala to meet with the Dalai Lama. They exchanged spiritual insights, discussed similarities and differences between Judaism and Buddhism, and shared “survival tips.” This interreligious dialogue was initiated by Marc Lieberman, a Buddhist Jew, who had founded an NGO for Tibetan people. Religion scholar and poet Rodger Kamenetz recounted the story of this meeting in his best seller, The Jew in the Lotus, to begin his exploration of the phenomenon of Jewish‐Buddhists, whom he called “Jubus.” Since then, the term Jubu has become a commonly used expression to designate the broad and eclectic array of Jews who practice Buddhism, and this term fails to represent the diversity of situations constituting this phenomenon. Yet academic attempts to grasp this phenomenon seem to have taken this term for granted as a new multi‐religious label. In this essay, I would like to propose an analysis that can express and address more accurately the lived realities of the so‐called Jewish‐Buddhists. I will show that in today's cultural context, it is more accurate to address this phenomenon in terms of an inner dialogue rather than of multi‐religious belonging. Leaving aside the fascinating history and reasons for the specific connection Jews have with Buddhism, which have been addressed elsewhere (Linzer , Vallely , Gez , Niculescu ), I will focus here on the performativity of this encounter: its parameters, and the way it actually “works” or rather is made to work. First, I redefine Judaism and Buddhism and explore their multi‐dimensionality in today's Western contemporary societies, as both religious and secular traditions. Second, I show how, regardless of whether or not Buddhism is considered a religion, it still provokes tensions and dilemmas for Jewish‐born individuals. Third, I offer a typology of inner dialogue between the reference points of Judaism and Buddhism. Judaism and Buddhism Two of the most frequently asked questions with respect to the Jubu phenomenon are: “What is a Jewish Buddhist?” and “Are Judaism and Buddhism compatible?” These questions require redefining Judaism and Buddhism, and examining the contemporary links between belonging, identity, and practice. Indeed in today's era of religious subjectivities, not only is it possible to practice without belonging or identifying to a tradition (for instance practicing yoga without identifying as a Hindu); it is also possible to belong and identify without practicing a religion (many contemporary Jews thus contradict Grace Davie's observation of the “Believing without belonging” phenomenon). Hence, today, practice and identification can be partial, selective, and construed in various ways. The minimal definition of a Jewish‐Buddhist designates a Jew by birth (religious or not) who practices Buddhism (whether or not he identifies with a Buddhist community). Who is a Jew and who is a Buddhist will therefore be my first question, although addressed very superficially in this essay. The first question is easier: A Jew according to halakha (Jewish law) is an individual born to a Jewish mother. Even Jews who live as Buddhist monastics are still considered Jews by this definition. According to Jewish tradition, the Torah was given to a people called Israel in a divine epiphany on Mount Sinai through Moses the prophet. Before being a religion, Judaism appears as an inherited, permanent identity. The question of the definition of Buddhism has deep implications for the Jewish community: If it is a religion, “practicing it,” that is, meditating and following Buddhist principles, can be considered a transgression of the prohibition of idolatry or Avodah zarah, or the “worshiping of foreign deities.” This prohibition is fundamental to Judaism, as demonstrated by the second and third negative assertions of the Decalogue: A Jew is forbidden to “know other Gods” and to “make graven images” (and by extension bow to them). If Buddhism is not a religion, “practicing” should not be any more problematic than doing sports or psychotherapy. However, as we will see, as a tradition bearer with its own meaning and ritual system, Buddhism can still be viewed as contradicting Jewish precepts. Buddhism is ontologically not a religion. First...

Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey (review)

Reviewed by: Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey Joseph Wolf (bio) Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey, by Harold Schulweis. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2008. To say that Harold Schulweis has been a groundbreaker in the pulpit over the past thirty years would not be overstating facts. In his Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey, Schulweis reexamines a touchstone of his work. He makes the case for the “sacred duty to disobey” the dominant culture when it tramples human life, finding support in the grim scenario described in BT Avodah Zarah 18b. Therein human beings killed one another for sport, and yet Jews, like today, sat in the stands at public events. What were they expected to do, as spectators? How could they express outrage? Although the Roman arena elicited a defiant rabbinic response, the author is well aware that today a gladiator civilization continues to foster genocidal battles, while the world watches. How are we to imagine Jews sitting in attendance, while wholesale carnage persists? Once again, Schulweis considers the experiences of the altruists who saved lives at great peril to themselves during the Shoah. Amidst the stench of death, as in Samson’s riddle, they performed sweet deeds against all odds. Harold Schulweis has shined a light on the inspiring role played by ḥasidei ummot olam. And especially given how Samantha Power and a host of human rights thinkers have made it a cause to end genocidal indifference in the twenty-first century, why would we [End Page 91] suggest that this book is anything but timely? Well, for one thing, it was several decades ago that Rabbis Albert Axelrad, Arnold Jacob Wolf, and Arthur Waskow (among others) wrote passionately on the subjects of conscientious objection during the Vietnam War and nascent concern for the Palestinians. They commented astutely back then on the tension that exists between defending Jewish survival and the overarching, if at times vague, commitment to the right every people/nation has to self-determination, liberation, and continuity. And during the turbulence of the post-civil rights era, they—among others—made conscience a paramount issue when Jews in high positions were more predisposed to toe the company line. Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey is a reprise of some of these themes in a period of new religious challenges. Still, if the author seems to be applying his final brushstrokes to the canvas, it’s worthy reading— if only to consider a Jewish basis for self-discovery. It is in the refiner’s fire, he writes, that individuals may discern their own internal voices as distinct from the persistent drumbeat of hegemony. And it is that experience exactly from which can come a vibrant religious discourse about moral issues. Too often, says Shulweis, religious people (in general, and Jews in particular) put a premium on blind obedience, when they would be more correct to recognize the crucial role played by authorities who take exception to the rule. We have biblical models of faith who, when confronted with new information or changing circumstances, threw up their hands in protest. What a shame it is, suggests the author, that Jews see other religious systems operating within an authoritarian model, and draw the erroneous conclusion that their own is little different. Were they sufficiently adept at navigating the literature, then they would see firsthand the animated interplay of emotions and erudite argumentation between human beings and God. Schulweis imputes godliness to the moment when one resists doing what’s wrong, but the “cult of ‘commandedness’” fails routinely. In this sense, it is David’s conscience that distinguishes between orders for the day, within his sovereign prerogatives, and ones that he will think twice about. “Attah ha-ish,” says his rebuker Nathan, and David is forced to orient himself within a moral universe. Schulweis cites Rabbi Yoḥanan in BT Bava Metzia 30b, who said that Jerusalem was destroyed because the sages of that period “based their judgments strictly upon biblical law, and did not go beyond the requirement of the law.” Legal conventions still allow the killing to go...

Menorahs in Color: Polychromy in Jewish Visual Culture of Roman Antiquity

Abstract In recent years, polychromy has developed as a significant area of research in the study of classical art. This essay explores the significance of this work for interpreting Jewish visual culture during Roman antiquity, through the focal lens of the Arch of Titus Digital Restoration Project. In July 2012, this project discovered that the Arch of Titus menorah was originally colored with yellow ochre paint. The article begins by presenting the general field of polychromy research, which has developed in recent years and resulted in significant museum exhibitions in Europe and the US. It then turns to resistance to polychromy studies among art historians, often called “chromophobia,” and to uniquely Jewish early twentieth-century variants that claimed that Jews were especially prone to colorblindness. After surveying earlier research on polychromy in Jewish contexts, we turn to polychromy in ancient Palestinian synagogue literature and art. Finally, the article explores the significance of polychromy for the study of the Arch of Titus menorah panel, and more broadly considers the importance of polychromy studies for contextualizing Jewish attitudes toward Roman religious art (avodah zarah).

A New Reading of the Three Dialogues in Mishnah Avodah Zarah

A New Reading of the Three Dialogues in Mishnah Avodah Zarah

The Limits of "Their Laws": Ancient Rabbinic Controversies about Jewishness (and Non-Jewishness)

Neutralization is a productive way to think about how some early rabbis attempted to build and to bound Jewish identity. A neutralization strategy of the kind Moshe Halbertal has associated with Mishnah Avodah Zarah can be found in a passage from the Sifra (a third-century rabbinic legal compilation) that interprets Leviticus 18:3's injunction against following "their laws." The logic of neutralization for the Sifra is that legal significance is denied to popular, shared practice and restricted to the traditions passed on by a male elite. This reading of the Sifra draws from Daniel Boyarin's argument in Border Lines that early rabbis and Christians created new orthodoxies grounded in a notion of apostolic transmission. The Sifra passage creates a "perverse parallel" to rabbinic orthodoxy and, in so doing, tries to naturalize it. The Sifra's emphasis on gay marriage as the substance of gentile transmission points to the significance of gender and sexual identity for the creation of rabbinic orthodoxy. This neutralization strategy can be contrasted with the construction of Jewish/gentile difference found in a section of material from the Yishma'el school inserted into the Sifra, where rabbinic voices imply that it may be impossible to neutralize pagan practice. This inserted text represents an "anti-neutralization" strategy in which potency is recognized in a wide array of elite and popular habits. This analysis of the Sifra and its inserted materials contributes to an expanding conversation about early rabbis' strategies for negotiating Jewish identity within the Roman imperial context.

READER RESPONSE:BERURIAH'S FINAL LESSON

One time [Beruriahl mocked the Sages [over their] saying, Women are light-headed (Kiddushin 80b, Shabbat 33b). [Rabbi Meir] said to her: By your life, you will ultimately affirm their words. He instructed one of his disciples to seduce her. [The student] urged her for many days, until she consented. When the matter became known to her she strangled herself, and Rabbi Meir fled out of disgrace. (Rashi to Avodah zarah 18b)

Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Difference in Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah (review)

Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Difference in Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah (review)

Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Differences in Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah ZarahHayesChristine Elizabeth Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Differences in Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah Oxford University PressNew York, 1997, viii, 270, £42.50

Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Differences in Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah ZarahHayesChristine Elizabeth <i>Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Differences in Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah</i> Oxford University PressNew York, 1997, viii, 270, £42.50

Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Difference in Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah

In this book, Hayes addresses the central concern in talmudic studies over the genesis of halakhic (legal) divergence between the Talmuds produced by the Palestinian rabbinic community (c. AD 370) and the Babylonian rabbinic community (c. AD 650). Hayes analyses selected divergences between parallel passages of the two Talmuds. Proceeding on a case-by-case basis, she considers whether external influences (cultural or regional differences), internal factors (textual, hermeneutical, or dialectical), or some intersection of the two best account for the differences.