Rabbinic Texts Research Articles

A tale of two baraitot: the Western Galilee borders of the rabbis in archaeology and texts

The purported border of Jewish settlement in the Western Galilee is identified in two separate tannaitic texts, each referring to the ̔Akko–Akhziv road. One text cites this road as the western border of Jewish settlement, while the other cites the same road as the eastern border. The border of Jewish settlement is also described in another rabbinic text, also discovered in the Reḥov synagogue excavations. This text is inconsistent with the texts referring to the ̔Akko–Akhziv road. Archaeologists give priority to the Reḥov inscription and dismiss the contradictory texts as a scribal error. Talmudic scholars validate the authenticity of the apparently contradictory texts using critical textual analysis, but leave the apparent contradictions unresolved. This article uses archaeological evidence in conjunction with a critical review of the texts to resolve the apparent contradiction, proving that the rabbinic texts authenticated by Talmudic scholars are consistent with the Reḥov inscription.

Redefining the Boundaries of the Sacred

This essay considers three recent Jewish graphic novels that synthesize biblical and Rabbinic texts with exegetical illustrations. Designating these works as sacred graphic novels provides an opportunity for considering the boundaries of the genres of, and interrelationship between, sacred Jewish literature and graphic novels. The concept of sacred graphic novels is explored by analyzing J.T. Waldman’s Megillat Esther, Jessica Tamar Deutsch’s Pirkei Avot and Jordan Gorfinkel and Erez Zadok’s The Passover Haggadah. While all three texts involve exegesis, what distinguishes these works is the integration of the actual text of the sacred writings in question. This integration changes the ways that the graphic novels are used as religious texts and religious texts as graphic novels and leads to a broader understanding of sacred Jewish literature.

Marital Bond and Genealogical Anxiety – Reaffirming the Schism between Rabbinic Texts from Babylonia and the Land of Israel

Abstract Societies are constituted of thick networks of intersecting constructs: genealogical anxiety is bound up with stronger patriarchal family structures. Goody and Guichard portrayed two clusters of social features – the “Occidental” (bi-lineal family model, strengthened nuclear family, solid husband-wife relationship, monogamy, loose gender separation, and a higher status of women); and the “Oriental” (patrilineal model, broader family structure, weak husband-wife relationship, tribal importance attributed to genealogy, codes of honor and shame, legitimacy of polygamy, rigid gender separation, a lower status of women, active men, and female passivity). Following these taxonomies, the article explores the relationship between genealogical anxiety and intersecting social commitments in classical and early medieval rabbinic culture: Talmudic and Midrashic stories, as well as an exegetical narrative from an unknown Midrash preserved in the Genizah. It also claims that the earlier sources are proven helpful in reaffirming the claim for a different mode of genealogical anxiety in Babylonian sources.

Palestinian Amoraic Hebrew As A Living Vernacular: An Indication From Morphosyntax

Abstract Presently, most scholars hold that the linguistic status of Rabbinic Hebrew from Byzantine Palestine (380-640 ce) is that of a dead literary language, influenced by Aramaic and earlier varieties of Hebrew, and that Hebrew had already died out as a spoken vernacular in the second or early third century ce. The sources for this variety are rabbinic texts produced by the Palestinian Amoraim and to a lesser degree, epigraphy. The article challenges this view, claiming that such opinions have not been based on a systematic morphosyntactic examination of Palestinian Amoraic Hebrew. The article presents such an analysis of a morphosyntactic structure, namely, pseudo-coordinated verb pairs. Two sub-structures are examined: (I) imperative + imperative and (II) imperative + yiqtol, in Palestinian Amoraic Hebrew, Tannaitic Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew and Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. Palestinian Amoraic Hebrew is found to clearly align with Tannaitic Hebrew, and not Biblical Hebrew and Jewish Palestinian Aramaic.

Staging Rachel: Rabbinic Midrash, Theatrical Mime, and Christian Martyrdom in Late Antiquity

AbstractLamentations Rabbah Proem 24, a late ancient rabbinic midrash, is in many ways a unique text within the entire rabbinic corpus. It presents an extraordinary array of characters (including Abraham, Moses, the Torah, and even the alphabet) who are called upon to placate God, but fail. As their quest proves inconclusive, the biblical Rachel jumps into the fray to tell her story: how out of sisterly compassion she allowed Leah to take her own place in the conjugal bed on “her” wedding night. Disclosing to her sister the secretive “signs” she had shared with Jacob, Rachel crawled under the nuptial bed to respond to Jacob whenever he spoke. This scandalous autobiography transforms an apparent instance of illicit sex, the ideal material for theatrical stage mimes, into an act of martyrdom and sublime compassion. This article argues that the performance culture of the late ancient Mediterranean world provides the key for assessing this text’s originality. We begin with an analysis of the text, drawing attention to its theatrical qualities and its relationships with contemporary visual imagery (mosaics) and texts from outside the rabbinic milieu (Christian Apocrypha). We then examine the casting of midrashic Rachel as a response to both the mimic adulteress and the Christian martyr. Finally, we consider rabbinic familiarity with mime, particularly with its usefulness as a social mediator and agent of collective catharsis. It is precisely these aspects of mimic performance, we argue, that Rachel’s vignette appropriates in this fascinating rabbinic text.

Between Yerushalayim DeLita and Jerusalem—The Memorial Inscription from the Bimah of the Great Synagogue of Vilna

During excavations of the bimah (the platform for reading the Torah) of the 17th-century Great Synagogue of Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania), an important memorial inscription was exposed. This paper describes the new finds associated with the baroque-rococo architecture of the bimah and focuses on the inscription and its meaning. The Hebrew inscription, engraved on a large stone slab, is a complex rabbinic text filled with biblical allusions, symbolism, gematria, and abbreviations. The text describes the donation of a Torah reading table in 1796 in honour of R. Ḥayim ben Ḥayim and of Sarah by their sons, R. Eliezer and Shmuel. The inscription notes the aliyah (emigration) of Ḥayim and Sarah to Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel. The interpretation of the inscription shows the use of multiple messianic motifs. Historical analysis identifies the involvement of the Vilna community with the support of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Ottoman Palestine) and the aliyah of senior scholars and community leaders at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Amongst these figures were Ḥayim ben Ḥayim and Sarah, with Ḥayim ben Ḥayim going on to represent the Vilna community in the Land of Israel as its emissary, distributing charitable donations to the scholarly Ashkenazi community resident in Tiberias, Safed, and later Jerusalem.

Worth Knowing: Talmud Study and the Intellectual Values of High School Students at Liberal Jewish Day Schools

ABSTRACTWhat do Jewish day school students believe constitutes good understanding and worthwhile learning in the context of their encounter with rabbinic texts in the classroom? This article shares findings from an interview study of Jewish day school students in grades 9 through 12 regarding their attitudes toward the study of Talmud. I argue that high school students’ estimations of the value of Talmud study are shaped, not only by individually held tastes, talents, and commitments, but also by a set of shared intellectual values. These values, related to their beliefs about the purposes of learning and what good learning should accomplish for the learner, develop in the context of their schools and communities and frame how students set goals for and assess their own understanding of Talmud.

David Castelli on Nationalism and Universalism

The Jewish Quarterly Review (Fall 2020) Copyright © 2020 Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved. T H E J E W I S H Q U A R T E R LY R E V I E W, Vol. 110, No. 4 (Fall 2020) 610–612 David Castelli on Nationalism and Universalism JESSICA M. MARGLIN AT THE AGE OF twenty-­ seven, David Castelli had a crisis of faith. Born in the Tuscan port city of Livorno in 1836, Castelli was a promising student on the path to rabbinic ordination. He studied with some of Italy’s most influential teachers—­ including Benedetto (Abraham Barukh) Piperno, who also taught Sabato Morais, founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary.1 But his doubts made Castelli abandon the path to the rabbinate; he moved to Pisa, home of the Scuole Normale Superiore, one of Italy’s most venerable seats of Orientalist scholarship. In Tuscany’s most famous university town, he devoted himself to the study of Arabic and Syriac.2 As a colleague and friend remarked ­ after Castelli’s death in 1901, the scholar’s religious crisis was “easily explained.” Castelli’s “acute and logical intellect” made it impossible for him to conform to the “demands of the synagogue, where, as in any other religious institution,” one is required to take part in “indisputable veneration for tradition and practice.” Like Ernest Renan—to whom Castelli was often compared by both his admirers and his detractors—­ the late scholar opted for “complete intellectual liberty.”3 Castelli found this in the “scientific” study of Judaism; ­ after publishing The Messiah according to the Jews in 1874, Castelli assumed a position as professor of Hebrew at the Istituto di Studi Superiori in Florence. In its first year of existence, JQR published Castelli’s only work in En­glish;4 Castelli’s full-­ length essay “The ­ Future Life in Rabbinical Lit­ er­ 1. Arthur Kiron, “Livornese Traces in American Jewish History: Sabato Morais and Elia Benamozegh,” in Per Elia Benamozegh, ed. A. Guetta (Milan, 2001), 46. 2. Christiana Facchini, David Castelli: Ebraismo e scienze delle religioni tra Otto e Novocento (Brescia, 2005), 40–41. 3. Angiolo Orvieto, “Di David Castelli e della sua opera,” in David Castelli, pubblicato in occasione del primo anniversario della morte di Lui per cura del figlio Guido, ed. G. Castelli (Livorno, 1901), 37. 4. In the third issue, published in the spring of 1889, Castelli authored a short philological note, titled “A Conjecture on Job vi.4,” JQR 1.3 o.s. (1889): 286. Castelli on Nationalism—Marglin 611 a­ ture” appeared in 1889. The essay was in many ways pathbreaking—­ one of the first sustained examinations of Jewish conceptions of the afterlife, the resurrection of the dead, and the messianic age in Anglophone scholarship .5 “The ­ Future Life” is a classic example of the kind of Wissenschaft des Judentums most commonly associated with nineteenth-­ century Germany. Castelli’s crisis of faith led him to engage with Judaism as an object of study rather than as a lived religion. This scientific approach infuriated his more famous con­temporary—­and former teacher—­Rabbi Elia Benamozegh. Also hailing from Livorno, Benamozegh took a dif­ fer­ ent approach to Jewish modernity; he combined mysticism and philosophy to argue strongly that Judaism was a universalist faith.6 Most of all, Benamozegh was a believer; he wrote to elicit what he saw as the divine truth of the Jewish tradition—­ not a supposedly scientific truth that was inherently alien to religion. Benamozegh accused Castelli of relativism, the same sin of which Renan was guilty.7 The dislike was mutual; Castelli, in turn, dismissed Benamozegh’s account of Jewish theology as inaccurate, misleading, and confusing.8 Castelli teased clarity out of the Talmud with the aim not of offering guidance but rather of exposing the multiple and often conflicting accounts held within the rabbinic corpus. The tension Castelli observed in rabbinic texts on the afterlife mapped onto debates raging in postunification Italy—­ indeed, in Eu­ rope more broadly—­ over the place of Jews in the nation-­ state. Castelli was deeply influenced by Italian nationalism and his desire for Jews to participate fully as members of a united...

»For they did not change their language« (MekhY Pischa 5): On the Early Medieval Literary Rehebraicisation of Jewish Culture

Following the early commentary on the book of Exodus in the Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael (third century CE), a series of later rabbinic texts with other exegetical agendas praise the children of Israel for remaining loyal to their language identity during the time of the Egyptian bondage. This tradition is found both in Hebrew and in Hebrew-Aramaic rabbinic corpora of the classical period before it is taken up in early medieval works, for the most part written in Hebrew, which attest to a return to Hebrew in part of the Jewish literary production in the early Middle Ages. This paper is about tracing this evolving tradition through changing contexts.

Transfiguration of Moses and Enoch on Heaven and the Adamic condition

In Second Temple Judaism, especially in apocalyptic literature, the encounter between God and believers acquires a distinct visionary accent. Regardless of whether heavenly realities are revealed on earth or the visionary ascends to heaven, the essence is the manifestation of important revelations. Corresponding Old Testament heroes, such as Enoch or Moses, according to apocryphal, Samaritan or rabbinic texts, ascended to the place of God’s presence (a throne room or even a cloud). In addition to receiving relevant soteriological and cosmological knowledge, they underwent transfiguration there. The transfiguration of these characters is very illustrative: they take angelic, royal, and priestly qualities. Divine radiance, shining faces, and magnificent robes are just some examples of the divine characteristics that are acquired. This article, together with the study of these elements, underlines the fact that these divine qualities were described in the literature around the change of era and dedicated to Adam prior to his expulsion from Eden. The closeness between the first man and God in the Garden of Eden was expressed in a number of divine attributes inherent in Adam, the same ones that would later be assumed by Enoch or Moses, among others, in heaven. In this way, the transfiguration of Enoch or Moses is nothing more than a manifestation of the rich Jewish anthropology of an Adamic character.

Fluidity in the Early Formation of the Hebrew Bible

What follows is a survey of the formation of the Hebrew Bible in its formative stages, highlighting the continuing fluidity in the scope of the Jewish Scripture collection for centuries. This is seen from a limited selection of sacred texts in the post-exilic writing of Ezra and Nehemiah. To that time there was no formal fixed collection, though it is clear that most frequent citations or references are to the laws of Moses and likely all of the books of the Pentateuch. There are a few faint references to the Prophets (2 Kings and Ezra 5), but no clear reference to a collection of the Prophets until about 180 BCE in Ben Sira. Examples of this fluidity can be seen in several ancient Jewish texts (Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, and several early rabbinic texts) as well as in several early Christian references when Second Temple Judaism had a major influence on the Jewish-Christian sect, including the witness of several important Hebrew and Christian ancient manuscripts. These examples reflect the continuing fluidity in the shape of the Jewish Scriptures and the early Christian Old Testaments well into the Middle Ages.

Review: Piyyuṭ and Midrash: Form, Genre, and History, by Tzvi Novick

Tzvi Novick, Piyyuṭ and Midrash: Form, Genre, and History . Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements 30. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage, 2019. 235 pp. ISBN 9783525570807. €90.00. In 1938, Menahem Zulay published what is often considered to be the first critical edition of classical piyyutim , Hebrew liturgical poems from late antique Palestine. At the time, scholars had only just begun to publish these long-forgotten works from manuscript fragments rediscovered in the Cairo Genizah. While the edition was nothing less than groundbreaking, Zulay chose to hold off on providing a commentary, such that, in the words of Saul Lieberman, “the book remains closed and sealed in terms of its content.”1 For Lieberman, and for those scholars who came after him, the key to understanding piyyuṭ lies in midrash , rabbinic exegesis, and thus, for the past eight decades, scholars have read piyyuṭ as hierarchically indebted to rabbinic texts. When combined with its baroque aesthetic and the simple fact that much piyyuṭ still remains unpublished, the perception of hierarchy has allowed scholars of late antique Judaism to largely avoid this corpus. Piyyuṭ , it is believed, is hard to penetrate, and anyway, it is largely derivative and unoriginal. Tzvi Novick's learned and subtle new book, Piyyuṭ and Midrash: Form, Genre, and History , seeks to rectify this situation. Over the course of seven chapters, Novick attempts “to build bridges across the disciplinary divide that separates the study of rabbinic literature in late antique Roman Palestine from the study of early (pre-classical and especially classical) piyyuṭ ” (215). In Chapter 1, Novick outlines the terms of his study, the program of the book, and also the ways in which the explicit performative element of piyyuṭ differs from what is usually found in midrash . Much of the chapter takes up the issue of voicing in the two corpora. Novick looks at the way midrash and piyyuṭ each represent the voicing of biblical characters, of God and Israel, and …

Imagining the Temple in Rabbinic Stone: The Evolution of the ʾEven Shetiyah

The mythical ʾeven shetiyah, often translated as the “foundation stone,” marks the physical place where the Jerusalem temples once stood in the rabbinic imagination. In its earliest incarnation it identified the place where the ark of the covenant resided in Solomon's Temple. Over the centuries it absorbed cosmogonic and eventually eschatological meaning. In later post-talmudic rabbinic literature, it adopted another mythic trope—the seal on thetehom. I argue that these two separate narrative strands of a seal on thetehomunderthe Temple and ʾeven shetiyahinthe Temple became intertwined, but only in late (post-talmudic) rabbinic midrash. I trace this evolutionary trend and argue that while the early rabbis both innovated and reinvigorated older biblical and ancient Near Eastern cosmogonic motifs with their ʾeven shetiyah, the later rabbinic texts were influenced by Christian and Muslim competition for spiritual and earthly Jerusalem. The stone that started as a means for rabbinic self-authorization became a reassertion of God's control of history and protection of Israel and the world, but in the process displaced priestly authority.

Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem by Julia Watts Belser (review)

Reviewed by: Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem by Julia Watts Belser Shulamit Shinnar Julia Watts Belser. Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 245 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400941900059X Drawing on an impressive range of theoretical approaches, including disability studies, gender and sexuality studies, and new materialist ecological criticism, Julia Watts Belser's Rabbinic Tales of Destruction provides a rich examination of the rabbinic narratives of the destruction of the Second Temple and its aftermath. Centering around a close analysis of the relevant story cycle found in the fifth chapter of the Babylonian Talmud tractate Gittin, Belser's work makes two important interventions to the study of rabbinic responses to the Temple's destruction and Roman conquest. First, her book brings new focus to the material dimensions of Bavli Gittin's destruction narratives by directly [End Page 447] engaging the graphic descriptions of imperial brutality, sexual violence, and enslavement that suffuse these stories. Through her nuanced readings of the descriptions of violence wrought on body, land, and nation, she elucidates the stories' complex gender and sexual politics and critique of empire. Secondly, her analysis highlights an understudied strain of rabbinic theological understandings of communal catastrophe. In both Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic texts, the Temple's destruction is often understood in covenantal terms, where destruction and exile are viewed as divine responses to Jewish sin. However, Belser argues that Bavli Gittin deviates from this familiar theological framework, eschewing the expected tropes of sin and punishment and articulating a distinctly different "theology of destruction" (xv). In these stories, God's relationship to Jewish catastrophe is markedly different from that conceived in the covenantal framework. Here, it is not God, but the political power of imperial Rome that is the force behind the destruction, and, instead of divine wrath towards Jewish transgression, the text emphasizes God's empathy for Jewish suffering (xiv). The chapters are organized thematically, with each chapter exploring a selection of narratives from Bavli Gittin's story cycle and employing parallel texts from Palestinian rabbinic literature to highlight the unique project of Bavli Gittin. The first two chapters carefully unravel the themes of sexual transgression, sexual violence, and the vulnerability of the captured Jewish body that permeate these tales, noting how these stories subvert the expected gender dynamics associated with the covenantal interpretation of destruction. Chapter 1 begins by exploring the significance of the motif of the "wayward woman" in Palestinian rabbinic narratives of the destruction. In these texts, the "wayward woman" becomes a symbol for "social disorder" and "national danger" (11), whose behavior leads to communal disaster. Thus, the destruction becomes intrinsically tied to the perceived dangers of transgressive female sexuality. However, Bavli Gittin, despite the recurrent reference to the sexual violation of women, avoids the "wayward woman" motif and "refuses to blame women for their own violation" (2). Rather, the tractate highlights the themes of male sexual transgression and virtue, reflecting on both the "depravity of unbridled sexual desire" and the possibility of "men's sexual virtue and restraint" (38). In chapter 2, Belser turns to Bavli Gittin's accounts of rape. In these stories, rape and sexual assault become symbolic for the violation of imperial conquest, conceptualizing "divine woundedness and rabbinic lament" (41). These stories provide further contrast to the tropes found in Palestinian rabbinic accounts of destruction, as here in Bavli Gittin, women's sexual transgressions do not trigger disaster. Furthermore, these acts of sexual violence are not presented as punishments or sanctioned by God. Rather, rape is clearly identified as "an act of violation that reveals the brutality of the conqueror" (41) and God is portrayed as empathizing with the suffering of the victims of Roman conquest. Belser's analysis in these first chapters is exemplary of the careful reading practices required to unpack the shades of meaning within these chilling accounts of sexual violence. Even as she explores the stories' seemingly sympathetic attitude towards victims of sexual violence, she stresses how the deployment of rape as a [End Page 448] symbol to "express divine and rabbinic lament" ultimately silences "the voices of the most direct...

Priestly Aesthetics: Disability and Bodily Difference in Leviticus 21

Leviticus 21:16–23 forbids priests with a wide range of disabilities from offering sacrifice at the altar, a ritual act that Leviticus considers the most sacred responsibility of the priesthood. This essay raises critical questions about the biblical writer’s assumption that God desires the service of those with “perfect” bodies. The essay probes traditional Jewish interpretation of Leviticus 21 and argues that rabbinic texts leach the prohibition of much practical force. Despite offering a path toward more inclusive practice, conventional readings of these texts have left in place power dynamics that presume the inferiority of the disabled body. Yet they also contain the seeds for a conceptual shift that could transform the way contemporary communities engage with disability. Biblical Priests; Disability; Ethics; Jewish Theology; Leviticus 21; Rabbinic Literature; Talmud

Facing the Holy Ark, in Words and in Images

This essay explores depictions of the ark of the covenant in late antique Jewish and Christian texts, as well as ancient art. It explores the interrelationships between the arks of the covenant from the wilderness tabernacle and the first Jerusalem temple, and the ark for Torah scrolls in late antique synagogues. The inaccessibility or invisibility of the arks of the covenant in the tabernacle and temple is contrasted against the visibility and symbolic depictions of the Torah arks in late antique synagogues. Moreover, the author demonstrates how early rabbinic texts depicted Torah scrolls within or alongside the arks of the covenant, fusing all three arks into one. In doing so, the rabbis draw a connection between the late antique present and the biblical past, which can be juxtaposed against claims of discontinuity by other sources from late antiquity.

Rabbis on refugees: theological responses to the treatment of converso migrants in sixteenth-century Candia

This case study considers rabbinic texts that address the migration of converso refugees to Venetian Crete in the mid-sixteenth century. New papal policies and the onset of the Roman Inquisition on mainland Italy prompted a refugee crisis in Candia that led to tensions between the migrants and local Candiote Jews. Coming primarily from Sephardic origins, these migrants were in search of refuge as well as the opportunity to reclaim their Jewish identities after forced conversion; here we consider three letters contained in Takkanot Kandiyah from rabbinic authorities on how to diffuse the situation and approach the converso issue within a halakhic framework.

Методология поиска «исторического Иисуса»: история вопроса, текущее положение и научные перспективы (Methodology of the Search for ‘Historical Jesus’: Background, Current Position and Scientific Perspectives)

Russian Abstract: Основным объектом настоящей работы является направление научной библеистики, которое в западной историографии получило название «поиск исторического Иисуса» (англ. Quest for the historical Jesus): история, методология и ключевая проблематика. «Поиск исторического Иисуса» – это реконструкция жизни исторического Иисуса из Назарета на основании древнейших источников (новозаветные тексты, древнейшие апокрифы, свидетельства древнеримских авторов, раввинистических текстов и т.д.). Используется научная методология, при которой исследователи стараются дистанцироваться от своих религиозных и конфессиональных убеждений. Жизнь Иисуса реконструируется так, как реконструируется жизнь других исторических лиц (Моисея, Гаутамы Будды, Сократа или Авраама Линкольна). English Abstract: The main object of this work is the direction of scientific biblical studies, which in Western historiography was called the “search for historical Jesus” (English Quest for the historical Jesus): history, methodology and key issues. “The Search for the Historical Jesus” is a reconstruction of the life of the historical Jesus of Nazareth based on the most ancient sources (New Testament texts, ancient apocrypha, testimonies of ancient Roman authors, rabbinic texts, etc.). Researchers use a scientific methodology distancing themselves from their religious and religious beliefs. The life of Jesus is reconstructed as the life of other historical persons is reconstructed (Moses, Gautama Buddha, Socrates, or Abraham Lincoln).

Karen B. Stern. Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 312 pp.

Reviewed by: Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity by Karen B. Stern Mika Ahuvia Karen B. Stern. Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 312 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000114 Karen Stern opens a window onto the life of ordinary Jews in the late antique Mediterranean world using an abundant and neglected corpus: graffiti written in Jewish dialects or accompanied by Jewish symbols. Stern demonstrates how [End Page 199] Jews participated in graffiti making in a variety of regions, in an array of public and private places that will dazzle those scholars used to literary sources, which are abstracted from the grittiness of daily life. Stern highlights that surviving legal writings tend to reify differences between Jews, Christians, and others, while graffiti shows Jews sharing worship practices, sporting fandom, and other ritual behavior with inhabitants all over the Mediterranean world. At the same time, as Stern often acknowledges, analyzing the abundance of extant ancient graffiti is rendered difficult by the brevity of graffiti themselves and the fact that ancient sources rarely comment on graffiti. Stern organizes her research thematically into three chapters: the graffiti of devotional spaces, mortuary graffiti, and graffiti in civic spaces. Each of her chapters lays out the evidence with minimal speculation on her part, forcing the reader to try and make sense of the data on their own before she offers her measured and limited hypotheses about the meaning of the extant graffiti at the end of each chapter. In her introduction, Stern guides readers to relinquish their modern understanding of graffiti as a deviant practice, noting that for the ancients it was considered "desirable, even normal" to inscribe one's name on the wall of a synagogue, for example (1). She acknowledges that graffiti is not an emic term but defines graffiti as "always of unofficial character" (quoting Angelos Chaniotis) and finds the capaciousness of this category useful for the many kinds of evidence it amasses for the study of ancient Jewish life (15). Stern places her work in the intellectual trajectory of French theorist Michel de Certeau and German microhistorians. Her intervention is to challenge the "the hegemony of rabbinical texts" for the interpretation of Jewish life; she upholds an approach that centers the archaeological evidence of graffiti in situ "and uses local and regional analogues (often produced by non-Jews) to interpret them—outside of literary texts and outside of twenty-first-century expectations" (8). Rather than reading the rabbis into graffiti, she argues that the data of graffiti have something important to teach us about the rabbis themselves as well as about nonrabbinic Jews. Her first chapter, "Carving Devotion," examines graffiti as a mode of prayer in synagogues, in sacred spaces of other religious communities, at pilgrimage sites, and in open outdoor shrines. As she points out, graffiti reveals "that ancient Jews prayed in a variety of built and natural environments," sometimes alongside other Jews and sometimes alongside others (39). Often the graffiti of devotion, as she terms it, consists only of "I am" and people's names or other very brief statements. She suggests, following Joseph Naveh, that these signature graffiti are "a type of petition, permanently documented in plaster or stone" (51). Literate people encountering this graffiti would read it aloud, reviving the petition, somewhat in the way that we cannot help but read signs or graffiti we encounter as we walk through the world. The relationship between composers of graffiti and later reciters brings to my mind the statement attributed to Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai: "When a student quotes his teacher in this world his lips move in the grave" (B. Yevamot 97a). If the sages were rabbinizing a common idea, it would bear out Stern's assertion that nonrabbinic evidence can illuminate rabbinic texts. [End Page 200] In the chapter on mortuary graffiti, Stern revisits the cemetery of Beth-Sheʿarim. This chapter primarily focuses on a couple of short graffiti texts and the many images found inscribed on the walls there. Many graffiti images are challenging to make sense of: ships, representations of human figures, human figures with weapons, abecedaries, animals...

Sexual Orientation in the Presentation of Joseph's Character in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature

This article explores rabbinic traditions that see in the character of Joseph a figure of uncertain sexual orientation. I examine a series of rabbinic and biblical texts in which an unconventional gender dynamic may be present. While it is true that these biblical and rabbinic texts ran contrary to the normative ideational and behaviorally prescriptive traditions concerning sexuality presented by the main body of biblical and rabbinic texts, it is nonetheless true that the texts I examine invite readers to see an alternative dynamic through their stories. I will employ a variety of methodologies, including philological/critical scholarship, close literary reading, and queer theory, through which we might most profitably examine the interpretative traditions I consider.