Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem

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Julia Watts Belser (Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Georgetown University)

Rabbinic Tales of Destruction

Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem

Julia Watts Belser (Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Georgetown University)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
08 February 2018

Judaism: sacred texts; Criticism & exegesis of sacred texts; Religious aspects of sexuality, gender & relationships

In Rabbinic Tales of Destruction, Julia Watts Belser examines early Jewish accounts of the Roman conquest of Judea. Faced with stories of sexual violence, enslavement, forced prostitution, disability, and bodily risk, Belser argues, our readings of rabbinic narrative must wrestle with the brutal body costs of Roman imperial domination. She brings disability studies, feminist theory, and new materialist ecological thought to accounts of rabbinic catastrophe, revealing how rabbinic discourses of gender, sexuality, and the body are shaped in the shadow of empire.

Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud's longest sustained account of the destruction of the Temple, Belser reveals Bavli Gittin's distinctive sex and gender politics. While Palestinian tales frequently castigate the 'wayward woman' for sexual transgressions that imperil the nation, Bavli Gittin's stories do not portray women's sexuality as a cause of catastrophe. The Bavli's resistance to Rome makes a critical difference. While other rabbinic texts commonly inveigh against women's beauty as the cause of sexual sin, Bavli Gittin's tales express a strikingly egalitarian discourse that laments the vulnerability of the beautiful Jewish body before the conqueror. Bavli Gittin's body politics, Belser maintains, align with a significant theological reorientation. While most early Jewish narratives link the destruction of the Temple to communal sin, Bavli Gittin's account does not explain catastrophe as divine chastisement. Instead of imagining God as the architect of Jewish suffering, it evokes God's empathy with the subjugated Jewish body. As it navigates the ruins of Jerusalem, Bavli Gittin forges a sharp critique of empire. Its critical discourse aims to pierce the power politics of Roman conquest, to protest the brutality of imperial dominance, and to make plain the scar that Roman violence leaves upon Jewish flesh.

By: Julia Watts Belser (Associate Professor of Jewish Studies Associate Professor of Jewish Studies Georgetown University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 157mm, Width: 239mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780190600471
ISBN 10: 0190600470
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 08 February 2018
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction Chapter 1: The Sexual Politics of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Sin in Bavli Gittin Chapter 2: Sex in the Shadow of Rome: Sexual Violence and Theological Lament in Bavli Gittin's Disaster Tales Chapter 3: Conquered Bodies in the Roman Bedroom: The Gender Politics of Beauty in Bavli Gittin's Destruction Tales Chapter 4: Disability Studies and the Destruction of Jerusalem: Rabbi Tsadok and the Subversive Potency of Dissident Flesh Chapter 5: Materiality and Memory: Body, Blood, and Land in Rabbinic Tales of Death and Dismemberment Chapter 6: Romans Before the Rabbis' God: Rabbinic Fantasies of Recompense, Revenge and the Transformation of Flesh Chapter 7: Opulence and Oblivion: Class, Status, and Self Critique in Bavli Gittin's Tales of Feasting and Fasting Postlude: Theology in the Flames: Empathy, Cataclysm, and God's Responsivity to Suffering in Bavli Gittin

Julia Watts Belser is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies in the Theology Department at Georgetown University. She is the author of Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity.

Reviews for Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem

This important book by Julia Watts Belser demands that we look again at rabbinic responses to the Roman conquest of Jerusalem ... [S]he pays particular attention to theoretical studies, including methodologies of related disciplines such as feminist, disability, ecological materialist, and post-colonial studies. In all, Belser brings insights from the crises and successes of our own era in order to reveal new interpretations of these ancient texts. * Susan Marks, Reading Religion *