Why Arent Jewish Women Circumcised

Author : Shaye J. D. Cohen
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520212509
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? written by Shaye J. D. Cohen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-09-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book represents engaged scholarship at its very best. Cohen presents the vast range of texts at his command with brevity and wit. Elegantly written, this is a very stimulating book that is sure to provoke admiration, discussion, and controversy."—David Biale, author of Cultures of the Jews "A distinguished and wide-ranging work of scholarship. Cohen’s definitive discussion of the covenant of circumcision enhances our understanding of Jewish identity formation, women’s status in Judaism, Jewish-Christian polemic, and the impact of diverse cultural environments on the evolution of Jewish tradition."—Judith R. Baskin, author of Midrashic Women

Author : Shaye J. D. Cohen
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 052092049X
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? written by Shaye J. D. Cohen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-09-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why aren't Jewish women circumcised? This improbable question, first advanced by anti-Jewish Christian polemicists, is the point of departure for this wide-ranging exploration of gender and Jewishness in Jewish thought. With a lively command of a wide range of Jewish sources—from the Bible and the Talmud to the legal and philosophical writings of the Middle Ages to Enlightenment thinkers and modern scholars—Shaye J. D. Cohen considers the varied responses to this provocative question and in the process provides the fullest cultural history of Jewish circumcision available.

Author : Elizabeth Wyner Mark
Publisher : UPNE
ISBN 13 : 9781584653073
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Covenant of Circumcision written by Elizabeth Wyner Mark and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2003 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars and rabbis examine the complicated history and contemporary challenges of the Jewish rite of circumcision.

Author : Harvey E. Goldberg
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520227530
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Life of Judaism written by Harvey E. Goldberg and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-12-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers readers an insider's view into the ways Judaism is lived and experienced. it presents narrative and ethnographic accounts of present day Jewish practices the rituals, communities, and political involvement.

Author : Lawrence A. Hoffman
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226347837
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Covenant of Blood written by Lawrence A. Hoffman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central to both biblical narrative and rabbinic commentary, circumcision has remained a defining rite of Jewish identity, a symbol so powerful that challenges to it have always been considered taboo. Lawrence Hoffman seeks to find out why circumcision holds such an important place in the Jewish psyche. He traces the symbolism of circumcision through Jewish history, examining its evolution as a symbol of the covenant in the post-exilic period of the Bible and its subsequent meaning in the formative era of Mishnah and Talmud. In the rabbinic system, Hoffman argues, circumcision was neither a birth ritual nor the beginning of the human life cycle, but a rite of covenantal initiation into a male "life line." Although the evolution of the rite was shaped by rabbinic debates with early Christianity, the Rabbis shared with the church a view of blood as providing salvation. Hoffman examines the particular significance of circumcision blood, which, in addition to its salvific role, contrasted with menstrual blood to symbolize the gender dichotomy within the rabbinic system. His analysis of the Rabbis' views of circumcision and menstrual blood sheds light on the marginalization of women in rabbinic law. Differentiating official mores about gender from actual practice, Hoffman surveys women's spirituality within rabbinic society and examines the roles mothers played in their sons' circumcisions until the medieval period, when they were finally excluded.

Author : Leonard B. Glick
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199884234
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Marked in Your Flesh written by Leonard B. Glick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book of Genesis tells us that God made a covenant with Abraham, promising him a glorious posterity on the condition that he and all his male descendents must be circumcised. For thousands of years thereafter, the distinctive practice of circumcision served to set the Jews apart from their neighbors. The apostle Paul rejected it as a worthless practice, emblematic of Judaism's fixation on physical matters. Christian theologians followed his lead, arguing that whereas Christians sought spiritual fulfillment, Jews remained mired in such pointless concerns as diet and circumcision. As time went on, Europeans developed folklore about malicious Jews who performed sacrificial murders of Christian children and delighted in genital mutilation. But Jews held unwaveringly to the belief that being a Jewish male meant being physically circumcised and to this day even most non-observant Jews continue to follow this practice. In this book, Leonard B. Glick offers a history of Jewish and Christian beliefs about circumcision from its ancient origins to the current controversy. By the turn of the century, more and more physicians in America and England--but not, interestingly, in continental Europe--were performing the procedure routinely. Glick shows that Jewish American physicians were and continue to be especially vocal and influential champions of the practice which, he notes, serves to erase the visible difference between Jewish and gentile males. Informed medical opinion is now unanimous that circumcision confers no benefit and the practice has declined. In Jewish circles it is virtually taboo to question circumcision, but Glick does not flinch from asking whether this procedure should continue to be the defining feature of modern Jewish identity.

Author : Harvey E. Goldberg
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520206939
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Jewish Passages written by Harvey E. Goldberg and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-10-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Goldberg's breadth of knowledge is particularly impressive. Here is a scholar who has read everything, and has produced a rich, first-rate book that is both comprehensive and accessible, making Jewish customs meaningful even to non-specialists. A scholarly achievement that is also a great bar-mitzvah gift, with tremendous value for anyone in Jewish Studies including rabbis and members of synagogue study groups."—Jack Kugelmass, Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor and Director, Jewish Studies Program at Arizona State University "Sweeping in its reach and richly informative in its details. Jewish Passages offers a treasury of wonderfully interesting information. This is a work that will not be lost. " Samuel C. Heilman, author of When a Jew Dies

Author : Shaye J. D. Cohen
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520226933
Total Pages : 444 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Beginnings of Jewishness written by Shaye J. D. Cohen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of the notion of Jewishness from c. 200 BCE to c. 200 CE. Reasonable and well-informed people disputed whether a given person was Jewish or not; Cohen opens by discussing just such an argument, about Herod the Great.

Author : Daniel Boyarin
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520920361
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book A Radical Jew written by Daniel Boyarin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1994-10-14 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel Boyarin turns to the Epistles of Paul as the spiritual autobiography of a first-century Jewish cultural critic. What led Paul—in his dramatic conversion to Christianity—to such a radical critique of Jewish culture? Paul's famous formulation, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, no male and female in Christ," demonstrates the genius of Christianity: its concern for all people. The genius of Judaism is its validation of genealogy and cultural, ethnic difference. But the evils of these two thought systems are the obverse of their geniuses: Christianity has threatened to coerce universality, while ethnic difference is one of the most troubled issues in modern history. Boyarin posits a "diaspora identity" as a way to negotiate the pitfalls inherent in either position. Jewishness disrupts categories of identity because it is not national, genealogical, or even religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension with one another. It is analogous with gender: gender identity makes us different in some ways but not in others. An exploration of these tensions in the Pauline corpus, argues Boyarin, will lead us to a richer appreciation of our own cultural quandaries as male and female, gay and straight, Jew and Palestinian—and as human beings.

Author : Daniel Boyarin
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520917125
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.2X/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Carnal Israel written by Daniel Boyarin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1993-09-17 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with a startling endorsement of the patristic view of Judaism—that it was a "carnal" religion, in contrast to the spiritual vision of the Church—Daniel Boyarin argues that rabbinic Judaism was based on a set of assumptions about the human body that were profoundly different from those of Christianity. The body—specifically, the sexualized body—could not be renounced, for the Rabbis believed as a religious principle in the generation of offspring and hence in intercourse sanctioned by marriage. This belief bound men and women together and made impossible the various modes of gender separation practiced by early Christians. The commitment to coupling did not imply a resolution of the unequal distribution of power that characterized relations between the sexes in all late-antique societies. But Boyarin argues strenuously that the male construction and treatment of women in rabbinic Judaism did not rest on a loathing of the female body. Thus, without ignoring the currents of sexual domination that course through the Talmudic texts, Boyarin insists that the rabbinic account of human sexuality, different from that of the Hellenistic Judaisms and Pauline Christianity, has something important and empowering to teach us today.