Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (New Historicism-Studies in Cultural Poetics , No 25)
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Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (New Historicism-Studies in Cultural Poetics , No 25)
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.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0
Post-modern rhetoric with pre-modern methodology:
Boyarin fails miserably in this tome to make use of the critical scholarship that has been written in the past 30 years on the rabbis and on rabbinic literature. He speaks of Hellenistic Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism rather than of the individual authors and editors of texts who lived distinct lives and thought distinct thoughts. To make the error clear: what Boyarin does is equivalent to someone writing a book in the future about "Jewish" views of sex in 21st century America and citing Boyarin and Boteach... more info
the Talmud through a feminist, po-mo lens:
you don't have to be a radical traditionalist to understand how Boyarin deliberately misinterprets the Talmud and projects onto it his own feminist, post-modernist ideas.
brilliant speculation:
Boyarin manages to cover some very interesting Talmudic material on gender and sexuality in an intelligent and informed manner. He also has a deep understanding of cultural theory, and argues for a number of exceptionally striking theses regarding Talmuds' (deliberate plural: he contrasts the Babylonian Talmud with the Jerusalem or Land of Israel Talmud) relationships to sexuality, gender, and embodiment. HOWEVER, Boyarin's claims are so wide-ranging and fundamental that it would require the study of a... more info
A taboo subject approached openly:
This books approaches in a very open way the issue of sex in the Talmud. Not an easy thing to do... Yet it manages to do so well, without excessively offending one view or another. Through its approach, it probably expores one of the earliest expressions of feminism in Judaism.
