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Tractate Gittin of the Mishnah is located in the Order of Women and discusses divorce proceedings. Chapters 4 and 5 of the Tractate address a specific topic??the improvement of the world?? and list a number of rules (most of them devoted to women and gender issues) which were enacted so as to improve a certain undesirable condition. This volume provides a feminist commentary on these gender-relevant mishnaic texts, and on the commentary of the Babylonian Talmud on them. The Babylonian commentary includes an extended literary unit that describes and comments on the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple. Anat Israeli and Tal Ilan address the gendered issues that arise from this literary unit and raise the question of women?s place (and victimhood) in the male economy of war.

In this volume, Tal Ilan presents a feminist commentary on the first three mishnaic tractates of Seder Zera'im (Seeds) that have no Babylonian commentary. The first one, Pe'ah, is about charity. The commentary shows that, even though women in antiquity were poorer than men, and the Bible was aware of this, this tractate actually ignores them completely. Demai, the second tractate, is about doubtful tithing. Because it devotes much space to a sectarian organization known as the havurah, it is interesting to discover that this sect included women among its members. The third tractate, kil'ayim, is about forbidden mixtures - mixed breeding among animals, mixed weaving of two sorts of thread; the sowing of mixed crops in a field, or working the land with two different animals hitched together. The tractate is full of gendered metaphors that are discussed in detail.

This is a biography of Queen Berenice, the daughter of King Agrippa I, sister of King Agrippa II, wife of two kings and lover of the emperor designate Flavius Titus. A Jew of the 1st century, she witnessed some of the foundational events of her time like the emergence of Christianity and the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, is. She met and socialized with the most important people of her day - Philo the Philosopher (who was at one time her brother-in-law), Paul the Apostle (whose trial she witnessed) and Josephus the Historian who told part of her story.

La literatura rabínica, conocida también como la literatura de los Sabios o del judaísmo clásico, comprende la Misná-Tosefta y el Talmud, que forman el segundo canon del judaísmo y que fueron escritos en Palestina y Mesopotamia durante la Antigüedad Tardía (aproximadamente entre el 200 y el 800 de la Era Común), así como numerosos comentarios al texto bíblico o midrashim. Con frecuencia esta literatura se refiere a las mujeres bíblicas y revisa los planteamientos bíblicos relacionados con el género. Este volumen está compuesto por quince contribuciones y una extensa introducción. En ellas se examina la representación de estas mujeres desde la perspectiva y las inquietudes de los rabinos. También se explica cómo los Sabios adaptaron y actualizaron las cuestiones concernientes al género en una amplia variedad de textos rabínicos que datan de este dilatado período.

This volume in the Bible and Women series is devoted to rabbinic literature from late Jewish antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Fifteen contributions feature different approaches to the question of biblical women and gender and encompass a wide variety of rabbinic corpora, including the Mishnah-Tosefta, halakhic and aggadic midrashim, Talmud, and late midrash. Some essays analyze biblical law and gender relations as they are reflected in the rabbinic sages'argumentation, while others examine either the rabbinic portrayal of a certain woman or a group of women or the role of biblical women in a specific rabbinic context. Contributors include Judith R. Baskin, Yuval Blankovsky, Alexander A. Dubrau, Cecilia Haendler, Tal Ilan, Gail Labovitz, Moshe Lavee, Lorena Miralles-Maciá, Ronit Nikolsky, Susanne Plietzsch, Natalie C. Polzer, Olga I. Ruiz-Morell, Devora Steinmetz, Christiane Hannah Tzuberi, and Dvora Weisberg.

Rabbinical literature forms the second canon of Judaism: Mishnah and Talmud, which were written in Palestine and Mesopotamia between 200 and 800 CE. The basis of these texts is the Hebrew Bible. Rabbinical literature often refers to both biblical women and biblical concepts of gender. Drawing on the latest research findings, the contributions in this volume examine how biblical women have been represented, edited, and seen anew in this extensive body of literature.

Tal Ilan explores the real, as against the ideal social, political and religious status of women in Palestinian Judaism of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The main conclusions of this investigations are that extreme religious groups in Judaism of the period influenced other groups, classes and factions to tighten their control of women and represent the ideal relationships beween men and women as requiring greater chastity, in order to prove their piety. However, the lives of real women, over and against their representation in the literature of the time, and their relationships to men as opposed to the ideals represented by legal codes, were much more varied and nuanced. This book integrates both Jewish and Early Christian sources together with a feminist critique.'This book is a tour de force - a major piece of research and a'must read'for all concerned with the recovery of women's history.'Judith Romney Wegner in Journal of Biblical Literature 2 (1997), pp. 354'This fine collection of carefully analysed data will have lasting value...'Martin Goodman in Journal of Roman Studies vol. 88 (1998), p. 189'The scope of the work is impressive.'Joshua Schwartz in Journal of Jewish Studies 1 (1997), pp. 156

Die Bedeutung von Wein im Judentum ist seit Jahrhunderten Teil jüdisch-religiöser Diskurse. Darf Wein getrunken werden? Von wem? Und vor allem welcher Wein? Dies sind nur einige Fragen mit denen sich Rabbinen, Philosophen, Händler und jüdische Menschen in Deutschland und in der Welt auseinandersetzen. Standen in der Forschung bislang vor allem religiöse Gesichtspunkte im Fokus, hebt Wein und Judentum kulturgeschichtlich relevante Texte und Erscheinungen in den Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung. Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes reichen dabei zeitlich von der Spätantike, insbesondere von den bis heute grundlegenden erzählenden Texten der rabbinischen Literatur, über das Mittelalter mit seinen zahllosen Zeugnissen – von magischen Praktiken bis hin zu Parodien – bis in die Neuzeit, in der Wein nicht nur in philosophischer Hinsicht bedacht wurde, sondern in der Juden auch als Weinhändler aktiv waren und der Umgang mit Wein im säkularen Kontext zu einem wichtigen kulturellen Faktor wurde. Immer wieder wird dabei die Ambivalenz des Getränkes deutlich, das eben Segen und Fluch bedeuten konnte und dessen Genuss zu unterschiedlichen Zeiten mit wechselnden Begründungen sanktioniert wurde.

In this book various authors explore how rabbinic traditions that were formulated in the Land of Israel migrated to Jewish study houses in Babylonia. The authors demonstrate how the new location and the unique literary character of the Babylonian Talmud combine to create new and surprising texts out of the old ones. Some authors concentrate on inner rabbinic social structures that influence the changes the traditions underwent. Others show the influence of the host culture on the metamorphosis of the traditions. The result is a complex study of cultural processes, as shaped by a unique historical moment.