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By shifting attention from the image of Jews as a textual community to the ways Jews understand and manage their bodies - for example, to their concerns with reproduction and sexuality, menstruation and childbirth- this volume contributes to a revisioning of what Jews and Judaism are and have been. The project of re-membering the Jewish body has both historical and constructive motivations. As a constructive project, this book describes, renews, and participates in the complex and ongoing modern discussion about the nature of Jewish bodies and the place of bodies in Judaism.
"The greatest strength of the book is the issue it poses: the notion that Jews are not simply a people of the book but also a people of the body. This is a dimension of Jewish experience that has been sorely neglected and that the book puts on the agenda of Jewish studies through its consideration of a number of dimensions of the embodiedness of Jewish life." — Judith Plaskow, Manhattan College
"Eilberg-Schwartz has identified an overlooked area of inquiry and has gathered together a collection of essays that in the aggregate suggests the riches awaiting further inquiry. This is the kind of book which will be cited frequently as a turning point in the development of a crucial research agenda." — Martin S. Jaffee, University of Washington
Acknowledgments
Introduction: People of the Body
1. The Problem of the Body for the People of the Book
Howard Eilberg-Schwartz
2. The Garden of Eden and Sexuality in Early Judaism
Gary Anderson
3. The Great Fat Massacre: Sex, Death, and the Grotesque Body in the Talmud
Daniel Boyarin
4. Mizvot Built into the Body: Tkhines for Niddah, Pregnancy, and Childbirth
Chava Weissler
5. Purifying the Body in the Name of the Soul: The Problem of the Body in Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah
Lawrence Fine
6. Images of God's Feet: Some Observations on the Divine Body in Judaism
Elliot R. Wolfson
7. God's Body: Theological and Ritual Roles of Shi'ur Komah
Naomi Janowitz
8. The Body Never Lies: The Body in Medieval Jewish Folk Narratives
Eli Yasif
9. The Jewish Body: A Foot-note
Sander Gilman
10. (G)nos(e)ology: The Cultural Construction of the Other
Jay Geller
11. Zionism as an Erotic Revolution
David Biale
12. Menstruation and Identity: The Meaning of Niddah for Moroccan Women Immigrants to Israel
Rahel Wasserfall
13. Why Jewish Princesses Don't Sweat: Desire and Consumption in Postwar American Jewish Culture
Riv-Ellen Prell
14. Challenging Male/Female Complementarity: Jewish Lesbians and the Jewish Tradition
Rebecca Alpert
Contributors
Index