Defining Jewish Difference

by Berkowitz, Beth A.

• ISBN13: 9781107013711
• ISBN10: 1107013712
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-19
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

This book traces the interpretive career of Leviticus 18:3, a verse that forbids Israel from imitating its neighbors. Beth A. Berkowitz shows that ancient, medieval, and modern exegesis of this verse provides an essential backdrop for today's conversations about Jewish assimilation and minority identity more generally. The story of Jewishness that this book tells may surprise many modern readers for whom religious identity revolves around ritual and worship. In Lev. 18:3's story of Jewishness, sexual practice and cultural habits instead loom large. The readings in this book are on a micro-level, but their implications are far-ranging: Berkowitz transforms both our notion of Bible-reading and our sense of how Jews have defined Jewishness.

Table of Contents

Introduction: law, identity, and Leviticus 18:3

The question of Israelite distinctiveness: paradigms of separatism in Leviticus 18:3

Allegory and ambiguity: Jewish identity in Philo's De Congressu

A narrative of neighbors: rethinking universalism and particularism in patristic and rabbinic writings

The limits of 'their laws' in midrash halakhah

A short history of the people of Israel from the patriarchs to the Messiah: constructions of Jewish difference in Leviticus rabbah

Syncretism and anti-syncretism in the Babylonian Talmud

The judaization of reason: the Tosafists, Nissim Gerondi, and Joseph Colon

Women's wear and men's suits: Ovadiah Yosef's and Moshe Feinstein's discourses of Jewishness

Conclusion: an 'upside-down people'?

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