Papers by Charlotte Fonrobert
Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & …, 2001
... the "Oven of Akhnai." Both the Palestinian Talmud (Mo'ed katan 3:1, 81c-d) and... more ... the "Oven of Akhnai." Both the Palestinian Talmud (Mo'ed katan 3:1, 81c-d) and the Babylonian Talmud (Baba metzia 58b-59b) provide ... declared to be ritually pure, he sits down upon the ground, and "his eyes streamed with tears (zalgu einav dema'oi)"26 God's immediate ...
... I therefore wish to thank first and foremost Emily-Jane Cohen, the current editor of the huma... more ... I therefore wish to thank first and foremost Emily-Jane Cohen, the current editor of the humanities at Stanford Uni-versity Press for her ... Finally, I would like to thank my colleague and friend VeredShem-tov, whose unending support in every respect made this work possible. ...
The article reexamines the Jewish character of the Syriac translation of theDidascalia Apostoloru... more The article reexamines the Jewish character of the Syriac translation of theDidascalia Apostolorum.Whereas this text is commonly read as a Jewish-Christian text, theauthorial voice never identifies itself in these terms. The verycategory of Jewish Christianity can be questioned in light of theDidascalia.The Jewish character of the document is doubly reflected in thevoice of the author(s) as well as among the heretics against whom itpolemicizes. TheDidascalia's heresiology clearly indicates a diversity of Jewish heterodoxpractices which are partially echoed in the rabbinic tradition. Basedon the author's familiarity with some of the rabbinic traditions, thepaper suggests that theDidascaliacan be read as a counter-Mishnah for the disciples of Jesus. In addition,the article explores the parallelisms between theDidascalia's biblical hermeneutic and some of the rabbinic midrashic tradition. Thisprovides grounds for reading theDidascalia's voice as a Jewish voice. Ultimate...
Introduction Part I: 1. Rabbinic authorship as a collective enterprise Martin S. Jaffee 2. The or... more Introduction Part I: 1. Rabbinic authorship as a collective enterprise Martin S. Jaffee 2. The orality of Rabbinic writing Elizabeth Shanks Alexander 3. Social and institutional settings of Rabbinic literature Jeffrey L. Rubenstein 4. The political geography of Rabbinic texts Seth Schwartz Part II: 5. Rabbinic Midrash and ancient Jewish biblical interpretation Steven D. Fraade 6. The Judaean legal tradition and the Halakhah of the Mishnah Shaye J. D. Cohen 7. Roman law and Rabbinic legal composition Catherine Hezser 8. Middle Persian culture and Babylonian sages: accommodation and resistance in the shaping of Rabbinic legal tradition Yaakov Elman 9. Jewish visionary tradition in Rabbinic literature Michael D. Swartz 10. The almost invisible presence of the other: multi-lingual puns in Rabbinic literature Galit Hasan-Rokem Park III: 11. The 'other' in Rabbinic literature Christine Hayes 12. Regulating the human body: Rabbinic legal discourse and the making of Jewish gender Ch...
Handbuch Jüdische Studien
Jewish Studies
Eruv is a term coined in the rabbinic Hebrew of the Mishnah (late second century ce). It refers t... more Eruv is a term coined in the rabbinic Hebrew of the Mishnah (late second century ce). It refers to a rabbinic ritual construct, mostly for urban Jewish dwelling, that emerged at a particular moment in Jewish cultural history and was subsequently developed and adapted to different historical circumstances all the way to the 21st century. Difficult to translate, it refers first and foremost to a rabbinic ritual construct having to do with rabbinic Sabbath law and the prohibitions of weekday activities associated with it. The verbal root for the nominal form eruv in rabbinic Hebrew suggests mingling, mixing, or merging. Either food, or the residential community of neighbors and their residential domains, or even halakhic prohibition and permissibility suggest themselves as possible referents for the intended ritual act of “merging.” The fact is that in its earliest rabbinic use the term refers specifically to food in two different but related contexts. First, eruv refers to the food co...
Talmudic Transgressions
Did not Rabbah bar Bar Ḥana state in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan: Jerusalem-if not for (the fact th... more Did not Rabbah bar Bar Ḥana state in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan: Jerusalem-if not for (the fact that) its gates were locked at night, would the Sabbath restrictions applicable to a public domain have been imposed on it? And (has not) Ulla, too, stated that the city gateways of Maḥuza, if not for (the fact that) their doors are locked, would be subject to the restriction of a public domain? b. Eruvin 6b, emphasis added … Dadurch, daß die Tür gleichsam ein Gelenk zwischen dem Raum des Menschen und alles, was außerhalb desselben ist, setzt, hebt sie die Trennung zwischen dem Innen und dem Außen auf. Gerade weil sie auch geöffnet werden kann, gibt ihre Geschlossenheit das Gefühl eines stärkeren Abgeschlossenseins gegen alles jenseits dieses Raumes, als die blosse ungegliederte Wand. Diese ist stumm, aber die Tür spricht.
Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues, 2015
The Individual in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, 2013
The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, 2007
The study of the cultural constructions of gender in rabbinic literature is a relatively young fi... more The study of the cultural constructions of gender in rabbinic literature is a relatively young field, certainly compared to other literatures. Although already in the seventies Jewish feminist critics joined their colleagues in different religious contexts to critique the encrusted patriarchal traditions of Judaism, serious analyses of the workings of gender in the literature produced by the Late Antique rabbis began only in the nineties of the past century. Influenced by Michel Foucault's work as well as academic feminist theory, scholars started to move beyond the somewhat one-dimensional analytic and critical categories of "sexism," "misogyny," and "patriarchy" that had inspired the earlier feminist critics. Now, Jewish "sexuality" as encoded by rabbinic texts came to have a history and cultural context (Daniel Boyarin, Michael Satlow), as did the Jewish "body," both male and female (Boyarin, Charlotte Fonrobert). Rabbinic "work" (that is, descriptions of productive labor and laborers) became gendered (Miriam Peskowitz), as did rabbinic thinking about "space" (Cynthia Baker). Moreover, as gender-defined here as knowledge about sexual difference-has evolved as an analytic category, rabbinic texts have come to be viewed as riddled with tensions and ruptures in gender perspectives. This lends a new dynamic quality to the rabbinic literature. No longer do these texts merely reflect the gender economy of the supposed sociohistoric reality from which they emerge, but they have come to be viewed as actively engaging the various gender possibilities in their cultural universe, favoring some, rejecting others, which however may leave traces within a text. Rabbinic thinking about and representations of the body have played a central role in all of this work. But as of yet, no systematic account exists as to how the body is represented, especially in rabbinic legal texts. Clearly, to the degree that Jewish cultures have been shaped by the halakhic perspectives of their rabbinic elites, such an account is crucial in order to understand how gender works in Jewish cultures in
Journal of the History of Sexuality, 2001
Late antique rabbinic literature makes repeated references to decrees that were ordained by a &qu... more Late antique rabbinic literature makes repeated references to decrees that were ordained by a "government" (variously designated but rarely specified historically) and that prohibit the observance of a list of Jewish practices.1 In their emphasis on bodily rituals, such decrees seem intended to undermine the continuity ofthe Jews as a corporeal commu? nity, which is exactly the light in which rabbinic texts cast them. Tradi? tional historicists have expended considerable effort on dating and contextualizing these decrees.2 However, precisely because the rabbinic texts omit specific historical references, such as the names of rulers or locales, these efforts have more often than not been inconclusive. My intention here is not to comb the lists for historical references either to
Journal for the Study of Judaism, 2007
Images, 2011
This essay takes as its starting point the observation that the earliest manifestation of the reg... more This essay takes as its starting point the observation that the earliest manifestation of the regulations concerning the eruv (hatzerot) can be found in the Mishnah (late second or early third century C.E.). A careful reading of the early rabbinic texts demonstrates that the eruv shapes a community’s relationship to the local space it inhabits in significant ways that are predicated neither on ownership nor on control over that space. Rather, that relationship is based on a set of negotiations with those who share the space, in rabbinic times predominantly neighbors, and later also jurisdictions. Further, as a tool of drawing symbolic Jewish maps, the rabbinic eruv enhances the concept of multidimensionality of space, as one map—a rabbinic map—of signification is superimposed on space without control over it. As such, the eruv is quintessentially the product of a diaspora imagination, not merely in a historical sense of a post-70 C.E. reality, but in the political sense of inhabitin...
Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2000 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stan... more Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2000 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva. Menstrual purity : Rabbinic ...
Journal for The Study of Judaism, 2007
AJS Review, 2007
Thus we are told in one of the most famous narratives in talmudic literature, in its most elabora... more Thus we are told in one of the most famous narratives in talmudic literature, in its most elaborate and complex version in the Babylonian Talmud. The late ancient and early medieval rabbinic popularity of Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai's (henceforth Rashbi) sojourn in the cave is demonstrated by the wide distribution of the motif in various rabbinic texts. It later gained additional prominence in the Jewish collective imagination to such a degree that no less than the composition of the Zohar was attributed to Rashbi; indeed, the text was considered a product of his sojourn in the cave. As is the case with other extensive narratives in the Babylonian Talmud about early rabbinic sages from the days of the Mishnah, different and most likely earlier versions of the whole or parts of this story can be found elsewhere in rabbinic literature. Others have gone about the task of carefully assembling and comparing the versions of the story, and various interpretations of it have been offered. S...
AJS Review, 2011
It was the title of this little book (The Birth of Judaism from the Spirit of Christianity: Five ... more It was the title of this little book (The Birth of Judaism from the Spirit of Christianity: Five Lectures Concerning the Origins of Rabbinic Judaism) 1 that caught my immediate attention. Of course, that is the intent of any title. But this book's title, the published version of five ...
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Papers by Charlotte Fonrobert