Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature

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A01=DR. S Mira Balberg
A01=Mira Balberg
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
ancient judaism
antiquity
Author_DR. S Mira Balberg
Author_Mira Balberg
automatic-update
bible
biblical language
biblical law
biblical practices
bodily self
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBLA
Category=HRAX
Category=HRJ
Category=NHC
Category=QRAX
Category=QRJ
consciousness
COP=United States
cultural studies
Delivery_Pre-order
early rabbis
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
greco roman mediterranean world
history of judaism
human environment
jewish studies
judaism
Language_English
mishnah
nonhuman environment
PA=Temporarily unavailable
palestinian legal codex
philosophy of halakah
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
rabbinic texts
religion
religious
religious studies
ritual impurity
ritual purity
s mark taper foundation imprint in jewish studies series
self making
self reflection
softlaunch
spiritual
subjectivity

Product details

  • ISBN 9780520280632
  • Weight: 499g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 15 Feb 2014
  • Publisher: University of California Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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This book explores the ways in which the early rabbis reshaped biblical laws of ritual purity and impurity and argues that the rabbis' new purity discourse generated a unique notion of a bodily self. Focusing on the Mishnah, a Palestinian legal codex compiled around the turn of the third century CE, Mira Balberg shows how the rabbis constructed the processes of contracting, conveying, and managing ritual impurity as ways of negotiating the relations between one's self and one's body and, more broadly, the relations between one's self and one's human and nonhuman environments. With their heightened emphasis on subjectivity, consciousness, and self-reflection, the rabbis reinvented biblically inherited language and practices in a way that resonated with central cultural concerns and intellectual commitments of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature adds a new dimension to the study of practices of self-making in antiquity by suggesting that not only philosophical exercises but also legal paradigms functioned as sites through which the self was shaped and improved.
Mira Balberg is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University.