A01=Jane Kanarek
Author_Jane Kanarek
Category=DSM
Category=QR
Category=QRJ
Category=QRJF5
Category=QRVP7
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Feminism
Gender Studies
Jewish Studies
masculinity
Mishnah
rabbinic literature
Sotah
Talmud
Product details
- ISBN 9781684582990
- Weight: 313g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 08 Dec 2025
- Publisher: Brandeis University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A feminist reading of one of the most troubling tractates of the Talmud.
Beyond Brutality draws on feminist analysis and gender studies to examine tractate Sotah of the Babylonian Talmud as a literary unit. By interrogating how, why, and where women are invisible within Bavli Sotah, Jane Kanarek brings to light a ubiquitous female presence throughout the text. Despite the brutality of the sotah ritual—in which the woman accused of adultery is put through a divine ordeal intended to reveal her innocence or her guilt—this book demonstrates that Bavli Sotah is not primarily concerned with describing the sotah ritual or establishing male control over women. Instead, Bavli Sotah becomes a pedagogical text in which the sotah is secondary to moral and sinning men. As the sotah herself fades into the background, the sotah ritual nevertheless overflows its boundaries and weaves its way through a range of other topics within the tractate. In the process, Bavli Sotah teaches its audience who transmits and how one transmits rabbinic culture.
Beyond Brutality draws on feminist analysis and gender studies to examine tractate Sotah of the Babylonian Talmud as a literary unit. By interrogating how, why, and where women are invisible within Bavli Sotah, Jane Kanarek brings to light a ubiquitous female presence throughout the text. Despite the brutality of the sotah ritual—in which the woman accused of adultery is put through a divine ordeal intended to reveal her innocence or her guilt—this book demonstrates that Bavli Sotah is not primarily concerned with describing the sotah ritual or establishing male control over women. Instead, Bavli Sotah becomes a pedagogical text in which the sotah is secondary to moral and sinning men. As the sotah herself fades into the background, the sotah ritual nevertheless overflows its boundaries and weaves its way through a range of other topics within the tractate. In the process, Bavli Sotah teaches its audience who transmits and how one transmits rabbinic culture.
Jane Kanarek is Professor of Rabbinics and Dean of Faculty at Hebrew College. She is author of Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law and coeditor of Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination.
