A01=Miriam B. Peskowitz
Author_Miriam B. Peskowitz
Category=JBSF
Category=JBSR
Category=NHC
Category=NHD
Category=NHG
Category=QRJ
challenges traditional assumptions
classic form of religion
critical moment in jewish history
destruction of jerusalem temple
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
feminist interpretation
judaisms historical development
new incarnations of judaism
rabbinic judaism
rabbis of roman palestine
study of ancient spinning
understanding of early rabbinic judaism
Product details
- ISBN 9780520209671
- Weight: 408g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 26 Nov 1997
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Miriam Peskowitz offers a dramatic revision to our understanding of early rabbinic Judaism. Using a wide range of sources - archaeology, legal texts, grave goods, technology, art, and writings in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin - she challenges traditional assumptions regarding Judaism's historical development. Following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by Roman armies in 70 C.E., new incarnations of Judaism emerged. Of these, rabbinic Judaism was the most successful, becoming the classical form of the religion. Through ancient stories involving Jewish spinners and weavers, Peskowitz re-examines this critical moment in Jewish history and presents a feminist interpretation in which gender takes center stage. She shows how notions of female and male were developed by the rabbis of Roman Palestine and why the distinctions were so important in the formation of their religious and legal tradition. Rabbinic attention to women, men, sexuality, and gender took place within the 'ordinary tedium of everyday life, in acts that were both familiar and mundane'.
While spinners and weavers performed what seemed like ordinary tasks, their craft was in fact symbolic of larger gender and sexual issues, which Peskowitz deftly explicates. Her study of ancient spinning and her abundant source material will set new standards in the fields of gender studies, Jewish studies, and cultural studies.
Miriam B. Peskowitz is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Florida and coeditor, with Laura Levitt, of Judaism since Gender (1996).
