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Analyzing early Jewish accounts of the destruction of the Second Temple, Julia Watts Belser illuminates the brutal body costs of Roman conquest. Drawing on disability studies, feminist theory, and new materialist ecological thought, Belser reveals how rabbinic discourses of gender, sexuality, and the body are shaped in the shadow of empire.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Sexual Politics of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Sin in Bavli Gittin
- Chapter 2: Sex in the Shadow of Rome: Sexual Violence and Theological Lament in Bavli Gittin's Disaster Tales
- Chapter 3: Conquered Bodies in the Roman Bedroom: The Gender Politics of Beauty in Bavli Gittin's Destruction Tales
- Chapter 4: Disability Studies and the Destruction of Jerusalem: Rabbi Tsadok and the Subversive Potency of Dissident Flesh
- Chapter 5: Materiality and Memory: Body, Blood, and Land in Rabbinic Tales of Death and Dismemberment
- Chapter 6: Romans Before the Rabbis' God: Rabbinic Fantasies of Recompense, Revenge and the Transformation of Flesh
- Chapter 7: Opulence and Oblivion: Class, Status, and Self Critique in Bavli Gittin's Tales of Feasting and Fasting
- Postlude: Theology in the Flames: Empathy, Cataclysm, and God's Responsivity to Suffering in Bavli Gittin
About the author
Julia Watts Belser is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Theology Department, Georgetown University. She is the author of Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish late Antiquity.
Summary
Analyzing early Jewish accounts of the destruction of the Second Temple, Julia Watts Belser illuminates the brutal body costs of Roman conquest. Drawing on disability studies, feminist theory, and new materialist ecological thought, Belser reveals how rabbinic discourses of gender, sexuality, and the body are shaped in the shadow of empire.
Additional text
This important book by Julia Watts Belser demands that we look again at rabbinic responses to the Roman conquest of Jerusalem ... [S]he pays particular attention to theoretical studies, including methodologies of related disciplines such as feminist, disability, ecological materialist, and post-colonial studies. In all, Belser brings insights from the crises and successes of our own era in order to reveal new interpretations of these ancient texts.
