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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 in the Theology Department at 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
Overall, this book is an important intervention in rabbinic studies. Belser brings important new insights through gender and disability studies analysis of the Bavli Gittin.
