Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature
While most gender-based analyses of rabbinic Judaism concentrate on the status of women in the halakhah (the rabbinic legal tradition), Judith R. Baskin turns her attention to the construction of women in the aggadic midrash, a collection of expansions of the biblical text, rabbinic ruminations, and homiletical discourses that constitutes the non-legal component of rabbinic literature. Examining rabbinic convictions of female alterity, competing narratives of creation, and justifications of...
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A unique look at how non-legal rabbinic writings imagine women and their lives.
AcknowledgmentsNote on Translations and AbbreviationsIntroduction11Distinguishing Differences: The Otherness of Women in Rabbinic Judaism132Constructing Eve: Midrashic Revisions of Human Creation443Eve's Curses: Female Disadvantages and Their Justifications654Fruitful Vines and Silent Partners: Women as Wives in Rabbinic Literature885"Why Were the Matriarchs Barren?": Resolving the Anomaly of Female Infertility1196"A Separate People": Rabbinic Delineations of the Worlds of Women141Afterword161Notes165Bibliography203Subject Index213Index of Primary Sources223
\ From the Publisher"Baskin has given us an excellent study of women in rabbinic Judaism and Jewish culture of late antiquity. Hers is a serious and well informed voice that must be engaged in any future conversation on this topic . . . Baskin's book should be required reading . . . for those interested in Jewish women in late antiquity."--AJS Review\ "Baskin demonstrates that rabbinic conceptions of marriage reflect an identification of marriage with appropriation and legal acquisition, rather than with partnership."--National Women's Studies Association Journal\ "Baskin's work is well argued emphasizing that although women today may have already started on the road to repairing what the rabbis stipulated, they still have a way to go before the long Talmudic legacy of denying women a strong social role can be fully addressed and reversed."--Journal of the American Academy of Religion\ "Baskin's book is essential reading for those who wish to understand classical rabbinic views of women and the feminine. . . a major contribution of the volume is its focus on aggadic midrash (i.e., nonlegal biblical interpretation) rather than the legal writings known as the halakah that more typically ground scholarly discussions of rabbinic thought. While still incorporating halakic traditions in her analysis, Baskin makes the important point that "aggadic literature frequently preserves a more nuanced and complex view of women."--Choice\ \ \
