Introductory overview of the legal literature in the Bible

Review of Decter, Jonathan. Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe. Indiana UP, 2007. Originally published in Calíope 14.1 (2008): 139-42. https://ssl.uh.edu/class/spanish/caliope/

Review of Díaz-Mas, Paloma. Sephardim: The Jews from Spain. Ed. and trans. George K. Zucker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Originally published in Bulletin of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 33.1 (33-34).

Review of Szpiech, Ryan. Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic (Middle Ages Series). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Orignially published in Speculum 88.3 (853-855).

Review of Tabea Linhard’s ‘Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory’ (2016): “These essays are nothing short of a manifesto of new Spanish Jewish cultural studies, an area that has long been wanting a champion. In this sense, Jewish Spain is an exciting departure in the study of the Jewish experience and memory in modern Spain.”

Martin Luther (1483-1546), the great religious reformer, re-rooted German culture by turning once again to the Hebrew and the Greek of the Old and New Testaments after a thousand years of relative neglect, and by putting the Bible translated from Hebrew and Greek into the hands of people of every walk of life. Thanks to Luther and Melanchthon,…[Read more]

In the rabbinic worldview, man goes through life surrounded by temptation. The world is a place where temptation lurks on every street corner, at every table, and at every moment. For the rabbis, Torah – both Written and Oral – is the solution to controlling the yeẓer (יצר), the inclination to act on one’s desires. The ability to control on…[Read more]

Household sacrifice is a common feature of the ancient Mediterranean. While offerings are made in temples, a home altar is a frequent sacrificial site. This raises an intriguing question for scholars of Judaism in antiquity: do Jews also sacrifice on household altars? While Judaism in antiquity is riotously diverse, it often looks very much like…[Read more]

In this essay, I attempt to inscribe the mysterious location known as “the cities of the sea” (כרכי הים) onto the map of rabbinic scholarship. Classical rabbinic authors look toward this mythic locale for three reasons: (1) to discuss tales of sin (and sometimes salvation); (2) to offer definitions and clarifications of obscure words; and (3) to…[Read more]

A discussion of rabbinic meal practices.

A discussion of rabbinic meal practices.

Josephus attests several times to a Jewish aversion to the use of Gentile olive oil. In m. ‘Abod. Zar. 2:6, this practice is first advocated and then immediately reversed by Rabbi and his court. What is the rationale for this sudden leniency with regard to Gentile olive oil? In a well-known article entitled “Kosher Olive Oil in Antiquity,” Marti…[Read more]

Josephus attests several times to a Jewish aversion to the use of Gentile olive oil. In m. ‘Abod. Zar. 2:6, this practice is first advocated and then immediately reversed by Rabbi and his court. What is the rationale for this sudden leniency with regard to Gentile olive oil? In a well-known article entitled “Kosher Olive Oil in Antiquity,” Marti…[Read more]

In the tannaitic corpus, a novel innovation appears: sharing bread is understood to lead to sharing a bed. As such, the Tannaim problematise and marginalise commensal interactions between Jews and non-Jews. In several instances, commensality with non-Jews is equated with idolatry, the binary opposite of Jewishness in rabbinic literature. While…[Read more]

In the tannaitic corpus, a novel innovation appears: sharing bread is understood to lead to sharing a bed. As such, the Tannaim problematise and marginalise commensal interactions between Jews and non-Jews. In several instances, commensality with non-Jews is equated with idolatry, the binary opposite of Jewishness in rabbinic literature. While…[Read more]

Justifications for foodways are too often ignored in the academic study of commensality. In seeking to understand how a particular group constructs the rules around the table – what, how, and with whom one will or will not eat – the rationales for these rules must be factored into any scholarly analysis. In this essay, I use the example of anc…[Read more]

Explores the connections between Jews, Romans, pork, and identity.