Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture Volume 25

by Daniel Boyarin

Book Overview

Beginning with a startling endorsement of the patristic view of Judaism-that it was a "carnal" religion, in contrast to the spiritual vision of the Church-Daniel Boyarin argues that rabbinic Judaism was based on a set of assumptions about the human body that were profoundly different from those of Christianity. The body-specifically, the sexualized body-could not be renounced, for the Rabbis believed as a religious principle in the generation of offspring...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520203364
• ISBN13: 9780520203365
• Release Date: August 1995
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

brilliant speculation

Boyarin manages to cover some very interesting Talmudic material on gender and sexuality in an intelligent and informed manner. He also has a deep understanding of cultural theory, and argues for a number of exceptionally striking theses regarding Talmuds' (deliberate plural: he contrasts the Babylonian Talmud with the Jerusalem or Land of Israel Talmud) relationships to sexuality, gender, and embodiment. HOWEVER, Boyarin's claims are so wide-ranging and fundamental that it would require the study of a great deal of additional primary textual material to really confirm them in a responsible fashion.

A taboo subject approached openly

This books approaches in a very open way the issue of sex in the Talmud. Not an easy thing to do... Yet it manages to do so well, without excessively offending one view or another. Through its approach, it probably expores one of the earliest expressions of feminism in Judaism.