
Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature
Mira Balberg(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 15. February 2014
Book
Hardback
262 pages
978-0-520-28063-2 (ISBN)
Description
This book explores the ways in which the early rabbis reshaped biblical laws of ritual purity and impurity and argues that the rabbis' new purity discourse generated a unique notion of a bodily self. Focusing on the Mishnah, a Palestinian legal codex compiled around the turn of the third century CE, Mira Balberg shows how the rabbis constructed the processes of contracting, conveying, and managing ritual impurity as ways of negotiating the relations between one's self and one's body and, more broadly, the relations between one's self and one's human and nonhuman environments. With their heightened emphasis on subjectivity, consciousness, and self-reflection, the rabbis reinvented biblically inherited language and practices in a way that resonated with central cultural concerns and intellectual commitments of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature adds a new dimension to the study of practices of self-making in antiquity by suggesting that not only philosophical exercises but also legal paradigms functioned as sites through which the self was shaped and improved.
Reviews / Votes
"Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature adds a new dimension to the study of practives of self-making in antiquity." Existentia "Fascinating... [A] very original and expertly written study... [Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature] will form the basis of all future discussions of purity, the self and the body in ancient Judaism." Journal of Jewish StudiesMore details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
562 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-28063-2 (9780520280632)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Mira Balberg
Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature
E-Book
02/2014
1st Edition
University of California Press
€88.49
Available for download
Person
Mira Balberg is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University.
Content
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. From Sources of Impurity to Circles of Impurity 2. Subjecting the Body 3. Objects That Matter 4. On Corpses and Persons 5. The Duality of Gentile Bodies 6. The Pure Self Epilogue: Recomposing Purity and Meaning Notes Bibliography Index