When We Collide
Description
When We Collide is a landmark reassessment of the significance of sex in contemporary Jewish ethics. Rebecca Epstein-Levi offers a fresh and vital exploration of sexual ethics and virtue ethics in conversation with rabbinic texts and feminist and queer theory.
Epstein-Levi explores how sex is not a special or particular form of social interaction but one that is entangled with all other forms of social interaction. The activities of sex-doing it, talking about it, thinking about it, regulating it-are sites of ongoing moral formation on individual, interpersonal, and communal levels.
When We Collide explores the development of Jewish sexual ethics, and represents an opportunity to move beyond the usual heteronormative accounts that are presented as though they were neutral representations of what "Judaism teaches about sex."
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Person
Rebecca J. Epstein-Levi is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Vanderbilt University. An expert on sexual ethics, she uses unconventional readings of classical rabbinic text to study the ethics of sex and sexuality, disability, and neurodiversity. In her copious free time, she enjoys cooking unnecessarily complicated meals and sharpening her overly large collection of kitchen knives. She lives with her wife, Sarah, her cats, Faintly Macabre and Chroma the Great, and a rapidly expanding flock of wire dinosaurs and other beasties. You can follow her on Twitter @RJELevi.
Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Groundings
1. Textual Intercourse: Grounding Sexual Ethics in Jewish Sources
2. Social Intercourse: Why Sex Is Enmeshed in Sociality
3. Risky Business: Why Risk Is Inherent in Sociality
Part II: Case Studies on Community and Risk
4. STIs: Infection, Impurity, and Managing Social Contagion
5. BDSM: Risk, Pleasure, and Polymorphous Community
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
