As AJS 2018 is kicking off this morning, I figured it's better late than never to share some notes/highlights from the last AJS conference I attended. My attending the 2016 conference of the Asssociation for Jewish Studies was my third such conference. Out of ten sessions, I primarily attended those dealing with rabbinic literature.
5 papers that were particularly of interest for me were in the field of Rabbinics, 2 papers in other fields, and one response in the field of Rabbinics that really stood out to me.
Here are my notes:
Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg "A Makeshift Scripture: Early Rabbinic Doubts Concerning the Status of the Biblical Text in Light of Late Antique Christian Parallels"
really well put-together paper that focussed on some excerpts from the Tosefta about what Ezra's role vis-à-vis the Torah scroll, such as Tosefta Sanhedrin 4:7 "opens up the possibility that Ezra was forced" to go into a new version of the text. Wollenberg described such stories as "tales primarily concerned with textual contingency." scribal restoration project as reconstruction
scribal housekeeping after period of degradation
manifestations of broader cultural anxieties about the text
she also compared it to what was going on in Christian circles
Noah Benjamin Bickart
"Gentiles and Anal Sex: A Sex Act as Cultural Boundary Marker"scholars tend not to look for sexuality as site of cultural differences
rabbinic documents imagine different degrees of overlap between Jews and non-Jews
Rava reimagines anal sex as a form of sex that heterosexual people do - before him, it was problematic
imperial roman society
living in Sassanian Babylonian, Rava was wholly unaware of Roman culture
policing communities
after Rava, it's an act that is legally sex and it means something different for Jews and gentiles
"Rabbis, Doctors and Patients: Conceptions of Medical Expertise and Knowledge in Rabbinic Literature"
Shulamit Shinnaraccounts and experiences of the patients - not just opinions from doctors
wde range of experience and training - also lack of trust
gender plays into rabbinic adjudication
patients may also have medical knowledge, not just from doctors and medical books
in rab.lit, ppl would pay up-front, but that would be strange in Roman context, where you only pay afterwards
doctors are seen with a certain amount of ambivalence
rabbis serve as intermediaries between doctors and women patients
Redaction and Codification: On the Appearance of Halakhic Conclusions in the Talmuds
Edmond Isaac Zuckier [Shlomo Zuckier]both PT and BT use the term halakhah or hilkheta to signify a halakhic conclusion
codifying language, but does not mean that Talmud is a code
legal codification can be seen as important part of redaction
M and T do not usually codify the law as such, although there are some exceptions
the terms appear hundreds of times from amoraim from different generations and scores of stammaitic times
1st or 2nd gen amoraim from EY
hundreds of cases whee halakhah are by middle and late amoraim
early Pal amoraim did use for operative halakhah, but not much
codifying sacrificial law?
could traditions from EY 1-2gens of amoraim only reached Bavel in 3rdgen?
avoiding conclusions on sacrificial matters - yerushalmi
from 3rd generation of amoraim and on, bavli amoraim don't state halakhah/hilkheta about non-practical matters
different approaches: authorial, redactional, compositional, etc.
both Talmuds point to a shift where the amoraim don't get involved in establishing halakhah for Temple practice at a certain point
Christine Hayes, respondent
composition and redaction are complicated during amoraic times - not clear (also, editing, etc.)
not just in amoraic period do both composition and redaction take place - even in post-amoraic period, redaction and composition can take place
stammaitic project engage ina limited form of composition in making large groups of memrot in
we think about composition and redaction from the perspective of print culture, but that's not how it works…
oral performative literary culture where these things collapse or get separated all at once
amoraim and post-amoraic figures engage in redaction and composition in different degrees and kinds
difficulty in separating composition and redaction
halakhic conclusions might be seen as a source
something might have features of both redaction and composition
healthy measure of ambivalence about rhetorical techniques of persuasion - subjective
"Walking Through the Bible: Four Moments of Mythmaking in the Desert"
Sara Ronis
focussing on bBB 73b-74a 5 stories of Rabbah b.b. Hannah
construct certain Biblical spaces as rabbinic
Biblical scenes as understood through rabbinic lenses
make Biblical history immediate and real
only can serve as a distant and inaccessible backdrop for rabbinic life
exegetical convos with Arabs about Yishmael
taya becomes a generic label, vs Arab, which is used for settled communities
on the most basic level, all five instances are set in the dessert, where the taya is nomadically traversing
see magical negro phenomenon, endowed with folk wisdom, etc. to benefit the white character
numerous similarities between taya and magical negro
it his inherited folk traditions….
the taya'a magically disappears, we don't know much about him, he appears on his own, and not with others
the rabbis leave him, rather than him leaving the rabbis
functions much like Elijah in rabbinic narratives
in bBerakhot 6b, mss divided whether it's a taya or Elijah
the rabbis insisting that Rabbah bb Hannah as having missed out and mired in foolishness
rich site of rabbinic mythmaking
points to the tension of an imagined past
Howard Lupovitch
“The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch and its Impact, in Hungary and Beyond”
one of the most widely published book
ultra-Orthodox Hungarian canon
emergence of humra culture - tendency for stringency
unprecedented publication history - 12 separate editions in Europe in 1860s through 1930s - and different languages
widespread publication attests to the importance of print culture - where print culture can have an important impact on ritual
b1804 in Ungvar, standard Orthodox upbringing and a gifted individual
he was part of the world of Hungarian ultra-Orthodoxy, which was a response to reform and haskalah, but also to modern orthodoxy
prior to writing this book, his books were about specific observances, and then culminated in writing this book
even though he was very much a part of the UOH world, he wasn't involved in the polemicizing, simply someone who wanted to quietly write his book and be a dayan
wanted to write a guidebook and not polemical work
he compiled this abridgement so that Jews who lacked the ability to study the Shu"A could read this and easily find halakhah
why so popular: 1) bears a certain authenticity (structured similarly as the Shu"A), esp. on halakhic matters that are part of the day-to-day, 2) he chose three 18-19th c halakhists (Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Avraham Danzig, and ?), who were engaged in an opposition to modernity - b/c of his halakhists, it has an anti-modernist
succinctness and simplicity - each of its 211 entries are maybe a paragraph
user-friendly answers
3) it's compactness - should not be published with commentaries (of course, ten years later, there were commentaries that began to emerge)
it was easy to print, re-print, and to translate
3 examples of impact in hungary and beyond: 1) published same time as SRH's Horeb
for the European readers, they had the ability to read other codes - but in 1930s, the KSHuA, the only available guidebook for American Jews (English) - called the Code for Jewish Law in English, so there are many observant American Jews, they don't know that it's not the Shu"A, so that grants it a greater sense of authenticity
short-term accessibility vs long-term critical thinking
widespread circulation led to a certain mentality for observant Jews in America
Marzena Zawanowska
"Theological Limitations to Karaite Literalism in Bible Translation"
they are generally considered to be extreme literalists, at the expense of the quality of the product, rejecting the dual concept of revelation and rejecting rabbinic
needed to find new explanations of the Biblical text, using the Biblical text, so they engaged in a very detailed study of the Hebrew language - if they engaged in language studies, could engage with the text
also adherents of an intense rationality
deep tension for fidelity to the words of scripture and theological tenants
the same thing is done by Sa'adyah Gaon, but the difference is the way they justify their decisions
Karaite: didactic purposes - mechanism to teach something important about God, about Divine transcendence
Sa'adyah is concerned by extratextual concerns for rational theology
the Karaites look for stylistic or linguistic explanations
when God descended to see the city, both rabbanite and karaite say the angel went to see the city - the difference is that the karaites were more systematic
much more focussed on the text and more interested at looking at intertextual
engaged in rabbinic dictum dibrah torah kilshon bnei adam - as far as we know, they are the first Jews to really utilize this
the difference
Sa'adyah attributed the anthropomorphism due to the weakness of human language, whereas the Karaites say that it's a perfect means to communicate to humans
Karaites say that God needs to use common language of humanity
the Karaites are the missing link in Biblical interpretation - later on, see Maimonides for using lashon Bnei Adam, but Sa'adyah never uses it
