Rebuilding the House of Israel
Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity
Description:... This book investigates the mappings of ideas about sexual and ethnic difference in Galilee during the centuries following the last Jewish revolt against the Roman Empirecenturies that saw major socioeconomic changes in the region, as well as the development of that small community of Jewish authors/authorities known as the rabbis.
It examines aspects of Jewish identity as these were constructed both in the earliest rabbinic texts and on the ground, through practices that created (or contested) topographies of self vs. other, male vs. female, and insider vs. outsider. Three sociospatial sites, which the author explores through texts and archaeology, ground this study: house, marketplace, and courtyard/alleyway.
The book questions long-standing historical narratives that have cast ancient Jewish women as private, housebound creatures and Jewish men as public, social, mobile agents. Offering useful strategies for working with, and combining, literary and nonliterary material remains, it fleshes out a richer narrative of Jewish antiquity.
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