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 Empire--centuries 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...

Jew. The word possesses an uncanny power to provoke and unsettle. For millennia, Jew has signified the consummate Other, a persistent fly in the ointment of Western civilization's grand narratives and cultural projects. Only very recently, however, has Jew been reclaimed as a term of self-identification and pride. With these insights as a point of departure, this book offers a wide-ranging exploration of the key word Jew--a term that lies not only at the heart of Jewish experience, but indeed at the core of Western civilization. Examining scholarly debates...