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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.

Rabbinical literature --- Purity, Ritual --- Immersion (Judaism) --- Purity, Ritual (Judaism) --- History and criticism. --- Judaism. --- 233.55 --- 236.1 --- 296*6 --- 296.2 --- 236.1 Dood. Scheiding van lichaam en ziel --- Dood. Scheiding van lichaam en ziel --- 233.55 Eenheid van lichaam en ziel bij de mens --- Eenheid van lichaam en ziel bij de mens --- 296*6 Joodse theologie en filosofie--(algemeen) --- Joodse theologie en filosofie--(algemeen) --- 296.2 Antisemitisme --- Antisemitisme --- Judaism --- History and criticism --- ancient judaism. --- antiquity. --- bible. --- biblical language. --- biblical law. --- biblical practices. --- bodily self. --- consciousness. --- cultural studies. --- early rabbis. --- greco roman mediterranean world. --- history of judaism. --- human environment. --- jewish studies. --- judaism. --- mishnah. --- nonhuman environment. --- palestinian legal codex. --- philosophy of halakah. --- rabbinic texts. --- religion. --- religious studies. --- religious. --- ritual impurity. --- ritual purity. --- s mark taper foundation imprint in jewish studies series. --- self making. --- self reflection. --- spiritual. --- subjectivity.

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"When Near Becomes Far explores the representations and depictions of old age in the rabbinic Jewish literature of late antiquity. Through close literary readings and cultural analysis, the book reveals the gaps and tensions between idealized images of old age on the one hand, and the psychologically, physiologically, and socially complicated realities of aging on the other hand. The authors argue that while rabbinic literature presents various statements on the qualities and activities that make for good old age, on the respect and reverence that the elderly should be awarded, and on harmonious intergenerational relationship, it also includes multiple anecdotes and narratives that portray aging in much more nuanced and poignant ways. These anecdotes and narratives relate, alongside fantasies about blissful or unnoticeable aging, a host of fears associated with old age: from the loss of beauty and physical capability to the loss of memory and mental acuity, and from marginalization in the community to being experienced as a burden by one's own children. Each chapter of the book focuses on a different aspect of aging in the rabbinic world: bodily appearance and sexuality, family relations, intellectual and cognitive prowess, honour and shame, and social roles and identity. As the book shows, in their powerful and sensitive treatments of aging rabbinic texts offer some of the richest and most audacious observations on aging in ancient world literature, many of which still resonate today"--

Aging in rabbinical literature --- Old age in rabbinical literature --- Rabbinical literature --- History and criticism