| Description |
1 online resource |
| Contents |
Cover; Half-title; Title page; Copyright information; Table of contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; Rembrandt's Ass; Balaam's Ride; Talking Animals; Critical Animal Studies; Animality; Animality in the Talmud; Microreading; The Animal in Jewish, Religious, and Ancient Studies; The Chapters; Orientation to the Babylonian Talmud; 2 Animal Intelligence; Animals at the Edge; Animal Minds; Classical Philosophy on Animal Reason: "Elephants Employ Surgery"; Animal Reason in the Mishnah; Mishnah Bava Qamma 3:10: Slavery, Sabbath Observance, and Other Things Uniquely Human |
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Palestinian Talmud Bava Qamma 3:10: The Needy OxBabylonian Talmud Bava Qamma 34b-35a: The Clever Ox; Conclusions: Animal Lessons; 3 Animal Morality; Trying Animals; Bestiality, the Bible, and Bad Writing; Can an Animal Sin? The Mishnah's Rhetorical Question; The Question of Gentile Bestiality; Rav Sheshet: Proximity to Sin; Abaye: Gentile Moral Consciousness; Rava: Animal Moral Consciousness; God's (Sometime) Compassion for Animals; The Unwitting Jew and Other Partial Subjectivities; Conclusions: Animal Mirrors; 4 Animal Suffering; The Raccoon in the Kitchen; Peter Singer and His Critics |
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The Resting Donkey (Exodus 23:5) and the Exhausted Ox (Deuteronomy 22:4)Mishnah Bava Metzia 2:10: Sadistic, Sick, and Elderly Donkey Drivers; Rava's Revolution; The Talmud's Testing Grounds; Conclusions: Competing Concerns, Law and Ethics, Slippery Slopes; 5 Animal Danger; Dangerous Animals; Abnormal Oxen; Wild Animals; Animals in the House; Bad Cats and Bad Rabbis; Rabbis, Their Wives, and Their Animals; Black and White World-Views; Conclusions: Macho Rabbis and Queer Animal-Lovers; 6 Animals as Livestock; The Thingness of Animals; The Personhood of Animals; Travel Sukkahs in the Mishnah |
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Animals as Architecture in Talmudic TraditionsFlight and Death among the Rabbis: What Makes Animals Bad "Things"; The Search for a Stable Sukkah; Fantasies of Control in the Coda; Conclusions: The Personhood of Things; 7 Conclusion; Animals and The Rabbinic Self; Animals and the Rabbinic Other; Disruptive Animals; Works Cited; Index |
| Summary |
Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud selects key themes in animal studies - animal intelligence, morality, sexuality, suffering, danger, personhood - and explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud. Beth A. Berkowitz demonstrates that distinctive features of the Talmud - the new literary genre, the convergence of Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian cultures, the Talmud's remove from Temple-centered biblical Israel - led to unprecedented possibilities within Jewish culture for conceptualizing animals and animality. She explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud, showing how it is ripe for reading with a critical animal studies perspective. When we do, we find waiting for us a multi-layered, surprisingly self-aware discourse about animals as well as about the anthropocentrism that infuses human relationships with them. For readers of religion, Judaism, and animal studies, her book offers new perspectives on animals from the vantage point of the ancient rabbis |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references |
| Notes |
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed May 01, 2018) |
| Subject |
Animals in rabbinical literature.
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Rabbinical literature.
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Judaism -- Relations.
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RELIGION -- Judaism -- General.
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Animals in rabbinical literature
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Interfaith relations
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Judaism
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Rabbinical literature
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781108542739 |
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1108542735 |
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9781108529129 |
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1108529127 |
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