Judaism Since Gender offers a radically new concept of Jewish Studies, staking out new intellectual terrain and redefining the discipline as an intrinsically feminist practice. The question of how knowledge is gendered has been discussed by philosophers and feminists for years, yet is still new to many scholars of Judaism. Judaism Since Gender illuminates a crucial debate among intellectuals both within and outside the academy, and ultimately overturns the belief that scholars of Judaism are still largely oblivious of recent developments in the study of gender. Offering a range of provocations--Jewish men as sissies, Jesus as transvestite, the problem of eroticizing Holocaust narratives--this timely collection pits the joys of transgression against desires for cultural wholeness.

""A Major Collection of Scholarship that Contains the most up-to-Date, Indeed Cutting-Edge Work on Gender and Jewish History by Several Generations of Top Scholars."--Atina Grossmann, the Cooper Union.

Gender and Second Temple Judaism examines the myriad constructions of gender in Second Temple Judaism including early Christianity. The chapters examine the state of the field and methodology and hone in on specific texts.

Demonstates through different essays Jewish Womens movement rides the fine line between tradition and transformation.

This book addresses a range of topics, including gendered readings of texts, legal issues in marriage and divorce, ritual practices, and women's literary expressions , along with feminist influences within the Muslim and Jewish communities and issues affecting Jewish and Muslim women in contemporary society.The volume focuses attention on the theoretical innovations that gender scholarship has brought to the study of Muslim and Jewish experiences. At a time when Judaism and Islam are often discussed as though they were inherently at odds, this book offers a reconsideration of the connections between these two traditions.

Stereotyped as delicate and feeble intellectuals, Jewish men in German-speaking lands in fact developed a rich and complex spectrum of male norms, models, and behaviors. Jewish Masculinities explores conceptions and experiences of masculinity among Jews in Germany from the 16th through the late 20th century as well as emigrants to North America, Palestine, and Israel. The volume examines the different worlds of students, businessmen, mohels, ritual slaughterers, rabbis, performers, and others, shedding new light on the challenge for Jewish men of balancing German citizenship and cultural affiliation with Jewish communal solidarity, religious practice, and identity.

Yiddish literature is commonly perceived as a gendered cultural space, as neatly summarised by the line 'Story books for women, holy books for men' in the opening scene of the popular movie Yentl. Yet it is well known that the traditional dichotomy oversimplifies the issue of gender in Yiddish literature. This volume seeks to give a more multi-faceted picture of the topic, investigating the representation of gender in Yiddish literary works, the gendered self-representation of Yiddish authors, and the (implied) expectations with respect to the gender of the Yiddish target readership. It also considers debates and reflections about gender in Yiddish literary criticism and journalism, exploring the participation and positioning of Yiddish cultural critics in this discourse.