The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture

Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity

Rachel Neis (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

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English

Cambridge University Press
29 September 2016

Ancient history: to c 500 CE; Judaism; Judaism: worship, rites & ceremonies; Judaism: life & practice; Jewish studies

Series: Greek Culture in the Roman World

This book studies the significance of sight in rabbinic cultures across Palestine and Mesopotamia (approximately from the first to seventh centuries). It tracks the extent and effect to which the rabbis living in the Greco-Roman and Persian worlds sought to appropriate, recast and discipline contemporaneous understandings of sight. Sight had a crucial role to play in the realms of divinity, sexuality and gender, idolatry and, ultimately, rabbinic subjectivity. The rabbis lived in a world in which the eyes were at once potent and vulnerable: eyes were thought to touch objects of vision, while also acting as an entryway into the viewer. Rabbis, Romans, Zoroastrians, Christians and others were all concerned with the protection and exploitation of vision. Employing many different sources, Professor Neis considers how the rabbis engaged varieties of late antique visualities, along with rabbinic narrative, exegetical and legal strategies, as part of an effort to cultivate and mark a 'rabbinic eye'.

By: Rachel Neis (University of Michigan Ann Arbor)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 230mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 500g
ISBN: 9781316628904
ISBN 10: 1316628906
Series: Greek Culture in the Roman World
Pages: 332
Publication Date: 29 September 2016
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Rachel Neis is an Assistant Professor in the History Department and in the Program for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Her interests include rabbinic literature and culture, the history of the senses, and comparative ancient and contemporary law and legal theory.

Reviews for The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity

'… highly recommended to anyone interested in late antique Jewish, Christian, and Graeco-Roman society and to scholars of rabbinic and patristic texts.' Catherine Hezser, Theologische Literaturzeitung