Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In a world that seeks to erase our history and our bodies, these texts provide images of a past where we may have existed, albeit with complexities. To study Talmud is to dream our past into the future, and to engage in the act of traveling through time accompanied by our ancestors’ voices. . . . As queer, trans and nonbinary Jews do the work of consciously creating a usable past, Trans Talmud invites us to do so with more integrity and precision."
* Lilith *
"Dr. Max Strassfeld, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona, now offers us a welcome guide to Talmudic gender(s) in this meticulous, far-reaching, and lyrical book. It welcomes a wide variety of readers with patient explanations of central concepts in the fields of gender and queer studies and the world of the Talmud and rabbinic literature of late antiquity." * Jewish Book Council *
"Strassfield…nourishes the discussion of the ancient texts on a marginalized community then and now. Recommended to interested individuals and academic libraries." * Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews *
"
Trans Talmud regularly disrupts our understandings of sex, gender and sexuality, and so too of what scholarship itself is meant to be. Strassfeld makes these texts come to life as he sprinkles gems of insight and relevance throughout." * Journal of Jewish Studies *
"A thought-provoking book. . . . [that] will be a point of reference for future studies on bodies that challenge the binary categorization of sex/gender in late ancient Jewish literature and beyond." * Religious Studies Review *
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Transing Late Antiquity: The Politics of the Study of Eunuchs and Androgynes
2. The Gendering of Law: The Androgyne and the Hybrid Animal in Bikkurim
3. Sex with Androgynes
4. Transing the Eunuch: Kosher and Damaged Masculinity
5. Eunuch Temporality: The Saris and the Aylonit
Conclusion: Rereading the Rabbis Again
Bibliography
Glossary
Inde
