Rabbinic tales of drought, disaster, and charismatic holy men illuminate critical questions about power, ethics, and ecology in Jewish late antiquity. Through a sustained reading of the Babylonian Talmud's tractate on fasts in response to drought, this book shows how Bavli Taʿanit challenges De...

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Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Belser, Julia Watts 1978- (Author)
Format:	Electronic eBook
Language:	English
Published:	Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2015
Subjects:	Droughts in rabbinical literature Rain in rabbinical literature Disasters in rabbinical literature Rabbinical literature / History and criticism Rabbinismus Israel > Altertum
Online Access:	BSB01 UBG01 Volltext
Summary:	Rabbinic tales of drought, disaster, and charismatic holy men illuminate critical questions about power, ethics, and ecology in Jewish late antiquity. Through a sustained reading of the Babylonian Talmud's tractate on fasts in response to drought, this book shows how Bavli Taʿanit challenges Deuteronomy's claim that virtue can assure abundance and that misfortune is an unambiguous sign of divine rebuke. Employing a new method for analyzing lengthy talmudic narratives, Julia Watts Belser traces complex strands of aggadic dialectic to show how Bavli Taʿanit's redactors articulate a strikingly self-critical theological and ethical discourse. Bavli Taʿanit castigates rabbis for misuse of power, exposing the limits of their perception and critiquing prevailing obsessions with social status. But it also celebrates the possibilities of performative perception - the power of an adroit interpreter to transform events in the world and interpret crisis in a way that draws forth blessing
Item Description:	Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015)
Physical Description:	1 online resource (xi, 239 pages)
ISBN:	9781316286326
DOI:	10.1017/CBO9781316286326