• “Inclined to Decline Reclining?: Women, Corporeality, and Dining Posture in Early Rabbinic Literature"

    Author(s):
    Jordan Rosenblum (see profile)
    Date:
    2012
    Subject(s):
    Rabbis, Judaism--Study and teaching
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Rabbinic studies, Talmud, Midrash, and Rabbinics
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6GD44
    Abstract:
    Imagine it is the year 209 C.E. You are a disciple in a rabbinic circle located in a city in Palestine. Your rabbinic mentor invites you to a banquet that he is hosting in celebration of his son’s wedding. Do you bring your wife? In essence, this is the question that I seek to answer in this essay. Were women present at such commensal encounters? And, if so, were they reclining? In the process of asking this question, we learn about early rabbinic (or tannaitic) concepts of corporality because, as is also the case in ancient discussions of dining posture in the larger Greek and Roman milieu, to talk about women at the table is to talk about the issues associated with female bodies: sex, power, procreation, etc. Throughout, I continually ask the question: with regard to women at the table, were the Tannaim inclined to decline reclining?
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Book chapter     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.1057/9781137032485
    Publisher:
    Palgrave Macmillan
    Pub. Date:
    2012
    Book Title:
    Meals in the Early Christian World: Social Formation, Experimentation, and Conflict at the Table
    Author/Editor:
    Dennis E. Smith and Hal Taussig
    Chapter:
    18
    Page Range:
    261 - 271
    ISBN:
    978-1-137-00288-4
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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