Revolutionary Retellings

 

Gila Fine’s The Madwoman in the Rabbi's Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud does just this – and to great effect.  Fine takes some very famous Talmud stories which feature woman, pouring them into novel molds.   

Take the story of Yalta and the wine.  This tale has often been cast as the classic “shrew,” narrative, or the story of a disagreeable woman.  Shrew stories are designed to display unflattering features of women's dispositions.  However, Fine contextualizes the literary trope of the shrew, and in the process, shows us how Yalta is fighting for her treatment at the hand of callous and unthinking men.  Fine does this again and again with familiar Talmud stories.  The new spin she gives to these stories is nothing short of revolutionary.

Pragmatic Judaism

 

Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life by Rabbi Marc Katz take us on a journey through the evolving landscape of Rabbinical Judaism.   Once the temple was destroyed, and the sectarian violence of the Jewish Rebellion abated, certain Jews had to pick up the pieces of Judaism if it was to survive. 

The Rabbinical tradition grew up without political power, territory, a cultic center – so under these circumstances, the Rabbi’s developed a flexible approach to governance that was guided by the a majority rules pragmatism that would become its hallmark until the modern period. 

A Judaism stripped of territory, political power, and a cultic center, had no other option but to hit what was pitched.  Rabbi Katz’s book explores the many ways that pragmatism forged a new form of Judaism.