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File Format | PDF
File Size | 3.58 MB
Pages | 310
Language | English
Category | Judaism
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Description: Massekhet Ta`anit, a tractate of the Babylonian Talmud that addresses fasts in response to drought among rabbinic Jewish communities in Iate antiquity, envisions rainfall as a tangible manifestation of divine blessing and a key signifier of the relationship between God and Israel. Alongside a literary, folkloristic, and cultural analysis of the contents of the massekhet, I show how the unique form of the massekhet allows the Stam to set conflicted aggadic narratives and halachic legal discussions into dialogue, fashioning them into a dialectical whole.
My analysis of Massekhet Ta`anit moves beyond the individual sugya and reads the tractate as a carefully crafted text whose dialogical form allows its creators to express a polyphonous, mulitvalent theology---and grapple with cultural questions in a way that resists unitary resolutions to complex cultural tensions. My reading of Massekhet Ta`anit analyzes the symbolic power of the rain and the fast, showing how the fast turns the vulnerable body into an instrument for crying out to God.
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Between the human and the holy: The construction of Talmudic theology in Massekhet Ta`anit
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