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Between Philology and Foucault: New Syntheses in Contemporary Mishnah Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2008

Moshe Simon-Shoshan
Moshe Simon-Shoshan
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
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Extract

The work of many emerging young rabbinics scholars today, particularly that which is focused on the Mishnah, is animated by a desire to synthesize two distinct approaches to rabbinic texts. One is the traditional philological-historical approach, which traces its roots back to the European Wissenschaft des Judentums tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In its current form, traditional Talmud criticism is perhaps most associated in Israel with the work of J. N. Epstein, the founder of the Hebrew University Talmud Department and the “father of exact scientific Talmudic inquiry.” While most of Epstein's students proceeded to shape the study of rabbinic literature in the Israeli academy, Saul Lieberman, perhaps his most distinguished disciple, moved to America, where his presence dominated the study of rabbinic literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the postwar decades. Traditional Talmud criticism is characterized by a scrupulous attention to manuscripts and textual variants, a systematic use of the findings of Semitic and comparative linguistics, and the use of form and source criticism to determine the history and development of larger textual units.

Type
Research Article
Information
AJS Review , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , November 2008 , pp. 251 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2008

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References

1. Lieberman, Saul, Sifre Zuta (New York, 1968), 135Google Scholar. Epstein's, major works include Mav'o lenusaḥ hamishnah, 3rd ed. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Mav'o lesifrut hatanna'im (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1957).

2. Lieberman's major works include Tosefta Ki-Fshuta, 10 vols. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1955–88); and Greek in Jewish Palestine: Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1994). On Leiberman's methodology and the historical-philological approach in general, see Rosenthal, Eliezer Shimshon, “Hamoreh,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 31 (1963), *1–71Google Scholar.

3. Rosen-Zvi, Ishay, Hatekes shelo hayah: mikdash, midrash umigdar bemasekhet sotah (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

4. See Halbertal, Moshe, Mahapekhot parshaniyot behithavutan (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Hauptman, Judith, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 15–29Google Scholar.

5. Epstein, Mav'o lenusaḥ, 375.

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7. Hoffmann, David Zvi, Hamishnah harishonah (Berlin: S. Gruenberg, 1914), 27Google Scholar; and Epstein, Mav'o lesifrut, 399.

8. For Neusner's dating of the ritual narrative in Mishnah Sotah, see Neusner, Jacob, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Women (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980), 5:224Google Scholar. For a general discussion of Neusner's methodology in dating mishnaic texts, especially those dealing with Temple ritual, see “Dating a Mishnah-Tractate: The Case of Tamid,” in History, Religion, and Spiritual Democracy, ed. Maurice Wohlgelernter (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980).

9. Neusner, Jacob, “Story and Tradition in Ancient Judaism,” in Judaism: The Evidence from the Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 307–26Google Scholar.

10. On the actual and potential role of Foucault's work in contemporary rabbinics scholarship, see Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva, “On Carnal Israel and the Consequences: Talmudic Studies since Foucault,” Jewish Quarterly Review 95, no. 3 (2005): 462–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12. Rosen-Zvi, Ishay, “Bilha the Temptress: The Testament of Reuben and ‘The Birth of Sexuality,’” Jewish Quarterly Review 96, no. 1 (2006): 65–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Ibid., 92.

14. Ibid., 90.

15. Foucault, Michel, “Pastoral Power and Political Reason,” in Religion and Culture, ed. Carrette, Jeremy R. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 135–52Google Scholar.

16. On the origins of the conceptual-analytical approach, see Solomon, Norman, The Analytic Movement: Hayyim Soloveitchik and His Circle (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1993)Google Scholar; and Shapiro, Marc B., “The Brisker Method Reconsidered,” Tradition 31, no. 3 (1997): 78–102Google Scholar.

17. For a discussion of the particular branch of the analytic school in which these authors and many other scholars were trained, see the essays collected in Blau, Yosef, The Conceptual Approach to Jewish Learning (New York: MSYU, 2006)Google Scholar, esp. Elyakim Krumbein, “From Reb Hayyim and the Rav to Shi'urei ha-Rav Aharon Lichtenstein—The Evolution of a Tradition of Learning,” 229–97.

18. On these terms, see Solomon, The Analytic Movement, 117–20.

19. On distinctions of this nature in the work of the conceptual-analytic school, see Solomon, The Analytic Movement, 128–32; and Adler, Yitzchak, Lomdus: A Substructural Analysis of Conceptual Talmudic Thought (New York: Bet Sha'ar Press, 1989), 37–39Google Scholar.

20. See Adler, Lomdus, 10–18.

21. Clothes torn in mourning for a parent may never be resown and hence serve as a reminder of loss as long as they remain in the mourner's possession.

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23. Rosen-Zvi's discussion of these details of sotah ritual would be further enriched by a treatment of Foucault's discussion of the concept of exomologeisis in Christianity. In the course of this discussion, Foucault cites a passage from Jerome in which he describes the penance practiced by an adulteress that involves, among other things, the dishevelment of her hair and the revealing of her “naked breast.” This aspect of the sotah ritual might be a particularly good locale to compare and contrast the construction of the self in rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. See Foucault, , “The Hermeneutics of the Self,” in Religion and Culture, ed. Carrette, Jeremy R. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 158–81Google Scholar.

24. Wimpfheimer, Barry, “‘But It Is Not So’: Towards a Poetics of Legal Narrative in the Babylonian Talmud,” Prooftexts 24 (2004)Google Scholar; idem, “Talmudic Legal Narrative: Broadening the Discourse of Jewish Law,” Dine Yisrael 24, nos. *157–96 (2007): 51–86; and Levenson, Joshua, The Twice Told Tale: A Poetics of Exegetical Narrative in Rabbinic Midrash (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

25. Simon-Shoshan, Moshe, “Halakhah lema‘aseh: Narrative and Legal Discourse in the Mishnah” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2005)Google Scholar.

26. Albeck, Chanoch, Shishah sidre mishnah, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1952)Google Scholar; Kehati, Pinchas, Mishnayot mevu’arot (Jerusalem: Hechal Shelomo, 1977)Google Scholar; Goldberg, Abraham, Masekhet Ohalot (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1955)Google Scholar; idem, Perush lamishnah, masekhet shabbat (Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1976); and idem, Perush lamishnah, masekhet ‘eruvin (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986). For a survey of the premodern commentaries on the Mishnah, see idem, “The Mishnah—A Studybook of Halakha,” in The Literature of the Sages, ed. Shmuel Safrai, Compedia Rerum Iudiacarum Ad Novum Testamentum (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1987), 211–51. On the manuscripts of the Mishnah in our possession, see Krupp, Michael, “Manuscripts of the Mishnah,” in The Literature of the Sages, ed. Safrai, Shemuel, Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum Ad Novum Testamentum, section 2, Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud (Assen, Netherlands; Philadelphia: Van Gorcum; Fortress Press, 1987), 346–66Google Scholar.

27. Albeck, Chanoch, Mav'o lamishnah (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1959)Google Scholar; and Epstein, Mav'o lenusaḥ. Note also Neusner's voluminous body of work on the Mishnah.

28. For example, Segal, M. H., Dikduk leshon hamishnah (Tel-Aviv: Devir, 1936)Google Scholar; and Azar, Moshe, Taḥbir leshon hamishnah (Jerusalem: Academy of Hebrew Language, 1995)Google Scholar.

29. Hauptman, Judith, Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005)Google Scholar; and Friedman, Shamma, Tosefta ‘atikta: Masekhet pesaḥ rishon, makbilot hamishnah vehatosefta, perush umav’o (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

30. For a recent statement by Neusner on the nature of the Mishnah, see Making God's Word Work: A Guide to the Mishnah (New York: Continuum, 2004).

31. Moscovitz, Leib, Talmudic Reasoning: From Casuistics to Conceptualization (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002)Google Scholar; and Alexander, Elizabeth Shanks, Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Walfish, Avraham, “The Poetics of the Mishnah,” in The Mishnah in Contemporary Perspective, ed. Avery-Peck, Alan J. and Neusner, Jacob, vol. 2, Handbuch Der Orientalistik. Abt. 1, Der Nahe Und Der Mittlere Osten (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), 153–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Berkowitz, Beth A., Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chaya T. Halberstam, Evidence and Uncertainty: Rabbinic Judges Interpret the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming).

34. Neusner, Jacob, Ancient Israel after Catastrophe: The Religious World View of the Mishnah (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983)Google Scholar.

35. See Simon-Shoshan, Moshe, “Halakhic Mimesis: Rhetorical and Redactional Strategies in Tannaitic Narrative,” Dine Yisrael 24 (2006): 101*–23*Google Scholar; and Berkowitz, Execution and Invention, esp. 18, where she cites Neusner in the context of her own argument that “the ritual of the Mishnah creates a reality that is almost impervious to contingencies.”