AJS Review: The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies

This handsome and (very) lengthy tome is one in a series entitled A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud. The series editor is the author of the volume under review. An ambitious project, A Feminist Commentary plans a commentary to the entire Babylonian Talmud through the lens of a particular focus: feminist studies. As per the publisher's website, for each talmudic tractate, the author will take the texts s/he perceives as relevant to issues of women and gender, write an introduction outlining the tractate's conception of gender and provide a commentary to selected sugyot.

Writing a commentary on any work of rabbinic literature, and particularly the Babylonian Talmud, is a formidable task. The Talmud is textually difficult (concise and ambiguous) and conceptually complex, as it contains circuitous, forced logic and highly involved case studies. Therefore, I preface my remarks [End Page 212] below by recognizing the rigor, creativity, and time (the author worked on the volume for a decade!) that writing such a commentary requires.

Questions of method and focus stand front and center. Indeed, the usual difficulties involved in writing a commentary are compounded when a focus of choice is imposed on the text. The author's admission at the beginning of the volume is, therefore, praiseworthy: discussions of individual mishnayot and talmudic sugyot make localized contributions to gender questions; these same examples, however, "when approached from a gender perspective" are "incoherent as a whole structure" (7). This critical point cannot be overlooked; it calls into question the ability to write a commentary that presumes the priority of certain questions. Certainly, some tractates, chapters, and sugyot may be better suited for a feminist commentary—just like some tractates, chapters, and sugyot are more appropriate for other academic foci, such as ritual, disability, or animal studies. The task taken on by the editors of A Feminist Commentary to include the entire Talmud, therefore, is not free of some possibly unsurmountable challenges. Only philology and source criticism are methods that can be applied to page after page of talmudic text: every page of Talmud is subject to linguistic analysis and comparison with parallels. However, applying questions of gender to every page of Talmud—even those directly dealing with women—poses interpretive difficulties. In light of the above, the ways in which this volume frames and furthers our understandings are that much more significant.

First, I address the form. The placement of parallel texts, Mishnah, Tosefta, and Yerushalmi, in parallel columns in both English and Hebrew makes the study of the material flow for the reader in, perhaps, unprecedented ways. The turning of pages becomes unnecessary and the search for parallels is taken care of before one starts reading. A cursory review of the translations suggests their accuracy. The translation and commentary of mishnaic units as a separate section in each chapter will benefit even students who do not have a particular interest in a feminist commentary. At the end of every sugya, variant manuscript readings are listed, even though their significance is not always explored. Exceptions occur when the variant is relevant for a feminist reading, as noted regarding the case of milk production by a male beast (322; Bavli manuscripts) and the question of whom a priest's daughter may marry (567; Sifra variant).

Regarding content, Ilan's observation that the use of "all" in tannaitic literature, at times inclusive and at other times exclusive of women, tends to be interpreted in the Talmud as inclusive is significant (103–4). More insights into interpretive tendencies in the Bavli, such as distinctions between amoraic and stammaitic approaches to issues relating to women and gender, would have been welcomed. Some of the most important interpretations offered are the product of the author's general expertise in ancient studies and experience with tannaitic and Palestinian amoraic literature. Take, for example, the framing of the question in the Mishnah concerning whether a fetus found in a slaughtered beast is an independent living being or not as a polemic...