Beyond Brutality: Reclaiming Female Presence in Bavli Sotah (Brandeis University Press, 2025) draws
on feminist analysis and gender studies to examine tractate Sotah of
the Babylonian Talmud as a literary unit. By interrogating how, why, and
where women are invisible within Bavli Sotah, Jane Kanarek brings to
light a ubiquitous female presence throughout the text. Despite the
brutality of the sotah ritual—in which the woman accused of adultery is
put through a divine ordeal intended to reveal her innocence or her
guilt—this book demonstrates that Bavli Sotah is not primarily concerned
with describing the sotah ritual or establishing male control over
women. Instead, Bavli Sotah becomes a pedagogical text in which the
sotah is secondary to moral and sinning men. As the sotah herself fades
into the background, the sotah ritual nevertheless overflows its
boundaries and weaves its way through a range of other topics within the
tractate. In the process, Bavli Sotah teaches its audience who
transmits and how one transmits rabbinic culture.
Dr. Rabbi Jane Kanarek is Professor of Rabbinics at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, Newton, MA.
Dr. Rabbi Rachel Adelman, Professor of Bible at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, Newton, MA.
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