Skip to content
Register Sign in Wishlist

The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture
Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity

Award Winner

Part of Greek Culture in the Roman World

  • Date Published: September 2016
  • availability: Available
  • format: Paperback
  • isbn: 9781316628904

Paperback

Add to wishlist

Other available formats:
Hardback, eBook


Looking for an inspection copy?

This title is not currently available on inspection

Description
Product filter button
Description
Contents
Resources
Courses
About the Authors
  • This book studies the significance of sight in rabbinic cultures across Palestine and Mesopotamia (approximately from the first to seventh centuries). It tracks the extent and effect to which the rabbis living in the Greco-Roman and Persian worlds sought to appropriate, recast and discipline contemporaneous understandings of sight. Sight had a crucial role to play in the realms of divinity, sexuality and gender, idolatry and, ultimately, rabbinic subjectivity. The rabbis lived in a world in which the eyes were at once potent and vulnerable: eyes were thought to touch objects of vision, while also acting as an entryway into the viewer. Rabbis, Romans, Zoroastrians, Christians and others were all concerned with the protection and exploitation of vision. Employing many different sources, Professor Neis considers how the rabbis engaged varieties of late antique visualities, along with rabbinic narrative, exegetical and legal strategies, as part of an effort to cultivate and mark a 'rabbinic eye'.

    • Proposes a new way to look at how ancient people experienced and understood the sense of sight
    • Offers a fresh perspective on the cultural history of vision
    • Gives an inviting and novel approach into late antique rabbinic culture and presents Talmudic sources in an accessible and lively fashion for non-specialist readers
    Read more

    Awards

    • Winner of the 2013 Salo Baron Prize
    More

    Reviews & endorsements

    '… highly recommended to anyone interested in late antique Jewish, Christian, and Graeco-Roman society and to scholars of rabbinic and patristic texts.' Catherine Hezser, Theologische Literaturzeitung

    Customer reviews

    Not yet reviewed

    Be the first to review

    Review was not posted due to profanity

    ×

    , create a review

    (If you're not , sign out)

    Please enter the right captcha value
    Please enter a star rating.
    Your review must be a minimum of 12 words.

    How do you rate this item?

    ×

    Product details

    • Date Published: September 2016
    • format: Paperback
    • isbn: 9781316628904
    • length: 332 pages
    • dimensions: 230 x 153 x 18 mm
    • weight: 0.5kg
    • availability: Available
  • Table of Contents

    Introduction
    1. Visual theory
    2. God-gazing and homovisuality
    3. Heterovisuality, face-bread and cherubs
    4. Visual eros
    5. Eyeing idols
    6. Seeing sages
    Conclusion.

  • Author

    Rachel Neis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
    Rachel Neis is an Assistant Professor in the History Department and in the Program for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Her interests include rabbinic literature and culture, the history of the senses, and comparative ancient and contemporary law and legal theory.

    Awards

    • Winner of the 2013 Salo Baron Prize
    • Honourable Mention, 2013 Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards, Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity category

Related Books

Sorry, this resource is locked

Please register or sign in to request access. If you are having problems accessing these resources please email lecturers@cambridge.org

Register Sign in
Please note that this file is password protected. You will be asked to input your password on the next screen.

» Proceed

You are now leaving the Cambridge University Press website. Your eBook purchase and download will be completed by our partner www.ebooks.com. Please see the permission section of the www.ebooks.com catalogue page for details of the print & copy limits on our eBooks.

Continue ×

Continue ×

Continue ×
warning icon

Turn stock notifications on?

You must be signed in to your Cambridge account to turn product stock notifications on or off.

Sign in Create a Cambridge account arrow icon
×

Find content that relates to you

Join us online

This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Read more Close

Are you sure you want to delete your account?

This cannot be undone.

Cancel

Thank you for your feedback which will help us improve our service.

If you requested a response, we will make sure to get back to you shortly.

×
Please fill in the required fields in your feedback submission.
×