Jane Kanarek, "Beyond Brutality: Reclaiming Female Presence in Bavli Sotah" (Brandeis UP, 2025)

About this episode

Jane Kanarek discusses her book 'Beyond Brutality' which reclaims female presence in Bavli Sotah through feminist analysis.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Jane Kanarek

Topics covered

• feminist analysis
• gender studies
• Babylonian Talmud
• Bavli Sotah
• female presence
• rabbinic culture

Keywords

• Bavli Sotah
• feminism
• gender studies
• Talmud
• female presence
• rabbinic culture
• sotah ritual

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Brandeis University Press, Hebrew College

Books & works: Bavli Sotah

Places: Newton, MA

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