Eros & the Jews - From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America

1. Auflage 1997
ISBN: 978-0-520-21134-6
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 334 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 135 mm x 203 mm, Gewicht: 345 g

Contradictory stereotypes about Jewish sexuality pervade modern culture, from Lenny Bruce's hip eroticism to Woody Allen's little man with the big libido (and even bigger sexual neurosis). Does Judaism in fact liberate or repress sexual desire? David Biale does much more than answer that question as he traces Judaism's evolving position on sexuality, from the Bible and Talmud to Zionism up through American attitudes today. What he finds is a persistent conflict between asceticism and gratification, between procreation and pleasure.

From the period of the Talmud onward, Biale says, Jewish culture continually struggled with sexual abstinence, attempting to incorporate the virtues of celibacy, as it absorbed them from Greco-Roman and Christian cultures, within a theology of procreation. He explores both the canonical writings of male authorities and the alternative voices of women, drawing from a fascinating range of sources that includes the Book of Ruth, Yiddish literature, the memoirs of the founders of Zionism, and the films of Woody Allen.

Biale's historical reconstruction of Jewish sexuality sees the present through the past and the past through the present. He discovers an erotic tradition that is not dogmatic, but a record of real people struggling with questions that have challenged every human culture, and that have relevance for the dilemmas of both Jews and non-Jews today.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Biale, David

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Geschichte des Judentums
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Sonstige Religionen: Theologie, Doktrine
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Sexualpsychologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION: Dilemmas of Desire

Chapter 1 Sexual Subversions in the Bible

Chapter 2 Law and Desire in the Talmud

Chapter 3 Rabbinic Authority and Popular Culture in Medieval Europe

Chapter 4 Sensuality, Asceticism, and Medieval Jewish Philosophy

Chapter 5 Sexuality and Spirituality in the Kabbalah

Chapter 6 The Displacement of Desire in Eighteenth- Century Hasidism

Chapter 7 Eros and Enlightenment

Chapter 8 Zionism as an Erotic Revolution

Chapter 9 Sexual Stereotypes in American Jewish Culture

EPILOGUE: Creating Desire

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SELECTED SECONDARY  WORKS

INDEX

Über Autor(innen)

David Biale is Koret Professor of Jewish History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He is the author of Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History (1979) and Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (1986), both of which won the National Jewish Book Award.