3 - Jewish Male Identity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
Summary
Women [in World War II America] were not considered full citizens worthy of the blessings of liberty; instead, they were designated as the keepers of a more communally minded, classically republican notion of civic virtue.…[W]omen's real and most important battlefield was the kitchen. There women could – and should – fight the war and prove their patriotism by cooking and serving the right kinds of foods in the right kinds of ways. Every meal served was a political act.
Another “Other” that tannaitic commensal practices establish in part is the category of women. A woman is not the “normative” Tanna, who is in general, “a male, property owning, rabbi or rabbinic disciple.” As the actions and participants surrounding the tannaitic table become increasingly regulated, this observation comes into greater focus.
In this chapter, I divide the tannaitic data into two groups: (1) texts pertaining to women preparing food and (2) texts pertaining to women at the table. Each group illustrates differently how tannaitic commensality practices enact and maintain a distinct Jewish male identity. From texts legislating the preparation of food by women, we encounter the literary role that women play in the tannaitic corpus. In these pericopae, women are often not “real” women; they are literary foils, serving a discursive purpose. As characters in a drama, they are introduced only to elucidate the social and legal effects of certain culinary and commensal practices on tannaitic men.
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- Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism , pp. 103 - 137Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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