1. Two important works for the development of rabbinic food studies are Kraemer, David, Jewish Eating and Identity through the Ages (New York: Routledge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rosenblum, Jordan, Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kraemer examines the history of Jewish eating, focusing primarily on the development of Jewish eating systems and the phenomenon of “transgressive” Jewish eating that pushes or breaks religious or cultural boundaries. Rosenblum examines how tannaitic sources craft distinctive Jewish identity through dietary regulations, cooking practices, and table fellowship, emphasizing how foodways communicate social identity.

2. Archeologist Michael Dietler argues that feasts and feasting rituals represent a critical area in which people express social, economic, and political relationships, describing feasts as both “inherently political and . . . a fundamental instrument and theater of political relations.” Dietler, Michael, “Theorizing the Feast: Rituals of Consumption, Commensal Politics, and Power in African Contexts,” in Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power, ed. Dietler, Michael and Hayden, Brian (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 66Google Scholar.

3. B. Gittin 55b–56a.

4. In this respect, the rabbinic story is manifestly at odds with many Roman writers who focus extensively on the food served at banquets. John D'Arms discusses the role of elaborate food and drink in crafting the atmosphere of spectacle at elite Roman banquets, noting Macrobius's opinion that food and drink are commonly on exhibition and parade, “more for show than for nutritional use.” See Macrobius, Saturnalia Convivia, 7.5.32. D'Arms, John, “Performing Culture: Roman Spectacle and the Banquets of the Powerful,” in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, ed. Bergmann, Bettina and Kondoleon, Christine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 303Google Scholar.

5. While the Bar Kamẓa story is set in Palestine and concerns the behavior of Palestinian Jews, the Bavli's narrative is likely shaped by a feasting culture common among both Roman and Sasanian elites. Matthew Canepa suggests that, beginning in the late third century, both Roman and Sasanian rulers used increasingly similar rituals of public display at banquets, rituals, and other public events to communicate visually to their own subjects and to each other the majesty of their kingship and the magnificence of their largess. Canepa, Matthew P., The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 188Google Scholar.

6. D'Arms emphasizes the importance of hosting in elite Roman culture: “For a Roman notable, the ostentatious exhibition of wealth was part of self-representation; it reinforced the great man's sense of his own power over those personally bound to him by the ties of clientela, and it set him and his social and political equals, the lofty few, apart from the rest of Roman society, the obscure many.” D'Arms, “Performing Culture,” 308–9.

7. My thinking about feasting is shaped by anthropological thought on the social and political implications of gift exchange. Dietler emphasizes that while feasts are commonly viewed primarily as a means of expressing social solidarity and reinforcing a sense of community, they also create relationships of social superiority and inferiority. In this regard, he argues that hospitality has great potential “to be manipulated as a tool in defining social relations.” Dietler, Michael, “Feasts and Commensal Politics,” in Food and the Status Quest: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, ed. Wiessner, Polly and Schiefenhövel, Wulf (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1996), 91–2Google Scholar. Marcel Mauss emphasizes that agonistic forms of gift exchange foster competitive and aggressive responses, in which shame plays a significant role. By contrast, nonagonistic forms of gift exchange tend to foster relationships through hospitality. Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Halls, W.D. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990). Published originally as Essai sur le Don (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950)Google Scholar.

8. Many interpreters connect this shame with the common rabbinic motif that the Second Temple was destroyed on account of causeless hatred. The tradition that the Second Temple was destroyed on account of causeless hatred appears in T. Menaḥot 13:22, and paralleled in Y. Yoma 1:1 38c and B. Yoma 9b. See Kraemer, David, Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 176–7Google Scholar. By contrast, Jonathan Crane demonstrates that other rabbinic sources emphasize the ability to feel shame as a sign of moral development. Accordingly, B. Shabbat 119b describes shamelessness as one of the causes of the destruction of the Temple. Crane, Jonathan K., “Shameful Ambivalences: Dimensions of Rabbinic Shame,” AJS Review 35, no. 1 (April 2011): 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Malmberg, Simon, “Visualizing Hierarchy at Imperial Banquets,” in Feast, Fast or Famine: Food and Drink in Byzantium, ed. Mayer, Wendy and Trzcionka, Silke, Byzantina Australiensia 15 (Brisbane: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 2005), 12–13Google Scholar. Canepa, Two Eyes of the Earth, 182–185.

10. D'Arms, “Performing Culture,” 313. The quote from Seneca appears in Ep. 47.8.

11. Canepa, Two Eyes of the Earth, 186.

12. Rubenstein, Jeffrey, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. The term “rabbinization” has been used to discuss the Bavli's tendency to describe early Jewish wonder-workers and other nonrabbinic figures in ways that make them resemble rabbis, thereby appropriating these figures as protorabbis and bringing them into the realm of rabbinic culture. Bar Kamẓa's remark seems to serve a similar purpose, retroactively situating the feast within rabbinic space. On the phenomenon of rabbinization in rabbinic literature, see Green, William Scott, “Palestinian Holy Men: Charismatic Leadership and Rabbinic Traditions,” ANRW II 19, no. 2 (1979): 619–47Google Scholar; Bosker, Baruch M., “Wonder-Working and the Rabbinic Tradition: The Case of Hanina ben Dosa,” JSJ 16 (1985): 42–92Google Scholar; Kalmin, Richard, “Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” The Harvard Theological Review 87, no. 2 (April 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kalmin, Richard, “Holy Men, Rabbis, and Demonic Sages in Late Antiquity,” in Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire, ed. Kalmin, Richard and Schwartz, Seth (Leuven: Peeters Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

14. A similar dynamic appears in other talmudic stories in which famous rabbis are rebuked or suffer intense grief on account of seemingly minor ethical lapses, suggesting that the rabbis held themselves to higher standards of piety—and often suffered on account of this expectation. B. Nedarim 62a recounts a tradition about Rabbi Tarfon, who reportedly grieved “all the days of his life” for making use of his status as a Torah scholar to save himself from murder. For a discussion of this narrative, see Valler, Shulamit, Sorrow and Distress in the Babylonian Talmud (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011), 18–24Google Scholar. Jonathan Schofer argues that a motif of “trivial sins” appears frequently in rabbinic literature, in which God punishes harshly apparently minor transgressions committed by sages. Schofer argues that this motif emphasizes the ethical significance of a sage's every action and intention, no matter how minor. See Schofer, Jonathan Wyn, “Protest or Pedagogy? Trivial Sin and Divine Justice in Rabbinic Narrative,” Hebrew Union College Annual 74 (2003): 243–278Google Scholar; and Schofer, Jonathan Wyn, Confronting Vulnerability: The Body and the Divine in Rabbinic Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

15. The literal meaning of the expression is difficult to parse. In this form, it appears only in the construction ʾokhlei karẓʾa: to inform against. Jastrow defines the word karẓʾa as “biting, cutting, or destruction.” Jastrow, Marcus, Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Yerushalmi, and Midrashic Literature. (New York: The Judaica Press, 1996), 1425Google Scholar. Sokoloff comments that “the literal meaning of the phrase is uncertain.” Sokoloff, Michael, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 1003Google Scholar. In B. Berakhot 58a, the phrase is used in a story that likewise pits the rabbis against the emperor: Rav Shila lashed a man who had sexual relations with an Egyptian woman, and the man went and informed upon him before the emperor.

16. In Roman culture, attendance at imperial banquets was one way that elites signaled their loyalty to the emperor. Malmberg, “Visualizing Hierarchy,” 11–24.

17. Smallwood, E. Mary, The Jews under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Dioclecian: A Study in Political Relations (1976; repr. Leiden: Brill, 2001), 147–148CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Page citations are to the 2001 reprint edition. While many scholars have stressed the character of this accommodation as unique to Judaism, Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev argues that Roman emperors devised and accepted diverse forms of cultic practice as demonstrations of loyalty. Zeev, Miriam Pucci Ben, Jewish Rights in the Roman World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 471–8Google Scholar.

18. On the symbolic significance of ingesting sacrificial food and the refusal to partake of sacrificed meat as signal of revolt, see Rosenblum, , Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism, 50–52Google Scholar.

19. Michael Sage emphasizes that Roman siege warfare depended primarily on wearing down the garrison through famine, in contrast to Greek strategies that made extensive use of war machines in order to breach a city's walls and allow invaders to storm the city. Sage, Michael M., The Republican Roman Army: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 2008), 276–283Google Scholar. Hunger made a city significantly more likely to capitulate to a siege—and late antique war manuals discuss strategies for destroying crops, trees, and food stores, as well as methods for poisoning wells or water reservoirs. See discussion in Dionysius Ch. Stathakopoulos, , Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire: A Systematic Survey of Subsistence Crises and Epidemics (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing House, 2004), 46–8Google Scholar.

20. Noting that “no siege was complete without [the depiction] of a mother eating her child,” Shaye Cohen emphasizes that this motif was already common in literature by the sixth century BCE, appearing in Lamentations 2:20 and 4:10. Cohen, Shaye J. D., “The Destruction: From Scripture to Midrash,” Prooftexts 2 (1982): 22Google Scholar. Sage also notes the widespread appearance of this trope in Roman sources. Sage, , Republican Roman Army, 282CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. B. Gittin 56a.

22. The tale is surely hyperbolic on this point—twenty-one years is an unrealistic amount of time in the context of ancient siege warfare. Even large, fortified cities rarely held out for more than a year when under siege. Analyzing the relationship between famine and siege warfare in the Roman and Byzantine Empires from the mid-fourth to the mid-eighth century, Stathakopoulus notes that the duration of sieges varied. A year was common for a larger, well-fortified city, with smaller ones often capitulating in half that time. Of the cases he has collected, “no siege surpassed a period of 14 months.” Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence, 47.

23. An explanation of Nakdimon's name appears in B. Taʿanit 19b–20a, after a tale that describes a crushing drought in Jerusalem, when the people are making a festival pilgrimage to the Temple. Nakdimon negotiates with a nobleman for the loan of twelve wells of water, promising to repay the water with rainfall before an appointed time. Late afternoon on the last day, Nakdimon enters the Temple and prays that God grant rain—reminding God that he made the pledge not for his own honor, but for the honor of God, so that the pilgrims would be able to fulfill their obligations. But the nobleman claims that the rain fell too late to fulfill Nakdimon's word, so Nakdimon reenters the Temple and pleads with God again. The sun pierces through the clouds—a miracle that the Bavli takes to reveal the intimate love between Nakdimon and his God. The conclusion of the narrative likens Nakdimon to Moses and Joshua, who also had miracles performed on their account. A full discussion of this narrative will appear in my forthcoming book.

24. Sifrei Devarim reads: You shall not…take a widow's garment in pledge: whether rich or poor, even if she were [as rich as] Marta bat Boethus. Sifrei Devarim, Ki teẓ’e, pis. 281, to Deuteronomy 24:17 (ed. Finkelstein, p. 298).

25. M. Yevamot 6:4 rules that a high priest may not marry a widow, but that he may marry a widow whom he betrothed before he became high priest. The Mishnah uses Marta as an example of the latter case, writing “There was the case of Joshua ben Gamla who betrothed Marta bat Boethus and the king nominated him high priest and he took her to wife.”

26. T. Kippurim 1:13–14 describes “the case of the sons of Marta bat Boethus.” Tal Ilan regards this case as another situation that dramatizes the wealth and prominence of Marta and her sons. Ilan, Tal, Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women's History from Rabbinic Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 89–90Google Scholar.

27. Similar stories of wealthy women in distress give the woman's name as Miriam bat Boethus in Eikhah Rabbah 1:47, to Lamentations 1:16 (ed. Buber, p. 86); Miriam bat Nakdimon ben Gurion in Eikhah Rabbah 1:48, to Lamentations 1:16 (ed. Buber, p. 86) and in Pesikta Rabbati 29–30 (ed. Friedman, p. 140a); Miriam bat Shimʿon in Y. Ketubot 5:13 (30c); the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gurion in T. Ketubot 5:9, Sifrei Devarim, Niẓavim, pis. 305, to Deuteronomy 31:21 (ed. Finkelstein, p. 325), B. Ketubot 66a and Avot de-Rabbi Natan A:17 (ed. Schechter, p. 65); or an anonymous Jewish woman in the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, par. Baḥodesh 1, to Exodus 19:1 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, p. 203–4). While the names of these distressed women vary and some details of their stories shift, the existence of many parallel stories suggest that these tales of once-prosperous women were culturally significant for the rabbis. For a close analysis of the development of this aggadic motif, see Visotzky, Burton, “Most Tender and Fairest of Women: A Study in the Transmission of Aggada,” Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 4 (October 1983): 403–418CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. B. Gittin 56a.

29. In this narrative, the Bavli seems to exhibit strong disapproval for the practice of sustaining the formerly wealthy poor according to their previous social status. For a discussion of other sugyot that demonstrate the Bavli's increasing ambivalence toward the expectation that wealthy people who fall on hard times have a right to lavish provisioning at communal expense, see Gray, Alyssa, “The Formerly Wealthy Poor: From Empathy to Ambivalence in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” AJS Review 33, no. 1 (2009): 101–133CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. On the association between white bread and high class status, see Dalby, Andrew, Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece (Routledge: New York, 1996), 93Google Scholar. Malberg notes that access to high-quality foods was an important marker of class hierarchy in Roman society, with elite status often demarcated through elaborate displays of food and special dishes. Malmberg, “Visualizing Hierarchy,” 14.

31. Hamel, Gildas, Poverty and Charity in Roman Palestine: First Three Centuries C.E., Near Eastern Studies, vol. 23 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Based on mishnaic texts, Sperber concludes that in the second century, wheat cost twice as much as barley (2 kabs of wheat is regarded as equivalent to 4 kabs of barley). Similarly, in the Edict of Diocletian of 301 CE, wheat was almost double the price of barley (100/60 denarii). Sperber, Daniel, Roman Palestine 200–400: Money & Prices, 2^nd ed. (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1991), 112Google Scholar. Though the barley crop was often maligned, it was likely a critical crop for subsistence. Barley took a shorter time to mature, was more resistant to disease, and was better able to grow in thin, limestone soil that is characteristic of Greece, the Judean hills, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean world. Braun, Thomas, “Barley Cakes and Emmer Bread,” in Food in Antiquity, ed. Wilkins, John, Harvey, David, and Dobson, Mike (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995), 25–27Google Scholar.

32. Cohen, Naomi G., “The Theological Stratum of the Martha b. Boethus Tradition: An Explication of the Text in Gittin 56a,” Harvard Theological Review 69 (1976): 188–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Eikhah Rabbah 1:47, to Lamentations 1:16 (ed. Buber, p. 86). The Leningrad manuscript gives the woman the name of “Marta.” Printed editions read “Miriam.” The names and stories of these two women are often interchanged in the literature. See Visotzky, “Most Tender and Fairest of Women.”

34. The motif of women picking grains from dung appears widely: B. Ketubot 67a; T. Ketubot 5:9–10; Y. Ketubot 5:13 (30b–c); Eikhah Rabbah 1:48, to Lamentations 1: (ed. Buber, p. 86); Sifrei Devarim, Niẓavim, pis. 305, to Deuteronomy 31:21 (ed. Finkelstein, p. 325); Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, par. Baḥodesh 1, to Exodus 19:1 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, p. 203–4), and Pesikta Rabbati 29–30 (ed. Friedman, p. 140a). In many cases, the sage who sees her is Rabbi ʾElʿazar ben Ẓadok. See extensive discussion of the relationship between these narratives in Visotzky, “Most Tender and Fairest of Women.”

35. In B. Yoma 39a–b, the Bavli attributes significance to forty years before the destruction, associating it with signs and portents that prefigure the destruction.

36. See further discussion in my forthcoming book.

37. A famous example is Ḥanina ben Dosa, who is described as subsisting on a handful of carobs from week to week. In his study of poverty in Greco-Roman Palestine, Gildas Hamel notes that the fruits of the wild carob tree were considered a typical poor man's food and actually used primarily as fodder for animals. The human consumption of carobs was synonymous with living in poverty. Hamel reads the rabbinic narratives of Ḥanina ben Dosa as well as Shimʿon bar Yoḥai and his son, who lived for twelve years in a cave hiding from the Romans and eating carobs, to suggest that “only extraordinary individuals could subsist on so meager a food.” Hamel, Poverty and Charity, 16–7. For further discussion of this motif of “wondrous provision,” see Wire, Antionette Clarke, Holy Lives, Holy Deaths: A Close Hearing of Early Jewish Storytellers (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002)Google Scholar.

38. Diamond, Eliezer, Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

39. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 154.

40. Drawing upon longstanding biblical metaphors that imagine Jerusalem as woman, Marta embodies both the glory and tragedy of city, nation, and people. The coupling of a devastated Jerusalem as a ruined woman appears most prominently in the book of Lamentations. For an analysis of rabbinic use of gender and destruction in Eikhah Rabbah, see Hasan-Rokem, Galit, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially Chapter 6. I hope to explore the ethical implications of this trope of suffering women in detail in another paper.

41. Saldarini, Anthony J., “Good from Evil: The Rabbinic Response,” in The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History, Ideology, ed. Berlin, Andrea M. and Overman, J. Andrew (New York: Routledge, 2002), 231Google Scholar.

42. Cynthia Baker critiques scholars' tendency to view the market as a place devoid of women. She discusses the involvement of Jewish women in the market in light of rabbinic texts and material culture of the Galilee, and analyzes the significance of gender in the market in rabbinic culture. Baker, Cynthia, Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 77–112Google Scholar. See also Rosenblum, Food and Identity, 22.

43. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 20:2:5.

44. Brooten, Bernadette, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues, Brown Judaic Studies 36 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), 141–144Google Scholar.

45. Saldarini, “Good from Evil,” 231.

46. I thank Bernadette Brooten for drawing my attention to this point and for stimulating conversation on the representation of subordinates and slaves in late antique texts.

47. “If in the first scene the servant confuses his instructions and invites the wrong person, in this case the servant does nothing, leading to death. Nonaction can be worse than wrong action—the moral of the story presented in microcosm.” Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 154.

48. Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 77–112.

49. Jennifer Glancy argues that late antique slaves often served as “body doubles” for their owners, physically insulating their owners from risk or violence. Glancy, Jennifer A., Slavery in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 15Google Scholar.

50. B. Gittin 57a.

51. Kraemer, Responses to Suffering, 181.

52. This remark echoes an important moment earlier in the sugya, when Rabbi Yoḥanan is rebuked for failing to ask Vespasian to withdraw from the city and spare Jerusalem. See Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 356 n. 72.