This book explores the ways in which the early rabbis reshaped biblical laws of ritual purity and impurity and argues that the rabbis’ new purity discourse generated a unique notion of a bodily self. Focusing on the Mishnah; a Palestinian legal codex compiled around the turn of the third century CE; Mira Balberg shows how the rabbis constructed the processes of contracting; conveying; and managing ritual impurity as ways of negotiating the relations between one’s self and one’s body and; more broadly; the relations between one’s self and one’s human and nonhuman environments.With their heightened emphasis on subjectivity; consciousness; and self-reflection; the rabbis reinvented biblically inherited language and practices in a way that resonated with central cultural concerns and intellectual commitments of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. Purity; Body; and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature adds a new dimension to the study of practices of self-making in antiquity by suggesting that not only philosophical exercises but also legal paradigms functioned as sites through which the self was shaped and improved.
#178800 in Books Bridges Khiara M 2011-03-18Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .90 x 6.00l; .95 #File Name: 0520268954306 pagesReproducing Race An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization
Review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Read this book! It's an eye opener.By AgateAnnieWondering about racism? Read this book. Written really well by an amazing; and extremely bright woman. Well researched and tells her story first hand.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Great reading on a rainy day.By Deborah A. BridgesIt was as if the author was sitting with you telling her story...easy to read. I could relate to some of the situations and experiences; mostly having observed it while in waiting rooms. Thoroughly enjoyed it.5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. This book is wonderful! As a current BU medical studentBy Jamie WThis book is wonderful! As a current BU medical student; I am so appreciative of the way she confronts the "biologic" notions of race both taught currently in medical schools and also practiced on a daily basis. For example; she confronts the use of an "African American" drug (BiDil) for heart failure; which is routinely prescribed for heart failure in black patients only despite the lack of evidence that there is any racial advantage to this drug; and furthermore the way it perpetuates racist notions of a biological origin of race and thereby developing medicines along this skewed belief. She writes about a wide variety of issues of race and medicine; which Dr. Bridges describes as her desire to write a book that is as "complex as race is" in our world. She demonstrates the nuances of this often generalized discussion; and as a current medical student I can't thank her enough for providing this book as a valuable resource for both patients and providers. This should be mandatory reading in all health profession schools!
