Books covers by Reuven Kiperwasser
This new book by Reuven Kiperwasser examines the social, cultural, and religious aspects of third... more This new book by Reuven Kiperwasser examines the social, cultural, and religious aspects of third-to sixth-century narratives involving rabbinic fi gures migrating between Babylonia and Palestine. Kiperwasser draws on migration and mobility studies, comparative literature, humor and satire studies, as well as social history to reveal how border-crossing rabbis were seen as exporting features of their previous eastern context into their new western homes and vice versa. Through their writing, rabbinic authors articulated the nature and legitimacy of their own scholastic practices, knowledge, and authority in relationship to their internal others. REUVEN KIPERWASSER is research associate and lecturer at Ariel University in Israel and is research associate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in rabbinic literature, and his research interests include especially the interactions between Iranian mythology, Syriac-Christian storytelling, and rabbinic narrative. His critical edition of Qoheleth Rabbah with introduction and commentary was published in 2021.
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Edited Volumes by Reuven Kiperwasser
This volume presents case studies of the phenomena that contributed to group identity in late ant... more This volume presents case studies of the phenomena that contributed to group identity in late antique Syria-Mesopotamia, in particular traditions reflecting interactions between Judaism and Christianity, among various Christian groups, and among other religious traditions of late antiquity (such as Zoroastrianism or 'paganism'). By studying Christian, Jewish and other sources that deal with the establishment, modification and deletion of boundaries, the authors seek to create a frame of reference that will in turn explain and contextualise the existing evidence concerning communication and interaction between highly diverse groups in Late Antiquity.
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Expressions of Sceptical Topoi in (Late) Antique Judaism, 2021
Scepticism has been the driving force in the development of Greco-Roman culture in the past, and ... more Scepticism has been the driving force in the development of Greco-Roman culture in the past, and the impetus for far-reaching scientific achievements and philosophical investigation. Early Jewish culture, in contrast, avoided creating consistent representations of its philosophical doctrines. Sceptical notions can nevertheless be found in some early Jewish literature such as the Book of Ecclesiastes. One encounters there expressions of doubt with respect to Divine justice or even Divine involvement in earthly affairs. During the first centuries of the common era, however, Jewish thought, as reflected in rabbinic works, was engaged in persistent intellectual activity devoted to the laws, norms, regulations, exegesis and other traditional areas of Jewish religious knowledge. An effort to detect sceptical ideas in ancient Judaism, therefore, requires a closer analysis of this literary heritage and its cultural context.
This volume of collected essays seeks to tackle the question of scepticism in an Early Jewish context, including Ecclesiastes and other Jewish Second Temple works, rabbinic midrashic and talmudic literature, and reflections of Jewish thought in early Christian and patristic writings. Contributors are: Tali Artman, Geoffrey Herman, Reuven Kiperwasser, Serge Ruzer, Cana Werman, and Carsten Wilke.
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English Papers by Reuven Kiperwasser
JSQ, 2024
Abstract: This is a narratological inquiry into stories about the conversion of Gentiles to Judai... more Abstract: This is a narratological inquiry into stories about the conversion of Gentiles to Judaism. Rabbinic literature relates a relatively small number of such stories, and as a rule, their plots explore the uneasy acceptance of the Other. Two conversion stories from Midrashic Literature (of Late Antique Mediterranean provenance) analyzed here are about an uneasy conversion, in which the convert is disappointed in his new identity or finds himself in a demanding situation. Both explore rather humoristic situations in which a satirical approach to the institution of conversion is evident. However, by poking fun, the narrator sheds light on some problematic norms and beliefs of the social insiders’ group. This paper attempts to show how the image of a convert is helpful in the process of identity formation of the rabbinic narrator and aims to explore how behind the stories of acceptance of converts, the self of the rabbinic narrators is hidden.
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Abstract: This is a narratological inquiry into stories about the conversion of Gentiles to Judai... more Abstract: This is a narratological inquiry into stories about the conversion of Gentiles to Judaism. Rabbinic literature relates a relatively small number of such stories, and as a rule, their plots explore the uneasy acceptance of the Other. Two conversion stories from Midrashic Literature (of Late Antique Mediterranean provenance) analyzed here are about an uneasy conversion, in which the convert is disappointed in his new identity or finds himself in a demanding situation. Both explore rather humoristic situations in which a satirical approach to the institution of conversion is evident. However, by poking fun, the narrator sheds light on some problematic norms and beliefs of the social insiders’ group. This paper attempts to show how the image of a convert is helpful in the process of identity formation of the rabbinic narrator and aims to explore how behind the stories of acceptance of converts, the self of the rabbinic narrators is hidden.
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HENOCH Historical and Textual Studies in Ancient and Medieval Judaism and Christianity 45 (1), 2023
This paper examines the early reception of the famous story from bGiṭṭin
68b by Slavic re-tellers... more This paper examines the early reception of the famous story from bGiṭṭin
68b by Slavic re-tellers in the Palaea Interpretata, which preserves elements of
early understanding of the story and sheds light on the processes of transmis-
sion and the reception of Talmudic tales. The Palaea Interpretata is an original
Slavonic composition, which includes apocryphal, exegetical, and anti-Jewish
polemical material, compiled around the thirteenth century. The story of Sol-
omon and his demonic helper is part of a long cycle of the so-called Courts
of Solomon, preserved in Slavonic in the Palaea Interpretata and presumably created in the Balkans in the time when Old Slavonian culture was flourishing. Comparing the Talmudic and the Slavic versions of the story, I conclude that the transmitter of our story from its Mesopotamian context to the Slavic came from the Mesopotamian cultural realm, where the story was told and retold. There is no proof of an intermediary version of the story between the Talmudic version and the Slavic one. Thus, I presume that the narrator of the story in the Slavonic literary work got it directly from some Jewish informant, probably from one of the Jewish communities in the Balkan lands.
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Power of the Priests
The rabbis living in the cities of Late Antique Palestine were a sort of local
intellectual elite... more The rabbis living in the cities of Late Antique Palestine were a sort of local
intellectual elite devoted to certain religious practices and learning the traditional disciplines of rabbinic Judaism. In the complexity of the political life of Roman Palestine, the rabbis probably were not a leading group, but a significant minority that often played the role of mediators between Jewish people widely defined, non-oriented from the religious point of view and others, i.e. various sectarians, including Christians, as
well as Roman pagans, and rabbinic jews. As a minority and an intellectual group, or – in Bryan Stock’s words – at textual community the rabbis were led by the need to express their identity in their literary creation through a constant dialogue with their sacred text. In a series of short concise accounts, they expressed a typological religious use of the figure of God of Israel in forming their own identity and determining the identity of the others. Looking closely at the others, to determine their
own identity, they composed stories in which the atmosphere of the Mediterranean cities, stored with religious inquiries finds expression. The paper will analyze these stories on behalf of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence and symbolic capital.
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Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Travel Experiences: 3rd century BCE – 8th century CE, 2023
The storms threatening ancient sea-travelers were traditionally supposed to be a sign of divine d... more The storms threatening ancient sea-travelers were traditionally supposed to be a sign of divine displeasure. The marine voyage with its tempests, famously featured in the Jonah story, also became a well-known topos in Greco-Roman storytelling. This essay investigates how some Jewish and Christian narrators reworked that topos in light of their particular religious agendas. Their tales thus turn out to be hybrid creatures composed of both biblical and mythological patterns of narration. Several such mythological patterns can be discerned in late antique sea travelogues, including divine intervention calming a stormy tempest; wondrous birds coming to sailors’ rescue; and treasure hidden in the depth of the sea, guarded by a monstrous creature. Our study focuses on the final motif, with the texts under discussion mostly originating in the Syro-Mesopotamian Aramaic-speaking cultural sphere-Jewish rabbinic and Syriac Christian milieus. For all our narrators, the sea maintained its perilous appeal and the voyages provided a meaningful liminal experience that challenged their religious outlook. We outline a variety of strategies in dealing with the tension inherent in the sea adventure, some of them tailored to temper the mythic tenor of the background tradition.
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The aim of this paper is to provide the historical research based on narratological analyses of a... more The aim of this paper is to provide the historical research based on narratological analyses of a few rabbinic stories from the Mishna, Tosephta, and the Palestinian Talmud, originating in Roman Palestine in the 3rd and 4th centuries. The stories are united by the usage of the space of the market, which is a meaningful space, playing a role of identity marker typical of a city dweller. The plots happening in the marketplace are an inverted mirror of what is going on in the rabbinic academy. Another common characteristic of these story plots is the situation of the sabbatical year. Though the sabbatical year's ideal, archaic, and strange norms were successfully resuscitated by rabbinic legal fictions inside the house of study, they still look problematic in the marketplace. The self-awareness of the ancient Jewish literati in their role as a minority and their norms as a scholastic production need to be adjusted to the course of life of the commoners expressed in these stories. The market, as any 'lived space', is a space which the rabbinic imagination seeks to appropriate. Appropriating it, rabbinic urban actors subvert, inhabit, colonize, and impose their meanings, values, and uses on space in creative and playful ways that conflict and contest dominant forms and representations of space. Inhaltsverzeichnis Anzeigen Focus, applied concept and method State of the art Historical and spatial exposition, agents Tiberian Parable Sabbatical Year: Utopia and Reality Jews and Gentiles on the Market Galileans and Cappadocians on the Market of Sepphoris Explanatory hypotheses, potential generalisations, possible relations to other factors
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Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 17 (2023), 1-13, 2023
The imagined universe of the people of Late Antiquity was heavily populated by gods. Even the bro... more The imagined universe of the people of Late Antiquity was heavily populated by gods. Even the broader philosophical trends and monotheistic foundation of Judaism and Christianity had failed to entirely diminish their power. How then did Jews and Christians cope with such a
backdrop presence of “other gods”? Earlier research suggested that Jewish attitudes, which found their way into early Christian sources as well, fluctuate between accommodation and rejection. Following analysis of Jewish and Christian Late Antique literary traditions dealing with gods, and more specifically, goddesses, this essay aims to demonstrate that such “fluctuation” resulted – in addition to the extreme positions – in a variety of middle of the road strategies. These strategies point to a keen harmonizing impulse to absorb—via domestication—motifs with mythic religious vitality from the broader cultural repository.
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Revue des études juives, 182 (1-2), pp. 1-24, 2023
This paper investigates the metamorphosis of a halakhic case of a kohen (priest) who
is an androg... more This paper investigates the metamorphosis of a halakhic case of a kohen (priest) who
is an androgynous or, in modern terms, an intersex person. This kohen, who has both
a male reproductive organ and a female one, can be sexually active both as a man
and as a woman. The halakhic case is analysed in light of the rabbinic perception
of sexual intercourse. The textual evidence for the androgynous case has been chosen diachronically from early rabbinic literature to the sixth-century work, Ma‘asim li-bnei Eretz Israel, composed in the Land of Israel. We also aim to explore the gender politics and strategies motivating the different usages of the term androgynous and show the dynamics of its development from the third to the sixth centuries.
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Jews and Health Tradition, History, and Practice Edited by Catherine Hezser, Leiden:Brill, 69-86, 2023
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Demons in Early Judaism and Christianity Characters and Characteristics, 2022
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Humour in the Beginning. Religion, Humour and Laughter in Formative Stages of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism, by Roald Dijkstra and Paul van der Velde (eds.) , 2022
My paper is dedicated to the role of humour in expressing theological ideas in the Babylonian Tal... more My paper is dedicated to the role of humour in expressing theological ideas in the Babylonian Talmud. As an example, I analyse the narrative with a strong theological focus. In stories of this kind the acting characters are God and the Other involved in an ongoing collision. God plays the role of a scoffer, exposing the Other as an object of derision. The real objects of the mockery are theological views that the narrator would not like to have in his own environment: therefore, he projects them on the Other. Analysing appearances of mockery through theological debates I will show that ridicule here does not demonize the Other or minimize his importance nor does it pursue the goal of alienating him. As a rule, the laughter opens a moment of potential rupture in the continuity of interactions and produces some re-organization in order to steer the interaction once more towards continuity rather than towards chaotic turbulence. With the paradox, it is thoughtfully tried to subject the system of coexistence with the Other to the shock caused by the usage of the weapon of laughter; however, after the laughing situation, the previously inhabited borders are sought again in order to ensure the continuity of an updated order.
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The Past Through Narratology, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2022
This paper analyses both Jewish and Christian travel narratives of Late Antiquity, arguing for co... more This paper analyses both Jewish and Christian travel narratives of Late Antiquity, arguing for common mythological tropes that fused into new stories with adapted meaning and morality. The Syriac 'Life of Barsauma' and several stories in the Babylonian Talmud feature a sea that is home to threats and wondrous creatures that need to be dealt with. At the roots of this phenomenon lies a shared mythological storyworld. Be it the taming of the waves, magical birds, or treasures in the depths, there seem to exist narrative patterns ready to be picked up by Christian and Jewish authors in the late antique Near East. The way in which these authors handled the arsenal of traditional stories, tells us about the evolution of their classical storyworlds and late antique perception of the sea in general, as well as the intercultural exchanges of the epoch.
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Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, vol. 23, no. 1, 2022, pp. 189-203. , 2022
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Books covers by Reuven Kiperwasser
Edited Volumes by Reuven Kiperwasser
This volume of collected essays seeks to tackle the question of scepticism in an Early Jewish context, including Ecclesiastes and other Jewish Second Temple works, rabbinic midrashic and talmudic literature, and reflections of Jewish thought in early Christian and patristic writings. Contributors are: Tali Artman, Geoffrey Herman, Reuven Kiperwasser, Serge Ruzer, Cana Werman, and Carsten Wilke.
English Papers by Reuven Kiperwasser
68b by Slavic re-tellers in the Palaea Interpretata, which preserves elements of
early understanding of the story and sheds light on the processes of transmis-
sion and the reception of Talmudic tales. The Palaea Interpretata is an original
Slavonic composition, which includes apocryphal, exegetical, and anti-Jewish
polemical material, compiled around the thirteenth century. The story of Sol-
omon and his demonic helper is part of a long cycle of the so-called Courts
of Solomon, preserved in Slavonic in the Palaea Interpretata and presumably created in the Balkans in the time when Old Slavonian culture was flourishing. Comparing the Talmudic and the Slavic versions of the story, I conclude that the transmitter of our story from its Mesopotamian context to the Slavic came from the Mesopotamian cultural realm, where the story was told and retold. There is no proof of an intermediary version of the story between the Talmudic version and the Slavic one. Thus, I presume that the narrator of the story in the Slavonic literary work got it directly from some Jewish informant, probably from one of the Jewish communities in the Balkan lands.
intellectual elite devoted to certain religious practices and learning the traditional disciplines of rabbinic Judaism. In the complexity of the political life of Roman Palestine, the rabbis probably were not a leading group, but a significant minority that often played the role of mediators between Jewish people widely defined, non-oriented from the religious point of view and others, i.e. various sectarians, including Christians, as
well as Roman pagans, and rabbinic jews. As a minority and an intellectual group, or – in Bryan Stock’s words – at textual community the rabbis were led by the need to express their identity in their literary creation through a constant dialogue with their sacred text. In a series of short concise accounts, they expressed a typological religious use of the figure of God of Israel in forming their own identity and determining the identity of the others. Looking closely at the others, to determine their
own identity, they composed stories in which the atmosphere of the Mediterranean cities, stored with religious inquiries finds expression. The paper will analyze these stories on behalf of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence and symbolic capital.
backdrop presence of “other gods”? Earlier research suggested that Jewish attitudes, which found their way into early Christian sources as well, fluctuate between accommodation and rejection. Following analysis of Jewish and Christian Late Antique literary traditions dealing with gods, and more specifically, goddesses, this essay aims to demonstrate that such “fluctuation” resulted – in addition to the extreme positions – in a variety of middle of the road strategies. These strategies point to a keen harmonizing impulse to absorb—via domestication—motifs with mythic religious vitality from the broader cultural repository.
is an androgynous or, in modern terms, an intersex person. This kohen, who has both
a male reproductive organ and a female one, can be sexually active both as a man
and as a woman. The halakhic case is analysed in light of the rabbinic perception
of sexual intercourse. The textual evidence for the androgynous case has been chosen diachronically from early rabbinic literature to the sixth-century work, Ma‘asim li-bnei Eretz Israel, composed in the Land of Israel. We also aim to explore the gender politics and strategies motivating the different usages of the term androgynous and show the dynamics of its development from the third to the sixth centuries.
This volume of collected essays seeks to tackle the question of scepticism in an Early Jewish context, including Ecclesiastes and other Jewish Second Temple works, rabbinic midrashic and talmudic literature, and reflections of Jewish thought in early Christian and patristic writings. Contributors are: Tali Artman, Geoffrey Herman, Reuven Kiperwasser, Serge Ruzer, Cana Werman, and Carsten Wilke.
68b by Slavic re-tellers in the Palaea Interpretata, which preserves elements of
early understanding of the story and sheds light on the processes of transmis-
sion and the reception of Talmudic tales. The Palaea Interpretata is an original
Slavonic composition, which includes apocryphal, exegetical, and anti-Jewish
polemical material, compiled around the thirteenth century. The story of Sol-
omon and his demonic helper is part of a long cycle of the so-called Courts
of Solomon, preserved in Slavonic in the Palaea Interpretata and presumably created in the Balkans in the time when Old Slavonian culture was flourishing. Comparing the Talmudic and the Slavic versions of the story, I conclude that the transmitter of our story from its Mesopotamian context to the Slavic came from the Mesopotamian cultural realm, where the story was told and retold. There is no proof of an intermediary version of the story between the Talmudic version and the Slavic one. Thus, I presume that the narrator of the story in the Slavonic literary work got it directly from some Jewish informant, probably from one of the Jewish communities in the Balkan lands.
intellectual elite devoted to certain religious practices and learning the traditional disciplines of rabbinic Judaism. In the complexity of the political life of Roman Palestine, the rabbis probably were not a leading group, but a significant minority that often played the role of mediators between Jewish people widely defined, non-oriented from the religious point of view and others, i.e. various sectarians, including Christians, as
well as Roman pagans, and rabbinic jews. As a minority and an intellectual group, or – in Bryan Stock’s words – at textual community the rabbis were led by the need to express their identity in their literary creation through a constant dialogue with their sacred text. In a series of short concise accounts, they expressed a typological religious use of the figure of God of Israel in forming their own identity and determining the identity of the others. Looking closely at the others, to determine their
own identity, they composed stories in which the atmosphere of the Mediterranean cities, stored with religious inquiries finds expression. The paper will analyze these stories on behalf of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence and symbolic capital.
backdrop presence of “other gods”? Earlier research suggested that Jewish attitudes, which found their way into early Christian sources as well, fluctuate between accommodation and rejection. Following analysis of Jewish and Christian Late Antique literary traditions dealing with gods, and more specifically, goddesses, this essay aims to demonstrate that such “fluctuation” resulted – in addition to the extreme positions – in a variety of middle of the road strategies. These strategies point to a keen harmonizing impulse to absorb—via domestication—motifs with mythic religious vitality from the broader cultural repository.
is an androgynous or, in modern terms, an intersex person. This kohen, who has both
a male reproductive organ and a female one, can be sexually active both as a man
and as a woman. The halakhic case is analysed in light of the rabbinic perception
of sexual intercourse. The textual evidence for the androgynous case has been chosen diachronically from early rabbinic literature to the sixth-century work, Ma‘asim li-bnei Eretz Israel, composed in the Land of Israel. We also aim to explore the gender politics and strategies motivating the different usages of the term androgynous and show the dynamics of its development from the third to the sixth centuries.