Massekhet Ta’anit
Text, Translation, and Commentary
by Tal Ilan
Tal Ilan discusses tractate Ta’anit of the Babylonian Talmud, which deals with ritual fasting, usually in the case of rain failure. In this commentary, the author presents and discusses texts from the tractate which are relevant to women and gender. These include legal proclamations on the participation of women in public fasts, stories on pious men, whose proper conduct toward women make them ideal intermediaries for bringing rain and discussions of gendered rabbinic terms such as Bat Qol, usually translated as ‘heavenly voice’ but which literally translated means ‘a daughter’s voice’. The overall impression of this tractate is that it emphasizes the way the relationship between rainfall and the dry ground was imagined by the rabbis in a gendered metaphor of sexual relations in which rain is male and the land is female. This theme repeats itself in the tractate throughout.
- By (author) Tal Ilan
Other Titles in this Series
Similar Books
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Connecting the Dots: Counting, Writing, and the Beginnings of Civilization
The Secret Lives of Clay Tokens: A Memoir
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Ḫattušaš utnē išḫameški
Hittite and Other Ancient Near Eastern Studies Presented to Piotr Taracha on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday
Lobbying for Equality
Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Equality during the French Revolution
New Research on Old Collections in Southwest Asian Archaeology
Proceedings of the Workshop Held at the British Museum, London, 31 July – 2 August, 2023
Old Aramaic Inscriptions and their Contexts
An Epigraphic, Archaeological, and Historical Synthesis
Volume 63
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
Shame in the Worlds of the Hebrew Bible and Akkadian Texts
A Linguistic Study and Its Implications
Volume 33
Telling Contexts
Archaeological and Textual Studies in Honor of Elizabeth Bloch-Smith and Mark S. Smith
The Body
Lived, Cultured, Adorned: Essays on Dress and the Body in the Bible and Ancient Near East in Honor of Nili S. Fox
The Discourse of Rites
Shaping and Reshaping the (Counter-)Priestly Rituals Conducted Outside the Tabernacle
The Therapeutae as the Best Paradigm for the Contemplative Life
A Contextual Reading of Philo of Alexandria's De Vita Contemplativa
