The Necessary Outlaw: The Catastrophic Excommunication & Paradoxical Rehabilitation of Rabbi Eliezer Ben Hyrcanus
This is a story; let us begin at the end.They have come, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Joshua and their colleagues, this Friday afternoon to visit the dying outcast, to offer him one last chance to repent, to return. "Why have you come?" he asks them. "We have come to learn Torah, " is thei...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1994
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| In: |
Journal of law and religion
Year: 1994, Volume: 11, Issue: 2, Pages: 733-748 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This is a story; let us begin at the end.They have come, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Joshua and their colleagues, this Friday afternoon to visit the dying outcast, to offer him one last chance to repent, to return. "Why have you come?" he asks them. "We have come to learn Torah, " is their reply.It is about time. For R. Eliezer is shammuta, excommunicated. Under the ban he has been forbidden to teach, forbidden casual social intercourse, unkempt and unshaven: like a leper, like a mourner. Hear how he expresses himself, the teacher cut off from students:"Woe is me, " he tells them. "I know three hundred laws concerning the bright white spot" - the mark of the condition we translate as leprosy - "but there is none to ask me questions."Now there are people to ask him questions about Torah, although not about the bright white spot."What is the law of a ball, a shoemaker's last, an amulet, a curative leather bag of pearls, and a small weight?" Are they succeptable to ritual impurity if they come in contact with a corpse? "And what of the shoe, just completed but still on the last?" |
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| ISSN: | 2163-3088 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of law and religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1051385 |