RT Book
T1 Fractured tablets: forgetfulness and fallibility in late ancient rabbinic culture
T2 The S. Mark Taper Foundation imprint in Jewish studies
A1 Balberg, Mirah 1978-
LA Undetermined
PP Oakland
PB University of California Press
YR 2023
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1853340979
AB This book examines the significant role that memory failures play in early rabbinic literature. The rabbis who shaped Judaism in late antiquity envisioned the commitment to the Torah and its commandments as governing every aspect of a person’s life. Their vision of a Jewish subject who must keep constant mental track of multiple obligations and teachings led them to be preoccupied with forgetting: forgetting tasks, forgetting facts, forgetting texts, and—most broadly—forgetting the Torah altogether. In Fractured Tablets, Mira Balberg examines the ways in which the early rabbis approached and delineated the possibility of forgetfulness in practice and study and the solutions and responses they conjured for forgetfulness, along with the ways in which they used human fallibility to bolster their vision of Jewish observance and their own roles as religious experts. In the process, Balberg shows that the rabbis’ intense preoccupation with the prospect of forgetfulness was a meaningful ideological choice, with profound implications for our understanding of Judaism in late antiquity. “Lucidly written, lively, and fun to read, Fractured Tablets offers a new window into the tannaitic mind and the priorities at the foundation of the rabbinic movement from its inception.” — NATALIE B. DOHRMANN, coeditor of Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity
OP 293
CN BM496.6
SN 978-0-520-39186-4
K1 Rabbinical literature : Criticism and interpretation
K1 Memory : Religious aspects : Judaism
K1 Religion: general
K1 Literature & literary studies
K1 Littérature rabbinique - Critique et interprétation
K1 Religion / Judaism / History
K1 Memory - Religious aspects - Judaism
K1 Rabbinical literature
K1 Criticism, interpretation, etc