Papers by Gwynn Kessler
Oqimta Vol 11, 2025
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This article sets forth a novel r... more https://www.oqimta.org.il/oqimta/2025/eng-abst-kessler11.pdf
This article sets forth a novel reading of the rabbinic category of tumtum v’androginos. It offers an alternative to the dominant interpretive framework by positing and historicizing a process through which a single category, tumtum v’androginos, becomes “tumtum” and “androginos.” Central to this historicization is a (re)contextualization of what is increasingly cited as the defining, “seminal,” text about tumtum and androginos in rabbinic sources: Tosefta Bikkurim 2:3-7. Placing this tradition in its larger rabbinic textual context and situating it among other rabbinic mentions of tumtum v’androginos invites us to revisit and reconsider the meanings and functions of tumtum v’androginos as a rabbinic categorization as it develops over time. Ultimately, contextualizing t. Bik. 2:3-7 also offers alternative ways of seeing the place of nonbinary gendered bodies in rabbinic sources and provides a fuller understanding of rabbinic constructions of gender within halakhic sources.
Re-forming Judaism Moments of Disruption in Jewish Thought EDITED BY Rabbi Stanley M. Davids and Leah Hochman, PhD, 2023
ECADES OF FEMINIST, queer, and trans scholarship have estab lished that biblical constructions of... more ECADES OF FEMINIST, queer, and trans scholarship have estab lished that biblical constructions of gender are less stable than we might first realize.' Nevertheless, the biblical gender landscape presents male and female as exhaustive gender ("sex") categories. 2 Marc Brettler writes, "The Bible only recognizes two sexes: male and female." Brettler proceeds, by way of contrast, to invoke the presence of the categories
Torrey Seland REPRODUCTION This purpose of this article is to review biblical texts related to re... more Torrey Seland REPRODUCTION This purpose of this article is to review biblical texts related to reproduction-including procreation, contraception, and abortion-and the ongoing legacy that they have for Christian and Jewish tradition. Procreation in the Bible. Genesis 1:28 states, "And God blessed them and God said to them, 'be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it:" Here, after God created human beings-male and female-God blessed them with fertility. This blessing to reproduce abundantly represents, moreover, the first words God uttered to humanity. Genesis 9:1 reiterates, offering a shortened version of the blessing to Noah and his sons, "And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, 'be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth'" (see also Gen 9:7; 35:n).In between these blessings, Genesis 3:16 recounts God's proclamation to the first woman, "I will greatly multiply your pain in conception, in pain you shall bring forth children~ and similarly to the first man in Genesis 3:17, "Cursed is the ground because of you, in pain you shall eat ofit all the days of your life:' These two verses make an explicit connection between human fertility and that of the earth. Despite the strong statement that women will conceive and give birth in pain in Genesis 3:16, the Bible rarely repeats such a sentiment. Indeed, shortly after, Genesis 4:1 states, "And the man knew his wife Eve and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain~ without mention of any travail. Further, the verse continues with Eve triumphantly proclaiming, "I have acquired a man with God~ a statement that stresses God's role in procreation, which is consistently reiterated throughout the Bible (Frymer-Kensky, 1992). Throughout the Hebrew Bible, fertility is largely attributed to God. God "opens wombs~ granting preg
Constant Creation: Procreation in Palestinian Rabbinic Midrashim, 2013
A Companion to Late Ancient Jews and Judaism: Third Century BCE to Seventh Century CE. Edited by Naomi Koltun-Fromm and Gwynn Kessler , 2020
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality. Edited by Vasudha Narayanan., 2020
Concilium , 2019
This essay applies queer theories of gender fluidity and gender performativity to readings of rab... more This essay applies queer theories of gender fluidity and gender performativity to readings of rabbinic parables. Although parables in rabbinic literature have been explored for their theological insights, they have not been placed in conversation with understandings of gender that emerge from queer theory. This essay suggests that queer readings of parables offer a compelling counter-narrative to an always and singularly rigid, binary construction of gender in rabbinic sources. Rabbinic parables, which highlight gender fluidity, multiplicity, and instability, illuminate a queer theology at the heart of rabbinic understandings of gender, God, and Israel.
Die Religionen der Menschheit Begrtindet von Judaism lll Culture and Modernity Cover: The Duke of Sussex' Italian Pentateuch (British Library MS15423 flsv) ttaly, ca. L441-7467. 1. Auflage Alle Rechte vorbehalten, 2020
This chapter provides an interpretive literary history of feminist engagements with Judaism in th... more This chapter provides an interpretive literary history of feminist engagements with Judaism in the U.S. in the last fifty years.
Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements, 2019
Feminist Studies and Sacred lexls makes available innovative and provocative research on the inte... more Feminist Studies and Sacred lexls makes available innovative and provocative research on the interface of feminist studies and sacred texts. Books in the series are grounded in religious studies perspectives, theories, and methodologies, while engaging with the wide spectrum of feminist studies, including women's studies, gender studies, sexuali¡, studies, masculinitl'studies, and queer studies. They embrace intersectional discourses such as postcolonialism, ecolog¡.', disability', class, race, and ethnicif' studies. Fufthermore, thev are inclusive of religious texts from both established and new religious traditions and movements, and the¡, experiment with interand cross-religious perspectives. The series publishes monographs and edited collections that criticall¡.,' locate feminist studies and sacred texts within the historical, cultural, sociological, anthropological, comparative, political, and religious contexts in which thel' were produced, read, and continue to shape present practices and discourses.
Jewish and Christian Cosmogony in Late Antiquity , 2013
Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, 2009
Journal of the American Academy of Religion , 2005
Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, 2006
Imagining the Fetus, 2008
Books by Gwynn Kessler
University of Pennsylvania Press , 2009
In Conceiving Israel, Gwynn Kessler examines the peculiar fascination of the rabbis of late antiq... more In Conceiving Israel, Gwynn Kessler examines the peculiar fascination of the rabbis of late antiquity with fetuses—their generation, development, nurturance, and even prenatal study habits—as expressed in narrative texts preserved in the Palestinian Talmud and those portions of the Babylonian Talmud attributed to Palestinian sages. For Kessler, this rabbinic speculation on the fetus served to articulate new understandings of Jewishness, gender, and God. Drawing on biblical, Christian, and Greco-Roman traditions, she argues, the rabbis developed views distinctive to late ancient Judaism.
The Blackwell Companion to Late Ancient Jews and Judaism, 2020
Book Reviews by Gwynn Kessler
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Papers by Gwynn Kessler
This article sets forth a novel reading of the rabbinic category of tumtum v’androginos. It offers an alternative to the dominant interpretive framework by positing and historicizing a process through which a single category, tumtum v’androginos, becomes “tumtum” and “androginos.” Central to this historicization is a (re)contextualization of what is increasingly cited as the defining, “seminal,” text about tumtum and androginos in rabbinic sources: Tosefta Bikkurim 2:3-7. Placing this tradition in its larger rabbinic textual context and situating it among other rabbinic mentions of tumtum v’androginos invites us to revisit and reconsider the meanings and functions of tumtum v’androginos as a rabbinic categorization as it develops over time. Ultimately, contextualizing t. Bik. 2:3-7 also offers alternative ways of seeing the place of nonbinary gendered bodies in rabbinic sources and provides a fuller understanding of rabbinic constructions of gender within halakhic sources.
Books by Gwynn Kessler
Book Reviews by Gwynn Kessler
This article sets forth a novel reading of the rabbinic category of tumtum v’androginos. It offers an alternative to the dominant interpretive framework by positing and historicizing a process through which a single category, tumtum v’androginos, becomes “tumtum” and “androginos.” Central to this historicization is a (re)contextualization of what is increasingly cited as the defining, “seminal,” text about tumtum and androginos in rabbinic sources: Tosefta Bikkurim 2:3-7. Placing this tradition in its larger rabbinic textual context and situating it among other rabbinic mentions of tumtum v’androginos invites us to revisit and reconsider the meanings and functions of tumtum v’androginos as a rabbinic categorization as it develops over time. Ultimately, contextualizing t. Bik. 2:3-7 also offers alternative ways of seeing the place of nonbinary gendered bodies in rabbinic sources and provides a fuller understanding of rabbinic constructions of gender within halakhic sources.