Humanity, Animality, Otherness, and the Study of Jewish Traditions

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Critical approaches to conventional understandings of the human and especially “the question of the animal,” as Jacques Derrida put it, are at the forefront of current theory and pose a challenge to both research and teaching in Jewish studies. 5 discussants who have published in this area will respond to this challenge by considering 4 questions: 1) How does attentiveness to the human/animal binary and animality shape interpretation of Hebrew Bible, rabbinic literature, and other Jewish traditions? 2) How has the sometimes racialized othering of the Jew in Western civilization been bound to the image of the animal? 3) How have Jews’ own imagination of otherness been bound to ideas about humanity and animality? 4) How is “the animal” already critically approached in modern Jewish thought, and what is its ongoing significance? Discussants include two specialists in modern Jewish thought: Aaron Gross, who will speak out of his interest in the racialization of Jews and Jewish racialization, drawing on his monograph THE QUESTION OF THE ANIMAL AND RELIGION (Columbia 2014) and his co-edited volume FEASTING AND FASTING (NYUP 2019), and Daniel Weiss, who will speak out of his interest in modern literary, ethical, and philosophical approaches to biblical and rabbinic literature, especially his own journal article and book chapter addressing the Hebrew Bible’s understanding of blood, bloodshed, and otherness; a historian, Jacob Ari Labendz, who specializes in European Jewish History and will speak out of his interest in Jewish veganism as an embodied practice and reflect upon his recent work co-editing JEWISH VEGETARIANISM AND VEGANISM (SUNY 2019); and two specialists in classical rabbinic literature, Beth Berkowitz, who will speak out of her interest in the study of Jewish difference, and her recent monograph ANIMALS AND ANIMALITY IN THE BABYLONIAN TALMUD (Cambridge 2018), and Mira Wasserman, who will speak out of her interest in the confluence of gender and animality in rabbinic discourse and her recent monograph, JEWS, GENTILES, AND OTHER ANIMALS (Penn 2017). Adrienne Krone, an ethnographer of contemporary Jewish food justice movements in North America whose work considers human-animal encounters on Jewish community farms, will serve as moderator.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish Thought and Theology

Moderator

• Adrienne M Krone, Allegheny College

Discussants

• Beth A. Berkowitz, Barnard College

• Jacob Ari Labendz, Youngstown State University

• Daniel Haskell Weiss, University of Cambridge

• Mira Beth Wasserman, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College