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Sacred Body

Readings in Jewish Literary Illumination

Roberta Sterman Sabbath

Sacred Body: Readings in Jewish Literary Illumination provides fresh and insightful interpretations of Jewish texts, narratives, and cultural practices that show how these artifacts unhinge the “sacred” from the divine and focus instead on the “everyday sacred” of a dynamic earthly existence that emphasizes the body, celebrates life-affirming decisions, actions, and relationships, and avoids abstraction, metaphysics, and apocalypticism. Roberta Sabbath argues that a diverse array of Jewish artifacts, from sacred scripture to contemporary novels and ballet performance, articulate a tradition that has existed for millennia in mythic, proto-historic, legalistic, mystical, philosophical, and aesthetic expressions of Jewishness. The author refers to this tradition as Jewish literary illumination, and she deftly demonstrates how it illuminates the most salient message of Judaism: that earthly existence and the body are also the site of the spiritual and the sacred.

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Lexington Books
Pages: 216 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-66690-796-4 • Hardback • June 2023 • $95.00 • (£73.00)
978-1-66690-797-1 • eBook • May 2023 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
Series: Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature
Subjects: Social Science / Jewish Studies, Literary Criticism / Jewish, Literary Criticism / General

Roberta Sterman Sabbath is director of religious studies and visiting assistant professor in the English Department at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Chapter 1. Biblical Emigrants: Human Agency in Eve, Abraham, Sarah

Chapter 2. Sexuality, Martyrdom, and Suicide in the Talmud: Life Force and Death by Choice

Chapter 3. From Hekhalot to Kabbalah: Accessing the Body of God

Chapter 4. Wonder and the Jewish Enlightenment: False Messiahs, Philosophers, and Social Justice

Chapter 5. Twenty-First Century Narratives of Jewish Identity: The Schlemiel and the Messianic in Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Nicole Krauss’s Forest Dark

Chapter 6.Twenty-First Century Epic Theater and Eclectic Choreography in Margot Mink Colbert’s Ballet Transit(ion): Emigration Transformation

Sabbath’s erudite chapters are appealing and well written. Overall, she effectively challenges that secular Jewish expression detracts from practicing and preserving legitimate Jewish belief and practice. Her charge that earthly life is inspired by action more than awe is challenging and enables infinity to conjoin with the actual in the Jewish view of the “sacred body.”


— Journal of Ecumenical Studies


Roberta Sterman Sabbath presents an intriguing and stimulating survey of Jewish literature from the Bible and the Talmud, through Kabbalistic, philosophical, and enlightenment texts, and on into contemporary Jewish literature and dance. Her focus is the role of the Body, both Human and Divine, in facilitating the encounter with the Holy and its expression in the world of creation throughout the history of the Jewish experience.


— Marvin A. Sweeney, Claremont School of Theology


This book offers a masterful discussion of Jewish literary illumination, evoking life-affirming stories from the biblical past to the twentieth century. It argues the human condition should not be left hostage to predetermined discourses on the metaphysical, apocalyptic, or uniform. It should wrestle, rather, with the tensions of uncomfortable, contradictory, and fragmentary lived experience. The sacred body is where human beings can fulfill their mission, namely to make life on earth better. Roberta Sterman Sabbath's intervention is erudite and eye-opening, and its innovative worldview is much needed in our world today, which is increasingly beset by crisis and instability.


— Emran El-Badawi, University of Houston


Sacred Body

Readings in Jewish Literary Illumination

Cover Image
Hardback
eBook
Summary
Summary
  • Sacred Body: Readings in Jewish Literary Illumination provides fresh and insightful interpretations of Jewish texts, narratives, and cultural practices that show how these artifacts unhinge the “sacred” from the divine and focus instead on the “everyday sacred” of a dynamic earthly existence that emphasizes the body, celebrates life-affirming decisions, actions, and relationships, and avoids abstraction, metaphysics, and apocalypticism. Roberta Sabbath argues that a diverse array of Jewish artifacts, from sacred scripture to contemporary novels and ballet performance, articulate a tradition that has existed for millennia in mythic, proto-historic, legalistic, mystical, philosophical, and aesthetic expressions of Jewishness. The author refers to this tradition as Jewish literary illumination, and she deftly demonstrates how it illuminates the most salient message of Judaism: that earthly existence and the body are also the site of the spiritual and the sacred.

Details
Details
  • Lexington Books
    Pages: 216 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½
    978-1-66690-796-4 • Hardback • June 2023 • $95.00 • (£73.00)
    978-1-66690-797-1 • eBook • May 2023 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
    Series: Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature
    Subjects: Social Science / Jewish Studies, Literary Criticism / Jewish, Literary Criticism / General
Author
Author
  • Roberta Sterman Sabbath is director of religious studies and visiting assistant professor in the English Department at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Chapter 1. Biblical Emigrants: Human Agency in Eve, Abraham, Sarah

    Chapter 2. Sexuality, Martyrdom, and Suicide in the Talmud: Life Force and Death by Choice

    Chapter 3. From Hekhalot to Kabbalah: Accessing the Body of God

    Chapter 4. Wonder and the Jewish Enlightenment: False Messiahs, Philosophers, and Social Justice

    Chapter 5. Twenty-First Century Narratives of Jewish Identity: The Schlemiel and the Messianic in Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Nicole Krauss’s Forest Dark

    Chapter 6.Twenty-First Century Epic Theater and Eclectic Choreography in Margot Mink Colbert’s Ballet Transit(ion): Emigration Transformation

Reviews
Reviews
  • Sabbath’s erudite chapters are appealing and well written. Overall, she effectively challenges that secular Jewish expression detracts from practicing and preserving legitimate Jewish belief and practice. Her charge that earthly life is inspired by action more than awe is challenging and enables infinity to conjoin with the actual in the Jewish view of the “sacred body.”


    — Journal of Ecumenical Studies


    Roberta Sterman Sabbath presents an intriguing and stimulating survey of Jewish literature from the Bible and the Talmud, through Kabbalistic, philosophical, and enlightenment texts, and on into contemporary Jewish literature and dance. Her focus is the role of the Body, both Human and Divine, in facilitating the encounter with the Holy and its expression in the world of creation throughout the history of the Jewish experience.


    — Marvin A. Sweeney, Claremont School of Theology


    This book offers a masterful discussion of Jewish literary illumination, evoking life-affirming stories from the biblical past to the twentieth century. It argues the human condition should not be left hostage to predetermined discourses on the metaphysical, apocalyptic, or uniform. It should wrestle, rather, with the tensions of uncomfortable, contradictory, and fragmentary lived experience. The sacred body is where human beings can fulfill their mission, namely to make life on earth better. Roberta Sterman Sabbath's intervention is erudite and eye-opening, and its innovative worldview is much needed in our world today, which is increasingly beset by crisis and instability.


    — Emran El-Badawi, University of Houston


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