Books by Beth A. Berkowitz

For readers of religion, Judaism, and animal studies, Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud offers new perspectives on animals from the vantage point of the ancient rabbis. It selects key themes in animal studies - animal intelligence, morality, suffering, danger, and personhood - and explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud.

This book traces the interpretive career of Leviticus 18:3, a verse that forbids Israel from imitating its neighbors. Beth A. Berkowitz shows that ancient, medieval and modern exegesis of this verse provides an essential backdrop for today's conversations about Jewish assimilation and minority identity more generally. The story of Jewishness that this book tells may surprise many modern readers for whom religious identity revolves around ritual and worship. In Leviticus 18:3's story of Jewishness, sexual practice and cultural habits instead loom large. The readings in this book are on a micro-level, but their implications are far-ranging: Berkowitz transforms both our notion of Bible-reading and our sense of how Jews have defined Jewishness.