ANCIENT JEW REVIEW

“What does a human look like? What does a raven look like? What happens when you look at them for long enough to see something like yourself? And then you look even longer? –and there is something about being asked to attend to these things that gets at the heart of the matter.”

“Critical to this argument, and worthy of further reflection, is Rafael’s deployment of their own artistic practice to communicate their book’s ideas and to produce a meta-argument about history and method that develops alongside the text, and does work that words alone could never do.”

“In When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven, Neis uncovers a world of reproductive uncertainty, making a convincing case for taking the rabbis’ scenarios and debates at face value – as constitutive of ancient world-making.”

“Rafe’s book invites us to revisit what it meant in the rabbinic world to take care of another being, to rely on and be relied upon, and to be enmeshed with another being physically and psychically.”

“I hope the book further chips away at the deep-seated eurocentrism and Roman-triumphalism that continues to treat Iranian empires as backwards and primitive, employing different strategies of rule based on their lesser governing capabilities.”

“In the end what I think distinguishes Simcha’s account from others is the sense of the informality and improvisatory character of these arrangements, their non-institutionalization and their easy evadability. Thus, minority communities were not bound by any Personalitätsprinzip: they were not required to follow their own laws and did not even necessarily have any formal privilege to follow them, just accreted usage and custom.”