Why Goy?
by Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi
"The aim of this book is, therefore, not historical but rather genealogical and typological. It toils to trace the birth of an operative category and reconstructs a discursive configuration that played a decisive role in many layers and aspects of Jewish culture(s)."
The Perils of Polarization
“Indeed, one might go so far as to attribute to Paul the enshrining of a whole series of interlocking dualisms that have “become the building blocks” not only of “Jewishness” but of numerous Western, humanistic institutions and ways of knowing – including knowing, and naming, one another.”
Ethnic and Cultural Identities in the Rabbinic Goy Discourse
“The rabbis were no doubt well aware of the decisive role of the mechanism of Roman citizenship in rearranging the multiplicity of ethnic and cultural identities into an all-inclusive contrast between citizens and non-citizens.”
The Goy: A Synchronic Proposal
“Whether we like it or not, when it comes to conceptions of Israel’s other(s), the Bible cannot be acquitted of the charge of a generalized binary (whether the contingent binary of the Pentateuch or the essentialist binary of Ezra); nor can the rabbis be condemned for a wholesale adoption of the same. The generalized conception of Israel’s other occurs at all textual stages.”
Paul, the Gentiles, and the Other(s) in Jewish Discourse
“I would argue that Paul’s ethnē may well be a “no-man’s land,” but it is not merely a step on the road from the particular to the universal. Rather, it gives Paul a rhetorical flexibility that allows him to resolve tangible problems that confront him in his missionary work.”