Hagith Sivan. Jewish Childhood in the Roman World. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Hagith Sivan’s Jewish Childhood in the Roman World provides a comprehensive analysis of the rabbinic sources on childhood and features four fictional short stories from the perspectives of Jewish youths living in Rome or in a Roman province. One of Sivan’s major goals in this work is to “build bridges between disciplines and between the study of childhood/children in antiquity and the study of ancient Jewish childhood (p. xviii).” Since the study of childhood has received considerable attention from scholars of Classics, Sivan’s work serves to insert the Jewish voice into a field which has so often put the study of rabbinic literature into its own category. This book marks a pivotal step in the process of decolonizing Classics because of its cogent articulation of a crucial topic from the perspective of a subaltern community in the Roman empire.
Sivan’s methodology is unconventional, though to some may seem problematic. Since the primary sources about Jewish childhood do not feature actual voices of children, Sivan constructs the child’s point of view through fictional narratives grounded in different historical contexts. Parts one and two of this book, constituting seven chapters, remain within the realm of traditional scholarship and discuss rabbinic texts about different aspects of childhood. Part three, which is only four short chapters, contains four discrete works of historical fiction followed by a rigorous analysis of the texts which Sivan utilizes as grounds for her fictional stories.
In the first seven chapters, Sivan tackles complex issues in Jewish scholarship through her detailed account of diverse childhood experiences. In her opening chapter, “Theorizing the Jewish Child,” Sivan discusses the rabbinic conception of the yetzer hara (evil inclination) as it relates to childhood development. Sivan is primarily concerned with demonstrating the way the Rabbis used the yetzer hara to understand the ontology of children vis-à-vis adults. After sighting a primary source, Sivan concludes that “childhood is deemed a period of thoughtlessness and impetuosity” since the child has not yet received the yetzer tov (good inclination) to counteract the yetzer hara (p.18). This chapter persuasively demonstrates that the Rabbis viewed children as incomplete and deficient adults.
Chapters three and four, titled “Bringing up Boys: Contemporary Father-Son Bonding,” and “Daughters: Delight or Dissension,” focus on the rabbinic construction of gender as it relates to the disparate upbringings the Rabbis prescribe for boys and girls. Sivan is able to elucidate this gender construction by calling attention to the fundamentally different education boys and girls received. One interesting difference in the gendered curriculum that Sivan chooses to highlight is the rabbinic attitude to Torah and Greek education. Sivan argues that the father’s most important job was to teach his son Torah. After citing the requisite primary texts to justify this point, Sivan introduces a text from the Palestinian Talmud regarding the paternal obligation to teach male children Greek: “May a man teach his son Greek? [Rabbi Joshua] responded that he indeed can, providing he does so at a time that is neither day nor night since it is written [about Torah study]: ‘And you shall meditate on it day and night’ (Josh 1:8).”[1] Sivan can appropriately conclude that “Greek could have been approvingly shunned (p. 107).”
Daughters in rabbinic literature, the focus of chapter four, received nearly polar opposite educational guidelines. In a subsection of chapter four titled “Teaching Daughters Torah or Greek,” Sivan discusses much of the important rabbinic literature regarding the education of female children. The famous Mishna from Sotah (3.4-5) that features an argument between Ben Azzai and Rabbi Eliezer concerning female Torah education allows Sivan to articulate a seminal difference between male and female children. Since the Mishna rules against Ben Azzai and prohibits daughters from learning Torah, Sivan argues that there is “a separation of paternal roles, with fathers duplicating their identity through sons yet also depriving daughters of learning (p.146).” Torah education and the feminine are structurally opposed. Despite stern opposition to female Torah knowledge, Sivan demonstrates that the matter of Greek education for women “was left open (p. 147).”
In Chapter five, Sivan discusses the children who do not fit into the binary categories of male and female. Although she does not incorporate gender theory into the body of this chapter, the primary texts cited provide the student of gender studies with valuable material for further research. After citing a Tosefta that reads “the sages could not agree whether an androginos is male or female,” Sivan provides a two-page list detailing the “male” and “female” attributes of androginoi as they relate to gender-specific Jewish law (p.185-7). This fascinating section shows that the rabbis were unable to implement their rigid binary system: “The very existence of categories that did not quite fit gender duality questioned the myths of origin and the manner in which these were inscribed into the religious space of post-biblical and especially rabbinic Judaism (p. 189).” Sivan cannot give this topic the attention it deserves because the scope of her work is the entirety of Jewish childhood.
In section two of Jewish Childhood in the Roman World, Sivan departs from textual sources on childhood and moves to visual synagogue art. The questions guiding this section are as follows: What would Jewish children living in the Mediterranean see and how would these images shape their identity? Sivan argues that the images found in synagogues could function as an additional pedagogical tool for text study. Sivan’s discussion of the militant depiction of King David at Meroth’s synagogue in the upper Galilee demonstrates how images could inculcate societal values: “The selection of an armed David was hardly accidental. Children… would have gorged with gusto on the story of the duel between an adolescent Israelite and a grown-up Philistine. They lived in a community that seemed rarely at peace with itself and with others (p.234).” By articulating the different mediums of education, Sivan strives to paint a holistic picture of Jewish adolescence.
Section three features four short stories about individual children living in Roman-controlled regions. Although the stern scholar may pass over these works of fiction, the stories themselves are entertaining and pedagogically useful. Since each story is followed by a detailed analysis of the primary sources upon which the story is based, there is important historical information in this section and excellent references to secondary literature for further research. The curious student who seeks an easy read will find these stories stimulating and educational. In crafting these short stories, Sivan has made this book valuable and desirable for those outside of academia.
As a whole Jewish Childhood in the Roman World is an informative book with a wealth of rabbinic sources on childhood and adolescence. Sivan covers a wide range of topics through the lens of childhood and supplies requisite secondary literature for further study. For this reason, Jewish Childhood in the Roman World is invaluable for collecting contemporary scholarship on the most important topics in the study of Judaism and more broadly the study of religion in antiquity. Any Ph.D. student in Jewish Studies compiling a bibliography for his or her comprehensive exams would benefit from reading this book and gathering the numerous valuable citations. However, aside from the final section of the book, which is historical fiction, this work reads like a comprehensive textbook. Sivan does not demonstrate how her own position fits into broader scholarly discussions and treats a vast array of important topics at the expense of in-depth analysis into one theme. This book is valuable for its wealth of rabbinic citations on the multitudinous experiences of childhood, its comprehensive citations of secondary literature, and its creative works of historical fiction.
Daniel Golde is a Ph.D. student in Ancient Jewish Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
dannygolde@gmail.com or dagolde@jtsa.edu
[1] Sivan, 107 citing PT Peah 1.1.