Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.
In Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism, Sarit Kattan Gribetz demonstrates how constructions of time simultaneously establish and obscure difference between various groups in rabbinic texts. This work presents the reader with an excellent model for how to bring eclectic sources spanning a large amount of time and space into conversation with one another. While this book occasionally faces issues when accounting for cultural differences between rabbinic texts, Gribetz nonetheless succeeds in her astute analysis of rabbinic anthropology by unpacking how different groups within the rabbinic world relate to and construct time.
This book is divided into four sections, each of which sets out to show how the rabbis use time to articulate difference and establish cohesion between groups. In chapter one, “Rabbinic and Roman Time,” Gribetz discusses how the rabbis incorporated Roman holidays into their own calendar. In chapter two, “Jewish and Christian Time,” Gribetz turns to rabbinic responses to pagan and later Christian critiques of Jewish Sabbath observance. Chapter three, “Men’s and Women’s Time,” compares laws regarding times of prayer to laws of niddah, ultimately suggesting that while prayer punctuated the rabbinic man’s time, fastidiousness over menstrual purity governed women’s time. In chapter four, “Human and Divine Time,” Gribetz artfully articulates how concern for the ways God spends his time allows the rabbis to understand themselves and their own daily commitments in relation to the deity. This final chapter shows the rabbis to be decisively unlike their Christian contemporary Augustine. Taken together, these four chapters demonstrate the potential of temporal discourses for constructing identity and provide a valuable paradigm for scholars in different fields within the humanities to do similar research.
Gribetz’s first chapter on rabbinic and Roman time is especially valuable to scholars of Classics seeking to integrate subaltern voices into their understanding of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, either because of linguistic deficiency or institutional barriers, rabbinic texts have flown under the radar of classicists. The flippant but all too accurate quip from Amy Richlin still sums up the current state of affairs: “Classics kicked out the Jews in the 19th century.”[1] Nonetheless, Gribetz is actively doing the work of integrating rabbinic literature into Classics through thoughtful comparative analysis. In many ways, Gribetz’s chapter, “Rabbinic and Roman Time,” answers the calls to reevaluate Roman history most recently put forth by Dan-el Padilla Peralta when the latter speaks of a “a summons to come to terms with the scope of ancient Rome’s epistemicide, and to embrace the epistemological and ethical recalibration needed to write its history.”[2]
Chapter one of Gribetz’s work acutely frames the polarizing and uniting aspects of discourse on time. The rabbis, on one hand, seek to carefully chronicle Roman festivals lest they be duped into any association with avodah zarah (foreign worship). However, by diligently keeping track of Roman festivals, the rabbis integrate Roman time into rabbinic time. Thus, we see rabbinic narratives about the origins of Roman holidays where biblical figures play an intimate role in forging the Roman state. Roman holidays become an integral theme of the rabbinic project even if the original impetus for their mention in the Mishna and Tosefta is to caution Jews from any association with Roman paganism. After articulating the merging of rabbinic and Roman calendars in rabbinic literature, Gribetz argues that rabbinic stories about the origin of Roman festivals should be considered a part of the broader literature on Roman holidays (p. 56). Just as writers like Ovid and Macrobius embedded narratives about the Roman holidays in a calendrical framework, so too do the rabbis of the Yerushalmi and Bavli. Gribetz then explicitly articulates the implication of this claim: “And much like these authors [Macrobius and Ovid], the rabbis used such stories to construct and cultivate their own identities--as Romans and as Rabbis (p 56).” This conclusion has profound implications for what we call Roman or understand to be a part of the classical canon. By arguing that the rabbis used Roman holidays as a canvas on which to sort out their hybrid identity, Gribetz presents a model of Romanness commonly ignored and passed over by scholars of classics.[3]
Gribetz joins a host of scholars of rabbinic literature who have shown how rabbinic texts can complicate dominant discourses about Romanness. Daniel Boyarin, writing about tales of martyrdom in rabbinic literature, characterized the whole corpus as a “safe and private space” outside the gaze of the Romans.[4] Hayim Lapin, in his work The Rabbis as Romans, argues that the rabbis of Roman Palestine engaged Roman institutions in constructing their social system and constitute “one modality of provincial self-fashioning.”[5] Boyarin, Lapin, and Gribetz all cite James C Scott’s hidden transcript as a valuable model for understanding rabbinic literature in its Roman context.[6] Catherine Bonesho, like Gribetz, focuses on Roman holidays as an intersection of Roman and rabbinic culture. For Bonesho, the holidays of the Roman Other become a tool in rabbinic self-understanding; in other words, Roman religio-cultural practices and institutions are subordinated to expressions of Jewish identity and law in rabbinic literature.[7]
In chapter two, Gribetz continues to show how temporal discourses frame rabbinic identity vis-a-vis non-Jews. Certain discussions of the Sabbath in rabbinic literature, Gribetz cautiously suggests, function as a response or at the very least an engagement with Roman and later Christian critiques of Jewish Sabbath observance. This chapter homes in on a select number of rabbinic texts in which the rabbis discuss Sabbath observance with non-Jews. Gribetz astutely notes that these discussions (or in some cases heated exchanges) nicely correspond to externally attested critiques leveled against Jewish Sabbath observance by Romans and Christians. For example, Pseudo-Ignatius, among other church fathers, claims that Jewish food served on the Sabbath has a revolting smell and is too cold. In response, claims Gribetz, Genesis Rabbah 11:4 features a discussion between the legendary Roman emperor Antoninus and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi in which Antoninus lauds the delicious Sabbath food which he enjoys at the rabbi’s house. Antoninus goes so far as to say that he prefers the cold dishes which Rabbi serves him on the Sabbath to the hot dishes prepared during the week. In another dialogue in Genesis Rabbah, the Roman governor Tinneus Rufus interrogates Rabbi Akiva about Jewish Sabbath observance. The skilled rabbi responds to each of the hostile governor’s quips. Gribetz cogently argues that “[t]he ‘outsider’ characters do not simply stand in as projections of internal rabbinic anxieties, as is common in rabbinic literature, but rather embody in these narratives prejudices, stereotyped judgments, and theological arguments actually held by those for whom the figure speaks, in this case a segment of the Roman pagan and Christian literate, literary and ruling elite (p. 130).” Gribetz acknowledges that scholars such as Mira Balberg caution against understanding rabbinic ideology as stemming from dialogues with others. However, Gribetz, following the precedent of Marc Hirshman, argues that since Roman and later Christian sources about the Jewish Sabbath circulated widely in Palestine, the aforementioned rabbinic texts are more fully understood with a full appreciation of their context (p 97-8).
Chapters one and two present a unique approach to analyzing Jewish engagement with non-Jews. Rather than analyze rabbinic interaction with the Other in a general sense, Gribetz focuses on pressure points in rabbinic literature where the rabbis inscribe their hybrid identity. Roman holidays were actively celebrated in Palestine, and non-Jews in the region disparaged Jewish Sabbath observance. The rabbis unpacked their Roman-Rabbinic hybridity when it related to issues where the two sides of that identity were in the most tension. In the next two chapters, Gribetz turns toward intra-communal difference and then to ontological difference.
In chapter three, “Men’s and Women’s Time,” Gribetz demonstrates that in rabbinic literature women marked time through purity concerns while men marked time with daily prayer. The corollary of this thesis, which Gribetz spells out explicitly, is that women were excluded from prayer while concerns for male purity are less pronounced in the later texts of rabbinic literature. Gribetz details the nature of these gendered temporal rhythms by noting that “men’s time was determined by the heavenly bodies and defined men’s relationship to God and to the future, while women’s time was determined by their own bloody bodies, required serious retrospection, and defined their relationships to their husbands and surrounding objects--and only indirectly to God (p.141).” This gendered temporality marks male time as intimately associated with the divine while female time as inextricably linked to the body. Thus, these two temporal rhythms are directionally opposed to one another. As with the discussion of rabbis and the Other, Gribetz reads gender in rabbinic texts in a new light.
In her final chapter, “Human and Divine Time,” Gribetz argues that the rabbis use temporal discourse to unpack the differences and similarities between God and humans. She frames this chapter with three questions (p. 190): How does God divide time? How does God spend time? How does human time relate to these divine time-keeping practices? This chapter features a wide array of texts. Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and the seventh century poet Yannai all feature a discussion of how God spent his time during the sixth day of creation. The stories of God’s hour by hour schedule on the day God created humans “all employ the cosmic and hourly time of the sixth day of creation … to reflect on the intimate yet fraught connection between divine and human, heavenly and earthly (p. 202).” Here again we see that time allows the rabbis to construct and elide difference. On one hand, God is like humans since God wraps tefillin and studies Torah just like rabbinic men. However, God is also temporally isolated, living in a temporal dimension where only the Levithan can keep God company.
Gribetz’s Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism succeeds in demonstrating how temporal discourses allowed the rabbis to construct their own identity, inscribe difference between themselves and Romans, Christians, Jewish women, and God, and simultaneously elide that difference. Since the book is organized thematically, Gribetz present texts from both the Tannaitic and Amoriac period not always focusing the development of temporal discourse over time and space. This organizing principle elides the differences in temporally and geographically diverse texts in the rabbinic corpus while highlighting thematic continuity. In her final chapter especially, Gribetz cites sources spanning hundreds of years without much clear discussion of the ways rabbinic thought developed.
However, Gribetz does employ a diachronic analysis of sources in her first chapter, “Rabbinic and Roman Time” with productive results. In regards to the Roman holiday Kratesis, she keenly observes that where the Palestinian Talmud “blames the Jews and their idolatrous sins for the original founding of Rome, the Babylonian Talmud’s etiology for the same festival credits the Jews and their promotion of the Torah for the success of the Roman Empire (p.81).”[8] Gribetz uses a similar type of comparative analysis for the other Roman holidays mentioned in this chapter.[9] By discussing the development of rabbinic sources on Roman holidays Gribetz is able to argue for a substantial difference in the way the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmud construct their etiologies. She concludes that while Palestinian sources stress the “tensions between Jews and Romans,” the Babylonian Talmud tends “to highlight the positive impact and influence of Jews on Roman culture (p.85).”[10] This chapter succeeds in highlighting the development of rabbinic discourse on this theme in a way that would be productive elsewhere in the text.
Nonetheless, Gribetz does succeed in drawing a thematic throughline between texts. Scholars interested in a specific textual community still have much to glean from this book, even if it involves sifting through the eclectic sources which populate its pages.
This learned work has much to contribute to many subfields within rabbinic literature. For any scholar working on rabbis and Romans, Jewish-Christian relations, gender, or rabbinic theology, Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism is an invaluable resource. The intersectional potential of this book becomes most apparent in a wholesome anecdote about a classroom discussion. Gribetz shares that when she introduced the idea of “Jewish Time,” her students, all too familiar with way time relates to their own identity, brought up “CPT,” “Dominican Time,” and “Gay Standard Time.” This lovely snapshot into a lively classroom discussion demonstrates how this book provides a paradigm for understanding different kinds of identities. I end this review with Gribetz’s beautiful insight about how her students integrated her research into their own lives: “We realized together…that time can deliberately be used…to assert and celebrate ethnic, religious, or gendered difference (p.xii).” Gribetz harnesses the potential of temporal discourses to produce an engaging and multidisciplinary study of rabbinic literature.
Daniel Golde is a PhD student at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
[1] Richlin (2013: 299).
[2] Padilla-Peralta (2020: 151)
[3] See Rosen-Zvi’s (2007: 503-4) critique of Ando’s provincial model.
[4] Boyarin (1999: 46).
[5] Lapin (2012:150).
[6] See Lapin (2003: 332-3) for an in-depth engagement with Scott’s Hidden Transcript. See Scott (2011) for a full treatment of the hidden transcript. The hidden transcript refers to the discourse of the non-dominant group that is outside the purview of the dominant group. Scott’s formulation nicely captures the hostile nature of these subaltern discourses (2011:11): “It [the hidden transcript] is, if you will, the portion of an acrimonious dialogue that domination has driven off the immediate stage.”
[7] Bonesho (2018: 23-25).
[8] This difference between the talmuds fits with a larger trend identified by Kalmin where the Bavli tends “visualize the rabbis everywhere” (Kalmin 2006: 47).
[9] See p. 65-66 for her analysis of the difference between the two Talmuds with respect to the Kalends. See p. 81 for a short analysis of Genousia in both Talmuds.
[10] This conclusion broadly aligns with the observations of Herman who argues that the Bavli reframes Palestinian interactions with gentile rulers in a more positive light. He generally argues for a more sympathetic depiction of Rome in the Babylonian Talmud (Herman 2018:112-114).
Work Cited:
Ando, C. 2000. Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bonesho, Catherine. 2018. Foreign Holidays and Festivals as Representative of Identity in Rabbinic Literature. PhD Dissertation. University of Wisconsin.
Boyarin, Daniel. 1999. Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Herman, Geoffrey. 2018. “In Honor of the House of Caesar: Attitudes to the Kingdom in the Aggada of the Babylonian Talmud and other Sasanian Sources.” In The Aggada of the Bavli and its Cultural World. ed. J. Rubenstein and G. Herman. 103-23: Providence: Brown Judaic Studies.
Kalmin, Richard. 2006. Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman-Palestine: Decoding the Literary Record. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lapin, Hayim. 2003. “Hegemony and its Discontents: Rabbis as a Late Antique Provincial Population.” In R. Kalmin and S. Schwartz, eds. Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire. Bremen: Peeters, Pp. 319–348.
Lapin, Hayim. 2012. Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100-400 C.E. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Padilla Peralta, Dan-el. 2020. “Epistemicide: The Roman Case.” Classica: Revista Brasileira de Estudios Clássicos 33.2: 151-86.
Richlin, A. 2013. “Sexuality and History.” In Partner, N., and Foot, S. eds. The Sage Handbook of Historical Theory. Los Angeles: Sage. 294-310.
Rosen-Zvi, I. 2017. “Is the Mishnah a Roman Composition?” In Hayes, C., Novick, Z., and Bar-Asher Segal, M. eds. The Faces of Torah: Studies in the Texts and Contexts of Ancient Judaism in Honor of Steven Fraade. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 487-508.
Scott, James C., 2011. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press