Papers by Caryn Tamber-Rosenau
Journal of Biblical Literature, 2024
In this article, I explore the intersections of gender and ethnic categories in the book of Judit... more In this article, I explore the intersections of gender and ethnic categories in the book of Judith. The entire book-titled after a character whose name means "Jewess"-is suffused with commentary on both Judith's womanhood and her Jewish identity. Here, I focus on chapters 10, 11, 12, and 14 of the book, which contain the language of both gender and ethnicity. Judith's Jewish identity is discussed in the same breath as her gender and beauty, presenting an opportunity to examine how the categories of womanhood and Jewishness are invoked and how they complicate one another. This article will use the figure of the belle Juive, or "beautiful Jewess, " to discuss how gender and Jewishness interact in Judith. I will discuss how the conversations between Judith and the Assyrians play with assumptions the Assyrians have about women and Jews, and how meeting Judith shapes the Assyrians' ideas about the rest of her people. We can read this encounter as engineered by the character of Judith, with attention to the complicated dynamics of gender and national identity, to produce exactly the result she gets: an Assyrian army and general that unwittingly hands her the power to achieve her goal.
Lee Edelman and the Queer Study of Religion
Encyclopedia of the Bible Online, Sep 30, 2013
Hebrew Studies, 2022
The character of Esther in the biblical book named for her is often read in scholarship as passiv... more The character of Esther in the biblical book named for her is often read in scholarship as passive, overshadowed by her relative Mordechai, merely complying with his directives. This essay uses queer-theoretical vocabularies of drag and passing to allow for a different reading of Esther, one in which she acts intentionally and at great personal risk to save herself and her people. I examine the Hebrew Masoretic text of Esther, as well as early Jewish interpretations of the story, for clues about Esther's ethnic and sexual passing. In addition to arguing that Esther the character engages in drag and passing, I contend that Esther the book does temporal drag, playing with notions of time to make an important argument about how Jewish history works. While acknowledging that the book was almost certainly written to legitimate nationalist counter-reading strategies can produce more liberatory understandings.
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 2022
Nina Paley's animated musical Seder-Masochism reimagines the story of the Exodus. To Paley, the E... more Nina Paley's animated musical Seder-Masochism reimagines the story of the Exodus. To Paley, the Exodus is not the pinnacle of God's relationship with Israel but the silencing of Goddess religion. Paley draws heavily on the work of some "goddess feminists" to argue that YHVH's rise killed "the Goddess." This article discusses how Seder-Masochism portrays goddess worship in the ancient world in general and ancient Israel and Judah in particular. Tamber-Rosenau explores how Paley's filmic portrayals of goddesses interact with the current state of scholarship on ancient goddesses. She then shows how the film's central thesis that God silenced and killed the Goddess connects with Paley's antitransgender ideology.
The Social Studies Texan, 2020
The term “Judeo-Christian” is ubiquitous among American politicians, pundits, and the public. It ... more The term “Judeo-Christian” is ubiquitous among American politicians, pundits, and the public. It even shows up in the TEKS (WH.19A, WH.21B, G.1B). It surely strikes many as an inclusive term, making clear that the American project includes not only the majority religion, Christianity, but also its Abrahamic forerunner, Judaism. However, I argue “Judeo-Christian” is not an advisable term in the classroom. It is deeply offensive to many Jews. It creates an us-vs.-them mentality, pitting Jews and Christians against other religions. It obscures major differences between Judaism and Christianity and ignores the long history of Christian anti-Judaism. I argue that the “Judeo-Christian” framing leads to deficient understandings of both traditions. Finally, I offer concrete suggestions for educators teaching about Judaism and Christianity in the Texas social studies classroom, including how to work with TEKS guidelines that include the term.
The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible, 2020
The idea that biblical scholars discern the "gender" of a text or tradition by examining a text's... more The idea that biblical scholars discern the "gender" of a text or tradition by examining a text's worldview, voice, and use of language gained currency in the 1990s with Athalya Brenner and Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes's On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Bible. Since then, a steady stream of books and papers has made the case for "masculine" or "feminine" voices in various biblical narratives. Although the boom in scholarship searching for "M" or "F" voices in biblical texts coincided with the growth of queer-theoretical and gender-critical approaches to the Bible, no queer-influenced cri tique of the practice of gendering texts has yet emerged. This essay argues that the M/F textual schema both implies and reinforces a fixed gender binary, a notion rejected by queer theory in general and queer biblical criticism in particular. In other words, the at tempt to recover female voices in the Hebrew Bible is a noble goal, but the conviction that an exegete provides such a recovery by looking to a text's stereotyped "gendered" language or interests is unhelpful to feminist biblical studies. CAN modern researchers recover female voices in the Hebrew Bible, hidden in plain sight among the male-authored bulk of the corpus? The possibility is tantalizing. If we can iden tify parts of the Bible that bear the marks of women's interests and concerns, feminist readers gain new ways to relate to and interpret scripture. Additionally, if these scholars find authentic female voices in the Bible, we get closer to finding out what women's lives in ancient Israel were really like. In the landmark work On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Bible (1993), Athalya Brenner and the late Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes propose that this type of recovery is possible. 1 Their book was, and still is, huge ly influential in feminist biblical scholarship and precedes a plethora of interpretations that seek to recover authentic female voices in biblical texts.
Biblical Interpretation, 2020
The Book of Judith and its main character are fascinating for the ways in which they play with ti... more The Book of Judith and its main character are fascinating for the ways in which they play with time and history. This article argues that theoretical frameworks of queer temporality are instructive for understanding Judith. Judith's childlessness, her aberrant daily schedule, and her refusal to work on her enemies' time mark her as someone resisting normative time and a focus on the future. At the same time, however, Judith does ensure a future for Bethulia, and, by extension, for Israel. Consequently, this article also explores how the Book of Judith itself plays with the idea of history, calling into question the very future Judith supposedly ensures. The article also highlights the absence of eschatological thinking in the Book of Judith. Finally, this article discusses the implications of such an erring, queer narrative for thinking about Jewish history and the biblical canon. Keywords Book of Judith-queer theory-queer historiography-queer temporality-reproductive futurism-chrononormativity-queer subjects
The famous baths of two biblical women, Bathsheba and Susanna,
captured the lust of their respect... more The famous baths of two biblical women, Bathsheba and Susanna,
captured the lust of their respective onlookers. Despite what is
not a hint of seductive intent in their stories, many interpreters
have portrayed these two characters as, essentially, “asking
for it.” Feminist scholars have worked to rehabilitate Bathsheba
and Susanna’s reputations. Curiously, though, neither traditional
scholars portraying the characters as femmes fatales nor feminist
interpreters defending them have brought a third biblical bathing
woman, Judith, into the discussion. This paper argues that
Judith is the only one of the three to whom the biblical text actually
does attribute seductive motives. Judith uses the idea that a
bathing woman is an irresistible object of desire to her advantage
and so arranges semipublic baths while she is in an Assyrian military
camp. Using close readings of the three texts and feminist
interpretive strategies, Tamber-Rosenau argues that Judith, unlike
the other two bathing women, choreographs her exposure
for maximum effect. Judith’s baths, unlike those of Bathsheba
and Susanna, are a calculated part of a larger seduction routine.
This paper reexamines a fragmentary Aramaic letter from the Yedaniah communal archive in Elephant... more This paper reexamines a fragmentary Aramaic letter from the Yedaniah communal archive in Elephantine. The document, TAD A4.4, tells a tale of intrigue involving burglaries, arrests, and failed diplomacy. Many details of the letter escape us because the text is incomplete, but it is clear that five men and six women from Elephantine were seized at the gate in Thebes. Scholarly treatments have tended to discuss the women’s presence at Thebes as an ancillary fact, as if they were merely wives and daughters along with their men on a business trip. This paper analyzes the internal evidence of TAD A4.4, brings to bear contemporary material from Elephantine, and proposes alternatives for the role of the captured women. I argue that TAD A4.4 provides further insight into the roles of women in Elephantine and discuss how and why their roles might differ from those implied in biblical texts of this period.
Teaching Documents by Caryn Tamber-Rosenau
Female Divinities syllabus
Introduction to Jewish Studies syllabus
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Papers by Caryn Tamber-Rosenau
captured the lust of their respective onlookers. Despite what is
not a hint of seductive intent in their stories, many interpreters
have portrayed these two characters as, essentially, “asking
for it.” Feminist scholars have worked to rehabilitate Bathsheba
and Susanna’s reputations. Curiously, though, neither traditional
scholars portraying the characters as femmes fatales nor feminist
interpreters defending them have brought a third biblical bathing
woman, Judith, into the discussion. This paper argues that
Judith is the only one of the three to whom the biblical text actually
does attribute seductive motives. Judith uses the idea that a
bathing woman is an irresistible object of desire to her advantage
and so arranges semipublic baths while she is in an Assyrian military
camp. Using close readings of the three texts and feminist
interpretive strategies, Tamber-Rosenau argues that Judith, unlike
the other two bathing women, choreographs her exposure
for maximum effect. Judith’s baths, unlike those of Bathsheba
and Susanna, are a calculated part of a larger seduction routine.
Teaching Documents by Caryn Tamber-Rosenau
captured the lust of their respective onlookers. Despite what is
not a hint of seductive intent in their stories, many interpreters
have portrayed these two characters as, essentially, “asking
for it.” Feminist scholars have worked to rehabilitate Bathsheba
and Susanna’s reputations. Curiously, though, neither traditional
scholars portraying the characters as femmes fatales nor feminist
interpreters defending them have brought a third biblical bathing
woman, Judith, into the discussion. This paper argues that
Judith is the only one of the three to whom the biblical text actually
does attribute seductive motives. Judith uses the idea that a
bathing woman is an irresistible object of desire to her advantage
and so arranges semipublic baths while she is in an Assyrian military
camp. Using close readings of the three texts and feminist
interpretive strategies, Tamber-Rosenau argues that Judith, unlike
the other two bathing women, choreographs her exposure
for maximum effect. Judith’s baths, unlike those of Bathsheba
and Susanna, are a calculated part of a larger seduction routine.