Transforming Identity

Of all Judaic rituals, that of giyyur is arguably the most radical: it turns a Gentile into a Jew - once and for all and irrevocably. The very possibility of such a transformation is anomalous, according to Jewish tradition, which regards Jewishness as an ascriptive status entered through birth to a Jewish mother.

What is the internal logic of the ritual of giyyur, that seems to enable a Gentile to acquire an 'ascribed' identity? It is to this question, and others deriving from it, that the authors address themselves.

Interpretation of a ritual such as giyyur is linked to broad issues of anthropology, religion and culture: the relation of 'nature' and 'culture' in the construction of group boundaries; the tension between ethnicity and religion; the interrelation of individual identity and membership in a collective. Fully aware of these issues, this groundbreaking study focuses upon a close reading of primary halakhic texts from Talmudic times down to the present as key to the explication of meaning within the Judaic tradition.

In our times, the meaning of Jewish identity is a core issue, directly affecting the public debate regarding the relative weight of religion, nationality and kinship in determining basic aspects of Jewish life throughout the world. This book constitutes a seminal contribution to this ongoing discussion: it enables access to a wealth of halakhic sources previously accessible only to rabbinic scholars, fleshes out their meanings and implications within the cultural history of halakha, and in doing so situates halakha at the nexus of contemporary cultural discourse.

Autorentext

Avi Sagi is Professor of Philosophy, and Founder and Director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies, at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Israel. He has written and edited numerous books and articles in Jewish and general philosophy, among them Religion and Morality (with Daniel Statman, New York: 1995) and the recently released Judaism: Between Religion and Morality (Tel Aviv: 1998) and Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd (New York: 2002).

Inhalt

**Introduction
Part I: The Proselyte's Motivation as a factor in Giyyur
**Prologue
Chapter One: The Proselyte's Motivation in Talmudic Sources
Chapter Two: The Proselyte's Motivation in Post-Talmudic Sources up to the Sixteenth Century
Chapter Three: The Motivation for Giyyur in Modern Halakhic Sources:
Adaptivist Positions
Chapter Four: The Motivation for Giyyur in Modern Halakhic Sources:
Rejectionist and Transformationist Positions
**Part II: The Giyyur Ritual
Introduction
**Chapter Five: Giyyur as a Voluntaristic Normative Commitment in Talmudic Literature
Chapter Six: Giyyur as a Bodily Ritual in Talmudic Literature
Chapter Seven: Chapter Seven: The Canonical Formulation of the Ritual of Giyyur
Chapter Eight: The Yevamot Paradigm in Medieval Halakha
Chapter Nine: The Ritual of Giyyur: Aspects of the Demai Paradigm in Medieval Halakha
Chapter Ten: The Two Paradigms of Giyyur -- from the Arba'ah Turim to the Shulhan 'Arukh
Chapter Eleven: The Hermeneutical Controversy Regarding Rabbi Caro's Position - and its Significance
**Part III: The Polyphonic Meaning of Acceptance of the Commandments in Halakhic Literature
**Introduction
Chapter Twelve: Acceptance of the Commandments as a Formal Declaration
Chapter Thirteen: Acceptance of the Commandments as Subjective Intent
Chapter Fourteen: Ex post facto Annulment of Giyyur
**Part IV: The Meaning of Giyyur
**Introduction
Chapter 15: Giyyur and Jewish Identity
Bibliography