Language:
English
Year of publication:
2016
Titel der Quelle:
Hebrew Union College Annual
Angaben zur Quelle:
87 (2016) 145-177
Keywords:
Breastfeeding in rabbinical literature
;
Motherhood Religious aspects
;
Judaism
Abstract:
Breast milk is an ideal beverage for rabbinic inquiry. The only quaffable bodily fluid, it is available only for a limited period of time; yet, during that brief period, it is vital to an infant's life. Further, both the producer and consumer of milk are interstitial, since women/mothers and minors/infants do not fit in the normative rabbinic category of Jewish adult man. Given these observations, it is startling: (1) how little scholars have written about breastfeeding in rabbinic literature; and (2) how much of this sparse scholarship treats these texts as if they are straightforward descriptions of lived practice. This article addresses both of these issues. Throughout, I argue that the rabbis use breast milk as a vehicle for scholastic inquiry into a number of central legal matters.
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