Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?

Download or read book Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? written by Shaye J. D. Cohen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-09-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why aren't Jewish women circumcised? This improbable question, first advanced by anti-Jewish Christian polemicists, is the point of departure for this wide-ranging exploration of gender and Jewishness in Jewish thought. With a lively command of a wide range of Jewish sources—from the Bible and the Talmud to the legal and philosophical writings of the Middle Ages to Enlightenment thinkers and modern scholars—Shaye J. D. Cohen considers the varied responses to this provocative question and in the process provides the fullest cultural history of Jewish circumcision available.