Beyond Brutality

Reclaiming Female Presence in Bavli Sotah

Jane Kanarek

Beyond Brutality draws on feminist analysis and gender studies to examine tractate Sotah of the Babylonian Talmud as a literary unit. By interrogating how, why, and where women are invisible within Bavli Sotah, Jane Kanarek brings to light a ubiquitous female presence throughout the text. Despite the brutality of the sotah ritual—in which the woman accused of adultery is put through a divine ordeal intended to reveal her innocence or her guilt—this book demonstrates that Bavli Sotah is not primarily concerned with describing the sotah ritual or establishing male control over women. Instead, Bavli Sotah becomes a pedagogical text in which the sotah is secondary to moral and sinning men. As the sotah herself fades into the background, the sotah ritual nevertheless overflows its boundaries and weaves its way through a range of other topics within the tractate. In the process, Bavli Sotah teaches its audience who transmits and how one transmits rabbinic culture.

Series:

HBI Series on Jewish Women

Paper: $45 | Cloth: $130 | E-book: $44.95

ISBN-13: 9781684582990

Pages: 300 | Size: 6 in. x 9 in.

Date Published: December 22, 2025

Imprint:

Brandeis University Press

About the Author

Jane Kanarek

Jane Kanarek is associate professor of rabbinics and associate dean of the Hebrew College Rabbinical School. She is the author of Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law and the co-editor of Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How it Happens and Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination, the latter two of which were finalists for the National Jewish Book Awards. Her work has been published in AJS Review, Teaching Theology and Religion, the Journal of Jewish Education, and Sh’ma Journal: A Journal of Jewish Ideas.

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