Bringing Down the Temple House

Happy families may all be alike, but the priestly family is unhappy in its own ways, shows Marjorie Lehman in her fine-grained readings of Babylonian Talmud Tractate Yoma. Lehman’s story is one of patriarchy and hierarchy, but also of vulnerability and reflection, as the tractate turns towards the practices of self-affliction that, until today, characterize the day of atonement. Tractate Yoma reads, if not quite like a novel or poem, then like a series of meditations on the shifting meanings of home and the anxieties about continuity and control. You will leave Bringing Down the Temple House never thinking the same way again about ‘the house’ as a Jewish cultural topos.

Strikingly original. Lehman brings to bear a feminist lens to demonstrate how one group of men (the rabbis) critiques and wrestles with the legacy of another group of men (the priests). Feminist attention to the constitutive relationships of the household (husband-wife, father-son, mother-son) illuminates the anxieties and tensions that play out as the rabbis claim the mantel of religious leadership from their priestly rivals.

Lehman persuasively demonstrates that the theme ‘house’ runs uniquely and distinctively through Bavli Tractate Yoma, read holistically as a self-contained literary unit. With an erudite combination of academic Talmud criticism and feminist and gender analysis, Lehman shows the many gendered paths Bavli Yoma takes to disconnect the rabbinic ‘house’ from a Temple ‘house’ for which she perceptively detects a lack of rabbinic nostalgia.

Through insightful analyses, compelling argumentation, and beautiful prose, Lehman mines Tractate Yoma’s structure, content, and imagery to reveal the intricate connections that the rabbis drew between gender, the home, and the temple. A model of what can be learned when we read the Talmud as literature and bring feminist analysis to ancient texts, and an absolute pleasure to read.