Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism

Sarit Kattan Gribetz’s new book, Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism, explores the rhythms of time that animated the rabbinic world of late antiquity, revealing how rabbis conceptualized time as a way of constructing difference between themselves and imperial Rome, Jews and Christians, men and women, and human and divine. The book sheds new light on the central role that time played in the construction of Jewish identity, subjectivity, and theology during this transformative period in the history of Judaism, and traces the legacies of rabbinic constructions of time in the medieval and modern periods.

Please join us for a conversation between the author and Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, a scholar of rabbinics, as they discuss the big themes from the book and the implications of the book’s findings for how we understand time, religion, and community today, as well as key rabbinic passages that are central in the book,

For more information about the book, visit https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691192857/time-and-difference-in-rabbinic-judaism.

About the Speakers
Gribetz is an associate professor of theology at Fordham and author of Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism (Princeton University Press, 2020).

Alexander is a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia and author of Gender and Timebound Commandments in Judaism (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and co-editor with Beth Berkowitz of Religious Studies and Rabbinics (Routledge, 2017).