Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?: Gender and Covenant in Judaism

About this book

Why arent 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 sourcesfrom the Bible and the Talmud to the legal and philosophical writings of the Middle Ages to Enlightenment thinkers and modern scholarsShaye J. D. Cohen considers the varied responses to this provocative question and in the process provides the fullest cultural history of Jewish circumcision available.