Holiness and Transgression: Mothers of the Messiah in the Jewish Myth(Psychoanalysis and Jewish Life)

About the Book

This volume deals with the female dynasty of the House of David and its influence on the Jewish Messianic Myth. It provides a missing link in the chain of research on the topic of messianism and contributes to the understanding of the connection between female transgression and redemption, from the Bible through Rabbinic literature until the Zohar. The discussion of the centrality of the mother image in Judeo-Christian culture and the parallels between the appearance of Mary in the Gospels and the Davidic Mothers in the Hebrew Bible, stresses mutual representations of "the mother of the messiah" in Christian and Jewish imaginaire. Through the prism of gender studies and by stressing questions of femininity, motherhood and sexuality, the subject appears in a new light. This research highlights the importance of intertwining Jewish literary study with comparative religion and gender theories, enabling the process of filling in the 'mythic gaps' in classical Jewish sources. The book won the Pines, Lakritz and Warburg awards.

Table of Contents:

• Acknowledgments
• Translator's Note
• Introduction
• Part One - Messianic Mothers in the Bible
• Chapter One: Feminine Genealogy and the Lineage of the House of David
• Chapter Two: The Type-Scene of “The Birth of the Messianic Hero”
• Part Two - The Messianic Mother in Rabbinic Literature - Sororal Love and ""Ethics of Redemption""
• Chapter Three: David’s Mother(s) in Yalkut ha-Makhiri
• Chapter Four: Gedolah Aveirah Lishmah - From Rabbinic Literature to the Messianic Teachings of R. Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto
• Part Three - The Messianic Mother in the Zoharic Literature
• Chapter Five: Lot’s Daughters and the Zoharic “Ṭiqla”
• Chapter Six: The Burning Face of the Shekhinah - Tamar in Zohar Aḥrei Mot
• Chapter Seven: The Shekhinah's Exile and Redemption in Ruth and Naomi's Journey
• Conclusion - Gender Reversal and Redemption Poetics
• Epilogue - The Messianic Mother in Judaism and Christianity

About the Author :

Ruth Kara Ivanov Kaniel is a lecturer at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies and at the Hebrew University, and is a research fellow at the Tel-Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and at the Shalom Hartman Institute. She is also the head of a Research Group at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Her current research deals with intersections between Jewish mythology, mysticism, gender and psychoanalysis.

Review :
"Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel's careful handling of discussions spanning nearly two thousand years of Jewish literary output is highly original and is accomplished by excellent knowledge of the relevant texts and of the research literature, Gender Studies and Myth Theory. The overall picture that emerged from this book is an innovation within the field of Jewish Thought … a major contribution to the understanding of the Messianic idea and its development in certain branches of the Jewish world, as well as to the understanding of the importance of the role of women in the history of the Messiah." “This is a fascinating history of women’s transgressive sexuality, which features time and again in the biblical, rabbinic and kabbalistic sources, where it is construed as the crucial and most productive element of the redemptive process, giving rise to the famously irregular maternal genealogy of the Jewish Messiah in each one of his incarnations, right up to and including Jesus Christ.”