A Feminist Talmud Commentary: Tractate Sukkah

H-JUDAIC REVIEW:

Shulamit Ṿaller. Massekhet Sukkah: Text, Translation and Commentary. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009. x + 224 pp. $157.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-16-150121-0.

Reviewed by Harry Fox (University of Toronto)
Published on H-Judaic (February, 2011)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

A Feminist Talmud Commentary: Tractate Sukkah
Shulamit Valler's book is part of a mega-project under the editorship of Tal Ilan to produce the first feminist commentary to the Babylonian Talmud. In conformity with the series as a whole (and as outlined in Ilan's Massekhet Ta'anit[1]), Valler opens her study with a general introduction to her particular tractate, followed with selected Mishnaic texts related to gender issues, followed by the bulk of the work--selected Babylonian Talmudic texts of the same sort but independent of the Mishnah. The Babylonian Talmud serves as the cornerstone of rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism that informed the Jewish people until emancipation and beyond; hence it is a timely and worthy project. It follows on the heels of similar projects examining the biblical canonical literature for Jews and Christians under the critical lens of feminism. Perhaps the project will push Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and others in Eastern religions towards a similar critical examination of their own canonical collections. To wit, this social revolution is now possible after a generation of effort produced a critical mass of feminist scholars capable of putting the traditional text under such intense scrutiny.

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