Grouping Information

Book Cover Information

Hoopla Extract Information

stdClass Object
(
    [year] => 2023
    [artist] => Yaron Z. Eliav
    [fiction] => 
    [coverImageUrl] => https://cover.hoopladigital.com/pup_9780691243443_270.jpeg
    [titleId] => 16936539
    [isbn] => 9780691243443
    [abridged] => 
    [language] => ENGLISH
    [profanity] => 
    [title] => A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse
    [demo] => 
    [segments] => Array
        (
        )

    [pages] => 392
    [children] => 
    [artists] => Array
        (
            [0] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [name] => Yaron Z. Eliav
                    [artistFormal] => Eliav, Yaron Z.
                    [relationship] => AUTHOR
                )

        )

    [genres] => Array
        (
            [0] => Ancient
            [1] => Antiquities & Archaeology
            [2] => History
            [3] => Jewish
            [4] => Jewish Studies
            [5] => Judaism
            [6] => Religion
            [7] => Rome
            [8] => Social Science
        )

    [price] => 1.99
    [id] => 16936539
    [edited] => 
    [kind] => EBOOK
    [active] => 1
    [upc] => 
    [synopsis] => Yaron Z. Eliav is associate professor of rabbinic literature and Jewish history of late antiquity at the University of Michigan. He is the author of God's Mountain: The Temple Mount in Time, Place, and Memory and the producer of the documentary Paul in Athens. 
	A provocative account of Jewish encounters with the public baths of ancient Rome

Public bathhouses embodied the Roman way of life, from food and fashion to sculpture and sports. The most popular institution of the ancient Mediterranean world, the baths drew people of all backgrounds. They were places suffused with nudity, sex, and magic. A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse reveals how Jews navigated this space with ease and confidence, engaging with Roman bath culture rather than avoiding it.

In this landmark interdisciplinary work of cultural history, Yaron Eliav uses the Roman bathhouse as a social laboratory to reexamine how Jews interacted with Graeco-Roman culture. He reconstructs their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about the baths and the activities that took place there, documenting their pleasures as well as their anxieties and concerns. Archaeologists have excavated hundreds of bathhouse facilities across the Mediterranean. Graeco-Roman writers mention the bathhouse frequently, and rabbinic literature contains hundreds of references to the baths. Eliav draws on the archaeological and literary record to offer fresh perspectives on the Jews of antiquity, developing a new model for the ways smaller and often weaker groups interact with large, dominant cultures.

A compelling and richly evocative work of scholarship, A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse challenges us to rethink the relationship between Judaism and Graeco-Roman society, shedding new light on how cross-cultural engagement shaped Western civilization. "Writing entertainingly and informatively on both archaeology and the Talmud is a rare gift, and the author brings enthusiasm and erudition to his explanations of Roman engineering feats."---Sara Jo Ben Zvi, Segula "Eliav's engaging account of cultural interaction between Jews and non-Jews in the rabbinic era will help readers to better imagine the interactions between Jews and Gentiles in the New Testament."---Zen Hess, The Christian Century "A profound meditation on what it meant to be a Jewish body in a Roman world of bodies. By taking seriously both Roman Jewishness and Jewish Romanness, Eliav casts new light on what life, in all its mundaneness and intimacy and temptation, was like as a Roman Jew. Eliav makes a powerful argument for the integration of rabbinics and classics around the steamy space of the public bath."-Kimberly D. Bowes, University of Pennsylvania "Yaron Eliav is a rare specimen of a scholar who knows Graeco-Roman literature and has been trained in both archaeology and rabbinic Judaism. Most modern scholars agree that these fields need to be combined, but there are still very few who can claim that they have a thorough knowledge of all the relevant sources and appropriate methodologies of these disparate fields. Eliav is indeed a trailblazer of this integrative approach, which appears throughout the pages of A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse."-Peter Schäfer, professor emeritus of religion and Jewish studies, Princeton University "A convincing and accessible examination of the embeddedness of Jews in bath culture and the broader Graeco-Roman environment."-Nicole Belayche, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris "An impressive work of scholarship that brings a rich and unique perspective to the topic. The scope of Eliav's research is impressive, and his acute argument markedly advances our understanding of Jewish participation in the bathing culture of the Roman world."-Erich S. Gruen, author of The Construct of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/16936539
    [pa] => 
    [subtitle] => Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean
    [publisher] => Princeton University Press
    [purchaseModel] => INSTANT
)