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Reviewed by:
  • Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives
  • Tzvi Novick
Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives, by Gwynn Kessler. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. 256 pp. $59.95.

The book's thesis is that "rabbinic narratives about the fetus . . . articulate an idea of, and an ideal, Israel, which cannot, for the rabbis, be thought apart from God" (pp. 3-4). The introduction (Chapter One) pushes back against the prevalent notion that identity is to be defined first and foremost in contrast to an "other." The fetus instead provides a model for studying how the rabbis "articulate Israel from an insider perspective and in positive terms" (p. 7). Kessler also suggests that narratives about the fetus, insofar as they locate Jewish beliefs and practices in the womb, blur the line between the genealogical and covenantal models of Jewish identity (pp. 11-15). Finally, the introduction flags the gender dimensions of rabbinic fetus narratives, in particular the way they occlude the pregnant woman, and figure the fetus as male.

The textual parameters of the book raise certain questions. Despite the book's subtitle, it covers not only narratives about fetuses, but also rabbinic embryology. It addresses primarily Palestinian sources, but also Babylonian parallels and even uniquely Babylonian traditions so well known that "to leave them unexamined would significantly impact a sense of the completeness of this project" (p. 25). But the decision to cover some but not all Bavli material itself undermines the integrity of the book. More important, Kessler explicitly, but without explanation, excludes halakhic sources (p. 146 n. 137). Even to the extent that a meaningful distinction can be drawn between narrative and embryological sources, on the one hand, and halakhic ones, on the other, one wonders whether the latter are any less relevant to the book's project than the former. The fact that the one halakhic text treated by Kessler (m. Berakot 9:3, on p. 80) offers a distinctive view on a central issue in the book, the role of God in the formation of the fetus, suggests that Kessler pays a price by forgoing halakhic sources.

The body of the work consists of four chapters. Chapters Two and Three address fetus narratives. Chapter Two centers on two passages, one tannaitic, in which even fetuses sing God's praise at the sea, and one medieval, in which God renders wombs transparent at Sinai so that he may address Israel's fetuses and make them guarantors of the covenant. Kessler suggests that through [End Page 172] these narratives, and other reflections in which the generic fetus praises God and studies Torah in the womb, the rabbis set forth the essence of Israel: belief in God as one who saved and taught Israel, and who continues to save and teach them. Kessler aptly notes that the motif of fetal Torah study becomes important only in the Bavli, which valorizes Torah study to a far greater degree than do Palestinian sources. Chapter Three focuses on Genesis Rabba's interpretation of the embryonic struggle between Jacob and Esau (Gen 25:22-23). Kessler argues that, in making Jacob good and Esau wicked even in the womb, this passage responds to Romans 9, which uses Jacob's election from the womb as evidence—precisely on the assumption that fetuses do neither bad nor good—that election does not rest on works. In the conclusion, Kessler warns that a focus on the contrast between Esau and Jacob obscures the importance, in itself, of Genesis Rabba's construction of the fetus Jacob as good rabbinic Jew. Given the prominence of Christian sources in these chapters, Kessler's silence on the extensive Christian discourse about Jesus in Mary's womb—see, e.g., John Saward, Redeemer in the Womb: Jesus Living in Mary (Ignatius, 1993)—represents an opportunity missed. Thus, for example, the rabbinic notion of the fetus Jacob lunging toward the house of study resembles Luke's claim (1:41) that John leaps in the womb when Mary enters. Likewise the iconic tradition of the vierge ouvrante and the liturgical use of Mary as monstrance—both outgrowths of motifs in patristic theology—recollect the image of transparent wombs at Sinai.

Chapters...

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