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Acknowledgments This book would not have appeared without the feedback, encouragement, and support of so many people, and the funding and research assistance offered by various institutions. I have had the good fortune of being mentored extensively by the two leading scholars of the Babylonian Talmud, David Weiss Halivni and Shamma Friedman. It was their respective work on the layered composition of the Talmud and the import of its anonymous redactors that first lured me from traditional Talmud study, and their impact on me has only increased with time. Professor Halivni has always made himself available to me to discuss any and every aspect of a talmudic text. His legendary recall is more than matched by his personal warmth. Through my h .abrûtâ with Shamma Friedman in Jerusalem, I had the weekly opportunity to observe a prolific scholar in action. Had I not witnessed it, I would not have imagined the creative energy that could flow from a devotion to explaining every last feature of a talmudic text. I am grateful to have had this opportunity and for Professor Friedman’s continued correspondence and friendship. Various academic contexts allowed me to present and critique some of what appears in this book. An early version of “The Lovesick Man” was critiqued by Robert Post and Nan Goodman at the Law and Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop. Another version of this work was published as “Talmudic Legal Narrative: Broadening the Discourse of Jewish Law” in a special issue of Dine Yisrael (2007), and I am grateful to Suzanne Last Stone for her editorial comments and suggestions. Early drafts of Chapter 4 were written in dialogue with David Damrosch and Pericles Lewis. A version of those drafts appeared as “‘But It Is Not So’: Toward a Poetics of Legal Narrative in the Talmud” in Prooftexts (Winter 2004) thanks to the enthusiasm and constructive editing of David Stern. I have had a number of institutional homes while writing this book. Penn 238 Acknowledgments State was my first scholarly home, and I am particularly grateful for the collegial friendships of Brian Hesse, Lila Corwin Berman, Daniel Berman, Aaron Rubin, and Markus Asper. I am also grateful to the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard for providing the opportunity, as a Harry Starr Fellow, to engage with Michela Andreatta, Marc Caplan, Haim Gertner, Geoffrey Herman, Rabbi Joseph Levi, Shulamith Furstenburg-Levi, Marcus Pyka, and David Wacks. My current residence is Northwestern University’s Department of Religious Studies (née Religion) and Law School. My colleagues at Northwestern have provided the kind of intellectual camaraderie every academic craves. Michael Stanislawski, director of Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, provided constructive feedback on much of this volume. Elizabeth Castelli has taught me so much, both formally and by example. I am grateful to Alan Segal and Jeffrey Rubenstein for their comments and critiques on earlier research that is the basis for this book. Several scholars have mentored me or provided me with helpful feedback . I would like to thank Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Moshe Benovitz, Beth Berkowitz, Jeremy Dauber, Charlotte Fonrobert, Moshe Halbertal, Christine Hayes, Menachem Kahana, Joshua Levinson, Shlomo Naeh, Jonathan Schofer, and Holger Zellentin for their feedback. I am grateful that Idana Goldberg, Ricky Hidary, Meir Katz, Jon Levisohn, Tova Mirvis, Asha Moorthy , Tzvi Novick, Shai Secunda, and Zvi Septimus responded to cries for help. Special thanks go to Alyssa Henning for her research assistance. Since the initial submission of this monograph to the University of Pennsylvania Press, I have received extensive constructive feedback from editors of the Press’s Divinations series, Virginia Burrus and, especially, Daniel Boyarin. I have been enamored of Boyarin’s work for some time, and his development of some of my insights within his own recent book honors me greatly. Our work has been in dialogue for the past few years, and I am pleased that this volume will appear in Divinations. I am also grateful to Jerry Singerman, who has been the perfect editor for me. I am extremely indebted both to Jennifer Shenk for her meticulous copyediting and to Erica Ginsburg for masterfully shepherding the monograph through final production. Particular friends need to be singled out for their assistance. For several years I saw more of Daniel Reifman than anyone else, including my wife. Though our formal h . abrûtâ has been over for some time, Daniel has always encouraged this project and has lent an incredibly learned ear to both the ideas herein and the many rejected...

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