Marked and Unmarked Flesh: Jewish Identity, Gender, and Circumcision in Historical Perspective

The topic of circumcision has been both a popular and controversial one over the past years. A number of monographs, as well as collections of essays and specific chapters in books have explored different aspects of circumcision from antiquity until modern days. The two books before us, both published in 2005, join this collection.

Shaye J. D. Cohen, a renowned scholar of rabbinic Judaism who has written extensively about the question of Jewish identity, striving to establish how Jewish identity was established and determined in the historical contexts of late antiquity, sets out to answer a broader question concerning a specific aspect of Jewish identity. This issue, which he defines in the introduction, is the “Sarah paradox,” or why Jewish women aren’t circumcised and how they are conceived of as part of the covenant lacking the mark of circumcision.

Unlike his previous work, this study is not limited to one historical time period; rather, it seeks to address this question throughout all of Jewish history. While his expertise regarding the Mishnah and the Talmud remain obvious throughout the entire book, he also discusses a number of medieval thinkers at length as well as some modern developments. Cohen constructs his book as a series of questions, all of which pertain to the exclusion of women from the commandment of circumcision. These questions are intended to, and indeed do, provide useful pointers throughout the book outlining the specific issue at hand.

Part one of the book includes four chapters which are meant to define his agenda. He begins with a description of the canonical history of Jewish circumcision, explaining the major developments throughout history. This chapter, which is of a summarizing nature, presents the changes throughout history in the ritual and emphasizes a central theme in the book, the significance of the contrast between circumcision and baptism in Christian lands. He then proceeds to discuss the non-circumcision of Jewish women, refuting the very small number of references that raise the possibility that Jewish women were ever circumcised. As Cohen demonstrates throughout the book, the question of the non-circumcision of women became central and drew attention amongst Christians who criticized Jews from the days of Paul and onward for the discrimination in circumcision. Chapters three and four outline the Christian arguments against the Jews in both Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Part Two presents the Jewish responses to the questions set out in chapter one. In my eyes, this is the most interesting part of the book. Four chapters present different answers, in an impressive command of a wide variety of sources and contexts. Chapter five discusses responses from Italy and northern France from the thirteenth century, namely those of R. Jacob Anatoli and a polemicist known as Menahem. Both argued (in slightly different ways) that women expressed their Jewishness by helping the men in their lives and that their subservience to men made circumcision unnecessary. During his discussion of these two approaches, Cohen tackles almost every issue that modern religious feminists have addressed in the context of women’s individual identification and belonging to the Jewish community—such as their exemption from time-bound commandments and the much discussed morning blessing “that has not created me a woman” recited by men. Cohen’s mastery of rabbinic sources stands out in this section in his concise and sharp discussions of key Talmudic passages and his linking of the medieval sources to the ancient ones. He concludes unapologetically that, in theory, real Jews are men.

If this chapter tells us the ways in which women are lacking, chapter six explores the ways in which men are perceived in classic Jewish thought, or more specifically understandings of masculinity and lust. A new central player is introduced here, R. Moses Maimonides, and his thought...