Mira Balberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 1695225 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mira Balberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mira |
| FAMILY NAME | Balberg |
| SIGNATURE | BALBERG M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0009-0000-7930-2455 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Eagles’ Nest
This essay explores the unique fusion of asceticism and ecstasy among the idealistic young Jewish immigrants of the Third Aliyah (1919–23), focusing in particular on the short-lived yet influential commune of Bithania in the lower Galilee. Drawing primarily on the 1922 collection Our Community, the essay examines how pioneering youth embraced physical deprivation, communal labor, and personal sacrifice not as a means of suffering for its own sake…
Binding the Heart
This article proposes a combined analysis of late ancient magical and rabbinic texts that deal with control and subordination of renegade enslaved persons. These texts reveal some of the ways in which slaveholders utilized physical coercion, whether real or imagined, to transform or overpower enslaved persons’ will and interior dispositions. The first part of the article examines two spells used for returning runaway slaves (or otherwise, for pre…
The Torah Is Bound to Be Forgotten
This paper argues that the rhetoric of forgetting was central to the early rabbinic movements self-conception. Earlier interpretations of the saying that »the Torah is bound to be forgotten« were guided by the »retreat from history« hypothesis. On this account, the rabbis promoted their efforts at preservation and consolidation of the Torah as a timely solution to the vicissitudes of real events. Balberg, however, stresses the specific connection…
When Near Becomes Far
When Near Becomes Far explores the representations and depictions of old age in the rabbinic Jewish literature of late antiquity. Through close literary readings and cultural analysis, the book reveals the gaps and tensions between idealized images of old age on the one hand, and the psychologically, physiologically, and socially complicated realities of aging on the other hand. The authors argue that while rabbinic literature presents various st…
The Fruits of Halakhah
Tractate Ma'aserot of the Mishnah commences with the general rule that one is not obligated to tithe fruits and vegetables until they become edible, and follows this rule with a lengthy list of different produce items alongside the time in which each one of them can be registered as "food" and is therefore subject to tithing. This essay briefly discusses this list to elucidate the rabbinic practice of list-making as a textual, rhetorical, and cul…
That Old Man Shames Us«
This article explores the literary trope of old age in rabbinic narratives, primarily in the Babylonian Talmud. We argue that rabbinic narratives construct old persons as liminal figures, occupying spaces between center and margins and between life and death, and that their liminality serves a subversive function in stories in which they appear. We begin the article by providing a brief survey of the paradigmatic roles played by elderly people in…
Blood for Thought
Blood for Thought delves into a relatively unexplored area of classical rabbinic literature: the vast corpus of laws, regulations, and instructions pertaining to sacrificial rituals. The book traces and analyzes the ways in which the early rabbis interpreted and conceived of biblical sacrifices, and examines sacrifice and worship in the temple as sites through which the rabbis negotiated new and old intellectual, political, and religious ideas an…
Blood for Thought
Omen and Anti-omen
This article proposes that the place and meaning of various objects among religious communities can be explored in terms of “hagiography,” that is, through the narratives constructed around sacred objects sometimes long after their physical disappearance. It takes as its point of departure the assumption that in the same way that written accounts of saints’ lives disclose more about the authors of these accounts than about the protagonists, so na…
Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible
The Animalistic Gullet and the Godlike Soul
This article proposes an analysis of two homiletic units in the Palestinian Midrash Leviticus Rabbah, which revolve around biblical chapters pertaining to sacrifices. A theme that pervades these units is that of eating as an animalistic activity that often entails moral depravity. In contrast, the act of sacrificing is constructed in these units as one in which one is willing to give up one's own nourishment, and in a sense one's own “soul,” in o…
Pricing Persons
In this article I explore the procedures of monetary evaluation of persons as constructed in three halakhic contexts in the Mishnah consecration of humans to the Temple, restitutions for bodily injuries, and compensations for rape and seduction. I argue that in all three contexts we can identify an underlying tension between two competing paradigms of personhood: a paradigm which stresses the unity and sameness of all persons qua persons, and a p…
The Emperor's Daughter's New Skin
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
Rabbinic Authority, Medical Rhetoric, and Body Hermeneutics in Mishnah Nega‘im
The second century CE has long been recognized as a time of intense preoccupation with medicine and health in the Graeco-Roman world. Medicine had always been a part of the Greek paideia , and acquaintance with it was traditionally required of every aristocrat, but it was during the second Sophistic period that a new form of medical self-presentation emerged in which the knowledge of medicine was hailed not only as one of the apices of the intell…
Alexandra Cuffel. Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic. Notre Dame, In
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Pricing Persons
In this article I explore the procedures of monetary evaluation of persons as constructed in three halakhic contexts in the Mishnah consecration of humans to the Temple, restitutions for bodily injuries, and compensations for rape and seduction. I argue that in all three contexts we can identify an underlying tension between two competing paradigms of personhood: a paradigm which stresses the unity and sameness of all persons qua persons, and a p…
Rabbinic Authority, Medical Rhetoric, and Body Hermeneutics in Mishnah Nega‘im
The second century CE has long been recognized as a time of intense preoccupation with medicine and health in the Graeco-Roman world. Medicine had always been a part of the Greek paideia , and acquaintance with it was traditionally required of every aristocrat, but it was during the second Sophistic period that a new form of medical self-presentation emerged in which the knowledge of medicine was hailed not only as one of the apices of the intell…
Alexandra Cuffel. Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic. Notre Dame, In
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Rabbinic Authority, Medical Rhetoric, and Body Hermeneutics in Mishnah Nega‘im
The second century CE has long been recognized as a time of intense preoccupation with medicine and health in the Graeco-Roman world. Medicine had always been a part of the Greek paideia , and acquaintance with it was traditionally required of every aristocrat, but it was during the second Sophistic period that a new form of medical self-presentation emerged in which the knowledge of medicine was hailed not only as one of the apices of the intell…
The Emperor's Daughter's New Skin
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
Pricing Persons
In this article I explore the procedures of monetary evaluation of persons as constructed in three halakhic contexts in the Mishnah consecration of humans to the Temple, restitutions for bodily injuries, and compensations for rape and seduction. I argue that in all three contexts we can identify an underlying tension between two competing paradigms of personhood: a paradigm which stresses the unity and sameness of all persons qua persons, and a p…
The Animalistic Gullet and the Godlike Soul
This article proposes an analysis of two homiletic units in the Palestinian Midrash Leviticus Rabbah, which revolve around biblical chapters pertaining to sacrifices. A theme that pervades these units is that of eating as an animalistic activity that often entails moral depravity. In contrast, the act of sacrificing is constructed in these units as one in which one is willing to give up one's own nourishment, and in a sense one's own “soul,” in o…
Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible
Omen and Anti-omen
This article proposes that the place and meaning of various objects among religious communities can be explored in terms of “hagiography,” that is, through the narratives constructed around sacred objects sometimes long after their physical disappearance. It takes as its point of departure the assumption that in the same way that written accounts of saints’ lives disclose more about the authors of these accounts than about the protagonists, so na…
Blood for Thought
Blood for Thought delves into a relatively unexplored area of classical rabbinic literature: the vast corpus of laws, regulations, and instructions pertaining to sacrificial rituals. The book traces and analyzes the ways in which the early rabbis interpreted and conceived of biblical sacrifices, and examines sacrifice and worship in the temple as sites through which the rabbis negotiated new and old intellectual, political, and religious ideas an…
Blood for Thought
That Old Man Shames Us«
This article explores the literary trope of old age in rabbinic narratives, primarily in the Babylonian Talmud. We argue that rabbinic narratives construct old persons as liminal figures, occupying spaces between center and margins and between life and death, and that their liminality serves a subversive function in stories in which they appear. We begin the article by providing a brief survey of the paradigmatic roles played by elderly people in…
When Near Becomes Far
When Near Becomes Far explores the representations and depictions of old age in the rabbinic Jewish literature of late antiquity. Through close literary readings and cultural analysis, the book reveals the gaps and tensions between idealized images of old age on the one hand, and the psychologically, physiologically, and socially complicated realities of aging on the other hand. The authors argue that while rabbinic literature presents various st…
The Fruits of Halakhah
Tractate Ma'aserot of the Mishnah commences with the general rule that one is not obligated to tithe fruits and vegetables until they become edible, and follows this rule with a lengthy list of different produce items alongside the time in which each one of them can be registered as "food" and is therefore subject to tithing. This essay briefly discusses this list to elucidate the rabbinic practice of list-making as a textual, rhetorical, and cul…
The Torah Is Bound to Be Forgotten
This paper argues that the rhetoric of forgetting was central to the early rabbinic movements self-conception. Earlier interpretations of the saying that »the Torah is bound to be forgotten« were guided by the »retreat from history« hypothesis. On this account, the rabbis promoted their efforts at preservation and consolidation of the Torah as a timely solution to the vicissitudes of real events. Balberg, however, stresses the specific connection…
Binding the Heart
This article proposes a combined analysis of late ancient magical and rabbinic texts that deal with control and subordination of renegade enslaved persons. These texts reveal some of the ways in which slaveholders utilized physical coercion, whether real or imagined, to transform or overpower enslaved persons’ will and interior dispositions. The first part of the article examines two spells used for returning runaway slaves (or otherwise, for pre…
The Eagles’ Nest
This essay explores the unique fusion of asceticism and ecstasy among the idealistic young Jewish immigrants of the Third Aliyah (1919–23), focusing in particular on the short-lived yet influential commune of Bithania in the lower Galilee. Drawing primarily on the 1922 collection Our Community, the essay examines how pioneering youth embraced physical deprivation, communal labor, and personal sacrifice not as a means of suffering for its own sake…
Philosophy (11 works) · Art (9 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (9 works) · Theology (8 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (7 works) · History (7 works) · Literature (7 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works)