Rabbinic Reflections on the Barren Wife

Abstract

A study of rabbinic legal rulings concerning the barren wife reveals the subordinate place of women in rabbinic Judaism's systematic vision of an ideal reality. Yet at the same time, aggadic texts demonstrate that demands of necessity and compassion often prevailed over halachic prescription, illuminating the rift which not infrequently separated rabbinic theory and actual practice. Moreover, a review of aggadic reflections on barren women also yields suggestive insights into the dilemma of suffering, and the efficacy of prayer, as well as examples of the ways in which biblical models could become paradigms and symbols of empowerment in women's lives.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.