"But—" exclaims Schmuel the Simple—"of what use is such a purse?  It's so small!"
"So it would seem," admits the honest mohel.  "But when I rub it..."

Such anecdotes are a staple of what Jews call "Jewish humour."  At their most essential, Jewish jokes are microcosms of Jewish life: tragic, comic, and ineluctably hopeful.  This joke excellently displays the special mixture of irreligious pragmatism, twinkling self-deprecation, and resourceful intelligence, with a soupcon of Yiddish or Hebrew.  And let us not forget linguistic gesticulation--grammatically applied.(9)

In this joke there is a mohel, and the joke as meant to be told requires no explanation of the term "mohel."  In rendering it for a general (non-Jewish) audience, I have had to both edit and augment the language for intelligibility.  The phrase "that which he so skilfully separates from its tiny owner," of course, never appeared in my father's telling, nor would it need to if all my readers were Jews; the listener would already understand the office of a mohel.  The phrase could thus be ingeniously supplied with gestures such as the spreading of the hands and repeated nodding of the head;  at most the teller might show the motion of snipping and pinching air between the fingers—an overstatement more likely supplied after the initial gesture, as if to say, "Nu, you know what I'm talking about!"  But while the joke superficially treats Jewish life, the solitary image of the mohel's purse remarks on a deeper level about the variety of stereotypes about Jews from ancient times to the present.  Jews are portrayed as bloodthirsty [p. 78] (why circumcise anyway?), cheap and hoarding (imagine putting discarded foreskins to use!), and supernatural (how else could one handle—and especially sew—something so small?).  As my father would observe in another joke, "Only a Jew could have so much chutzpah as to cut it off before knowing how big it will be."  But the ultimate image in the story is that of circumcision itself, the single-most fearsome, misunderstood and misrepresented act in Jewish life.

Deborah's earliest memory of Danny was the glint of the sharp knife moving toward his tiny penis…she could see everything clearly from the arms of her mother, who was standing in a corner of the room, alternately staring and wincing. [..]Then the mohel, a tall, gaunt man in white apron and prayer shawl, placed a clamp around her brother's penis and a bell-shaped metal shield that covered the tip down to the foreskin.  At the same moment his right hand raised what looked like a stiletto. There was a silent gasp as the males present all dropped their hands instinctively to cover their own genitals.(10)

Horrors!  Erich Segal (the same man who deluged us in sentimentality with the infamous Love Story) presents the rite of circumcision as the early traumatic memory of a Jewish girl.  Because she is outside the ceremony, having had no part in its decisions or obligations, her comments appear to innocently convey the moment and particularly the vision of its traumatic embodiment in the men.  (Of course, as a member of Jewish culture and society, and a participant in the rite, this distinction is artificial.)  Terminology contributes to the success of the terror: structural oppositions such as the "sharp knife" versus the "tiny penis," the alternately "staring" and "wincing" mother who holds her daughter safe from everything but the harmful memory; frightening imagery such as the "tall, gaunt" figure of a male stranger in a "white apron;" the glistening planes of the "metal shield" and the "stiletto"—a knife associated with gangland and revenge rather than a surgical procedure; the auditory byte of the audience's "silent gasp," heard round the room like the silently screaming caricature of Edvard Munch's die Shrei.  [p. 79] And, perhaps involuntarily, the humour of the men's reactions, as they "instinctively" move to cover something endangered (if at all) only in the symbolic realm, the referent but not the sign.

Jewish masculinity

The signifying tefillin (amulet or prayer box), kippa (skullcap) and tallit (prayer shawl), all temporary "gender attributes" in Butler's sense, by convention signify male artefacts, specified for the adornment and use of Jewish males (and thus denied to Jewish females).  Women have no religiously decreed costumes, artefacts or attributes—although custom provides for diverse interpretations of appropriate head and body coverings, intended to conceal the hair and flesh of married women.  Women have, rather, three roles pertaining to the keeping of Judaism: home, children and education.  One might think the Shabbat candles a female artefact, as women by custom light them.  (This is also disputable, as is the number of candles to be lit.)  But while the terms for nerot (candles) and minorah (lamp) are female, the articles themselves are not viewed as women's possessions, and the or (light) itself, produced by kindling these objects, is male.  Yet they are lit for the illumination of Jews at home and (for those in hiding who cannot kindle them) elsewhere in the Diaspora; although the term beit, home, is masculine, home is personified as female.  Outside the prayers required for sanctifying the home and meals, women are not even required to pray, and by custom must not be seen or even heard by men at prayer.  (Elsewhere I posit the development of a priesthood to ensure there is no usurpation of male dominance in the cultus.)  Female roles, but not artefacts, are historically ordained.

Judaic performativity is primarily male by definition. As a Reconstructionist feminist woman who has sought out training in prayer and custom, I accommodate, borrow or wear Judaic performativity as a woman: I daven in a tallit so I may encase myself at relevant mentions in the weekly prayers (kippot serve a dissimilar function).  Within a particular minyan (modern Orthodox women, or Reconstructionist women and men) I am permitted to demonstrate Jewish performativity— as a woman, but as if I were a man—there being no ritualised performativity for women.  (One might ask why the absenting of flesh is crucial to Jewish "difference," and how Jewish women are to know when and how to make a mark, without the training given males.)  Outside these sects, Jewish performativity is proscribed for women. [p. 80] Thus, when permitted to perform Jewish ritual in accordance with my own needs as a contemporary, educated and feminist Jewish woman, I do so knowing that the rituals in which I participate are explicitly denied women, by halakhah (legally) or masorti (tradition), and that by continuing in my cultic practice of men's actions I am often contesting the written covenants of my religion.  (Personally, I have no qualms in performing any of these activities I choose, and embracing them without gender trouble, but I do not deny their provenance in Jewish masculinity.)  Rabbi Rebecca Alpert has often noted the utter absence of liturgical language signifying lesbian Jews(11); Jewish women in general, while honoured, are limited in their responsibilities and therefore cultic importance.  Many Jewish-born feminists negotiate these contradictions by denying themeselves Judaic ritual, perhaps substituting women's rituals.(12) These negotiations result from progressive upbringings; they do not inherently spring up in sequestered orthodox communities.

In fact, male homosexuals are nearly as invisible as lesbians in the Biblical periods.  Liturgical phrases accepted as warning of (male)homosexuality actually deplore the possibility of men dressing in women's clothes (transvestism) and lying down with men as if they were wives (sodomy).  Introduction of the topic originates in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, and centres on a single word, to'evah.  Jewish commentators have traditionally interpreted to'evah as "abomination."  As Alpert points out, that fails to tell us the precise meaning of the word, or why lying down with with a man is considered to'evah.  Interdictions against female garments might as easily indicate costumery, a reason given for the late development of a Yiddish theatre (there has never been a Jewish theatre per se).  The fall-out from such an act can be seen in Euripides' Bacchae  (5th Century B.C.E.), where a Greek male (King Pentheus) dresses as a woman in order to infiltrate women's rituals.  Having donned the garments he gets rather carried away by the whole experience, and desires to actually project himself into the rites of women.  The ending is very messy, an excellent warning of the danger in women's rituals as well as the threat inherent in female impersonation.

[p. 81]Yet in Europe male Jews have historically been constructed as feminine Others.  Sander Gilman and Jay Geller demonstrate how Jews have been marginalised in military, sexual and domestic contexts.(13)   Daniel Boyarin extends the framework of effeminacy to the context of male homosexuality, contending that European Jews struggled to escape from the label of homosexuality, an effect of their feminising.(14) Like both Boyarins, David Itzkovitz problematises the image of Jews in performative terms, but views Jews as queers through the process of a shared alterity.  He argues that in the US the European construct of Jew as Other is reconstructed allegorically into the Jew as nation.(15) Identifying Jews as issuing from the "trope of secrecy," Itzkovitz draws attention to the shared "elusive identities" (16) of Jews and gays. 

Itzkovitz' thesis, which concerns American Jews specifically, is conceptually admissible in that context, possibly because of the US' cultivation of individualism, North America's relationship to WWII and Jewish immigration, or the (relative) visibility of Jewish American homosexuality.(17)  It would appear consistent with effects of alienation experienced by first generation American Jews—particularly children of Jewish refugees.  I note with bemusement that the theory cannot be extrapolated to other countries or regions with high concentrations of Jews (for instance, Israel or Australia); it does not define Jews outside the US, or fit the experience of Jewish life elsewhere, even in major urban centres like Melbourne or Sydney.

[p. 82] But Itzkovitz' notion of Jewish performativity does not encompass the response to ritual, or religious, enactment—that is, the performance of Jewishness in its most traditional contexts, in synagogue, the minyan, or at home.  In regard to religious space a queer construction is irrelevant or inadequate, even in a gay and lesbian congregation, because traditional Jewish liturgical texts (Torah, Havtorah, Tanach, and Siddurim) take precedence over cultural contexts.  Although twin or doubled alterities (Jewish and homosexual) may constitute the defining characteristic of such congregations, and rituals performed by these congregations may accommodate the shifting or already shifted sensibilities of Jewish members (i.e., towards gender-free language, or inclusion of women in religious reading and ceremony), Jewish groups are nonetheless religiously defined by usage of the historical, History text of Torah.  And this text has not been rewritten to facilitate contemporary concepts of gender difference. 

My remarks are predicated upon a definition of Jewish performativity as inscribing Jewish males; Jewish females are not so inscribed, included or constructed due to their enforced absence from the founding ritual texts.  Jewish women who abridge the ritual caveats do so in the manner of men—affecting the same behaviour as men—as in the synagogue there are no relevant women's behaviours.  In a religious setting, therefore, Jewish cultural performativity may fluctuate greatly but Jewish religious performativity remains (fundamentally) constant.

Performativity is, in any case, a concept dependent upon other concepts, upon phenomenology and ontology, the body envisioned as a representative of other bodies, the body poised for acquiring meaning and significance, the body both somatically and semiotically weighty.  In short, this exegesis is never more than an exploration of metaphors juxtaposed with other metaphors, Jew, gender, mark, embodiments of culture, enculturation. In addition to its somatic existence as a means of marking young males as Jewish ritualists, brit milah is also a method for framing Jewish Otherness in the cultural imaginary, rendering the Jew metaphorical.

It is therefore no accident that the Jewish body historically performs the service of the "scapegoat"—itself a metaphor for sacrifice.  As Girard shows in his discussion of Oedipus, the surrogate sacrificial victim becomes the "repository of all the community's ills."(18) Jewish custom already [p. 83] undertakes this act of sacrificial marking, of bloodletting(which should not be construed as an excuse for persecution of any kind).  The bloodletting in this act is not undertaken, however, for the purpose of pharmakon. Unlike the scapegoat's measure of blood, brit milah is not concerned with corruption as Mary Douglas describes it in Purity and Danger, either marking it or unmaking it; instead, brit milah strives towards the specific sacrifice of sacrament.

If, as Butler suggests, there is no pre-existing gender identity, then brit milah unambiguously heralds its arrival, marking an encultured and enculturating moment in the Jewish body.  The Jewish body is both individual and collective: crucial to this making/marking is its occurrence in a community context, where the sign is witnessed in the act of its conferral, a physical and social confirmation.  Ironically, though Jews are stereotyped as "the people of the Book," and seen as non-physical, even disembodied, sites of intellect, the confluence of soma and society—marking and making—is a distinctively Jewish formula.  Jewish religious affect is rife with physical instructions. Consider the particular location of tefillin on the frontal lobe and signatory wrapping motions down the arm, the fingers becoming the sign of a letter—a dramatising of metaphor, this temporary marking.  During morning prayers the fingers are interwoven in the tzitzit, the fringes of the prayer shawl (the fringes already signifying metaphors); tzitzit are brought to the lips, their edges kissed, bringing the margins of the body to the margins of the garment.  It is perhaps obvious that if tallit and tefillin are peculiar to male costume, then females are not meant to carry out these signifying practices and pleasures.  Having experienced the profound sensuous delights of performative Judaism, I can understand why men would protect themselves from the sight of women in the spell of its enactment.  As in The Bacchae,  it could be messy, watching women give themselves to G-d. 

The physical aspects of prayer are rarely recognised, although there are many more examples.  While reading Tanach, Orthodox Jews eat honey dipped in bread, the literal action of sweetening the practice of study.  On the repeated command to "rise," we actually rise up on our toes.  Similarly, the instruction to "bend the knees" with reverence (v'anachnim korim, umishtachavim umodim) is accomplished through sung language and the real actions of bending and bowing.  These examples, [p. 84] moreover, are not arcane, but well-known, central actions in Jewish prayer.  As the foregoing examples indicate, they utilise either mimetic or metaphoric motions, or a combination of both—in the donning of tefillin the tiny book is placed directly over the forehead while the leather strap spells out the letter shin on the body.  Tantamount to a physical accompaniment of a verbal score, these customary and customised movements help to enact the literary, bringing the word (literally) to the body as sign, as mark, as movement.

This movement towards signification occurs on diverse levels; yet it is so well structured into the liturgy-as-read that it is most often performed unconsciously, without awareness of the symbolic referents.  (If asked to explain their actions, many Jews may not be able to do so, and will answer that this is the way they were taught to pray. That is, the teaching of prayer is intended to incorporate physical movements even in the absence of their explication.)

Shemoneh Esreh, a daily series of benedictions (traditionally performed by males), begins with three steps back and three steps forth.  Although these actions return one to one's physical starting place, the movement is more than physical; it is metaphysical. First, in the moment between backwards and forwards motion the individual offers up a personal prayer (outside the collective liturgy).  The amidah itself (the act or fact of standing) is associated with readiness or preparedness, therefore assiging the attention of battle to the fulfilment of prayer.  Second, the movement takes one backwards to what has been, to the single person, before moving towards what shall be, the future.  Future tense (yeheye) holds another name for G-d.  Symbolic travel takes one to the place of transport—to religious travel—from the human to the godly.

The most continuous physicalisation is the most subjective or diversely represented action, called davening.  The word davening, itself, is of especial interest to me because of its preferred translation of "praying."  An anyone who watches Jews at prayer can see, davening bears no relation to most Christian prayer, which is structured as an inactive intonation of liturgy; in its embodiment, the Southern Baptist and evangelist sects are most similar.  Many Reform (progressive sect) Jews do not outwardly represent it at all; others vary from very slight nodding of the head to vigorous rocking of the upper torso to an urgent bending from the waist.  My own davening tends to fall somewhere in the middle of these, but is always [p. 85] externally visible.  That is not its point, but its embodiment is implicated in my celebration of Judaism.

Reading Jewish

Reading as a Jew shapes Jewish thinking.  For Jews the ability to wear the cultural mark of brit milah suggests the ability to read the marks of culture: to be literate, literacy describing if not defining the Jew.  But females, too, are taught to read Hebrew, even if traditionally denied study of Hebrew.  The difference between these two may not be obvious to someone from outside the culture: all Jews must read in order to properly pray, but only males may productively spend the day re-reading in order to properly know or contest Jewish knowledge. 

In many English speaking countries the word synagogue is interchangeable with, or effaced by, the Yiddish term schul, which comes from the German word for "school."  This substitution emphasizes German-Jewish identification of the synagogue with a place of learning.  Modern Hebrew constructs the site as one concerned with communality, referring to beit knesset, a "house of gathering" (place of meeting); such terminology patently demonstrates the Zionist policy of togetherness and inclusiveness vital to the State of Israel's survival.  The word schul better reflects and "translates" the underlying command to literacy.  Jews are instructed to read aloud, in voices audible to those nearby, in the manner of reading together but also as a means to signifying reading as "prayer": despite the collectivist practice denoted, the practice in most synagogues is to read the majority of the prayers independently, rapidly and sotto voce.  Progressing through the Hebrew siddur at individual tempos, "congregants create a holy wall of sound."(19)  

This "distinctly oral quality" of Judaic study and prayer, Shalom Speigel argues, directly addresses the reader, calling upon the individual to take part in the story.(20)   Spiegel's implication, I believe, is that Jewish participation in the literature is active rather than passive, more in the sense of playing a role than [p. 86]reading a story.  This would suggest that the Biblical stories are more akin to discovery scenes of a play than chapters of a book.  It is evident that writing leaves out a great deal (prompting centuries of religious commentary, such as the Talmud and Midrashim), and characters are revealed by their actions rather than their own speech.(21)  "The real book," according to philosopher Edmond Jabés, is created in the moment of its enunciation, by its readers.(22)

Curiously, prayer is intended for hearing by other humans as well as G-d.  The purpose of this injunction is elusive and provocative.  Is prayer intended as much for other people as for the Divine Other?  Is prayer intended more for other people than the Divine?   Is prayer merely a way of signifying worship, a kind of ritualistic exercise de voce, in which efficacy issues from the activity rather than the words themselves?

"Judaic performativity," as I defined it in "Sarah's Laughter," comprises a set of physical responses (gestures and movements) to written phrases.  What I mean by "Judaic performativity" is, therefore, different from what I have discussed as "Jewish performativity," the former referring to religious somatisation and the latter indicating the affects and conscriptions of gender attributable to identity politics and queer theory.  Judaic performativity is not even as simply defined as what Jews do but is rather one way of approaching religious Judaism.  Even more specifically, it is an Ashkenazi way: Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews incorporate other enactments, although all Jewish males carry the brit milah.  Obviously there is some overlapping in the embodiment of Jewish signs, and Jewish performativity lends itself to Judaic performativity (rather than vice versa). 

Freedman comments that "the theory of performativity has served a "Proustian function," (23) breaking down social barriers to permit Jewish inclusion.  He adds that [p. 87]

many of the most profound revisionary thinkers of the performative—Derrida, Felman, Sedgwick, Cavell, Butler—are themselves Jewish-born scholars who have made glittering careers in canonical fields…by carving out a space for alternative predications of identity, whether philosophical or sexual.(24)

Yet he questions the number of queer Jewish scholars "unwilling or unable to interrogate their own Jewishness with as much conviction as they have their queerness."(25)

Discussing Nancy Miller's Jewish feminism, which has been critiqued for its refusal of "Jewish" and "feminist" as a single category, Naomi Seidman asserts that this "stance can, paradoxically, be described as Jewish, exposing its "Jewishness" not only in the repudiation of Jewish particularism but also in the adoption and championing of another marginality… [theorising] some other "difference" than the Jewish one." (26)   Seidman posits a "(Jewish) politics of vicarious identity" in which Jewish identity appears parenthetically or under erasure.(27)   For Itzkovitz, the very indeterminability of Jewishness is essential to its existence.(28)

Superficially, traditional Judaism thrives on the literal: the brit milah is only one clear example, the actual cutting of a sign into or from a human body, the externalisation of the Abramic covenant.  But it is the metaphor which holds Jews (and goyim) in its grip.  Women are not marked, not substracted, not perfected.  We end as we started, complete but not signifying.  Symbolically and semiotically denied the efficacy of the Covenant, Jewish females are like ger—-familiar strangers, people in whom Jews perceive a human characteristic—even people to follow, love and protect, as in Ruth's story.  The Torah is [p. 88] circumspect about women's place in the cultus, and in the ritual.  Perhaps this is G-d's gift to us: the power to make our own.

Another literal religious artefact is used for reading Torah in synagogue.  The yad is a hand-held pointer, and assists the reader in exactly following the language while reading aloud; manipulation of the pointer beneath the Hebrew letters prevent contact of the reader's own hand with the words on the scrolls—not because of any sense of defilement from the human body (which is, or has been made, perfect), but rather to preserve the hand-scribed document.  Although the yad could, and sometimes is, made to resemble other shapes than a human hand, the pointer is called a yad (literally, hand or arm) and pointing is obviously its purpose.  Most commonly forged in silver, the yad is delicate, figurative and feminine in appearance, a simulacrum of a scholar's uncalloused hand.

Beyond human, G-d has no body but the human's as mutable canvas.  Signage assumes many forms: marking the body as G-d's through the letting of blood; suspending amulets containing manuscripts between the eyes; scoring the hand and arm (yad) with a leather strap; symbolising that arm/hand in the religious artefact for reading, among others.  These elements are neither arbitrarily literal nor primitive conceptualisations.  In their literal manifestations these signposts must be read as markers of humanity, deliberate evocations of the human body. The sign of humanity is a quintessential Jewish concept.  Brit milah's positioning in the penis decrees the masculine construct of the Abramic covenant; by custom (rather than contract) other performative acts become male, tacitly excluding the efficacy of female worship.  The sense of a body in motion, in the moment of its mark, remains fundamental to Jewish practice.  Judaic performativity will thus continue to signify the founding of religious activity in embodied events, even as women adopt and re-gender Jewish enactments, performing as G-d's bodies.

Endnotes

1. Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 77.
2. Rene Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephan Bann and Michael Metteer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987) 23.
3. At the brit, which requires the dedication of first blood, anonymous male babies receive a name, become Jews, babies experience their first pain as Jews.  They are then welcomed into Jewish society.
4. Sander L. Gilman, The Jew's Body (New York: Routledge, 1991).
5. Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, "The cut that binds," Celebration Studies in Festivity and Ritual, ed. Victor Turner (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1982).
6. Jonathan Boyarin, Thinking in Jewish (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) 45.
7. In situ 46.
8. Johnathan Freedman, "Coming out of the Jewish Closet with Marcel Proust," GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 7.4 (2001): 522.
9. The Jewish joke usually becomes a form of degradation and ethnic slur when told by Gentiles, i.e., when told about rather than by Jews.
10. Erich Segal, Acts of Faith (New York: Bantam Books, 1992) 11.
11. Rebecca Alpert, Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997) 27.
12. See Christie Balka and Andy Rose, eds., Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).
13. See Jay Geller, "(G)nos(e)ology:  The Cultural Construction of the Other,"  Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, ed., People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992)  243-282; Sander L. Gilman, The Jew's Body (New York: Routledge, 1991); Sander L. Gilman Gilman, "The Jewish Body:  A Foot-note,"  ed. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992)  223-241.
14. Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz and Ann Pelligrini, eds., Queer theory and the Jewish question (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
15. David Itzkovitz, "Secret Temples," Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies, Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin, eds. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997) 176-202. 177.
16. In situ 179.
17. I am speaking of the liberal or Reform sectors, of course; historically there has been far less visibility among Orthodox Jews, the thesis of Sandi DuBowski's (1970) visual documentary Trembling Before God. 
18. Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972) 77.
19. Rob Baum, "Utter Holiness: Sarah's Laughter and Judaic Performativity," Journal of Theatre and Drama, Vol. 4 (1999): 50.
20. Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice: The Akedah, trans. Judah Goldin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967) xxiii.
21. See also Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Midland Book, 1987).
22. Edmond Jabés, From the Desert to the Book, trans. Pierre Joris (Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 1990) 82.
23. Johnathan Freedman, "Coming out of the Jewish Closet with Marcel Proust," GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 7.4 (2001): 544.
24. In situ 545.
25. In situ 544.
26. Naomi Seidman, "Fag-Hags and Bu-Jews: Towards a (Jewish) Politics of Vicarious Identity," Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism, David Biale, Michael Galchinsky and Susannah Heschel, eds.  (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998) 254-268.
27. In situ 256.
28. David Itzkovitz, "Secret Temples," Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies, Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin, eds. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997) 200.

[p. 89]

Works Cited

Alpert, Rebecca.  Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Auerbach, Erich.  Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard Trask.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.

Balka, Christie and Andy Rose, eds.  Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish.  Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.

Baum, Rob.  "Utter Holiness: Sarah's Laughter and Judaic Performativity."  Journal of Theatre and Drama. Vol. 4 (1999): 37-54.

Boyarin, Daniel.  Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Boyarin, Daniel, Daniel Itzkovitz and Ann Pelligrini, eds.  Queer theory and the Jewish question. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

Boyarin, Jonathan.  Thinking in Jewish.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

DuBowski, Sandi Simcha. Trembling Before God.  Videorecording.

Douglas, Mary.  Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo.  New York: Praeger, 1970.

Freedman, Jonathan. "Coming out of the Jewish Closet with Marcel Proust." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 7.4 (2001) 521-551.

Geller, Jay.  "(G)nos(e)ology:  The Cultural Construction of the Other."  Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, ed.  People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective.  Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.  243-282.

Girard, Rene.  Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.  trans. Stephan Bann and Michael Metteer.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.

Girard, Rene.  Violence and the Sacred.  trans. Patrick Gregory.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972.

[p. 90]

Gilman, Sander L.  The Jew's Body.  New York:  Routledge, 1991.

Gilman, Sander L.  "The Jewish Body:  A Foot-note."  ed. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz.  People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective.  Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.  223-241.

Itzkovitz, David.  "Secret Temples."  Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies. ed. Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 176-202.

Jabés, Edmond.  From the Desert to the Book, trans. Pierre Joris.  Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 1990.

Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara.  "The cut that binds."  Celebration Studies in Festivity and Ritual.  ed. Victor Turner.  Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1982.  201-4.

Segal, Erich. Acts of Faith. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.

Seidman, Naomi.  "Fag-Hags and Bu-Jews: Towards a (Jewish) Politics of Vicarious Identity."  Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism. Ed. David Biale, Michael Galchinsky and Susannah Heschel.  Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. 254-268.

Spiegel, Shalom. The Last Trial.  On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice: The Akedah. trans. Judah Goldin.  New York: Pantheon Books, 1967.