Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self

by Dina Stein

As they were entering Egypt, Abram glimpsed Sarai's reflection in the Nile River. Though he had been married to her for years, this moment is positioned in a rabbinic narrative as a revelation. "Now I know you are a beautiful woman," he says; at that moment he also knows himself as a desiring subject, and knows too to become afraid for his own life due to the desiring gazes of others.

There are few scenes in rabbinic literature that so explicitly...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812244362
• ISBN13: 9780812244366
• Release Date: October 2012
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.1"