Female Body or Women's Bodies? The Limits of the Body Metaphor in Jewish Culture

The use of metaphor to approach women’s bodies in Jewish culture is a powerful rhetorical tool for conveying a specific construction of the female body within the social, literary, and medical spheres. These images define the boundaries within which this body is to be viewed, perceived, and experienced. By interrogating these boundaries from a gender studies perspective, this study day provides an opportunity to develop a comparative approach to metaphors of the female body as they are used to represent women’s bodies—from the Talmud to contemporary Hebrew literature, including the Midrash, legal texts, and medical discourse.