Rafael Rachel Neis's "When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven" delves into late ancient Palestinian rabbinic texts, exploring their unique approach to creaturely generation and species classification. The book challenges traditional views of reproduction, highlighting the rabbis' recognition of life's proliferation through mechanisms beyond heterosexual copulation. Neis analyzes how the rabbis considered overlaps and resemblances across species, questioning the absolute distinctiveness of humans. The work engages with animal studies, queer theory, and feminist science studies, offering historical alternatives to conventional reproductive paradigms. By examining the rabbis' intricate classifications and their blurring of lines between humans and other beings, the book provides a fresh perspective on kinship, species, and the very definition of humanity.
When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species (U California Press, 2023) investigates rabbinic treatises relating to animals, humans, and other life-forms. Through an original analysis of creaturely generation and species classification by late ancient Palestinian rabbis and other thinkers in the Roman Empire, Rafael Rachel Neis shows how rabbis blurred the lines between humans and other beings, even as they were intent on classifying creatures and tracing the contours of what it means to be human. Recognizing that life proliferates by mechanisms beyond sexual copulation between two heterosexual “male” and “female” individuals of the same species, the rabbis proposed intricate alternatives. In parsing a variety of creatures, they considered overlaps and resemblances across seemingly distinct species, upsetting in turn unmitigated claims of human distinctiveness. When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven enters conversations in animal studies, queer theory, trans theory, and feminist science studies to provincialize sacrosanct ideals of reproduction in favor of a broader range that spans generation, kinship, and species. The book thereby offers powerful historical alternatives to the paradigms associated with so-called traditional ideas.
New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review
Rafael Rachel Neis is Neis is a scholar, writer, educator, and artist. A Professor of History and Judaic Studies, they are Director of the Interdepartmental Program in Ancient History and hold the Jean and Samuel Frankel Chair in Rabbinics.
Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston.
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New Books in Animal Studies