Overview

Avot, a tractate in the Mishnah (c. 220 CE), is the single most studied and commented upon Jewish text outside the Hebrew Bible. Commonly published as a stand-alone volume with the title Pirke Avot (""""Chapters of the Fathers"""" or """"Ethics of the Fathers""""), Avot is also included in Jewish prayer books to encourage group and home study in every form of Judaism. A number of scholarly studies over the past three decades have reconceptualized the historical purpose and stylistic character of tractate Avot, which is unlike any other in the Mishnah. Some scholars have recognized that Avot's content reflects the ideological positions of an elitist fellowship originally formed according to paradigms established by Greco-Roman schools of philosophy. Subversive Principles furthers the argument that Avot was composed to facilitate the formation of such a fellowship by engaging the analytical insights of Pierre Bourdieu regarding symbolic language and other theorists elucidating the role of exchange theory in religions. This volume explores an ethics of reading and the matter of historical relativism as such concerns influence the historical-critical interpretation of a canonical text.

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Reviews

""Forget everything you think you know about Avot, the supposed 'Ethics of the Fathers' and founding document of rabbinic Judaism. David H. Aaron applies the strategy of defamiliarization to dispel your preconceptions. Through his close reading of the Jewish classic in the light of Greco-Roman culture and modern social theory, Avot emerges as a revolutionary tract rather than an affirmation of traditional wisdom. Written and presented well, Subversive Principles is a winner."" --Bernhard Lang, University of Paderborn, Germany ""Drawing on the theoretical work of Bourdieu and Foucault, David Aaron provides a refreshingly innovative and often startlingly insightful commentary on the first two chapters of Mishnah-tractate Avot. Aaron explores possible meanings of this text in its original Greco-Roman context, in which early rabbinic master-disciple circles were akin to those of Hellenistic philosophical schools, particularly Epicureanism. He also proposes an ethics of reading for handling difficult, albeit canonical, texts from the past. Thought-provoking and highly recommended."" --Richard S. Sarason, The Deutsch Family Professor of Rabbinics and Liturgy, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

Author Information

David H. Aaron is professor of Hebrew Bible and the history of interpretation at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (Cincinnati). He is author of Biblical Ambiguities (2001), Etched in Stone (2006), and Genesis Ideology (Cascade Books, 2016) among other studies in rabbinic literature and the history of the Hebrew language.

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