Instantiations of alterity: The goy as modern subject

Abstract

This article offers an anthropological and theoretical-archeological comparative exploration of agency, responsibility, and alterity in the Late Ancient Iranian Talmud and its reading in contemporary Manhattan. The guiding question is how the classical rabbinic imagery and conceptualization of the “Goy” or “non-Jew” are implicitly recast in the modern framework of subjectivity, in a social context of quasi-traditionalist Talmud study. The specific Talmudic texts examined focus further on the role that the difference and analogy between humans and other animals plays in this reimagination of the "Goy's" persona.