Since the “Talmudo-Iranica” revolution, students of the Babylonian Talmud have proceeded to reexamine basic aspects of Babylonian rabbinic culture, including the body and sexuality. Some of Elman’s recent work considers matters of sexuality, marriage and the status of women. Building on Boyarin’s and Satlow’s earlier observations, Elman demonstrates the possibilities of the new comparative idiom, and he also tantalizingly points to promising areas of future research in this arena. Even if the “corporeal school” in rabbinics has begun to move on, quite a bit of work remains to be done in terms of explaining the sources of the Talmud’s articulations of carnality and sexuality, particularly with regard to the conceptualization of the body in the Babylonian rabbinic imagination and its relationship to the wider Sasanian context.
Shai Secunda, “The Construction, Composition and Idealization of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Parallel Iranian Texts: Three Excurses”, NASHIM: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Studies No. 23 (Spring-Fall 2012), 62.