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Jews and sexuality in the Americas, 1519–1880
Author(s) -
Rabin Shari,
Leibman Laura
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
religion compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.113
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1749-8171
DOI - 10.1111/rec3.12413
Subject(s) - colonialism , judaism , human sexuality , normative , gender studies , protestantism , power (physics) , reproduction , transgressive , sociology , history , religious studies , political science , law , philosophy , archaeology , ecology , sedimentary depositional environment , paleontology , physics , quantum mechanics , structural basin , biology
Abstract This essay explores how Jewish understandings of sexual purity changed in the Americas, where Catholic and Protestant understandings of sex, reproduction, and embodiment were at the heart of European colonialism. It begins in colonial New Spain and ends in the nineteenth‐century United States, exploring both normative and transgressive forms of Jewish sexuality. Showing how understandings of Jewish purity developed—and expanded—in early America sheds new light on the history of colonialism and sex, showing how multiple systems of purity competed and overlapped across the Atlantic world. It also helpfully reorients American Jewish history away from “waves of migration” toward sites of power: the newly created courts, Jewish communal institutions, and domestic spaces where bodies and relationships were regulated.