Jewish History Matters

Jordan Rosenblum joins us to talk about his book Rabbinic Drinking: What Beverages Teach Us About Rabbinic Literature—how drinks and drinking provide an avenue for understanding the Talmud in its context, and illuminates big issues about the nature of rabbinic literature, the world of late antiquity, and also about how issues of food and drink in Judaism, stemming from the Talmud, reverberate through the centuries. Purchase Rabbinic Drinking: What Beverages Teach Us About Rabbinic Literature from the University of California press, and you can use the code 17M6662 to take 30% off. Jordan Rosenblum is the Belzer Professor of Classical Judaism, and the Max and Frieda Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and he’s also the Chair of the Department of Art History there. His research focuses on the literature, law, and social history of the rabbinic movement in general and, in particular, on rabbinic food regulations. Rabbinic Drinking is his latest book, and he’