A Queer Genealogy of "Havruta": Study Partnership as Intimate Relationship Between Men in Jewish Literature

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorEhrlich, Carl
dc.contributor.authorGleibman, Shlomo Sergei
dc.date.accessioned2025-04-10T10:58:23Z
dc.date.available2025-04-10T10:58:23Z
dc.date.copyright2025-01-23
dc.date.issued2025-04-10
dc.date.updated2025-04-10T10:58:23Z
dc.degree.disciplineHumanities
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation traces a literary lineage in Jewish cultural imaginations that associates havruta—an educational method of long-term study partnership that has evolved in a male homosocial context of traditional Judaism as a central pedagogical method and an important religious practice—with forms of same-sex erotic and affective connections, often analogous to marriage. This dissertation argues that the trope of queer havruta, which refers to literary images of traditional Jewish study pairs that can be read as queer through a modern lens, has established its place in the canon of queer romance and contributed to the shaping of Jewish queer culture. Traditional Jewish sources, from the rabbinic period onward, often depict male study partnerships as sites of intimacy, personal attachment, and commitment, sometimes including erotic desire or sexual practices. The homoerotic potential of these representations is rooted in cultural assumptions distinct from modern sexual categories. The images of havruta intimacy in the Mishnah, Talmudim, and Midrash, along with their interpretive traditions, draw on biblical heroic couples and construct homoerotic intellectualism as a form of masculinity within ancient homosocial and patriarchal contexts. Jewish writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—including S. An-sky, S.Y. Agnon, I.B. Singer, Tony Kushner, Jyl Lynn Felman, Michael Lowenthal, Evan Fallenberg, and others—re-articulate this literary tradition of homoerotic scholarship and havruta intimacy in ways that both align with and challenge modern gender and sexual categories. These modern and contemporary narratives seek and resist the signification of havruta intimacy, offering new pleasures, relational models, and ways to conceptualize male-male desire through affective and eroticized readings of Jewish history and intellectual life. Reimagining havruta through a queer literary genealogy enables the reclamation and transformation of traditional Jewish symbols, often by challenging their heteronormative, sexist, and misogynistic assumptions, while reshaping religious, gender, and sexual identities, relationships, and intimacies. It disrupts binary and totalizing definitions of normativity and queerness by representing havruta intimacy as an intersection of multiple viewpoints and sensibilities, when some forms of traditional Jewish normativity produce enabling dynamics for new queer intimacies. It allows the creation of a distinctly Jewish queer space.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/42879
dc.languageen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subject.keywordsJudaism
dc.subject.keywordsJewish studies
dc.subject.keywordsJudaic studies
dc.subject.keywordsHebrew Bible
dc.subject.keywordsTanakh
dc.subject.keywordsRabbinics
dc.subject.keywordsRabbinic literature
dc.subject.keywordsMishnah
dc.subject.keywordsTalmud
dc.subject.keywordsMidrash
dc.subject.keywordsJewish antiquity
dc.subject.keywordsModern Jewish literature
dc.subject.keywordsModern Jewish culture
dc.subject.keywordsContemporary literature
dc.subject.keywordsJewish history
dc.subject.keywordsQueer studies
dc.subject.keywordsLGBTQ+ studies
dc.subject.keywordsGay male literature
dc.subject.keywordsSexuality studies
dc.subject.keywordsGender studies
dc.subject.keywordsMasculinity
dc.subject.keywordsQueer theory
dc.subject.keywordsQueer Judaism
dc.subject.keywordsQueer Jewish culture
dc.subject.keywordsGay Jewish culture
dc.subject.keywordsLGBTQ+ Jews
dc.subject.keywordsComparative literature
dc.subject.keywordsNorth America
dc.subject.keywordsIsrael
dc.subject.keywordsEastern Europe
dc.subject.keywordsHebrew
dc.subject.keywordsAramaic
dc.subject.keywordsYiddish
dc.subject.keywordsEnglish
dc.subject.keywordsRussian
dc.subject.keywordsAn-sky
dc.subject.keywordsAgnon
dc.subject.keywordsBashevis Singer
dc.subject.keywordsTony Kushner
dc.subject.keywordsLanger
dc.subject.keywordsHomoeroticism
dc.subject.keywordsHomosexuality
dc.subject.keywordsReligion
dc.subject.keywordsReligious studies
dc.subject.keywordsHavruta
dc.subject.keywordsDavid and Jonathan
dc.subject.keywordsRabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish
dc.subject.keywordsAvot
dc.subject.keywordsLeviticus
dc.subject.keywordsSexual diversity
dc.subject.keywordsFiction
dc.subject.keywordsCultural studies
dc.subject.keywordsCanadian literature
dc.subject.keywordsAmerican literature
dc.subject.keywordsJewish life
dc.titleA Queer Genealogy of "Havruta": Study Partnership as Intimate Relationship Between Men in Jewish Literature
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Gleibman_Shlomo_Sergei_2025_PhD.pdf
Size:
2.29 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.87 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
YorkU_ETDlicense.txt
Size:
3.39 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download

Collections

Humanities

All items in the YorkSpace institutional repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved except where explicitly noted.