ABSTRACT

Talmudic traditions are the only available source of information about the use of prostheses in late antique Jewish cultures. This chapter examines a selection of passages discussing such prosthetic devices, their materiality, their various functions and, most importantly, their role within the socio-religious world of the rabbinic discourse. It argues that, on the one hand, prostheses within these texts are a prime example of a liminal category that the rabbis deployed as a ‘scholastic’ tool – they are ‘good to think’ with. On the other hand, the sample texts show that the rabbis must have also felt a need to include this topic in their discussions, as a possibly rather common phenomenon in their lived experience. Thus, at times, their discourse about prostheses became also a ‘prosthetic discourse’ tending to the inclusion of persons with certain impairments and mitigating some of the physical and social hardships experienced.