Jonathan Boyarin explores a wide range of scholarship in Jewish studies to argue that Jewish family forms and ideologies have varied greatly throughout the times and places where Jewish families have found themselves. He considers a range of family configurations from biblical times to the twenty-first century, including strictly Orthodox communities and new forms of family, including same-sex parents, and suggests productive ways to think about possible futures for Jewish family forms.

Foreword
Preface: Doing the Jewish Family
Introduction
1. Terms of Debate

Family History and the History of Families
Bearing the Children of Israel
Narrating the Family Journey
Husbands, Wives, and Rabbis in Antiquity
In the Ancient Neighborhood
"Jewish Gender"?
Beyond "Tradition" and "Modernity"
An All-Too-Quick Trip to Israel
 

2. State of the Question

The Medieval Jewish Past Today
Mediterranean Wolrds
Dreamtimes and Lifetimes
Leaving Ashkenaz
Back to Europe?
From Ethnic Dissolution to Ashkenaz Regained
Jewish Genes

3. In a New Key

Off-Key Echoes of Old Prejudice
The Return of "Race"?
Families Undone and Redone
Suturing the Tears in Family Memory
Cut to Identity
Possible Futures
Keeping Up with the Goldbergs
Who Needs the Jewish Family?

Notes