Book panel on Rafael Rachel Neis' *When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species* (University of California Press, 2023)

I am proposing a roundtable session on Rafael Rachel Neis’ book, When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species which was published in 2023 with the University of California Press. Neis’ book innovatively weaves together critical animal studies, trans studies, queer theory, feminist science studies, and critical race studies to grapple with late ancient Jewish models of kinship

Neis draws on examples from rabbinic literature in which the rabbis explore models of reproduction that extend beyond an idea of male/female intra-species copulation. These rabbinic ideas of reproduction notice resemblances and entanglements between species, across human/animal and demon/human divides, and overturn careful distinctions between creatures. At the same time, Neis diligently tracks alternative strains of thought that demonstrate a rabbinic investment in taxonomical projects that are animated by a desire to classify species and define what it means to be human. These two approaches exist in tension in rabbinic literature.

The book employs an innovative theoretical approach to upend long-held assumptions about the centrality of human distinctiveness in Judaism. The idea that humans, uniquely, are created in the image of God is attributed to the creation story in the Hebrew Bible, leading scholars to conclude that human distinctiveness is both ancient and canonical within the Jewish tradition.

Much of the contemporary U.S. anti-queer, anti-trans, and anti-feminist politic turns specifically to the creation story in Genesis to argue for a “Judeo-Christian” model of monogamous kinship and heterosexual reproduction predicated on a sex/gender binary. These constructs are underpinned by the concept that humanity is created “in the image of God.” Neis’ work therefore levels a fundamental challenge to these connected assumptions, by exploring the diversity of understandings in classical Jewish sources about kinship, reproduction, the human, and inter-species entanglement. Their scholarship upends claims that locate “traditional” models of reproduction, human distinctiveness, and kinship within all early layers of classical Jewish texts.

Thus, Neis’ work presents a significant challenge to long-held assumptions within the field, and takes up under-explored examples from the sources, all while connecting these debates to their broader political contexts. This makes the book both widely accessible, and important for a range of scholars from different fields.

The book also pushes the boundaries of scholarship; Neis rethinks the traditional monograph format, and incorporates their own art and comics to interrupt, play with, and otherwise disrupt expectations about what scholarship on pre-modern textuality should “look” like. Thus Neis includes a critique of the reproduction of scholarship within a book interrogating models of reproduction and generation. Much of the artwork pushes against speciated boundaries, such as their painting “Canine Metathesis,” which simultaneously plays with manuscript illustration, the boundaries between species, and the idea of “walking upright” as a more elevated form of locomotion for animals.

Neis’ scholarship is well-recognized by scholars who study Judaism and/or late antiquity. But their work also raises sophisticated theoretical questions of import to anyone whose scholarship is at the intersection of religion and animality, queer and trans theory, pre-modern feminist science studies. This panel reflects a broad array of scholarly perspectives and methodologies in order to account for the variety of sub-fields that Neis’ book engages.