Analyzing early Jewish accounts of the destruction of the Second Temple, Julia Watts Belser illuminates the brutal body costs of Roman conquest. Drawing on disability studies, feminist theory, and new materialist ecological thought, Belser reveals how rabbinic discourses of gender, sexuality, and the body are shaped in the shadow of empire. This important book by Julia Watts Belser demands that we look again at rabbinic responses to the Roman conquest of Jerusalem ... [S]he pays particular attention to theoretical studies, including methodologies of related disciplines such as feminist, disability, ecological materialist, and post-colonial studies. In all, Belser brings insights from the crises and successes of our own era in order to reveal new interpretations of these ancient texts.