This study investigates the history and nature of Gentile impurity in ancient Judaism. It is deceptively simple to assume that Gentiles, who did not observe purity laws, would have been considered ritually impure as a matter of course. Indeed, a number of scholars maintain this position. In fact, however, the situation is a bit more complex. Ancient Jewish sources reflect two conflicting tensions. On the one hand, both biblical and rabbinic law(considered Gentiles to be exempt from the laws of ritual purity. On the other hand, Gentiles ate impure foods, came into regular contact with impure substances, and–what is worse–committed idolatry and defiling sexual acts. Ultimately, some rabbinic sources do state that Gentiles are, in fact, ritually impure (e.g., T. Zabim 2:1). The goal of this paper is to analyze, distinguish, and trace the history of these tensions and developments in ancient Judaism.

This study examines Rabbi Yehuda Hayyûj′s (945–1000 C.E.) use of two derivational processes: underlying forms and linguistic analogies (singular: Arabic Hebrew ), which were an integral element of his work. Since his goal was to show the derivation of Hebrew verbs from triliteral roots, he focused on weak verbs whose surface forms did not demonstrate all three radicals. He compared many weak verbs to other verbal forms in order to identify the exact inflection of words, especially their verbal pattern and consonantal roots.

I wish to address two basic questions that are confronted in the translation of “immigrant” or “border” literature:1 (1) What is the translator to do with a multilingual source text? And (2) How should one approach a literary transcription of a text that is already a literary transcription of an oral culture, without betraying that culture?

In a recent article, “Israeli Literature Over Time,”Aharon Megged describes his work as “unremittingly concerned with burning national issues,” mainly with the issue of Israel′s relationship to the Diaspora.1 Megged′s intense preoccupation with the Zionist ideology of the negation of the Diaspora emerged in his 1955 story “Yad va-shem” (“The Name”). The story presents a scathing criticism of Israel′s dissociation from the history of the Diaspora and especially from the catastrophe of the Holocaust. “Yad va-shem” was followed by an article entitled “Tarbutenu ha-yeshana ve-ha-hadasha” (“Our Old and New Culture”) in which Megged deplored Israel′s severance of its Diaspora roots and urged a reexamination of the negative attitude toward the destroyed European Jewish culture.In 1984, Megged published Massa ha-yeladim el ha-aretz ha-muvtachat (“The Children's Journey”), a novel based on a true story about a group of young survivors of the Holocaust on their way to Palestine.3 This work, as Dan Laor notes in his review, “offers a perspective of the Diaspora in the Holocaust which differs from [the typical Israeli attitude of] contempt infused with pity” toward the Diaspora Jew.