Embracing the Jewess: Reading Gender and Ethnicity in Judith with the Belle Juive

Abstract In this article, I explore the intersections of gender and ethnic categories in the book of Judith. The entire book—titled after a character whose name means “Jewess”—is suffused with commentary on both Judith’s womanhood and her Jewish identity. Here, I focus on chapters 10, 11, 12, and 14 of the book, which contain the language of both gender and ethnicity. Judith’s Jewish identity is discussed in the same breath as her gender and beauty, presenting an opportunity to examine how the categories of womanhood and Jewishness are invoked and how they complicate one another. This article will use the figure of the belle Juive, or “beautiful Jewess,” to discuss how gender and Jewishness interact in Judith. I will discuss how the conversations between Judith and the Assyrians play with assumptions the Assyrians have about women and Jews, and how meeting Judith shapes the Assyrians’ ideas about the rest of her people. We can read this encounter as engineered by the character of Judith, with attention to the complicated dynamics of gender and national identity, to produce exactly the result she gets: an Assyrian army and general that unwittingly hands her the power to achieve her goal.