Elisha ben Avuyah, a first century rabbi, is one of the most tantalizingly enigmatic figures of Jewish literature. Known as "Aher," Hebrew for "the Other," he is best known for his apostasy--his denial of something--which the early rabbinic writings describe with both symbolic richness and maddening vagueness. No one knows his precise biograph--what he did, what he thought, and how he related to Jewish society during that time, yet (or perhaps therefore) speculation about him has proven to be a rich source for Jewish storytellers in different generations. Questioning religious people hunger to know: What makes a brilliant scholar and religious leader renounce his faith? Of what does renunciation  consist--when do a person's actions put him definitively outside the fold of acceptable religious behavior, and outside of acceptable society? Who is a Jew, and what does he do, once he is outside? How do regular people deal with the Other? How does God? 

My project is another small chapter in the long line of questions, taking apart stories and putting new ones together. My goals began with learning more about Elisha himself, from whatever factual information exists. Without historical records, however, what is more important (and more interesting) is learning how Elisha was represented by his near-contemporaries and by people in succeeding generations. What did people think he did, and how did they regard him for it, and how did they express these attitudes? In what contexts did differing representations develop? Often, the story of the Other is used to approach other ideas, providing us a window on to the religious, social, and personal landscape of the author or group who wrote it. One goal of this project was to look at early sources for common stories, and examine how they develop in different directions. (This was not a scholarly exercise in text and redaction, but rather a purely literary comparison.) I chose the particular subject of these traditions because it affords the opportunity for asking myself some questions along the way: about what makes a person belong and what makes him Other? This is part of a process of religious self-understanding. Last, but not least of my goals was to create an occasion to study a selection of aggadic (narrative, as opposed to legal) texts in detail.