A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse: Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean

by Yaron Eliav

A provocative account of Jewish encounters with the public baths of ancient Rome

Public bathhouses embodied the Roman way of life, from food and fashion to sculpture and sports. The most popular institution of the ancient Mediterranean world, the baths drew people of all backgrounds. They were places suffused with nudity, sex, and magic. A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse reveals how Jews navigated this space with ease and confidence, engaging with Roman bath culture rather than avoiding it.

In this landmark interdisciplinary work of cultural history, Yaron Eliav uses the Roman bathhouse as a social laboratory to reexamine how Jews interacted with Graeco-Roman culture. He reconstructs their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about the baths and the activities that took place there, documenting their pleasures as well as their anxieties and concerns. Archaeologists have excavated hundreds of bathhouse facilities across the Mediterranean. Graeco-Roman writers mention the bathhouse frequently, and rabbinic literature contains hundreds of references to the baths. Eliav draws on the archaeological and literary record to offer fresh perspectives on the Jews of antiquity, developing a new model for the ways smaller and often weaker groups interact with large, dominant cultures.

A compelling and richly evocative work of scholarship, A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse challenges us to rethink the relationship between Judaism and Graeco-Roman society, shedding new light on how cross-cultural engagement shaped Western civilization.

Genres: History, Judaism, Jewish

392 pages, Hardcover

Published May 16, 2023

Reviews

[Shivayne Gandotra · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who is not Jewish, Eliav’s A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse completely reshaped how I imagined Jewish life in antiquity. The book dismantles the familiar image of ancient Jews as culturally withdrawn and instead reveals a community deeply entangled with Roman daily life. Eliav argues that the Roman bathhouse, one of the most Roman spaces imaginable, functions as a “laboratory” for studying cultural interaction. Rather than avoiding this world, Jews participated in it regularly: they bathed, exercised, socialized, and even debated legal questions that arose in these mixed spaces. One of the most compelling examples is Eliav’s reading of the Mishnah’s story of Rabban Gamaliel encountering a statue of Aphrodite in the bath. Instead of condemning the space, Gamaliel distinguishes between sacred and non-sacred images, explaining that the goddess here is an ornament, not an object of worship. Eliav brilliantly demonstrates how this choice of wording indicates that Jews developed precise conceptual tools, legal, spatial, and linguistic, to navigate a sculptural world without abandoning their identity.

This insight connects to the book’s broader argument about “filtered absorption”: Jews did not reject Roman culture wholesale, nor did they assimilate uncritically. They selectively absorbed aspects of Roman life while filtering out those that conflicted with their values. Archaeological discussions in the book reinforce this point. What earlier scholars interpreted as “Jewish rejection” of bathhouses often turns out to be an artifact of missing or misread evidence; in many regions, the so-called “absence” of baths appears for reasons unrelated to Jewish culture at all. Eliav’s careful comparison shows that Jews lived within Roman structures rather than outside them. The result is a far more dynamic and human picture of ancient Judaism, one that reveals adaptation, negotiation, and creativity rather than resistance or isolation. This book made the ancient world feel more complex and more connected, and it challenged assumptions I did not even realize I had. I cannot recommend this read enough, both to my Jewish brothers and sisters, and to anyone even slightly interested in this topic.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was in rabbinical school, we read several scholarly articles about whether the ancient Jewish population had been influenced by the Greek culture of its time. The material was very easy to summarize: even though the authors used the same evidence, some said Greek culture had no influence, while others suggested the exact opposite. These studies came to mind when I was reading Yaron Z. Eliav’s “A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse: Cultural Interactions in the Ancient Mediterranean” (Princeton University Press). Although his topic may sound as if it might be of limited interest, Eliav instead offers an excellent discussion of the way ancient Jews managed to live a Jewish life while still taking part in the culture that surrounded them. He focuses on the ways rabbinic literature portrays how the rabbis and other Jews were able to enjoy the Roman bathhouse, while avoiding potential halachic (legal) difficulties the bathhouse potentially offered. His overview of Jewish culture offers a different way of exploring the past.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...

[Matan Berg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eliav's book takes a simple assumption that most people (including scholars) had and corrects the historical record -- not only did Jews have access to and partake in the institution of the Roman Bathhouse, they enjoyed it quite thoroughly. The book counters the mainstream scholarly notion that Jews avoided most things Roman, including the bathhouses, like the plague. He responds directly to scholars like Ronny Reich, insisting that the supposed lack of evidence for bathhouses in Judea is both disproven in light of new archaeological discoveries and comparatively illogical. Using the bathhouse as his microcosm, Eliav introduces the phenomenon of "filtred absoprtion" -- Jews engaged with the Roman world, while simultaneously retaining much of their own traditions and ways of life. Perhaps most importantly, he engages directly with halakhic text from the Rabbis of the time, examining thousands of references to the bathhouse to explore Jewish thought on idolatry, nudity, magic, and more. Halakha is emblematic of this filtered absorption, as a bridge (and not a wall as once thought) into the broader world.

[Jeffrey Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't exactly read this book. I edited the manuscript before the author submitted it, and I am extremely proud that Princeton University Press published it.
Very few people have the knowledge and skills to take on this subject. Eliav is an archaeologist, familiar with classic Jewish texts, familiar with Greek and Roman sources, and a historian - a professor at the University of Michigan.
Eliav's choice of subject is original and thought-provoking. Those of us who have visited ancient sites in Israel and Italy, among other places, have seen the excavated remains of public bathhouses, and we probably never thought very much about why they were so prevalent in the Roman Empire. Eliav, however, has thought a great deal about it and explains what the institution reveals about the culture of the Roman Empire and the place of the Jews in it.

[Sandra Favinati · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read a funny and thought provoking book on this kind of topic is a rare feat. If you're interested in history of the Roman world or, or n archeology, or ancient (and modern) Judaism this is a must read.