Walking on the Talmud?

A new book is coming out in October:-



That looks like the opening of Tractate Kiddushin:

האשה נקנית בשלש דרכים וקונה את עצמה בשתי דרכים נקנית בכסף בשטר ובביאה בכסף בית שמאי אומרים בדינר ובשוה דינר ובית הלל אומרים בפרוטה ובשוה פרוטה וכמה היא פרוטה אחד משמנה באיסר האיטלקי וקונה את עצמה בגט ובמיתת הבעל היבמה נקנית בביאה וקונה את עצמה בחליצה ובמיתת היבם

A woman is acquired in three ways and she acquires herself in two ways. She is acquired through money, documents, or sexual intercourse. With money: Beit Shamai says with a dinar, or the equivalent value of a dinar; Beit Hillel says with a pruta or the equivalent value of a pruta. How much is a pruta? It is one eighth of an Italian issar. She acquires herself with a get or the death of her husband. A levirate woman is acquired through sexual intercourse and acquires herself through halitza or the death of her levirate husband.

The teaser:-

Jews and Shoes takes a fresh look at the makings and meanings of shoes, cobblers, and barefootedness in Jewish experience. The book shows how shoes convey theological, social, and economic concepts, and as such are intriguing subjects for inquiry within a wide range of cultural, artistic, and historic contexts.

The book's multidisciplinary approach encompasses a wide range of contributions from disciplines as diverse as fashion, visual culture, history, anthropology, Bible and Talmud, and performance studies. Jews and Shoes will appeal to students, scholars and general readers alike who are interested to find out more about the practical and symbolic significance of shoes in Jewish culture since antiquity.

The author:

Edna Nahshon is Associate Professor of Hebrew at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Senior Associate, Center of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Oxford University.

The table of contents:-

Introduction: Jews and Shoes, Edna Nahshon * Part 1: Religion and the Bible * 1. The Biblical Shoe, Ora Prouser * "... Put Off Thy Shoes From Off Thy Feet ..." * 2. The Halitzah Shoe, Catherine Heszer * The Halitza Shoe: Between Female Subjugation and Symbolic Emasculation * 3. The Tombstone Shoe, Rivka Parciack * The Living within the Dead: Shoe-Shaped Tombstones at Jewish Cemeteries * 4. The Israeli Shoe, Orna Ben-Meir * 'Biblical Sandals' and Native Israeli Identity * Part 2: Memories and Commemoration * 5. The Shtetl Shoe, Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett * How to Make a Shoe * 6. The Folkloristic Shoe, Robert A. Rothstein * Shoes and Shoemakers in Yiddish Language and Folklore * 7. The Holocaust Shoe, Jeffrey Feldman * Untying Memory: Shoes as Holocaust Discourse * Part 3: Ideology and Economics * 8. The Cobbler's Shoe, Natalia Aleksiun * Shoes, Poverty and National Minority: Shoemakers in the Discourse of Jewish Intellectuals in Interwar Poland * 9. The Wanderer's Shoe, Shelly Zer-Zion * The Cobbler's Penalty: the Wandering Jew in Search for Salvation * 10. The Equalizing Shoe, Ayala Raz * On Shoes, Pioneers, and the Zionist Search for Equality * Part 4: Theatre, Art and Film * 11. The Fetishist's Shoe, Andrew Ingall * 'Poems of Pedal Atrocity': Sexuality, Ethnicity, and Religion in the Art and Literature of Bruno Schulz * 12. The Artist's Shoe, Sonya Rapoport * Digging Into the Jewish Roots of Shoe-Field * 13. The Theatrical Shoe, Dorit Yerushalmi * The Voice of Shoemaking: Cobblers on the Israeli Stage * 14. The Cinematic Shoe, Jeanette Malkin * Shoes and the City: Ernst Lubitsch and the Urban 'Jewish' Film

Hmmm.

These boots are made for learning?


P.S. Does she include this shoe element:-

Another ancient tradition that has been reevaluated in the light of recent archeological discoveries has to do with an obscure law in the Mishnah that forbids the wearing of “nailed sandals” on the Sabbath. [90:1 Once a number of Jews took refuge in a cave, and hearing some persons pass, whom they supposed to be enemies, they fell on each other with their hobnailed sandals, and beat each other to death.]

The Talmud traces the prohibition to a tragic occurrence that occurred “in the final days of the ‘persecution’ [sh'mad],” a standard rabbinic expression for the Bar Kokhba insurrection: A group of Jews who were hiding in a sealed off cave saw the tracks of a nailed sandal that inadvertently been worn backwards, and assumed that enemy soldiers had entered their cave. In the ensuing panic, which took place on a Saturday, “more people were killed than were killed by the enemy.” *

A variant of the story had it that it was the familiar scratching sound of the sandals’ nail-heads on the ground outside the cave that had provoked to the hysteria, with its deadly consequences.

Indeed, the dreaded nailed sandal was often equated in ancient sources with the might of the Roman legionary, and the word kalgas, from the Latin caliga, became a synonym for a fierce soldier.

Nevertheless, the Talmudic rationale for the prohibition of wearing nailed sandals on the Sabbath was dismissed by most respectable scholars as too farfetched for serious consideration.

Here again, archeology has altered our perspectives on the matter.

On a mountainous ridge overlooking Jericho, a cave was excavated in 1986, and it soon became clear that it was one of those caves that had served as a refuge for Jews during the Bar Kokhba uprising. The cave also contained the remains of a nailed sandal that had evidently belonged to a Jewish revolutionary. The owner of the sandals apparently perished in the cave, along with more than thirty men and women of diverse ages.

This tragic episode, or one very much like it, might lie at the root of the halakhic prohibition against wearing the lethal footwear.

And see: Hanan Eshel, “Nailed Sandals in Jewish Sources and in the Excavation of a Cave at Ketef Jericho,” Zion 53, no. 2 (1988): 191-8.

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*
From the Tractate Shabbat

דף ס,א משנה לא יצא האיש בסנדל המסומר ולא ביחיד בזמן שאין ברגלו מכה ולא בתפילין ולא בקמיע בזמן שאינו מן המומחה ולא בשריון ולא בקסדא ולא במגפיים ואם יצא אינו חייב חטאת:

דף ס,א גמרא סנדל המסומר מאי טעמא אמר שמואל שלפי <הגזרה> {השמד} היו והיו נחבאין במערה ואמרו הנכנס יכנס והיוצא אל יצא נהפך סנדלו של אחד מהן כסבורין הם אחד מהן יצא וראוהו אויבים ועכשיו באין עליהן דחקו זה בזה והרגו זה את זה יותר ממה שהרגו בהם אויבים רבי אילעאי בן אלעזר אומר במערה היו יושבין ושמעו קול מעל גבי המערה כסבורין היו שבאו עליהם אויבים דחקו זה בזה והרגו זה את זה יותר ממה שהרגו בהן אויבים רמי בר יחזקאל אמר בבהכ"נ היו יושבין ושמעו קול מאחורי בהכ"נ כסבורין היו שבאו עליהם אויבים דחקו זה בזה והרגו זה את זה יותר ממה שהרגו בהן אויבים באותה שעה אמרו אל יצא אדם בסנדל המסומר

MISHNAH. A MAN MAY NOT GO OUT WITH A NAIL-STUDDED SANDAL, NOR WITH A SINGLE [SANDAL]. IF HE HAS NO WOUND ON HIS FOOT;15 NOR WITH TEFILLIN, NOR WITH AN AMULET, IF IT IS NOT FROM AN EXPERT, NOR WITH A COAT OF MAIL [SHIRYON], NOR WITH A CASQUE [KASDA], NOR WITH GREAVES [MEGAFAYYIM]. YET IF HE GOES OUT, HE DOES NOT INCUR A SIN-OFFERING.16

GEMARA. A NAIL-STUDDED SANDAL: What is the reason? — Said Samuel: It was at the end of the period of persecution.17 and they [some fugitives] were hiding in a cave. They proclaimed, 'He who would enter, let him enter,18 but he who would go out, let him not go out.'19 Now, the sandal of one of them became reversed, so that they thought that one of them had gone out and been seen by the enemies, who would now fall upon them. Thereupon they pressed against each other,20 and they killed of each other more than their enemies slew of them. R. Ila'i b. Eleazar said: They were stationed in a cave when they heard a sound [proceeding] from above the cave. Thinking that the enemy was coming upon them, they pressed against each other and slew amongst themselves more than the enemy had slain of them. Rami b. Ezekiel said: They were stationed in a Synagogue, when they heard a sound from behind the synagogue. Thinking that the enemy was coming upon them, they pressed against each other and slew amongst themselves more than the enemy had slain of them. In that hour it was enacted: A man must not go out with a nail-studded sandal.21

16 Because these are garments in war, hence do not rank as burdens.
17 So Jast. Rashi: There were fugitives from persecution. [The reference is generally held to be to the Syrian persecutions under Antiochus Epiphanes; v. Berliner, Hoffmann Magazin XX, p. 123].
18 As he could see beforehand whether the enemies' spies were on the watch.
19 For fear of spies, lest their whereabouts be disclosed.
20 Panic stricken, in order to flee.
21 According to Samuel, because this had led them astray. According to R. Ila'i b. Eleazar and Rami b. Ezekiel, because the carnage had been wrought by their nail-studded sandals.