Book panel on Rafael Rachel Neis' *When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species* (University of California Press, 2023)

This book panel engages Rafael Rachel Neis’ innovative book, *When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven*. This book investigates rabbinic treatises relating to animals, humans, and other life-forms. Through an original analysis, Neis shows how rabbis blurred the lines between humans and other beings, even as they were intent on classifying creatures and tracing the contours of what it means to be human. Recognizing that life proliferates by mechanisms beyond sexual copulation between two heterosexual “male” and “female” individuals of the same species, the rabbis proposed intricate alternatives. In parsing a variety of creatures, they upset unmitigated claims of human distinctiveness. When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven enters conversations in animal studies, queer theory, trans theory, and feminist science studies to provincialize sacrosanct ideals of reproduction; the book thereby offers powerful historical alternatives to the paradigms associated with so-called traditional ideas