Sarit J. Kattan Gribetz

This dissertation examines conceptions of time and rhythms of daily life among ancient Jews from the second to the sixth centuries C.E., and the ways in which members of the rabbinic community synchronized their daily lives with the temporal systems of surrounding religious communities on both a conceptual and a practical level. Based on close readings of rabbinic legal and exegetical texts from Palestine and Babylonia, the dissertation analyzes the role that central rituals and observances—such as morning and evening prayers, menstrual purity laws, and other "time-bound" commandments—played in marking and structuring the time of ancient Jews within the Roman and Sasanian empires.