Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (12 page)

Read Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture Online

Authors: Daniel Boyarin

Tags: #Religion, #Judaism, #General

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Yohanan, the Talmud makes crystal clear the point that a man may not force his wife to have sex with him and that to do so is rape. The reason that the Talmud cites their views here is not to permit sexual objectification of a wife, as the context makes abundantly clear, but to indicate that the Torah does not interfere in the details of sexual practices, of positions and pleasures between husband and wife, any more than it prescribes whether to boil or fry (kosher) foods. Nevertheless, the decision
not
to interfere when a situation is potentially repressive implicitly supports the status quo. While banning rape, the text still implies that male dominance in sexual matters is protected by the law, because the law will not interfere to put checks on it or provide the woman with protection or with a procedure to attain her own desires and exercise her own free will. The prescriptions repeatedly provided by the Talmud for the creation of conditions for mutual arousal, intimacy, and mutual satisfaction exclude the interpretation that the purpose of the citation of the Rabbi stories is to permit wife-rape, since that very practice is condemned so severely only a few lines later, but they still leave the husband firmly in control. It is worth noting, moreover, that this interpretation of the text is the one that came to be codified in medieval and later Jewish law; wife-rape was absolutely forbidden and recognized as sin, and all that was learned from Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi was that the Torah does not prescribe nor proscribe any particular sexual practices between husbands and wives.
The theme of the necessity for intimacy between the husband and wife at the time of sexual intercourse is expressed throughout the passage in different ways.
11
Thus, even with regard to the ambivalent story of Rabbi Eliezer's sexual practice that Imma Shalom tells,
12
while we must concede a great deal of ambivalence in association with the Rabbi's behavior we must also not ignore the explicit statement that the purpose of his behavior
11. My interpretations here are much influenced by the doctoral dissertation of my student Dalia Hoshen (Hoshen 1990), from whom I have learned a great deal. She is not, of course, responsible for the exact nuances of my interpretations, which are sometimes in open conflict with her positions.
12. It should be emphasized that I am not denying ideological conflict and ambivalence about sexuality among the Rabbis. My position is somewhat between that of the "apologists," who have blithely characterized rabbinic Judaism as pro-sex, this-worldly, and non-ascetic and those of the "revisionists," which seek to characterize it as very similar in its sexual anxieties to the late-antique pagan and Christian world around and among the Jews. In Chapter I above, I have detailed this in-between point of view.
 
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was to prevent him from thinking of another woman. That is to say, whatever the "true" meaning of Rabbi Eliezer's sexual behavior, the narrator, through the speech of Imma Shalom, inscribes it in the intimacy code. Moreover, it is consistent with at least three other moments in the text. First, the function for which the story of Rabbi Eliezer and Imma Shalom is cited is explicitly as an objection to the statement by Rabbi Yohanan the son of Dabai that a couple may not converse during intercourse.
13
The Rabbis who cited this source here understood that the conversation between Rabbi Eliezer and Imma Shalom took place during sexual intercourse. Moreover, the resolution of the apparent conflict between the texts is also highly significant. What the angels intended to forbid, according to the talmudic resolution, was speaking of other and distracting matters during the sexual act. Even the angels permit couples to speak of sexual matters, which is what Rabbi Eliezer and Imma Shalom did. According to the redactorial level of the talmudic text, then, one is permitted to speak of sex during sexual activity, as it is considered conducive to the creation of intimacy and warmth between the partners. This is, then, consistent with the stated reason for the Rabbi's behavior.
Let us read this story a bit more closely. It is important to know at the start that the word that Imma Shalom uses for "intercourse" is "talking." Literally, what she says to the Rabbis is, "When he talks to me, he does not talk to me at the beginning of the night, nor at the end of the night, but at midnight." I think that the linguistic echo is significant, because the story, like the entire talmudic passage, is about the
discourse
of sex, that is, at least in this case, about
talking
about sex.
14
Rabbi Yohanan ben Dabai's angelic communication has been cited as illustration of the principle that modesty is vitally important. Accordingly, the conversation that takes place between husband and wife during intercourse (which in English, too, means conversation!) is an example of immodesty according to that tradition. It is that notion that the text of Imma Shalom is motivated here to counter.
However, at first glance, one would think that far from countering or opposing Rabbi Yohanan ben Dabai's tradition, the story of how Rabbi Eliezer conducted his sexual life would seem to support that tradition. If
13. That is,
mirabile dictu
, the text is cited as a permissive one!
14. I do not agree with David Biale (1989) who sees here a misunderstanding of the word and claims that the Talmud cites this as an objection on the basis of a literal understanding here of "talking."
 
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