The Talmud, however (after some further discussion of this point irrelevant to our purposes), indicates unambiguously that the requirement of immersion in a ritual bath after sex was later abrogated. The anxiety about sexuality that was manifested by such an idea of impurity was incompatible with later rabbinic sensibilities around the body:
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 | | It is taught: Rabbi Yehuda the son of Betayra used to say: "The words of Torah are not susceptible to impurity." There was a case of a student who was hesitating to speak in the presence of Rabbi Yehuda the son of Betayra. He said to him: "My son, open your mouth and let your words be radiant, for the words of Torah are not susceptible to impurity, for it says
Behold my words are like fire; a speech of the Lord
[Jer. 23:29]. Just as fire is unsusceptible to impurity, so the words of Torah are unsusceptible to impurity." . . . Rav Nahman the son of Yitzhaq says: "The community is accustomed to follow the view of that venerable sage Rabbi Yehuda the son of Betayra with regard to the words of Torah, in accordance with what Rabbi Yehuda the son of Betayra has said, 'The words of Torah are not susceptible to impurity.''' When Zeiri came, he said: "They have rescinded immersion, in accordance with the view of Rabbi Yehuda the son of Betayra."
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The early Palestinian authority Rabbi Yehuda ben Betayra is represented as having opposed the entire principle of immersion after sex and before the study of Torah. He gives a technical midrashic reading in support of his position, arguing that since the words of Torah are like fire, they cannot be made impure by contact with an impure person, and that there is no reason for one made impure by seminal emission to refrain from the study of Torah. Passing through fire is one of the ways that objects become pure in rabbinic law, so the Torah would purify the one who studies it. The prohibition against the study of Torah in this state of impurity, however, did not have a technical basis in the laws of purity. Rather, it was based on a moral/psychological foundation: as the Torah had been received in a state of full concentration on spirituality, so also should it be studied. Otherwise, it would be impossible to understand why menstruating women whose state of technical impurity is identical to that of men who have had a seminal emission (or, if anything, more severe) would be permitted to study Torah without immersion, a point made at several junctures in the Palestinian literature (see below, p. 180). Furthermore, by the talmudic period, cultic impurity had been abrogated because of the destruction of the Temple. Clearly, then, the belief that a man must immerse after sex was not held on the basis of technical, cultic impurity but because of a sense that sex was somehow incompatible with holy
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