Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (163 page)

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leaves this question open, but the later halakha is codified in accord with the view of Rabbi Yehuda ben Betayra, supported by Rav Nahman the son of Yitzhaq, that the whole matter of seminal impurity is irrelevant for the study of Torah. We have seen evidence for a highly ambivalent set of notions about sex on the part of early Palestinian authorities and the reduction of that ambivalence in the later rabbinic (especially Babylonian) period. We will find this pattern repeated in other texts as well.

Some early Palestinian authorities seem to hold a highly ironic, ambivalent stance toward sexuality. One of the most colorful expressions of this stance is the utterance of the Palestinian Resh Lakish cited (and contested) in the Babylonian Talmud: ''Said Resh Lakish, 'Come let us be grateful to our ancestors, for had they not sinned we would not have come into the world, for it says
I said, you are all angels and heavenly creatures, but you have spoiled your behavior; therefore like Adam you will die
[Ps. 82:6]'" (Babylonian Talmud Avoda Zara 5a). Resh Lakish's gnomon is subtle and complex. At first glance it seems to encode a highly negative marking for sexuality, allowing it place only insofar as it leads to procreation; it is similar, then, to the ideologies of Philo and Clement. But careful reading reveals a more complicated and sophisticated meaning. First, it is vital to realize that Resh Lakish's statement says nothing direct about sexuality at all. The psalm that he cites refers only to social evils, such as mistreatment of the poor in courts that favor the wicked rich. Resh Lakish can be understood to mean only that we should be grateful to our ancestors who sinned (not through sexuality) and, by sinning, brought death into the world, for without death there would be no generation, and we would not exist. Read this way, Resh Lakish does not explicitly call sexual intercourse sin. By seemingly understanding, however, that before the sin the ancestors were like angels, did not die, and
therefore
did not procreate, his apothegm nevertheless strongly encodes the association of sexuality with sin and death that lies at the bottom of Christian notions about the Fall and Original Sin. Even given this, however, Resh Lakish's utterance is hardly Christian in spirit, in its affirmation of having come into the world. It is hard to imagine an early Christian writer arguing that we should be grateful to Adam and Eve for having sinned. The Babylonian Talmud did not accept, however, even these tenuous or ironic associations, for it continues:


Shall we say that had they not sinned, they would not have procreated? But it says, And as for you, be fruitful and multiply . Until Sinai. But

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[that cannot be correct, because] at Sinai it also says, Return to your tents, [which means] for the joy of intercourse. . . . Do not say, We would not have come into the world, but it would be as if we had not come into the world,

which the eleventh-century commentator Rashi glosses, "For they would have lived forever, and as long as they live, we would not have been significant at all." The Babylonian Talmud could tolerate neither the ironic, ascetic implication of Resh Lakish's original statement, nor the possible associations it had with Christian doctrine. To escape such implications, the Talmud distorted his obvious meaning and provided us with some precious evidence for an alternative view of sexuality in the phrase "the joy of intercourse." In opposition to one rabbinic view (which held that sex was only for procreation), there was another view that strongly encoded a value for sexual pleasure in its own right. This hardly fits Brown's characterization of sexuality for "the Rabbis" as "an irritating but necessary aspect of existence."

Certain rabbinic texts, moreover, recognize the emotional value of married sex. Thus, when a decision must be made about whether consummation is necessary for the contraction of a valid marriage, it is made in the following terms: "Ravin asked, if she entered the marriage canopy but has not had intercourse, what is the law? Does the fondness of the marriage canopy effect the marriage or the fondness of intercourse?" (Babylonian Talmud Ketubbot 56a). Two things can be learned from this text. First, the validity of the speech-act of marrying is conditional upon a feeling of intimacy, and second, this feeling of intimacy is produced byis one of the aims ofsexual intercourse.
³²

The strongest arguments that procreation was by no means the sole purpose of sex in rabbinic Judaism come from texts and situations in which the sex and procreation are differentiated or even in conflict with each

32. See Brown on Plutarch's notion of
charis,
"the 'graciousness' created by intercoursethat indefinable quality of mutual trust and affection gained through the pleasure of the bed itself," a notion as foreign, it would seem, to Philo as it was to Clement (Brown 1988, 133). Indeed, I would claim that the later rabbinic ethos of married love is very similar to the doctrine of Plutarch as described by Foucault (1986a, 20708) even to the approving references to Solonic laws regarding the frequency of intercourse owed by a husband to a chaste wife as a "mark of esteem and affection," for which compare the Talmud Yevamot 62b, "Anyone who knows that his wife is God-fearing and does not sleep with her is called a sinner." See, however, Fox (1987, 349) for a somewhat different account of Plutarch's position.

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other, as in the situation of the barren wife. In the following story, procreation and erotic companionship come into conflict, and love prevails:


We will rejoice and be happy with you [Song of Songs 1:4]. There we have taught: If a man married a woman and remained with her for ten years and had no children, he is not permitted to refrain from procreation [i.e., he must divorce her and marry another].

Said Rabbi Idi: There was a case of a woman in Sidon, who remained ten years with her husband and did not give birth. They came before Rabbi Shimon the son of Yohai; they wanted to get divorced one from the other. He said to them, "On your livesjust as you got married with feasting and drinking, so shall you separate in feasting and drinking." They followed his suggestion, and they made for themselves a festival and a banquet, and she got him too drunk. When his sensibility returned to him, he said, "My daughter, choose any precious object of mine that is in the house, and take it with you when you go to your father's house." What did she do? When he was asleep, she told her manservants and maidservants and said to them, "Pick him up in the bed, and take him to Father's house." At midnight he woke up. When his wine had worn off, he said to her, "My daughter, where am I?" She said, "in Father's house.'' He said, ''What am I doing in your father's house?" She said to him, "Did you not say to me this very evening, 'Any precious object which you have in your house, take and go to your father's house'? There is no object in the world which is more precious to me than you!" They went to Rabbi Shimon the son of Yohai. He stood and prayed for them, and they were remembered [she became pregnant].


(Shir Hashirim Rabba 1:31)

There is one startling moment of narrative illogic in this otherwise perfectly constructed little tale. Why are we told that "she got him too drunk," and then, "when his sensibility returned to him, he said . . ."? What function did his drunkenness play, if all that we know about it is that his sensibility returned to him afterwards, and why was it important that he was
too
drunk? Note that it is impossible to understand this drunkenness as that which resulted in his being so sleepy that he didn't detect that he was being first carried off, because that sleep takes place
after
he has recovered from his drunkenness. I think that the most plausible way to fill this gap is that the story delicately hints that they made love while he was drunk, and that during intercourse they realized that they loved each other too much to allow the halakha to separate them. This seems to have been her plan, for after all, "she made him
too
drunk," too drunk

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