Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (167 page)

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this is no longer the case afterward. Hence matterthe bodywill be referred to as a "helper which is
over-against
him," and with this moment, rabbinic Judaism had come full circle. Maimonides reads, in this respect, like nothing so much as a recapitulation of Philo.

In the next chapter, we will see how much cultural struggle and tension was involved in the effort to produce sexual desire as "good" in a cultural environment in which it was heavily problematized.

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2
Dialectics of Desire
"The Evil Instinct is Very Good"

Far from being a simple legacy of its cultural heritage, the rabbinic insistence on the positive valence of sexuality seems to have been hard won and contested. The Talmud relates the following strange history of the returnees from the exile in Babylonia:

[1] "And they cried out unto God in a loud voice" [Nehemiah 9:4]. What did they say? Rav (and some say Rabbi Yohanan) says: "Woe, Woe: This is the one who destroyed the temple, and burned the Holy Place, and killed all of the righteous ones, and exiled Israel from their land, and still he dances among us. What is the reason You gave him to us? Is it not to receive reward [for resisting him]? We don't want him or his reward!" A sherd fell from heaven with the word "truth" written on it.
Said Rav Hanina: Learn from this that the seal of the Holy Blessed One is truth!
They sat in fast for three days and three nights, and he was given over to them. A figure like a lion of fire went out from the Holy of Holies. A prophet said unto Israel: ''That was the Desire for worship of strange gods, as it is said,
This is the evil
" [Zach. 5:7]. While they were capturing him, a hair was pulled from his head. He cried out, and his voice carried four hundred parasangs [The entire distance from heaven to earth is five hundred!] They said: "What shall we do? Perhaps, God forbid, they will have pity on him in heaven." A prophet said to them: ''Throw him into a leaden pot and stop up his mouth with lead, for lead absorbs sound, for it says,
This is the evil, and he threw the leaden stone into its mouth
" [loc. cit.].

[2] They said, "Since this is a time of [God's] favor, let us pray regarding Desire for sexual sin." They prayed and he was committed into their hands. He said to them, "Be careful, for if you kill that one, the world will end." They imprisoned him for three days, and then they looked for a fresh egg in all of the Land of Israel, and they did not find one. They said, "What shall we do? If we kill him, the world will end. If we pray for half [i.e., that people will only desire licit sex; Rashi], in heaven they do not answer halfway prayers. Blind him and let him go." At least, a man does not become aroused by his female relatives.


(Babylonian Talmud Yoma 69b)

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Here is perhaps the best example in all of the Talmud of the essentially mythical mode of thinking and expression of this culture. I am inclined to think that the narrative is a true mytha story, neither fiction nor historiography (Boyarin 1993a), which articulates the most profound meanings and understandings of the world of the collective; for the present purposes, however, even if it be read as allegory, the same results will ensue.

This dark and strange tale is the way that the Rabbis of the Talmud communicate their deepest thoughts on human psychology and especially the complex notion of the
Yetser Hara',
with which this chapter will be concerned. The concept of the
Yetser Hara',
usually translated as the "Evil Inclination," is one of the most intriguing formations in talmudic culture and one, I think, that is easily misunderstood.

The first half of the story is an etiological myth, which explains why the Jews of rabbinic times are no longer attracted to the worship of idols. Upon returning from the Babylonian exile, the Jews prayed to God to have the desire for such worship removed from them, and their prayers were answered favorably. They were able to capture the Desire for idolatry and to execute him. In the second half of the story, the Jews attempt to rid themselves similarly of desire for sexual transgression, i.e., adultery and incest. They capture the personified Desire, but Desire himself warns them that he is necessary to the continuation of the world. Prudently, instead of executing him they imprison him for three days, only to discover that there are no eggs in the world. Eggs are, of course, the ultimate symbol of generation and regeneration. Realizing that nothing can be done about the situation, for halfway prayers are not answered, they blind him and let him go. The blinding avails to reduce the desire for incest with one's closest relativesbut no more.
¹

The crucial sentence in the story is that halfway prayers are not answered. It is this which gives us the central clue to the rabbinic psychology and their concept of Evil Desire. In order for there to be desire and thus sexuality at all, they are saying, there must also be the possibility of illicit desire. Desire is one, and killing off desire for illicit sex will also kill off the desire for licit sex, which is necessary for the continuation of life. Unlike the desire for idolatry, which serves no useful purpose other than testing resistance, the desire for sex is itself productive and vital but it has destructive and negative concomitants. These concomitants


1. My brother the anthropologist reminds me that for Lévi-Strauss (as for Freud) this "blinding" is absolutely foundational.

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