becomes so involved with his studies that he does not know whether he has a daughter, or if he does, forgets her existence entirely. Even after his wife writes to himafter thirteen yearsand requests his aid in caring for his daughter's future, he does not respond until explicitly commanded to do so by the head of the yeshiva, none other than Rabbi Akiva, whose cultural prestige is being mobilized here for a purpose quite different from that in the Babylonian text. The original story ends with the bitter consequence of his behavior, the death of his wife. There is nothing in this version that ameliorates in any way the critique of the practice of long absences for study of Torah, unless it be the implicit contrast with Rabbi Shim'on, who at least stayed in constant touch with his wife.
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In stark contrast to this version is the Babylonian rewriting of the story. Here, the elements of critique of Rabbi Hananiah are relatively muted. We are not told that he did not contact his family, or that he only decided to go home when forced to either by the wife or by the teacher. When his wife dies, he is horrified and intervenes with heaven to restore her to life. What I am claiming is that the Babylonian version is a revision of the story, which is explicitly designed to provide a utopian solution to the enormous moral and halakhic contradictions involved in the practice of husbands being away from their wives to study Torah for years on end, as if to suggest that, in our contemporary language of utopia, you can have it all. The Babylonian reteller, struggling with a Palestinian story that, not surprisingly, reflects the strongly critical position of that culture against the practice, mutes that critique dramatically by leaving out certain elements of the narrative. His provision of the deus ex machina of a miraculous resurrection only emphasizes the failed utopian resolution of the story even more. This happy ending rings as false as the ending of
The Tempest
or
Midsummer Night's Dream,
with everyone well married. This comparison is not intended, of course, as an aesthetic comment, but rather a statement of the way that the very resolutions typical of the comic literary text often betray rather than provide solutions for the underlying socio-cultural conflicts.
39
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 | | 39. A glossator has added a line to the Palestinian version as well, to the effect that the wife's soul returned; it is clear, however, that this is only a later addition to the text, and perhaps one that is based on the Babylonian story. Fränkel makes the same point. The version in the equally Palestinian Wayyiqra Rabba 21:8 text also includes an ending in which the outcry of Rabbi Hananiah causes a miraculous resurrection, but I am virtually certain that this also is a later scribal addition imitating the Babylonian talmudic version. There are three reasons for this judgment. First, the very fact that the two Palestinian texts, otherwise almost identical, have entirely different
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