The Roman matron who sees the two obese rabbis cannot believe that they could possibly perform sexually, so she challenges the legitimacy of their children. A brief, highly comic linguistic farce ensues. They answer her cryptically, "Theirs are bigger than ours," apparently understanding the matron to have meant that since they have such enormous penises, they could not have intercourse and replying that their wives have even bigger vaginas.
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The matron, misunderstanding their answer and thinking that they are referring to their wives' abdomens, retorts, "If your wives are even fatter, then all the more so that you could not have intercourse." At this point the fat rabbis finally understand the matron's concern and answeraccording to one tradition, that the size of a man's genitals is in keeping with the size of the rest of his body, and according to the other, that desire overcomes obesity.
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It is at this moment of anxiety about paternity in the text that the account of the gargantuan phalli of the rabbis is mustered. Beginning from this incident, the text produces a phenomenal series of stories that all have anxiety over gender and reproduction as a major motif. The most obvious sign of this thematic concern is the fact that when Rabbi El'azar returns to the House of Study, his first activity is to permit marital sex for sixty women who have had a flux of blood that may or may not be menstrual. According to rabbinic practice, when a woman has a discharge, if it is certainly menstrual blood, then she and her husband are forbidden to have sex until after the period and a purification ritual. However, if it is doubtful as to whether the discharge is menstrual or not, a stain is shown to a rabbi who makes a judgment based on his expertise.
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In our story, Rabbi El'azar was shown sixty of such stains and judged them all to be non-menstrual, thus permitting intercourse for these wives. All of the sixty children born of the intercourse permitted by R. El'azar were named after him, signifying him as in some sense their parent. My claim for the significance of this narrative moment in signaling the thematic emphasis of the text is occasioned by its very gratuitousness. We could have had the rabbi performing any feat of halakhic (rabbinic law) ingenuity in
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 | | 7. I owe this interpretation to David Satran, and to my student Christine Hayes I owe the brilliant suggestion that the matron meant one thing and the two rabbis another.
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| | 8. This practice has, of course, disturbing aspects with regard to gender and power over women's bodies and sexualities. In a forthcoming research project, this issue will be dealt with fully, dv.
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