Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (9 page)

Read Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture Online

Authors: Daniel Boyarin

Tags: #Religion, #Judaism, #General


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knowledge is placed way down on the list, something on the order of knowing the speech of demons, as opposed to the various branches of Torah-knowledge proper, including knowledge of the Oral Torah and the aggadah, which are placed very high on the list.
⁴The citation, by placing its statements in the mouths of angels, is not codifying them as Torah-knowledge, that is, as normative statements, but as "scientific" or practical knowledge. The form of the assertions themselves implies this pragmatic orientation, for instead of saying that it is forbidden to engage in such activities and relating that the punishment will be such and such, the assertions merely claim that these sexual practices give rise to certain undesirable procreative results. The type of control attempted here fits Foucault's descriptions of the modern discourses of medical control of sexuality better than it does the way that the medieval church exercised its control (Foucault 1980, 3738) through canon law and the system of penances.

Rabbi Yohanan rejects, however, both the content of Rabbi Yohanan the son of Dabai's statement and, implicitly, its claims to scientific status. He promotes it from the category of "good advice" from a knowledgeable source to the level of Torah discourse, that is, to the discourse of the forbidden and permitted according to religion, but he does so in order to
reject
its religious validity. While Amemar's explanation seems farfetched, in a sense it is necessitated by Rabbi Yohanan's intervention, because the latter had introduced a discontinuity into the discursive frame by saying, "The halakha is not like Rabbi Yohanan the son of Dabai," as the latter had ostensibly not made a halakhic statement at all. In any case, the upshot of Rabbi Yohanan's pronouncement is to disqualify Rabbi Yohanan the son of Dabai's statement twice, as lacking both the scientific status of angelic knowledge and any correctness as Torah-knowledge. The Torah disqualifies itself from any interference in the private sexual practices of married couples, who may behave sexually as they please with each other. Moreover, as if Rabbi Yohanan were not authority enough, the Talmud backs up this judgment with an authority even greater than his, that of Rabbithe author of the Mishna itself, who, in actual practical situations advises two women that they have no recourse or complaint to the rabbis against their husbands' desire for an "unusual'' form of intercourseeither woman on top or, somewhat less likely, anal penetration (see below)because the Torah has permitted it. Note


4. See Sukkah 28a and Baba Bathra 134a.

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that according to Rabbi Yohanan, not even non-procreative acts are condemned by the Torah. In other talmudic texts we learn, moreover, that anal intercourse is permitted as well. According to this view, at any rate, "wasting of seed" takes place only in masturbation, not in sexual intercourse of even non-procreative varieties.

Female Desire

Until this point, I have purposely evaded an issue that must now be directly addressed. In interpreting that both Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi permit
couples
to engage in whatever sexual practices
they
wish, I have tacitly been ignoring the obvious fact of gender asymmetry in this text. These rabbinic voicesi.e., those attributed to Rabbi and Rabbi Yohananonly specify and relate to the will of the man and not to that of the woman. The "reciprocal" interpretation given thus far tends, therefore, to mystify the effects of gender inequality in sexuality as in most areas of the culture. One could even imagine, in fact, that what is encoded here is permission to the male to exercise his will upon the body of the woman without reference to her desire. This misogynistic interpretation seems well warranted by the text: we have here a metaphor that apparently compares the woman to a piece of meat or fish, seemingly an object for the satisfaction of the man, and we also have Rabbi's explicit declaration that he can do nothing for the women who come to him expressing their wish that their husbands be censured, since the Torah has permitted such sexual practice. This view of Rabbi and of his student Rabbi Yohanan stands in sharp contrast, howeverin fact, in direct contradictionto the rest of the talmudic discourse on this topic, which unambiguously forbids all sexual coercion, including verbal, of a wife by her husband and raises a joining of wills and desires to a very high value in its hygiene of sexual intercourse.

In contrast to the more usual situation, then, where I identify a counter-voice that I choose to animate and mobilize for a future of gender politics, in this case it is the counter-voice that I wish to leave as inactive. The dominantin terms of both the text itself and the "reception" of this textunambiguously militates against the notion of the wife as object in sexual relations. Thus, in distinction to the
rejected
angelic proscriptions on various sexual practices, as leading to physical defects in the children, the Talmud
accepts
the statement of Rabbi Levi that affective disorder in the sexual relation leads to moral faults in the offspring. The

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affective disturbances listed, moreover, are ones that take very seriously indeed the desire of the wife. The first two on the list are children of fear and children of rapethat is, offspring of situations in which the husband coerces his wife into having sex with him by being aggressive to the point that she is too frightened to say no or, even worse, is actually raped. This note is strengthened dramatically by a parallel passage in the Talmud Eruvin 100b, where the following pronouncement occurs:


Rami bar Hama said that Rav Asi said: It is forbidden for a man to force his wife in a holy deed, ⁵for it says One who presses the legs is a sinner [Prov. 19:2]. And Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: One who forces his wife in a holy deed will have dishonest children.


Said Rav Ika the son of Hinnena: What is its verse? Also without will, the soul is not good [ibid.]. And so we have learnt in a tannaitic tradition as well: What is the meaning of Also without will, the soul is not good? This is the one who forces his wife in a holy deed. And one who presses the legs is a sinner? This is one who has intercourse twice in a row.


Can that be? But did not Rava say: If one wants all of his children to be male, he should have intercourse twice in a row.


There is no difficulty: One refers to a case where she does not agree, and one to a case where she does agree.

Because the Talmud both here and in the parallel passage strongly condemns one who has intercourse with his wife against her will, and indeed codifies such behavior as "forbidden" even when it is procreative, then the proscription against force should be all the stronger in a non-procreative situation, such as oral or anal intercourse. This opinion that one may not force one's wife is not at all an isolated or minority view; it is the generally held and authoritative position both of the Talmud and of later Jewish law. Indeed, far from treating a wife as a piece of property or mere object for the satisfaction of the husband's sexual desire, talmudic law may be the first legal or moral system that recognizes that when a husband forces his wife the act is rape, pure and simple, and as condemnable and contemnable as any other rape!
⁶Another attempt to enact


5. The literal translation is "in the matter of a commandment." There is no doubt, however, that the reference is to sexual intercourse, as Rashi points out. It is indeed interesting that the talmudic discourse uses commandment without further definition to refer to sexual intercourse and transgression without further definition to refer to sexual sin.


6. For the present situation of American law, see Chamberlain (1991, 122). I remember reading somewhere (but unfortunately not where) that an American court had cited the Talmud as a legal precedent for treating wife-rape as rape. In this

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