Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture Read Online Free PDF Page A

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

 
< previous page
page_113
next page >

< previous page
page_114
next page >
Page 114
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, 5 for 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! 6 Another