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Rabbis thinking of the Gendering of the Body

Rabbinic legal thinking, which provides much of the structural framework of subsequent Jewish cultures, aims first and foremost at instituting a rather pronounced dual gender grid, imposed on the social organization of Jewish society as the rabbis envisioned it. Most of the individual laws of rabbinic halakhah apply to either men or women. Differently put, in rabbinic legal thinking it is almost always important whether the halakhic agent is a man or a woman.
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Representations of the body are an important means for grounding gender, and for justifying the distribution of legal privileges and disadvantages. As theorists of gender have come to recognize, representations of the body often serve the aim of naturalizing and therefore legitimizing legal privilege. Hence, so the theory goes, almost everyone may agree now that gender differences are cultural constructs. Gender is variable, and gender differences are scripted differently in different social and cultural contexts. But the fact that gender differences exist to begin with is traditionally considered to be based in biological fact. Nature – or biology – has made bodies different, male and female, and different cultures only inscribe this reality with their specific ways of differentiating between genders. In the rabbinic case, this translates, for instance, into the prohibition of cross-dressing, inherited from biblical law (Deuteronomy 22:5), in order to uphold the clear distinction between the sexes. Or it famously translates into the general positioning of men as always “obligated” by Jewish law, while women are only sometimes obligated and mostly “exempt” (M. Kiddushin 1:7), a legal rhetoric that already early feminists have recognized as a way of privileging the male position in Jewish law.

Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, “Regulating the Human Body: Rabbinic Legal Discourse and the Making of Jewish Gender,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee (Cambridge & New York City: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 271.

We do not impose moral judgments on people who care for their own children, parents, or siblings than they would for other people

We do not impose moral judgments on people who care for their own children, parents, or siblings than they would for other people even though in the cosmic sense no life is worth more than any other. Even regarding giving charity, Rambam in Matanot Evyonim 7:13 (based on B. Bava Metzia 31b) writes that one’s family takes precedence for charity over the people of his city which take precedence over those outside. The issue is not of holistic moral worthiness, but the proximity of the relationship places additional requirements, obligations, and affinities such that it is not only moral but expected to prioritize the needs of some over others.

Rabbi Josh Yuter, e-mail message, 4 December 2012.

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Women and men cross-dress for very different reasons

Women and men cross-dress for very different reasons, to the point that in many cases what a particular society considers transvestitism will be different for each gender. This explains the variation of both the nouns and the verbs in sections 1a and 1b of Deut 22:5. The verse is much more than a simple prohibition of particular wardrobes, and indeed in no way addresses the issue of women wearing masculine garments, since in the culture of ancient Israel the clothing of men was less associated with gender than was the clothing of women. Rather, the verse reflects the most basic ideology of gender in Israelite society, and to this end it distinguishes not simply between male and female but also between different qualities of men. The ideals of manhood and masculinity were not considered either simple or innate; one had to achieve them through action, behavior, and a good relationship with Yahweh.

Harold Torger Vedeler, “Reconstructing Meaning in Deuteronomy 22:5: Gender, Society, and Transvestitism in Israel and the Ancient Near East,” Journal of Biblical Literature 127, No. 3 (Fall 2008), 473.

Differing Roles of the Stam in the Sugya versus the Amoraim

…an appreciation of the role played by the stam in the sugya, which is distinguishable from that typically played by amoraim. The stam often takes upon itself tasks that affect the sugya or sugyot as a whole…. The tasks of the amoraim, in contrast, are localized, consisting of the interpretation of a particular tradition, stating the law, resolving or posing an objection, or answering or raising a question. … It is the way of the stam to offer artificial responses, sometimes to teach us why a particular argument was chosen over another, sometimes to increase the complexity of the argument, and sometimes to weave together independent traditions or discussions.

Richard Kalmin, “The Function and Dating of the Stam and the Writing of History”, in Melekhet Mahshevet: Studies in the Redaction and Development of Talmudic Literature, ed. Aaron Amit and Aharon Shemesh (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011), 40-41 (English section).

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Heschel preferred frankness and authenticity to popularity

Heschel preferred frankness and authenticity to popularity. He told people exactly what he thought, because he believed more in the destruction of a false god than in the compromise of truth. Rabbi Heschel warned The General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federation and Welfare Funds, that while their members were concerning themselves with numbers, society was increasingly consumed by spiritual decline. He reminded those who measure religious engagement in terms of monetary contributions of an old Jewish principle: “The world stands on three pillars: on learning, on worship and on charity. We are not going to invite a friend to sit on a tripod, a stool designed to have three legs, when two legs are missing.” He pointed to the spiritual absence which was so typical of religious life in America. According to Heschel, synagogues and churches suffer from an identical disease: acute coolness, since leaders of religious communities think that spiritual problems can be resolved by administrative means.

Waldemar Szczerbiński, “Poland and Christianity in Heschel’s Life and Thought” in Abraham Joshua Heschel: Philosophy, Theology and Interreligious Dialogue, ed. Stanisław Krajewski and Adam Lipszyc (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2009), 16.

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The Mishnah shapes a complex attitude towards evil

…the Mishnah shapes a complex attitude towards evil. When bad things are still avoidable, a person ought to fight them with all his strength. He should act on his own and petition God up to the last moment. But once the events have actually occurred, he has to shift from demand to acceptance.
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If we understand the concept of vain prayer within the larger context of the obligation to thank God for the bad, it follows that the vainness of prayer for past events is not dependent on the argument that backward causality is impossible, logically or otherwise. The point of the Mishnah is not that by asking God to undo the past we request what is impossible or absurd. The crucial third mishnah that limits prayer deals with a different problem altogether. The basis for such a limitation on prayer is not the limits of logic but the limits of complaint. There is no need to take a stance on the deep metaphysical problem concerning the logical possibility of backward causality, since the point of the Mishnah concerns not metaphysics but the nature of the religious and human stance towards the world.

Mosha Halbertal, “The Limits of Prayer”, Jewish Review of Books (Summer 2010), 43, 44.

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Without meaningful Jewish peoplehood, we will not remain Jewish for long

Without meaningful Jewish peoplehood, we will not remain Jewish for long; without a transcendent reason for Jewish survival, it is unlikely that many will want to. As for the world, healthy Jewish identity produces Jews who are grateful for freedom and contribute mightily to society at large.

Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, “Three Guests, Three Questions,” The Jewish Week (5 October 2012), 31.

The medical interests of the Talmudic rabbis are complex and far-reaching

The medical interests of the Talmudic rabbis are infinitely more complex and far-reaching than those of the Jews in Biblical times, and only with the formulation of the Talmud can one speak of a Jewish medical science. Perhaps the most impressive achievement of Talmudic medicine for the student of Hippocratic and Galenic science is rabbinic pathology. It is no exaggeration to state that the Talmudists invented the science of pathology, a direct consequence of the need to examine slaughtered animals that were to be used for food…. In the course of such investigations, the Talmudists made the remarkable discovery that disease may be associated not only with morphological changes in tissues, but may manifest itself in functional abnormalities and external symptoms and morbid alteration of tissue appearance. For the Greek doctor, disease was simply the result of a condition termed plethora by the Hippocratic school, that is, an excess of one or more of the four bodily humors isolated by the Hippocratics, namely black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Health is defined by the Hippocratic physician as a proper balance of these humors. An external circumstance, like a fall or even a sudden change in the weather, can cause a humor to rarefy or condense, rushing to a particular part of the body and rendering it diseased. Ironically, the Hippocratic theory of humoral imbalance became the accepted explanation for the origin of disease in the Middle Ages, while the sound Talmudic pathological anatomy had no influence on medieval medicine.

Stephen Newmyer, “Talmudic Medicine: A Classicist’s Perspective,” Judaism 29, Issue 3 (Summer 1980), 362.

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The priesthood does not play a part in Avot’s succession list

Unlike the role of the priesthood in I Clement, the priesthood does not play a part in Avot’s succession list. The elders, the prophets, and the men of the Great Assembly are all explicitly denoted in Avot and thereby assume a role in Avot’s list. The Second Temple Leaders, the House of Gamaliel, and the tannaim also feature in Avot’s list since the members of these groups are listed together and in succession. In contrast, priests (like shoemakers (4:11)) only appear as individuals, and the priesthood as a result is omitted from Avot’s chain of transmission. As M.D. Herr has shown, however, priests were important teachers and officials during Temple times and therefore their omission from Avot requires an explanation. Consequently, scholars like Herr, who attribute the early portion of Avot to the Pharisees, hypothesize that the Pharisees omitted the priests from their chain of transmission sometime during the late Second Temple period in order to undermine other sects, such as the Sadducees, for whom the priesthood (so it is alleged) was a central element (see Finkelstein, Introduction, 9-11; M.D. Herr, ‘Continuum in the Chain of Torah Transmission’, Zion 44 (1979) [Hebrew], 44-56). It is questionable, however, whether the Pharisees actually viewed the priesthood as a vehicle for the Sadducees (see also above, Ch. 6 n. 36)). According to this hypothesis, one might suggest that Clement, unlike the Pharisees, was free to envision the Christian leadership as the heirs of the priests because he was not threatened by priesthood-oriented Jewish sects. It is questionable, however, whether this hypothesis (even if correct) can explain how the omission of the priests in the final edition of Avot was understood in the third century. Perhaps this omission was not understood polemically but as a natural derivative of rabbinic legal theory. As expressed in Avot 4:13, certain tannaim assumed that the Jewish polity was ruled by the crowns of Torah, of priesthood, and of kingship. These three crowns, moreover, were ‘the governmental extensions’ of the pillars of Avot 1:1: Torah, temple service, and correct civil behaviour (see Cohen, The Three Crowns, 19). Thus, according to this theory of the division of powers found in Avot, the priests did not belong in the chain of Torah transmission because their responsibilities were limited to officiating in the temple. Perhaps both priests and kings were omitted from Avot because the editor wanted to stress that only the rabbis were the true Torah authorities. In contrast, the Christian penchant for allegorizing and spiritualizing possibly led Christian authors such as Clement of Rome and Cyprian to view the Christian leadership as the spiritual counterpart to the Jewish priesthood of old (see E.W. Benson, Cyprian: His Life, His Times, His Work (London and New York, 1897), 31-34).

Amram Tropper, Wisdom, Politics, and Historiography: Tractate Avot in the Context of the Graeco-Roman Near East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 213-214, n. 11.