Read Online Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture by Daniel Boyarin - Free Book Online
Authors: Daniel Boyarin
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and the position of men is dominant. The very consideration that he is supposed to show her is the marker of this magnanimous but confining patriarchy. As the Talmud says explicitly in the continuation, "She is a mattress for her husband."
Truth and Desire
At the bottom of this (inter)textual complex, I read, then, an intricate strategy for "putting sex into discourse," and at the same time for limiting the discourse of sexual control. Foucault has contrasted two relations of sexuality to truth as characteristic of two cultural formations, that of the ancient Greeks and "ours":
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In Greece, truth and sex were linked, in the form of pedagogy, by the transmission of a precious knowledge from one body to another; sex served as a medium for initiations into learning. For us, it is in the confession that truth and sex are joined, through the obligatory and exhaustive expression of an individual secret. But this time it is truth that serves as a medium for sex and its manifestations.
(Foucault 1980, 61)
What, then, is the link between truth and sex in the textual complex that we have been reading here? That is, how shall we describe the talmudic culture on the scale of Foucault's taxonomy? Certainly, neither of the alternatives that he proposes to describe the two formations with which he deals are adequate for describing this culture, for sex is not the medium of a paideia, and confession is not a mode of producing truth in this culture. It would seem, indeed, that what the Talmud is telling us is that the truth of sex (that is, the Torah of sex) is concerned with two aspects of sexuality only: that the objects of sexual interaction be appropriate, and that the connection between wife and husband be marked by warmth, intimacy, exclusiveness (even in polygyny!), and respect for the desire and pleasure of the subordinate female partner. The actual deployment of bodies and pleasures lies outside of the purview of Torah.
The rabbinic culture thus occupies a position somewhere "between" Foucault's Greek and Christian cultures. On the one hand, there is a near-explicit rejection of the model of the panoptical surveillance of sexual behavior between husbands and wives; on the other hand, sexuality itself is not seen as an area entirely out of the realm of socio-cultural legislation. The Talmud achieves diverse (and not always compatible) discursive objectives through this complicated strategy. The "repressive" discourse is made availableand indeed, later cultural forces will mobilize itbut it is rendered counter-normative and marginalized. The net effect of such textual tactics is that out of the ashes of a rejected scientia sexualis a very embryonic ars erotica is produced. 23 The (male) reader of the text now knows that it is possible to derive pleasure from looking at his wife's genitals, from kissing them, from "turning the tables," and most of all, from conversing with her, laughing and playing while making love.
23. The terms are, of course, those of Michel Foucault, whose influence pervades this chapter (Foucault 1980, 67). To be sure, they are only partially appropriate in the present context, but Foucault himself allows that the binary opposition between the two may be deconstructible.
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5
Lusting after Learning
The Torah as "the Other Woman"
Rabbi Akiva says, Anyone who commits murder diminishes the image of God, as it says, One who spills blood of a human, for the sake of the human his blood will be spilt for in the image of God, He made the human [Gen. 9:6].
Rabbi El'azar ben Azariah says, Anyone who does not engage in procreation diminishes the Divine Image, for it says, In the image of God, He made the human [Gen. 9:6], and it is written [immediately following], And as for you, be fruitful and multiply.
Ben-Azzai says, Anyone who does not engage in
Truth and Desire
At the bottom of this (inter)textual complex, I read, then, an intricate strategy for "putting sex into discourse," and at the same time for limiting the discourse of sexual control. Foucault has contrasted two relations of sexuality to truth as characteristic of two cultural formations, that of the ancient Greeks and "ours":
< previous page
page_131
next page >
< previous page
page_132
next page >
Page 132
In Greece, truth and sex were linked, in the form of pedagogy, by the transmission of a precious knowledge from one body to another; sex served as a medium for initiations into learning. For us, it is in the confession that truth and sex are joined, through the obligatory and exhaustive expression of an individual secret. But this time it is truth that serves as a medium for sex and its manifestations.
(Foucault 1980, 61)
What, then, is the link between truth and sex in the textual complex that we have been reading here? That is, how shall we describe the talmudic culture on the scale of Foucault's taxonomy? Certainly, neither of the alternatives that he proposes to describe the two formations with which he deals are adequate for describing this culture, for sex is not the medium of a paideia, and confession is not a mode of producing truth in this culture. It would seem, indeed, that what the Talmud is telling us is that the truth of sex (that is, the Torah of sex) is concerned with two aspects of sexuality only: that the objects of sexual interaction be appropriate, and that the connection between wife and husband be marked by warmth, intimacy, exclusiveness (even in polygyny!), and respect for the desire and pleasure of the subordinate female partner. The actual deployment of bodies and pleasures lies outside of the purview of Torah.
The rabbinic culture thus occupies a position somewhere "between" Foucault's Greek and Christian cultures. On the one hand, there is a near-explicit rejection of the model of the panoptical surveillance of sexual behavior between husbands and wives; on the other hand, sexuality itself is not seen as an area entirely out of the realm of socio-cultural legislation. The Talmud achieves diverse (and not always compatible) discursive objectives through this complicated strategy. The "repressive" discourse is made availableand indeed, later cultural forces will mobilize itbut it is rendered counter-normative and marginalized. The net effect of such textual tactics is that out of the ashes of a rejected scientia sexualis a very embryonic ars erotica is produced. 23 The (male) reader of the text now knows that it is possible to derive pleasure from looking at his wife's genitals, from kissing them, from "turning the tables," and most of all, from conversing with her, laughing and playing while making love.
23. The terms are, of course, those of Michel Foucault, whose influence pervades this chapter (Foucault 1980, 67). To be sure, they are only partially appropriate in the present context, but Foucault himself allows that the binary opposition between the two may be deconstructible.
< previous page
page_132
next page >
< previous page
page_134
next page >
Page 134
5
Lusting after Learning
The Torah as "the Other Woman"
Rabbi Akiva says, Anyone who commits murder diminishes the image of God, as it says, One who spills blood of a human, for the sake of the human his blood will be spilt for in the image of God, He made the human [Gen. 9:6].
Rabbi El'azar ben Azariah says, Anyone who does not engage in procreation diminishes the Divine Image, for it says, In the image of God, He made the human [Gen. 9:6], and it is written [immediately following], And as for you, be fruitful and multiply.
Ben-Azzai says, Anyone who does not engage in
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