Read Online Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture by Daniel Boyarin - Free Book Online Page B

For similar contradictions between the theory and practice of Hellenistic (Stoic) sages, see Griffin (1976, 340).

 
< previous page
page_135
next page >

< previous page
page_136
next page >
Page 136
derson 1989, 140). This solution was available to the Rabbis as well, but they vehemently rejected it. The story of Ben-Azzai is an index of how much energy was required to combat the attractiveness of the celibate life. 4 Extravagant praise of the married state, which occurs over and over in rabbinic texts, is a marker not of how happily married the Rabbis were but of how much pressure against marrying there was in their world. Celibacy provided an attractive "out" from the world's pain, and, moreover, the life of the purely spiritual seeker of wisdom was the ideal of much of the circumambient culture, both Jewish and non-Jewish. 5
Rabbinic culture, accordingly, is beleaguered with a constant unresolved tensionalmost an antinomybetween the obligation to marry and the equal obligation to devote oneself entirely to the life of Torah-study (Fraade 1986, 275). In contrast to other cultural formations, both Jewish and non-Jewish, which formulate the problem as a conflict between body and spirit, the Rabbis do not set this up as a hierarchy of values. The activities of the "lower" (reproductive) body were considered as important as those of the "upper" (speaking) body, but were acknowledged at the same time somehow to conflict with them, at the very least in that both activities competed for time and energy. 6 Unless we remain aware of both poles of this tension, it will be difficult to account for many of the features of rabbinic culture. Rabbinic texts provide several attempts to produce social practices that would resolve the tension between marriage and the study of Torah, between sex and the text. We will see, however, that all of the proposed resolutions roused great opposition within the culture, as we can determine from oppositional discourses captured in the very texts that produce the "solutions."
A Rabbinic Romance
The Babylonian Talmud relates the following "biography" of one of its greatest heroes, Rabbi Akiva, a Palestinian authority of the second century:
4. Cf. David Biale 1989 for a reading along somewhat similar but differently nuanced lines. He provides further evidence for the attractions of celibacy and even castration for late-antique Jews.
5. Peter Brown's book is the most eloquent evocation of that pain and the response to it among early Christians. See also the important comments of Jeremy Cohen (1989, 114 n. 177).
6. For a somewhat different, partly complementary and partly contradictory account of these matters, see Eilberg-Schwartz (1990b, 22934). See also David Biale 1989 and Eilberg-Schwartz 1990a.

 
< previous page
page_136
next page >

< previous page
page_137
next page >
Page 137
Rabbi Akiva was the shepherd of Kalba Savua'. The daughter of Kalba Savua' became engaged to Rabbi Akiva. Kalba Savua' heard and cut her off from any of his property. She went and married him in the winter. They used to lie in the hay-barn, and he would take hay out of her hair. He said to her, "Were I only able, I would give you a 'Jerusalem of Gold!'" 7 Elijah the Prophet came and appeared to them as a person crying out at the door. He said, "Give me some of your hay, for my wife is giving birth and I have nothing for her to lie down on." Rabbi Akiva said to his wife, "You see, there is someone who doesn't even have hay." She said to him, "Go and sit in the House of Study.'' He went for twelve years and studied with Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua. At the end of twelve years, he came home. He heard from behind his house, a certain rogue saying to his wife, "Your father treated you suitably. First of all, he [Rabbi Akiva] is not of your kind, and moreover he has left you a grass widow all of these years." She said to him, ''If he were to follow my wishes, he would remain for another twelve years." He said, "Since