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

propose that this appellation be abandoned.
22. Specifically, of course, I am referring to Walter Benn Michaels, one of the authors of the original "Against Theory" essay. See Thomas (1991).

 
< previous page
page_12
next page >

< previous page
page_120
next page >
Page 120
Yohanan, the Talmud makes crystal clear the point that a man may not force his wife to have sex with him and that to do so is rape. The reason that the Talmud cites their views here is not to permit sexual objectification of a wife, as the context makes abundantly clear, but to indicate that the Torah does not interfere in the details of sexual practices, of positions and pleasures between husband and wife, any more than it prescribes whether to boil or fry (kosher) foods. Nevertheless, the decision not to interfere when a situation is potentially repressive implicitly supports the status quo. While banning rape, the text still implies that male dominance in sexual matters is protected by the law, because the law will not interfere to put checks on it or provide the woman with protection or with a procedure to attain her own desires and exercise her own free will. The prescriptions repeatedly provided by the Talmud for the creation of conditions for mutual arousal, intimacy, and mutual satisfaction exclude the interpretation that the purpose of the citation of the Rabbi stories is to permit wife-rape, since that very practice is condemned so severely only a few lines later, but they still leave the husband firmly in control. It is worth noting, moreover, that this interpretation of the text is the one that came to be codified in medieval and later Jewish law; wife-rape was absolutely forbidden and recognized as sin, and all that was learned from Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi was that the Torah does not prescribe nor proscribe any particular sexual practices between husbands and wives.
The theme of the necessity for intimacy between the husband and wife at the time of sexual intercourse is expressed throughout the passage in different ways. 11 Thus, even with regard to the ambivalent story of Rabbi Eliezer's sexual practice that Imma Shalom tells, 12 while we must concede a great deal of ambivalence in association with the Rabbi's behavior we must also not ignore the explicit statement that the purpose of his behavior
11. My interpretations here are much influenced by the doctoral dissertation of my student Dalia Hoshen (Hoshen 1990), from whom I have learned a great deal. She is not, of course, responsible for the exact nuances of my interpretations, which are sometimes in open conflict with her positions.
12. It should be emphasized that I am not denying ideological conflict and ambivalence about sexuality among the Rabbis. My position is somewhat between that of the "apologists," who have blithely characterized rabbinic Judaism as pro-sex, this-worldly, and non-ascetic and those of the "revisionists," which seek to characterize it as very similar in its sexual anxieties to the late-antique pagan and Christian world around and among the Jews. In Chapter I above, I have detailed this in-between point of view.

 
< previous page
page_120
next page >

< previous page
page_121
next page >
Page 121
was to prevent him from thinking of another woman. That is to say, whatever the "true" meaning of Rabbi Eliezer's sexual behavior, the narrator, through the speech of Imma Shalom, inscribes it in the intimacy code. Moreover, it is consistent with at least three other moments in the text. First, the function for which the story of Rabbi Eliezer and Imma Shalom is cited is explicitly as an objection to the statement by Rabbi Yohanan the son of Dabai that a couple may not converse during intercourse. 13 The Rabbis who cited this source here understood that the conversation between Rabbi Eliezer and Imma Shalom took place during sexual intercourse. Moreover, the resolution of the apparent conflict between the texts is also highly significant. What the angels