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C h a p t e r 7 Weak Like a Female, Strong Like a Male: Yetzer and Gender Do women have a yetzer? The question is far more complex than it might sound. Most rabbinic sources do not use gender-specific language, but their usage might nonetheless imply some sort of gendering. Sources that use the word adam (‫)אדם‬ are especially tricky: Rabbinic Hebrew usually uses ish (‫)איש‬ in opposition to isha (‫;אשה‬ woman), thus marking men specifically.1 Adam, on the other hand, does not have a decisive gender tag, and might refer to all humans.2 However, sometimes adam is also gendered, such as in the idiom “adam takes a wife” (‫אשה‬ ‫אדם‬ ‫)נושא‬ and the like.3 When Rabbi Johanan says: “There is a small organ in adam. When it is made hungry—it is satisfied; when it is satisfied—it becomes hungry” (b. Suk. 52b), he definitely means “man.” Context is thus the only tool to determine the gender charge of each statement, sometimes only hesitantly. When Antoninus asks Rabbi: “When is the evil yetzer placed in adam?” the question seems gender-neutral, as can be deduced from Antoninus’s following question: “When is a soul placed in adam?”4 for in rabbinic literature the soul is present in all humans. However, R. Levi b. Hama ’s homily, “Adam should always incite the good yetzer against the evil yetzer,”5 seems to be directed exclusively at men, for one of the tactics mentioned there is Torah study, from which women are excluded.6 But what about maxims such as “The yetzer of adam overpowers him every day,”7 or “Adam’s soul covets and lusts for robbery and forbidden sexual relations,”8 and “Even at a time when adam is entrusted with the burial of a relative (‫)אונן‬ his yetzer overpowers him”?9 And so we are left without a decisive conclusion. Women seem to have a yetzer, though the sources hardly say so outright (except the stammaitic layer, as discussed above). The key to resolving this confusion lies in the observation that the gender bias of the yetzer is located not in its very existence but in the struggle against it. Women probably have a yetzer, since it is a basic human Gender 121 characteristic, but the rabbis are not really concerned with it. The yetzer holds their interest only inasmuch as it can be overpowered and resisted, which women are not capable of doing. The tannaitic homily “I have created the evil yetzer and created the Torah as a ‘spice’ (‫”)תבלין‬ (b. Kid. 30b; cf. Sifre Deut 45, ed. Finkelstein, 103) clearly demonstrates that yetzer discourse is inextricably intertwined with the struggle against it. The vanguard of this struggle is the study of Torah, which the rabbis placed exclusively in the male sphere. Such a gender division is far from self-evident even for the rabbis’ time. In the Shepherd of Hermas, both men and women are expected to fight their “evil desire” and subjugate it to the good one.10 Discussing these passages, Geert Cohen Stuart laconically notes: “The ‘equal’ treatment of man and woman indicates a difference with the rabbis.”11 Indeed, a very deep one. The diverging gender economy encoded in the rabbinic and the early Christian sources leads also to profoundly diverse kinds of piety.12 The rabbinic story of the struggle against the yetzer is clearly a masculine one, and so images of virility and heroism are its building blocks. The yetzer, at first, is “weak, like a female, and then becomes strong like a male” (Gen Rab. 22:6, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 210); the Mishna remarks that a hero is someone who can “conquer (‫)כובש‬ his yetzer” (m. Avot 4:1), and, of course, “it is the way of men to conquer (‫)לכבוש‬ and not the way of women to conquer” (b. Yev. 65b). This division is presented most clearly in a homily in b. Av. Zar. 19a: Happy is a man fearful of God, he is greatly desirous of His commandments (Ps 112:1)—Happy is the man, but not the woman (‫ולא‬ ‫איש‬ ‫אשרי‬ ‫אשה‬ ‫!?)אשרי‬ Rav Amram said, and some say it in the name of Rav Nahman in the name of Rav: Happy is he who repents (‫תשובה‬ ‫)עושה‬ when he is [still] a man (‫איש‬ ‫)כשהוא‬. R. Joshua b. Levi said: Happy is he who overpowers his yetzer like a man (‫כאיש‬ ‫יצרו‬ ‫על‬ ‫)מתגבר‬. The textual basis for this homily is the unique idiom “happy is a man” (‫איש‬ ‫)אשרי‬,13 which appears only in this psalm instead of the more common “happy is a person...

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