Arguing for Women in Talmudic Literature

72 SHOFAR Fall 1995 Vol. 14, No.1 ARGIDNG FOR WOMEN IN TALMUDIC LITERATURE by Gail Labovitz Gail Labovitz is a candidate for the Ph.D. in Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary ofAmerica in New York. She has taught Rabbinics both there and at the AcademyforJewish Religion. Her work in progress engages women's history, feminist reading strategies, and rabbinic literature. Mishnah Kidusbin 1:7 reads in part, "And all positive time bound commandments [a positive act that must be performed at a specific time/on a specific datej-men are obligated and women are exempt. And all positive non-time bound commandments-men and women are equally obligated." The gemara on this piece of mishnah (beginning on the very bottom of 33b) begins by asking what constitutes a positive time bound or non-time bound commandment and answers by bringing several examples of each. However, a challenge is raised almost immediately-counterexamples , time bound commandments to which women are obligated and non-time bound commandments from which they are exempt, are brought. Rabbi Yohanan, an early second generation amora and younger contemporary of Rav and Shmuel, is cited as saying that a seemingly general rule in the Mishnah can never be taken as such, even if exceptions to it are already spelled out with the rule itself; unexpected exceptions may always appear.! 'The Mishnah, a collection of rabbinic dicta on a number of topics ofJewish law (often presented in oppositional form; Le. "in such and such a case, Rabbi Ploni says x, Rabbi Almoni says y"), was edited in Palestine at apprOXimately the beginning of the third century C.E. The Mishnah is divided into 6 orders, or broad subject areas (including "Nashim", Women, dedicated largely to marriage law), the orders into massekhtot (singular, massekhet), sub-topics (as in "Kidushin", Betrothals), the; massekhtot into chapters and the Arguingfor Women in Talmudic Literature 73 Within this small piece lies one of the central dilemmas for a feminist studying Talmud, emphasized by the sugya that follows. On their face, rabbinic documents seem clearly to marginalize women, removing them from many of the positive acts of religious identification so valued by the contributors to those documents. And yet, as Rabbi Yohanan's statement makes clear, these texts cannot be read as unambiguous, unified, univocal -on any subject (Rabbi Yohanan's contention is proven by reference to a matter totally unrelated to the one at hand, the law of eruvim, the creation of unified domains to permit carrying on the Sabbath), not only women and gender. And yet again, whatever welter of voices and counter-voices are to be discovered in these texts, none of them are the voices ofwomen (while defining women's voices is notoriously difficult, as Peskowitz notes, in the case of rabbinic documents, notably the Talmud, there is almost nothing present which could be remotely said to fit the category, however defined). Moreover, the exemption posited by the Mishnah was largely kept intact (albeit with great difficulty; see below), and has continued to affect the lives of many Jewish women even to the present day. I presented an extended analysis of the sugya based on Mishnah Kidushin 1:7, a sugya which runs from 33b to 35a, at the annual conference ofthe Association forJewish Studies, in December of 1994. The paper was entitled "Centering the Peripheral Jew: A Feminist Deconstruction of Kidushin 33b-35a," and was given in a session entitled "Women in Talmudic Uterature.'; My title, as I look at it again in writing this piece, seems to me to embrace the central dilemma I have laid out and wish to explore here. The title of the session would, based on Peskowitz' article, appear to be severely problematic: chapters into individual paragraphs, each also referred to as a "mishnah." Rabbis of the Mishnaic period are referred to as tanrzaim; tarmaim are also cited in baraitot, material which was not included in the Mishnah but appears in other sources such as midrashic collections, the Tosefta, and in the Talmudim. The Gemara is commentary on the Mishnah (following the Mishnah's format), from the Mishnah's redaction until, in Babylonia (Sassanian lraqllran), roughly the middle ofthe sixth...