Misogyny and Its Discontents

Judith Baskin's work Midrashic Women examines the way that women are presented in aggadic (nonlegal) rabbinic texts, concentrating on the rabbinic reshaping of biblical feminine figures as well as on more direct statements regarding women's nature, character, and status. After a general presentation of the thesis (chap. 1), Baskin examines rabbinic versions of the biblical Creation stories (chap. 2) and the vast aggadic material on Eve, the first woman (chap. 3). She returns to this issue at the end of the book (chap. 6), discussing the midrashic presentation of various biblical heroines-from Hagar and Sarah to the daughters of Zelophehad. In between, Baskin explores rabbinic attitudes toward family life, especially in the context of marital duties (chap. 4) and fertility (chap. 5). In what follows, I examine Baskin's book beginning with a discussion of her thesis and her treatment of the sources, then seeking to situate her approach against the backdrop of the scholarship on issues of gender in rabbinic literature.

Baskin's major thesis is that rabbinic interpretations of biblical stories function as explanations or justifications of the systematic discrimination against women and their exclusion from religious life. By locating these issues in the context of biblical interpretation (mainly of the stories of creation and the patriarchs in Genesis), the Rabbis present their views on these matters as ancient and authoritative truths, originating from time immemorial or even based on the order of creation itself, rather than as products of their own social policy. In a similar fashion, Baskin reads sources that discuss the differences between men and women in physiological and ontological rather than social terms (menstruation, circumcision, intercourse, and so on). Both, in her view, serve to neutralize criticism of discrimination, justifying it as an integral part of the human and even the cosmic order.¹

This thesis is problematic in two ways. First, Baskin's explicit goal is to identify "predominant," "primary," or "privileged" (5) views about women in rabbinic literature. As much as rabbinic literature is multivocal and varied, "certain dominant themes emerge out of the multiplicity of opinion preserved in aggadic literature" (11). But Baskin does not reveal how those privileged views are to be identified.² From the way the book is structured, it seems to be a question of quantity. In the course of the book, hundreds of sources are cited, mostly from the Bavli and Genesis Rabbah, but almost never from the Yerushalmi or tannaitic midrashim, a fact that seems odd in light of her efforts to survey general dominant rabbinic views, not only late or Babylonian (5-6).

Second, a more trenchant difficulty involves the explanatory value of Baskin's thesis. Women, Baskin claims, are marginalized in rabbinic social policy, as well as devalued as inferior (and even as defective and polluting) in aggadic statements, because of their extreme alterity in the sages' eyes (162). Women's "essential otherness"-sometimes presented by Baskin as emerging from "woman's disturbing physical otherness from man" (40)-provides the real basis for the rabbinic attitude toward them. This basic otherness is extended and abstracted in rabbinic discourse, established as theological and ontological certainties and converted into a social policy of exclusion and discrimination. But this does not explain much: by using psychological categories such as "essential otherness," Baskin has done little more than repeat the well-known platitude that the Rabbis were misogynists. But misogyny, in and of itself, cannot be regarded as an explanation; it is rather a phenomenon that demands explanation.³ By explanation, I do not mean apologetics or justification, but contextualization-an analysis that would locate it in a broader social, historical, cultural, or discursive context. Misogyny, like any other cultural phenomenon, does not function in a vacuum and, more important, does not manifest itself identically in every cultural context.⁴

The main weakness of this book, however, lies not so much in the specific thesis that it promotes as in the underdeveloped treatment of the sources cited. Most of the rabbinic sources are cited with almost no detailed analysis of their language, textual variants, structure, style, or literary characteristics. Indeed, in many cases, Baskin simply contents herself with providing some background or summarizing existing scholarship.⁵ The assumption behind Baskin's methodology seems to be that, surrounded with the right framework, the sources will speak for themselves. They don't; and when prompted, they do not all say the same thing.

For example, in a section entitled "Woman as Temptress" in the middle of the first chapter, Baskin cites the following two texts from the Bavli:

R. Jonathan said: Joseph's strong temptation [by Potiphar's wife, recounted in Gen. 39:7-13] was but a petty trail to that of Boaz [Ruth 3:8-15], and that of Boaz was small in comparison with that of Palti son of Layish. . . . R. Jonathan said: What is meant by the verse, "Many women have done well / But you surpass them all?" (Prov. 31:29). "Many Women" refers to Joseph and Boaz; "But you surpass them all" refers to Palti son of Layish. (B. Sanhedrin 19b-20a, Soncino translation with Baskin's remarks)

Rahav inspired lust⁶ by her name; Yael by her voice; Abigail by her memory; and Michal, daughter of Saul, by her appearance.

(B. Megilla 15a)

After some general background (including noting the irony in the "transgendered reading of Proverbs 31:29-30"), Baskin concludes: "Here, as elsewhere in Midrashic exegesis, biblical women of courage and action are objectified and reduced to their imagined sexual impact on men" (31). One cannot but agree with Baskin's statement that these texts objectify the biblical feminine figures (not "women"); however, the question remains of whether this is all that these texts are doing.

Let us look at the two sources more carefully. Each lists a series of biblical heroes or heroines who have some trait in common, and arranges them according to their growing (in the first case) or declining (in the second) magnitude.⁷ The sole prism through which the figures are ordered is, in both cases, sexual: the feminine figures are all temptresses, while the masculine figures all struggle to overcome their own inclinations.⁸ Both groups are reduced to their fixed, opposite, sexual roles, in an exclusive contest of seduction and self-control. It is important, then, to note not only the double objectification that is taking place in these texts but also the clear link between the two sides of this process. The same rabbinic discourse that reduces women to "their imagined sexual impact on men" reduces men to their ability to resist it. As many other sources clearly show, rabbinic discourse of the yetser (inclination) reshapes (indeed, creates) both masculine and feminine identities alike.⁹ This is not, of course, to deny the very different ways that this discourse constructed masculine and feminine identities, as well as the simple fact that it was (real) women, rather than men, who were its main victims,¹⁰ but only to emphasize the need to go beyond misogyny to its larger discursive context if we wish to understand the processes that create such extreme images.

Another example: Genesis 3 lists the curses that Adam, Eve, and the serpent receive for violating the divine prohibition. The curses are characterized by clear gender divisions: the man is condemned to hard labor in the field, and the woman is made a suffering prisoner in her own body, subordinate to the will of her husband. Rabbinic literature preserves various aggadic traditions that elaborate (and multiply) Eve's curses, using them as a site of reflection on women and their fate in this world. Various lists (appearing in the Bavli, Bereshit Rabbah, and Avot deRabbi Natan A and B) demonstrate significant similarities and fascinating differences.¹¹ In a chapter entitled "Eve's curses" (73-79), Baskin analyzes some of these lists, presenting them as yet another example of the rabbinic effort to justify women's exclusion from public life by ascribing it to the very first divine decree. Thus, for example, she writes with regard to the last three curses in the Bavli's version: "She is wrapped up like a mourner, banished from the company of all men, and confined within a prison" (Eruvin 100b):¹² "Even if it is understood as a straightforward reference to women having to veil themselves when they appear in public, the comparison of woman's ordinary public state to that of a mourner is a telling and disturbing remark which also evokes the blame and guilt attached to women in Genesis Rabbah 17:8" (75). It seems that here, too, Baskin's binary lens oversimplifies the subtle picture described in the text. This tradition (in all of its versions) presents women's inferior social condition as an integral part of the natural order of the world;¹³ it does not, however, make any effort to justify it. None of the versions lists negative female qualities or traits that could account for their low status. They also do not present women's condition (as many other rabbinic sources do) as intended for their own good or as suited to their special feminine nature. Instead, the text uses a sympathetic rhetoric of pain, misery, and isolation by linking women's condition to that of prisoners and mourners, without any attempt at excuses.¹⁴ Even if we agree with Baskin that women's condition is itself, to a large extent, a result of rabbinic policy, we must not overlook the differences between the sources. Rabbinic literature preserves many diverse and opposing voices, and the tradition of women as mourners seems to be a particularly critical one, which laments rather than rationalizes their social condition.¹⁵

Ultimately, it is not the individual readings that are of greatest interest here but Baskin's overall approach to the study of women and gender in rabbinic literature. As an academic discipline, the study of women in rabbinic literature can be traced back to the 1980s. In its first stage, the field was dominated mainly by research conducted under "liberal feminist"¹⁶ assumptions that focused mainly on questions of attitudes toward women.¹⁷ The early works can be divided roughly into those wishing to incriminate the rabbinic tradition and those intending to protect and uphold it, with apologetics playing a substantial role in the debate.

Since the beginning of the 1990s (with a measure of delay not untypical of Jewish studies),¹⁸ fresh methods and theories have begun influencing the field,¹⁹ resulting in the emergence of new scholarly efforts.²⁰ Although very different in scope and method, some common characteristics can (with some risk of oversimplification) be traced in many of these new works:²¹

1. The understanding that masculinity, not less than femininity, is a culturally constructed identity²² has brought about a shift in rabbinic studies, from an exclusive concentration on issues affecting women to analyzing broader questions of gender identities and relationships.²³

2. The new awareness of the artificiality of (any) gender identity further brought about a shift from searching for "attitudes toward" or "views on" to questions of construction and formation. Instead of viewing identity as a fixed substance, toward which only viewpoints or attitudes varied, scholars began to conceive of identity itself as dynamic and negotiable and so began seeking the cultural contexts that served as the site of their formation.²⁴

3. These new understandings carried with them a new set of questions: If all gender identities are constructed, where exactly does this construction happen? How do the Rabbis learn what it means to be "a woman" or "a man" (how, if you will, do they know a woman when they see one)?²⁵ How and where do they teach these gender differences to others? These kinds of questions cannot be answered on a large scale. They demand focused studies about the possible sites-real as well as textual-in which such gender identities are acquired, negotiated, and taught. As a result, general works encompassing the whole of rabbinic literature have in recent years given way to smaller, more narrowly focused studies on specific themes, sites, or texts in which such negotiations take place: the house of study; the public bath; the market, the private house and yard; body and bodily emissions; purity and menstruation; and more.²⁶ Most of these issues did not hold sufficient attention in earlier scholarship, which tended to concentrate on more classical issues such as marriage, sexual ethics, legal status, and religious duties, as well as on direct aggadic statements about the nature and character of women.

4. With this shift of focus, the tone of scholarship seemed also to have changed, concentrating less on accusations or justifications and endeavoring instead to analyze the unique rabbinic cultural constructions in all their complexities and subtleties.

Baskin's book, with its broad scope, its preoccupation with views and attitudes toward women, and its judgmental rhetoric, clearly belongs to the old, liberal school of Jewish scholarship that sought to uncover (and denounce) the misogyny of rabbinic literature.²⁷ But, as Nicole Loraux has stated, liberal readings of classical sources, while not wrong, have little new to say.²⁸ Rather, they tend to affirm what is already quite well known: that ancient cultures are androcentric, chauvinistic, and, to some extent, misogynic. More than anything, then, this book can be seen as the conclusion of a period, a sign of the end of a scholarly path that has been, by and large, exhausted and that must now give way to other, new perspectives that will shake up the all-too-familiar picture and allow for more fresh insights to emerge.