Not by Her Mouth Do We Live: A Literary/Anthropological Reading of Gender in Mishnah Ketubbot, Chapter 1

Abstract

This paper uses a literary/anthropological approach to reading gender in the Mishnah. It is argued that by paying attention to literary devices such as chiasmus we may gain a more nuanced idea of the rabbinic constructions of gender found in the Mishnah. The first chapter of M. Ketubbot is examined, and it is suggested that the structure of this chapter is built on a progression from the social unit of the family to that of the nation. This structure also revolves around a parallelism between married women and priests—the former representing the unity of the family and the later, the unity of the nation. An important dynamic in this chapter is the relationship between speech, especially the authoritative speech found in the courtroom, and women's bodies.

Although this paper will have a double focus, methodological and topical, the topic of gender cannot ultimately be separated from methodologies of reading. Because the approach I call literary/anthropological is somewhat of a departure from the norm in the present academic study of the Mishnah, I will spend the first part of this paper presenting a general case for it. In the second half, I offer an example of this methodology by exploring the discourse of gender in the first chapter of M. Ketubbot. My thesis is that a literary/anthropological approach can greatly aid us in our understanding of the Mishnah's discourse of gender by offering not simply another reading, but another type of reading.

The study of gender has not, until recently, played a major role in the academic study of the Mishnah. Jacob Neusner opened the door to gender analysis of the Mishnah with his assessment of the Mishnah's Order of Women as revolving around the Rabbis' need to control what they perceived as disruptive, anomalous women. This cleared the way for other pioneering works, such as Judith Romney-Wegner's Chattel or Person?¹ For many years, Romney-Wegner's book was almost a lone star on the horizon of gender studies of the Mishnah. In the more general area of rabbinic Judaism or Judaism of the Greco-Roman period, the work of scholars such as Ross Kraemer and Bernadette Brooten has served an essential groundbreaking function.² Based primarily in the historical and archaeological scholarly traditions, these works have been followed by Miriam Peskowitz's Spinning Fantasies, which adds postmodern theories of reading and culture to the historical and archaeological toolbox.³

Within the tradition of the more textually focused academic study of rabbinic literature, Judith Hauptman has been the outstanding contributor to the study of gender in the Mishnah.⁴ Her recent book, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice, is a demonstration of the importance of a shift in perspective, even while staying within the traditional methodology of historical/philological research.⁵

In the recent work on gender in rabbinic texts, there is a move beyond the "inclusion of women" into an already existing frame of analysis. Miriam Peskowitz writes of the need for a basic shift in focus that places gender as a central category of analysis. She succinctly expresses this shift when she writes, "We cannot fully explain and account for the development of Judaism during its classical period without taking into account the presence and the constructedness of gender in all aspects of Jewish religion and history."⁶ Peskowitz has been in the forefront of the call for critical awareness not only of the constructed, historically contingent character of the categories of thought found in rabbinic texts, but also in regard to the categories and assumptions of scholarship of these texts.⁷ Awareness of the implications of the masculinist bias of the Enlightenment traditions that are central to the academic study of rabbinic literature will open the way for alternative approaches to reading.

It is with these observations that the double focus of this paper comes together. The methodological considerations I discuss may be seen as a critique of some of the assumptions of reading that prevail in the academic study of the Mishnah...