Yeshiva Fundamentalism: Piety, Gender, and Resistance in the Ultra-Orthodox World

3. On the Edge of Transgression: The Study of the Talmud and the “Evil Inclination”

52 3 on the edge of transgression The Study of the Talmud and the “Evil Inclination” Sin crouches at the door. —Genesis 4:7 Any form of transgressive discourse, of anti-language, implies an alternative reality. —Halliday 1976, 572 After a long interview with Moshe about yeshiva life, i asked him about its many prohibitions. Moshe asked me whether i was familiar with the writings on the evil inclination and explained his view of these restrictions: we know that the evil inclination is there all the time. . . . we know that when you are with people, it is much harder to overcome your desires, that God is huge and stronger than us, that we can pray and worship God but that when we meet people, this is when we have to deal with our nature and truly fight the evil inclination. we must do this every day and every time. with the torah we can accomplish this mission, this daily trial that is striving for our final defeat. . . . i try every day to fight it. The evil inclination is here all the time, but sometimes when i survive it, i feel good, spiritually satisfied, and i feel that i deserve to rest in olam Haba because i have fought it, and even though i have failed many times, i did my best every day. we can examine the shaping of Haredi piety and yeshiva masculinity in israel by looking at the meanings of sexual restrictions and bodily On the Edge of Transgression 53 prohibitions. Along with studious activities at the yeshiva, students are educated to restrain their bodily desires. Prayer, repeated rituals, memorization , and debates are some of the techniques used to reinforce selfcontrol and create a pattern of behavior associated with the yeshiva piety. The ideal of torah studies entails a set of body techniques, what Pierre Bourdieu calls the habitus of sitting, talking, speaking, moving, and reacting to other members of the group (1977). This ideal model, a product of the early modern Ashkenazi–Jewish yeshivas, is what defines piety in the community today as it is constructed and tested every day in the yeshiva (see Biale 1992a, 1992b; Boyarin 1997, 154; Satlow 1996, 21). when talking about the practice of torah study, the students i interviewed used various metaphors of love, stressing the pleasure of wisdom, otherworldly satisfaction, and regeneration and, at the same time, emphasizing bodily hardship and toil. The enchantment of torah studies and piety accentuated in current Haredi writings and narratives is accompanied by a strong emphasis on the body’s struggle with the secular temptations of modernity. ideals such as self-mastery, physical restraint, and the constant war between the self with endless internal and external distractions are major themes in the popular discourse of yeshiva students and manuals. According to the new generations of Haredi rabbis and students, piety is a continuing and courageous battle between the higher self and the body and its desires. in the study hall in the modern city, yeshiva students learn how to overcome desires and temptations, to control lust, and to dedicate their body and soul to their talmudic tasks. All men are trained to ascend to high spiritual levels and to distance themselves as much as possible from secular and state affairs. The new yeshiva books interpret piety as heroic, for it is even harder to achieve under the current social conditions of the modern israeli state. transgressions are abundant, scattered everywhere in the modern, secular city. The Haredi response has been to add to the prohibitions already governing the yeshiva students. to become a pious, virtuous man, the student first must be able to fight his bodily desires, to master and purify his body and become a hero. to do this, rabbis and writers emphasize constraint, abstinence, and the strict regulations regarding marriage and refer to the morality literature (sifrut musar) for students. My interviewees accepted without question this piety and its worthiness as a guide for their actions. They did not contest it or complain that it was unnecessary or too rigorous. instead, the students expressed their 54 On the Edge of Transgression fear of transgression and stressed the need to overcome their bodily desires and seek purification. By reinforcing this discourse of overcoming their sexual desires, the students were able to achieve a courageous piety and maintain the group’s religious dominance and social power at all levels of community life...