A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales

Notes

145 NOTES INTRODUCTION 1. In this sense I regard myself as a student of Professor Yonah Fraenkel, who views the aggadic story as a creation of the sages for a community of scholars in the study house. 2. In his writing on the philosophy of history, twentieth-century German Jewish critic Walter Benjamin reflects on culture as the plunder of history’s victors. Faced with the barbaric documents of culture and their transmission to the present, Benjamin asserts, it is the task of historical materialism to “rub history against the grain.” 3. I am grateful to Gra Tuvia, from whom I learned about “barefoot reading” in the study program at Beit Midrash Elul, and to Rotem Prager and Rivka Miriam , who pioneered new ways of learning that have since become common in many other study programs as well. 4. See, for instance, the comprehensive work of Wilhelm Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaiten (Strassburg: K. J. Truebner, 1890). 5. I follow the approach of Daniel Boyarin, as discussed in Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), especially the chapter titled “Concluding Forward: Talmudic Study as Cultural Critique,” 227–46. THE IMAGINATIVE MAP 1. As Isaak Heinemann writes: “Our rabbis were not, of course, systematic scholars. Rather, their thought was closer to those ‘natural nations’ which researchers refer to as ‘primitive.’ This expression suggests a sense of condescension and deprecation: We will call this thinking ‘organic’” (The Methods of Aggadah [Givatayyim: Magnes and Massada, 1949], 8). Heinemann and other reputable scholars analyzed the literature of the Aggadah from the vantage point of German academic scholarship. The tradition of “Orientalism” reduced the East and its culture to the way in which it appeared through Western European male eyes. A better familiarity with the cultural and literary milieu of the Middle East is likely to serve as a more fitting lens through which to survey aggadic literature. 2. See, for instance, the bloodletting of Rabbi Eliezer ben P’dat (Taanit 25a) or the request for a blessing from Rabbi Yishmael (Berakhot 7a). 146 Notes to pages 1–15 THE FISHPOND 1. Samuel Krauss, author of Antiquities of the Talmud (4 vols. [Berlin: Benjamin Bretz, 1929]), interprets this phrase differently. Instead of “fishpond,” he suggests “fruit of the hive,” that is, honey. According to his view, the teacher used honey to bribe the struggling child, sweetening the letters to lessen the pain of learning. On the subject of licking honey from letters as a rite of passage into the world of the study house, see Ivan Marcus, Childhood Rituals, Education , and Study in Medieval Jewish Society (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 1997), 60, 118–24. 2. B. Taanit 23a–25b includes thirty-eight stories about bringing rain, and B. Taanit 21b includes six stories about simple pious men. See the list of story cycles in Eli Yassif, The Story of the Jewish Nation (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute and Ben Gurion University Press, 1994), 268. 3. “Thus there are no public fasts in Babylonia (B. Pesachim 54b), because the land does not need rain. But the halacha teaches that in the diaspora they fast because of too much rain (B. Taanit 22b). That is, rain is also a curse; it is a double-edged sword, cutting in both directions.” Krauss, Antiquities of the Talmud, vol. 1, pt. 1, “Characteristics of the Land of Israel and Babylonia,” 15. 4. “Rabbi Abahu said: Why is the term copulation used [for rainfall]? It is something that copulates with the land, as per Rav Yehuda. As Rav Yehuda said: The rain is the husband of the land, as it is written, ‘For as the rain or snow drop from heaven and return not there but soak the earth, and make it bring forth vegetation’ (Isaiah 55:10)” (B. Taanit 6b). “Remembrance is said of a woman and remembrance is said of rain. Remembrance is said of a woman, as it is written: ‘And the Lord remembered Sarah’ (Genesis 21:1). And remembrance is said of rain, as it is written: ‘You remember the earth and irrigate it’ (Psalms 65:10)” (B. Taanit 8b). “Rabbi Abahu said: When do we begin blessing the rain? From the time that the bridegroom goes forth to greet his bride” (B. Taanit 6b). Here the term bridegroom refers to the raindrops that fall from above, and the term bride refers to the drops in the puddles on the ground that splash upward. SISTERS 1. Moshe Halbertal, Interpretive Revolutions in the Making (Jerusalem...