Rabbinic Judaism and the Creation of Woman

66 SHOFAR Fall 1995 Vol. 14, No.1 RABBINIC JUDAISM AND mE CREATION OF WOMAN by Judith R. Baskin Judith R. Baskin is Professor and Chair ofJudaic Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She is the editor ofjewish Women in Historical Perspective, Women of the Word: jewish Women and jewish Writing, and, with Shelly Tenenbaum, Gender andjewish Studies: A Curriculum Guide, as well as numerous articles on women in rabbinic and medieval Judaisms. FeministJewish studies scholars have frequently focused on images of women in rabbinic literature. Miriam Peskowitz's essay raises provocative questions about this approach. Although I appreciate efforts to render the "marginalization and/or invisibilization ofwomen and gender intellectually impossible" inJewish studies scholarship, I believe that such efforts cannot fully overcome literary constructions of gender embedded within ancient Jewish texts. It is sometimes possible to read canonical]ewish texts in new ways and "against the grain" to tease out evidence of women "struggling within and against patriarchal culture." However, finding evidence of struggle should not obscure the evidence of patriarchy. I will argue that scholarship that explores "images of" women in classical Jewish texts also tells us important things about the marginalization of women in much of rabbinic thinking. Rabbinic discourse is far from monolithic in the views and attitudes it expresses. It includes a variety of competing interpretations and opinions. Given this multivocality it is not surprising that rabbinic literature expresses a diversity of attitudes towards women. What unites these views, however, is the conviction that "women are a separate RabbinicJudaism and the Creation of Woman 67 people" (B. Shabbat 62a),t different from men in innate qualities as well as in social and legal status. In some of my previous writings I have asked why it was so vital for the male framers and subsequent adherents of rabbinic Judaism to place women in this marginal position despite evidence to the contrary, including women's vital place in family life, their ongoing participation in economic activities, and their various roles in Jewish ritual observance. Given the social centrality of women, why have they been constructed as essentially other, and even as potentially harmful to men? Why are women of concern only when they have an impact on male affairs?2 Miriam Peskowitz observes that in scholarship such as mine "the study of 'women' may be removed from the study of rabbinic Judaism, and made marginal to this enterprise." I would suggest, however, that androcentrism is an inherent feature of the classical texts of rabbinic Judaism; this literature overwhelmingly constitutes women as objects of male agency, rather than as subjects of their own lives. An examination of some aggadic (non-legal) biblical interpretations or midJ;'ash concerned with the creation of the first woman confirms these observations. The Hebrew Bible contains two separate biblical accounts of the creation ofhuman beings. The first passage, Genesis 1-2:4, and the second passage that begins at Genesis 2:5 were traditionally read as part of one continuous text. In Genesis 1, male and female entities are created equally in the divine image. To rabbinic readers, these same entities were also the husband Adam and wife Eve, formed from her husband's rib, of Genesis 2:5ff. These two biblical accounts of creation presented problems to rabbinic exegetes, for whom revelation could not be contradictory. In Genesis Rabbah, a rabbinic midrash anthology, we find the rabbis attempting ~o respond to these two contrasting creation stories: the apparently equal and simultaneous creation of male and female (Genesis 1), in which both parties are created in the divine image and jointly charged with the imperatives to fertility and propagation, and the secondary creation of Eve from Adam's rib (Genesis 2:22). '"B." indicates a citation from a tractate of the Babylonian Talmud. Italics in cited passages indicate verses from the Hebrew Bible. Underlining indicates either a non-English word or emphasis by the author. Square brackets provide words absent but implied in the original texts. 2See, for example, Judith R. Baskin, "Rabbinic Reflections on the Barren Wife," Harvard Theological Review 82 (1989): 1-14; idem, "From Separation to Displacement: The Problem ofWomen in SeIer Hasidim," Association/orJewish...