Tag Archives: sexuality

Pesachim 87-88 Hashem’s love for Am yisroel, and sexual imagery in Tanach and Chazal

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A Special post in loving memory of my father zt’l, containing some of his teachings based on Navi and Chazal.

One of the parts of Tanach my father zt’l loved teaching was the early chapters of  Sefer Hoshea, and the teachings of Chazal on it, which are found on these daf.

While reading these, one is struck by the unusual nature of Hoshea’s first prophetic mission.

In short, Hashem tells Hoshea to marry a prostitute and have “children of prostitution” with her.

They have 2 sons and a daughter together, and Hashem tells Hoshea to call them names which denote his anger with the people of Israel.

Suddenly, the second chapter opens with a short positive message of how numerous the people of Israel will be and how Hashem will accept them back, before going back to predictions of destruction.

Whereas this is not the first example of a valid prophecy telling a Navi to do something that is usually forbidden (the עקידה  being the most famous example,) this is certainly bizarre enough to beg some explanation.

Chazal pick up on this and fill in the background- Hashem told Hoshea how the people had sinned.

Rather than begging for mercy for them, Hoshea suggests that Hashem replace them with a different nation.

Hashem then tells Hoshea to marry and prostitute and have children with her.

He then tells him to leave her and her children.  Hoshea protests that he cannot just leave his wife and children, and Hashem reveals the Mussar in the allegory.

Hoshea wouldn’t abandon his wife and kids despite their  sinful  and doubtful status, yet he expected Hashem to abandon his chosen people who had a long and proven unique relationship with him?!

Although Hoshea’s initial response might seem harsh and out of place for a leading Navi, it is not the only  case we find of such an attitude.

Chazal (Shabbos 89b ) tells us how in the future, Hashem will approach Avraham Avinu and tell him that his children have sinned, and he will reply that Hashem should destroy them. He then approaches Yaakov who has the same reaction. Only Yitzchak asks Hashem to spare them.

One cannot but notice the irony by which Avraham, known as the man of kindness who begs for mercy for the worst of sinners, seemingly gives up on his descendants, whereas Yitzchak, known as the man of absolute justice who is hardly recorded in the text as begging for mercy for anyone, is the one who comes to the rescue.

Be that as it may, it seems that there is a certain threshold beyond which even the most dedicated of our leaders lose their patience with us and stop even attempting to save us from ourselves.

As my father zt’l would often point out, this happened eventually to Eliyahu haNavi as well, who in his encounter with Hashem on Chorev spoke extremely negatively and dismissively of the Jewish people  (Melachim 19), and Hashem’s reaction was to inform him that his time as leader was over and he needed to anoint his student Elisha in his place-  A leader who gives up on his people and can no longer see the good in him gives up his right to lead his flock.

Yeshayahu  also calls the people a “nation of impure lips” and is punished by being burnt on his lips. (Yeshayahu 6)

At a certain point, after  a lifetime of fighting for his people, even Moshe Rabbeinu lost his temper and hit the rock, after which he lost the chance to lead the people into Eretz-Yisrael (Bamidbar 20/10.)

However, unlike Avraham, Eliyahu, and Moshe who reached this stage at the end of a long career of serving the people, Hoshea  and Yeshayahu display this attitude at the beginning of their prophetic careers, and rather than depriving them of their planned prophetic future, Hashem chooses to correct their attitude and give them another chance, by way of a very traumatic experience which puts their thinking right.

מעשה אבות סימן לבנים  (the actions/events of the fathers are a sign for the children-[see Tanchuma Lech Lecha 9]) and this error and subsequent correction was not limited to the founding fathers and the prophets, but can be found in Chazal themselves as well, and up to this very day.

The Gemara (Pesachim 88a) tells how when the Amora עולא came to the Babylonian center of פומבדיתא  , he was given a basket of the dates that Bavel was famous for.

When told how cheap they were, he expressed his amazement at how despite the easy availability of such incredible sustenance, the Jews of Babylon did not study Torah at night.

Later, after eating them, he got a stomach-ache.

After that, he expressed his astonishment at how despite the availability of such unhealthy food (סמא דמותא,)  the Babylonians still studied Torah at night!

We discussed in the beginning of the Masechta (see my post on Pesachim  3 ) how the Torah goes out of its way to use לשון נקיה  (clean language.)

In fact, the Rambam  (Moreh 3/8)  takes this even further and in a controversial statement highly disputed by the Ramban (Shmos 30/13), he explains that the reason why the Hebrew language is called לשון הקודש  is because among other degrading words, it has no explicit nouns for the sexual organs, nor verbs for the sexual act, using only euphemisms.

Yet any Yeshiva kid should be able to tell you that both the Tanach and Chazal are full of sensual imagery, and on our daf, multiples examples of this can be found from Shir haShirim, Hoshea, and in Chazal’s comments on them.

It is interesting to note that whereas Chazal seem to interpret the explicit imagery in Shir haShirim completely allegorically, they  significantly enhance the sexual meaning of the episode in Hoshea, painting a rather graphic picture of the career of the prostitute Hoshea marries.

It seems rather clear from this, consistent with the thesis we developed in our earlier quoted post, that despite the mandate to attempt to use euphemistic language where it is possible to do so without blurring the message, when the clearest way of teaching a message is by use of explicit imagery, the Torah and Chazal do not hold back.

The above attempts to follow the approach of Rambam- of course, it is possible, more along the lines of Ramban,  that the Torah and Chazal simply see nothing “unholy” about the use of sexual imagery in the first place, and use it rather freely, in some cases allegorically, and in some rather literally.  (see though Mishna Sanhedrin 8/1 where the term “clean language” seems to be used in this context as well as the words of the above-quoted Ramban himself who seems to admit this. It is also possible that the entire incident with Hoshea is also to be understood allegorically despite how graphically Chazal describe the details. )

Much to talk about this subject, but it will take a tour of shas to test either thesis, so l have attempted to at least start laying the foundations from our daf and continue building as we go.

These posts are intended to raise issues and stimulate further research and discussion on contemporary topics related to the daf. They are not intended as psak halacha.

Eruvin 17 The army and spiritual challenges

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We have pointed out various times during our posts how everything in Torah is related, and that very often that relationship stands out so clearly that one is absolutely awestruck.

The direct connection between our daf and this weeks parsha is certainly one such example.

The parsha opens with the highly unusual law of אשת יפת תואר, the beautiful captive girl taken in war.

In an unprecedented ruling, the Torah permits the soldier who falls for an enemy captive to begin a process whereby he will be able to marry her and even gives him permission to sleep with her once before this process begins, in order to satisfy that lust.

The explanation for this most unusual capitulation to human sexual desire on the part of the Torah is that לא דברה תורה אלא כנגד יצר הרע – “The Torah only spoke against the evil inclination. “

In the heat of war, the Torah understood that if a soldier was not permitted any outlet for his desires, he would carry them out anyway, and thus came up with a permitted way that allowed him to do so if necessary, while never encouraging it.

There is much to discuss about this idea, and the first question that jumps to mind is why is this extreme lust treated any differently to other extreme situations of lust?

The Torah always insists that people have free will and are responsible for their actions, no matter what the temptations, yet here, suddenly it acts completely differently.

Is the lust of a soldier at war really so much stronger than a man whose wife is a Niddah, a homosexual man who has no permitted outlet for his passions, or a single man who isn’t even permitted to masturbate to satisfy his urges, let alone carry on a sexual relationship with someone outside marriage?

Even if we argue that this is a question of פקוח נפש, given the emotional pressures that a soldier is under, we have found that a person is not permitted to practise forbidden sexual relations even to save his life (Sanhedrin 74a,) one of three great transgressions which one may not even transgress with a gun to one’s head.

In the case where the danger to his life comes from his emotional state caused by his desires, this could apply even to a non-married Jewish woman!

We see this from the case (Sanhedrin 75a) where a certain man fell so badly for a woman that he became desperately ill from desire.

The doctors opined that he would never heal unless he got to sleep with her.

The Rabbis ruled that it is better to let him die than to allow him to sleep with her, or even “talk with her from behind the fence.”

Clearly, the fact that a person gets himself into an emotional state that endangers his life does not justify illegitimate sexual behaviour.

It might be possible to distinguish between the two cases in a few ways, among them:

  1. The reason given by the Gemara why such a harsh ruling was given even in the case of un unmarried Jewish girl (who was not even a Niddah) was either because of פגם משפחה (damage done to the girl and her family) or שלא יהו בנות ישראל פרוצות בעריות (so the daughters of Israel would not be engaged in sexual immorality. )

The former reason focusses on the individual girl and her family whereas the later focusses on societal needs – The good of society takes precedence than the good of this individual, as we need to uphold a moral society at all times.

The case in our parsha is different given that the girl is an enemy captive, and neither of those two concerns apply, at least on a technical legal level.

The fact that the soldier is away from society also lessens the impact on society.

  1. In the case mentioned in Sanhedrin, the threat to the person’s life came from his lust itself. We cannot allow our girls to become the “medicine” for every person who is unable to control himself. In the case of the solder, the danger is from the war, the lust simply increases that danger, and the permission given by the Torah simply removes that extra danger allowing him to focus on the prime directive of survival and most important, victory for the nation as a whole.

Despite the above, given the extreme stringency with which the Torah usually treats these matters, there is little doubt that the situation of war should be treated as the exception rather than the rule, and however we try our best to understand it, it is likely that it cannot be applied to any other situations and אין בו אלא חדושו .

On our daf, we see that this is not the only allowance made for people at war.

Our Mishna tells us that there are 4 areas in which Chazal were lenient went it comes to soldiers in an army camp:

  1. They may collect wood from anywhere, even if it does not belong to them.
  2. They are exempt from washing hands before eating bread.
  3. They are permitted to eat דמאי (produce bought from an ignorant person who might not have taken tithes.
  4. They are exempt from putting aside an ערוב חצירות (though they still need basic מחיצות in order to carry within a designated area.

With the exception of the first which involves the biblical prohibition of stealing (probably permitted through the rule of הפקר בית דין הפקר,) these are all rabbinical laws that are waived, but the facts that such allowances were made also makes it clear how much of a need Chazal saw to allow soldiers to focus on the sacred task at hand of achieving victory without having to allocate too much energy to other things that were not practical at the time.

In an even larger concession, the Gemara (Chullin 17a) says that during the wars to conquer the land, the soldiers were permitted to eat forbidden foods if they are hungry, even pig!

What all these things have in common is that the Torah and Chazal have waived certain very important halachik requirements in order to allow soldier to focus on the battle and not use all their energies battling hunger, the evil inclination, or circumstance.

In the context of all of these things, it seems that the although the Torah only spoke against the evil inclination in the case of the captive girl, this is not because the Torah allows people to sin “legally” in order that they not come to sin “illegally,” but because of the unusual situation soldiers face in war where survival and victory has to be their only goal and the Torah therefore chooses not to make them spend their energy fighting their evil inclination in almost certain losing battles.

One of the major objections raised by many in the Torah world against religious youth going to the Israel army involves the spiritual dangers that they face there, given that much of the army is irreligious.

One of the strongest arguments against this comes from the many extreme allowances that the Torah itself makes for those at war, to the point of permitting some very serious transgressions- what it does not do is in any way discourage soldiers from going to fight, whether the war is obligatory or voluntary in nature.

If this is the case in situations where religious life is not possible, how much more so, we could argue, should it be in a Jewish army where so many allowances are made for religious soldiers, such as kosher food, Shabbos observance, and even time to pray and study.

On the other hand, one could counter that there is a difference between leaving one’s own camp to go into battle or to enemy territory, where the religious threat is from the outside, and being in a Jewish camp where the religious temptations come from the inside, from one’s own side.

The former is more likely to be a temporary setback, whereas the chance of long-term assimilation into secular society poised by being part of an irreligious unit is on a completely different level.

One can argue back and forth on this issue, but one thing that we see for sure on our daf is that certain leniencies were applied by Chazal even INSIDE our own camp.

The army certainly does not seem like a place for imposing extra stringencies above the basic requirements of the law, and even certain laws themselves, namely the 4 mentioned in our Mishna, are pushed aside even while in the מחנה itself.

These posts are intended to raise issues and stimulate further research and discussion on contemporary topics related to the daf. They are not intended as psak halacha.

Shabbos 140 Domestic matters- from the dining-room to the bedroom

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On this daf, we find some statements of Chazal which seem to throw a curveball at certain aspects of our modern frum society.
 
I wish to focus on two of these:
 
There is a tendency amongst young adults who become more “frum” (observant) than their parents or Rabbis to take on new stringencies at the expense of their relationships with their seniors.
 
For example, many yeshiva students or Kollel students return home and although their home has always been halachically kosher, refuse to eat their parents food seeing as it is not up to the “higher standards” of kashrut they have taken on.
 
Sometimes such students even refuse to eat at the homes of their community Rabbis or high-school mentors, or insist that they buy food with a specific hechsher (kosher certification) that they eat.
 
Some people even refuse to let their children visit their grandparents on their own or eat in their homes, even though they have always been strictly kosher and shabbos observant.
 
Whereas there is certainly space for taking on chumros (extra stringencies) under certain situations, so long as it does not make one appear arrogant, or undermine accepted authorities, it is clear from various statements of Chazal that this should never be at the expense of appearing to make light of one’s parents or Rabbis, and that it is better to compromise on these stringencies when necessary rather than offend them or imply that their standards are not high enough.
 
There is a dispute at the beginning of our daf regarding mixing mustard that has already been “kneaded” before shabbos with its own liquids.
 
There are 3 opinions:
1.      One may mix it further with water but only with one’s hands
2.      One may fix it further with water even with a kli (instrument)
3.      One may not mix it further at all
 
Although there might be no actual melacha of לש ( kneading,) seeing as it is already in kneaded form, it appears that there is a concern for עובדין דחול  , things that resemble weekday activities, a topic for another discussion.
 
The Gemara tells how Abaya’s mother made such a mixture for him on Shabbos and he refused to eat it.
 
It then tells how Zeira’s wife made such a mixture for his student, Rav Chiya bar Ashi, and he too refused to eat it.
 
Zeiri’s wife did not take this lying down, and reprimanded him strongly with the words: “I made it for your Rebbe (her husband) and he ate it, and you won’t eat it?”
 
We see a similar idea in a מרגלא בפומיה (favourite statement) of Rava (Brachos 17a):
 
מרגלא בפומיה דרבא: תכלית חכמה תשובה ומעשים טובים; שלא יהא אדם קורא ושונה ובועט באביו ובאמו וברבו ובמי שהוא גדול ממנו בחכמה ובמנין
 
“It was a pearl in the mouth of Rava: the goal of wisdom is repentance and good deeds- that a person should not learn verses and Mishna and kick aside his father, and his mother, and his teacher, and one who is greater than him in wisdom and numbers”
 
Rava makes it clear that the end result of growing in Torah learning needs to be practically recognized in one’s good deeds, not a new-found sense of arrogance where he views himself as superior to his parents, teachers, and superiors.
 
Such “frumer arrogance”  does no service to his learning, but makes Torah look like something elitist and offensive, and is to be rigorously avoided.
 
In another sugya (Yevamos 114a,) the Gemara discusses whether one is obligated to prevent a child from eating forbidden foods.
 
However one learns the conclusion, one case that is agreed upon is that if a חבר  (Torah scholar’s) son goes to visit his עם בארץ  (ignorant) grandparents, he need not be concerned about him being fed possibly  untithed produce by less observant grandparents.
 
The assumption was generally that most עמי הארץ  (ignorant people) separated their tithes, but a significant minority did not, and Chazal thus decreed that any produce brought from such people , known as דמאי  , needs to be tithed out of doubt before eating.
 
Yet in such a case of children visiting their grandparents, they were lenient and allowed them to eat in their homes without such a concern.
 
Although it seems from the context that we are dealing with minor children who are not yet obligated in mitzvos, the fact that even those who require one to stop children from transgressing waived the rabbinical concern of דמאי  while they visiting their less observant grand-parents is telling.
 
Let us recall that we are dealing here with grandparents who kept some level of kashrut, but were also suspected of using untithed produce!
 
If Chazal told Torah Scholars to allow their children to visit grandparents in the category of עמי הארץ  , despite real halachik, albeit rabbinical, concerns, how much more so should this apply to grandparents and teachers who are fully observant, but simply do not follow additional chumros that they have taken upon themselves!

2
 
Another phenomena we find in parts of the religious world, is a total avoidance of discussing anything sexual in nature, particular with children and teenagers.
 
There are some Torah schools that even forbid the study of biology, seeing as it includes sections about human anatomy and the reproductive system, and many frum parents and teachers refrain from giving their children a healthy, Torah- based  sex education, because of the false belief that such things are inappropriate for anyone, at least before marriage while sexual activity is forbidden.
 
Not only does such an attitude foster an unhealthy sense of self in teenagers and young adults, it is also totally contrary to the view we see both in Tanach and Chazal.
 
Although the Torah is very clear about what types of sexual behaviour are permitted and what is forbidden, and Chazal stress in many places the importance of modesty and avoiding temptation, there is an equally strong emphasis on educating  people about such things, from a relatively young age. Although they use euphemisms wherever possible, they do not do so at the expense of the clarity of the message being given over.
 
From the beginning, the young child is taught how, amongst other things,

  • the first man ‘knew’ his wife and had children
  • the generation of the flood behaved immorally
  • Noah’s son Ham “saw” his father’s nakedness, interpreted by one view in Chazal as sodomizing him
    -Sarah was abducted and taken to Pharaoh’s house
  • Reuven slept with his father’s concubine (or mixed up his beds at best)
  • Dina was raped by Shechem
    -Yehuda’s two sons, Er and Onan, died for spilling their seed on the ground rather than impregnating their wife
  • Yehuda went to someone he thought was a prostitute
  • Yoseif was seduced by Potiphar’s wife and according to a view in Chazal, almost gave in.
     
    The above is just in Sefer Beraishis, usually completed in the early years, if not first year, of primary school.
     
    A tour through the rest of Chumash, and of course the rest of Tanach, reveals an equally uncensored view of life, some striking examples being
     
    –          The section on forbidden relationships read on Yom Kippur afternoon
    –          The mass seduction of the people by the Mideanites and the case of Pinchas
    –          The gruesome story of פלגש בגבעה (concubine of Giv’ah)
    –          The rape of Tamar by David’s son Avner
    –          David’s seduction by Avigail, as interpreted by Chazal
    –          David’s sin with Batsheva
    –          Shlomo’s excesses with his many wives
    –          Many references to sexual excesses in the later Neviim.
    –          The parable of the prostitute in הושע
    –          The allegorical שיר השירים (songs of songs,) filled with sensual imagery.
    –          The highly sexualized narrative in מגילת אסתר (the book of Esther.)
     
    Ironically, the neglect of Tanach study in certain sections of the religious community has led to a high level of ignorance of many of these incidents, as has a sanitized form of studying them.
     
    The later is perhaps most symbolized by the Artscroll’s “non literal” translation of Shir haShirim with the excuse that it was never meant to be understood literally, is all parable, and “holy of holy”- forgetting the fact that there is a reason the book is written with such metaphors in the first place
     
    Yet while the Tanach has been neglected, often using the non-authoritative testament of Rabbi Eliezer (see Brachos 28b and Rashi there) as an excuse, while ignoring the clear halachik requirement to divide one’s Torah-learning hours  into 3, including a third for Tanach study (Kiddushin 30a), the same cannot be said for Talmud study, which occupies most of the time of the young Ben-Torah.
     
    It is impossible to learn even the first masechta in the Shas from cover to cover without encountering numerous explicit sexual discussions.
     
    One of the most graphic, is the description of Rav Kahana hiding under his teacher, Rav’s bed while he was engaged in enthusiastic sexual foreplay with his wife, justifying his action to the infuriated (and obviously mortified) Rav  by the need to learn Torah (how a Ben-Torah should act in the bedroom.  Brachos 62a)
     
    It is doubtful that anyone in the Torah world would, or should , even consider such a direct form of sex education today, but it just goes to show how far Chazal were prepared to go in order to educate themselves about such matters, at the correct time, so long as it was with holy intentions.
     
    In a similar vein, our daf has another mind-blowing graphic description of how Rav Chisda prepared his daughters for their married life (let us recall that one of his daughters married the leading Amora of the next generation, Rava!)
     
    It tells precisely how he told them to engage in arousing foreplay with their husbands, and although it is a clear Gemara, I will show enough respect to our more sensitive readers to refer them back to the Gemara itself for more details…
     
    These posts are intended to raise issues and stimulate further research and discussion on contemporary topics related to the daf. They are not intended as psak halacha.