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Masechet Ketubot Daf 7-9
Jul. 19th, 2022 09:02 amDaf 7 revisited
I skipped over this intentionally on Daf 7, but I decided I wanted to mention it because of lots of stuff I've been reading on the internet. The Gemara discusses an alternate reading of the verse that is used to say that you need a minyan for Sheva Brachos, which is that the verse is proof that nefashot in the womb also sang the Kriat Yam Suf.
I haven't said much about the Dobbs decision, which I think was a bad decision legally and morally, but I've read a lot of things both accurate and inaccurate about Jewish positions on abortion lately and I wanted to clarify some things. From an Orthodox position, we stand somewhere in the middle. Abortion is not the murder of a fetus, but it is a violation of Torah law. That said, since it's not murder, it is not only allowable but required in the case where the life of the mother is threatened. And unlike the mess of uncertainty that's been created by some red state laws, Jewish law is clear that in a safek pikuach nefesh situation, you act as if it were unambiguous pikuach nefesh, nobody wants you hesitating and trying to be machmir when a person's life might be at stake. But as this passage in Daf 7 makes clear, there is some conception that a fetus has a nefesh and that it is in some intermediate stage between having no significance and having all the significance in the world.
I dunno, I feel like it's important to maintain an awareness of the specific facts, and I've seen summaries of Jewish law that make it seem like traditional Judaism is more permissive of abortion than it actually is, and I've seen when some of the more conservative Jewish groups have defended Dobbs that they've been criticized as being un-Jewish. That said, the key point Modern Orthodox people are making now is that more permissive or less permissive, the Orthodox conception of when an abortion is required is clearly different than that of the conservative Christians writing the laws in red states today, and we would much prefer a regime like Roe because it meant that deciding to go forward with an abortion was the province of individual women in consultation with their personal religious and moral and medical authorities.
Of course, there are more liberal Jewish traditions that take from our mesorah instead the idea that since theologically we don't regard the fetus as being a full nefesh, logically the woman's autonomy is the most important fact. From a pluralist perspective, these are valid Jewish traditions, too, and fuck Josh Blackman for saying otherwise.
Daf 8
Continuing discussion of the Sheva Brachot. There's a machloket between Levi and Rav Asi, or machloket is the wrong word, I think, Levi is a Tanna and Rav Asi a late generation Amora, they can't have a machloket, just an apparent discrepancy in practice. Levi recited 5 brachot, Rav Asi recited 6. 6 is actually 7 for our purposes, as I mentioned in my last post the borei pri hagafen was a later addition of the Geonim, which is to say Rav Asi follows the accepted practice, but why did Levi recite 5?
The Gemara seems to think the discrepancy is that Levi considered the first two brachot (the ones we recite second and third) to be one bracha. These brachot both discuss the creation of mankind, in different language- one echoes Bereishit chapter 1, the other Bereishit chapter 2. Famously these two accounts differ in their description of the creation of mankind- one version has man created and then women created from man, the other version has man and woman created together, brooking of many explanations. In the Documentary Hypothesis, this is evidence that the story of creation was assembled from multiple accounts. In Jewish folklore, this is the origin of the idea of Lilith, the woman who predated Eve. But theologically here, the Rabbis seem interested in the question of how we understand the relationship of man and woman as demonstrated through the marriage. Anyway, Levi combines the two brachot, suggesting he considers the two narratives to reflect one act of creation. And Rav Asi doesn't combine, suggesting he thinks they represent two separate creations. But the Gemara rejects the idea of dual creation, and says that actually they all agree it was one creation, but it was a dual stage process and they just disagree about whether to emphasize the first step (when man and woman were one) or the second step (when man and women were separated). Which is to say, in accepting Rav Asi's position we are accepting the idea of man and women as separated entities that are being brought back together by marriage.
Either way, the emphasis of the sheva brachot in these brachot is on the idea of Man and Woman as these really fundamental theological categories, and Marriage as this unification of the two into a partnership. R' Linzer's class took this off into some fairly detailed homiletical ideas about partnership and how separation itself creates a kind of unity, which are pretty ideas but they also buy into this idea of strict gender roles, and I don't know exactly how to reconcile this with the many people I know who find gender roles constricting in a way that is really damaging to their spirits. R' Linzer claimed that Levi's approach feels more consonant with a modern sensibility about gender because it premises a much stronger sense of equality between the (emphatically two) genders, but I think this reflects a more second wave than third wave feminist idea about gender.
Daf 9
Fundamental to Jewish Talmudic law is the idea of two witnesses being required to create a factual reality in court. We do not make a ruling based on the testimony of one person. There are various exceptions, I am not an expert but I generally understand the exceptions to be places where for some reason the witnessing creates a personal imposition of a reality. So for example if I testify that I made a vow that obligates me in some way, the court accepts that testimony because my testimony creates the reality for myself, in a way that doesn't need anyone else witnessing it.
Rabbi Elazar says that if a chasan goes to Beis Din and says that he was with his kallah for the first time last night and she did not appear to be a betulah (but the physical evidence is gone or ambiguous or something), we accept this testimony even though obviously there is no possibility for there to be another witness. The logic seems to be parallel to the idea of the vow- since if a woman committed adultery she is no longer allowed to have sex with her chasan, in effect what the testimony is trying to do is establish a sort of vow that the chasan is forbidding his kallah to himself, so it takes effect.
There are lots of problems with this. One is there is a monetary aspect too- The ketubah settles different amounts of money on the woman in the event that she is not a betulah than if she is a betulah. But possibly we just say that the chasan can prohibit his wife to himself by his own testimony, but to annul the ketubah he still needs two witnesses. Another problem is similar to what I mentioned on the last post- if we can go by the testimony of just the husband, what's with the whole business of blood on the sheet? But we can resolve this similarly- to annul the ketubah, we need two witnesses, and the two witnesses are going to be going by the evidence of the sheet. But the evidence of the sheet can be faked, or it might be missing altogether in the cases where for legitimate reasons a betulah doesn't bleed. So a chasan can still bind himself to not being able to sleep with his kallah. But even the Gemara recognizes this is ridiculous. But what if he's not an expert at sex? it asks. Obviously in this case no consequences attach to his testimony, they conclude. Except emotional consequences.
But the Gemara clearly sees the scenario itself, of a woman claiming to be a betulah but not being one in actuality, as being of serious concern. That's why there's any consequence at all to the testimony of the chasan, that's why the Mishna we started with scheduled weddings for Wednesday. The Gemara lived in a world where if a chasan discovers his kallah was not a betulah, and he shrugged and said I don't care, I love her anyway, I'm not seeking the Beis Din, then there were real problems this could pose. Because what if she really were an adulterer? I think there's metaphysics behind this, similar to eating non-kosher meat. Remaining in an improper relationship has metaphysical consequences not just for the couple, but for their whole community because at a metaphysical level the whole structure of the community is built on the purity of the family structure. So in spite of the aforementioned emotional consequences, the Rabbis didn't want to make it too hard to speak up if there was a spiritual stain on a marriage.
I think it's also possible, if tricky, to make an argument that holding the chasan to his testimony is a way of protecting the kallah- she may think she wants to, but she really shouldn't want to continue being married to a man who would doubt her on her wedding night. I'm not really holding my hat on this argument, though.
I skipped over this intentionally on Daf 7, but I decided I wanted to mention it because of lots of stuff I've been reading on the internet. The Gemara discusses an alternate reading of the verse that is used to say that you need a minyan for Sheva Brachos, which is that the verse is proof that nefashot in the womb also sang the Kriat Yam Suf.
I haven't said much about the Dobbs decision, which I think was a bad decision legally and morally, but I've read a lot of things both accurate and inaccurate about Jewish positions on abortion lately and I wanted to clarify some things. From an Orthodox position, we stand somewhere in the middle. Abortion is not the murder of a fetus, but it is a violation of Torah law. That said, since it's not murder, it is not only allowable but required in the case where the life of the mother is threatened. And unlike the mess of uncertainty that's been created by some red state laws, Jewish law is clear that in a safek pikuach nefesh situation, you act as if it were unambiguous pikuach nefesh, nobody wants you hesitating and trying to be machmir when a person's life might be at stake. But as this passage in Daf 7 makes clear, there is some conception that a fetus has a nefesh and that it is in some intermediate stage between having no significance and having all the significance in the world.
I dunno, I feel like it's important to maintain an awareness of the specific facts, and I've seen summaries of Jewish law that make it seem like traditional Judaism is more permissive of abortion than it actually is, and I've seen when some of the more conservative Jewish groups have defended Dobbs that they've been criticized as being un-Jewish. That said, the key point Modern Orthodox people are making now is that more permissive or less permissive, the Orthodox conception of when an abortion is required is clearly different than that of the conservative Christians writing the laws in red states today, and we would much prefer a regime like Roe because it meant that deciding to go forward with an abortion was the province of individual women in consultation with their personal religious and moral and medical authorities.
Of course, there are more liberal Jewish traditions that take from our mesorah instead the idea that since theologically we don't regard the fetus as being a full nefesh, logically the woman's autonomy is the most important fact. From a pluralist perspective, these are valid Jewish traditions, too, and fuck Josh Blackman for saying otherwise.
Daf 8
Continuing discussion of the Sheva Brachot. There's a machloket between Levi and Rav Asi, or machloket is the wrong word, I think, Levi is a Tanna and Rav Asi a late generation Amora, they can't have a machloket, just an apparent discrepancy in practice. Levi recited 5 brachot, Rav Asi recited 6. 6 is actually 7 for our purposes, as I mentioned in my last post the borei pri hagafen was a later addition of the Geonim, which is to say Rav Asi follows the accepted practice, but why did Levi recite 5?
The Gemara seems to think the discrepancy is that Levi considered the first two brachot (the ones we recite second and third) to be one bracha. These brachot both discuss the creation of mankind, in different language- one echoes Bereishit chapter 1, the other Bereishit chapter 2. Famously these two accounts differ in their description of the creation of mankind- one version has man created and then women created from man, the other version has man and woman created together, brooking of many explanations. In the Documentary Hypothesis, this is evidence that the story of creation was assembled from multiple accounts. In Jewish folklore, this is the origin of the idea of Lilith, the woman who predated Eve. But theologically here, the Rabbis seem interested in the question of how we understand the relationship of man and woman as demonstrated through the marriage. Anyway, Levi combines the two brachot, suggesting he considers the two narratives to reflect one act of creation. And Rav Asi doesn't combine, suggesting he thinks they represent two separate creations. But the Gemara rejects the idea of dual creation, and says that actually they all agree it was one creation, but it was a dual stage process and they just disagree about whether to emphasize the first step (when man and woman were one) or the second step (when man and women were separated). Which is to say, in accepting Rav Asi's position we are accepting the idea of man and women as separated entities that are being brought back together by marriage.
Either way, the emphasis of the sheva brachot in these brachot is on the idea of Man and Woman as these really fundamental theological categories, and Marriage as this unification of the two into a partnership. R' Linzer's class took this off into some fairly detailed homiletical ideas about partnership and how separation itself creates a kind of unity, which are pretty ideas but they also buy into this idea of strict gender roles, and I don't know exactly how to reconcile this with the many people I know who find gender roles constricting in a way that is really damaging to their spirits. R' Linzer claimed that Levi's approach feels more consonant with a modern sensibility about gender because it premises a much stronger sense of equality between the (emphatically two) genders, but I think this reflects a more second wave than third wave feminist idea about gender.
Daf 9
Fundamental to Jewish Talmudic law is the idea of two witnesses being required to create a factual reality in court. We do not make a ruling based on the testimony of one person. There are various exceptions, I am not an expert but I generally understand the exceptions to be places where for some reason the witnessing creates a personal imposition of a reality. So for example if I testify that I made a vow that obligates me in some way, the court accepts that testimony because my testimony creates the reality for myself, in a way that doesn't need anyone else witnessing it.
Rabbi Elazar says that if a chasan goes to Beis Din and says that he was with his kallah for the first time last night and she did not appear to be a betulah (but the physical evidence is gone or ambiguous or something), we accept this testimony even though obviously there is no possibility for there to be another witness. The logic seems to be parallel to the idea of the vow- since if a woman committed adultery she is no longer allowed to have sex with her chasan, in effect what the testimony is trying to do is establish a sort of vow that the chasan is forbidding his kallah to himself, so it takes effect.
There are lots of problems with this. One is there is a monetary aspect too- The ketubah settles different amounts of money on the woman in the event that she is not a betulah than if she is a betulah. But possibly we just say that the chasan can prohibit his wife to himself by his own testimony, but to annul the ketubah he still needs two witnesses. Another problem is similar to what I mentioned on the last post- if we can go by the testimony of just the husband, what's with the whole business of blood on the sheet? But we can resolve this similarly- to annul the ketubah, we need two witnesses, and the two witnesses are going to be going by the evidence of the sheet. But the evidence of the sheet can be faked, or it might be missing altogether in the cases where for legitimate reasons a betulah doesn't bleed. So a chasan can still bind himself to not being able to sleep with his kallah. But even the Gemara recognizes this is ridiculous. But what if he's not an expert at sex? it asks. Obviously in this case no consequences attach to his testimony, they conclude. Except emotional consequences.
But the Gemara clearly sees the scenario itself, of a woman claiming to be a betulah but not being one in actuality, as being of serious concern. That's why there's any consequence at all to the testimony of the chasan, that's why the Mishna we started with scheduled weddings for Wednesday. The Gemara lived in a world where if a chasan discovers his kallah was not a betulah, and he shrugged and said I don't care, I love her anyway, I'm not seeking the Beis Din, then there were real problems this could pose. Because what if she really were an adulterer? I think there's metaphysics behind this, similar to eating non-kosher meat. Remaining in an improper relationship has metaphysical consequences not just for the couple, but for their whole community because at a metaphysical level the whole structure of the community is built on the purity of the family structure. So in spite of the aforementioned emotional consequences, the Rabbis didn't want to make it too hard to speak up if there was a spiritual stain on a marriage.
I think it's also possible, if tricky, to make an argument that holding the chasan to his testimony is a way of protecting the kallah- she may think she wants to, but she really shouldn't want to continue being married to a man who would doubt her on her wedding night. I'm not really holding my hat on this argument, though.