On this amud, the Talmud directly addresses the adultery of a wife vs. the adultery of a husband -- and it sure grates on our egalitarian sensibilities. In the middle of the amud, Rav Hisda relates adultery to a worm that consumes sesame - the analogy is clear - just as a worm eats the sesame, adultery eats away at the house. His next statement is the same, except substitute 'adultery' with 'anger' - which is an interesting drasha on its own - ie how an angry home can have the same consequences as an adulterous one.
However, Rav Hisda's comments seem to be general (unless you read 'beyta' as wife - however Rashi doesn't read it that way and I'm going with him on this one) - referring to adultery committed by a husband or a wife. Yet the gemara steps in to clarify that in fact Rav Hisda is just referring to the wife, but we don't worry about a husbands adultery.
Of course, this couldn't be farther from the truth today. Adultery committed by either spouse is a serious offense in a marriage. Instead of focusing on the misogyny of the Talmud here, I would rather see it as an example that context matters. I'd imagine, in the Talmuds time before the Herem of Rabbenu Gershom, some men took multiple wives -- so how could adultery be wrong? Perhaps b/c it was out of the context of marriage, but if a man could marry more than one wife in a community than I'd assume that a man's adultery would not be considered as severe as a woman's -- who could not have more than one husband. However, in our world where it is illegal for a man to have multiple wives, the adultery for a man becomes more egregious, and on par with a woman's adultery. This shift of context necessitates an evolution of the law - which here is a good thing.
Friday, June 20, 2008
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2 comments:
Reading this amud had me in all directions.
Part of me wanted to sign up for the next RA gittin course. At the same time, I wanted to do something radically egalitarian just to stick it to R' Hisda.
In the end, I just went upstairs and gave Aviva a kiss and went to bed.
It also reminds me of the parasha this week in Ki Tisa, where we see several mitzvot in the first few pesukim that seem out of context to us (shaving his wife's head, removing the nails, letting her mourn her family 30 days etc...). To us, these seem strange, but perhaps Micah is right that the "context" does matter. After all, in the parasha, at first glance, it seems like the Torah is permitting something that we think to be assur (polygamy and/or multiple wives). But perhaps if we look at the context and the actual application of how it works, we will see things differently.
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