200 Zuzim?

I struggled with the name of this post. I thought about "Better Understanding the Rabbis", or "My Talmud Teacher is Awesome", or "Holy cow! Who would have thought I would be talking about sex in my Talmud class?!"....here's the story...

Today was the first day of school. I only had a Talmud class - although it began at 8:30 and didn't really end until noon! So that was quite the one class!

We are going to be learning chapter two of Ketubot - a tractate of the Talmud. Before we start chapter two, we are learning just the mishna'ot of chapter one. [The Talmud is made up of both the mishna and the gemara - the gemara is much longer commentary explaining what the mishna, which is short, meant.]

So we spent this morning learning the first 7 (or so) mishna'ot (plural of mishna) of the first chapter. Here is the very first mishna:

בתולה נשאת ליום הרביעי, ואלמנה - ליום החמישי שפעמים בשבת בתי דינין יושבין בעיירות, ביום השני וביום החמישי, שאם היה לו טענת בתולים היה משכים לבית דין

It generally translates to:

"A virgin [gets married] on the fourth day of the week (Wednesday) and a widow on the fifth day (Thursday), because twice a week the Beit Din (rabbinic court) sits in the cities (ie. convenes to hear cases), on the second day (Monday) and the fifth day (Thursday), and if he doubts her virginity, he should get up early and hurry to the Beit Din [on Thursday]."

After spending a while reading this, as well as the next couple of mishna'ot, I got a general feel for what we are talking about. The basic gist is that the husband thinks he is marrying a virign, but after the first night of marriage, he discovers that she is not a virgin, he should hurry to the Beit Din. There are many reason that he may think to run to the Beit Din - he wants to divorce her because he married under false pretense, he wants to change the ketubah to reflect a more accurate status (virgins were guaranteed 200 zuzim upon their husband's death or divorce, while non-virgins, such as widows or divorcees, were only guaranteed 100), etc.

We spent a long time discussing why each gets married on each day - and came to the conclusion that virgins are told to marry specifically on Wednesdays, so that if there is a problem, her husband can complain to the Beit Din immediately the next morning. Widows aren't presumed to be virgins, and a man knowing that he's marrying a widow can't be duped into thinking that she would be a virgin - so they don't need to get married the day before the Beit Din meets.

[just go with me for a minute - you don't have to actually agree with this]

Anyway...I'm not usually very sensitive to the anti-feminist comments in the Talmud. I understand that it was written at a very different time - and that "the views represented in the Talmud do not necessarily represent our views". But, this mishna was bothering me - everything I know about rabbinic Judaism says that marriage is sacred, and it seemed to me that the Rabbis were making it very easy for the husband to divorce his wife, almost encouraging it, and saying that they expected that she was lying. My thought process was...why not make sure that they get married as far away (time-wise) from when the Beit Din would meet, so that the husband would have to stay home with his wife, perhaps get to know her a bit better, fall in love with her, etc. Perhaps they would talk, and he would forgive her. (this is to say nothing about how the woman was feeling - but for now let's leave her out of it)

So I raised my hand and said something to this effect! I asked why the Rabbis would hurry him away from his wife, when perhaps if he stayed home longer, he wouldn't be so angry? And it was a good question!!! We talked about it for a little while! And that made me feel good - it wasn't just an overly sensitive question from a female student, it was a really good Talmud question - and I was pleased to hear that there was a really good Talmudic answer. We flipped my question around a bit, so that we were really thinking about the question, "why is it important to the Rabbis for the husband to still be angry and go to the Beit Din?". And the answer to that is...they knew as well as I did, that if the husband stayed home and talked with his wife until he wasn't angry anymore, perhaps he would forgive her and continue to be married to her. And there is a verse in the Torah that forbids a man from staying with a wife that has cheated on him. So...rather than reading the text to see the Rabbis as anti-women, we can understand it as them being "anti-sin" - they didn't want the husband to be sinning.

[I recognize that there are many other layers and angles to be looking at this text from. Who is to say that the woman really did cheat? What if she was raped? Or if she just didn't bleed from sex? And what is wrong with this society that we're only worrying about the woman cheating, not the man?]

And while the anti-sin answer doesn't sit well with me in today's society (or probably then either), I much prefer that they were enacting rules designed to prevent sinning, rather than to just let the woman be taken advantage of. And our teacher very much acknowledged that this is a very very hard situation - what do you do as a rabbi, when someone comes to you and says that she has been cheating on her husband?

It was a good conversation and I enjoyed the class very much. I am a bit embarrassed to be talking about such subjects in class - but everyone is pretty mature about it! (the text goes into a bit more detail that I've given you here, but, hey, my grandparents read this!) :) And I enjoyed getting into the Rabbis' minds in a bit of a different way than I have been able to before! This looks like it is going to be a good class.

Comments

[SBB]

I love this post because it reminded me of the Passover song "Chad Gadya." That's the song where Pops buys a goat for just 2 zuzim.

So, if a virgin is worth 200 zuzim, and a non-virgin worth 100, and a goat worth 2 zuzim, which would you want? After all, you can get 50 goats for the price of one non-virgin, and 100 for the price of a virgin!

[A variety of goat jokes can be put here, but I will refrain. Also, this is why I do not study Talmud on a regular basis.]

[N & P]

Even grandparents know about sex. We just don't want you to know. And now I have fulfilled my duty by making a comment on yur blog. We do read it every day.