Women in Judaism

Library Of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data, Swidler, Leonard J, Women in Judaism. Includes index. 1. Women in Judaism. I. Title. BM729. W6S9 296 75-46561 ISBN 0-8108-0904-4. Copyright © 1976 by Leonard Swidler. Printed in the United States of America

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“He who has no wife dwells without good, without help, without joy, without blessing, and without atonement.”

A woman is “a pitcher full of filth with its mouth full of blood, yet all run after her.”

“The difference in the relations of men and women to each other makes a constant difference between the Rabbis and ourselves. It is always cropping up. Modern apologists tend to ignore or evade it. They quote a few sentences such as ‘Who is rich? He who has a good wife’; or they tell of a few exceptional women such as Beruria. It is quite true that wife and mother played a very important part in Rabbinic life; it is true the Rabbis were almost always monogamists; it is true that they honored their mothers profoundly, and usually honored and cared for their wives. But that is only one side of the story.... Women were, on the whole, regarded as inferior to men in mind, in function and in status.”

This study attempts to answer the question: What was the status of women in the period of formative Judaism; that is, where did women stand in the social scale in comparison to others, namely, men? Were they thought of as having the same rights and responsibilities as men, and if not, how, and why, were they different, and with what results? By formative Judaism is meant the time span from about the second century before the Common Era (B. C. E. ) to the fifth century of the Common Era (C. E. ), and the geographical area first of all in Palestine and secondly in Babylonia. This was the time and locus of the formation of what emerged as mainline Judaism. Of the various Jewish “sects” teeming in the first decades of the Common Era, such as Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, and Christians, only the first and the last persisted in an organized fashion, coming down to us as Judaism and Christianity. I hope also to study the status of women in formative Christianity, but that will be a subsequent volume, which of course could not be attempted until this study was completed.

The reason for undertaking such a study is not unlike the motive of the teller of the story of Adam and Eve, namely, how can we explain the contemporary relationships between men and women? Our attempt to answer the question, instead of using mythic means, will use the historical- critical method. Naturally all serious history attempts to be as “objective” as possible, i. e., to “tell it like it was” (“wie es eigentlich gewesen”), as much as that is possible within inevitable human limitations. Like most historiography, this study is prompted by a question that is important in contemporary life; in this case, the place of women in human society and their relationship to men. Surely this is a fundamental question and one worthy of being put to our past. Any attempt at responsible history will seek to avoid tendentiousness and hold the conclusions to what the evidence will bear. Concerning the present subject on the one hand the positive evaluations of women in formative Judaism will have to be sought out and recorded. But, given the subject matter, it will be particularly important to guard against the sort of apologetic that became especially prevalent since the Enlightenment and the rise of the subsequent feminist movements: the tendency to claim that Judaism, and Christianity, have really valued women very highly and even made them “equal” to men, a claim that an earlier day would have rejected. Josephus stated quite clearly that “The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man,”¹ and his contemporary, Paul of Tarsus, echoed the same idea: “Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.”²

A second tactic which embarrassed modern Jewish and Christian, scholars have adopted has been to grant, grudgingly, that women were treated “differently” from men, but to insist either that this did not mean that they were thereby any less valued, or that in any case it was “better” that they be thus “differently” treated. Of course, treating two groups of human beings differently does not automatically mean in logic that one group is valued more or less than the other, but empirically, when groups of mature human adults with millions upon millions of members and a highly systematized social differentiation of major proportions are in question, then there is more than ample prima facie evidence that a higher and lower valuation of the groups is involved. To argue oppositely merely on the grounds of logic or some references to structurally superficial evidence, without a thorough analysis of the structure of the society involved, and its presuppositions and inevitable results, is to argue speciously. This was the sort of argumentation that stated in America that it was a good thing for Black slaves to be treated “differently,” that they were in fact happier so, and referred to some statements and actions of “happy” Black slaves and the paternal attitude of some benign slave holders. The same approach led to the second line of defense after the abolishment of slavery; namely, that Blacks were to have “different” schools, etc. from Whites, but of course they would be equal! The United States Supreme Court finally dismissed that line of argument as the rationalization of the White group in power oppressing the Black group not in power. Such a manner of arguing was not honest; it did not seek to describe reality “wie es eigentlich gewesen.” To so argue in the matter of the status of women would be similarly dishonest.

At the same time this study cannot be an attempt to argue that the past under scrutiny necessarily could, or should, have been different than it was, or that the values of contemporary society are necessarily better than those of the past. Rather, as initially stated, it can only be an attempt to answer as accurately as possible on the basis of evidence, the question proposed by the author--which naturally is prompted by a contemporary concern. As a historical study, this work can only stand or fall, in whole or in part, on the basis of the gathering and analysis of, and argumentation from, the evidence available. However, distinct from that study, but based on it, the author, not so much as historian but as a concerned human scholar, who is also committed to religion, institutional and otherwise, should also be able to offer an evaluation, indicating something of the study’s significance for contemporary society. That I expect to do in a concluding chapter.

The main documentary sources for this study are the following: the later books of the Hebrew Bible (mainly the Wisdom literature); the apocrypha, that is, the additional books found in the Jewish translation of the Scriptures into Greek (the Septuagint); the pseudepigrapha, i. e., Jewish writings around the beginning of the Common Era which were not taken into the scriptural canon; the Dead Sea scrolls; the works of Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century C. E.; the writings of Philo, the great first century C. E. Jewish philosopher and religious thinker; and the rabbinic writings. These latter include primarily the Mishnah, a collection of the sayings, discussions and decisions of early rabbis, called Tannaim, on how to live according to the Torah (codified around 200 C. E. ); the Babylonian Talmud, commentary of later rabbis, called Amoraim, on the Mishnah (codified in Babylonia in the fifth century C. E. ); to a lesser extent the smaller Palestinian Talmud (codified in the fourth century C. E. in Palestine), the Tosephta, Mechilta, Sifre, and Sifra Scripture commentaries (mostly all additional materials from the Tannaim), and the early midrash--i. e., rabbinic stories, etc. illustrating the Torah--mainly the Genesis Rabbah (codified in the fourth century C. E. ).

To understand any human event it must be seen in its historical context, for every human event is the product of the interplay of the forces of the past and the responses of the forces of the present. We can no more understand a human event outside of its historical context than we can grasp the concept of the sound of a single hand clapping--Zen Buddhism notwithstanding. The importance of the historical context is even further heightened when the human event being investigated is a person’s, or a society’s, attitude concerning the status of the most broadly distributed class of persons in a society, namely, the status of women in society. Hence, to approach properly the subject of this investigation-the status of women in formative Judaism--it is essential to seek to learn the attitude toward women prevalent in the surrounding milieux as this Jewish society developed.

By way of remote background it should be noted that the status of women in the ancient Near Eastern world was generally that of an inferior.³ Of the perhaps most ancient of those civilizations, the Sumerian, it has been said that it was male-dominated: men ran the government, managed the economy, administered the courts and schools, manipulated the theology and ritual, and therefore women generally were treated as second-class citizens without power, prestige, or status.⁴ However, as the eminent Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer has pointed out, there are some indications that this was predominantly true only of later Sumerian society, i. e., from about 2000 B. C. E. on. In the earlier period the Sumerian woman may well have been man’s equal socially and economically, at least among the ruling class. Further, in the area of religion, the female deity was worshiped from earliest times to the very end of Sumer’s existence. In spite of some manipulative favoritism on the part of the male theologians, God in Sumer never became all-male.

Among other things, Kramer points out that polyandry apparently existed in Sumer previous to 2400 B. C. E., for one of the Urukagina “reform” documents of that period reads: “The women of former days used to take two husbands, (but) the women of today (if they attempted this) were stoned with stones (upon which was inscribed their evil) intent.” Kramer pointed out that, judging from this rather strident boast, some women in pre-Urukagina days practiced polyandry, and got away with it--which hardly smacks of a male-dominated society. In this early period of the twenty-fourth century some women also owned and controlled vast amounts of property, enjoyed some laws which in effect enjoined something like equal pay for equal work, and were able to hold top rank among the literati of the land, and be spiritual leaders of paramount importance.⁵

By the year 2000 B.C. E., and onward, the role of women deteriorated considerably and on the whole the male ruled. For example, marriage was then theoretically monogamous, but the husband was permitted one or more concubines, while the wife had to remain faithful to her one and only spouse.⁶ Continuing in this trend, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (1728-1636 B.C. E.) and similar laws legislated, for example, that men were free to repudiate their wives for any or no reason⁷, though the woman was able to divorce the husband only for very serious cause;⁸ indeed, even if in such a case a wife e were “a gadabout,” her life was forfeit: “If she was not careful, but was a gadabout, thus neglecting her house (and) humiliating her husband, they shall throw that woman into the water.⁹“ Polygyny was accepted, but not polyandry; hence adultery was solely a crime against the husband¹⁰. However, it should be noted that the oriental woman enjoyed, on the other hand, a very large legal capacity. In the presence of the man (father or husband) the oriental woman was silent and passive; but if the man disappeared--and not only by death or by absence in the technical sense, but even by a temporary absence--the woman became a fully capable person.¹¹

Such general disability of women was not uniformly the case in the other massively important cultural milieu in the ancient fertile crescent, including Palestine, i. e., in Egypt. In fact, during half the history of ancient Egypt, the age of the pyramids (2778 B.C.E. and following) to the end of the Hellenistic period (30 B. C. E. ), women enjoyed a high status. For example, during the third, fourth, and into the fifty dynasties (2778-2423 B. C. E. ), when the highest level of culture of the Old Kingdom was reached, daughters had the same inheritance rights as sons, marriages were strictly monogamous (with the exception of royalty) and tended to be love matches; in fact, it can be said that in the Old Kingdom the wife was the equal of the husband in rights, although her place in society was not identical with that of her husband.¹² With the decline of the Old Kingdom (2270 B. C. E.). centralized control also waned and feudalism arose, which brought in its wake the decline of individual rights and the rise of corporate rights in private law; this meant that women lost their equality of rights and were subordinated to men, usually fathers or husbands. At any rate, this was true among the nobility (where polygyny then also became widespread) and on the land; in the cities, commerce continued to be based on individualism in private law (i. e., urban property remained free and alienable), and the equality of the sexes persisted as under the classic law of the Old Kingdom. In the cities the woman had an independent legal personality.¹³

The situation was reversed again during the New Empire (1580-1085 B. C. E.--18th,.19th, and 20th dynasties) and women again generally enjoyed equality of status, particularly during the 18th dynasty (1580-1341 B. C. E.). Centralization was restored in the monarchy and individualism triumphed in private law, and consequently during the 18th dynasty women recovered their entire independence and their own legal personalities. They again took up the social role they had had, at the side of their husbands, in the Old Kingdom.¹⁴ (It was during this period that the Hebrew people traditionally are said to have lived in and left Egypt.) Once again in 1085 B. C. E. the Egyptian empire disintegrated into a feudal pattern, with its stress on corporate rights in private law and the consequent subordination of women to men.

With the beginning of the 26th dynasty (663-525 B. C. E.) and its centralized monarchy a definitive change in favor of equality for women in ancient Egypt took place. Women possessed a situation of legal independence and from then on disposed of themselves freely. Absolute equality of spouses was established in marriage. Strictly monogamous, the conjugal union was based on the mutual consent of the partners and imposed on the spouses identical obligations: the infidelity of the husband as well as that of the wife permitted the injured spouse to obtain a divorce at her or his own profit.¹⁵ Thus, as Jacques Pirenne put it, “we have arrived at the epoch of total legal emancipation of the woman. That absolute legal equality between the woman and the man continued to the arrival of the Ptolemies in Egypt.”¹⁶

Pirenne provides a very precise overview of the history of the status of women in ancient Egypt from the beginning, excluding the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Women in ancient Egypt were considered legally the equal of men in the epochs of individualism. They were, on the contrary, treated as minors and’ placed under tutelage in feudal-seignorial epochs, during the course of which those social groups founded on the solidarity of authority and hierarchy were restored. Pirenne argued that although that conclusion could, in varying degrees, well be extended and adapted to all civilizations, none, at least in antiquity, accorded to women an independence equal to that which they knew in Egypt. Greek civilization itself, which one nevertheless generally admits was the most individualistic in antiquity, was far from granting women the independence which they knew in Egypt during the periods of its apogee.

There is there a very important element which perhaps ought to stimulate historians of law as well as moralists to study, in comparison with Greek individualism, Egyptian individualism which, before our period, alone issued in the complete legal emancipation of the woman.¹⁷

Let us now turn our attention to those cultural forces, Hellenism and Romanism, which largely formed the immediate context within which so much of formative Judaism developed.

Some scholars argue that the almost omnipresent patriarchy perceived from the beginning of humanity’s written records was preceded by a very long, beneficent period of matriarchy.¹⁸ This thesis, which is lent at least some support by the findings of the Sumerologist Kramer (discussed above) and the Etruscanologist Heurgon (discussed below), is, however, disputed. In any case, as a very careful historian, Vern L. Bulloughl, noted in general, scholars have argued that women in the Homeric poems, which probably were put into final form in the ninth century B. C. E., had a higher position and were better regarded than later in Greek society. However, by the time of Hesiod in the eighth century B. C. E., male dominance was no longer in doubt, and in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. E. the “golden age” of Pericles, the status of women seemed to have reached some kind of nadir in Western history.¹⁹

In this period of “classical” Greece there was also a large difference between the status of women in Athens and in Sparta. Of the two largest Greek city states, Sparta provided women with by far the greater freedom, i. e., scope for human development, and equality with men. In Sparta women wore clothes which did not restrict their movement (e. g., their robes were open on the side)²⁰, and took part in sports (e. g., see the Vatican girl racer, a statue originally from the time of the Persian wars), in politics,²¹ and in the owning and running of businesses and farms; in fact., women owned almost forty per cent of all the real estate of Sparta,²² which in itself also tended to increase and sustain the high estimation of women in Sparta.

Though Athens was only a short distance away from Sparta and though the two spoke basically the same language, the styles of life of the two city states were dramatically different--and so was the status of women in each. In Athens women did not participate in politics; in fact they were largely shut out of social life as well. Among the works attributed to Demosthenes we find the statement of one fourth-century Athenian: “We have hetaerae for our pleasure (hedone), concubines for the daily needs of the body (therapeia), and wives so we may have legitimate children and a faithful steward of our houses.”²³ Only the hetaerae (“companions”) were educated and entered into male society. They were like courtesans who were to provide men with interesting conversation and entertainment as well as venereal pleasure--in short, social intercourse and sexual intercourse. Marriage was usually monogamous in that there was only one legitimate wife at a time. However, she normally did not mix with the husband’s male friends, but was largely the bearer and rearer of legitimate offspring and the administrator of the household--to which she was largely confined. In Athens the wife “lived entirely or almost entirely as in a harem.”²⁴

Leipoldt has some very enlightening remarks about how Athens developed the harem-like condition for its women:

Athens, especially through its export business and commerce, became a rich city. There were men who no longer worked (the rabbis have a very instructive definition: a settlement is to be designated a city when there are to be found in it at least ten men who do not pursue a profession Megilla 1, 3), and all necessity for the women to work outside the home disappears--why else have slaves? Whoever has such trains them to take over all toilsome work (ponos). Some wives will at first find that pleasant and a reason to carry their heads higher. But now there awakens the feeling among the men that the women are their personal possessions, useless, but ornamental pieces, which one can best preserve by keeping them at home (the notion of envy probably says too little here). Thus is the path to the harem entered upon.²⁵

An important point that is alluded to here is that within the same culture women tend to be more restricted in cities than in villages or in rural areas (distinct of course from the lot of women of the landed nobility in a feudal society, as in Egypt, where even women in cities tended to retain a certain legal liberty, as noted above). The present writer experienced this personally within the Arab Muslim culture in the fall of 1972 when visiting the Muslim city of Hebron (south of Jerusalem) and a number of Muslim villages nearby. In the villages the women always wore a head covering, but never veiled their faces; in Hebron, however, many of the women in the streets went about with face veils. Something of the same thing occurred in the movement of populations to urban areas in nineteenth and twentieth century America; pioneer and rural women had a whole range of indispensable roles to play in their families and societies, including a key economic one, and consequently led a human life relatively as full as their husbands’. But when it was no longer necessary to share in the fighting of Indians, or in working to help provide food, clothing, and other necessities, they tended to become the “ornamental pieces” mentioned above; the wives of most professional men did not take a job, and so there later developed the mysterious malaise among suburban women which Betty Friedan called the “feminine mystique.”

Thus, economical and technological progress gradually released more and more women from hard physical labor into being “ornamental pieces,” but this same progress also tended to equalize men and women in that the male’s physical strength became less and less important--a tiny woman with a machine-gun was as deadly as any muscular male with the same. More and more in a technologically advancing society, knowledge and experience became the important things--and women could gain these as well as men. Hence, although women are at first lowered in importance vis-a-vis men as a civilization “advances,” if this advance continues sufficiently it bears within it the seeds of a growing movement of women’s liberation. This can, of course, be seen in the development of the feminist and women’s liberation movements of nineteenth and twentieth century America and Europe. But the same thing also happened in the Hellenistic and Roman world, as we shall see in somewhat more detail later.

The phenomenon of ancient women--and modern women--becoming “ornamental pieces” was carefully analyzed by the twentieth-century sociologist Thorsten Veblen, who in the process coined the concepts “conspicuous leisure” and “conspicuous consumption.” When men earned more than they really could use they would tend to use their superfluous wealth in a public way that would call attention to it--like lighting a cigar with a ten-dollar bill. The wives of these men, of course, became veritable clothes models, for by the extravagance of a woman’s attire people could see something of her man’s wealth--vicarious conspicuous consumption. Likewise, the women of wealthy men, or men who had pretensions of wealth, usually did not work, again to show publicly that the husband had so much money that the wife need not work--vicarious conspicuous leisure. Thus, the woman contributed little to the family or society, became just an ornamental piece, a conspicuous consumer of commodities for the sake of showing the husband’s wealth.

As wealth massively increased in Athens it was no wonder that such women had no significant part in the world of decision-making, that men came to think of them as their possessions which they needed to protect from thieves--in a restricted., harem-like existence.²⁶

Shortly after the time of the great philosophers of classical Greece--that is, from the end of the fourth century B. C. E. on--an extraordinary change in the general societal feeling took place, at first in Greece and then elsewhere in the Hellenistic world; a sensitivity developed for other persons, particularly the previously overlooked, and for animate and inanimate reality all around. It was a cultural phenomenon something like the Romantic Movement which burst upon the Western world at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This change, which continued to develop with the passage of time and spread throughout the Mediterranean and Near East through Hellenistic military and cultural expansion, was expressed in many ways, including painting, poetry, the emotions, and concern for animals, slaves, children--and women.

An appreciation of landscapes is usually something that children do not possess; it comes only with the development of more intense human emotions. Just as such an appreciation was often reflected in the paintings of the Romantics and afterward, so too in Hellenistic and Roman paintings the beauty of the countryside was highlighted--which was not done in earlier Greek art--for example, in extraordinary wall paintings in Pompeii.²⁷ This more highly developed emotion and sensitivity was also reflected in the much more frequent reports of expressions of joy or sorrow and of crying than was earlier the case.²⁸

There was also an increase in fondness for animals. For example, those in the Greek world who did not possess a dog were thought poor,²⁹ and yet domestic dogs were almost unknown in the East in pre-Hellenistic times; they were introduced through Greek influence, as can partly be seen in the stories of Tobit and the Syrophoenician woman whose daughter Jesus healed.³⁰ This Hellenistic fondness for animals was also expressed in poems dedicated to pets that had died. It is perhaps significant that it was a woman, Anyte of Tegea in Arcadia (around 300 B. C. E.), who firmly set the custom in Greek culture. Couplets by her, some in the form of grave inscriptions, exist on a hunting dog, a locust, a dolphin, a war-horse, and a rooster. Leipoldt says of her work: “These are really works of art: brief texts in chosen language, without exaggeration, full of genuine love for the animals--and each of the little poems is differently constructed.”³¹ Another scholar has gathered together over fifty such examples from antiquity,³² including the Latin: Catullus’ poem on the dead sparrow of his daughter is perhaps the best known example.

Even more important is the fact that this new sensitivity was also extended to “inferior” human beings. Slaves were more often viewed as other humans with various talents., feelings, etc., and were consequently more humanly appreciated; e. g., they often were given grave stones. Children received a greater appreciation, especially small children.³³ (Again one is reminded of similar developments in early nineteenth-century Europe under the leadership of children’s education pioneers like Pestalozzi.) This “discovery” of children can be seen in the Greek plastic arts: in the earlier period children were obviously not thought important enough to observe carefully; only after the time of Alexander the Great were the sculpted figures of children properly proportioned. The figure of Eros on the east frieze of the Parthenon and on vase paintings is that of a half adult; later it becomes a real infant.

The question naturally arises: Why the development of this new sensitivity toward the end of the fourth century B. C. E.? The causes of such a complex historical development can only be proportionately complex, but a few “causes” do lie close to the surface. The new sensitivity became apparent a generation after Alexander exploded the Greek world of city states into the vast imperial world of Hellenism. Energies that most Greek citizens had formerly devoted to politics could now be turned to themselves, persons, and things around them, all of which they had not had much time or energy to really observe or appreciate before. Also, most humans cannot live merely as a single unit in a massive impersonal organization; they must also have satisfying personal relations; they must live in a personal community, or communities. That was possible as a citizen in a city-state such as Athens or Corinth, but not in an empire. Hence, not only was there now time and energy available to devote to new relations, but there was also a need to find a more human community (witness the incredible popularity of the mystery religions at this time; indeed, the massive spread first of Judaism--perhaps ten per cent of the population of the Roman empire at the beginning of the Common Era!--and then of Christianity are still further evidence). Whatever other “causes” of this historical event are put forth, these two will at least have to be reckoned in.

In ancient Greek society, as in many others, women were often categorized with the other “inferior” beings, slaves and children--usually to place some restrictions on them. Quite naturally, the development of the new sensitivity which raised the status of slaves and children also led to the raising of the status of women. In fact one can speak of a gradually developing women’s liberation movement in Hellenism. It did not move as rapidly or as dramatically as the one in the nineteenth century of Western civilization, but it was clearly there and made enormous advances from the time of Alexander to Constantine. In fact, already in the fifth century, in Periclean Athens, there were at least the beginnings of a movement, particularly in the areas of philosophy and politics, as is attested to by the plays satirizing gynocracy and, just a little later, by Aristophanes’ play on the first “Women’s Strike for Peace,” Lysistrata.³⁴ In speaking of a Greek women’s liberation, however, it is well to keep in mind what was succinctly stated by Klaus Thraede: “One does well, when concerned with the development of a freer situation [for women], which nevertheless did take place in Hellenistic times, to distinguish between Asia Minor and Athens and Sparta as well as between city and land.”³⁵ One might add to this the need at times to distinguish between early and late Hellenism and, perhaps more importantly, between social classes. Likewise, one must keep in mind the advanced state of the liberation of women in Etruria, as well as Egypt, which persisted in the Hellenistic periodic³⁶ and also doubtless spread these ideas throughout the ancient world through the medium of Hellenistic culture.

In terms of “causes” of the spread of this women’s liberation movement in the Hellenistic world, one must calculate, in addition to what has been discussed above about the new sensitivity and about Egypt, the important influence of the queens, princesses, and other royal women of Hellenistic courts.³⁷ The court of Philip II was not marked by great elegance and refinement, but to it belonged Olympias, and where such an imperious and self-willed woman reigned, her sex must have enjoyed a freedom and consideration not possible in Athens. It was, however, on the model of the Macedonian court that the officers of Alexander ordered their households, and when Eastern customs were considered, they were the customs of the Persian and Egyptian monarchies, where the queen and the queen-mother were always potent personages. Hence they could but strengthen Macedonian tendencies to accord women social and political importance. “The influence of a court is always far-reaching, and in this case it accelerated a movement, of which the Greek courtesans had been hitherto the leaders, for the emancipation of women.”³⁸

William Ferguson added a further insight into the spread of Hellenistic women’s liberation when he described how an Athenian girl installed in a new home in Elephantine or in Antioch was dependent upon her own resources to a much greater degree than one who remained at home surrounded by her kinsmen and within easy reach of her natural guardian. She had to be given freedom of access to the courts and personal right to hold property, without which she would have been entirely at the mercy of her husband. In other words, her parents were bound to see that privileges were guaranteed to her in the marriage contract which they would not think of demanding for their daughters who married their neighbors’ sons. The instability of life, the enormous increase of opportunity to move from one place to another, made new safeguards for the wife and mother advisable. The consequence was that everywhere in the Hellenistic world the old rules of society were being abandoned, and new ones, dealing with woman’s liberties, were being formed to take their place.

There had been no such occasion for the creation of a new social regime since the seventh century B. C. E. In Athens, as for that matter in the cities of old Greece generally, these causes of social change were not directly operative. A royal family did not exist there; the city was not dependent for its prosperity upon its attractiveness to immigrants; there was no new contact with foreign races. Hence it is the influence of the hetaerae upon the structure of Athenian society, and the reaction of the new world upon the old, that must be considered and, if possible, measured at this point-“...the emancipation of women made slow, if any, progress in Athens. It was, in fact, an unfriendly territory for the social innovations of Hellenism.”³⁹

The above mentioned “cautions” having been noted, a rather impressive list of indications of a gradually developing women’s liberation movement in the Hellenistic world can be put forward. Even the form of address to a woman that grew up in this period is an indication of her increase in status: as it became customary in late Greek times to address men as “Lord” (kyrie), it became equally customary to address women as “Lady” (kyria); the custom split out of the Greek language area into Latin as well, where men and women tended more and more to be addressed as dominus and domina.⁴⁰

To this one can add the fact that in growing contrast to the earlier frequent social restriction of the Greek married woman, in Hellenistic times the wife was quite likely to turn up at social gatherings, at symposia;⁴¹ and women went on long journeys.⁴² Whereas earlier it was customary for Spartan women to participate in sports, including the Olympics, women’s involvement in this area advanced in late Hellenistic times to the point where there were women professional athletes, as, for example, the three daughters--Tryphosa, Hedea, and Dionysia--of Hermesianax of Tralles, who engaged in foot and chariot races in the years 47 to 41 B.C. E.⁴³ Many women pursued music as a profession,⁴⁴ but not many became actresses or dancers (at least not “socially acceptable” women),⁴⁵ although we hear of women who traveled about Greece giving recitations, such as Aristodana of Smyrna who was accompanied by her brother as a manager.⁴⁶ Asia Minor was known for its women physicians,⁴⁷ though according to Pliny the Elder much of the information about these women physicians was deliberately suppressed.⁴⁸ On the level of skilled artisans, women often pursued a craft similar to their husbands’, e. g., a woman goldsmith and a man armorer.⁴⁹

The position of women within marriage is, of course, an important key to the status of women in society in general. We have noted something of the atypical freedom and equality Spartan women enjoyed in classical times, and something of the extremely limited position of other Greek married women (being shut out of politics and social life and having to run competition with the hetaerae and the concubines-that is, mostly slave women who were always totally at the disposal of the husband, sexually and otherwise).⁵⁰ The Greek wife of classical time did nevertheless retain her right over her dowry, even if a divorce occurred; and she as well as the husband could initiate a divorce-quite a different situation than existed in the Jewish world, where only the husband could initiate a divorce; but that will be discussed in detail later.

In the Hellenistic period the status of women in marriage advanced quite dramatically, allowing, of course, for wide variation according to the location and the dominant local legal tradition. Marriage was monogamous in classical Greek times and it continued to be so in an even more intense fashion in the Hellenistic period, e.g., the restriction on concubines-as reflected in a late fourth century (311 B. C. E.) marriage contract, presumably drawn up according to the Greek law dominant on the island of Cos (off the coast of Asia Minor). Part of it runs as follows:

Contract of marriage of Heracleides and Demetria. Heracleides takes for his legitimate wife Demetria of Cos. He receives her from her father Leptine of Cos and from her mother Philotis. He is free. She is free.... It is not permitted to Heracleides to take another woman, for that would be an injury to Demetria, nor may he have children by another woman, nor do anything injurious to Demetria under any pretext. If Heracleides be found performing any such deed, Demetria shall denounce him before three men they will both choose. Heracleides will return to Demetria, the dowry of 1000 drachmas, which she contributed, and he will pay an additional 1000 drachmas in Alexandrian silver as an additional fine.⁵¹

Here the husband is not only committed to monogamy and to marital fidelity (as is the wife, elsewhere in the contract) but is even subject to a double penalty if he violates that commitment. The contract also clearly assumes an equal right for both spouses to initiate a divorce on the grounds of infidelity. (It is also interesting that the bride is given away by the mother as well as the father.) It should be noted that this advance in the status of the married woman took place at a time and place where the forces at work were probably Greek. The later Egyptian influence could only further raise the status of women, which can be seen in, among other things, the fact that in Hellenistic Egypt the wife, as well as the husband, could initiate a divorce when and as she wished.⁵²

Klaus Thraede speaks of Hellenism’s linking of the goal of women’s liberation with equality in marriage: “In a more progressive civilization equal rights for both women and men is a condition for married harmony (the Stoics formulate it the same way also). Hellenism discovered that because the value and individuality of the woman is fulfilled in marriage, monogamy is required.”⁵³

Women in Hellenistic times also exercised extensive rights in the economic sphere. A woman could inherit a personal patrimony--equally along with sons!--buy, own, and sell property and goods, and will them to others.⁵⁴ Indeed, in Hellenistic times there were wealthy Greek women, some of whom were greatly honored for their philanthropy.⁵⁵ Thraede sums the matter up when he says:

The emancipation of the woman in private law was decisive for the development which began already in the classical period: the equalization in inheritance and property rights as well as the de facto independence in marriage and divorce.⁵⁶

In classical Greek times a woman usually could undertake a public act--i. e., one involving property or marriage--only with the cooperation or approval of a kyrios (lord), who usually was the father, then the husband. This institution, reflective of ancient familial solidarity, continued into Hellenistic times.⁵⁷ The custom, however, was resisted in Hellenistic Egypt, and was eventually eliminated.⁵⁸ For some time then, the Hellenistic woman exercised her quite large public capacity with a kyrios under Greek law and without a kyrios under Egyptian law. However, even outside Egypt the institution of the kyrios declined to a mere formality⁵⁹ and finally was eliminated in Roman times, i. e., after the Antonine constitution of 212 C. E.⁶⁰ Nevertheless., even in the third century B. C. E. many women initiated a wide range of legal actions, civil, penal, and administrative--without a kyrios.⁶¹ Not only Egyptian women did so, but even Greek. “This capacity is without a doubt an innovation in regard to women living under Greek law when compared to the institutions of classical times.”⁶² It is also an “innovation” when compared to the situation in contemporary Judaism, where women were not able even to bear legal witness.⁶³

From one perspective the dramatic difference in the status of women in classical Athenian society and Hellenistic society reflects the difference in the societal structures: the former was patriarchally collective and the latter was individualistic. Parenthetically, it should be noted that Jewish society was built only on the patriarchal collective model: “Talmudic family structure is based upon the biblical patriarchal system, which for its part is the continuation of the custom of the tribal age. Preference is given to males, within the family as well as in society. A person’s status is determined by his descent and for this purpose the paternal rather than the maternal relationship is decisive.”⁶⁴ On the other hand, Hellenistic law of persons and family assumed a definitely individualistic shape.⁶⁵ Furthermore, behind the legal, though not necessarily social independence of women, there was the fundamental fact that a new type of family, which rested entirely on blood relationship, had replaced the classical oikos. This new family was based purely on personal ties and, consequently, there was no patriarchal family organization at all. Various restrictive practices atrophied in a gradual change of custom that was inherent in the logic of a social development which did away with the concept of a family in which women were subject to the head of the “house.” “The husband had no conjugal power over his wife.”⁶⁶

In an advanced civilization the key to advanced status is education; by itself it will not accomplish everything, but without it usually little will be possible. Whereas in classical Athens usually only the hetaerae had any kind of an education, education for young girls became ever broader and more widespread throughout the Hellenistic period, and one result was that more and more wives as well as husbands were educated.⁶⁷ In fact, in Hellenistic Egypt there were more women who could sign their names than men,⁶⁸ “and thus Hellenistic literature, particularly the novel, was written for a feminine public.”⁶⁹ Another result of the broader Hellenistic education of women was the appearance of a flood of Hellenistic women poets.⁷⁰

It is perhaps most of all in that discipline of the spirit for which the Greeks are most renowned, philosophy, that one can see the striving for women’s liberation. We hear from an ancient biographer of Pythagoras that already in the seventh century B. C. E. there were many women students of Pythagoras.⁷¹ The comedy writer Alexis even wrote a piece entitled “The Women Pythagorians” (Pythagoridzousa).⁷² The comment on the “woman question” by one of the women philosophers of the Pythagorean school, Theano, who was either the wife or daughter of Pythagoras, is still extant. Within the context of the primitive assumption that sexual intercourse makes a person “unclean,” she was asked: “In how many days after intercourse with a man will a woman be clean?” Her reply: “If it is her own husband, she is immediately clean; if it is with a stranger, never.”⁷³ Continuing this tradition, the sophists and Socrates (470-399 B. C. E.) raised criticisms of the subordinate position of women in society.⁷⁴

In his writing about the ideal state Plato (427-347 B. C. E.) made a rather extraordinary breakthrough concerning the status of women; he argued in favor of equality for women with men--indeed, equality was in the nature of things. He wrote:

Are we of the opinion that the female watchdogs must perform their guard duty just as the male watchdogs? Do they have to go on the hunt and do everything with the rest? Or do the female dogs remain at home, incapable because they must bring offspring into the world and nourish them, whereas the male dogs do all the work and take care of everything involved in shepherding?

Everything must be done together! Only we assign lighter tasks to the former and heavier ones to the latter. Is it possible, however, to assign to any beings the same kind of tasks if the same education and training are not available to all alike? Impossible. Therefore, if we wish to engage the women in the same work as the men, they must also be allowed to learn the same things. The men receive intellectual and physical education. Thus, the women must also learn and appropriately employ these two disciplines and the art of warfare.... They must take part in war and everything involved in guard duty.⁷⁵

However, although educated women thus were seen by Plato as equally a boon for the state as men, he nevertheless wished to curtail the development of too much freedom for women by legally limiting their lifestyles.⁷⁶ (It should also be noted that we do know of at least two women philosophical disciples of Plato.)⁷⁷

Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle (384-322 B. C. E.) also paid lip service to the desirability of the freedom of women in a democracy,⁷⁸ but at the same time he argued that too much freedom for women was a political evil⁷⁹ and that women should take a subordinate position.⁸⁰ However, we know that one of Aristotle’s followers, Theophrastus (d. 287 B. C. E.), had both a woman disciple, Pamphile (some of whose writing is extant), and a woman opponent, unfortunately anonymous. Thereafter to some extent the Cynics also spoke out in favor of equal rights for women, and women played a prominent role in the school of Epicurus (343-270 B. C. E.), not only as disciples but even as favorite teachers.⁸¹

The philosophical school which did most to promote the improved status of women was that of the Stoics. These grassroots philosophers stressed the worth of the individual woman, the need for her education (consequently there were many women followers of Stoicism), strict monogamy and a notion of marriage as a spiritual community of two equals.⁸² “In the woman question the Stoics of later times are much more influential because they concern themselves above all with the proper living of everyday life.”⁸³ The Roman knight C. Musonius Rufus, a contemporary of the apostle Paul, discusses at length whether women should also pursue philosophy and whether daughters should be brought up the same as sons; he answers yes to both questions. The dependence on Plato’s Republic is everywhere apparent in the essay. Even the male and female dogs are reported on in similar fashion. What is decisive is that both sexes have the same relationship to virtue and must be correspondingly educated. Indeed, both receive the same spiritual capabilities (the same logos) from the gods. Furthermore, it is specifically the profession of housewife that the woman can correctly fulfill only when she is a philosopher. These thoughts of Musonius have a great significance for intellectual history, for they influence later thinkers, as can be seen, for example, in Plutarch and Clement of Alexander. In fact, we know of a third century C. E. Syrian princess with the Arabian name of Zenobia who lived according to the precepts of Musonius.⁸⁴

What makes the teachings of the Stoics especially important in the spread of the liberation of women in the centuries just before and after the beginning of the Common Era is not only that they keenly stressed woman’s personal value and equality with men, but also that they were so widely spread abroad even on the grass-roots level. Many educated people were counted among the adherents of Stoicism, but so too were many others who had never heard a professional Stoic teacher, for many of their ideas and sayings became standard elements of traditional education. However, there were many Stoic popular speakers who went about like circuit preachers, speaking in homely language about their ideas of life. They thus penetrated all classes, even that of the slaves.⁸⁵ “But all this was not only the result of stoical stumping; the masses were especially prepared to receive the teachings of the Stoa because they helped the oppressed to preserve at least the feeling of inner freedom.”⁸⁶

Not every aspect of every teacher, let alone adherent, of Stoicism reached the full height of complete equality between men and women in its expression,⁸⁷ nor, doubtless, did every professed disciple always practice fully what he preached. Still, Stoicism and the other forces discussed above surely spread ideas of women’s liberation far and wide throughout the Hellenistic world and massively influenced many people to live by them.

In religion and cult, women in classical Greece experienced restrictions that were broad, but by no means absolute. There were a number of religious activities or places that they could not enter upon, as, for example, the very important oracle of Delphi, the cult of Hercules; and only maidens, not married women, usually could watch the sacred games at Olympia. Women were also almost entirely absent from, or were kept in the background of, state religion activities. Still, in some cults, such as those of Artemis and Dionysius, women did play a significant role.⁸⁸ The restrictions, however, along with a lesser education, encouraged the popularity of superstition and magic among women; their normal human need for religious expression naturally moved in the direction of the occult when the more “legitimate” outlets were restricted. Strabo (63 B.C. E. -24 C. E.), e. g., unknowingly pointed toward this when he complained that women were the originators of superstition (deisidaimonias archegoi).⁸⁹ The rabbi Hillel (70 B. C. E.-10 C. E.) also unknowingly pointed to the same outcome of the religious restriction of women when he said: “Many women, much magic.”⁹⁰

It was doubtless the same kind of pressure, plus the burgeoning liberation of women in the Hellenistic period, that led to the extraordinary popularity at that time of the Eastern cults and mystery religions, particularly among women.⁹¹ Women not only took part in these religious cults, but often did so in great numbers and often in leading and even priestly roles, as, for example, in the Eleusian, the Dionysian and the Andanian mysteries (indeed, it would seem it was just such placing of women on a level with men in religion and cult that provoked a Christian polemic against the equality of women by Cyril of Alexandria--376-444 C. E.).⁹² The cult of the goddess Isis, which came from Egypt but spread all over the Hellenistic and Roman world, was at the beginning of its popularity exclusively a women’s cult, and even after men were admitted it still provided women with leading religious roles⁹³ and justly had the reputation of being a vigorous promoter of women’s equality and liberation.⁹⁴ The extraordinary appeal to women of the Hellenistic world of Judaism (reflected, for example, in Josephus’ remark that almost all of the women of Damascus embraced Judaism!)⁹⁵ and then Christianity (e. g., the first European convert to Christianity was a woman, Lydia of Philippi)⁹⁶ also must be at least partly traced back to the same forces of restriction, reaction and liberation discussed above--the latter was also doubtless responsible for the fact that the status of women in diaspora Judaism and Pauline Christianity was higher than it otherwise would have been.⁹⁷

Although it was the Hellenistic cultural world that exercised the greatest outside influence on Palestinian Judaism, the influence of Rome was also present in its own way, i. e., mostly political, legal, and military, from the time of Pompey’s conquest in 63 B.C. E. Hence, it is proper to note briefly the condition of women among Romans.

Behind the culture of Rome there stood the extraordinarily developed culture of the Etruscans, stretching in space from Rome up to Pisa, and in time from before the seventh into the third centuries B. C. E. Whether one agrees with Jacques Heurgon or not when he says that “one must imagine, at the outset, in Italy, as also in Minoan Crete, a civilization dominated by the importance of Chthonian cults and by the pre-eminence of women,”⁹⁸ it must be granted that he offers ample documentation that the Etruscan women “went out” a great deal. Everywhere women were at the forefront of the scene, playing a considerable role and never blushing from shame, as Livy says of one of them, when exposing themselves to masculine company. In Etruria it was a recognized privilege for ladies of the most respectable kind, and not just for courtesans as in Greece of the contemporary classical period, to take part with men in banquets, where they reclined as the men did. They attended dances, concerts, sports events, and even presided, as a painting in Orvieto shows, perched on a platform, over boxing matches, chariot races and acrobatic displays.⁹⁹

Heurgon notes that in addition to the documentary evidence of the high status of women in Etruscan society, there is also decisive evidence from archaeology, not just in paintings where we see Etruscan women participating with men in numerous aspects of social life, not only in the epitaphs where the matronymic often is given a prominent place, “but in certain evidences, not sufficiently noted before, which are provided by the contents and the disposition of the tombs.”¹⁰⁰ A large number of the Etruscan tombs clearly set women in the pre-eminent position: “It is as if, between 650 and 450, the Etruscans, or at least those of Caere, had considered women to be of a superior essence and more and more susceptible of divinization than men.”¹⁰¹

All the evidence taken together allows Heurgon to attribute a privileged position to the Etruscan woman in a society where “we see her mingling with such brilliance in the business and the pleasures of men, her character torn to pieces by envious outsiders but invested in her country with an authority that was almost sovereign; artistic, cultivated, interested in Hellenic refinements and the bringer of civilization to her home; finally venerated in the tomb as an emanation of divine power.”¹⁰²

However, we do not find in Etruscan society either a theoretical Mutterrecht or an ideal gynaeocracy, but rather a stage in a long development, an unstable equilibrium of antagonistic forces in evolution which is given its full significance only if compared with Greece and Rome. furthermore, “Etruscan civilization was an archaic civilization. Its feminism, strange as it may seem to us, is not so much a recent conquest as a distant survival threatened by Graeco-Roman pressures; it recalls in many respects the Crete of Ariadne and the paintings of Cnossos more than the Athens of Solon and Pericles.”¹⁰³

Women, of course, did not enjoy such a high status in contemporary Greece, nor did they in early Rome. But by the third century B. C. E. Rome moved to improve the property rights of women. Somewhat later in the republic, doubtless due to the influence of Etruscan culture and the growing pressure of the women’s liberation movement in Hellenism, the condition of women improved to the point where a woman could in general marry and divorce on her own initiative and even choose her own name.¹⁰⁴ In speaking of the improvement of women’s legal position in the late republic, Thraede wrote: “Toward the end of the republican period the goal was to some extent attained”; he then referred to the capability of women to bear legal witness.¹⁰⁵ During the same period the image of leading women appeared on coins--for the first time.¹⁰⁶

The Roman Cornelius Nepos (d. 32 B.C. E.) even felt that the advanced status of Roman women was something to boast about (in doing so he perhaps painted the situation of the Greek women as too uniformly bleak--so as to enhance the contrast with that of Roman women):

What Roman would find it annoying to be accompanied by his wife to a banquet? Or what housewife does not take the first place in her house or go about in public? Quite different in Greece. There the wife is not brought to a banquet, except when relatives are involved; and she occupies only the inner part of the house, the so-called Gynaikonitis, where only close relatives can enter.¹⁰⁷

The status of women continued to improve dramatically under the empire. Indeed, the political activity of women of the senatorial class developed so vigorously that we find on the walls of Pompeii the names of women running for office, a definite advance over Egyptian and Greek women, who had few political rights; women were sent on imperial missions to pro-consuls; the possibility of a woman consul was even discussed.¹⁰⁸ Women were everywhere involved in business and in social life-i. e., theaters, sport events, concerts, parties, traveling-with or without their husbands. They took part in a whole range of athletics, and even bore arms and went into battle: “A still more marked sign of the advanced emancipation is the conquest of the world of professions by the women of the empire.”¹⁰⁹

In family affairs one would have to speak of “a veritable equality of the sexes in daily life.”¹¹⁰ The woman’s consent was necessary for marriage;¹¹¹ “the woman had no obligation to obey; the husband had no right to correct her.... legally the husband had no right of power over his wife ... from the point of view of money, the regime was one of equality and of separation.”¹¹² “The equality of the spouses was in effect total, whether concerning the full liberty of divorce in classical law, the limiting causes of that liberty in the late empire, or the sanctions of an unjustified divorce.”¹¹³

Republican Rome, acting originally under the influence of Etruscan culture, took up the impulse of women’s liberation from Hellenism and carried it forward to where the empire also made it its own and continued to promote it ever further throughout the first several centuries of the Common Era.

In sum: The status of women in the ancient world of the fertile crescent after the early Sumerian period was quite uniformly low except in Egypt, where it was early and often quite high. In the classical Greco-Roman world the condition of women was varied, but often quite restricted, with the clear exception of Etruscan culture. It nevertheless improved particularly during the Hellenistic period, so vigorously and continually that one must speak of a women’s liberation movement which had a massive and manifold liberating impact on the lot of women--not everywhere and in every class and at every period equally effective, of course. This improving impulse was picked up and carried forward by Rome. In fact, I believe we can accept as a general rule the statement of Oepke¹¹⁴ that “the general rule in this matter is that the further west we go the greater is the freedom of woman. In detail., however, there are the greatest possible variations,” and add to it that in general there is also a progression in the freedom for women according to time as well. Thus, as the women of Rome tended to be freer than those of Greece, who were more liberated than women of the oriental world, so also the women of the time of the Roman empire had greater freedom than those of the time of the Roman republic, and their sisters in the Hellenistic world and period were less restricted than those of Greece at the time of the Athenian empire. Due account must be taken, of course, of the unsympathetic vagaries of all human history, and the fact that in so many ways the liberation of women was long since preceded in ancient Sumer, in Egypt, and later also in Etruria.

It is in this context and under this surrounding and pervading influence of the Greco-Roman (Egyptian) world that Judaism developed.

Although it would be very helpful to a study of the status of women in formative Judaism to first do a thorough study of the status of women in pre-exilic Hebrew society, it is, fortunately, not essential. Nevertheless, it is very important to highlight at least one significant fact from that earlier period that will shed a good deal of light on the status of women in the post-exilic, formative period of Judaism: namely, that there are in the Bible two traditions about women.¹¹⁵

These two traditions about women depict her first-i. e., before the Fall-as the equal of man, if indeed not the perfection of humanity, and secondly-after the Fall-as subject to man, under the curse. This bifurcation is clearly seen in the Yahwist story of creation in Genesis 2, which is the older scriptural tradition. Contrary to much later, and often superficial., interpretation of this story, a careful analysis reveals that the Yahwist writer did not think of woman as lesser because she was created after Adam. Quite the contrary. The pertinent passage reads:

Yahweh God said, ‘It is not good that the man [ha adam, “the earthling,” from adam, “earth”] should be alone. I will make him a helpmate.’ So from the soil [adam] Yahweh God fashioned all the wild beasts and all the birds of heaven. These he brought to the man to see what he would call them; each one was to bear the name the man would give it. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild beasts. But no helpmate suitable for man was found for him. So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man. The man exclaimed: ‘This at last is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh! This is to be called woman, for this was taken from man.’ This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body. Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each other. (Genesis 2: 18-25)

Here, first of all, the creation of woman was set in contrast to that of the animals, which preceded. The latter were to have been understood by, and placed under, the authority of the man--they were not to have been worshipped, even symbolically, as they were in Canaanite and Egyptian cults. But the main point of the text was man’s relationship to woman. Clearly woman’s creation was also essentially related to man, since his solitude was the occasion for her creation. But was she to be seen as simply an afterthought, a companion slightly higher than the animals? Such an understanding would hardly square with the tone of the story wherein Yahweh was depicted as knowing well what he was doing and as having done everything purposefully. Yahweh was not a hesitant potter who tried one thing after another in hopes of final success; rather, he was the Almighty, whose actions carried lessons of major importance. Rather than seeing woman’s creation as the lowest in a series of creation attempts that started on a triumphant note with the forming of Adam and proceeded on a descending scale to that of Eden, plants, rivers, animals, and, finally, woman, we should view it as a creation that evolved from Adam to woman, with the intermediate creations serving to establish the stage for the higher creation that was attained with the modeling of woman.¹¹⁶

George Tavard spells out this understanding of the Yahwist’s description of the prelapsarian state of woman as humanity’s (i. e., adam, man in the generic sense) perfection: as far as humankind as a whole is concerned, there is only one creation, that of adam. The next step is not a second process of creation, but rather a step within the total process., a further development of what began with the fashioning of Adam. We should therefore understand woman not as an addition to the humankind that already was in the person of Adam; rather, Adam himself (in that part of him which was his rib) is built up into woman. Adam becomes a person, aware of himself, reaching consciousness as humankind with the disclosure of woman. For woman also is humankind. She is not other than adam; but she is adam as bringing to perfection what had first been imperfect. She is humankind as fully aware of its status, as the goal and perfection of man. Thus, woman is not made to be Adam’s helpmate just because he is lonely; she is created as the perfecting element, to the revelation of which he aspired when he refused companionship with the animal world. In one way, Ishah was made for mankind., as she was to bring it perfection, to be its perfection. In another, mankind was made for Ishah, the less perfect, the uncompleted, the undifferentiated being preparatory of the more perfect, the fullness, the being-in- relation. In the oneness of man and woman, it is woman who brings perfection.¹¹⁷

Thus in Genesis 2 the Yahwist pictured the state of woman as it was in the beginning, before the Fall. But he knew from experience that that was not the state of woman in contemporary society. Present reality was the opposite of that in Eden. The curse of woman evoked a reversal of the order of the universe attained in Eden. While woman in innocence was creation’s acme, woman in experience, following her initiation to sexuality, would be dominated by her sexual “desire for her husband,” indeed, by her husband himself, and by pregnancy’s pains. “The higher aspect of mankind becomes enslaved, and the ruder aspect, the man, takes over leadership.”¹¹⁸

Thus, seen in the light of the earlier analysis of the events in the Garden, this story of the curse provides the key to the entire meaning of the Yahwist tradition about the origins of humanity. The author, of course, belonged to postl-apsarian history, to the order of the curse. Yet he was convinced that it was not always thus. And the poet reconstructed a pre-lapsarian state which was the exact reversal of everyday life as he experienced it. When throughout centuries the Hebrews heard these stories and later read them, it was recalled to them that they were experiencing the ambiguity of living East of Eden, while they yet longed to return to Paradise. They were thus fed by two conflicting traditions, the post-lapsarian, which governed their daily lives and the structure of society, and the dream of the pre-lapsarian, which they hoped to return to at the end of their cycle in life--eventually to be called the messianic era.

Tavard summarizes this explanation when he says that we are thereby invited to read the whole Hebrew biblical tradition in this light: “There were two traditions about woman. The one corresponded to the order of society, in which woman, though protected by many laws, was inferior to man. The other echoed the legends of the origins as recorded in the Yahwist text: originally, woman was the higher and better part of mankind.”¹¹⁹

These two traditions do indeed continue to run from Hebrew society to beyond the Exile into inchoative and maturely formed Judaism (and into Christianity as well), but, as the subsequent study will clearly show., the pre-lapsarian tradition will tend to fade, be distorted, and even be suppressed at times. But it recurs, as, for example., with the prophets, who see Israel as the espoused of the Lord; with the wisdom literature where Wisdom is pictured as the primordial woman antecedent to the creation of the world; with some poetry, like the Song of Songs, where the love depicted is humanist and egalitarian (this erotic humanism was later rejected by Ben Sira, e.g., 9: 8), and even when it was interpreted, beginning with Rabbi Akiba, first century C. E allegorically, whereby the union of love between man and woman became a symbol of the relationship between God and his bride Israel; indeed, with the understanding of Israel as humanity, humanity as loved by God., for here humanity itself is feminine vis-a-vis God. It continues to recur throughout later Jewish history, as with the medieval Kabbalah, where the feminine is projected into the divinity. But most important, this pre-lapsarian tradition of woman as man’s equal, indeed, his completion, is there at the source, waiting to renew the tradition.

Most of the Wisdom literature was written after the return of the Jewish people from the exile (587-537 B. C. E.); a small portion of it--the central section of the Book of Proverbs, e.g.--was pre-exilic. In the Wisdom literature we find the two traditions about women reflected. First, it must be noted that these books, which include some most disparaging remarks about women, also project the feminine into a personification of divine Wisdom. In the Book of Proverbs, Wisdom is described as the highest and first creature of God, identical with the Law, and this Wisdom (Hokmah)is a woman. In Ben Sira, Wisdom, Sophia, is also a feminine creature, though an eternal one, that is, identified as the spirit of the Lord and the glory of Yahweh. In the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon the personification of the feminine Sophia attains its acme; she is no longer a creature, but an eternal emanation from God: “She is a breath of the Power of God, pure emanation of the Glory of the Almighty” (7:25). Wisdom takes part in all the powers of God. She is divine, yet not God, who, as in all biblical texts, remains the Unknowable One. Wisdom is what humans can know of God’s glory, that of God which can be communicated to humans. Said differently, Wisdom is the “good and evil” which the Ishah of Genesis 2 desired to know but never learned. It is the image of Ishah as transformed by the true knowledge of benediction and malediction, the divine antitype of Ishah. “It shows what Ishah would have been had she waited for God’s self-unveiling instead of attempting to grasp the secrets of God by herself.”¹

It should also be noted that although it is doubtless accurate to see the persistence of the prelapsarian, more positive tradition about woman in this personification of Divine Wisdom as the feminine Hokmah or Sophia, such a projection can also often become a device to further shunt a suppressed individual or group out of the path of power; it can serve as a sop of tokenism, a safety valve which drains off potential rebellion. Placing someone, or some group, on a pedestal clearly takes that person or group out of the real order of affairs where decisions are made; it is like “kicking someone upstairs” to get her out of the way. Thus, even the persistence of the positive tradition about woman is ambiguous, though, to be sure, its positive power does persist.

Almost parenthetically, it would also be proper at this point to discuss in a little detail the image of woman and of female-male relations projected in the Song of Songs, since it is classified with the wisdom books in the Septuagint and the Vulgate., though not in the Massoretic Hebrew Bible.

The book as we have it probably comes from the third century B. C. E., though much of the material is considerably older. It is simply love poetry of a woman and a man for each other with no particular “religious” content. Perhaps it was attributed to Solomon, who obviously was not the true author, because he had the reputation of being a great lover. Perhaps the reason it was included in the canon of sacred Scriptures was because it was interpreted allegorically, that is, as reflecting the love of Yahweh for Israel, as some rabbis supposedly argued at Jamnia around 100 C. E., although that does not tell us why it was already included in the Septuagint (third-second century B. C. E.). In any case, it is love poetry, and it reflects an image of woman and female-male relations that fits in the more positive, pre-lapsarian Hebrew tradition.

To begin with, attention focuses immediately on the woman: the book begins and closes with the woman speaking. Furthermore, the woman initiates most of the action and has most of the dialogue; she is active in love-making (e. g., “On my bed, at night, I sought him whom my heart loves,” 3:1). Mother is referred to seven times in the Song, whereas father is not referred to at all. The mothers of both the woman and the man are mentioned: she is called the “darling of her mother” (6:9); of the man reference is made to “where your mother conceived you” (8:5); King Solomon is said to wear the crown “with which his mother crowned him” (3:11); the woman’s brothers are mentioned once as “my mother’s sons” (1:6); in two places the woman takes the initiative by taking the man “into my mother’s house” (3:4. 8:2) for love-making.

One scholar notes that in light of the stress on woman’s role as wife and mother in Hebrew society, it is remarkable that the Song is not interested in these ways of identifying a woman. The Song does not tell us whether the lovers are married or not; marriage is not an issue here. Moreover, “the woman is not a mother, and there are no references to her procreative abilities or interest in childbearing.”²

Some of the most interesting work on the meaning of the Song of Songs has been done by Phyllis Trible, who, among other things, sees the Song as, if not in intent, then at least in fact, a midrash on the Adam and Eve story, a sort of theme and variations. She concludes by saying:

In many ways, then, Song of Songs is a midrash on Genesis 2-3. By variations and reversals it creatively actualizes major motifs and themes of the primeval myth. Female and male are born to mutuality and love. They are naked without shame; they are equal without duplication. They live in gardens where nature joins in celebrating their oneness. Neither couple fits the rhetoric of a male-dominated culture. As equals they confront life and death. But the first couple lose their oneness through disobedience. Consequently, the woman’s desire becomes the man’s dominion. The second couple affirm their oneness through eroticism. Consequently, the man’s desire becomes the woman’s delight. Whatever else it may be, Canticles is a commentary on Genesis 2-3. Paradise Lost is Paradise Regained.³

Thus, we have in the Song of Songs an image of woman that is positive, egalitarian, pre-lapsarian. However, excepting the Song of Songs and the feminine personification of Hagia Sophia in general it is accurate to say the Wisdom literature exhibits an attitude that is quite antithetic towards women. Even the oldest of the material, the book of Proverbs (probably put in its present form in the third or fourth century B. C. E.), is filled with negative sentiments toward women.⁴

Perhaps part of the reason for this negative attitude toward women is that this literature was written by and for men, although this fact by itself surely would not necessitate the negative stance. Moreover, the negative fact that no such (extant) biblical literature was written by and for women (with the possible exception of the Song of Songs) also speaks loudly of the lesser status of women in the later biblical period. Even the books of Esther and Judith do not really offer a counterpoint to this dominant male theme. (See Chapter III-1, Pharisees.)

If there is a sexual transgression it is usually assumed that the woman was the cause of it, whether she was an alien woman or a neighbor’s wife: “Keeping you also from the alien woman, from the stranger,⁵ with her wheedling words ... towards death her house is declining, down to the Shades her paths go. Of those who go to her not one returns, they never regain the paths of life” (Prov. 2: 1619). Shortly afterward the thought is repeated:

Take no notice of the loose-living woman, for the lips of this alien drip with honey, her words are smoother than oil, but their outcome is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lead down to Sheol; far from following the path of life, her ways are undirected, irresponsible ... set your course as far from her as possible, go nowhere near the door of her house, or you will surrender your honour to others, your years to one who has no pity, and strangers will batten on your property, your labors going to some alien house, and, at your ending, when body and flesh are consumed, you will groan (Prov. 5:2-11).

Again it is presumed that the woman is the source of the evil, and especially the alien woman, who will alienate the innocent male’s honor, years, property, labors, and even consume his body and flesh.

Then follow a group of rather striking metaphors that first project the native woman (or lawful wife) not only as a more prudent choice but also clearly as the property of the male, existing for his “refreshment”: “Drink the water from your own cistern, fresh water from your own well. Do not let your fountains flow to waste elsewhere, nor your streams in the public streets. Let them be for yourself alone, not for strangers at the same time. And may your fountain head be blessed!” (Prov. 5: 15-18). The following chapter again warns against evil women: “Preserving you from the wicked woman, from the smooth tongue of the woman who is a stranger” . .. and so on for the next eleven verses (Prov. 6: 24-35).⁶ But the author cannot yet leave the topic of the evil woman, particularly the alien woman (this is all in the post-exilic prologue, chapters 1-9), even repeating his earlier phrases: “To preserve you from the alien woman, from the stranger, with her wheedling words.” Then come twenty verses describing the ways of evil women vis-a-vis innocent men, ending with the familiar dire warning: “Her house is the way to Sheol, the descents to the courts of death” (Prov. 7: 5-27).⁷ Thus far this is the post-exilic material of the book of Proverbs.

The rest of the material of Proverbs (with the exception of the final poem, 31: 10-31, which cannot be dated) is most probably much older, surely pre-exilic, some going back perhaps to the time of Solomon (tenth century). Sexual transgression, particularly with the alien woman, was also warned against here, again in metaphors whose sexual symbolism is hardly veiled: “The mouth of the alien woman is a deep pit, into it falls the man whom Yahweh detests” (22:14). “A harlot is a deep pit, a narrow well, the woman who is a stranger. Yes, like a robber she is on the watch and many are the men she dupes” (23: 27-28). “This is how the adulteress behaves: when she has eaten, she wipes her mouth clean and says, ‘I have done nothing wrong’” (30:20). The rest of the ancient sayings of Proverbs-save the general remarks about indiscreet women: “A golden ring in the snout of a pig is a lovely woman who lacks discretion” (11: 22), and the enervating effect of all women, with language approaching a semen “cult”: “Do not spend all your energy on women, nor your loins on these destroyers of kings” (31: 3)-all refer to the non-virtuous wife, replete with repetitions and near-repetitions: “A gracious woman brings honour to her husband, she who has no love for justice is dishonour enthroned” (11: 16). “A good wife, her husband’s crown, a shameless wife, a cancer in his bones” (12: 3). “A woman’s scolding is like a dripping gutter” (19:13). “The steady dripping of a gutter on a rainy day and a scolding woman are alike. Whoever can restrain her, can restrain the wind, and with right hand grasp oil” (27: 15-16). “Better the corner of a loft to live in than a house shared with a scolding woman” (21: 9 and 25: 24). “Better to live in a desert land than with a scolding and irritable woman” (21: 19). The misery of living with a husband with comparable faults is not mentioned.

There are, however, several places where reference is made to honoring father and mother, or not dishonoring them (e.g., 15: 20; 17: 25; 19: 26; 23: 25; 30: 11, 17)--though in a number of places honoring the father alone is mentioned, but never the mother alone. Then finally comes the capstone, of an unknown date, the oft-quoted paean of praise of the perfect wife, in the form of an alphabetic poem, each verse beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

The “virtuous” wife described here is truly an extraordinary human being. However, the effectiveness of this poem as a testimony of post-exilic Hebrew appreciation of womanhood is somewhat weakened by the fact that the Hebrew gloss, incorporated and developed by the Greek into the final two verses, “seems to show that the scribes understood this whole passage allegorically as a description of Wisdom personified (cf. 8: 22 ff.). This would make it an apt conclusion to the book.”⁸ In regard to the appreciation of womanhood it is much more important to note that, like the few scattered positive remarks about women earlier in the book (the references, for example, to the good wife being the husband’s crown, honoring one’s mother), they are really not about women as such., about women as human beings, but only about women in their relationship to men, i. e., as a man’s wife or a son’s mother. (Men are not similarly treated solely in relational terms.) The book of Proverbs knows almost nothing good about women except insofar as they are for the advantage or profit of men;⁹ this is especially true of the poem on the perfect wife, which is always referred to when an attempt is made to show that the Wisdom literature was not always depreciative, but sometimes even appreciative of womanhood.¹⁰ The husband “will derive no little profit from her. Advantage and not hurt she brings him all the days of her life” (31:11-12). She works uncommonly hard, exercising a great deal of business judgment and responsibility; the result is not that she is given some religious or civic responsibility or honorific title or position-rather her husband is: “Her husband is respected at the city gates, taking his seat among the elders of the land” (31:23). It is no wonder such a woman is appreciated; she is the best model for the perfect servant. Indeed., the impression given by this poem is that thanks to the diligence of the wife, the husband is a man of leisure. The model of the perfect wife held up by the rabbis¹¹ is still seen today in Mea Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox sector of Jerusalem. In return for her complete self-sacrifice she is given praise by the men: “Her sons [children in RSV] stand up and proclaim her blessed., her husband, too, sings her praises” (31:28), and by those gathered at the city gates: “let her work tell her praises at the city gates” (31:31). She is allowed to share in the fruits of her labor: “Give her a share in what her hands have worked for”¹² (31:31).

The rest of the biblical Wisdom literature is all postexilic, coming down to within a little more than a generation of the Common Era. Ecclesiastes was written around the middle of the third century B. C. E.; Ecclesiasticus, or Ben Sira, about the middle of the second century B. C. E. ;¹³ and the Wisdom of Solomon, the middle of the first century B.C.E. Like Proverbs before them, all three of these books are addressed solely to men, apparently presuming that they alone needed to be instructed in wisdom. Time and again phrases like “happy the man who...” or “wretched the man who...” or “my son, do not...” occur throughout this literature, and it is really the man, the male, that is in the author’s mind.

In the latest of the books, the Wisdom of Solomon, outside of the feminine personification of Wisdom discussed above, there is nothing at all of significance about women.

Ecclesiastes is an unusually short book, twelve brief chapters, and also has unusually little to say about women. Outside of a few metaphorical references to women and an exhortation to marital fidelity (9: 9), the only reference to women is an especially vitriolic and bitter one: “I find woman more bitter than death; she is a snare, her heart a net, her arms are chains” (7: 26). Here the remarks are not like the statements praising women; that is, they are not directed toward them as relationships, as mothers or wives of men. Rather the statements are directed toward women as such: “I find woman,” not “my woman.” This would seem to fulfill the definition of misogynism, of woman-hating. The author then raises misogynism to the level of a religious virtue: “He who is pleasing to God eludes her, but the sinner is her captive” (7: 27). Here there is no pretense of a virtuous rejection of woman as a prostitute or adulteress; all women have been reduced to essential evil. Of course, in general Ecclesiastes is very pessimistic, as is reflected, among other places, in his remark that only one man in a thousand is “better than the rest.” This is surely a relatively low estimate of men; but his condemnation of women is absolute: “but never a woman” (7: 29).

Ecclesiasticus, or Ben Sira, is a deuterocanonical book (also referred to as one of the apocrypha, as is also the Wisdom of Solomon) of the second century B.C. E.; it is therefore found in the Catholic Bible but not the Hebrew or Protestant Bibles. However, it was quoted by the rabbis (the New Testament Epistle of James borrows many expressions from it, and, next to the Psalms, it is the “Old Testament” book most frequently quoted in the Christian liturgy). The author, Ben Sira, lived in Palestine at a time of expanding Hellenist influence, and opposed it vigorously. As a defense he emphasized the Jewish tradition, the Law, Torah. He was conscious and proud of the abilities of the man learned in the Law, the scribe. Wisdom was the privilege of the scribe (39: 1 ff.), whose supremacy in wisdom was described in the most enthusiastic terms. However, the apogee of his enthusiasm was reached in the description of Simon, the son of Onias, the high priest, who was described in all his priestly array as he appeared in the temple at the great festivals. “Ben Sira represents a phase of development in which the wise man has become the scribe, the man learned in the Law of Moses.... In his attitude toward the Law and its observance he seems to belong to that group which later became the Sadducees rather than to the Pharisees.”¹⁴

Ben Sira’s opposition to expanding Hellenism by emphasizing Jewish particularity would automatically lead him to an anti-feminist position on two counts: one, since a growing freedom and equality for women was a part of Hellenism,¹⁵ a rejection of Hellenism would tend to include a rejection of this more positive attitude toward women; two, the need to shelter Jewish women from the malign influences of Hellenism (especially its feminism), would tend to reinforce the restrictions on Jewish women-who could not be fortified by the study of the Law. Moreover, this exclusion of women from the study of Torah,¹⁶ coupled with Ben Sira’s exaltation of its study, would also incline him toward an anti-woman attitude. In fact, in this regard, Ben Sira fits perfectly the women-denigrating and even, at times, misogynist patterns in other authors of Wisdom literature. The quality of woman-hating of the century older and brief Ecclesiastes is easily matched by Ben Sira. But in the quantity of misogynism the older author is far outstripped by the later one.

Ben Sira discusses women from various aspects: as mothers, daughters, wives, sexual sinners, and as women as such. Only in the first category and partly in the third are his statements in any way positive. There are two brief passages reinforcing the commandment, “Honor thy father and mother” (3:3-6; 7:27-28). But for Ben Sira the great value of mothers is to bear sons; daughters are obviously undesirable: “The birth of a daughter is a loss!” (22:3). The only concern for daughters, it would seem, is to maintain their physical virginity and get them married, the proper age for marriage for girls being twelve and half years old: “Have you daughters? Take care of their bodies, but do not be over-indulgent. Marry a daughter off, and your cares will vanish; but give her to a man of sense.... A sensible daughter will obtain her husband, but a shameless one is a grief to her father. An insolent daughter puts father and mother to shame and will be disowned by both” (7:24-25 ... 22:4-5). (In contrast to this is the care exhibited for sons: “A man who educates his son will be the envy of his enemy” 30:3.)

For Ben Sira daughters are, from one point of view, nothing but painful burdens; from another view they are totally creatures of sex:

A daughter is a deceptive treasure for her father, the worry she gives him drives away his sleep: in her youth, in case she never marries; married, in case she should be disliked; as a virgin, in case she should be defiled and found with child in her father’s house; having a husband, in case she goes astray; married, in case she should be barren. Your daughter is headstrong? Keep a sharp look-out that she does not make you the laughingstock of your enemies, the talk of the town, the object of common gossip, and put you to public shame. (42:9-11)

There does not seem to be overly much concern about the evils themselves or the bad effects they will have on the daughter. Almost the only worry is what will happen to the man, the father, as a result of the daughter’s evil deeds. Again, the female’s existence seems to be summed up in her relationship to a male.

Ben Sira goes even further in his rejection of any kind of independence in a female offspring, describing her as “headstrong,” heaping abuse on her for her putative future behavior, again in language that has a very transparent sex symbolism--and given the extraordinary restrictions in girl’s and women’s contact with men and the very early non-love match marriages, it was doubtless at times a self-fulfilling prophecy: “Keep a headstrong daughter under firm control, or she will abuse any indulgence she receives. Keep a strict watch on her shameless eye, do not be surprised if she disgraces you. Like a thirsty traveler she will open her mouth and drink any water she comes across; she will sit in front of every peg, and open her quiver to any arrow” (26:10-12).¹⁷

Ben Sira has a number of positive things to say about good wives, albeit such goodness is often enough expressed clearly in terms of advantage or profit to the husband: “Happy the man who keeps house with a sensible wife” (25:8). “Happy the husband of a really good wife; the number of his days will be doubled. A perfect wife is the joy of her husband, he will live out the years of his life in peace. A good wife is the best of portions, reserved for those who fear the Lord” (26:1-3). The “feminine” qualities of submissiveness are then praised highly: “The grace of a wife will charm her husband, her accomplishments will make him the stronger. A silent wife is a gift from the Lord, no price can be put on a well-trained character. A modest wife is a boon twice over, a chaste character cannot be weighed on scales. Like the sun rising over the mountains of the Lord is the beauty of a good wife in a well-kept house... .” (26:13-16). Within this submissive context Ben Sira even knows to praise physical beauty:

Like the lamp shining on the sacred lamp-stand is a beautiful face on a well-proportioned body. Like golden pillars on a silver base are shapely legs on firm-set heels.... A woman’s beauty delights the beholder, a man likes nothing better. If her tongue is kind and gentle, her husband has no equal among the sons of men. The man who takes a wife has the makings of a fortune, a helper that suits him, and a pillar to lean on. (26:17-18; 36:22-24)

Not all the remarks about wives, however, are positive. Some are vaguely ominous, as: “Do not turn against a wise and good wife.... Have you a wife to your liking? Do not turn her out; but if you dislike her, never trust her” (7:19, 26). Some are rather threatening comparisons: “A godless wife is assigned to a transgressor as his fortune, but a devout wife given to the man who fears the Lord. A shameless wife takes pleasure in disgracing herself, a modest wife is diffident even with her husband. A headstrong wife is a shameless bitch, but one with a sense of shame fears the Lord. A wife who respects her husband will be acknowledged wise by all, but one who proudly despises him will be known by all as wicked” (26:23-26).

In many instances pure vitriol is poured on the wife (reminiscent of Proverbs 21:9, 19; 25:24; 27:15):

I would sooner keep house with a lion or a dragon than keep house with a spiteful wife. A wife’s spite changes the appearance of her husband and makes him look like a bear. When her husband goes out to dinner with his neighbours, he cannot help heaving bitter sighs....¹⁸ Low spirits, gloomy face, stricken heart: such the achievements of a spiteful wife. Slack hands and sagging knees indicate a wife who makes her husband wretched.... A bad wife is a badly fitting ox yoke, trying to master her is like grasping a scorpion. A drunken wife will goad anyone to fury, she makes no effort to hide her degradation. (25:16-18, 23; 26:7 -8)

Sometimes the scorn comes in the form of “humor”: “As climbing up a sandhill is for elderly feet, such is a garrulous wife for a quiet husband.... A loud-mouthed, gossiping wife is like a trumpet sounding a charge, and any man saddled with one spends his life in the turmoil of war” (25:20; 26:27). The wife as breadwinner is bitterly rejected: “Bad temper, insolence and shame hold sway where the wife supports the husband” (25:22).

Ben Sira, like Proverbs and other biblical writers before him, delivers admonitions for the would-be wise man to be on the outlook against women who will lead him astray sexually. Also like Proverbs (31:3) Ben Sira issues dire warnings against the alien women in language that uses very plain sexual metaphors and at times approaches a semen “cult”: “My son, preserve the bloom of your youth and do not waste your strength on strangers. Search the whole plain for a fertile field, sow your own seed there, trusting in your own good stock. Thus your offspring will survive, they will grow great, confident of their breeding. A woman for hire is not worth spitting at, but a lawful wife is as strong as a tower” (26:19-22). Moreover, every manner of woman is warned against: prostitutes, married women, singing women, handsome women, virgins, and just women:

Do not give your soul to a woman, for her to trample on your strength. Do not keep company with a harlot in case you get entangled in her snares. Do not dally with a singing girl, in case you get caught by her wiles. Do not stare at a virgin, in case you and she incur the same punishment. Do not give your soul to whores, or you will ruin your inheritance. Keep your eyes to yourself in the streets of a town, do not prowl about its unfrequented quarters. Turn your eyes away from a handsome woman, do not stare at the beauty that belongs to someone else. Woman’s beauty has led many astray; it kindles desire like a flame. Do not have much conversation with a married woman and do not conduct long discussions with her¹⁹ (9:2-9).

The beauty of any woman is seen as a danger: “Do not be taken in by a woman’s beauty, never lose your head over a woman!, (25:21).

Ben Sira does seem to move in the direction of placing a moral onus on the man not to commit adultery, or indeed fornication or masturbation (23:16-17).²⁰ However, a comparison between the warning against the adulterer and against the adulteress is instructive. Though Ben Sira goes beyond most of his biblical predecessors in demanding “moral uprightness” in sexual matters from husbands, there still is clearly a double standard involved. Only a general threat of punishment “in view of the whole town” is leveled against the man (actually only if the woman involved was married could the man be punished legally, and that because he had violated the rights of the other husband over his property, his wife). The threat against the adulteress is overwhelming-adulteresses apparently were still to be put to death regardless of the marital state of the man they consorted with;²¹ even her children and her memory were to be punished and forever stained (23:21-26).

It is not just prostitutes, adulteresses, daughters in general and all but submissive wives that receive invective from Ben Sira. Women in general are bitterly abused by him with an intensity that surpasses previous biblical misogynism. It would also seem that for Ben Sira all women are nymphomaniacs,²² at least in a passive sense: “A woman will accept any husband, but some daughters are better than others” (36:21). For Ben Sira it also seems that all women were spiteful by nature: “Do not let water find a leak, do not allow a spiteful woman free rein for her tongue. If she will not do as you tell her, get rid of her.... For a moth comes out of clothes, and woman’s spite out of woman” (25:25-26). He pushes the matter further: “Any spite rather than the spite of a woman!” (25:13). And still further: “A man’s spite is preferable to a woman’s kindness; women give rise to shame and reproach” (42:13-14). indeed, to Ben Sira women are the greatest evil in the world by far! “No wickedness comes anywhere near the wickedness of a woman, may a sinner’s lot be hers!” (25:19). Woman is not only the greatest of evils, but in fact the cause of all evil: “Sin began with a woman, and thanks to her we all must die” (25:24).

Note should also be taken here of the attitude toward women reflected in other Near Eastern wisdom literature. Such literature was widespread in the ancient Near East, including especially Egypt. Since there was a considerable mutual awareness of this wisdom literature,²³ a great deal of similarity can be expected.²⁴ It appears that the Egyptian wisdom literature was, like the Hebrew, written by and for men; the image of women in it consequently is likewise that of a relationship to men. The pertinent passages are as follows:²⁵

If thou desirest to make friendship last in a home to which thou hast access as master, as a brother, or as a friend, into any place where thou mightest enter, beware of approaching the women. It does not go well with the place where that is done. The face has no alertness by splitting. A thousand men may be distracted from their [own] advantage. One is made a fool by limbs of fayence, as she stands [there], become [all] carnelian. A mere trifle, the likeness of a dream-and one attains death through knowing her.... Do not do it-it is really an abomination-and thou shalt be free from sickness of heart every day.

If thou art a man of standing, thou shouldst found thy household and love thy wife at home as is fitting. Fill her belly; clothe her back. Ointment is the prescription for her body. Make her heart glad as long as thou livest. She is a profitable field for her lord. Thou shouldst not contend with her at law, and keep her far from gaining control.... Her eye is her stormwind. Let her heart be soothed through what may accrue to thee; it means keeping her long in thy house.

Take to thyself a wife while thou art (still) a youth, that she may produce a son for thee. Beget [him] for thyself while thou art (still) young. Teach him to be a man.

Be on thy guard against a woman from abroad, who is not known in her (own) town. Do not stare at her when she passes by. Do not know her carnally: a deep water, whose windings one knows not, a woman who is far away from her husband. ‘I am sleek,’ she says to thee every day. She has no witnesses when she waits to ensnare thee. It is a great crime (worthy) of death, when one hears of it.

Thou shouldst not supervise (too closely) thy wife in her (own) house, when thou knowest that she is efficient. Do not say to her: ‘Where is it? Fetch (it) for us!’ when she has put (it) in the (most) useful place. Let thy eye have regard, while thou art silent that thou mayest recognize her abilities. How happy it is when thy hand is with her! Many are here who do not know what a man should do to stop dissension in his house.... Every man who is settled in a house should hold the hasty heart firm. Thou shouldst not pursue after a woman; do not let her steal away thy heart.

The image of woman in this Egyptian wisdom literature is that of a wife or mother or harlot, i. e., she is always seen in relationship to a man. As in the parallel Hebrew wisdom literature, men are warned to avoid adultery’ and particularly to avoid the alien woman, and urged to take a good wife who will produce sons, taking care to deal with their wives with care and concern. But nothing like the outpouring of anger and misogynism on bad wives and all manner of women which appears in the Hebrew wisdom literature is to be found in this parallel Egyptian wisdom literature. This is doubtless a reflection of the relatively high status women enjoyed at various times in Egyptian history discussed above; at the same time this literature likewise reflects the fact that women in Egypt also experienced a relatively lower status for long periods of time, and even in the “higher” periods never attained complete equality with men in all areas of life.

In the area of Babylon where, after the ancient Sumerian period, the status of women was quite uniformly low, it is not surprising that we find a warning both against harlots, very like that found in Proverbs 7:6-27:

Or the house which she enters will be destroyed, her husband will not prosper. ²⁶

Also the one reference found in Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Texts which focuses on woman as such rather than on woman as wife, mother, or harlot, and which expresses a deep misogynism:

‘Servant, obey me.’ Yes, my lord, yes. ‘A woman will I love.’ Yes, love, my lord, love. The man who loves a woman forgets pain and trouble. ‘No servant, a woman I shall not love.’ [Do not love, ] my lord, do not [love]. Woman is a well, woman is a iron dagger-a sharp one!-which cuts a man’s neck. ²⁷

It appears that with the passage of time there was a clear movement in the attitude of the authors of the Hebrew Wisdom literature toward women. In the earlier materials from Proverbs the attitude was androcentric, exploitative, often set in a broader framework of anti-foreign racism. In the later literature, Ecclesiastes and Ben Sira, the attitude of the authors, without necessarily abandoning those earlier qualities, shifts toward an explicit misogynism, a hatred of women as such. Whether or not this progressively more repressive stance vis-a-vis women in the post-exilic biblical period was continued in the pseudepigraphical and rabbinic literature will be investigated in the following pages. (Whether the late post-exilic materials also represent a degeneration of the Hebrew attitude toward women when compared with all the rest of the pre-exilic biblical materials-as at first blush they would seem to do-is a judgment that will have to await a careful analysis of the earlier materials.)

It is clear, however, that the two traditions about women, the pre-lapsarian, positive one, and the post-lapsarian, negative one, are expressed in the Wisdom literature: there is the humanistic, egalitarian male-female love of the Song of Songs, the feminine personification of divine Wisdom (despite its pedestal-pusher problematic), and the positive sayings about women in relation to men-i. e., good daughters, good wives, good mothers. Nevertheless, under the force of evidence, it must be concluded that the pre-lapsarian tradition tends to fade and the post-lapsarian to come to the fore, and that the attitude toward women expressed in the biblical Wisdom literature is very strongly, even overwhelmingly, negative, reaching at times the peaks of hatred. Such evidence cannot, of course, automatically be taken by itself as absolute proof that the general attitude of the Jewish population toward women was also so strongly negative. But in conjunction with other evidence to be discussed below it must at least be said that it tends in that direction. At the same time it should be noted that aside from the question of whether the Wisdom literature’s misogynism was reflective of the population’s attitude toward women or not, because this literature was widely read, studied, commented on, and quoted, it had a great influence which consequently tended to make its misogynism in fact reflective of reality.²⁸

Judaism did not cease producing religious literature after the last canonical book of the Bible was written (whether in the Hebrew or Septuagint canon). In the period from the end of the second century B. C. E. to the end of the first century C. E. a large number of religious writings welled forth from Jewish pens; they are usually referred to as pseudepigraphal (or apocryphal in Catholic tradition) writings, because they were often attributed to an earlier writer to lend them a greater authoritative quality.²⁹ They were all written in about a century or so just before or after the beginning of the Common Era and provide us with continuing evidence on the status of women in the formative period of Judaism.³⁰

The Letter of Aristeas was composed between 130 and 70 B. C. E. by an Alexandrian Jew. In only one place does the author speak about women, and there in the traditional deprecatory manner: “Womankind are by nature headstrong and energetic in the pursuit of their own desires, and subject to sudden changes of opinion through fallacious reasoning, and their nature is essentially weak” (vs. 25). Here another small, but very solid, link in the chain of misogynism is forged.

Aristeas makes another remark which, although it is not directly about women, nevertheless provides a psychological insight helpful in understanding how, side by side with the already broadly evidenced deep-seated misogynism in ancient Jewish culture, there could also exist customs and sayings praising the good wife as the husband’s crown, etc. Aristeas states: “for it is a recognized principle that ... the human race loves those who are willing to be in subjection to them” (vs. 257).³¹

Another pertinent work, The Book of Adam and Eve, was probably composed in the first century C. E. by a diaspora Jew, perhaps an Alexandrian.³² The already prevalent idea that sexual sin was the “mother of all evils,”³³ was continued in this work: “Lust is the beginning and root of every sin.”³⁴ In speaking of the action of the serpent in tempting Eve, the Book of Adam and Eve said that the serpent “poured upon the fruit the poison of his wickedness, which is lust, the root and beginning of every sin, and he bent the branch on the earth and I took of the fruit and I ate.” (It is interesting to note that a rabbi of the first century C. E., Johanan ben Zackai, apparently expressed a similar idea so forcefully that it was recalled at least three different times in the Babylonian Talmud. He made the first woman, the symbol of all women, guilty of bestiality-the devil did not pour his semen of sin, lust, on the fruit, but rather injected it directly into Eve via sexual intercourse: “For Rabbi Johanan stated: When the serpent copulated with Eve, he infused her with lust.”³⁵ “Rabbi Johanan said: When the serpent came unto Eve he infused filthy lust into her.”³⁶ “For when the serpent came upon Eve he injected a lust into her.”³⁷ Modern psychologists were not the first to see the serpent as a phallic symbol.)

But here a new dimension is added; in retelling the story of Adam and Eve, the author makes it very clear that Eve, not Adam., was the primary sinner in the garden of Eden: “And Eve said to Adam: Live thou, my lord,³⁸ to thee life is granted, since thou hast committed neither the first nor the second error. But I have erred and been led astray for I have not kept the commandment of God; and now banish me from the light of thy life and I will go to the sunsetting, and there will I be, until I die.”³⁹ In another place Eve again confesses, rather magnanimously, to being the primary cause of suffering and pain in the world: “And Eve wept and said: ‘My lord Adam, rise up and give me half of thy trouble and I will endure it; for it is on my account that this hath happened to thee, on my account thou art beset with toils and troubles.’”⁴⁰ A variant version has it: “And when Eve had seen him weeping, she also began to weep herself, and said: ‘O Lord my God, hand over to me his pain, for it is I who sinned.’ And Eve said to Adam: ‘My lord, give me a part of thy pains, for this hath come to thee from fault of mine.’”⁴¹ Adam was less magnanimous; he made it very clear that he thought that Eve was the cause of all his-and our-sin and suffering: “And Adam saith to Eve: ‘Eve, what hast thou wrought in us? Thou hast brought upon us great wrath which is death, (lording it over all our face).”⁴² A variant version is even more explicit in Adam’s condemnation of Eve: “And Adam said to Eve: ‘What hast thou done? A great plague hast thou brought upon us, transgression and sin for all our generations; and this which thou hast done, tell thy children after my death, (for those who rise from us shall toil and fail but they shall be wanting and curse us and say, ‘All evil have our parents brought upon us, who were at the beginning.’). When Eve heard these words, she began to weep and moan.”⁴³

If it were not already clear that Eve was thought of as the source of death,⁴⁴ the author has Adam state the claim again quite bluntly: “And Adam said to him [his son Seth]: ‘When God made us, me and your mother, through whom also I die.. ..’”⁴⁵ The same notion of Eve as the cause of death occurs even more blatantly in another pseudepigraphal diaspora Jewish work, probably of the first century C. E., The Book of the Secrets of Enoch: “And I put sleep into him and he fell asleep. And I took from him a rib, and created him a wife, that death should come to him by his wife.”⁴⁶

According to the author of the Book of Adam and Eve it is not only the sin, suffering, and death of humanity that is to be laid at the feet of woman, Eve, but also the whole revolt of the animal kingdom against man:

And Eve saw her son, and a wild beast assailing him, and Eve wept and said: ‘Woe is me; if I come to the day of the Resurrection, all those who have sinned will curse me saying: Eve hath not kept the commandment of God.’ And she spake to the beast: ‘Thou wicked beast , fearest thou not to fight with the image of God? How was thy mouth opened? How were thy teeth made strong? How didst thou not call to mind thy subjection? For long ago wast thou made subject to the image of God.’ Then the beast cried out and said: ‘It is not our concern, Eve, thy greed and thy wailing, but thine own for (it is) from thee that the rule of the beasts hath arisen. How was thy mouth opened to eat of the tree concerning which God enjoined thee not to eat of it? On this account, our nature also hath been transformed.⁴⁷

Two of the most important and influential of the pseudepigraphal books were probably written by Pharisees. These same two documents also dealt in some detail with relations to women, and hence help set the tone for the Pharisees’ attitude toward women that persisted to the end of the Second Temple period (70 C. E.)-and afterward through the “successors” of the Pharisees, the rabbis (to be discussed in detail below).

The Book of Jubilees was written between 109 and 105 B. C. E.⁴⁸ and in certain limited aspects is extremely important for the student of religion. Without it we could of course have inferred from Ezra and Nehemiah, the Priests’ Code, and the later chapters of Zechariah the supreme position that the Torah had achieved in Judaism, but without Jubilees we could hardly have imagined such an absolute supremacy of the Law as is expressed there. “Jubilees represents the triumph of the movement, which had been at work for the past three centuries or more.”⁴⁹ For the author of Jubilees the Torah was of eternal validity. It was not the expression of the religious consciousness of one or a number of sages, but the revelation in time of what was valid from the beginning and for always. “The ideal of the faithful Jew was to be realized in the fulfillment of the moral and ritual precepts of this law: the latter were of no less importance than the former.”⁵⁰ Hence what is portrayed here as part of the Torah or the background to it is of the first importance, insofar as this book was read and had an influence-which was widespread.⁵¹

The matter that seemed to be uppermost in the mind of the author(s) of Jubilees-and also the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs-in their dealings with women was the avoidance of fornication, particularly with foreign women. In their symbolic representation as the Canaanite wives of Esau (The Book of Jubilees is cast in the form of a retelling of the story of Genesis), such women are described as evil and lustful-a combination of the extremely negative attitude toward foreign women and the notion that every woman is a nymphomaniac: “For all their deeds are fornication and lust, and there is no righteousness with them, for (their deeds) are evil” (25:1).”

But this attack on any kind of sexual contact, even, or rather, especially in legal marriage with foreign women, reached an extraordinarily extreme point later in the book. There it was stated, and repeatedly re-stated, that it was a shameful sin for Jews and non-Jews to inter-marry; all involved were to be killed, including the Jewish father who gave his daughter in (mixed) marriage: “And if there is any man who wishes in Israel to give his daughter or his sister to any man who is of the seed of the Gentiles he shall surely die, and they shall stone him with stones; for he hath wrought shame in Israel; and they shall burn the woman with fire, because she has dishonoured the name of the house of her father, and she shall be rooted out of Israel” (30:7). (That it would be almost impossible for a thirteen year old girl to resist the decision of her all-powerful father was apparently not considered important by the author.) The author continued:

For Israel is holy unto the Lord, and every man who has defiled (it) shall surely die: they shall stone him with stones ... regarding all the seed of Israel: for he who defileth (it) shall surely die., and he shall be stoned with stones.... And do thou, Moses, command the children of Israel and exhort them not to give their daughters to the Gentiles, and not to take for their sons any of the daughters of the Gentiles, for this is abominable before the Lord.... And it is a reproach to Israel, to those who give, and to those that take the daughters of the Gentiles; for this is unclean and abominable to Israel. And Israel will not be free from this uncleanness if it has a wife of the daughters of the Gentiles, or has given any of its daughters to a man who is of any of the Gentiles. For there will be plague upon plague, and curse upon curse, and every judgment and plague and curse will come upon him: if he do this thing, or hide his eyes from those who commit uncleanness (30:8-15).

Here the effort to maintain the Israelite “seed” undefiled resulted in demands of punishment far in excess of those recorded in Ezra, Nehemiah and the Wisdom literature.⁵²

It was not just with foreign women that the observant Jew was to avoid sexual intercourse, but all women (other than his wife). Through the figure of Abraham it is advised that “we should keep ourselves from all fornication and uncleanness (and renounce from amongst us all fornication and uncleanness)” (20:3). In the immediate context the charge is repeated again: “And guard yourselves from all fornication and uncleanness” (20:6). It is also there recalled that the giants and Sodomites “died on account of their fornication, and uncleanness, and mutual corruption through fornication” (20:5). If there was any question concerning the seriousness and fundamental quality of sexual intercourse outside of wedlock (even “spiritual” fornication was forbidden: “Let them not commit fornication with her after their eyes and their hearts”-20:4), it was laid to rest a little later when it was stated unambiguously that “there is no greater sin than the fornication which they commit on earth” (33:20). The one who was to suffer most of all from such sins was the woman: “And if any woman or maid commit fornication amongst you, burn her with fire” (20:4). (There is no mention here of any punishment whatsoever to be meted out to the man involved.)⁵³ Such a fundamental grounding of evil in sex and meting out of punishment to women tended to imply and further a misogynist attitude in males-and in females by way of self-hatred.

The second important pseudepigraphal book perhaps written by a Pharisee, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs., was composed at almost the same time as the Book of Jubilees, that is, between 109 and 106 B. C. E.⁵⁴ It too was greatly concerned with fornication as the “mother of all evils” (5:3), but it exhibited a much more generous attitude toward the Gentiles than did Jubilees; the author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs held a basically universalistic view of salvation: “And the twelve tribes shall be gathered together there, and all the Gentiles, until the Most High shall send forth His salvation.”⁵⁵ As a consequence there is none of the diatribe of Jubilees against sexual contact with foreign women, though there is a slight residue of the feminine xenophobic attitude in the Testament of Judah (14:7).

However, as noted, fornication was viewed with such a repeatedly expressed horror that the author’s attitude approached that of an idée fixe: “For a pit unto the soul is the sin of fornication, separating it from God, and bringing it near to idols, because it deceiveth the mind and understanding, and leadeth down young men into Hades before their time” (Testament of Reuben 4:6). Here fornication was seen as a fundamental sin, leading to death. The next verse says much the same: “For many hath fornication destroyed; because, though a man be old or noble, or rich or poor, he bringeth reproach upon himself with the sons of men and derision with Beliar” (Testament of Reuben 4:7).⁵⁶ Again the author said: “Beware, therefore, of fornication” (Testament of Reuben 6:1). And still further: “For in fornication there is neither understanding nor godliness, and all jealousy dwelleth in the lust thereof,” (Testament of Reuben 6:4).

In the author’s “rule of truth” the avoidance of fornication was primary: “And now my son I will show the rule of the truth.... First, take heed to thyself my son against all lust and uncleanness, and against all fornication.”⁵⁷ The author added elsewhere that fornication has grave, massive consequences: “He that committeth fornication is not aware where he suffers loss, and is not ashamed when put to dishonor. For even though a man be a king and commit fornication” (Testament of Judah 15:1-2). This description of the consequences of fornication still did not satisfy the author. He found it necessary a short while later to spell out in great detail the effects he saw flowing from fornication-and there seemed to be little missing:

Beware, therefore, my children, of fornication...(for they) withdraw you from the law of God, and blind the inclination of the soul, and teach arrogance, and suffer not a man to have compassion upon his neighbor. They rob his soul of all goodness, and oppress him with toils and troubles, and drive away sleep from him, and devour his flesh. And he hinders the sacrifices of God; and he remembers when he speaks, and resents the words of godliness. For being a slave to the passions contrary to the commandments of God and because they have blinded his soul, he walketh in the day as in the night. (Testament of Judah 18:2-6).

Still later the author again took up the specific question of fornication and bluntly labeled it the fountainhead of all evil-sex is the source of sin: “Beware, therefore, of fornication, for fornication is the mother of all evils, separating from God, and bringing near to Beliar” (Testament of Simeon 5:3). Indeed, as in the Wisdom literature,⁵⁸ there was even a strong hint of a sort of “sacred semen”: “Defile not thy seed with harlots; for thou art a holy seed, and holy is thy seed like the holy place” (Testament of Simeon 5:17).

The author moved a step further and urged not only the avoidance of illicit sexual intercourse, but also “spiritual” fornication, that is, with the eyes or mind:⁵⁹ “Do you, therefore, my children, flee evil-doing and cleave to goodness. For he that hath it looketh not on a woman with view to fornication and he beholdeth no defilement” (Testament of Benjamin 8:1-2).⁶⁰ In the Testament of Issachar the author claimed, “I never committed fornication by the uplifting of my eyes” (7:2). This step of urging the avoidance of sexual fantasy is, of course, psychologically understandable, but the matter did not remain there. The conclusion of the author was to see in the beauty of women a source of evil which at all costs should be avoided: “And now, I command you, my children, not to ... gaze upon the beauty of women” (Testament of Judah 17:1). “Pay no heed to the face of a woman, nor associate with another man’s wife, nor meddle with the affairs of womankind” (Testament of Reuben 3:10). Again: “Pay no heed, therefore, my children, to the beauty of women, nor set your mind on their affairs” (Testament of Reuben 4:1). And still again: “And the spirits of deceit have no power against him, for he looketh not on the beauty of women, lest he should pollute his mind with corruption” (Testament of Issachar 4:4).

From this attitude of the need to avoid women out of fear, it is but a brief step to outright misogynism, of seeing women as such as evil; every woman leads the essentially “good” man down to evil. The author takes that step: “For women are evil, my children; and since they have no power or strength over man, they use wiles by outward attractions, that they may draw him to themselves. And whom they cannot bewitch by outward attractions, him they overcome by craft” (Testament of Reuben 5:1-2). Somewhat as in Ben Sira, the author proceeded to describe how women in general went about spreading their evil: “By means of their adornment they instil the poison, and then through the accomplished act they take them captive. For a woman cannot force a man openly, but by a harlot’s bearing she beguiles him” (Testament of Reuben 5:3-4). The “logical” conclusion is then drawn by the author, namely, that all women should reject attractive clothing, jewelry and cosmetics: “Command your wives and daughters, that they adorn not their heads and faces,” and woe to the woman who nevertheless does, “because every woman who useth these wiles hath been reserved for eternal punishment” (Testament of Reuben 5:5). (At this point the author described how the women allured the angels to their fall., that is, to fornication; they did so by adornments and cosmetics.)⁶¹ In the end the principle, which was already seen in Ben Sira, was put forth, namely, that every woman is a nymphomaniac. It was expressed in the Testament of Reuben in the strongest possible form: “Moreover, concerning them (women), the angel of the Lord told me, and taught me, that women are overcome by the spirit of fornication more than men, and in their heart they plot against men” (Testament of Reuben 5:3).

Conclusion? “Guard your senses from every woman. And command the women likewise not to associate with men” (Testament of Reuben 6:1-2). Contact between men and women, “even though the ungodly deed be not wrought,” was seen as “an irremediable disease” for the women and as a “destruction of Beliar and an eternal reproach” for the men (Testament of Reuben 6:3-4).

The misogynism of the (Pharisee?) author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs seems rather complete. ⁶²

This then is basically all the pertinent material about women to be found in the pseudepigraphical, or apocalyptic, literature-other than the Dead Sea materials, which will be treated separately later. As can be seen, it is all quite negative in its estimate of women (other than the neutral) purely narrative portions); it does not even contain the few positive evaluations of “good” wives found in some of the Wisdom literature. The prel-apsarian, positive, tradition seems to be nowhere in evidence. Thus, the developing misogynism was sustained, and even intensified.

The question needs to be asked at this point why the status of women in post-exilic Judaism, at least as far as this is reflected in the literature of the period, appears to have declined, especially when women in Hellenistic culture appeared to be improving their status throughout a similar period. Perhaps what was suggested above (p. 38) concerning Ben Sira’s anti-woman attitude is at the basis of the increasingly repressive attitude taken toward women by Jewish writers throughout the post-exilic period. Positively, there was the need to stress the identity, the unity of the Jewish people; negatively, it was important to ward off outside influences which could confuse and dilute that identity and unity.

The need to develop such in-group/out-group defenses in the early post-Exile centuries, in view of the return of such a relatively small group of Jews, is patent. The traditional stress within a patriarchal society, like that of the Hebrews, on continuing the male line in general leads to the sexual restriction of women far beyond that of men (e. g., polygyny but not polyandry being allowed). But the condition of the embattled remnant obviously forced the Jews to take even more drastic measures to retain group identity and unity, as is evidenced by the radical negative actions of Ezra & Nehemiah. After the conquest of the area by Alexander the Great toward the end of the 4th century B.C.E. and the subsequent spread of Hellenistic culture, the repressive Jewish attitude intensified even more, as can be seen in Ben Sira, the Book of Jubilees, and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. The Hellenistic culture proved increasingly attractive and pervasive, and those Jews who saw it as a threat to Jewish identity felt that they had to insulate the Jewish community from its enervating influences. By increasing restrictions half the population, the female half, was thereby more surely removed from Hellenism’s baleful blandishments; such moves also tended to lessen the Hellenizing influence non-Jewish women had on the male half of the Jewish community. Such an approach was also reinforced by the knowledge that a significant element in the to-be-rejected Hellenistic culture was the relatively much higher status of women in religion and society.

As noted, of the last two pseudepigraphal books just analyzed, one most probably, and the other perhaps, was written by early Pharisees. Outside of the teachings of the Pharisees reflected in the rabbinic documents (and to some extent the New Testament), they are, along with Josephus, our best sources of information concerning their attitude toward women. Since the rabbinic writings will be treated at length later and since the pertinent material in Josephus is brief, it would be helpful to present Josephus’ material here so as to provide, along with the completed analyses of the Book of Jubilees and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (realizing that the latter’s relevance here is quite tentative), a basis for an initial evaluation of the attitude of the Pharisees toward women: Josephus described himself as having been a Pharisee entrusted with considerable leadership. Concerning women he said: “The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man.” He drew the consequence from this position: “Let her accordingly be submissive,” and added a slightly ameliorative phrase-which changed nothing: “not for her humiliation, but that she may be directed; for the authority has been given by God to the man.”¹

The evidence of these sources indicates that the Pharisees thought of women as “in all things inferior to the man,” as “evil,” as “overcome by the spirit of fornication more than men,” as ones who “in their heart plot against men,” and that every man should “guard (his) senses from every woman.” Such an attitude could hardly be without wide social effects in the areas which came under the influence of the Pharisees.

Joseph Klausner² would seem to argue that the opposite is the case, not only for the early Pharisees, but also for the whole Hasmonean period., i. e. the first and second centuries before the Common Era:

The social position of women in any land is evidence of the country’s cultural state.... In general, the status of women in Judea was improved under the Hasmoneans. The legend about the mother and her seven sons during Antiochus’ persecution shows that the nation knew how to appreciate the dignified and patriotic stand taken by the Jewish woman. Mention should also be made of the fine relationship depicted in the Book of Tobit (the father) and his wife Anna, between Tobiah (the son) and Sarah, and between Raguel and Edna, whom he calls ‘my sister,’ just as the ‘beloved’ calls his love in the Song of gongs. All this is reliable evidence that the general attitude towards women took a turn for the better in Hasmonean Judea. The position of Queen Salome constitutes further proof of this. Also worthy of note is the fact that not a single Hasmonean king had more than one wife, in contrast to Herod, for example, who took many. The regulations which Simeon ben Shetah introduced regarding the woman’s kethubah (wedding contract) simply lent religious and juridical sanction to this satisfactory situation which already prevailed in fact.

Klausner said the same thing, using almost identical words, over forty years earlier in his Jesus von Nazareth;³ there he also added a reference to the book of Judith, and ended with the statement: “This position of the Jewish woman in the centuries before Jesus is a witness therefore to the high level of the Hebrew culture of that time.”

The evidence offered by Klausner unfortunately appears to be quite incommensurate with the conclusion drawn, especially in view of all the counter evidence already put forth.

First, the story about the “mother and her seven sons” is extremely moving, but when one asks what the image of the woman in this story is, the answer is rather stereotypical: she was a mother (of sons!), and suffered; hardly “reliable evidence” that the “general attitude toward women took a turn for the better” (which language would indicate that it had been even worse previously). The evidence of the Book of Tobit seems even weaker. The events of the story, which can hardly be true, were supposed to have taken place in the seventh century B. C. E., and in this sense evidence nothing concerning the Hasmonean period; moreover, the book was written before 200 B. C. E., hence considerably before the Hasmonean period; in this sense it likewise can have no bearing on that latter period. Further, it is quite likely that the book was composed in Egypt,⁴ or Syria,⁵ and hence it could hardly reflect Hasmonean Palestinian Judaism. The fact that all three wives were addressed by their husbands as “sister” (which was an Egyptian custom at the time the book was written) does not seem to prove much. Likewise, the fact that a real human affection appeared to exist between the husbands and wives in the story⁶ shows that marriages with affection existed (where or when?) within Judaism; but doubtless there have been many such instances everywhere and at all times.

The message of the Book of Judith is that God will protect his People; it is hardly that of high esteem for women. When it is asked what the image of woman is, this time in the Book of Judith, the answer, again, is stereotypical: woman accomplishes her end by adorning her physical beauty and seducing men, and, in this instance, killing men.⁷ As in the Wisdom literature and elsewhere, the implicit message to men is to beware of beautiful women-they will un-man you and lead you to death. The redeeming factor here of course is that Judith puts her evil womanly wiles at the service of her nation. But Judith was hardly held up as a model of the typical Jewish woman; though she was a widow from her youth and was extremely beautiful, she did not take another husband either before her killing of Holofernes or afterwards; perhaps placing her seductive sexual powers at the service of her nation, and God, demanded, in this obviously fictional story, both that she not be “defiled” by Holofernes, or by any other man subsequently.⁸ The moral of the book is not that women are good creatures of God, but that God is so great that He can bring good out of evil; the moral is not that women are to be valued greatly, but that God is so great that He can humble Israel’s enemies even through the lowliest of instruments, women. “And the Lord struck him down by the hand of a woman!” (13:16).

A brief discussion of the Book of Esther might well be parenthetically inserted here, for although Klausner does not refer to it, it is nevertheless often pointed to, along with Judith, as evidence of a high evaluation of women in the late biblical period. Actually it also provides evidence of the opposite thesis. After a seven-day-long celebration King Ahasuarus was drunk and ordered his eunuchs to fetch Queen Vashti, “in order to display her beauty to the people and the officers” (1:11). She declined to come, an understandable decision given the probably riotous condition of what by then must have been a somewhat sodden drinking bout. This infuriated the king and disturbed his advisers, for they thought that when word got abroad among the other wives in the kingdom, “there will be endless disrespect and insolence!” Hence, Queen Vashti had to be deposed, so that “all the women will henceforth bow to the authority of their husbands ... ensuring that each man might be master in his own house” (1:20-21).

Further, in order to insure that we really have no shred of sympathy left for Vashti, several sources credit her with responsibility for preventing the king from giving his consent to the rebuilding of the Temple. These legends are very significant, for they reflect popular and rabbinic feeling. And it is very clear that in no way was Vashti’s refusal to debase herself seen by succeeding Jews as noble or courageous. Quite the contrary. The Rabbis must have found themselves in somewhat of a bind initially. On the one hand they couldn’t possibly approve the demand Ahasuarus makes on Vashti. On the other hand, to support her would be to invite female disobedience in other situations, an idea they apparently could not tolerate. They solve this by condemning Ahasuarus as foolish and by creating legends whereby Vashti is shown as getting exactly what she deserves.⁹

The later chosen queen, Esther, a Jew, saved her people by a certain bravery, but basically through her physical beauty, the result being that tens of thousands of people were killed at her behest. Again the image of women in the Wisdom literature was substantiated: “good” women are beautiful and submissive; but the beauty of women is dangerous and leads to the death of many. Here again, as with Judith, the redeeming factor was that Esther put this death-dealing female power at the service of her people.¹⁰ The point of this whole, fictional, story concerns the Providence of God which preserves his people from annihilation-and by the most unlikely means, a woman, just as happened with Judith. The fact that in both these stories the “heroines” were women indicates not that women were often heroines or highly thought of in Jewish society at that time,¹¹ but just the opposite, that women were not heroines or highly thought of in that society; otherwise the stories would not have been interesting or worth recording. They were of interest exactly because they displayed God’s Providence for his people by having them saved by the most unlikely and despised means available-women.

Ahasuerus can be seen not only as an Ultimate Authority who holds vast power over everyone, but more generally as male, patriarchal authority in relation to females. As such, Vashti and Esther serve as models of how to deal with such authority. And the message comes through loud and clear: women who are bold, direct, aggressive and disobedient are not acceptable; the praiseworthy women are those who are unassuming, quietly persistent, and who gain their power through the love they inspire in men. These women live almost vicariously, subordinating their needs and desires to those of others. We have only to look at the stereotyped Jewish Mother to attest the still-pervasive influence of the Esther-behavior-model.... What I am interested in here, however, is pointing up typical male and female models of behavior and, at that level, it is clear that society rewards men for being direct and aggressive while it condemns women, like Vashti, for equivalent behavior. For, in a sense, Mordecai and Vashti have behaved identically: both refuse to debase themselves by submitting to illegitimate demands. For this Mordecai is praised and Vashti is condemned.¹²

The reigning of Queen Salome (did the Hellenist example of reigning queens have an influence here?) and the “monogamy” of the Hasmonean kings (remember of course also the multiple concubines some of them had) and the small reforms in the marriage contract by Rabbi Simeon ben Shetah¹³ are perhaps items favoring the position of women. But in the face of the flood of opposite evidence, they hardly warrant the conclusion that “The position of woman ... was from the time of the Hasmoneans onward one of thoroughgoing esteem,”¹⁴ nor could any similar claim be made for the position of women in the view of the early Pharisees.

Besides the Pharisees there were three other groups of men who had an important influence on the customs and everyday life of Palestinian Judaism: the priests, the Essenes, and the scribes or rabbis. Each of these groups will have to be analyzed somewhat further, but the last is overwhelmingly more important than the first two. As can be seen in the cultic restrictions placed on women by the priestly writers in Leviticus, and elsewhere, the priestly party tended throughout the biblical period to be restrictive of the role women were allowed to play in religion and society. In the late biblical times this was reinforced by the strongly negative attitude toward women expressed by Ben Sira (second century B. C. E.). who was at least vigorously supportive of the priestly party, Hence, it has been suggested that he was a forerunner of the Hellenized upperclass priestly party, the Sadducees.

The Sadducees gathered their support not only from the aristocratic priestly families but also from the merchants and middle-class Jews who would benefit from association with the ruling, or at least powerful, class. They were adherents of the written Torah, but recognized no oral Torah, and hence were in opposition to the Pharisees. Unfortunately, almost nothing about their attitude toward women is known; it can only be speculated that perhaps Hellenist influence led them to give women more freedom than was otherwise customary, but on the other hand, the priestly tradition would have bent them in the opposite direction. In any case, their influence, at least insofar as they deviated from tradition, was doubtless relatively meager among the masses, who cared little for “foreign,” ways, which were associated with the hated foreign rulers-earlier the Seleucid Greeks and later the Romans. Since these upper classes often joined in oppressing their own people, they were also often hated-which is reflected in the fact that they were frequently attacked and looted by their own people during the disastrous Jewish rebellion, 66-70 C. E.

Until recently what we knew of the Essenes came from three contemporary sources: the Roman writer Pliny, the Alexandrian Jew Philo, and the Palestinian Jew Josephus. Then at the end of the nineteenth century the Damascus Document was discovered; it is a copy of a document written by and about a Jewish sectarian group around the beginning of the Common Era which most scholars identify with the Essenes of the three traditional sources. Still further discoveries came with the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls; these are original manuscripts from around the beginning of the Common Era, most of which came from or were connected with the Essene-like settlement at Qumran on the Dead Sea. Though there is some dispute, most scholars also identify Qumran with the Essenes, and for the purposes of this study they can be so treated. Concerning the Essenes’ attitude toward women, it must be said that they followed in the tradition of the misogynism of the Wisdom, apocryphal, and pseudepigraphical literature, and the attitude of the Pharisees.

The Essenes were in many ways closely related to the Pharisees, and came into existence about the same time in Palestine, namely, the second century B. C. E. In fact, Schuerer says “Essenism is first of all only Phariseeism in the superlative.”¹⁵ In the matter of their relation with women, they went considerably farther than the Pharisees, however: the central group were male celibates.¹⁶ Pliny stated the matter bluntly: “The solitary tribe of the Essenes is remarkable beyond all the other tribes in the whole world, as it has no women and has renounced all sexual desire.”¹⁷ This description of the Essenes’ celibacy is neutral enough in regard to women, but the more detailed information from Josephus, who claimed he was an Essene novice for a number of months,¹⁸ is not so neutral. To begin with, women are considered a source of dissension: “They neither bring wives into the community nor do they own slaves, since they believe that the latter practice contributes to injustice and that the former opens the way to a source of dissension.”¹⁹ The almost ubiquitous concern in this period with sexual immorality as a-if not the-primary sin is also reflected in the Damascus Document, which states: “Meanwhile, however, Belial will be rampant in Israel, the son of Amoz: ‘Terror and the pit and the trap shall be upon thee, 0 inhabitant of the land! (Isa. 24:17). The reference is to those three snares, viz. whoredom. .. .”²⁰ In another place Josephus noted that the Essenes “Disdain marriage, but they adopt other men’s children, while yet pliable and docile, and regard them as their kin and mould them in accordance with their own principles.”²¹

Philo also attributed to the Essenes much the same derogatory attitude toward women, but spelled it out in much greater detail, and misogynism again rang through clearly:

They eschew marriage because they clearly discern it to be the sole or the principal danger to the maintenance of the communal life, as well as because they particularly practice continence. For no Essene takes a wife, because a woman (gyne) is a selfish creature, excessively jealous and an adept at beguiling the morals of her husband and seducing him by her continued impostures. For by the fawning talk which she practices and the other ways in which she plays her part like an actress on the stage she first ensnares the sight and hearing, and when these subjects as it were have been duped she cajoles the sovereign mind. And if the children come, filled with the spirit of arrogance and bold speaking she gives utterance with more audacious hardihood to things which before she hinted covertly and under disguise, and casting off all shame she compels him to commit actions which are all hostile to the life of fellowship. For he who is either fast bound in the love lures of his wife or under the stress of nature makes his children his first care ceases to be the same to the others and unconsciously has become a different man and passed from freedom into slavery.²³

Some scholars argue that this opinion concerning women is not really that of the Essenes, but rather Philo’s own. However, Colson is most likely right when he says, “This diatribe must not, I think, be taken as Philo’s definite opinion, but rather as what might be plausibly argued by the Essenes.”²⁴ What the Essenes, through Philo, say about women is more detailed than what is found in Josephus, but it surely is in line with it. Moreover, it is very similar to the lengthy descriptions of the wily ways of women depicted in the Wisdom and pseudepigraphal literature quoted above,²⁵ and a similar diatribe found among the Qumran literature, quoted below;²⁶ this factor is especially significant when it is realized that all this literature was kept, copied, and studied at Qumran. “The association of women with trouble-making belongs quite naturally to the Wisdom of the OT. At Qumran, not only the OT Wisdom literature, but also Ben Sira and even properly Essene Wisdom texts were copied; and one of the unpublished texts from Cave IV attests, among other things, that the sapiential depreciation of women was not forgotten but developed startlingly.”²⁷ It should also be noted that what Philo’s Essenes have to say here about the sinful seductiveness of women is not predicated of the wanton woman or the prostitute, but rather of women as such, or at least of wives!

The text from Cave IV referred to by Strugnell is doubtless the lengthy description of the wayward ways of the harlot. The previous descriptions of the ways of prostitutes from Proverbs and elsewhere, or indeed any description of the seductive ways of women from ancient Jewish literature, is far outstripped by this Essene diatribe. There is obviously a fascination here with that forbidden thing, sex, and its personification, woman; but since it is forbidden, there is also expressed a deep hatred of the unattainable, woman, here in the form of a harlot. Here is the fountainhead of misogynism.

they descended the pit of her legs to act wickedly, and behave with the guilt of [transgression... ] the foundations of darkness, the sins in her skirts are many.

However, apparently not all who wished to follow the Essene principles were able or willing to give up married life. Josephus said:

There is yet another order of Essenes, which while at one with the rest in its mode of life, customs, and regulations, differs from them in its views on marriage. They think that those who decline to marry cut off the chief function of life, the propagation of the race, and, what is more, that, were all to adopt the same view, the whole race would very quickly die out. They give their wives, however, a three years’ probation, and only marry them after they have by three periods of purification given proof of fecundity. They have no intercourse with them during pregnancy, then showing that their motive in marrying is not self-indulgence but the procreation of children.²⁹

In sum it must be said that there is no significant evidence of a positive attitude among the Essenes toward women as such; at most there seems to be a tolerance among some for marriage for the sake of offspring. But there is a great deal of evidence of an extremely negative attitude on the part of the Essenes toward women; the misogynist tradition was continued here vigorously. The celibate way of life apparently did not continue beyond the destruction of the temple in 70 C. E., but the Essenes did have a significant impact on the Palestinian Judaism of their time. Pliny’s remarks in this regard are dramatic: “Day by day the throng of refugees is recruited to an equal number by numerous accessions of persons tired of life and driven thither by the waves of fortune to adopt their manners. Thus through thousands of ages (incredible to relate) a race in which no one is born lives on for ever; so prolific for their advantage is the other men’s weariness of life.”³⁰ Something so basic and pervasive as their misogynism could not help but be spread with their influence in general.

Mention should be made at this point of the Therapeutae, a group of Egyptian, Essene-like Jewish ascetics who shared a common life. They provide an interesting study in similarity and contrast with the customs of their contemporaries, the Essenes, in Palestine. What is known about them is from Philo; therefore they were in existence in the first century C. E. The Therapeutae community lived near Alexandria and had both men and women members, though for the most part they were separate, each having his or her own cell. They came together every Sabbath in their synagogue, which was divided into two sections:

being separated partly into the apartment of the men, and partly into a chamber for the women; for the women also, in accordance with the usual fashion there, form a part of the audience, having the same feelings of ardor as the men, and having adopted the same sect with equal deliberation and decision; and the wall which is between the houses rises from the ground three or four cubits³¹ upward, like a battlement, while the space above up to the roof is left open ... on two accounts: first of all, in order that the modesty which is so becoming to the female sex may be preserved; and secondly, that the women may be easily able to comprehend what is said, being seated within earshot.³²

Here is exhibited a mingling of Jewish and Hellenist influences-which one would expect in the then perhaps most flourishing of Hellenist cities (founded by Alexander the Great) which was at the same time perhaps the then most flourishing Jewish city in the world. The men and women were separated in the synagogue, according to the Jewish custom;³³ even today one can see in the synagogue in the very orthodox section of Jerusalem, Mea Shearim, the same kind of wall (though higher) between the room for men and the room for women, with a separate entrance for each room; a somewhat similar division exists at the Western, or “Wailing” wall. That meant, of course, that the women could only listen, but not speak in the services. However, it was untraditional that the women would have committed themselves with a devotion equal to that of the men to the life of this sect, for that meant devoting the greatest part of their lives to being in their cells studying allegorical interpretations of the Scriptures; women traditionally did not devote themselves, like men, to a study of the Scriptures,³⁴ whereas in Hellenist Mystery religions and the Egyptian Isis cult women did take prominent and even priestly roles.³⁵

There was, however , one regular occasion when the female Therapeutae did take an active part in a religious service. Every seventh week there was a sacred feast day with a meal. The men would recline at one side of the table and women on the other; with the meal there were readings, prayers and hymn- singing-and the women participated in the latter. Afterwards the men and women grouped themselves in two separate choirs and sang in alternating fashion, accompanied with various hand and body movements, like a sacred dance. At the end the men and women mixed to form a single choir. Philo said: “Then, when each choir has separately done its own part in the feast, having drunk as in Bacchic rites of the strong wine of God’s love they mix and both together become a single choir, a copy of the choir set up of old beside the Red Sea in honor of the wonders there wrought ... the men led by the prophet Moses and the women by the prophetess Miriam.”³⁶ Thus they prayed, sang and danced, filled with pious enthusiasm., until morning, when they returned to their cells. Leipoldt noted that the Therapeutae were “outsiders of Judaism,” that their general asceticism., their eremitical life-style (which one finds in Greek thinkers), their philosophical critique of slavery,³⁷ and especially their night feast every seven weeks, which had all the characteristics of a Greek Mystery religion feast, clearly reflected the influences of Hellenism. Concerning the last matter Leipoldt continued: “When the Greeks reflected a past fateful event by imitation, men and women participated equally-in Mystery religions something accepted as obvious. When the Therapeutae take this over they may not exclude the women Therapeutae, so much more so may they not since in the Old Testament model the prophetess Miriam steps forward so decisively. Hence, one may not view the participation of the women Therapeutae in the worship service as indicative of the Jewish manner,”³⁸ but rather the Greek manner. It should be noted that if, despite all the massive Hellenistic influences present in Alexandria and among the Therapeutae, the women were still so strictly separated in the weekly synagogue service and relegated to listening, then the force of the Jewish custom must have been very strong.

Thus we find a blending of Jewish and Greek traditions in the Therapeutae, and, as far as women are concerned, the stronger influence of Greek customs-in contrast to the apparently relatively weaker Greek influence among the Essenes- worked to their advantage: they were full-fledged members, “having adopted the same sect with equal (to the men) deliberation and decision”; they spent their time studying the Scriptures; they took an active part in the sacred banquet, vigil, and dance every seven weeks. None of these things was true of the position of women in the Essenes. Nevertheless, all women Therapeutae were segregated in the Sabbath synagogue, did not have the right to speak there, and in other ways appeared subordinate to men, which was not the case with women in many contemporary Greek Mystery religions. The misogynism of much of contemporary Palestinian Judaism seemed to have been greatly modified by Greek influence in the Therapeutae, though we know from other evidence that this modifying influence on the restrictions in the lives of married Jewish women in Egypt was not so effective.³⁹

At some point in this study a brief description of the status of women in the fifth century B. C. E. Jewish colony at a Persian military outpost at Elephantine, far up the Nile near Aswan, should be given. In time this material falls beyond the main confines of the study; likewise, this distant outpost apparently remained isolated and without influence on the rest of Judaism. Nevertheless, as a Jewish community with an extraordinarily different attitude toward the status of women from what was prevalent elsewhere in Judaism in either the biblical or rabbinic periods, it deserves to be mentioned here, however briefly.

Perhaps the best guide in this matter is Reuven Yaron., Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic Papyri (Oxford, 1961). He states that the position of women in the Elephantine compared favorably with that in other parts of the ancient Near East and that one ought to look to Egyptian law for an explanation. In the law of procedure he noted that women at Elephantine did not attest documents, but that they could be parties to litigation, and were capable of taking an oath. In the field of the law of property and obligations women enjoyed full equality; they went about their transactions in the same manner as men, no trace of inferiority or male supervision of any kind being discernible, although in the field of succession women may have been in an inferior position. Outside the sphere of private law, women were apparently enlisted in the military units which made up the population of the Elephantine. Equality of property rights also involved the duty to share in the burden of taxation. In C 22 women are conspicuous among the contributors to the temple fund, paying two shekels each, just like the men. The most interesting feature of divorce at Elephantine is the equal capacity of the spouses, as far as the power of dissolution of the marriage is concerned. “This is in striking contrast to the situation which on the whole obtains in the ancient East, and also in Talmudic law, where the husband alone is entitled to dissolve the marriage.... The equality at Elephantine is probably due to the Egyptian environment.”⁴⁰

In most of these matters Jewish women elsewhere in both late biblical and rabbinic times labored under grossly contrasting disabilities, perhaps most dramatically so in the essential area of marriage and divorce; outside of Elephantine it was the Jewish man who acquired the woman, and he alone could effect a divorce.⁴¹ However, the privileges enjoyed by Jewish women at Elephantine did not effect mainstream Judaism.

The scribes, as their name partially indicates, were those men who were responsible for the copying, protection , understanding, and explanation of the sacred books, the Scriptures. By the beginning of the Common Era they commanded tremendous respect from the masses of the people, who were over the years convinced that they were first of all Jews and that to be a Jew meant to live according to the Torah, the Scriptures; but it was only the scribes, those learned in the Law, the Torah, who could properly explain what that meant. Beyond this dependence of the masses on the scribes for instruction and explanation of what the Law was and how it was to be lived, was the tendency to see in the scribes the bearers of a secret knowledge, of an esoteric tradition. The replete apocalyptic literature of the time is evidence of such an esoteric tradition, as also is the fact that for hundreds of years the knowledge of the scribes, the rabbis, was handed down orally-committed to writing in the Mishnah, which was produced in the second century C. E.-in an archaic, holy language, Hebrew, that was not understood by the masses (it was only in the first century of the Common Era that the leading rabbis promoted the translation of the Bible into vernacular versions, called Targums).⁴²

It should be noted that the scribes of the first century C. E. were not all of one religious party. There were scribes who belonged to the Sadducees, but the majority belonged to the party of the Pharisees. It should also be observed that not all priests were necessarily members of the Sadducees. Many were adherents of the Pharisees (both the Pharisees and Sadducees, as well as the Essenes, were closed brotherhoods; not just everyone who claimed to live according to their principles could claim the name of and membership in the fraternity-a period of probation had to be passed before acceptance or rejection was decided upon), which is not at all strange when it is recalled that the Pharisees in effect wished to raise the biblically required stipulations for priests on Temple duty concerning purity and food regulations to the norm for the everyday life of the priest and the entire people. (Rabbi Meir-about 150 C. E.-once defined a non-Pharisee as someone who “did not eat his profane food in levitical purity.”)⁴³ At the same time, not all Pharisees (there were perhaps something over 6,000 in Palestine in the first century, as compared to 7,000-9,000 priests)⁴⁴ were priests or scribes. They came from all parts of society, though in the main they were lower middle class laymen who were also not scribes.

Succinctly put, the Pharisees were a sect of men who lived according to certain levitical rules of ritual purity, etc. that were derived from the written Torah and the Oral Law as handed down from the time of Moses by the scribes. (The term “Rabbi” was originally a form of address meaning “my master,” but by the first century it had become a title for one learned in the Law; in other words, the scribes, or as the Germans more descriptively put it, the “learned in the Scriptures,” Schriftgelehrten, came to be called not scribes but rabbis.) The scribes were those who studied and taught what this correct way of living was. As a consequence, many Pharisees became scribes and were doubtless as a consequence the most important and influential members of their brotherhood.

It is important to recall that in the first century C. E. the party of the Pharisees completely attained the upper hand in Palestine and after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C. E. the Sadducees as a party disappeared. Particularly interesting for the question concerning the status of women in the early formative period of Judaism is the Tannaitic tradition which recalls that the wives of the Sadducees followed the ritual purity regulations of the Pharisees, “since otherwise in the eyes of the Pharisees they would have been considered tainted with the impurity of a menstruant and their husbands would then, in their eyes, have been constantly impure.”⁴⁵ Josephus confirmed this overwhelming influence of the Pharisees when he wrote: “They are, as a matter of fact, extremely influential among the townspeople; and all prayers and sacred rites of divine worship are performed according to their exposition. This is the great tribute that the inhabitants of the cities, by practising the highest ideals both in their way of living and in their discourse, have paid to the excellence of the Pharisees.”⁴⁶

Of the Sadducees Josephus said: “Whenever they come to officiate they follow the prescriptions of the Pharisees, even if it be in an involuntary and forced manner; the masses would not tolerate its being otherwise.”⁴⁷ As a consequence, very little of the thought of the Sadducees or their scribes has been recorded. The work of the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, and subsequent work, has been overwhelmingly influenced and dominated by the Pharisaic tradition. Moreover, most scribes were Pharisees. Therefore it is very important to learn the attitude of the Pharisees, particularly the Pharisaic scribes, the rabbis, toward women, since they handed on and developed traditions that not only often went back hundreds of years, but also exercised a wide influence at that time and subsequently.

As noted above, there is a wealth of material to document this attitude, particularly as found in the Mishnah and Talmud. Since the scope of the influence of the rabbis covered every aspect of life, methodologically it would seem best to deal with the rabbinic material in each area as it is treated systematically below. However, it would be helpful to quote and analyze a number of rabbinic statements which reflect the general attitudes of the ancient rabbis toward women, keeping in mind that the body of rabbis of course did not present a homogeneous attitude toward women.

In the rabbinic writings there are a number of positive evaluations of women. For example, “It was taught: He who has no wife dwells without good, without help, without joy, without blessing, and without atonement.”⁴⁸ There is a series of sayings gathered together in one place in the Talmud, mostly concerning the sadness caused by the death, or divorce, of one’s wife: “Rabbi Alexandri said: The world is darkened for him whose wife has died in his days (i.e., predeceased him).... Rabbi Jose ben Hanina said: His steps grow short.... Rabbi Johanan also said: He whose first wife has died, (is grieved as much) as if the destruction of the Temple had taken place in his days.... Rabbi Samuel ben Nahman said: For him who divorces the first wife, the very altar sheds tears.”⁴⁹

In modern discussions of the status of women in rabbinic Judaism, lists of such positive rabbinic sayings about women will frequently be put forward to prove that women were very highly valued by the rabbis, or at least that this positive evaluation balanced, or even outweighed, the negative statements found in rabbinic literature. A judgment about whether the positive or negative attitudes of the ancient rabbis predominated can wait until the evidence on both sides has been presented and analyzed. But two things should be kept in mind in evaluating the positive statements. First, as with the Wisdom literature noted above,⁵⁰ almost all the positive things said about women by the rabbis are not about women as such, but rather about women as they are related to men, namely, as wives. In fact, at the same place in the Talmud as the above appreciative statements about the loss of one’s wife it is also stated: “Rabbi Samuel ben Unya said in the name of Rab: A woman (before marriage) is a shapeless lump, and concludes a covenant only with him who transforms her (into) a (useful) vessel.”⁵¹ Secondly, although a good wife is highly valued and receives deep affection, this appreciation very frequently is expressed, as in the Wisdom literature,⁵² in terms of what the wife does for the husband and family.

This attitude was expressed well by a modern rabbi writing on the subject of the Jewish woman: “Only the life of the woman contains even more renunciation. Her whole life is a self-denying devotion to the welfare of others, especially of her husband and children. The true woman is the performance of duty personified ... renunciation, sacrifice for the joy of her husband and children becomes her joy.” On the next page is a further comment about the subordination of wives to their husbands: “This will-subordination of the wife to the husband is a necessary condition of the unity which man and wife should form together. The subordination cannot be the other way about, since the man ... has to carry forward the divine and human messages.”⁵³

This essay on Jewish women, written by Rabbi Samson Hirsch in German in the latter part of the nineteenth century and translated and published in English in the middle of the twentieth century, contains about as thorough a listing of the positive rabbinic statements about women as might be found,⁵⁴ and hence will serve as a convenient check-list for analysis here. Rabbi Hirsch claims “full equality of status” for women in Judaism and speaks of placing “the woman forthwith on a footing of equality with the man.”⁵⁵ The last portion of this rather lengthy essay is devoted to “The Jewish Woman in the Talmudic Tradition,” and here the list of rabbinic statements is brought forward.

In addition to the laudatory statements already mentioned, the ancient rabbinic literature also contains the following rabbinic teachings which are likewise in praise of women, or rather, of wives and marriage. “Rabbi Eleazar said: Any man who has no wife is no proper man,” that is, as Rabbi Eliezer is recorded in the same place as having taught: “Anyone who does not engage in the propagation of the race is as though he sheds blood.” Also in the same place Rabbi Hiyya taught about wives that, “It is sufficient for us that they rear up our children and deliver us from sin,” i.e., satisfy the male’s sexual drive. “Our Rabbis taught: Concerning a man who loves his wife as himself, who honors her more than himself...” ⁵⁶ “Rabbi Hama ben Hanina stated: As soon as a man takes a wife his sins are stopped up,” that is, his concupiscence is allayed. A man was advised to “be quick in buying land, but deliberate in taking a wife. Come down a step in choosing your wife”; since the wife was to be in the subordinate position it was thought important that she come from a lower social position. In the same place in the Talmud there is also the appreciative saying: “Happy is the husband of a beautiful wife; the number of his days shall be doubled,” which is immediately followed by a warning against all other beautiful women: “Turn away thy eyes from (thy neighbor’s) charming wife lest thou be caught in her net. Do not turn in to her husband to mingle with him wine and strong drink; for, through the form of a beautiful woman many were destroyed and a mighty host are all her slain.”⁵⁷

If a good wife was appreciated by the rabbis, a bad wife was equally unappreciated: “Raba said: (If one has a) bad wife it is a meritorious act to divorce her.” “Raba further stated: A bad wife . . . (should be given) a rival at her side”; that is, a second wife should be taken. “Raba further stated: A bad wife is as troublesome as a very rainy day; for it is said, A continual dropping on a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.” “How baneful is a bad wife with whom Gehenna is compared.” “Behold I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape. Rabbi Nahuan said in the name of Rabbah ben Abbuha: This refers to a bad wife, the amount of whose kethubah is large.”⁵⁸

In demonstrating the high estimation of women held by the ancient rabbis, Rabbi Hirsch referred to the rabbinic teaching about the beneficent or maleficent influence a wife has on a husband: “It once happened that a pious man was married to a pious woman, and they did not produce children. Said they, ‘We are of no use to the Holy One, blessed be He, I whereupon they arose and divorced each other. The former went and married a wicked woman, and she made him wicked, while the latter went and married a wicked man, and made him righteous. This proves that all depends on the woman.”⁵⁹ However, the fact that this truly appreciative story about a pious wife is immediately followed by a whole series of rather deprecatory statements about women in general somewhat modifies the force of that story as evidence of high appreciation of women by the rabbis as a group (although clearly individual rabbis at least at times expressed themselves more positively about women):

And why must a woman use perfume, while a man does not need perfume?. .. And why has a woman a shrill voice but not a man?... And why does a man go out bareheaded while a woman goes out with her head covered? She is like one who has done wrong and is ashamed of people; therefore she goes out with her head covered. Why do they (the women) walk in front of the corpse (at a funeral)? Because they brought death into the world, they therefore walk in front of the corpse.... And why was the precept of menstruation given to her? Because she shed the blood of Adam (by causing death), therefore was the precept of menstruation given to her. And why was the precept of the ‘dough’ given to her? Because she corrupted Adam, who was the dough of the world, therefore was the precept of dough given to her. And why was the precept of the Sabbath lights given to her? Because she extinguished the soul of Adam, therefore was the precept of the Sabbath lights given to her.⁶⁰

Similarly weakened, or at least put in an ambivalent light as evidence concerning the rabbis as a group, are several sets of rabbinic teachings quoted by Rabbi Hirsch: “Rabbi Helbo said: One must always observe the honor due to his wife, because blessings rest on a man’s home only on account of his wife,” and “Thus did Raba say to the townspeople of Mahuza, Honor your wives, that ye may be enriched,” and again, “Rab said: One should always be heedful of wronging his wife for since her tears are frequent she is quickly hurt.”⁶¹ These are all truly sensitive sentiments, but in the same place the same “Rab also said: He who follows his wife’s counsel will descend into Gehenna.” At this the Talmud adds the part which Rabbi Hirsch only partially quoted as proof of the rabbis’high estimation of women: “Rabbi Papa objected to Abaye: But people say, If your wife is short, bend down and hear her whisper!” He did not include the following resolution of what the rabbis saw as a contradiction between the teachings of Rab and Papa just quoted: “There is no difficulty: the one refers to general matters; the other to household affairs. Another version: the one refers to religious matters, the other to secular questions.”⁶² Apparently the translator of the English Soncino edition was somewhat embarrassed by this teaching for he noted: “A man should certainly consult his wife on the latter, but not on the former-not a disparagement of woman; her activities lying mainly in the home,” which means that rabbinic “high estimation of women” was here limited to a valuing of women as housekeepers.

The noble statement: “Who is wealthy?... He who has a wife comely in deeds,”⁶³ takes on a somewhat intimidating quality when it is realized that it was made by Rabbi Akiba, who allegedly allowed his wife to spend twenty-four years in living widowhood while he studied Torah, who was “the founder of the peculiar institution of married ‘monasticism’.... After marriage they would devote themselves completely to their studies while their wives supported them”⁶⁴ (not unlike what happens in the Mea Shearim section of Jerusalem today), and who also taught that a man may divorce his wife merely on the grounds that “he finds another woman more beautiful than she is.”⁶⁵

It also says in the Talmud: “The Holy One ... endowed the woman with more understanding than the man.”⁶⁶ However, since this statement comes in the midst of a discussion about the age at which vows can be made and is used as an argument that girls can make vows a year earlier than boys because they mature sooner, its intended meaning seems to be limited to this particular case. This is clearly confirmed in an early midrash where the very same discussion is taken up and carried further as follows: “Some reverse it, because a woman generally stays home, whereas a man goes out into the streets and learns understanding from people.”⁶⁷

The evidence presented by Rabbi Hirsch from the early rabbinic writing, Sifra commentary on Leviticus 26:13, is at best of doubtful value. He writes: “Like the men, so the women are through the deliverance and election of Israel called to the highest spiritual and moral elevation of which mankind is capable (Sifra on Leviticus 26:13).”⁶⁸ The commentary referred to reads: “‘And I make you to walk tall.’ Rabbi Schimon says: two hundred cubits. Rabbi Jehuda says: one hundred cubits, as Adam, the first, I have only men. Whence women? Because it says: ‘our daughters as corner columns, hewn according to the pattern of the Temple.’ (Ps. 144, 12) And how high is the temple pattern? One hundred cubits.”⁶⁹ This quotation would not seem to indicate a “high” estimate of women by the rabbis-at le-st not in the usual sense.

Rabbi Hirsch also notes that the Talmud says that women are promised greater bliss-after death-but he does not note what it then says about how women are to merit this bliss. The following first sentence Rabbi Hirsch refers to; the rest he does not: “(Our Rabbis taught): Greater is the promise made by the Holy One, blessed be He, to the women than to the men; for it says, ‘Rise up, ye women that are at ease; ye confident daughters, give ear unto my speech. Rab said to Rabbi Hiyya: Whereby do women earn merit? By making their children go to the synagogue to learn Scripture and their husbands to the Beth Hamidrash to learn Mishnah, and waiting for their husbands till they return from the Beth Hamidrash.”⁷⁰ The latter half of this passage would seem to at least dilute somewhat the strength of the former half as evidence of the rabbis’ high estimation of women.

Also brought forth as evidence is the talmudic statement⁷¹ that “only if the husband has preserved his own fidelity to his wife and has allowed himself no excesses does the water test the fidelity of his wife.”⁷² According to this rabbinic teaching, if the husband has been faithful, the wife will either miscarry as a result of the ordeal if she is guilty of adultery, or not miscarry if she is not guilty; whereas, if the husband has not been faithful, she would presumably not miscarry in either case. But no matter what, the woman must go through the humiliating ordeal merely on the demand of her husband, that is, she must be brought before the priest in the temple, in public, have her head dress and hair disheveled and her cloths ripped off her to the waist, and be forced to drink water mixed with dirt from the floor. In no case does the husband suffer any disabilities.⁷³ The need of the husband to be faithful so as to make his wife’s ordeal effective on the one side, and the obligation of a wife suspected even by a groundlessly jealous husband to go through the ordeal on the other would not seem to bespeak an especially high estimation of womanhood by the rabbis.

Rabbi Hirsch likewise maintained that “the Sages expect from the husband the most tender consideration and the most loving and respectful treatment for his wife,”⁷⁴ and offered as one piece of evidence of this the statement that “if a man goads his wife to insult him by refusing her ornaments and finery, he becomes poor (Shabbath 62b).” The statement referred to is as follows: “Three things bring man to poverty, viz., urinating in front of one’s bed naked, treating the washing of the hands with disrespect, and being cursed by one’s wife in his presence.... Raba said (that is when she curses him) on account of her adornments. But that is only when he has the means but does not provide them.” Hirsch further added as proof that, “even if a man has to deny his wife something or reprove her, his right hand should draw her near him while his left hand repels (Sota 47a).”⁷⁵ The pertinent quotation is: “It has been taught: Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar says: Also human nature should a child and woman thrust aside with the left hand and draw near with the right hand.” The English Sorcino edition notes: “One must not be too severe in chiding a child or reproving a wife lest they be driven to despair.” As still further evidence Rabbi Hirsch stated that “reminders of duty should also be given by the husband softly and gently (bGitten 6b)” The talmud passage reads: “Rabbi Hisda said: A man should never terrorize his household ... the three things which a man has to say to his household just before Sabbath commences ... should be said by him gently, so that they should obey him readily.” Since these statements are all very much like advice to treat servants well so that they will obey properly, they are not very effective testimony of the high value the rabbis placed on women.

Here Hirsch also added the quotation from bB. M. 59a about bending down to consult one’s wife if she is short, already discussed above, and the differing treatment of wives by various types of men, including those who lock them up whenever they leave the house, discussed below (see chapter V-4, “Women Appearing in Public”),⁷⁶ and also the reference to the fidelity of the husband and the trial by ordeal for his wife. He then wrote: “Nowhere do we meet among Jews such a seclusion and isolation of women as is usually assumed on the analogy of oriental custom,” which is a less than accurate statement if one simply recalls, as one example, Philo’s description of the harem-like existence of Jewish women in first century C. E. Alexandria (see chapter V-4, “Women Appearing in Public,” for a detailed discussion of the seclusion of Jewish women). As still further evidence of the “most tender consideration and the most loving and respectful treatment” of the wife by the husband, Rabbi Hirsch wrote: “If women are not allowed to move about much in public, this is from fear of misbehaviour not on their part but on the part of the men (Genesis Rabbah 8, 12).”⁷⁷ The teaching alluded to is as follows: “‘Wekibshah’ (and subdue her) is written: the man must master his wife, that she go not out into the market place, for every woman who goes out into the market place will eventually come to grief.” This would appear to be a rather domineering “most tender consideration.” Moreover, women were often seen as lustful, grasping creatures of sex by many of the Pharisees and other writers of apocryphal and pseudepigraphal literature of the first century before the Common Era and by Philo, as already discussed above.

From these quotations from Rabbi Hirsch and elsewhere it can be concluded that there are a number of ancient rabbinic statements which are appreciative of women, but that they are almost inevitably about women as wives rather than as individual persons; and not a few of the frequently quoted statements do not reflect as much appreciation of women, i. e., wives, as they are often claimed to.

The following is a brief list of rabbinical sayings about women which do not particularly fit into the various categories of Jewish life that will be analyzed below; they give some indication of the widespread negative, and even, misogynist, attitude toward women among the rabbis.

The great rabbi of the first century before the Common Era, Hillel, who had a reputation of generosity and openness, said, “Many women, much witchcraft.”⁷⁸ In the first century C. E. Rabbi Joshua said: “A woman would rather have a single measure (of food) with wantonness than nine measures with continence.”⁷⁹ The notion that women by nature tend toward nymphomania was, of course, already familiar from the Wisdom and pseudepigraphical literature.⁸⁰ It was continued by the rabbis in the following teaching: “One glass is good for a woman; two are a disgrace; with three she opens her mouth (in lewdness); with four she solicits in complete abandon even an ass on the street.”⁸¹

The in-a-way opposite notion, that woman is an irresistible sexual temptation for man, was also taught, in terms that were not only very slightly veiled sexual symbols-reminiscent of the Wisdom literature-but were also brimming with hatred of women: a woman is “a pitcher full of filth with its mouth full of blood, yet all run after her.”⁸² Around 150 C. E. Rabbi Simon ben Jochai taught: “The most virtuous of women is a witch.”⁸³ He also taught that, “Women are light-headed,”⁸⁴ a teaching reiterated by the school of Elias.⁸⁵ Also doubly taught and recorded in this early period is this teaching: “The world cannot exist without male and female children. It is well for those whose children are male, but ill for those who are female.”⁸⁶ A similar thought was expressed by Rabbi Simon ben Jochai: “At the birth of a boy all are joyful . . . at the birth of a girl all are sorrowful. “⁸⁷ In the same place like thoughts of a rabbi from the following century, i. e., toward the end of the third century, are also recorded: “Rabbi Jicchaq said that Rabbi Ammi said: When a boy comes into the world, peace comes into the world.... When a girl comes, nothing comes.” A list of “characteristically female” vices was also provided, and added to by various rabbis: “The Rabbis said: Women are said to possess four traits: they are greedy, eavesdroppers, slothful and envious. Greedy, as it says ... Rabbi Judah ben Nahman⁸⁸ said: she is also a scratcher and talkative ... Rabbi Levi⁸⁹ said: She is also prone to steal and is a gadabout.”⁹⁰ This last teaching is also doubly taught.⁹¹

Perhaps the most widely known rabbinic saying from this early, mishnaic period which reflects the inferior position of women starkly is the three-fold daily prayer, still found in many Jewish prayer books: “Praised be God that he has not created me a gentile! Praised be God that he has not created me a woman! Praised be God that he has not created me an ignoramus! Praised that he has not created me a gentile: ‘For all gentiles are as nothing before him,’ Isaiah 40:17. Praised that he has not created me a woman because the woman is not obliged to fulfill the commandments. Praised that he has not created me an ignoramus for the ignorant man does not avoid sin.”⁹²

Because of the blunt attitude of male superiority expressed in this prayer one might be somewhat tempted to discount it as a single hyperbolic statement of an obscure rabbi. Such is not the case. No less than three separate direct quotations of this prayer occur in three of the most ancient rabbinic collections and at least one paraphrase in another later collection, and Paul paraphrases it in his Letter to the Galatians. The ancient collections are the Tosephta-a collection of Tannaitic teaching, i. e., from rabbis from two hundred before the Common Era to two hundred afterwards; the Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud; and the Babylonian Talmud.⁹³ In the first two the order is different-gentile, woman, ignoramus in the Tosephta; and gentile, ignoramus, woman in the Palestinian Talmud-but the wording is basically the same, including the three bases for the prayer. The Babylonian Talmud keeps the order of the Tosephta, but substitutes “slave” for “ignoramus,” and also does not repeat the three “justifications” for the prayer.

The somewhat later paraphrase stems from a fourth century rabbi: “I call on heaven and earth as witness: whether Jew or non-Jew, whether man or woman, whether slave or slave woman-each one has according to his actions the holy spirit within him.”⁹⁴ The quotation has no context in the text and is hence difficult to interpret completely, but it is apparently based on the earlier formulated prayer.

Paul in his Letter to the Galatians forms his statement in verse 28 of chapter 3 on this prayer: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” At that time the rabbinic teaching was not yet written down, or at least not in any codified, authoritative fashion; hence there is some variation from each of the later edited forms. In Paul’s letter, Greek is used rather than gentile in the contrast with Jew; slave is used in contrast to free, paralleling the text of the Babylonian Talmud; the order he uses-gentile, slave, woman-is the same as that which appears in both the Tosephta and the Palestinian Talmud.⁹⁵

The fact this statement is not simply a teaching, but rather a prayer, increases its significance considerably. Moreover, it was not recommended as a once-a-year or occasional prayer, but rather as a daily prayer-and it has been used by some as such ever since.⁹⁶ In the Tosephta Rabbi Judah recommended that this prayer be said daily. In the Babylonian Talmud the prayer is attributed to Rabbi Judah’s contemporary, Rabbi Meir, who lived in the first part of the second century C. E. and claimed he faithfully passed on what he learned from Rabbi Akiba.

There are many more rabbinic statements about women which reflect a negative, if not a misogynist, attitude on the part of many rabbis toward women; but they will be dealt with, as indicated, within the context of the systematic analysis of the life of Jewish women. However, on the basis of the evidence of both the positive and negative rabbinic statements about women thus far analyzed, and proleptically considering the mass of essentially negative evidence to be discussed below, it would be correct to conclude that quantitatively and qualitatively the negative attitude vastly outweighs the positive. It can be said, therefore, that the attitude of the ancient rabbis toward women was a continuation of the negative attitude toward women that evolved from the return from the Exile through the later Wisdom, apocryphal, and pseudepigraphical literature.⁹⁷ In fact, it was in a way an intensification of it, in that the rabbis, through their great influence on the masses of Judaism, projected it most forcefully into the everyday life of the observant Jew, for example, by the promotion of the three-fold prayer.

The Rabbinic literature is written by men and for men. The difference in the relations of men and women to each other makes a constant difference between the Rabbis and ourselves. It is always cropping up. Modern apologists tend to ignore or evade it. They quote a few sentences such as ‘Who is rich? He who has a good wife’; or they tell of a few exceptional women such as Beruria. It is quite true that wife and mother played a very important part in Rabbinic life; it is true the Rabbis were almost always monogamists; it is true that they honoured their mothers profoundly, and usually honoured and cared for their wives. But that is only one side of the story. ‘Women, children and slaves’: that familiar and frequent collocation means and reveals a great deal. Women were, on the whole, regarded as inferior to men in mind , in function and status.⁹⁸

The heart of Judaism is Torah, the Law, and the differing status of men and women is reflected here right at the heart, even quite explicitly. There are at least two places in the Mishnah which take up the different standings and obligations men and women have before the Law. The question is asked, “Wherein does a man differ from a woman?” and eight responses are given, of which three are of more interest than the others for they indicate both the greater power of the father compared to the mother and the inferior status of the daughter vis-a-vis the son (only the daughter can be sold by the father, not the son; only the daughter can be betrothed without her consent-if done before she is twelve and a half years old): “The man may place his son under the nazirite vow, but the woman may not impose the nazirite vow upon her son ... the man may sell his daughter, but the woman may not sell her daughter; the man may betroth his daughter, but the woman may not betroth her daughter.”¹

In a second place distinctions are made between positive and negative ordinances, and between those which are bound up with a stated time and those which are not. In effect, women are supposedly obliged to all ordinances other than time-bound, positive ones: “All positive ordinances that are bound up with a stated time are incumbent upon men but women are exempted, but all positive ordinances which are not bound up with a stated time are incumbent upon both men and women; and all negative commandments ... must be observed by men and women alike.” except for three specific ritual laws, like trimming a beard.² Either the Mishnah elsewhere or the Talmud spelled out specifically to some extent which time-bound religious obligations women were freed from: women did not have to live in the “sukka,” or temporary dwelling (the essential action for the week-long feast of Succoth)³ or carry the festival bouquet; be present at the sounding of the ram’s horn, the shofar, on the New Year’s feast, or put on the cicith or tephillin;⁴ read the Book of Esther on the feast of Purim,⁵ or recite each morning and evening the great prayer of Judaism, the Shema: “Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One” (Dt. 6:7).⁶ It is difficult to see how in most of these instances the duties of a housewife or daughter would be any more inhibiting than those of a householder or son: since everyone, woman or man, has to get up and go to bed (“when you lie down and when you rise up”-Dt. 6:8), the recitation of the Shema at those times would cause no problem; nor should the living in the sukka, since the men’s meals would have to be served in there anyhow; and the attendance at one New Year’s feast per year should cause no more difficulty for women than for men.

One midrash stated that the reason women-and slaves and children-were not obliged to fulfill all the Law was: “Because she has a single heart (for her husband); likewise, the heart of the slave is directed to his master.... Women and slaves still have a human master over them and the service of him makes such a claim on their heart that the time and energy for the service of God is lacking. Therefore, is a lesser claim in regard to the fulfillment of commandments made on women and slaves than on men and freeman.”⁷

Much subsequent explanation, however, including that of most contemporary Jewish commentators, points out that the reason for the differing obligations to fulfill the Law was that women would at times find it impossible to fulfill the time-bound commandments because of their household obligations and limitations connected with their sex, i. e., menstruation, pregnancy, nursing, etc.⁸ But, in the same paragraph of the Mishnah this rule is contradicted when rules which are not time-bound are said not to oblige women: “All obligations which devolve upon a father concerning his son must be observed by men but women are exempt, and all obligations which devolve upon a son regarding his father are incumbent on both men and women.”⁹ The Babylonian Talmud observes that these obligations of the father include: circumcision, redemption of first born son, teaching Torah, teaching an occupation, marriage, swimming-and except for circumcision, none of these tasks were bound to a specific time.¹⁰ That means that women, mothers, had no obligation to perform these tasks for their sons; in fact, in all these instances women also had either no obligation or, in some instances, no possibility to fulfill these tasks for themselves, i. e., no obligation to learn a trade, no absolute obligation (as a man has) to marriage, or no possibility for circumcision or redemption.

The Talmud itself made a somewhat similar observation: “Women are exempt from the study of Torah , the obligation of producing progeny, and from the redemption of the (firstborn) son, although these are not commands which are bound to a particular time.”¹¹ In the same place the Talmud notes three additional feasts (including Passover) which are connected with a specific time, but which women are nevertheless obliged to observe. Apparently the oftoffered rationale of giving precedence to women’s physical weakness and her household duties did not apply here, but only in certain select cases. In such a situation one feels the need to search for a deeper reason behind the one so ambiguously applied:

Learning was seen as the key to survival-obviously the only way Jews could remain Jews in exile was by learning what it meant to be a Jew and passing this knowledge on from generation to generation. This learning role, however, was open only to men. Women were also excluded from religious or communal activity that was associated with learning or the communal observance of rituals. There were certain mitzvot from which women were exempted. In essence, all the important ways in which Judaism defined what it meant to be a Jew were (and still are) either partially or completely closed to women.

There are several reasons for this. First, there is always a division of labor in patriarchy: men get the status roles and women get the role of doing everything that men don’t want to do, and anything else that enables men to do what they want to do. In addition, the Jews were in exile, and involved in a struggle for survival. In the division of labor, the people who were considered most capable got the most important role. Men, seen (by men) as being most capable of intellectual labor, allocated that role to themselves. Men were also more actively involved in confronting daily overt oppression and hostility as they went out into the world to earn a living. They needed some sort of compensation to off set their being treated as inferiors. They had to have someone to whom they were superior. Women had a definite role to play.¹²

The question of obligation concerning meal prayers is a good example of rabbinic legal distinctions which perhaps obligate women in some instances, perhaps not in others, and forbid them in still others. Women (along with slaves and children again) are not exempt from saying the prayers after meals,¹³ but it is disputed whether or not they can say it for someone else who for some reason cannot say it himself. Some say women, along with children and slaves, may,¹⁴ but the Talmud says: “A curse light on the man whose wife or children have to say grace for him”;¹⁵ and with regard to a different prayer reference, the Talmud repeated the curse: “May a curse come upon that man whose wife and (minor) sons have to recite the benediction for him.”¹⁶ Furthermore, the ancient Mishnah stated that, “Women or slaves or minors may not be included (to make up the number needed) for the recitation of Common Grace.”¹⁷ And still further, women (and children and slaves) may not even extend the ceremonial, and officially obliged, invitation to say grace (when three or more are together at meal), the zimmun; in this connection, “a hundred women are no better than two men.”¹⁸ In this connection a baby boy was considered, at least by some talmudic rabbis, as more significant than a grown woman, for the Talmud stated: “An infant in the cradle may be counted for the zimmun, but women, of course, could not.”¹⁹

It should also be noted here that there are three commands directed specifically at women, the disregarding of which, according to the Mishnah, has dire results: “For three transgressions do women die in childbirth: for heedlessness of the laws concerning their menstruation,²⁰ the Dough-offering (Hallah), and the lighting of the (Sabbath) lamp.”²¹ The reasons given for these three commands-in no less than four ancient sources²²-all lead back to the charge that Eve caused the death of Adam:

Concerning menstruation: The first man was the blood and life of the world ... and Eve was the cause of his death; therefore has she been given the menstruation precept. The same is true concerning Hallah (leaven); Adam was the pure Hallah for the world.... And Eve was the cause of his death; therefore has she been given the Hallah precept. And concerning the lighting of the (Sabbath) lamp. Adam was the light of the world.... And Eve was the cause of his death; therefore has she been given the precept about lighting the (Sabbath) lamp. Rabbi Jose (early second century) said: there are three causes of death and they were transmitted to women, namely, the menstruation precept, the Hallah precept, and the precept about lighting the (Sabbath) lamp.²³

Though the precept concerning menstruation could be seen as degrading for women, and the precept concerning Hallah might be seen as bothersome, the lighting of the Sabbath lamp at the Friday evening home service would normally be viewed as an honor; hence, it is somewhat of a surprise to learn that the ancient rabbinic reason for it is that it is a punishment for Eve’s having caused Adam’s death.²⁴

It might at first blush seem that this double-standard in men’s and women’s obligations toward fulfilling the Law was not really a restricting thing for the women, but rather a lightening of a burden. However, one result was that when a woman performed an act that she was exempt from, it had a lesser value than the same act performed by a man, who was obliged to perform it. The Talmud makes this point quite baldly; it discusses, and rejects, the opinion that a heathen would not receive any merit for his good actions-that is, for fulfilling the Torah²⁵-but goes on to make the point that the performance of a good act which is not obligatory has less merit than if it is obligatory:

Said Mar the son of Rabina: The release from those commands only means that even ‘if they observed them they would not be rewarded. But why should they not? ... What is meant, then, is that they are rewarded not as greatly as one who does a thing which he is bidden to do, but as one who does a thing unbidden. For, Rabbi Hananina said: He who is commanded and does, stands higher than he who is not commanded and does.²⁶

Given the fact that fulfillment of the Law had more and more become the way par excellence of the righteous Jewish life from the time of Ezra on, such a result was natural-the threefold benediction concerning women expressed this vividly.

The double-standard Torah obligation often had even greater effect: with the passage of time many non-obligations for women became outright restrictions. One modern Jewish scholar makes the point bluntly: “A logical consequence of female exemption from the time-geared features of the liturgical round is the ineligibility of women to take an active role in them, for example, as leaders in prayer for congregations including men.”²⁷ In referring to the exercising of ministerial functions by Lily Montagu in a Liberal Synagogue in England (20th century), the same author chides his countrymen: “The appointment was an exceptional one and probably not often, if indeed ever, paralleled within Reform Judaism even in its most radical manifestations. In so far as it was possible at all, it reflects the weakness of the sense of history within Liberal Judaism and a consequent tendency towards a loss of organic cohesion with the main stream of Jewish life.”²⁸

One clear development of an exemption into a prohibition can be seen in the physical separation of men and women that prevailed in the Temple of Herod (started in 19 B. C. E.), but which did not exist in the earlier temples. In Herod’s Temple, by far the most grand and imposing of Jewish temples, women were permitted to enter only the first court, the “court of heathens,” and the court inside that, the “women’s court.” The women’s court was five steps above that of the heathens, but also fifteen steps below that of Jewish men, the “Israelite’s court,” which women were not permitted to enter.²⁹ The Mishnah even described the women’s court as being enclosed by a gallery: “Beforetime (the Court of the Women) was free of buildings, and (afterwards) they surrounded it with a gallery so that the women should observe from above and the men from below and that they should not mingle together.”³⁰ Moreover, the women were allowed to enter their own court only by certain gates,³¹ and indeed this, as well as the entrance to the court of the heathens, was denied to them if they were within seven days of the end of their menstruation, or forty days of the birth of a boy, or eighty days of the birth of a girl.³² (It should be remembered., of course, that this separation of men and women was not only part of a broader set of distinctions between men and women, but a part also of another pattern of distinctions, for “separation was the principle upon which Temple worship was founded; it emphasized the distinction between man and God, Jew and Gentile, men and women, priests and people. These various separations were symbolized by the different courts of the Temple”³³-beyond the Israelites’ court was the Priests’ court, and beyond that the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies).

Each Jewish community in Palestine and throughout the Diaspora usually had at least one synagogue, an institution whose origins go back to the time of Ezra, and possibly to the Exile. As a building, the synagogue was a meeting place for prayer and for the study of the Law; at least by the time of the Roman emperor Augustus the synagogues tended to have two separate areas: the “sabbateion.” for worship services, and the “andron,” for lectures on and discussion of the Law by the scribes and their students. The latter room, as the name makes clear, was exclusively for males.³⁴ But even in the prayer hall the sexes were separated,³⁵ either by some sort of barrier or grillwork³⁶ or moderately high wall, as with the Therapeutae discussed above, or in a separate adjoining room, as in the synagogue of Delos (from the first century B.C. E.), or later, in a gallery around the two sides and the rear, complete with a separate entrance, as can be seen from the oldest extant ruins in Palestine, those at Capernaum. The latter stem from the third century C. E.; presumably all earlier synagogues were destroyed by the Romans after the 70 C. E. and 135 C. E. rebellions.

For a rather thorough discussion and documentation of the existence of a separate women’s section in ancient synagogues see the work of Eliezer L. Sukenik.³⁷ Among other things, he says:

The ancient literature nowhere mentions a specific regulation to the effect that the men and women must be kept separate at public worship; still less is it prescribed that the women’s section shall be built in the form of a gallery. That the sexes were in fact kept apart in synagogues, however, is already attested by Philo (apud Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 8:12), the custom having probably been taken over by the synagogue from the Jerusalem Sanctuary.... There is therefore every reason to suppose that the galleries of which remains have been found in several of the ancient synagogues of Palestine served, as in modern synagogues, as a women’s section.... The staircases leading up to the gallery are always situated outside the basilica proper, leaning against either the outer or inner walls of one of the annexed chambers.

Sukenik then notes that the Palestinian Talmud (fourth century C. E.) described a scene in 116 C. E. when Trajan destroyed the famous Diplostoon synagogue in Alexandria which proved that the women occupied the gallery above the men, after having killed the men Trajan offered mercy to the women at the price of their honor-they replied: “Do to those above as you have done to those below.”³⁸

In the same place³⁹ there appears the following even more explicit and detailed rabbinic statement, probably about the temple primarily, but also doubtless influencing synagogue customs:

In what does the ‘disposition of a large display at a feast’ consist? In a separation between the men’s area and the gallery reserved for women. That is therefore something which has been taught elsewhere. Originally the court had been undivided: then a balcony was erected; the women viewed the ceremony from above and the men remained below so that there was no mixing of the sexes. That virtuous act was taught in the words of the Law, saying (Zechariah 12:12): The country will be in mourning, each family separate, etc., the women apart. There are two different ways of explaining this verse. According to the one the prophet deplores the future death of the messiah; according to the other the matter concerns the destruction of the evil inclination (from henceforth overcome). The former justifies itself thus: if during the mourning the Law prescribes the separation of the men and the women, how much more therefore would this be so at a moment of rejoicing. Those who take the other way justify it as follows: if for those who no longer have the evil inclination the men must be separated from the women., how much more is that separation necessary for those who have not overcome the evil inclination at all.

Slightly later than the time of the codification of the Palestinian Talmud, the fact that Miriam took out the women to sing the Song (of the Sea) separately was taken as the authority for the segregation of the sexes in prayer in the synagogue.⁴⁰

A somewhat similar picture is offered by the archaeological data. Although the remains of the ancient basilical synagogues of Galilee, with a distinctive Hellenistic stamp, show unmistakable indications of the existence of galleries, which probably were the place assigned women, no traces of a women’s gallery have been found in the well-preserved remains of the non-basilical, more oriental synagogue of Dura-Europos in Hellenized Mesopotamia. Scholars differ in interpreting these facts. According to one school, the silence of earlier rabbinic sources and the absence of a women’s gallery in Dura reflect an earlier, more liberal attitude toward women, which allowed them to sit in the main hall, though in a special part, together with the men. The other school argues that the silence of earlier rabbinic authorities implies that in those circles no provisions were made at all for women in the synagogue, because they were excluded from active participation in public worship. For a few special occasions, in which women might have access to the synagogue, a temporary, removable screen would have been sufficient.

Only the latter interpretation seems to fit the evidence that provisions for separation of sexes appear mainly in synagogues with a Hellenistic tinge.... Another consideration should be borne in mind. It is probable that the basilical type of synagogue, which adopted architectural features of the temple, followed the example of the ‘woman’s hall’ in separating the sexes-i. e., by erecting galleries. The communities with a non-basilical type of synagogue might have taken stricter measures of separation, confining the women to a separate, adjoining room, as seems to have been the case in the earlier building of the Dura-Europos synagogue.⁴¹

Given the physical separation of women in the synagogue, it is not surprising that they were also “precluded even from constituting units of the necessary quorum of ten (minyan) to form a congregation to worship communally, boys under thirteen being likewise precluded (and also, in antiquity, slaves).”⁴²

Basically what Loewe says is accurate; already in the Mishnah it is clearly indicated that ten men constitute a minyan,⁴³ but it is not totally precise to say that boys under thirteen or slaves were never counted toward a minyan: the Encyclopaedia Judaica article on Minyan states that “the accepted custom in emergency cases is nine adults and a boy,” and gives rabbinic references. Already in the Babylonian Talmud it was noted that an infant boy “can be counted to make up ten,” and that “nine and a slave maybe joined (to make up ten).”⁴⁴ In a reference to the Mishnah and Talmud references, Meg. 1, 3 and bMeg. 5a, the above Encyclopaedia Judaica article notes: “In talmudic times a community was regarded as a ‘city’ if there were at least ‘ten idle men ... who could come to each synagogue service to make up the minyan ... in traditional congregations, especially in Eastern Europe, when it was customary to pay a few old or idle men to be present twice a day at the services. These people were called ‘minyan men. In the Reform ritual women are counted in the minimum quorum of ten persons to constitute a public prayer service since they have full religious equality with men.” Since late 1973 counting women toward a minyan is to be allowed in Conservative American synagogues, but this has not been done in Orthodox synagogues.

It is also not surprising to read in the ancient Tosephta: “Everyone is reckoned among the seven persons (who are called forward to read from the Torah in the Sabbath synagogue service), even a child and even a woman.⁴⁵ But a woman is not to come forward to publicly read (from the Torah).”⁴⁶ A talmudic quotation of the same teaching added, “out of respect for the community.”⁴⁷ I. Elbogen⁴⁸ argues that women were originally called to Torah, but then were later forbidden in practice from carrying out the reading; Billerbeck,⁴⁹ on the other hand, insists that women were called to the Torah merely in appearance in order honor them, but in keeping with the general custom they always had to forego actually carrying out the reading.

A similar explanation is often given to the somewhat anomalous facts that a three-year old child was once named the president of the synagogue in Venosa, and the same happened to a woman in Smyrna and once in Myndos, and that a woman proselyte was called the mother of two synagogues. These events took place in the Diaspora where foreign pressures were strong and it was sometimes important to adapt to the Hellenist environment (with its women’s liberation movement) at least in language; hence, these honorary titles, with no real powers, were handed out to important personages-including patronesses.⁵⁰

Thus, at the beginning of the Common Era, and subsequently, women were not only not individually active participants in the synagogue services; they could also often not be spectators-only listeners, who might also join in the congregationally recited prayers.

In the time after the destruction of the temple (70 C. E.) there is no question but that the central element in Jewish life was the study of Torah, the Law, oral and written. But even in the immediately preceding centuries the study of the Law was at least a close second to temple worship. Indeed, with the ever-increasing significance of the scribes after the return from the Exile in the sixth century B. C. E., and especially with the appearance of the Pharisees in the second century B. C. E., the study of the Law became as important as temple worship, and at times more important, as with the Essenes and some Pharisees, like the author of the Book of Jubilees (second century B. C. E.). Given, then, the extraordinary prominence in Jewish life held by the study of the Law,⁵¹ it is important to see what relationship women had to it.

The fact is that Jewish women of ancient rabbinic days, i. e., the formative centuries just before and after the beginning of the Common Era, did not study Torah, the Law.⁵² There was no outright command forbidding women to study Torah, but there were statements that came very close to it, and in fact went considerably beyond a simple negative command. In the first century C. E., Rabbi Eliezer, who claimed he taught only what he learned from his teachers, said: “If any man teach his daughter Torah it is as though he taught her lechery.”⁵³

The opposing opinion of a contemporary scholar, Ben Azzai, was also given in the same place, but his opinion was clearly neither the traditional nor the accepted one. Ben Azzai, though a widely reputed scholar, was not an ordained rabbi and hence his opinion did not carry as much weight as an Eliezer, who was an ordained rabbi and who hence belonged to the “chain of tradition.” Moreover, Ben Azzai wanted to teach daughters enough Torah merely so that they would know that if they had performed some meritorious deeds, this would result in postponing the deadly effects of the drinking the “Waters of Bitterness” by wives suspected of adultery: “Hardly has she finished drinking before her face turns yellow and her eyes bulge and her veins swell, and they say ‘Take her away! take her away! that the temple court not be made unclean!’ But if she had any merit this holds her punishment in suspense ... Hence Ben Azzai says.... “The commentary of the Babylonian Talmud completely ignored Ben Azzai’s opinion and provided a reason for Eliezer’s position, adding the tiny suggestion that instead of saying that the teaching of Torah to women actually taught them lechery, Eliezer, rather, had taught that it was as though she were taught lechery.⁵⁴ The Palestinian Talmud, in the discussion of this portion of the Mishnah, provided an additional story about Rabbi Eliezer that bore on the same subject- Eliezer said: “The wisdom of women is only in her distaff.... May the words of the Torah be burned rather than be given to women!”⁵⁵ These are amazingly strong words for one whose entire life was devoted to the preservation and study of the Torah.

Hans Kosmala⁵⁶ has some very enlightening remarks on the passage; he noted that Ben Azzai, as we know from his other statements, made more generous judgments than his contemporaries. He often maintained a view which was totally contrary to the interpretation and stand handed down. Moreover, he was not an ordained rabbi, but only a student of wisdom. Even though because of his personality he stood in high esteem, he did not exercise an independent teaching office. Probably he took part in halachic discussions, but he did not possess the same authority in decisions, as, for example, Rabbi Eliezer. From this debate we can conclude that Ben Azzai’s statement was a counter-move against an ancient custom that had become law. This counter-move was repulsed. The dictum of R. Eliezer was sustained throughout the following period. In his debate over the matter, Kosmala concluded:

Farbstein knows all this perfectly well, but apologetical grounds prevented him from presenting us with the true state of affairs. With his (partial) Talmud citation he makes us believe that the opinions on the matter were in fact fundamentally divided. In reality, however, only once in a special situation and in a very special connection was a contrary voice raised, and it sank on the same day in the broad stream of legal tradition. The Torah remained an affair of men.

Another talmudic passage has pertinence here. When commenting on the statement in the Mishnah that if an adulteress had any merit the effectiveness of the test waters would be postponed, the Talmud asked what kind of merit could bring about the postponement of the effects for three years: “‘And another for three years, etc.’ What sort of merit? If I answer merit of (studying) Torah, she is (in the category) of one who is not commanded and fulfils!⁵⁷ Rather must it be merit of (performing) a commandment.... Rabina said: It is certainly merit of (the study of) Torah (which causes the water to suspend its effect); and when you argue that she is in the category of one who is not commanded and fulfils, (it can be answered) granted that women are not so commanded, still when they have their sons taught Scripture and Mishnah and wait for their husbands until they return from the Schools, should they not share (the merit) with them?”⁵⁸ It is clear from this teaching that the rabbis did not expect any women to be studying Torah; the only connection with the study of Torah that women could be expected to have was to send their sons and husbands off to study and to wait for them.

Although it was not absolutely forbidden to teach women Torah (if Rabbi Eliezer’s dictum and its widespread echo is not seen as an absolute negative), there also was no obligation to do so either, as there was for sons: “The father is obliged to teach his son Torah.”⁵⁹ When it is recalled how important the obligation to fulfill a command was, and how the mere lack of obligation led to positive restrictions in other instances, such as women not being counted in a minyan, it will be apparent that this lack of obligation to teach women Torah, or for women to study Torah, was likely to have a very negative effect. This likelihood was confirmed by the fact that this obligation-or lack of it-was specifically discussed at length in the Talmud, with the result that it was clearly stated that women were not obliged to study Torah: “and how do we know that she (mother) has no duty (to teach her children)?... Because it is written ‘And ye shall teach them your sons’-but not your daughters.”⁶⁰

Still another story about Rabbi Eliezer corroborated the presumption that women did not study Torah: “Rabbi Eliezer was asked, ‘Is it permissible to drink from the hand of the bride so long as her husband is sitting with her at the festive table?’ He replied, ‘Whoever drinks from the hand of a bride is as though he drinks from the hand of a harlot.’ (His colleagues) said to him, Are not all the daughters of Israel possessed of good manners?’ He answered, ‘God forbid! who is not familiar with the Torah cannot be possessed of good manners.’”⁶¹

The assumption that men are to learn Torah, but not women, was further mirrored in the “difference in formulation, according to sex, of a prayer for the prosperity of a new-born infant. In the case of a boy, the conclusion asked that his parents may be granted to bring him up to ‘Torah, marriage, and good works’;⁶² for girls, a current modification of the formula runs ‘to reverence, marriage, and good works.’ ... Reference to the Torah is conspicuously absent.”⁶³ It should be added that in the recitation of the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:7, is quoted: “You shall repeat them to your sons.” That this very ancient precept, with its sole focus on men, persisted through much later times is seen by the fact that it was listed as the eleventh commandment (of the total of 613) to which Maimonides remarked: “Women are not obliged thereto.”⁶⁴

Thus, if no women were obliged to study Torah, and if no one was obliged to teach them., there was not much possibility that they would in fact study Torah. For who taught Torah? The rabbis, and their attitude toward women would have made it impossible for them to have women students. As the modern Jewish scholar C. G. Montefiore notes:

Very few women were students of the Law: it was not intended that they should be. Yet the highest and most adorable thing in the world was to study the Law. The greatest and purest joy in the world was to fulfil all the commandments and ordinances of the Pentateuch and Rabbinic codes. But women need not, and could not, observe them all. It was not for nothing that the daily blessing was said (the blessing which the modern orthodox Jews have not had the courage and good sense to remove from their prayer books): ‘Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, who hast not made me a woman.’ This blessing was as sincerely said as the two previous ones: ‘Blessed art thou, O Lord our God who hast not made me a gentile or a slave.’⁶⁵

Montefiore said, “they tell of a few exceptional women such as Beruria,” who apparently had some knowledge of Torah. In fact, whenever some kind of evidence is put forth which is counter to the above documentation, that women in reality did not study Torah, Beruria is always mentioned. When one finds in this connection a reference to Beruria everywhere, and very often only to Beruria,⁶⁶ one is tempted to see this as a classical case of the exception proving the rule.

Because Beruria was such an exceptional woman in early Jewish history, she is deserving of a more detailed discussion. The Encyclopaedia Judaica (vol. 4, col. 701) emphasizes that “she is famous as the only woman in talmudic literature whose views on halachic matters are seriously reckoned with by the scholars of her time.” Beruria was the daughter of a rabbi and the wife of the very important Rabbi Meir (early and middle second century). There are various spellings of her name, the usual alternates being Valeria, or possibly Valuria. In his 1921 book, Jesus und die Frauen, Johannes Leipoldt referred to these alternate spellings and described her as the daughter of Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion (p. 120). Twenty years later in Jesu Verhaeltnis zu Griechen und Juden., he referred to her as a proselyte: “The proselyte Veluriat⁶⁷ is probably the same woman as Meir’s wife Veluria because of the rarity of the name” (p. 20). However, in 1954, in Die Frau in der antiken Welt und im Urchristentum Leipoldt again simply referred to Beruria as the daughter of Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion (p. 100). Since the Talmud itself⁶⁸ identifies Beruria as the daughter of Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion, it is not likely the identification between her and the proselyte Valeria can be made.⁶⁹

Beruria became an avid student of Torah, although we do not know who taught her to read or with what rabbi she studied; she may have studied with her father, but perhaps also with other rabbis. Apparently she went through the intensive three-year course of study customary for disciples of rabbis at the time:

Rabbi Simlai came before Rabbi Johanan and requested him: Let the master teach me the Book of Genealogies.... Let us learn it in three months, he proposed. Thereupon he (Rabbi Johanan) took a clod and threw it at him, saying: If Beruria, wife of Rabbi Meir and daughter of Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon who studied three hundred laws from three hundred teachers in one day could nevertheless not do her duty in three years, yet you propose to do it in three months!⁷⁰

Beruria not only put in the canonical three-year program of study, but also did it in such an exemplary manner that she was held up as an example of how to study Torah. Indeed, her reputation as an avid student was so great that it spawned legends about her studiousness, as in the clearly hyperbolic reference to the three hundred laws studied from three hundred teachers every day for three years. Such a legend was quite a compliment to her reputation, and triply so when it is also recalled that Beruria was being held up to be emulated by Rabbi Simlai who himself was a very renowned rabbi, and that Rabbi Simlai lived over a hundred years after Beruria.

Beruria also took part in the discussions and debates among the rabbis and their more able followers. In one such a debate over a very technical matter of ritual purity she opposed, and bested, her brother: in referring to Beruria, Rabbi Judah ben Baba said, “His daughter has answered more correctly than his son.”⁷¹ Another debate was recorded in which two rabbinical schools were ranged on opposite sides, whereupon Beruria gave her solution. “When these words were said before Rabbi Judah, he commented ‘Beruria has spoken rightly.’”⁷² The striking thing about these reports, and others elsewhere in the Talmud, is that a woman’s opinion on Torah became law, halacha. At least one woman penetrated to the heart of Judaism, Torah, and not only as an absorbent student, but also as a rabbinical disputant and a decisive maker of law.

Beyond these accomplishments Beruria also followed the path of all other really able students of Torah and became a teacher of Torah: “Beruria once discovered a student who was learning in an undertone. Rebuking him, she exclaimed: Is it not written, ‘ordered in all things and sure?’ If it (the Torah) is ‘ordered’ in your 248 limbs it will be ‘sure,’ otherwise it will not be ‘sure.’”⁷³ The then common mode of studying Torah was to recite it aloud to memorize it more effectively. Here Beruria not only drilled the student as a schoolmistress, but did so in a peculiarly rabbinic fashion: she quoted from the Torah and argued her position by explaining and applying the scriptural passage. Her rebuke of the student was gentle; she tried to lead him more deeply into his studies. As one modern Jewish woman scholar states, “One gets the impression that Beruria had the personality of a master-rebbe who was seriously concerned with the spiritual and educational welfare of people.”⁷⁴ That this story of Beruria, together with one of her teaching the famous rabbi Jose the Galilean on the road to Lydda, is grouped with a number of other rabbinical stories about teaching, indicates that the editors of the Babylonian Talmud were aware of her teaching prowess as late as the fifth century-three centuries after her death.

Still another story recorded in the Talmud portrays Beruria teaching Torah in the customary rabbinical manner-quoting, explaining, and applying Scripture:

A certain min (Sadducees) said to Beruria: It is written: ‘Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear.’ Because she did not bear, she should sing? She said to him: Fool! Look at the end of the verse, where it is written, ‘for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.’ Rather, what is the meaning of ‘O barren, thou didst not bear’?-Sing O community of Israel, who resembles a barren woman, for not having borne children like you, who are damned to hell.⁷⁵

Beruria clearly did not suffer fools gladly, as this story and the one about Rabbi Jose the Galilean, related below, indicate. She could also be extremely sympathetic and sensitive to those she felt were sincere, but here she faced a man she thought was helping to destroy true Judaism (min is to be understood here either as a Sadducee opponent of the Pharisees/rabbis or as a Jewish- Christian) and who apparently was expounding Scripture in an ignorant way. If there was anything Beruria could not tolerate, it was a man being pretentious about Torah.

Beruria likewise had an intense moral fervor and sensitive concern for persons, as illustrated by the following story about her and her famous husband, Rabbi Meir:

Certain highwaymen living in the neighborhood of Rabbi Meir annoyed him greatly, and Rabbi Meir prayed for them to die. His wife Beruria said to him: What is your view? Is it because it is written: ‘Let the sinners be consumed’? Is ‘sinners’ written? ‘Sins’ is written. Moreover, look at the end of the verse: ‘and let the wicked be no more.’ Since the sins will cease, the wicked will be no more. He prayed for them and they repented.⁷⁶

This is clearly high moral advice, presented with the usual scriptural quotation, analysis and application of its meaning. Beruria here showed herself the superior of the best male rabbinical mind and moral spirit; the hard proof of that is that Rabbi Meir took her advice, with success. A modern male Jewish scholar has commented on this passage: “Students sufficiently familiar with Hebrew would profit greatly by following Beruria’s argument in the Talmud’s original text, also looking up the Hebrew of the verse ....”⁷⁷

If Beruria was a brilliant student and teacher of Torah, a decider of halacha, and one who lived and taught an intensely moral life, did she not have all the qualities of a rabbi? Rabbi, after all, simply meant master or teacher; it was a term of respect given to the teachers of Torah who were expected to decide the law and live morally. She clearly did, but in the documents as we have them she is never referred to as rabbi. Presumably she never received the “ordination” (semikhah) to the rabbinate that promising young men normally received at the completion of their studies. (At least one man, as noted above, Ben Azzai, of the first century, was also learned in the Law, taught Law, decided Law, and was of high moral character, and was also not “ordained,” and hence not referred to as rabbi.) There was no legal reason why she could not have been “ordained”; rather, the generally very low rabbinic estimate of women is the most likely reason, though from the documents which are available we cannot know that for certain.

Beruria, as she appears in the pages of rabbinic writings, is a person who lived a very full human life with perhaps more than her measure of suffering. Hers was the time of the final destruction of the Jewish homeland in Palestine by the Romans in 135 C. E., until it was reestablished in the twentieth century. She lost her father Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon in these same Hadrianic persecutions. Her brother, whom she had bested in a Torah dispute, disgraced the family by turning to banditry and subsequently was murdered by his gang for trying to inform on them. Her sister was forced into a brothel by the conquering Roman authorities, although Beruria contrived to have her husband Rabbi Meir rescue her. But perhaps the most tragic suffering of her life was the death of two of her sons. Her endurance and response to their sudden deaths is recalled in the following rabbinic story:

When two of their sons died on Sabbath, Beruria did not inform Meir of their children’s death upon his return from the academy in order not to grieve him on the Sabbath! Only after the Havdalah prayer did she broach the matter , saying: Some time ago a certain man came and left something in my trust; now he has called for it. Shall I return it to him or not? Naturally Meir replied in the affirmative, whereupon Beruria showed him their dead children. When Meir began to weep, she asked: Did you not tell me that we must give back what is given on trust? ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.’⁷⁸

In the midst of extraordinary suffering we see her rabbinic style coming to the fore once more, as she tells a story and applies it to the present situation with a Scripture quotation. Likewise, the stereotypical sex roles are reversed as the strong Beruria takes the more intellectual approach and Rabbi Meir weeps.

In all the stories recorded about Beruria, she is always set over against a man; the only story involving another woman is really not a tale about Beruria but about her husband, who was asked by Beruria to rescue her sister from the brothel.⁷⁹ In the rabbinic writings Beruria is seen only as a rabbinic student, disputant, halachic decision-maker, and above all a teacher-always with men. Moreover, she is always superior to the men, whether as a model of studiousness, a teacher, or as a superior and even at times triumphant disputant and exegete. This is the case even in regard to her husband, the most learned and renowned rabbi of his age. If such a strong and positive image comes through even the totally male memorized, written and edited rabbinic materials, what must Beruria have been like?

Beruria had to be an unusual-a rabbinical-woman to make a broad mark on that massive male work, the Talmud. Clearly she did not fit the female stereotype of her day. But she was more than that. She very keenly felt the oppressed, subordinate position women held in the Jewish society around her, and struck out against it. Her consciousness was extremely sensitized: “Rabbi Jose the Galilean was once on a journey when he met Beruria. ‘By what road,’ he asked her, ‘do we go to Lydda?’ ‘Foolish Galilean,’ she replied, ‘did not the Sages say this: Engage not in much talk with women? You should have asked: By which to Lydda?’”⁸⁰ What is irritating Beruria is woman’s second class status, here reflected in the rabbinic law that a man should not speak much with women., who are too “lightheaded” to waste time on, and sexually tempting besides. Here was a chance to throw verbal acid in the face of one of her “oppressors.” A student she treated gently; the rabbi she called a fool. But with her keen wit she did not simply vituperate the rabbi (one wonders if he had earlier delivered himself of some pompous sage quotation on the frivolity and inferiority of women to have earned this breathtaking attack); instead, she carefully followed the traditional rabbinic pattern of disputation by rebutting a statement with a quotation from the written or oral Law. Always she remained the intellectual.

What a weight Beruria’s reputation must have had in talmudic times for this vitriolic putdown of a rabbi to be noted, remembered for hundreds of years, and finally made permanent in the final redaction of the Talmud. That there was obviously also a counter-feeling among the early rabbis is reflected only in a shadowy fashion in the last line of the talmud story about Rabbi Meir’s rescue of Beruria’s sister from a brothel. There was a backlash to his rescue efforts and “He then arose and ran away and came to Babylon; others say because of the incident about Beruria.”⁸¹ No further information about the “incident” is given in the Talmud. There is merely this dark reference, sheer innuendo.

A thousand years later, we find a full-blown legend about the incident in the commentary on this passage by the famous Jewish medieval talmudic scholar Rashi:

Beruria once again made fun of the saying of the Sages that women are lightheaded. Then Meir said to her: With your life you will have to take back your words. Then he sent one of his students to test her to see if she would allow herself to be seduced. He sat by her the whole day until she surrendered herself to him. When she realized (what she had done) she strangled herself. Thereupon Rabbi Meir ran away (to Babylonia) on account of the scandal.⁸²

There is nothing at all in the intelligence, perceptiveness and moral character of Beruria to make this in any way credible. Would she not have perceived that her husband had set a trap for her? Is it not incomprehensible that the great Rabbi Meir could have commissioned his rabbinic student to commit one of the three deadly sins⁸³ in its most serious form: sexual immorality with a married Jewish woman? Finally, why would it take a thousand years for this story, so out of character with all of the previously known documentation, to surface?⁸⁴ It clearly was invented simply to morally annihilate Beruria, the one woman of superior stature in the Talmud, Beruria the feminist-for it was exactly on that point that she was attacked. Because she took an overtly feminist stance of rejecting the rabbinic stereotyping of women as intellectually inferior, she was told she would have to give up her life. Feminism was a capital crime! In male chauvinist fashion the moral destruction planned for her would reduce her to the female stereotype, a weak sexual creature who could not resist a determined Don Juan.

Despite the historical bankruptcy of this late legend, it does underline Beruria’s towering reputation in her lifetime and for centuries afterwards. The very attempt to destroy it is evidence of its power. Although the opposition was already there in talmudic times, as is seen in the innuendo about the “incident,” the later hatchet job suggests that the enemies of what she stood for grew stronger in time. Fortunately, the character assassination attempt was far from completely successful, for the clearly historically based evidence of the earlier talmudic stories remains today. Less fortunately, the fact that the talmudic evidence was not erased bears witness not only to the vigorous reputation of Beruria, but also to the faithful honesty of the generations of rabbis who memorized, handed on, and finally wrote down, collected, and edited the stories about Beruria. This latter means that there were no other women who entered and advanced in the heartland of Judaism, the study of the Torah, otherwise we would have talmudic stories of them as well. Beruria was the “exception that proves the rule” that in talmudic days women did not study Torah.

The one other woman of the early Rabbinic period who, along with Beruria, is at times mentioned by name as one who knew Torah, if not exactly as an example of “many women recorded as being Torah scholars in the fullest Sense,”⁸⁵ is Imma Shalom. She was the sister of Rabbi Gamaliel Il and the wife of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus-both famous first century C. E. rabbis, the latter being the one who, among other things, said “Whoever teaches his daughter Torah, it is as though he taught her lechery.”⁸⁶ Imma Shalom could not qualify as a Torah scholar in any sense of the word. There are several references to her in rabbinical writings, but only two have importance for us here. One story is about a dispute she was involved in with her brother (whether the recorded dispute is real or fictitious is difficult to determine definitely, but that has no bearing on its significance-or lack of significance-here), during which she bribed the (Christian?) judge, but lost anyhow because her brother put up a larger bribe. No scriptural or rabbinic argumentation was presented by Imma Shalom, nor was an ethical principle propounded or exemplified.⁸⁷

The second story about Imma Shalom also hardly proves that women were learned in Torah or were highly esteemed by the rabbis. It relates that when she once heard a sceptic mocking her brother, saying, “Your God is not strictly honest, or He would not have stolen a rib from sleeping Adam,” she asked him to fetch a police official whereupon he asked her why. “We were robbed last night of a silver cruet and the thief left in its place a golden one.” He responded, “If that is all I wish that thief would visit me every day!” Imma retorted, “and yet you object to the removal of the rib from sleeping Adam! Did he not receive in exchange a woman to wait on him?”⁸⁸ Perhaps the last line helps explain why the story was recorded.⁸⁹

The article on “Woman” in the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia⁹⁰ refers to the ubiquitous Beruria, then to the wife (no name given-a revealing fact) of Jacob ben Judah Mizrahi, who “continued to direct his Yeshiva after his death,” and to the “daughter (again no name) of the exilarch Samuel ben Eli of Baghdad, and Miriam Sapira (who) both taught Torah to male students from whom they were separated by a curtain”-also a “revealing” fact. Again, outside of Beruria, none of these cases has any bearing on the topic at hand, the status of women in the period of formative Judaism, i. e., 200 B. C. E.-500 C. E.; the latter two women lived during the High Middle Ages and the wife of Mizrahi lived in the sixteenth century.

A different list of “learned women” of this early period is given by Shalom Ben-Chorin.⁹¹ He grants that such women were the exception, but insists that there were some. Again none of them, with the exception of Beruria, can in any way be said to be learned in Torah, and in fact there is some difficulty with the general term “learnedness” (Gelehrsamkeit) used in reference to some of them. Ben-Chorin does not include Imma Shalom in his list of learned women because he has just referred to her in a somewhat derogatory fashion as a bluestocking.⁹² He begins his list with Beruria and then mentions “Homa the daughter of Rabbi Chisda from Kaphri.”

It is puzzling why Homa the daughter of Rabbi Chisda should be listed as learned in Torah. In the Babylonian Talmud she does not even have a name, but is constantly referred to simply as the daughter of Rabbi Chisda.⁹³ As a child she was once taken upon her father’s lap and was asked which of his two prize pupils she wanted for a husband; she said, both. This was recorded because she did eventually marry one, Rami, and after his death, the second, Raba.⁹⁴ It is also recorded that she had a hole made in the wall of the “court” so that she could stick her hand through above the head of her husband, presumably to ward off maleficent spirits,⁹⁵ and that once she burst into the courtroom to denounce a woman as a liar.⁹⁶

The last story about her in the Talmud is largely about another woman whom the Talmud names Homa. In the story this other Homa, who was reputed to be very beautiful but who also had the ill-fortune of having three husbands die one after the other, went to the rabbinical court, and in the course of her visit her beauty apparently “became visible” to the court:

As she was shewing it to him her arm was uncovered and a light shone upon the court. Raba arose, went home and solicited Rabbi Chisda’s daughter [his own wife]. ‘Who has been to-day at the court?’ enquired Rabbi Chisda’s daughter. ‘Homa the wife of Abaye,’ he replied. Thereupon she followed her, striking her with the straps of a chest until she chased her out of all Mahuza. ‘You have,’ she said to her, ‘already killed three (men), and now you come to kill another (man)!’⁹⁷

Here Rabbi Chisda’s daughter (Homa) appears either as a very jealous woman or one superstitiously fearful of the evil power of a thrice-widowed woman-or both. From all of the evidence, Homa (Rabbi Chisda’s daughter) can in no way be said to exhibit learnedness in Torah, or anything else.

A third learned woman, according to Ben-Chorin, is Yalta, the wife of Rabbi Nahman., a fourth century C. E. Babylonian rabbi. Although there are a number of references to Yalta in the early rabbinical writings, none of them indicate that she was in any way learned. She exhibited a sharp temper when a guest refused to send her a glass of wine with a blessing over it-women were not present when guests were at meals.⁹⁸ She also once said to her husband: “The Torah has permitted something of a similar taste for everything it has forbidden; I would like to eat meat in milk”; whereupon she listed a number of things that were forbidden and other things somewhat similar which were allowed.⁹⁹ The list, however, shows no more “Gelehrsamkeit” than any Jewish wife would have if she tried to keep a kosher home; that is, if she followed the rules her “learned” husband laid down.

Two other women are also referred to by Ben-Chorin. One is the foster mother of Rabbi Abaye, mentioned above,¹⁰⁰ who possessed medical knowledge and is credited with some pedagogical statements-but this of course does not qualify her as one learned in Torah. The last reference is more interesting: “Also a maid of Rabbi Judah (second century C. E.) is described as learned; she commented on Bible verses which were difficult to understand.”¹⁰¹

Perhaps the first thing to notice about this maidservant of Rabbi Judah (the codifier of the Mishnah) is that she is nameless; in the five, or possibly six, places in the Babylonian Talmud where she is mentioned she is always referred to only as Rabbi Judah’s maidservant or domestic. Our evidence concerning her is very meager. We do know that she had learned at least some Hebrew, something of the symbolic style of speaking current among rabbis and their students, and was an imposing and responsible enough member of Rabbi Judah’s household to be able to levy an excommunication and exercise a powerful prayer at the death of the Rabbi-no mean accomplishments for a woman servant. However, given the slimness of the documentation one must be careful to neither unduly expand nor contract its significance. It is necessary to look at each portion separately before attempting an over-all evaluation.

If the reference in bShab. 152a, about a ninety-two year old domestic of Rabbi Judah’s household serving as a food taster, refers to the female domestic in question, as seems reasonably likely, and if it is coupled with the stories of her exercising significant household responsibilities, one gets the picture of an intelligent, perceptive woman servant who for many decades must have heard the great Rabbi Judah, and perhaps even his father, Rabbi Simon III, teaching his students and discussing halachic matters with his colleagues.

She even had charge of the tables reserved by the patriarch for the numerous pupils who received free board at his house; and as circumstances or her whims dictated, she would either immediately dismiss the students after the meals were over or invite them to remain a while longer. In such company she adopted the technical language known only to the initiated, and employed exclusively by the Rabbis, who scarcely ever expressed the principal idea literally, but nearly always resorted to symbols and figures of speech:¹⁰²

When Rabbi’s maid indulged in enigmatic speech she used to say this: The ladle strikes against the jar [all the wine in the jar has been used up]; let the eagles fly to their nests [the students may now leave the dining room for their lodgings]; and when she wished them to remain at table she used to tell them, The crown of her friend [the bung of the adjoining jar] shall be removed and the ladle will float in the jar like a ship that sails in the sea.¹⁰³

That such a woman in that setting would have learned some Hebrew is not at all surprising, especially those terms dealing with kitchen and domestic matters. However, when looking at the passage in bMeg. 18a it is a little difficult to conclude with Ben-Chorin that she “commented on Bible verses which were difficult to understand.” The passage reads as follows:

The Rabbis did not know what was meant by serugin, until one day they heard the maidservant of Rabbis household, on seeing the Rabbis enter at intervals, say to them, How long are you going to come in by serugin?

The Rabbis did not know what was meant by halugelugoth, til one day they heard the handmaid of the household of Rabbi, on seeing a man peeling portulaks, say to him, How long will you be peeling your portulaks? (halugelugoth).

The Rabbis did not know what was meant by, salseleah (and it shall exalt). One day they heard the handmaid of the house of Rabbi say to a man who was curling his hair, How long will you be mesalsel with your hair?... [Then comes a similar example which does not involve Rabbi Judah’s maidservant. I

The Rabbis did not know what was meant by we-tetethia bematate (of destruction), til one day they heard the handmaid of the household of Rabbi say to her companion, Take the tatitha (broom) and tati (sweep) the house.¹⁰⁴

To be sure, Ben-Chorin is not alone in making the sort of claim he does: “She used to help the great scholar and his students to interpret difficult biblical passages by Muttering clues to their interpretations as she cleaned the room.”¹⁰⁵ Likewise: “In almost one breath this sensible woman once explained the meaning of four separate rabbinical expressions in the presence of the learned. The ingenious, roundabout way in which this was done, and her half playful manner of concealing the act, are matters not without interest.”¹⁰⁶

There are difficulties with these explanations of this passage. First, those who were aided by the maidservant’s Hebrew utterances did not include Rabbi Judah himself. Secondly, that these word difficulties all occurred and were solved “in almost one breath” is quite unlikely. What is likely is that several different occasions were involved and that these four at any rate were remembered and (almost) brought together in this one passage-after all, they were also recorded singly elsewhere in the Talmud.¹⁰⁷ The Talmud simply records that a group of rabbis who gathered around the household of Rabbi Judah the Prince were inadvertently assisted in understanding some unusual Hebrew words when they overheard the maidservant on different occasions using a form of these words-which concerned household matters that a maidservant would deal with. It is just possible that the maid was circumspectly passing on some of her household Hebrew to perhaps relatively newly arrived rabbis, but there is nothing in the text that positively indicates that this was the case; rather, the contrary is true. If she was “commenting on Bible verses which were difficult to understand,” then neither the rabbis who overheard her utterances nor those who recorded them in the Talmud were aware that she was doing so. Still, it is possible.

This same maidservant also wielded an extraordinary degree of responsibility, as the following story of her banishing a malefactor from the company of the Rabbi’s household indicates:

Then R. Samuel b. Nahmani got up on his feet and said: Why, even a ‘separation’ imposed by one of the domestics in Rabbi’s house was not treated lightly by the Rabbis for three years; how much more so one imposed by our colleague, Rab Judah! ... What (was the incident) of the domestic in Rabbi’s house? It was one of the maidservants in Rabbi’s house that had noticed a man beating his grown-up son and said, Let that fellow be under a shammetha! because he sinned against the words (of Holy Writ): Put not a stumbling-block before the blind. For it is taught: and not put a stumbling-block before the blind, that text applies to one who beats his grown-up son (and this caused him to rebel).¹⁰⁸

Obviously not only rabbis could “exclude” wrongdoers at that time, but obviously, too, the maidservant’s reputation must have carried some weight. It should also be noted that she also knew the rabbinic style of backing things up with a Scripture quotation-she doubtless had heard many such bannings issued over the decades.

The final story about Rabbi Judah’s maidservant reveals again her strength of character in a most dramatic manner.

On the day when Rabbi died the Rabbis decreed a public fast and offered prayers for heavenly mercy. They, furthermore, announced that whoever said that Rabbi was dead would be stabbed with a sword.

Rabbi’s handmaid ascended the roof and prayed: The immortals desire Rabbi (to join them) and the mortals desire Rabbi (to remain with them); may it be the will (of God) that the mortals may overpower the immortals. When, however, she saw how often he resorted to the privy, painfully taking off his tefillin and putting them on again, she prayed: May it be the will (of the Almighty) that the immortals may overpower the mortals. As the Rabbis incessantly continued their prayers for (heavenly) mercy she took up a jar and threw it down from the roof to the ground. (For a moment) they ceased praying and soul of the Rabbi departed to its eternal rest.¹⁰⁹

In sum, it is likely that the same maidservant is spoken of in all the passages quoted, although one cannot be absolutely certain since no name is ever given-a fact in itself which reveals a good deal about the inferior status of women, even those of strong character. This maidservant was a strong character who learned at least some Hebrew, could banter with rabbinic students in the “in” language, and at least once wielded effectively the “separation” in the approved manner. Nevertheless, for all of her strength of character, she is not evidence that women studied Torah. In fact she is evidence that they did not, for if such a servant had been male, he would doubtless have eventually been pulled into the ranks of the rabbinic students and then the rabbis, and would not have been nameless, or known simply as a man’s servant.

In a further remark Ben-Chorin writes: “When a pharisee can even issue a warning about a pharisaical woman (Sotah 3, 4), that shows that women had already entered into the theological discussion, if perhaps even only on the periphery.”¹¹⁰ The pertinent reference in the Mishnah is as follows: “A foolish pious man and a cunning wicked man and a sanctimonious woman and the self-inflicted wounds of the Pharisees-these ruin the world.”¹¹¹ Neither this text itself, however, nor the comment on it in the Babylonian Talmud give any indication of women being involved in theological discussion.¹¹²

In the end, of course, Shalom Ben-Chorin also is not attempting to maintain that women studied Torah in ancient rabbinic days. As noted, he remarks: “learned women were the exception.”¹¹³ In fact he goes beyond that, saying: “We must envision the religious life of a Jewish woman in this time as extremely introverted.... We have rather indiscriminately chosen several examples here out of a relatively large time span, but this is legitimate, for in this time span, from the time of Christ to the later talmudic period, no real emancipation of the woman took place. Her status within Judaism did not change.”¹¹⁴ It does seem that every time a list of women from ancient rabbinic days purportedly learned in Torah is put forth, they all seem to be chimerical-with the exception of Beruria. One can conclude that in mishnaic and talmudic times women did not study, nor were they taught, Torah.

A corollary point might well be added here: for the sake of prayer and the study of Torah, men did well to avoid contact with women, including their wives. The second century B. C. E. Testament of Naphtali stated: “There is a season for a man to embrace his wife, and a season to abstain therefrom for his prayer.”¹¹⁵ The idea is further developed in the Mishnah, where it states: “If a man vowed to have no intercourse with his wife.... Disciples (of the Rabbis) may continue absent for thirty days against the will (of their wives) while they occupy themselves in the study of Torah.”¹¹⁶ This period is especially noteworthy, for by contrast the Mishnah adds: “laborers-only for-one week.”

The Talmud expands the opposition between women and the study of Torah when it states: “Students may go away to study Torah without the permission (of their wives even for) two or three-years.”¹¹⁷ But it does not stop there, for a number of stories are added which indicate that it was often customary for a man to go off without his wife for twelve years! (This was apparently the usual period of Torah study in the academy.) This is true not only for the later rabbinic times but perhaps even for the first century C. E., for such a story is also told of Rabbi Akiba.¹¹⁸ If the question is “for how long (may they-disciples-go away) with the permission (of their wives)?” the response is: “For as long as they desire.”¹¹⁹ In fact, the life of Rabbi Akiba illustrates this dictum well, for after allegedly spending twelve years away from his wife he returned to his home town where he overheard an old man saying to his wife: “‘How long will you lead the life of a living widowhood?’ ‘If he would listen to me,’ she replied, ‘he would spend (in study) another twelve years.’ Said (Rabbi Akiba): ‘It is then with her consent that I am acting,’ and he departed again and spent another twelve years at the academy.”¹²⁰

However, Louis Finkelstein¹²¹ says: “The time of separation from his wife, which in reality could hardly have exceeded three years, is extended [according to the Talmud] over the full thirteen years.... Incredible as this is, the Babylonian teachers thought it insufficient, and they created a legend, according to which., when Akiba came home at the end of the twelve years, he heard a neighbor....” Nevertheless, even if Finkelstein is accurate, that the rabbis thought expanding Akiba’s three years’ absence from his wife to study Torah to twenty-four years would enhance his reputation, says almost as much about what the rabbis thought about women and their compatibility with the study of Torah as does the actual three-year absence or the perhaps legendary twenty-four year absence.

Akiba may thus be regarded as the founder of the peculiar institution of married ‘monasticism’ which, while it never became very popular in Judaism, has exerted an influence throughout the centuries. Many of Akiba’s pupils followed his example, and hardly more than a generation ago there were groups of people in the small Lithuanian communities, called perushim, separatists, who resurrected the ancient custom. [For a record of the institution during the Middle Ages, see Moritz Guedemann, Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Cultur der abendIaendischen Juden, Amsterdam, 1960, vol. I, pp. 266 ff.-who refers to the thirteenth century “almost monastic foundation. After marriage, they would devote themselves completely to their studies while their wives supported them. Rightly or wrongly, the talmudists believed that as married men, students were less open to temptation than as celibates. ‘He who has bread in his basket,’ they said in a rather coarse metaphor, ‘is safer than he who lacks it.¹²²‘

Indeed, elsewhere the Talmud teaches it is good to neglect one’s family and let them go hungry so as to devote one’s time to the study of Torah.¹²³ The haggadic En Jacob on Gittlin 1 even records an instance when a man sold his daughter to gain the means needed to study Torah!¹²⁴

Thus, holding to the observance of the scriptural command for every man to produce progeny, and adhering to the need for men to allay their sexual drive (as exhibited by some rabbis in their refusal to instruct an unmarried young man on the grounds that his entire day was filled with sin, that is, filled with sinful thoughts of sex),¹²⁵ it was thought best to remove women from Torah, or at least to subordinate them as much as possible to the study of Torah. The perfect wife and mother was one who lived so as to allow her husband and sons to spend as much of their lives as possible in the study of Torah: “Whereby do women earn merit? By making their children go to the synagogue to learn Scripture and their husbands to the Beth Hamidrash to learn Mishnah, and waiting for their husbands till they return from the Beth Hamidrash.”¹²⁶ One “rabbi,” Ben Azzai, even went so far as not to marry at all; he was, he said, in love with the Torah. Though strictly speaking not an ordained rabbi, Ben Azzai was probably the only known ancient “rabbi” not to marry.¹²⁷ Concerning the obligation for all Jewish men to marry to produce progeny and Ben Azzai’s delinquency in the matter, the Babylonian Talmud recorded: “They said to Ben Azzai: Some preach well and act well, others act well but do not preach well; you, however, preach well but do not act well! Ben Azzai replied: But what shall I do, seeing that my soul is in love with the Torah; the world can be carried on by others.”¹²⁸

In the end, it was not the brilliant Torah scholar and ethical thinker Beruria who was held up as the ideal wife, but rather the wife of Rabbi Akiba, who spent perhaps twenty-four years in living widow