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" Virginity in the Babylonian Talmud: "
Kamholz, Rebecca Elizabeth
Hayes, Christine
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1106450
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2394347983
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| Main Entry
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Hayes, Christine
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Kamholz, Rebecca Elizabeth
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| Title & Author
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Virginity in the Babylonian Talmud:\ Kamholz, Rebecca ElizabethHayes, Christine
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| College
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Yale University
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| Date
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2019
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| student score
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2019
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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314
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| Abstract
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This dissertation examines virginity as a legal, social, physiological, and epistemological concept in the Babylonian Talmud. It employs text critical methodologies as well as contemporary critical and gender theory to track and describe the legal construction of female virginity in the classical rabbinic literature of the 2nd-7th centuries C.E, particularly the Babylonian Talmud. Relevant sources are analyzed along 4 major themes. 1: The development of bodily expertise as a religious, scholarly, and interpretive pursuit, and the textual construction of Jewish sexual bodies. 2: Construction of the female body as an epistemological object, and the paradox of female interiority. 3: The problem of violence and subjectivity in a penetrative sexual economy. 4: Producing queer encounters; sexual and legal epistemology when sex is identity. The goals of this dissertation are two-fold. The first is to produce a study of legal, rhetorical, and discursive patterns of thinking about women’s bodies, sex, agency, and epistemology in rabbinic literature. The second is to advance the application of critical theory to the field of rabbinics. The study of virginity is a small but growing area within the field of classical rabbinic Judaism. In general, interest in studying gender in ancient Judaism has been slowly growing for decades, particularly since the 1990s and the publication of Carnal Israel. This dissertation is animated by the conviction that the study of virginity can benefit from a thoughtful combination of the critical tools that have been developed for the study of ancient religious texts and modern and contemporary theoretical approaches to gender and social issues. Because virginity lies at the confluence of multiple competing realms of knowledge, identity, and law, “virginity” as a social construct has great power to control, and therefore to reveal, social, sexual, and gender dynamics. Virginity is so complex, and so compelling, because it is constitutive of some of the most personal and profound elements of human life: identity, sexuality, relationships. What constitutes virginity, both as a matter of physical status, and as a metaphorical image with surprisingly broad applications, is therefore a fraught and complicated question from the moment of its formation. Because of its complexity, the analysis of texts on virginity demands a wide-ranging set of tools. Therefore, in addition to text-critical tools and traditional forms of rabbinic scholarship, this project will draw on contemporary philosophy, gender studies, film studies, and religious studies, among other models, and consider the broader implications of these findings for understanding gender, sexuality and patterns of surveillance and domination of women in rabbinic textual culture. Chapter 1 provides an overview of how virginity was understood in the ancient and Late Antique world. It surveys Greek, Christian, and rabbinic attitudes toward virginity and the nature of the hymen. In particular, it interrogates the relationship between virginity as social status and virginity as a bodily state. Chapter 2 continues the interrogation of the hymen; this time analyzing a text which carefully develops an understanding of the function of “signs of virginity.” The exploration of their precise functioning serves as a synecdoche for establishing and interrogating a specifically Jewish female sexual body. That body is contrasted with the bodies of Gentiles, especially Gentile women, who are characterized as more animal-like, and less fully human. Chapter 3 considers the symbolic and discursive function of the hymen in androcentric rabbinic discourse. It analyses a text in which the rabbis seek a reliable external sign by which to “read” and understand the state of a new bride’s hymen, and by extension, her internal state. Chapter 4 shifts to considering the repercussions of the first direct textual confrontation between the male subject and female interiority. It considers a text in which the rabbis attempt to classify first-time penetration as a type of action. Their discussion veers between refusing the potential for penetration to be an act of violence, and exploring the possibility of framing penetration as trauma inflicted upon female bodies. Chapter 5 explores the epistemology of sexuality and sex acts. It theorizes the contours of normative rabbinic sexuality, and explores the edges of those norms, the places where epistemological presumption and direct empirical observation collide.
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Gender studies
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Judaic studies
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Religion
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