Tal Ilan

As part of my Jewish Studies minor in college, I was exposed to the works of Tal Ilan, a feminist scholar of late antiquity whose work is colored by her outlook: She examines the evidence with an eye towards coming up with feminist conclusions, and is honest about that. This makes her work both extremely valuable and extremely biased at the same time. I wonder: How many men - even without realizing it - are looking for conclusions that back up the current heteronormative/patriarchal status quo? Are they any less biased than Ilan? I think the answer must be yes, if only because subconscious biases influence one's research less than conscious ones - or do they?

Anyhow, I thought it would be fun to sum up the findings of some of her articles, starting with this one* (btw, she does have books on Amazon):
1. The word "pharissee" has traditionally meant "legitimate Jewish religious authority/interpeter of the Jewish religious texts" in post-exilic Jewish society; the equation of Pharisees with legitimate Judaism meant that any claim to be upholding the Pharistic tradition was inherently political.
2. Tannaim are seen as carriers of the pharrisitic tradition; Shaye Cohen maintains that in fact, "rabbinic Judaism after 70 CE, whose representatives were indeed former Pharisees, did not become mono- lithic but resigned its claim to exclusivity in the interest of a religious and social tolerance, which is the most common feature of rabbinic Judaism." (Ilan 3). Thus, the more pluralism is in fact the movement with the greatest adherence to the Pharissitic tradition, which was that of embracing different relgious traditions in the name of unity.
3. Similarly, Judith Hauptman maintains that "since the rabbis of the Talmud, the historical heirs of the Pharisees, had bettered the condition of women in their day demonstrably, Judaism today should do likewise.20 Hauptman adopted the attitude that the true heirs of the Pharisees can be feminists, much like the Pharisees themselves probably had been." (Ilan 4). There has been much debate on whether Pharisess were feminists or mysogynists.
4. Thesis: Pharisanism, while not particularly feminist, still held much attraction for most women. (Ilan 5).
5. According to Josephus, Herod's sister-in-law paid a fine levied on the pharisees for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to Ceasar; in exchange, they foretold that "by God's decree" power would be taken from Herod and passed on to his sister-in-law's descendants. The pharisees are described by Josephus as " a group of Jews priding itself on its adherenceto ancestralcustomand claimingto observethe laws of which the deity approves." (Ilan 5-6).
6. Josephus also claimed that the Pharisess ruled over women. (Ilan 5). This claim "is not meant as a compliment. Real rulers rule over both men and women; rule over women
alone is a sign of weakness". (Ilan 6) Furthermore, since husbands rule over wives, this claim implies that the pharisees were stepping on husbands' toes. (Ilan 6).
7. Did women in general follow the Pharisees, or only women in Herod's court?
8. Rabbinic literature (RL) is pharisitic in nature, but due to changes over time, it is questionable how much of rabbinic literature was encompassed in the original pharisatic teachings.
9. RL claims that pharisees exerted influence over the Temple, a sadducean establishment, and that women who were part of the saduccean society followed pharisean law, especially regarding menstrual laws. A story is brought of the wife of a preist (part of the saducean Temple establishment supposedly influenced by the pharisees) who consulted pharisees with Niddah questions.
10. While neither Josephus or RL are completely reliable, the confluence of the two texts on the point that women of the higher sects of society supported pharisees makes it likely that there is truth to that statement.
11. The third chapter of tractate Sota in the Mishnah discusses the desirability of teaching one's daughter Torah: "R. Eliezer says: 'Whoever teaches his daughter Torah, it is as though he taught her tiflut". It is not clear what the last word means, but on the basis of the next sentence, it is usually interpreted as sexual licentousness. "R. Joshua said: A woman prefers one porition with sex(tiflut), rather than nine portions with abstinence (prishut)." Ilan explains that while prishut here means abstinence, it is also the same root as the word for pharisee. In this text R. Joshua asserts that women's sexual drives are paramount in their lives; the text's position in the Mishnah suggests that in order to avoid sexual misconduct, women should be married and ruled by their husbands. The text then proceeds as follows: "R. Joshua would say: 'A foolish Hasid, a sly villain, a prushi woman, and the injuries of the prushim, these wear out the world."
Is R. Joshua still referring to an abstinent woman? This is not clear since hementions injuries of the prushim, which probably refers to the Pharisees, after mentioning the woman. His referencet to a prushi womanmaybeaplay on the two aspects of the word prushi. The woman follows the Pharisees, disobeys her husband, and is thus driven to sexual abstinence. Correct sexual conduct can only be maintained if women are not prushi according to both meanings of the word; they must be ruled by their husbands rather than prushim' (Pharisaism; sexual abstinence). The sage therefore, acknowl- edges the phenomenon of Pharisee women, that is women who adhered to the Pharisee ways. If these women had been the wives of Pharisees, they would not have been worth mentioning. It is logical to assume that women apart from men or with no relationship to men, had followed the Pharisees; it is this that is strongly criticized.
R. Joshua's statement is negative in its assessment of both the prushi woman and the injuries of the prushim. If the second should be identified with the Pharisees, so should the first." (Ila 9-10).
12. Ilan claims that although this text is Pharisee, this source, which is in the context of discussing the destruction of the temple, "may be a personal reflection of certain social phe- nomena associated with Pharisaism, of which the sage disapproved, without actually discrediting Pharisaism. Perhaps when Pharisaism gained universal recognition after the destruction of the Temple, its members scoffed at some of the behavior of their forebears and the following they had relied
upon before attaining prominence. Once the following of women was no longer necessary to bolster up the lines of the Pharisees, the women's loy- alty was viewed as a burdenratherthan an asset." (Ilan 10)

The mishna cited is the fourth in the third chapter of Sotah.

Stay tuned for more on the Pharisee-women saga.... (I am too tired to continue for tonight)

*The Attraction of Aristocratic Women to Pharisaism during the Second Temple Period Author(s): Tal Ilan Source: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 1-33 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509816
Accessed: 05/12/2010 01:03