on to the judaism part

I found this dvar Torah in my inbox, that I wrote a few years ago - and bc im so modest, decided to publish it:

I want to take a few minutes to explore the applications of Levina’s concept of responsibility in this week’s Torah portion as well as the limits of those applications. To summarize: In this week’s Torah portion, Toldot, Isaac and Rebecca are barren. Isaac prays and Rebecca conceives twins. She receives a prophecy that the oldest twin, Esav, will worship the younger one, Jacob. At one point Esav sells his birthright to Jacob. Unaware of this fact, Isaac tries to give Esav the special blessing for the firstborn, but is tricked by Rebecca and Isaac and winds up giving the blessing to Isaac instead, thus fulfilling Rebecca’s prophecy.

    In Genesis 25:21 it says,  וַיֶּעְתַּר יִצְחָק לַיהוָה לְנֹכַח אִשְׁתּוֹ, כִּי עֲקָרָה הִוא; וַיֵּעָתֶר לוֹ יְהוָה, וַתַּהַר רִבְקָה אִשְׁתּוֹ. “And Isaac entreated God while facing his wife, and God entreated Isaac, and Rebecca became pregnant.

    In this scene, Levinas’s conception of responsibility is at work: It is Isaac’s facing Rebecca that imbues him with the responsibility to pray for children on her behalf. At the same time, Isaac faces God as an ethical being, and this face-to-face (so to speak) encounter with God is defined by each facer taking responsibility for the fac-ee: Thus, just as Isaac “entreats” God, so too, God “entreats” Isaac, (actively allows himself to be entreated and grants Isaac’s request.)

    Contrast this with a later scene: Coming home exhausted and hungry from a day of hunting, Esav sells his birthright to Jacob in exchange for lentil stew, reasoning in Genesis 25: 32, “I am going to die anyway, of what use to me is a birthright?” The Torah censures Esav’s actions; the birthright blessing was designed to help Esav fulfill his potential as a human being, but Esav, being tired from his hunting career, did not feel up to the challenge, so he gave up on it, ate and went to bed.

    Why did one face-to-face encounter result in responsibility, while the other resulted in an evasion of responsibility?   

    The answer lies in the presence of God in each encounter: Isaac faces Rebecca as a man who stands before God, thus imbuing him with responsibility towards his wife qua his relationship with and responsibility towards God. Whereas for Esav, God is not in the picture. I just want to note for a second that if one wants to get Soloveichikean about it, one could argue that Isaac is homo religiosus, Esav is cognitive man, and Jacob is halachik man.

    This is where the limits on the applicability on Levinas’s coneption of responsibility come into play:  For Levinas, the face-to-face encounter in it and of itself becomes the imperative for responsibility, while in the Torah, the human face-to-face encounter is not enough; it is the encounter with God that turns the human face-to-face encounter into the moral imperative.

    We constantly face exhaustion and the temptation to be like Esav:  How many times, tired from all-nighters, is it so tempting to give up on whatever it is that is really important to us, whether it is religion, fighting genocide in Darfur, or spending time with friends? It is important to remember however, that ultimately our humanity is more important than our academic career, and to not give up on our goals for ourselves as people in the course of pursuing academic success.

    Secondly: As students, we come into daily face-to-face encounters with multitudes of people. Do we use these encounters to engage in responsibility and ethical relationships with people, or do we, like Esav, seek to evade responsiblity?

    I hope that this semester we can all engage in meaningful, responsible, and ethical relationships with ourselves, with God, and with each other.

 *************************************************

I have notes on the bottom, positing maybe Yitzhak is homo religiosis, Esav is cognitive man, and Jacob is the halachik man, as per the Rav Soloveitchik, but I never really fleshed out that idea - please feel free to take a shot at it and let me know what you come up with :)

Divorce and Anullment - Woohoo!

One of the claims made against Orthodox Jewish law is that it is sexist, because while the husband must grant the wife a bill of divorce in order to enable her to be legally divorced - and thus, entitled to remarry - the husband needs no similar document from the wife. This makes the system open to abuse, by men who wish to keep their wives legally married, in order to extract money from them (by demmanding money in exchange for the bill of divorce), or to exact revenge. Such men, if they took upon themselves second wives while still not having granted their first wives a bill of divorce, would only be considered to be violating a rabbinic prohibition by Rabbi Gershom, whereas the wives they keep legally married would be considered adulteresses on a Biblical level.****

Today, it is common for communities to ex-communicate men who refuse to give their wives a bill of divorce, known in Hebrew as a get, but the man in question can simply move to another community, where his antics may be unknown, so the ex-communication has a limited effect. Technically, a woman might move to a place where her previous-marriage-that-is-still-legally-binding is unknown, and marry some hot stud, but most of Orthodox women would consider doing so to be a direct violation of the Torah commandment against adultery, so their conscience holds them back.

The Talmud was extremely aware of the system's potential for abuse. For that reason, it ruled it permissible to physically beat a recalcicrant husband into submission. Persumably, a good thrashing managed to bully men into giving their wives a get, in a way that ex-communication today does not. Also, keep in mind that at the time ex-communication was devised as a form of punishment, the world was formed of micro-communities, with each person's health and livelihood dependent on their community, so ex-communication had very serious consequences.

As a further safeguard against abuse, the rabbis instituted a legal mechanism for anulling marriages. The theory went like this: Every Jewish couple marries with the understanding that they are marrying according to the rules of the rabbis, thus, if at some point in the future, the rabbis want to anull the marriage, they technically have the right to do so. Because the couple is aware of the "This marriage is only valid as long as the rabbis say it is" clause in the marriage contract (which Rashi points out, is implied in the language of the marriage ceremony: "You are betrothed to me according to the laws of Moses and Israel"), at the time they make the contract, this "The rabbis can annul this marriage" clause is valid. Thus, rabbinically anulling a marriage after it's taken place, is simply legally using a clause that the couple themselves put in their marriage contract on their wedding day.

The rabbis are clearly not in favor of going around anulling marriages - as a matter of fact, almost every time it rules that a marriage anullment is permitted, it makes sure to include Ravina's (ultimately rejected) objection to the entire concept of rabbinic marriage anullments. I do not believe this is a mere rhetorical ploy, but rather, the editor's subtle way of underscoring that while permissible in certain circumstances, rabbinic marriage annulments are only to be used sparingly, because yes, the entire concept is problematic.*****

I plan on bringing two cases in the Talmud when the rabbinic power of annullment is used in response to inappropriate action by the husband. There are other cases when the Talmud allows anullments for different reasons, but my goal is to prove that annullment can be used in response to the husband's misdeeds, not to prove that it can't be used for other reasons.

In Baba Batra, 48:1, the Talmud explains that if a woman is forced into a marriage, the marriage is invalid. "He acted with her improperly, thus we act with him improperly, and retroactively anull the marriage." Thus, anullment is seen as something negative, yet necessary. The anullment prevents the woman from being taken advantage of by a man who acts improperly. The goal of the law is to protect the women's agency, her ability  to not be forced to stay in a marriage she does not want to be in.

Tosfot, commenting on the passage, note that the reason the "all people marry in accordance with rabbinic law, thus the "rabbis-can-annull-this" clause is built into the marriage contract, is not given as the reason behind the annullment in this case, is that the man in question clearly married in full knowledge that he was acting against the will of the rabbis.* This shows that Tosfot considered a woman's free choice in the matter to be essential enough to rabbinic matrimonial values that any man violating them must be one who consciously flouts the will of the rabbis.

The second case is in Yevamot 110., in the case of a woman in Narsh, a city notorious for cime, who was betrothed at a young age, and then kidnapped right before the actual wedding.** The Talmud rules that the woman does not need a get from her second husband (the kidnapper) because, "He acted with her improperly, thus we act with him improperly, and retroactively anull the marriage." Once again, an argument could be made that the rabbis are worried about a woman being forced to stay in a marriage she doesn't want to be in, since presumably she did not want to be kidnapped, and they were living before the discovery of Stockholm Syndrome.*** In any event, it seems that a husband's improper actions are grounds for anullment - as Tosfot points out, even if the marriage was done without the implied clause of "I'm marrying with the permission of the rabbis and this marriage lasts only as long as they approve".

Based on the above, it is clear that according to the Talmud, one of the major sources of Orthodox jurisprudence, if "a man acts improperly", the rabbis may retroactively annul the marriage, thus obviating the need for the man to give the women a get. Thus, one could argue: A man refusing to give his wife a get is acting improperly. Furthermore, it is acting improperly in such a way that it will force the woman to stay in a marriage she does not want to be in - the very type of impropriety mentioned in the two cases above. Thus, this impropriety is grounds to institute the principle of "He acted with her improperly, thus we act with him improperly, and retroactively anull the marriage.", thus annulling the marriage, and allowing the woman in question to be legally single without her husband giving her a get.

If this is the case, then the problem is not the Orthodox law per se, rather, the unwillingness of the rabbis to properly implement the law. The rabbis could make it a policy to anull the marriage of any couple where the man does not give the woman a get (unless he has a good reason behind his actions) - they certainly have the legal power to do so, they simply prefer not to use it.

But if anything, the extent to which the rabbis of the Talmud are willing to extend rabbinic power beyond the limits of what they are comfortable with, and to rely on all sorts of leniencies in order to make the laws of divorce more flexible, in a way favorable to women, shows the importance they placed on the value of protecting women from abuse within the halachik system - perhaps because they understood that such abuses violated the halachik principle of "The Torah's ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are paths of peace." Thus, such annullments would not only be using legal measures sanctioned by the Talmud, but they would also be upholding the values implied in those measures. Which begs the question of why the rabbis don't anull - a question whose answer depends on socio-historical, not religious, factors.

The question might then be asked: If the rabbis cared about the rights of women so much, why didn't they simply say that just as a man must give his wife a bill of divorce, so too, a wife must give one to her husband?

The answer lies in the verses themselves: Deutoronomy, 24:1: "When a man taketh a wife, and marrieth her, then it cometh to pass, if she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some unseemly thing in her, that he writeth her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house, 2 and she departeth out of his house, and goeth and becometh another man's wife, 3 and the latter husband hateth her, and writeth her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, who took her to be his wife; 4 her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD; and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance."

In the verses above, it is very clear that it is the man, not the woman, giving the bill of divorce. It is clear that the wife's divorce depends on the husband's bill of divorce, but that no such condition applies to the man, for if it did, the verse would mention it. The rabbis saw themselves bound by the language of the verse. There is some leeway - namely, the verse can be interpreted either in accordance with a standing tradition, even if it violates the apparent meaning of the text, or in accordance with the traditional exegetical tools (such as Rabbi Yishmael's 13 measures the Torah is expounded by), but here, there was no long-standing tradition of male divorce being dependent upon bills of divorce by women, nor did the rabbis feel the exegetical tools at their disposal justified such a reading. (It should be noted there are many midrashey halacha about the above verses that are not directly related to the topic at hand, but that do show the rabbis clearly felt comfortable expoudning midrashim about said verses.)

I believe the answer also stands in the way that the Talmudic rabbis saw the world, a way which determined how they related to the above verses: They saw it as one of natural, not positive, law. The role of the rabbis was to uphold the laws passed down through Moses, the written Torah, and various oral traditions, or to reveal laws using a variety of exegetical and legal methods - but they did not have the power to create their own laws. Even the "chiddush", the new learning, is in fact no more than a revelation of a pre-existing truth, which the learner is privileged to reveal. Thus, the midrashic story God first looked into the Torah, and then created the world: The threads of the Torah and the Jewish legal system was woven into the world, were part of the natural order since the first moment of creation. The process of the evolution of Jewish law is a process of ongoing revelation (albeit a more hidden revelation ever since the exile and the cessation of prophecy, but the relationship between revelation, prophecy, and the Jewish legal tradition is way too big to tack right now), not of ongoing creation.

Thus, the rabbis did not have the right to create a law that would enable a mutual exchanging of divorce bills. The most they could do was work within the limits they had to reveal ways in which the laws might be made more empowering of women. I believe that this model of revelation holds power for current Jewish legal jurisprudence. If I assume I am bound by the laws, but that I can look at the corpus of Jewish texts and the values contained therein, and then try to reveal ways, within the boundaries of the laws in front of me, to minimize any seeming conflict between the two, then all of a sudden, I have a plethora of options available to me. Another example of this method of jurisprudence is that of the rebellious son: The Talmud could not undo the law, because it is a Biblical passage******, but it did limit the definition of rebellious son to something so specific, not to mention impose ridiculous conditions on the parental testimony necessary for the execution, in such a way that the chances of anyone being executed under the law were zero. The Talmud itself claims, "A case (fitting all our criteria) for a rebellious son, never happened", and goes on to ask why the Torah bothered listing a law involving a case that will never take place. Conclusion: To give the Jews the benefit of the Torah study that comes from exploring that law.

So I hope you've benefited from reading my post exploring a Torah law - a law that I hope will not be used very often, because the majority of marriages will be deliriously happy, life-long unions.

*Since the built-in-clause was the way the rabbis justified their powers of anullment, Tosfot then goes through legal hoola-hoops to explain why the rabbis can anull in this case, when there was no such clause. While those hoola-hoops are not directly relevant to this piece, their commentary does include the sentence "The rabbis can uproot a Torah law" - which is admittedly much sexier when taken out of context.
** Best Jastro saying: "If a Narshean kisses you, count your teeth".
*** Yes, kidnap marriages in late antiquity are part of a larger topic. Not going to go there right now.
**** The men in question can legally remarry if they get a hundred rabbis to make them exempt from the prohibition, but getting a hundred rabbis to agree on anything is pretty hard. Also, worth mentioning for the record: A man can not force a woman to divorce - she must consent to the divorce for it to be valid. A different topic, but I couldn't resist.
***** because of the amount of power it grants the rabbis.
****** Yes, there are times the Talmud or a midrashic source will interpret the text in a way that is the complete opposite of its simple meaning. But I believe they only do so a) when the interpretation is in accordance with a long-standing tradition b) when the traditionally accepted ways of interpreting verses allow for such an interpretation. Presumably, in both the case of the man giving his wife a bill of divorce and in the rebellious son case, neither a nor b applied in such a way that would allow for claiming the verse was promulgating a mutual-bill-exchance law, or for claiming the verse was in fact not arguing for executing the rebellious son.

Periods. How exciting.

I want to write about what it's like to have my period, because I think it's not talked about enough. Girls are told to keep quiet; it's ok to say "I have a cold", or "I have a headache", but not "I have my period", even though, like colds and headaches, it is a natural medical condition - yet unlike those conditions, it does not imply a negative impact on health - on the contrary, menstrual periods are generally considered signs of a healthy female body.

It is true that periods are healthy, but they can also be extremely annoying. Every woman experiences her period differently, so I can't speak for others. But I think part of acknowledging the female existence on this earth, is acknowledging the different ways that different women experience periods. I understand that this goes against centuries of male-propagated menstrual taboos, but I think the fight is worth it. Imagine being able to actually say, "I have my period", when asked why you cancelled your dinner plans - just being able to say those words, to explain the real reason that you're feeling ill or don't feel like seeing anybody, provides you with so much freedom. Truth is empowering.

That's not to say that I think suddenly men will start considering periods sexy; I honestly believe that periods are an extremely unappealing part of how a woman's body works, for the simple reason that blood is unsexy (unless you have a vampire fetish, but let's not go there). So yes, knowing that blood is seeping out of the same part of a woman's anatomy that you stick your dick into - I think that's a completely valid reason to not feel like sticking your dick into it at that exact moment. I also know that this does not bother some men, though the concept of period-sex has always eluded me, for the reason that when I am sad and nauseous, it's kind of hard for me to feel turned on. I think if the sexiest man on earth walked into my room right now, I would just feel too sick to do anything beyond cuddling. I actually see the Bible's taboos on menstrual sex as a mechanism to protect women against rape within marriage: "They haven't invented Midol yet" might not have counted as a valid excuse for the average ancient near eastern husband, in an era before the concept of "rape within marriage" had been properly legally defined. "I'm forbidden" might have been a more palatable excuse.

Which brings me to my own experiences: Some days when I have my period, I can not eat. Other days, I crave food all day long, especially chocolate. Once I even craved tofu. I walk around in something ranging from mild nausea/stomach ache to fullblown stomach virus. I've fainted twice. One of those times was in public, and I was rushed to the emergency room. It was a Friday. Thankfully, the doctor didn't make me spend the night. Most classes that I have missed, I have missed on days when I had my period. It is easier for me to function with fever and strep than with my period (and easier for me to be with guys with fever and strep, though I never understood why the words "I'm on anti-biotics" are not a sufficient deterrent to stop someone from exchanging saliva with you.)

Not all my periods are alike. Some are better than others. Sometimes I will get through an entire period feeling completely normal. But of course, there is not just the period itself - there are also the days leading up to the period. A woman is told to track her period on a calendar. I sometimes forget to do this, but I can generally tell when I am "coming down" with my period, because suddenly, so many things in my life will seem pointless or impossible, because I will feel sad and lonely in a way I just don't when I'm not menstruating (thank God), because I won't feel like seeing or speaking to anyone, sometimes not even to my closest friends, because things I usually consider fun will be annoying, because I will suddenly find myself getting really emotional and crying over something silly. Again, I don't experience all of these things with each period; I usually experience at least one, but degree also matters: If I am walking around feeling slightly lonely, but knowing it's hormonal, that's not so bad. It's the days when I don't feel like getting out of bed, and have to remind myself it's my hormones that are making me feel that way, that the "me" beneath the hormones wants to get out of bed and continue functioning, when the entire thing enabling me to carry out tasks throughout the day is my rationality fighting the feeling that all I want to do is sleep in order to escape myself, that's when it's hard. And yes, it IS my hormones: I am grateful to God that I don't feel that way when I'm not pre-menstrual/going through the first day or two of menstruation.

And of course, there is the delicious horniness that hits me in the week or two before my period, that can grow so potent when the PMS forgets to strike. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint: I need to be horny while I ovulate so I can produce babies - and if this crazy monthly blood thing is what enables me to do that, then yes, it's worth it. (Ouch. Cramp as I write this - body, are you trying to test me?)

And yes, there are things I probably could do to minimize the pain. I could walk around hopped up on pain relief meds for a week. I could switch from birth control to birth control, until I found the one that made my period more bearable. I once told a doctor about my periods, and she asked if I wanted anti-depressants to take in the few days before I started menstruating. I was shocked: Not because I am against anti-depressants (I think they do good work WHEN PROPERLY PERSCRIBED) but at the casual way she suggested it, like a girl offering her friend candy - or menstrual chocolate. But you know what? All of these "cures" have consequences: Pain meds have side-effects, and generally make me fall asleep - and it's unhealthy to be hopped up on them for a quarter of your life, even the period-fighting ones, like Midol. Different birth controls have different side effects and risk factors, and getting one's body accustomed to a new birth control pill can be its own long and arudous process. Seasonale, the "four periods a year" birth control, has not been around for long enough to make me comfortable taking it, and it recently had a name-change, which is generally what companies do to cover up a testing glitch on a popular medication. As for anti-depressants: I guess I could go to a shrink and get them perscribed for one week a month, but I'd rather not and I also think that there is no need to, at least in my case. Perhaps other women feel differently, and do take anti-depressants that one week a month; it's their right to do so. But all medicines have side-effects and consequences - so there are no simple solutions.

I also think a lot of these solutions are needed because modern Western society ignores the uniqueness of a woman's menstrual experience. Women have to function normally; if they admitted that for one week out of every four (or even three) they might not feel well, physically or emotionally, they become less profitable, hence less hire-able, and there goes the feminist revolution, and we all go back to being housewives. I am not advocating that women be given special "period days" off from work, but I think periods should be seen as valid personal or sick days, and women shouldn't have to think up creative excuses. If the man and women each use the same amount of sick/personal days, it shouldn't be held against the woman that some of hers were for menstruation and some of his were for a headache.

I also think that a lot of rituals we interpret as "separating" out a menstruating woman, were in their own ways, respecting the uniqueness of a woman's menstrual experience. The woman was not expected to function normally during her period, the fact that she was going through something the non-menstruants were not, something that might make it harder for her to perform all the tasks she does when she doesn't have blood seeping out of her, was recognized. This special - because say whatever you want about it, it is special - time in a woman's life was marked off: There was a ritual to celebrate (or commiserate) the end (or beginning) of her period, demarcating it from the non-menstrual portion of her life. Behind many taboos lies male chauvenism and female disenfranchisement, but behind many taboos - perhaps some of those same taboos - lies an inherent respect for a woman's body, and often women embraced the taboos and made the their own, usurping chauvenistic rituals by using them as a means of female empowerment.

I am a little afraid to publish this, not just because, as I said before, I consider periods unsexy, and publishing unsexy information about myself is something I generally prefer not to do, but also because I'm afraid someday some guy considering dating me might see this, and say, "That girl is crazy when she has her period. I don't want to deal with this." It's nice to say, "The right guy will care enough to see beyond it", but I don't think that's how it works. There might be some awesome guy who'd fall in love with me if we went on a second date, but won't go on a second date with a girl who has tough periods. On the other hand, since I've been in extremely happy relationships before, and my period hasn't made a difference (other than that it sucks if your girlfriend doesn't feel well) in those relationships, I am hopeful that God willing, I will once more find happiness.

But of course, I am not sure how "tough" my periods are. It is generally impossible to compare one corporeal experience to another. We are all bound by the subjectivity of our bodies, and this is a general obstacle to human empathy. But the silence about women's menstrual experiences, means that beyond my circle of close friends, I'm not sure what women experience. I'd like to know. We each go through this common-yet-different experience every month, and we have so much to share and so much to learn from each other. (Come on people. This is a post about periods - you knew when you started reading that it had to end with a plea for hugs and women's empowerment.)

So I hope that my words about my period will be the first of many words that many different women will speak about their period - and perhaps even that different men will speak about how their lives are affected by the menstrual cycles of women close to them, if at all. I know in Orthodox Judaism for example, couples are taught to refrain from period sex, so there has to be an impact.

I did hesitate before publishing this, but Ghandi said "Be the change you wish to see in the world". I wish to live in a world in which women can openly express what they go through during menstruation, without fearing social (or other) consequences. So here goes. Here's to hoping that for every man who reads this and gets turned off, there's another one with a vampire fetish.*


* Note: I am completely joking. I do not have a vampire fetish. If I loved a guy, I'd be willing to try out a vampire fetish or role-play that did not involve menstrual blood, but the idea of it doesn't particularly appeal to me. I read Twighlight, but I never understood how it became a fad - and no, I have not seen the movies.