Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (134 page)

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Authors: Daniel Boyarin

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BOOK: Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture
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Torah's non-interference in, 112-13, 116, 120, 132
woman's role in, 129-31
Shakers, 8n, 238n.12
Shalom, Imma, 110, 120-21
Shemaia, Rabbi, 210
Shenhar, Aliza, 188-89n
Shepherd metaphor, 151-53
Shim'on the son of Gambiel, Rabbi, 211, 212, 224
Shim'on the son of Issi, Rabbi, 224, 225
Shim'on the son of Lakish, Rabbi.
See
Resh Lakish
Shim'on the son of Yohai, Rabbi, 49, 54, 125-26, 156-57
Shlomo Yitzhaki.
See
Rashi
 
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Page 27
Akivans or Meirites, for authority resides not in the individual Rabbi but in the entire community of the Rabbis. Speaking in Bakhtinian terms, the texts are not monological but dialogical, presenting different views on most issues dialectically at nearly every turn.
This is by now familiar ground. This feature of rabbinic textuality has often been characterized as its undecidability. David Stern has made a salutary move beyond the ''theory'' approaches to understanding this phenomenon and begun historicizing it in terms of the social structure of the rabbinic community (Stern 1988). Stern noticed that in contrast to commonplace descriptions of rabbinic interpretation as characterized by radical doubt or indeterminacy (Handelman 1982, 75), in point of fact the Rabbis of the Talmud and midrash are very vigorous (even aggressive) in support of their particular views. They are given, indeed, to the usage of such expressions as, "How long will you pile up nonsense?" or "What do you know about aggada? Go study the minutiae of obscure halakha!" Expressions such as these and others seem hardly compatible with a notion that these were people who did not hold that their own interpretations were correct. Moreover, the Talmud tells us of several instances in which schools of Rabbis came to blows and worse over their differences of opinion on interpretation and practice. The "indeterminacy," therefore, is not to be located at the level of epistemology or theology but at the level of a social practice that does not wish to decide between competing views of a dialogical authority. Each one of the Rabbis may indeed be sure that he is correct in his views, but our finally redacted and authoritative texts encode an inability or unwillingness to decide between competing views, and it is this which becomes the dominant in this cultural moment. Indeed, matters go so far that in the course of a talmudic discussion, an argument that threatens to resolve a controversy is considered a difficulty [
kushia
], while one that restores the controversy itself is called a solution [
terutz
]! One elegant way of describing this formation has been provided by Gerald Bruns: "From a transcendental standpoint, this theory of authority is paradoxical because it is seen to hang on the heteroglossia of dialogue, on speaking with many voices, rather than on the logical principle of univocity, or speaking with one mind. Instead, the idea of speaking with one mind . . . is explicitly rejected; single-mindedness produces factionalism" (1990, 199). The implication of this statement is, of course, that "speaking with many voices" is an alternative to factionalism, which it is, precisely in the sense in which I have discussed it above.
 
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