Up till here, Rabbi Yehoshua's remarks, while obnoxious in tone, do not necessarily depict vicious contempt for the female. Indeed, the last of the sentences is generally consonant with the argument of this chapter to the fact that rabbinic essentialization of women was owing to their desire to ensure that their procreative role not be compromised in any way. Rabbi Yehoshua's diatribe, however, continues:
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 | | "Why does the man go out bare-headed but the woman with her head covered?" He said to them, "it is like one who has committed a sin, and he is ashamed in front of others; therefore she goes out covered."
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| | "Why do they go first to the dead?" He said, "since they caused death in the world, therefore they go first to the dead."
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| | "And why was she given the Commandment of menstrual separation?" "Because she spilled the blood of the First Adam, therefore she was given the Commandment of menstrual separation." "And why was she given the Commandment to sacrifice the first portion of the dough?"
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"Because she spoiled the First Adam, who was the first portion of the world, therefore she was given the Commandment to sacrifice the first portion of the dough." ''And why was she given the Commandment of lighting the Sabbath candle?'' "Because she extinguished the soul of the First Adam, therefore she was given the Commandment of lighting the Sabbath candle."
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| | (ibid; cf. Schechter 1967, 117)
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Open misogyny like that of Rabbi Yehoshua is rare indeed in the rabbinic corpus, certainly by comparison with Philo, on the one hand, or Patristic culture on the other.
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This sort of misogynistic catalogue would become, however, endemic in medieval Judaism, as it was in medieval culture generally (Bloch 1987). Moreover, even this text does not project a conceptualization of female sexuality per se as dangerous and threatening, though it certainly suggests that possibility lurking in the background.
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"The Three Sins for Which Women Die in Childbirth" and Rabbinic Dissent
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Rabbi Yehoshua's nascent idea that Eve is the origin of death is amplified in the Palestinian Talmud's reading of a famous mishnaic passage: "There are three sins for which women die in childbirth: a lack of care with
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| | 22. When baking bread, a portion of the dough is set aside as an offering for the priests. Since such offerings to priests are always from the first of the fruit of the dough, and Adam was the first human, he is compared to the first of the dough.
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| | 23. To the best of my knowledge, the two texts cited here from a single place in Genesis Rabba are the only examples of such misogynistic diatribe in all of the
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