 | | with whom the Shekina only spoke for a short time, and only for a set time, the Torah said, "For three days do not approach woman," I with whom the Shekina speaks at every moment and without a set time, a fortiori. And how do we know that God agreed with him, for it says, "Go tell them, return to your tents" and right after that, "But you stay here with me." And there are those who say [that we learn it] from ''Mouth to mouth will I speak with him.''
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| | (Shabbat 67a)
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This Babylonian retelling of the story is conspicuous for its absences and by its absences makes the presences of the Palestinian version all the more prominent. There is no representation here, whatsoever, of the feelings of the wife, indeed no recognition that she is, in any way, an interested party in the decision. Moreover, although the difference between Moses and the ordinary people is adduced here as well, the difference does not lead clearly to the understanding that for all others, renunciation of marital sex is excluded and regarded as arrogance and wrong, as it is in the midrash. One could easily read this text as a further authorization for the apparent Babylonian practice of long marital separations for the study of Torah, while the Palestinian version above strongly condemns the practice.
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The Case of the Married Monk
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By cross-examining the talmudic texts, then, I have proffered a solution to the case of the married monk. A set of directly contradictory social demands was current within the culture; on the one hand, the highest of achievements was to devote oneself entirely to the study of Torah, and on the other hand, there was an absolute demand on everyone to marry and procreate. The Palestinians resolved this tension by following a common Hellenistic practice of marrying late after an extended period devoted to "philosophy"for the Jews, Torah. The Babylonians, on the other hand, having a strong cultural model of the necessity of sexual activity for postpubescent men, were prevented from such a pattern. They produced at some point, therefore, the impossible "solution" of men marrying young and then leaving their wives for extended periods of study, creating, as it
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(footnote continued from the previous page)
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| | talmudic Rabbis; rather, it would have to be attacking other well-attested practices of
mariage blanc
among Jews and non-Jews at least as early as the first century. It becomes then a polemic against the Babylonian institution avant la lettre.
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