sympathy with the general thrust of her text and its reading practice (''Retelling it from the world in which we stand, we can see how character strains against context, how it shakes assumptions about what it means to be a woman, a Jew, a sexual being"), but I wish here to present another reading of the text, retelling it from the world in which we stand but attempting also to learn more from it about the world in which it was told. The main difference in principle between our readings is generated by Adler's declaration that, "I call it a story, though in fact it is many stories from many times and many texts" (28) and the consequent conflation of "Palestine in 200
B.C.E.
[sic]
18
or Babylonia in 500
C.E.
" (29). While Adler shows here a fine awareness of the distinctions between these historical moments, her intention seems to be to produce an account of the
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 | | All love which is dependent on sexual desire, when the desire is gone, the love is gone. Love which is not dependent on sexual desire never ends. What is love dependent on sexual desire? The love of Amnon and Tamar. And love which is not dependent on sexual desire? The love of David and Jonathan.
|
| | (Adler 1988, 32)
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| | On this, Adler remarks: "If Amnon and Tamar and David and Jonathan represent the two ends of a continuum, the fact that one end is represented by an incestuous rape and the other by a relationship presumed to be nonsexual does suggest a dichotomy between sexual desire and true love."
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| | I think that this is a misreading of this text, and one that has serious consequences for our understanding of the place of legitimate Eros in rabbinic culture. The Mishna's text does not read, "All love which is dependent on sexual desire," but "love which is dependent on something," that is, love that has an ulterior motive versus "love which is disinterested." The point of the comment is that love that grows out of the fulfillment of some particular need in the lover is not a true love and will last only as long as the need exists and the beloved is fulfilling it. See also Aspegren (1990, 45) for a similar idea in Aristotle. The story of Amnon and Tamar is, in fact, an apt illustration of this, for once Amnon had raped his sister, the Bible tells us that not only did he not love her any more but he hated her. The Mishna commentator, R. Israel Danzig, insightfully remarks that Amnon did not love Tamar at all but only himself, for it was only the pleasure of his body that he was seeking.
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| | This text hardly represents the talmudic culture's generally positive appreciation of the power of sexual relations between husband and wife as an expression and enhancement of their love; there is even a rabbinic technical term for "the love caused by intercourse" (Babylonian Talmud Ketubbot 57a), a term that only functions in positively marked contexts, i.e., to indicate that only after a marriage has been consummated is there real commitment between the husband and the wife. After all, we also would hardly wish to claim the lust of the rapist as a model for a valorized erotic love. On the other hand, Adler's comments on the homosocial aspects of the institution of
havruta
, the practice of men studying in pairs, and the relationship of David and Jonathan as a model for it, are very important and suggestive of lines for further research. For the nonce, see Chapter 7.
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| | 18. In context, she certainly seems to mean Palestine in
C.E.
200, the time of the historical Beruria, and
"B.C.E."
would be a misprint.
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