adultery greater than this" (Buber 1964). An exception is made in our case. In fact, I believe that this is a correct reading of the challenge the Rabbis make to Rabbi Yohanan, i.e., that they are really challenging him on these moral grounds:
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 | | "Are you not afraid of the Evil Eye?" He replied, "I am of the seed of Joseph, our father, of whom it is said, 'A fertile son is Joseph, a fertile son by the spring'" [Gen. 49:22], and Rabbi Abbahu said [of this verse], "Do not read it, 'by the spring' but 'out of reach of the Eye.'"
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Ostensibly, the challenge that the Rabbis made to Rabbi Yohanan is something like, are you not afraid that by calling attention to your beauty, you will be attracting the Evil Eye? And the Rabbi's reply is made to mean merely, I am of the seed of Joseph who are proof from the Evil Eye. However, I am convinced that there is another meaning lurking within Rabbi Yohanan's words, which the Talmud has either willingly or unwittingly obscured. The whole verse that Rabbi Yohanan quotes is, "A fertile son (or young man) is Joseph, a fertile young man by the spring; the daughters walked on the wall." The last word can, however, be taken as a verb meaning "to look." The verse, so read, becomes an exact authorization for Rabbi Yohanan's practice, "a fertile young man is Joseph, he is a fertile young man alongside the ritual bath [= the spring]; the daughters walked to look at him." It is as if, therefore, what Rabbi Yohanan is proposing is that spiritually he would become the father of all of these children, transferring his qualities to them, through the thoughts of their mothers at the moment of intercourse with their physical fathers.
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If my reconstruction of Rabbi Yohanan's midrash is correct, then, the original challenge must have been, "Isn't it immoral for you to be sitting near the ritual bath and introducing yourself into the thoughts of these women as they sleep with their husbands?'' But Rabbi Yohanan's answer would be: "I am exceptional because of my beauty and have a precedent for my actions. Joseph, my ancestor!, also behaved thus." This reading is doubled by Rabbi Yohanan's very claim to be of the seed of Joseph as well, for he certainly could not have meant that literally he was a physical descendant of Joseph, the tribes of Joseph having been long exiled from the
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| | 27. The words for "spring" and "eye" are homonyms in the Hebrew, and the preposition "by" can also mean "above, out of the reach of."
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| | 28. It is even possible that this is the original sense of Rabbi Abbahu's midrashic comment as well, for "going up from the spring" would be a very natural way in Hebrew to refer to returning from the ritual bath.
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