Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture by Daniel Boyarin Read Free Book Online Page A

and harmony of the couple are what become codified as the purview of Torah, according to the Talmud, and not the details of the physical act itself, which are left to their desires.
However, in accord with the method of reading in this book in general, we cannot ignore the fact that the text also incorporates Rav Kahana's voice claiming that this is Torah, and that he has the right (duty, obligation) to observe it. This voice correlates with the voice of Rabbi Yohanan ben Dabai and his angelic interlocutors, who also wish to place the details of the sexual practices between lawful husband and wife under scrutiny and control. 16 Moreover, within the text itself it is thematized as directly contradictory to Rav's desire for intimacy and spontaneity in the sexual relations with his wife. Indeed, possibly we could detect a tension between the two citations of the story within the Talmud itself. As I have noted above, Rav Kahana's response"It is Torah and I must learn it"does not occur in the version cited in Hagiga, in which Rav's behavior is being cited as definitive. An argument can be constructed, in fact, that this phrase has been added in the Berakhot version. Immediately before this story there, two tannaitic stories are presented about pupils who fol-
16. To be sure, we are not told what aspect of sexual behavior Rav Kahana desired to learn about, nor what he considered to be Torah. My argument is not, then, that Rav Kahana literally held the view of Rabbi Yohanan ben Dabai but that the very fact that he wished to observe the sexual behavior implied the existence of a right way and a wrong way to do "it." One could argue that the right way is precisely the one that I am identifying as what the Rabbis wish to maintain, namely the affective, intimate aspect of sexual intercourse, but precisely that, of course, would be made impossible by observation! We have a kind of Heisenberg uncertainty principle with a vengeance. Hence, it is this aspect of the sexual behavior of the teacher that the student comments upon negatively. In order to ensure intimacy, the Rabbis have to be prepared to leave intimate behavior as intimate. Sometimes power can only function by withdrawing itself. The continuation of my argument will bear out this reading.

 
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low their masters into the toilet and, upon being reprimanded for not having the proper respect, reply, "It is Torah and I must learn it." In both of those stories, the pupil is not rebuked after this reply. It is not implausible, therefore, to assume that the editor who incorporated the Rav Kahana story here and added (according to this hypothesis) the student's reply in imitation of the earlier tannaitic traditions, did so in order to give weight to the act of Rav Kahana, thus providing in this context a sort of censure of Rav's behavior, for as we have seen, the two are in a conflictual articulation with each other. Be that as it may, we see that there were two opposed notions of the discourse of sexuality within the cultural formation of, at least, the Babylonian Talmud, with the weight of hegemony going, however, to the one that renounced vision and thus control over the sexual practices of the couple but insisted on mutual desire and intimacy in the conduct of relations. Rav Kahana's attempt to institute a panopticon for sex is rejected.
Sex in the Dark
Continuing the theme of the passage that throws the Rabbi out of his teacher's bedroom, the most insistent group of controls over sexual practice within marriage are those that encode extreme privacy for the sexual act. 17 Even these regulations, which at first glance appear to be repressive, hold some surprises for us. The Babylonian Talmud in Niddah 16b17a produces the following discourse:
Said Rabbi Shim'on the son of Yohai: There are four things that the Holy, Blessed One hates, and I do not like them either: one who enters his house suddenlyand