Talmud Commentary: Bavli 1/5. bSukkah 12a-b (mSukkah 1:5)

@Manuscript evidence

@General observations

Rashi clarifies that “male arrows (חיצין זכריים) are the arrowheads that are inserted into the pole of the sukkah, while the female arrows (חיצין נקביות) are the receptacles that have a hole into which the dagger of the arrow is inserted.” As one can see, this text has a parallel in ySuk 1:5, 52b, which is also assigned to Rav, although transmitted through other sages. This tradition states: “with male [ones] it is valid, with female [ones] it is invalid.” Although unlike the Bavli, the Yerushalmi version does not mention arrows as male and female, the commentaries on the Yerushalmi, the Penei Moshe and the Qorban ha-‘Edah explain this text as follows: “male arrow-shafts like ours are pushed into the shaft of the pole … female bored-shafts have a hole at the end into which the dagger of the arrow is inserted.” Basically this explanation is identical with that of Rashi for the Babylonian text and is probably derived from it.

In the Babylonian sugya, Rashi offers an explanation as to why the female receptacles are considered invalid. These receptacles can be permanently filled and they can therefore receive ritual impurity. This interpretation, however, contradicts a halakhah in mKel 17:17 that a permanently filled hole is not considered a receptacle at all and therefore does not become impure. The medieval commentator Menachem Ha-Meiri resolves this seeming contradiction by noting that each text refers to different circumstances. Bored-shafts with receptacles are used in a war. When there is no war, they can be emptied and are therefore viewed as valid receptacles that can acquire impurity.

It should be noted, however, that Ha-Meiri’s version of the passage in the Bavli reads סככה בחוצים זכריים like the text found in the writings of other rishonim and like the Munich MS no. 140: סככה בהו[חי]צין and that of the JTS MS no. סככה בהוצים: 218270 . This notice alerts us to what we could have observed through the manuscript variations mentioned above, namely that the text “If one covered a sukkah with male arrows, it is valid; with female ones, it is invalid” in bSuk 15a is an unstable text. If the original reading is חיצים , then we are dealing here with arrows and the entire above discussion is relevant. If, however, the version ה/חוצים is correct, than we must look for the explanation to this phenomenon elsewhere. Note also that in the Yerushalmi parallel, part of the flax plant used in covering the sukkah is designated hotsim (הוצני). This may suggest that we are dealing with a known botanical feature.

In Jastrow we read that הוצא is “the long and thin foliage of a palm branch spreading from the stem.”[1] According to this reading, male הוצים can be interpreted as the male flowers of the palm tree, which are elongated and closed (in certain species they have a narrow formation and in others they are less so). Likewise female הוצים are the female flowers. They have a cup-like shape that absorbs various things, including drops of liquid, which explains why they may be susceptible to ritual impurity.[2]

@Feminist observations

For a meaningful feminist interpretation of this passage, a distinction should be made between the first version, which reads חיצים , and the second one which involves הוצים. In the first case, the difference between the male and female חיצים is based on a metaphoric interpretation related to the male and female roles in sexual relations. A male object is perceived as such because it is inserted into an object that is perceived as female, much like the male and female sexual organs. In the second case, there is a tangible biological difference between the male and female palm trees.

In rabbinic literature there are other references to a metaphorical distinction between male and female inanimate objects. In bBekh 55a the male symbolizes the center of power:

אמר רב כהנא: זכרותא דירדנא, מערת פמייס [...] זכרותא דדמא, כבדא. אמר רבי יצחק: [...] זכרותא דמיא, פרת.

Said Rav Kahanah: The maleness of the Jordan is the cave at Pamias […] the maleness of blood is the liver. Said Rabbi Yitshaq: The maleness of water is the Euphratus [River].

In this text maleness is rather illusive. In GenR 14:7 it is very obvious. Here Rav Huna classifies different types of earth as male or female:

עפר זכר, אדמה נקבה. היוצר הזה מביא עפר זכר ואדמה נקבה כדי שיהיו כליו בריאין.

Dust is male and earth is female. The potter brings male dust and female earth together, in order to make his vessels healthy.

This discussion of a potter modeling vessels appears to be a metaphor for sexual relations. Just as male and female are combined into “one flesh” in the creation story, so too the potter creates better pots by mixing two types of earth together.

As opposed to the metaphorical reading, arrows, the version that reads Rav’s statement as referring to הוצים or חוצים invalidates a roof covering made from female palm branches. In this case, the difference between male and female is natural rather than metaphoric. In bPes 56a a distinction between male and female palm trees is also found. According to this text, one of six things that the inhabitants of Jericho would do on the 14th of Nissan was to graft (or perhaps fertilize) palm trees all day. Rav Aha Rabba’s son explains that the work of the people of Jericho was “to insert a male kofra into a female one” (מנחי כופרא דיכראלנוקבתא). Jastrow interprets the term kofra (כופרא) as “the inflorescence of a palm”[1] and explains bPes 56a as follows: “(for fertilization) they put the male flower (scattered the pollen) over the female tree.” Rashi however interprets the passage as follows:

מניחין ותוחבין גמזיות רכה בת שנתה שנתוספה באילן בשנה שעברה וקרי לה כופרא דיכרא, על שם שמכניסין אותו בענף האילן, שקוצץ ענף גדול וסודקו ומשים את זה בתוכו. לשון אחר: כופרא דיכרא – ענף רך של דקל זכר ומרכיבו בסדק של דקל נקבה מפני שדקל נקבה אינה עושה פירות והזכרים עושין פירות.

One takes and inserts a soft yearling branch that was added to the tree in the preceding year and is designated male branch, because it is inserted into a branch of the tree, for one cuts off a big branch, and slits [the stump] and places it inside. In other words, a male kofra is a soft branch of a male palm, and it is grafted on the branch of a female palm because a female palm does not produce fruit and a male one does.

This is a description of grafting and not of fertilization. It engenders a strange interpretation in which the male is the fertile entity that bears fruit, and not the female, utterly in opposition to what is usually observed in nature. One is justified in inquiring what is the source of this inversion of nature, which so reduces the importance of the female in the one process in which her contribution is undeniable. Rashi’s commentary may have originated in the following episode in Genesis Rabbah, a midrash from the Land of Israel:

א"ר תנחומא: מעשה בתמרה אחת שהיתה עומדת בחמתן ולא היתה עושה פירות. עבר דקלי אחד וראה אותה. אמר: תמרה זו צופה מיריחו, כיון שהרכיבו אותה עשתה פירות (ב"ר מא א).

Said Rabbi Tanhuma: There was the case of a [female] palm tree that stood in Hamtan and did not produce fruit. A palm-farmer passed by her and saw her and said: This palm tree is yearning for Jericho (=probably for male palms from Jericho). Once they grafted her (with the desired palm), she produced fruit (GenR 41:1).

Unlike Rashi, the rabbis do not assume that female palm trees are infertile, but on the contrary, they are surprised at the existence of such a palm tree. They assume she wishes to be pollinated solely by a male palm from Jericho and thus she refuses to bear fruit to other male palms. The solution the palm-farmer suggests is to graft her with another (probably local, certainly female) palm which will be fertilized by the local palms. Yet the setting of the story, in which a female palm does not bear fruit, may have been the inspiration of Rashi’s androcentric biologically incorrect interpretation.