Talmud Commentary: Bavli 1/2. bBetsah 5a-b (mBetsah 1:1)

@General observations

The rabbis discuss the question of the permissibility of an egg laid on the first of two consecutive holy days. They thereby refer to the taqqanot of Rabban Yo hanan ben Zakkai and his court concerning the celebration of the festival Rosh Ha-Shanah, which falls on the first day of the month Tishrei.[1] The Sanhedrin declared the beginning of a new month after receiving the testimony of two witnesses. On the 30th of the month Elul, which is the month that precedes the festival Rosh Ha-Shanah, such testimony was accepted until the end of the day. As a result, people had to refrain from any act of prohibited labor, for if witnesses arrived during the following day, the day before would retroactively become Rosh Ha-Shanah. Thus, Jews who lived far away from the Temple and would therefore not be aware of the exact arrival time of the witnesses were required to observe two days of Rosh Ha-Shanah. These two days were considered to be one extended festival, and it could not be stated with certainty which of the two days was actually profane and which not. With the destruction of the Temple the need for a two-day celebration of Rosh Ha-Shanah no longer existed. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai therefore reinstituted the practice of accepting witnesses throughout the entire day of the 30th of Elul. If witnesses came, the Jews of the Land of Israel observed only one day of Rosh Ha-Shanah; if none arrived, they celebrated two days. One of these two days was actually a profane day to which the festival laws were only applied to ensure that the festival of Rosh Ha-Shanah would not be unintentionally violated. Inasmuch as one of them was not a true festival day, an egg laid on the first day of Rosh HaShanah was permitted on the second. In contrast Rav and Shmu’el advised that these circumstances did not prevail in Babylonia, because Diaspora Jews were never released from observing the two days of Rosh Ha-Shanah. There, both days were considered holy and an egg laid on the first day remained prohibited on the second.

The underlying question of this discussion[2] is whether a law passed by ballot needs another ballot to repeal it, even if the law is no longer relevant. The rabbis approve the necessity of another ballot by referring to a biblical and a rabbinical law. A concrete rabbinic example is given: The case of the kerem rev‘ai: In the fourth year the fruits of a grapevine had to be brought to Jerusalem (mPea 6). Rabbi Eli‘ezer was not able to do so because of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and decided to distribute its produce to the poor. He could not, however, make this decision on his own, but needed a ballot (in our case, the court of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai). It was necessary that a court repeal the obligation of bringing the fruits to Jerusalem, given that the law had been introduced and approved by an earlier ballot. The same is then demonstrated for laws of biblical origin. Laws commanded by God could only be repealed by God himself.

@Feminist observations

The principle that a law passed by ballot needs another ballot for it to be repealed is discussed in the above-cited sugya in association with sexual relations. In Massekhet Sanhedrin the same sentence (only a ballot can repeal a ballot) appears in connection with a discussion of circumcision (bSan 59b).

In the Hebrew Bible (Exod 19:15) God tells Israel not to approach women for three days. This verse has become the locus classicus for the discussion of the inclusion or exclusion of women from the definition of “Israel.” Judith Plaskow has suggested that the verse excludes women from the collective of Israel, because the sentence “do not come close to a woman” is addressed exclusively to men.[1] In MekhY yitro ba-hodesh 3, it is suggested that the verse is indeed addressed to men, yet does not exclude women from the revelation of the Torah.[2] However, in our sugya we learn that the prohibition on approaching women did not cease ipso facto after three days, but direct permission from God was required to resume cohabitation. This, in the opinion of the rabbis, is the meaning of Deut 5:27. God told the Israelite men after three days to go back to their women, namely by saying: “Go back to your tents.” Tents and women are used synonymously. In the following commentary I will demonstrate that the term “tent” is used in rabbinic literature to mean “woman,” side by side with the well-known term “house.”[3]

In the year 1746 Tractate Betsah was printed in the German city of Fürth by Hayyim ben Zevi Hirsch.[1] On the title page we find the following quotation from the Hebrew Bible that serves to date the print:

Adding the letters printed in a larger font together results in the Jewish year (5)506, which is the year 1746. As Marvin Heller has pointed out, Tractate Ketubbot from the year 1737 is dated with the same chronogram.[1] He comments upon this: “While the verse is appropriate to Ketubbot, which deals with marital contracts, its use on the title page of Betzah is less seemly, that tractate dealing with the laws of festivals.”[2] I will continue with a short comment on women and tents in general and then argue why the sentence does fit Massekhet Betsah at least as much as it fits Massekhet Ketubbot.

The verse on the title page of the Fürth print has its origin in the song of Deborah (Judg 5:24):

The Bavli explicates the phrase “the women of the tent” as a reference to the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah (bSan 105b; bNaz 23b; bHor 10b).

Indeed, women are already closely associated with tents in the Bible, where the word tent (אהל) is mentioned 274 times and tents (אהלים ,in the plural) 74 times. Already in the book of Genesis (Gen 18:9; 18:10; 24:67; 31:33; 31:34) the tent is the dwelling place of women. When Abraham is asked by the angels: “Where is Sarah, your wife?” he answers: “Behold, in the tent” (Gen 18:9). According to the biblical story, Sarah listens to Abraham’s conversation “at the tent entrance, which was behind him” (Gen 18:10). When Isaac brings Rebecca to Sarah, his mother, it is to the latter’s tent that he brings her (Gen 24:67), and in Gen 31:33-34 Laban enters Jacob’s tent, and Leah’s tent, and into the two maidservants’ tents; but he does not find them. Then he leaves Leah’s tent, and enters Rachel’s tent. On this passage GenR 74:9 comments:.

According to the biblical stories, the tent is the place where women reside. The tent is further described as a meeting place for women (Exod 38:8). This concept is continued into post-biblical times. In the apocryphal Book of Judith, a Hebrew novella from the later part of the second century BCE that was excluded from the Hebrew Bible but included in the Septuagint, the tent is a focal point. Judith’s own tent is located at the highest point possible, on the roof of her house in a city on a mountaintop (7:10).[1] Judith’s tent has been interpreted by Adele Reinhartz, in contrast to other sites of the story, as the place where she is “ascetic, close to God and devoted to her people.”[2]

This coupling of women and tents can be found in the midrashim as well. A midrash interpreted the biblical command to a man who was suffering from a genital-related disease (זב zav), to “stay out of the tent for seven days” (Lev 14:8), as meaning not to have sex with women. So, too, SifrNum 90 comments on Num 11:10, which states that “Moses heard the people weep throughout their families, every man at the door of his tent,” that the people were mourning because of the forbidden marital relations with close family members. A talmudic text formulates this most clearly:

The midrash ends exactly with the Deuteronomic verse which is cited in our talmudic sugya to describe God’s permission to men to return to their wives. The reworking of this talmudic text in the later midrash is of great interest. Verses that spoke of a house as a woman are replaced with verses that specifically mention women, but the verse that spoke of tent as woman is retained. For our purpose this is particularly interesting. At this point we can return to the sugya in bYev 62b. It continues as follows:

Thus, the rabbis closely ally each woman with the image of a tent, which in their opinion symbolizes feminine modesty. It is a place of invisibility for women who are not supposed to be seen in public.

Whereas, according to the rabbis, the tent symbolizes the modesty of the matriarchs in the Hebrew Bible, the story of Yael adds another dimension to the interpretation of a woman as tent: In the story about Yael the tent transforms from an invisible place for women into the central stage of action, where the fate of the Israelites is decided. In light of this contradiction, at first glance the praiseworthiness of Yael seems strange. Therefore, one midrashic commentator states that Yael will be blessed even more than the modest matriarchs in the tents (GenR 48:16). This interpretation is derived from the two distinct ways of translating the Hebrew preposition מ in the word מנשים. One way to translate it would be as “of,” as translated above: “Of the women in the tent.” The second way would be as “more than,” which would make the translation read “more than the women in the tent.”

Yael is known to have left her tent in order to attract the Canaanite general Sisera. She then lured him back into her tent and killed him there:

This event is described again in the “Song of Deborah.” Deborah, a prophetess and leader of Israel at the time, praises God and all who had a share in assisting her victorious people. Of Yael she says:

Yael’s connection to her tent seems undignified compared to that of the matriarchs, for she appears to lack the commendable modesty of these other “women of the tent.” Also her own praiseworthiness seems to be belied by the violence that she exhibits in killing Sisera. But from a feminist point of view there is no better verse to represent Tractate Betsah than this one from Judges. The reason for this is that Yael turns the tent from an invisible space for women into a focal point where women play a central role in deciding the fate of the Jewish people. Therefore she represents a kind of “post-woman-in-tent.”

Tents, unlike houses, cannot be excavated by archeologists. With the tents the women disappeared, too – those who stood on the margins as well as those who stood at the center of Israel’s history. Therefore, the significance of the tent in this context cannot be overemphasized as the place of women as well as the place of the sacred, because in the Hebrew Bible God reveals himself to his people in a tent. As a metaphor for both the marginality and the centrality of women, the tent thus perfectly suits the role of women throughout Tractate Betsah. Although on the surface of the tractate women are almost invisible, they nevertheless play a central and active role in the important spheres of action described in it.