berakhot 62:1-3 // l'dor vador for gay sluts

30 October 2023

or, i contemplated writing erotica about this but decided i better express myself in walloftext

CW for sexual violence i guess but all things considered this is p tame

there's this small section of talmud that i have seen discussed as a proof text of judaism's liberal-style sex positivity (lol). and also discussed in a xai how r u ep explicitly challenging that shit take by saying, it is simply a joke not really about sex that much and also it certainly doesn't ~~model consent~~! it was meant as a tale of what not to do!

to these people, i say! y'all don't know gay erotica when you see it

gay erotica when you see it

bear with me i PROMISE there's enough here to make it worth ur time

there's this section at the top of berakhot 62a about one rabbi following another to the bathroom with the line at the end "it is torah, and i must learn." Classic section!

setting the pattern: berakhot 62a:1

(non-italic/bold english text is parenthetical in the hebrew, ie, implied. all text + translation direct from sefaria)

תַּנְיָא, אָמַר רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא: פַּעַם אַחַת נִכְנַסְתִּי אַחַר רַבִּי יְהוֹשֻׁעַ לְבֵית הַכִּסֵּא, וְלָמַדְתִּי מִמֶּנּוּ שְׁלֹשָׁה דְּבָרִים: לָמַדְתִּי שֶׁאֵין נִפְנִין מִזְרָח וּמַעֲרָב אֶלָּא צָפוֹן וְדָרוֹם, וְלָמַדְתִּי שֶׁאֵין נִפְרָעִין מְעוּמָּד אֶלָּא מְיוּשָּׁב, וְלָמַדְתִּי שֶׁאֵין מְקַנְּחִין בְּיָמִין אֶלָּא בִּשְׂמֹאל. אָמַר לוֹ בֶּן עַזַּאי: עַד כָּאן הֵעַזְתָּ פָּנֶיךָ בְּרַבְּךָ?! אָמַר לוֹ תּוֹרָה הִיא, וְלִלְמוֹד אֲנִי צָרִיךְ

It was taught in a baraita in tractate Derekh Eretz that Rabbi Akiva said: I once entered the bathroom after my teacher Rabbi Yehoshua, and I learned three things from observing his behavior: I learned that one should not defecate while facing east and west, but rather while facing north and south; I learned that one should not uncover himself while standing, but while sitting, in the interest of modesty; and I learned that one should not wipe with his right hand, but with his left. Ben Azzai, a student of Rabbi Akiva, said to him: You were impertinent to your teacher to that extent that you observed that much? He replied: It is Torah, and I must learn.

So, we've got here the the skeleton of a joke. One rabbi following another to the bathroom and watching him take a shit! Oh no! How scandalous! But then R' Akiva is like nono babe it's chill u gotta know how to be modest and wipe correctly. evidently something taught by one's rabbi and not one's mother (more on this later)

repetition for emphasis: berakhot 62a:2

next we've got repetition with a difference. essentially the same text repeated verbatim, but with ben azzai learning from akiva. (click above if u wanna see! it's p verbatim tho)

in context, the repetition conveys quite a bit of meaning. the immediately preceding section in berakhot 61b has been discussing various tannaitic rabbi's opinions on taking a shit. should it be done facing east-west or north-south? does the direction matter only in eretz yisrael, only where you can see the temple, only during a time period when the temple is still standing, or everywhere and always (r' akiva's opinion)?

with this repetition, we take a step back from the specific debate and emphasize that bathroom practices, too, are handed down as practices rabbi to rabbi, generation to generation. from r' yehoshua to r' akiva to r' ben azzai. there's a bit of humor here --- you were impertinent to your teacher to that extent? --- but we have yet to reach

the punchline: berakhot 62a:3

(non-italic/bold english text is parenthetical/implied in the hebrew, not literal. all text + translation direct from sefaria)

רַב כָּהֲנָא עָל, גְּנָא תּוּתֵיהּ פּוּרְיֵיהּ דְּרַב. שַׁמְעֵיהּ דְּשָׂח וְשָׂחַק וְעָשָׂה צְרָכָיו. אֲמַר לֵיהּ: דָּמֵי פּוּמֵּיהּ דְּאַבָּא כִּדְלָא שָׂרֵיף תַּבְשִׁילָא. אֲמַר לֵיהּ: כָּהֲנָא, הָכָא אַתְּ? פּוּק, דְּלָאו אֹרַח אַרְעָא. אֲמַר לֵיהּ: תּוֹרָה הִיא, וְלִלְמוֹד אֲנִי צָרִיךְ

On a similar note, the Gemara relates that Rav Kahana entered and lay beneath Rav’s bed. He heard Rav chatting and laughing with his wife, and seeing to his needs, i.e., having relations with her. Rav Kahana said to Rav: The mouth of Abba, Rav, is like one whom has never eaten a cooked dish, i.e., his behavior was lustful. Rav said to him: Kahana, you are here? Leave, as this is an undesirable mode of behavior. Rav Kahana said to him: It is Torah, and I must learn.

So this is a joke, right! That rav kahana is like, not understanding the point because this is genuinely unacceptable behavior culturally. But like most punchlines, it condenses a lot; and like many jokes, it also sets-through-challenging the bounds of acceptable social behavior. Rav Kahana does not get the fucking point, and that's really funny--- but the Rabbis are also clearly setting down what is and is not acceptable behavior. Watching your teacher shit: YES. Watching your teacher fuck: NO.

and yet.

and yettttt

the softcore of antiquity

The setting of one rabbi under another's bed is so evocative. I do think this is intended as an instructive tale of how to have sex, actually, and I think the liberal-movement commentary I've seen^ completely misses the social stakes it's taking up. This is a story about gay sex, social power, and misogyny!

gay sex (or, talmudic tops and bottoms)

First, it makes explicit the erotic subtext of the previous two scenes, that of two rabbis, student and teacher, hanging out partially clothed in the bathroom.^ The joke acknowledges the presence of this sexual tension through its diffusion --- sure, they were unclothed, alone, in the bathroom, but nothing sexual could have happened, of course! that's definitely beyond the pale! except. . . it isn't, because rav kahana literally tries it.

I also want to draw attention to the spatial play. There's a visual pun here: one rabbi under another rabbi's bed can be read as a spatial representation of the chain of transmission, one generation's insights being subsumed into the next's. but it is also a vertical display, a sexual scene: one rabbi, the student, literally underneath the bed of another rabbi, the teacher. this doubling of the power dynamic, sexual and generational at once, is clearly drawing attention to

social power (and the chain of transmission)

There are structural parallels in the third section to the motif of generational knowledge transmission from the first two. In the first two scenes, we get a display of rabbi-to-rabbi knowledge transmission, a reproduction both of knowledge and the method of transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next, even at a site of heightened privacy and potential embarrassment. L'dor vador: Rabbi to rabbi, generation to generation, toilet to toilet. When discussing the transmission of sexual norms, however, the insertion of a woman in the private home becomes both necessary and illuminating of uncomfortable truths. Unlike many other traditions and mitzvot, reproductive sex is an act of jewish cultural transmission which (supposedly) cannot have two rabbis at its center. Reproduction of the family is supposed to happen through procreative sex in the private home,^ the very space religious elites historically have very little control over because they have very little surveillance over --- a fact that rav kahana's spying plays on.

misogyny (or, the parenthetical woman)

The insertion of a woman is quite begrudging. There's a slip in the translation here we have yet to discuss: The wife is literally not referred to, not even by pronoun, in the Hebrew. Her presence is simply implied by the language of Rav Abba "seeing to his needs," which has seemingly historically been assumed to be non-masturbatory and heterosexual activity because these are rabbis,^ but is not actually explicitly made clear in the text. There's a woman here --- has to be a woman here for the joke to be about reproduction/transmission --- but she's parenthetical to even the joke at hand, referenced only obliquely through the conversation of the two rabbis. She acts as the diffuser of the erotic tension evident in the presence of one rabbi underneath another's bed; she also acts as the carrier of the continuity of the l'dor vador motif, referencing sexual activity as a reproductive and generational act.

and the woman's presence-through-absence in the punchline draws attention to her total absence in the first two bits. after all, who teaches one to properly wipe their ass, if not their mother? the rabbis here, as talmudists throughout time, are discussing and debating down to the finest details of daily life. but they're also intimately aware, and occasionally hint to, how minute their influence actually is over, say, how many Jews take their shits facing South --- or for that matter, what they get up to (and with whom!) within the confines of private bedrooms.

the historical consensus around the rabbis of the talmud is AFAIK that they were a pretty insular crowd talking largely amongst themselves, and certainly not the mainstream legal authorities of their (various) times. the legal rulings in the talmud (when they do rule rather than record a dispute!) are generally understood as legal fantasies in a time when Jews were subject to Roman courts under Roman rule. to extend this understanding, i think we can see this sugya as fantasizing about a level of rabbinic control and insight into daily, intimate, (homo)sexual, and women's life that simply did not exist at the time.

erotica! it's erotica!

this story is a homoerotic sexual fantasy about rabbinic power and its limits. one rabbi sneaks under his teacher's bed, watches him fuck, and then compliments him on his sexual prowess. when confronted, he slyly gives what is established as a rabbinic catchphrase. and then the story ends, leaving the reader entirely to their own devices as to what happens next.

even if you take my theory of this being softcore aside, which you should not because i am right, there is an explicit engagement here with social power and its reproduction. leaving that commentary on social power out by, say, interpreting this as "judaism is pro watching your rabbi fuck," or "this is about how desperate rav kahana was to learn about proper modesty"^ or heAven forbid "it's just a joke don't think about it that hard" is i think simply rude to the rabbis. who clearly knew Exactly what shit they were about

wait what about that fanfic tho

yeah okay here's your sacrilege you've read far enough

she's not even mentioned but i'm Dying for some drash on rav's wife here. like, imagine being halfway through getting head from ur man and suddenly his hot young student pops out and is like "wow, great job man, u got any pointers on this" and then they slowly fuck you and each other without once acknowledging you as an active participant because in their eyes you're not? Fucking hot. (Fucking terrifying.) It's such a potent little scene that would offer a really good opportunity to explore literarily what it's like to be at the center of the image of sex but somehow + through that symbolically barred from its experience (aka, a woman).

bonus

this section of talmud and my takes thereupon are as canonical to me as the letter from engels^ to marx discussing being ass-raped by the queer vanguard of the future, which me obrien seemingly dug up from the abyss purely for my entertainment. below, from to abolish the family, which you should go read in its entirety:

The homophobia of Marx and Engels also showed a certain ambiguity. In an 1869 letter, Engels writes to Marx concerning a book by homo- sexual militant Karl Ulrich:

These are extremely unnatural revelations. The pederasts are beginning to count themselves, and discover that they are a power in the state… they cannot fail to triumph. Guerre aux cons, paix aus trous-de-cul will now be the slogan. It is a bit of luck that we, personally, are too old to have to fear that, when this party wins, we shall have to pay physical tribute to the victors.… Then things will go badly enough for poor frontside people like us, with our childish penchant for females.

The contempt is clear, but also their own ironic play at lagging behind the coming queer revolution, contemplating the neglect of their own behinds.

it's. so fucking funny. frontside people. . . imagining themselves too old to be cruised. . . the reversal of the psychoanalytic positioning of queer people as immature in favor of a marxist conceptualization of sodomites as the class successors of heterosexuals (YEARS before psychoanalysis even exists! queer vanguardism, queers as a class, as concepts predate the invert and the homosexual! y'all!). . .

~