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THE CONSTRUCTION, COMPOSITION

AND IDEALIZATION OF THE FEMALE BODY
IN RABBINIC LITERATURE AND PARALLEL
IRANIAN TEXTS: THREE EXCURSUSES
Shai Secunda
Body studies have been a focus in Jewish Studies at least since the publication of Daniel Boyarins Carnal Israel (1993), while the Babylonian Talmuds Iranian context has been a preoccupation of talmudists as a result
of Yaakov Elmans massive decade-long project on this subject. In this
article, I use parallels from Zoroastrian literature to shed light on three
developments found in rabbinic attitudes toward the female body: the
-

its Indo-European parallels, I suggest that Genesis rabbahs androgynous

reading of Genesis 12 should not be interpreted as a direct subversion
of the Middle Platonic adaptation of the classical Greek androgyne myth
(as Boyarin suggested), but rather as participating in the production of
a widely diffused gender myth in late antiquity. Second, I demonstrate
that the view which sees menstruation as a punishment for Eves sin is
a wholly Babylonian rabbinic invention, and it parallels a Zoroastrian
etiology that ties menstruation to primal, demonic evil. Finally, I show
how the Babylonian Talmud adapts material from the Tosefta to create
an extended discussion regarding the aesthetics of the female breast that
parallels developments in Zoroastrian literature from the Avesta to its
Sasanian Middle Persian adaptation.

In 1993, Daniel Boyarin published a relatively compact book entitled Carnal Israel:
Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture,1 in which he attempted to redirect the study of
rabbinic literature in at least three respects. First, he encouraged talmudists to shift
their gaze from matters of law, theology and the history of the rabbinic mind toward

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NASHIM: A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies and Gender Issues. 2012

The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
interpretation of the body, its carnality and its messiness. Second, Boyarin encouraged
students of rabbinic literature to consider developments in literary theory, philosophy,
semiotics and cultural studies, and the hermeneutical possibilities offered by New
Historicism. The book helped establish gender as an important theoretical lens for
talmudists and to spur engagement with the work of Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin
and other theoreticians, which began to appear in critical rabbinic scholarship. Third,
in crafting a rabbinic anthropology, Carnal Israel engaged the Hellenistic Judaism
of Paul and Philo, which in Boyarins reading developed into most (western) articulations of Christianity. While the relationship of rabbinic literature to Christianity has
been a central concern since the rise of academic Jewish studies in nineteenth-century
Europe, Carnal Israel conveyed a sense of urgency to the issue, along with a new set
of questions and answers.
The academic study of rabbinic literature has never been the same. Carnal Israel
modernization of talmudic studies in North America, and it played a signal role
in updating the concerns and methods of talmudists to match broader trends in the
humanities.2
longer enjoys the same scholarly attention it previously did, as interests have begun to
shift from carnality to spaciality3 and beyond. Perhaps a more fundamental development has to do with research into the Babylonian Talmuds cultural contextnamely,
that of the Sasanian Empire. Incredibly, since World War II talmudists have scarcely
paid attention to the rich Iranian milieu in which the Babylonian Talmud was composed. This is in striking contrast to the study of Palestinian rabbinic literature, which
has more or less consistently looked to contemporaneous Latin and Greek works for
help in illuminating rabbinic texts and drawing out their meaning. At the beginning of
the new millennium, Yaakov Elman began a project of reading the Zoroastrian Middle
Persian texts composed by the Babylonian rabbis Persian neighbors and comparing
them with relevant passages in the Babylonian Talmud. Elmans innovative approach
has seen great success, both in terms of the quality and quantity of insights gained
from merging Iranian and talmudic studies, and in terms of the growing numbers of
As its subtitle indicates, Carnal Israel sets out to investigate something Boyarin
calls talmudic culturea term that refers not only to classic rabbinic literature
dating from the third to the sixth centuries in Palestine and Babylonia, but also to
its medieval inheritors and its contemporary, observant Jewish practitioners.4 The
gram quite nicely, although its coherence is frequently disturbed. As Boyarin admits,
talmudic culture can be deconstructed into various components, especially on a
geographical EastWest divide. In another book about rabbinic sexuality published
two years after Carnal Israel, 5 Michael Satlow charted further differences between
the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds and occasionally correlated them with the
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distinctive mores of Roman Palestine and Sasanian Babylonia. Nevertheless, the
lack of integration between Iranian and talmudic studies in the 1990s simply did not
differences by measuring the distance between East and West.
Since the Talmudo-Iranica revolution, students of the Babylonian Talmud have
proceeded to reexamine basic aspects of Babylonian rabbinic culture, including the
body and sexuality. Some of Elmans recent work considers matters of sexuality,
marriage and the status of women.6 Building on Boyarins and Satlows earlier observations, Elman demonstrates the possibilities of the new comparative idiom, and he
also tantalizingly points to promising areas of future research in this arena. Even if
the corporeal school in rabbinics has begun to move on, quite a bit of work remains
to be done in terms of explaining the sources of the Talmuds articulations of carnality and sexuality, particularly with regard to the conceptualization of the body in the
Babylonian rabbinic imagination and its relationship to the wider Sasanian context.
This article heralds a more extensive project on rabbinic attitudes toward the female
body. At this stage in the research and in the current forum, an exhaustive survey of
the topic is not possible. Instead, I wish to address three critical areas: (1) The creation
way of these three topics, I hope to illustrate some of the uses to which parallel Iranian
trate how attention to a Middle Persian source along with its precursors and parallels
sheds light on a widely distributed myth, in which a rabbinic midrash should be seen
as partaking, and not merely responding to it. The example of menstruation employs
a more typically genealogical approach and illustrates how Iranian materials can be
female body, shows how the complex evolution of a talmudic text can be illuminated
by parallel developments in Zoroastrian discourse.

Rethinking the Rabbinic Myth of the Androgyne

Boyarins central claim about the body-soul complex is made by way of a contrast. In
his view, the rabbinic approach to these two components is distinct from the dominant
Hellenistic understanding shared by Jews and early Christians alike.7 The Hellenistic
view separated the body from the soul, which was considered in most respects to
constitute the very essence of humanity. The body was perceived as merely the abode
of the soul, and, depending on the articulation, the valence of this home ranged
anywhere from a more positive view of it as a garment covering the soul to the extreme
negative view of the body as a grave in which the soul is buried. Rabbinic texts, by
contrast, stress the centrality of the body in the composition of the human being.
For the rabbis, the human being is not composed of a divine soul that happens to be

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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
points out, the rabbinic view may have engendered a generally positive reception of
heterosexuality, since corporality is an essential element of human existence, and the
physical differences between men and women are not to be interpreted as secondary
accidents of creation, but as central facets of being.8 At the same time, the rabbinic
scheme emphasizes differences between the sexes perhaps considered less important
in Jewish-Hellenistic texts, and this leads to a hierarchical arrangement of the sexes.9
This basic division informs Boyarins interpretation of the initial creation of humankind as it is understood in rabbinic literature. Famously, the Bibles account of the
matter seems contradictory. While Chapter 1 of Genesis refers to a single moment in
which male and female, together referred to as earthlings (Adam/adamah = earth),
were created in the image of God, Chapter 2 describes the creation of an initially male
being out of which a woman was later constituted. The two accounts have stimulated
Hellenistic Jews, such as Philo, solves the problem by reading Genesis 1 as recording the creation of a kind of perfect spiritual androgyne in the world of forms, and
womankind represents an even lower, derivate permutation. This approach makes use
of the well known pre-Socratic Greek myth of the androgyne, famously articulated
by Aristophanes in Platos Symposium, but with a decidedly Middle-Platonic spin.
Boyarin draws attention to a rabbinic midrashic text that describes humankind as
initially having been created androgynously. However, the rabbis describe a physical
androgyne that was later split into two separate gendered humans.

adam harishon], He created him androgynous, for it says, Male and

two] and made a back here and a back there. They objected to him: But it says,
tzela
tzela means] one of his
tzela] of the tabernacle
10

Boyarin reads this midrash as a kind of subversion of the view that the separation
of the genders is tied up with the secondary, derivative and, to use a loaded term,
and derivative link in the chain. For the rabbis, physicality and gender were present
from the androgynous beginning of humankind, and the splitting of the sexes does
not express a novel materiality. In this way, the rabbis are shown on the one hand
as incorporating the beliefs and interpretive modes of non-rabbis (the androgyne of
Genesis 1 that is split in two in Genesis 2), yet they are also assumed to reverse the
Hellenistic construction.
What disrupts this relatively neat picture is the presence in late antiquity of another
androgyne myth that parallels the Greek construction but in certain respects hews
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appearing in a Middle Persian cosmological work known as the Bundahin. Though
written down some time after the Islamic conquest, the Bundahin is made up of
older oral material dating at least to Sasanian late antiquity and perhaps stretching
BCE, in the form of late antique Middle
Persian translations of the Avesta, the Zoroastrian sacred canon.11 It has recently been
argued that Babylonian rabbis had access to some of the textual formulations that
appear in the Bundahin, and that they incorporated some of these formulations into
the Babylonian Talmud.12

different argument.
the Zoroastrian supreme deity, as a battleground where Good and Evil clash for a
-

13

grew up from this seed, populated the earth, and began the process by
which evil would be undone.14 We might say that, phenomenologically speaking,
15

According to the tradition preserved in the Bundahin,16

grew out of the earth in the form of a rhubarb:

in the back (or: at their ears), and they were attached to one another. They were of
the same height and same appearance. Between them Fortune came up. They were
of the same height, so that it was not apparent which was the male and which was
in mankind. . . . Then they both changed from rhubarb-form to people-form. And
that Fortune went into them from the world of thoughtthat is, the soul. Similarly,
now, too, a tree grows, whose fruits are the ten kinds of humans.17
material world (Middle
Persian
a critical concept designating the physical world, as distinct from
18
mental, spiritual existence, known in Middle Persian as
)
a kind of androgyneone that is apparently quite physical and literally rooted in the
19

Their division into two separate

beings was achieved only when they changed from plant to human form, and even then
the text does not explicate their sex. After a complex story of ungratefulness, sin and

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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
in this context that sex is not a symptom of the fall, but rather a result of the demons
unable to enjoy intercourse for half a century:

and as they were performing their desire they thought: We should have been doing
20

they have sex, reinstating them in a sense to their initial conjoined state. Not insigniincestuous marriage.21
As foreign (and forbidden) as the concept of a religious mandate for sibling marriage
may seem to the Western mind, we might still appreciate that a twin brother and

between Aristophanes and the Bundahin, but both contain an early being who is
androgynous, comprises two genders, and is conjoined in strange and fascinating
ways. Both texts play with the idea that heterosexual sex somehow reinstates an
apparently derives from far more ancient, Avestan precursors, circulated during late
of Genesis 1 and 2. In fact, the parallel is strongest between the Bundahin and the
Symposium, where the androgyne is physical and not spiritualizedas in the rabbinic
articulation, and unlike the Hellenistic-Jewish view. That being the case, it is worth
asking how the Bundahin and Aristophanes myths came to resemble each other, and,
further, what the implications of those resemblances are for understanding the import
of the midrashic androgyne.
It seems that the answer should be sought by looking at the shared Indo-European
heritage of the Greek and Iranian myths. Recent years have seen a resurgence of
research into Indo-European poetics. Among other things, this work attempts to
explain the presence of parallel beliefs, motifs, traditions and myths in European,
Iranian and Indian cultures, by reconstructing ancient Indo-European precursors that
were later diffused into various cultural formations across the European and Asian
continents. In this case, we may point to a number of ancient Indic, Iranian and Germanic texts spanning millennia that describe the processes that led to humankind
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as deriving from a primal twin. The basic notion consists of a paradoxical myth of a
solitary
provocatively suggested that this myth might stem from the human birthing process,
in which the birth of a baby is followed by the birth of the placenta.22
There are a number of attempts in Indo-European traditions to solve the paradox
of the pair-less twin. These sources essentially maintain that, somehow, the lone
twin was twinned. In a formulation found in Iranian texts and echoed in Indian tradition, the solitary twin23
Both articulations are brought together in Aristophanes colorfully described doublecreature, which constitutes a third, androgynous gender that is later split into two
heterosexual halves.24
We might recall that in Boyarins reconstruction, the myth of the androgyne is
thought to have entered rabbinic literature via the Jewish-Hellenistic discussion of
the contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2, which were divided along a platonic (ideational/material) plane. Philo wrote of the splitting of an initially spiritually androgynous entity into a physical male and subsequently a female being. Boyarin argues that
and reverses it by emphasizing the physicality of Genesis 1. This allows for an idealization of sexual relations between the two genders as well as a way of thinking about
sex as a return to Adam and Eves primal conjoined state.25 However, the Zoroastrian
myth should give pause to this neat reconstruction of the history and intent of the
rabbinic androgyne. If a recension of the Indo-European androgyne myth, rooted in
circulating in late antiquity, the midrashic androgyne need not be seen as a subversive appropriation of the Middle-Platonic reading of Genesis. Instead, it seems more

traditions, to solve the question of where gender difference originated, while also
resolving the contradictory accounts of Genesis 1 and 2.
As with nearly everything in rabbinic literature, the androgyne myth was merely one
view among many. The Babylonian Talmud has an interesting take on the androgyne
tradition, in which Rav and Shmuel, two early third-century CE
tion of amoraim, debate whether the androgyne was an equal amalgamation of male
tail appended to the male bodyan apparently misogynistic downgrading of the myth.
Ketubot
male.26
history and contextualize them in the complex web of ideas that inhabited late.
am suggesting, rather, that the rabbinic androgyne was somehow related to the broader
structure of the Indo-European myth and not simply a subversion of the JewishHellenistic conception of the body-soul divide. The Zoroastrian text reminds us that
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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
the rabbis inhabited and partook of a vibrant world of ideas that was also populated
by traditions other than the Hellenistic-Jewish or even the general classical tradition.
It also serves to illustrate one, non-genealogical use of reading Iranian and rabbinic
materials in tandemnamely, to highlight the variety of ideas that circulated across
the vast landscape of late antiquity, of which the rabbis were a part.

The Origins of Menstruation

Regardless of Eves physical position in the primal humanoid, a subsequent and crucial
set of questions about the female body in the rabbinic mind must interrogate the status
of Eves body in its unattached and female form. For example, one might question the
extent to which the female body was viewed as fundamentally different from its male
counterpart. Did the rabbis see the biological differences between the sexes as everpresent, inherent, fundamental and indicative of further divisions? Moreover, what
actually comprised the biological differences between women and men?27
The menstrual cycle is one relatively unambiguous biological difference between
the sexes. How was that difference perceived by the rabbis, and what did it symbolize?
Was the female menstrual cycle viewed as part of the inborn and inherent makeup of
womankind since the beginning of time, or as a result of a later development, perhaps
attributed in some way to sin and evil?
In contemporary English slang, menstruation is sometimes referred to as The
Curse. Interestingly, the idea that Eve, and by extension womankind, began to mentian literaturea most vital source of Western linguistic habitsbut in the Babylonian
Talmud.28 As I will try to demonstrate, the attempt to locate menstruation in the mythiabsent from earlier strata of Palestinian rabbinic literature. Its appearance in some late
rabbinic texts may be attributable to the Iranian context of the Babylonian Talmud.
Any discussion of Eves curses begins with Gen. 3:16:
And to the woman He said, I will greatly multiply your suffering and your pregnancy. In pain shall you bear children, yet your urge shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.29

in Judaism and Christianity. Ancient exegetes read it as a catalogue of various female

the gendered gaze of these male interpreters, menstruation is surprisingly absent from
virtually all Second Temple and late antique interpretations and retellings of Eves
punishment.30 Even in sources where we might expect menstruation to come up, it
does not. Witness the following passage in Genesis rabbah, a Palestinian midrashic
CE:
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Your suffering (etzvonekh
nancythis refers to the pain of carrying a child (lit.

this refers to the pain of raising children.31

While the biblical text itself32 refers only to an increase in (a) suffering, (b) pregnancy33
and (c) the pain of bearing children, Genesis rabbah presents a nicely arranged catalogue of curses relating to female procreation: (a) the pain of conception, (b) pregnancy, (c) the misfortune of miscarriages, (d) the travails of childbirth, and (e) the
rabbahs reading is the basic
allow for any redundancy. Instead, nearly every element in the verse is read in such
a way that it teaches the reader something new. And yet, menstruation is not to be
found. Likewise, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds virginal blood in its rendition of
the verse, probably paralleling Genesis rabbahs pain of conception, but it, too, does
not add menstrual blood.34
The Babylonian Talmud, however, preserves the following statement, attributed to
the third-generation Babylonian amora R. Yitzhak b. Avdimi:35
Did R. Yitzhak b. Avdimi not say: Eve was cursed with ten curses, since it is
written: And to the woman He said, I will greatly increasethis refers to the
two drops of blood,36 one being that of menstruation and the other that of vir-

husband teaches that a woman yearns for her husband when he is about to set out

among women.37
There seems to be a connection between R. Yitzhaks approach and the exegetical
tradition found in Genesis rabbah. However, his exegesis begins earlier in the verse,
with the words I will greatly increase,38 which is seen as adding two elements to
Eves cursesvirginal blood and menstrual blood.39 Pseudo-Jonathan and Genesis
rabbah also include the pain of virginal sex, but they derive it from the word etzvonekh (your suffering). Since R. Yitzhak has already derived virginal blood by
the time he reaches the word etzvonekh, he is forced to relate to another supposed
curse, childbearing, and this ends up disrupting the orderly, sequential exegesis found
in Genesis rabbah: conception > pregnancy > miscarriage > labor > childbearing.
Most interesting and somewhat unexpected is R. Yitzhaks inclusion of menstruation, which does not always cause a woman pain.40
exegesis.41 Apparently, the attempt to identify menstruation as one of Eves curses is
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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
an innovation of a third-generation Babylonian amora 42 that was later taken up by
other rabbinic texts.
Further negative evidence can be adduced from a cluster of sources43 that consider
the reason God commanded Jewish women to observe the menstrual laws. All bear
some relationship to Mishnah Shabbat 2:6, which states that women die in childbirth
on account of carelessness in observing the menstrual laws, tithing dough or lighting
Sabbath candles. Along with the other two commandments, the religious obligation to
observe the menstrual laws is depicted as a form of expiation for bringing mortality to
Adam through sin.44
only the reasons for the menstrual laws and not the origin of menstruation itself.45
In contrast to rabbinic sources, Zoroastrian texts preserve a fairly developed etioBCE.

Its clearest expression appears in the fourth chapter of the Bundahin, which
describes how, after the Evil Spirit, Ahrimen, was incapacitated for 3,000 years, the
demons attempted unsuccessfully to resuscitate him by enumerating their contribufrom his stupor, by declaring:
Rise up, our father, for in that battle I shall let loose so much harm upon the
Righteous Man and the toiling Bull that their lives will not be worth living. I shall

He jumped out of his stupor and placed a kiss on the Whores head. The pollution
now called menses appeared on the Whore then.46
The text does not make this explicit, but it seems that menstruation was invented
to help Jeh execute her destructive plan. A further implication is that menstruation
derives from the primordial demonic desire to harm the world.
a translation of an Avestan original,47 and I have recently demonstrated that fragments
relating to this myth show up elsewhere in Pahlavi literature.48 It seems likely to have
undergone a certain amount of development in its Middle Persian stagethat is,
ence on the Jewish myth is out of the question, it is certainly worth comparing how
these two Sasanian communities associated menstruation with evil.
The Iranian myth takes an exceedingly negative view of menstruation. It is a
demonic, destructive force, attributable to the very kiss of the devil and belongdescribed as existing opposite and parallel to the whore-demoness Jeh and her brood,
women. Menstruation is ordered in Zoroastrianisms dualistic framework by locating
its origins in evil incarnate.49
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Following the explicit connection made by R. Yitzhak b. Avdimi in the Babylonian
Talmud between menstruation and sin, later rabbinic literature sees the genital bleeding as a kind of measure-for-measure capital punishment for murdering Adam.50 Here
we might speculate that while womens blood was seen in the Babylonian conception as essential for reproduction, it was believed that women would not periodically
Sasanian Zoroastrian conception, where menstruation is seen as impure not in and of
itself, but rather due to the fact that it leaves the body. 51 Both Sasanian Zoroastrianism
and rabbinic Judaism apparently appropriated Galenic ideas about menstruation and
seed, while simultaneously developing parallel mythologies that linked menstruation
to primal evil or sin.52
It is not clear whether the best model for appreciating this parallel development is an
geographical and temporal space. Regardless, knowing that Middle Persian literature
discussed the primeval origins of menstruation is helpful for appreciating the genealogy of a Babylonian amoras late-in-coming suggestion that menstruationand not
merely the menstrual commandments or the genital blood of virginal sexoriginated
as Eves punishment for eating from the Tree of Knowledge. We already know that
the Babylonian laws of menstrual impurity intersected with contemporaneous Middle
Persian literature in a number of ways.53 It now appears that Zoroastrian ideas about
the evil origins of menstruation may similarly have interacted with notions about

The Ideal Woman

The rabbis were preoccupied not only with the constitution of the female body in the
text for this discussion was the question of the age of majority, which, as in other legal
systems, was intimately connected to the physical development of a childs body into
an adult one. Far more than the male body, the rabbis mapped out the maturing female
body in excruciating detail.54 There was also great interest in the female body as it
cussion of the interior architecture of female genitalia. A further context was marital
law, and it is to this topic that we now turn. The textual development of a sugya in the
Babylonian Talmud will be read against relevant Iranian texts in order to demonstrate
how intricate philological work can be illuminated by reading contextually.
Chapter 7 of Mishnah Ketubot is concerned with various physical and religious

duties.55 These can serve as grounds for divorce or, in certain cases, for retroactively
annulling a marriage. Defects in the male include blemishes like boils and polyps,
which affect the integrity of the body, and a few professions, like skin-tanning, that
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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
to divorce his wife and give her the payment stipulated in the marriage contract
(ketubah).
Regarding women, the Mishnah rules that if a man made his marriage conditional upon the absence of bodily defects in his wife and defects were later discovblemished wife without paying her ketubah. The Mishnah then states: For all
defects disqualify priests and disqualify women (Mishnah Ketubot 7:5, according
to the conventional numbering). This reading, which follows the best manuscripts, 56
equates the disqualifying force of blemishes upon priests and upon women, without
specifying what constitutes a disqualifying blemish. However, Tosefta Ketubot 7:957
apparently understands the equation between priests and women as applying the
priestly list of blemishes, outlined in Mishnah and Tosefta Bekhorot, to women.
This is also the direction taken by the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds. 58 Intermoreover added bad breath (lit. the smell of the mouth), body odor (lit. the smell of
59
and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds expand
60
the list even further.
in the Babylonian Talmud bears some structural and material relation to the parallel passage in the Jerusalem Talmud, notwithstanding the differences. Using similar
terminology, both Talmuds deal with matters like the size of an offensive wart and its
location on the head. Yet, there is one discussion in the Babylonian Talmud that bears
scarcely any relation to the parallel Jerusalem and toseftan passages. It will require
some kind of account of its origins and cultural import:
61

taught: The cavity (bira)62 between a womans breasts is a handbreadth.

breadth is advantageous.
63

baraita]: R. Nathan says64: Any woman whose breasts are

bigger than those of her peers (
a bodily defect.

Ketubot
75a)65

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Shai Secunda
clear from the ensuing discussion (BC) that later rabbis were also not entirely sure of
the statements original context: Rav Aha b. Rava thought that the text was describing
some kind of aesthetic ideal, while Rav Ashi argued just the opposite: It was taught
in connection with bodily defects. This is immediately followed (D) by Abayes
66
The
identical quantitative question is repeated a line later, following a baraita
attributed to a rabbi named Nathan that explicitly treats a bodily defectthe blemish of a woman having relatively large breasts. The formulation of this ruling is itself
somewhat curious, particularly its relativity (larger than those of her peers). To be
sure, passages where the original contexts of rabbinic statements are contested and
where the basic hermeneutical framework is unstable abound in the Talmud. How are
we to explain the present occurrence? Here, I would like to suggest a combination of
source criticism and cultural factors.
transmission, though this does not make them any less unsettling for the interpreter.

baraita attributed to R. Nathan. Unfortunately, there is no direct parallel to R. Nathans

statement about a woman whose breasts are bigger than those of her peers in extant
tannaitic literature or in parallel talmudic sources. However, the line does seem faintly
to echo the following passage in the Tosefta, also from the seventh chapter of Ketubot,
which describes a woman who is to be divorced without a ketubah:
And also she who goes out with her hair unfastened and her clothing torn, at
great ease with her slaves, maidservants and (female) neighbors (velibbah gas
), spins cloth in the market, and
washes in the bathhouse with everyone. . . . (Tosefta Ketubot 7:6)67
The expression libbah gas in the Hebrew phrase describing the womans improper
inter-personal relationships might literally be rendered her heart is large, or perhaps
her bosom is large,68 though this is certainly not its proper sense in the context. The
meaning of libbah gas is normally realized idiomatically as a reference to a level of
comfortableness or perhaps even of debasement, and it occasionally bears a sexual
connotation. Alternatively, the term can simply mean a lack of embarrassment.69 Thus,
the passage refers to a woman who is overly comfortable and immodest with certain
people, perhaps in a sexually charged sense, as the text indeed goes on to describe in
relation to her bathing practices.
Before returning to the passage at hand in BT Ketubot, it is worth discussing this
line further. First, it is almost solely concerned with inappropriate displays of the
body: uncovered hair, torn clothes, spinning in the marketplace and mixed bathing. The reference to overly comfortable relationships with neighbors and servants
is slightly incongruous. Further, at least with regard to maidservants and female
neighbors, it is not immediately clear why such behavior would be deemed immodest
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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
and thus grounds for divorce. Indeed, elsewhere in tannaitic literature a womans
comfortableness around her servants is taken as a sociological fact. As Mishnah
Sotah 1:6 rules:

bitter waters] comes and sees her, except her slaves and maidservants since she is
comfortable (libbah gas)
shaming].70
The manuscript variants to Tosefta Ketubot 7:6 and a parallel in Tosefta Sotah 5:9 may
71
and the
two toseftan passages are in turn complicatedly related to further tannaitic material
concerning the ordeal for the suspected adulteress.72
The passage from Tosefta Sotah deals with a husbands chaperoning of his wife:
R. Meir used to say: As men differ in their treatment of their food, so they differ in
most men who
do not mind their wives talking with their (male) neighbors and (female!) relatives.
what is in the dish. This corresponds to the way of a bad man who sees his wife go
out with her hair unfastened and her clothing torn, at ease (libbah gas) with her
slaves and maidservants, spins cloth in the market, and washes and cavorts with
everyone. It is a mitzvah to divorce her. . . . (Tosefta Sotah 5:9)73

deemed tolerable for a married woman to converse with her neighbors and relatives.74
This generally acceptable behavior is contrasted with a woman whose wicked husband allows her to act overly comfortably with her slaves and maidservants. Here,
the Tosefta and its parallels contrast not only differing levels of social interaction
(speech verses great ease), but also different kinds of people (neighbors and relatives
vs. slaves and maidservants). As we saw in Mishnah Sotah 1:6, the discussion regarding the ordeal for the suspected adulteress also mentions slaves and maidservants.
feel unembarrassed in front of the household help, the latter do not contribute to
her shaming at the ordeal.
To return to Tosefta Ketubot 7:6, the text there seems to have a woman acting inappropriately with her slaves, maidservants and female neighbors.75 It is interesting that
neighbors, slaves and maidservants are an integral part of the different discussions in
Mishnah and Tosefta Sotah, regarding the types of woman who should be divorced
and who should receive warning for indecent activities.76 It seems possible that, by
some textual mechanism, the Mishnahs discussion of slaves and maidservants before

73

Shai Secunda
Sotah 5:5 and the source in Tosefta Ketubot 7:6, which added neighbors to the list.77
This does not solve the problem of how exactly over-familiarity with slaves, maidservants and female neighbors was construed as immodest and as grounds for divorce.
Yet, it does partially explain how this text came to look the way it did.
Above, we noted that the clause at great ease with her servants in Tosefta Ketubot
7:6 is somewhat incongruous, because everything else in the list deals with public
or mixed nudity of some sort.78 It seems possible (perhaps distantly) that the phrase
libbah gas was chosen precisely because of its duality: the indecent woman is inappropriately comfortable (libbah gas) with people in her domestic sphere, and she is
also immodest (gas) with regard to her bosom (libbah). Interestingly, Mishnah Sotah
1:56 also refers to both senses of the word levcomfortableness and the bosom:
A priest lays hold on her garments . . . so that he lays bare her bosom (libbah). . . .
R. Judah says: If her bosom (libbah) was beautiful he would not lay it bare.
bitter waters] comes and sees her, except her slaves and maidservants since she is
comfortable (libbah gas) with them.
Ketubot 75a, which
might now be understood as a distant echo of the formulation in Tosefta Ketubot 7:6.
Indeed, one may note the linguistic similarity between the expressions used in both
places:
(BT Ketubot 75a) / libbah gas . . . bishkheinoteiha (Tosefta Ketubot 7:6). Surely, the textual relationship between these two
sources is not as simple as saying that R. Nathans baraita represents a misreading
of the Tosefta. But the proximity between the two texts is apparent. What is more,
there is evidence of some confusion regarding which elements in Chapter 7 of Tosefta
Ketubot are part of the discussion regarding inappropriate behavior, a violation of the
law of Moses and Israel and thus grounds for divorce, and which are related to bodily
defects.79 It is possible that a version of the formulation libbah gas . . . bishkheinoteihaperhaps without the slaves and maidservants element (which in any case was
suggested to have been secondarily derived from Mishnah Sotah 1:6)became associated with the list of defects and understood as a new blemish, that of relatively large
constitutes a peculiarly Babylonian textual process.
may have lead to some of the textual and interpretive problems in BT Ketubot 75a. A
defect articulated as breasts bigger than those of her peers needs to be explicated.
Accordingly, the amoraim asked by how much? It seems likely that this question
sugya
should perhaps be read as follows:80
baraita]: R. Nathan says: Any woman whose breasts are bigger

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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
By how much?Rav Meyasha the grandson of Rav Yehoshua b. Levi said in the

the sugyas current formulation, is answered by citing one of Rabbah b. Bar Hanas
81
Note
the resemblance to another short anecdote found a few folios earlier, appended to a
related discussion about the nature of spinning cloth in the market and conversing
with everyone in the parallel list of inappropriate activities in Mishnah Ketubot 7:6:

prohibition applies] where she exposed her arms in public.

only to one] who cavorts with young men.

Rabbah b. Bar Hana related: I was once walking behind Rav Ukba when I
observed an Arab woman who was sitting, casting her spindle and spinning a rose

What was that word?Ravina said: He spoke of her as a woman spinning in

the market. The Rabbis said: He spoke of her as conversing with everyone. (BT
Ketubot 72b)82
Whatever its original context and meaning,83 this tale of an Arab woman is used
here to exemplify the halakhic
that constitutes grounds for divorce in Chapter 7 of Mishnah Ketubot. Similarly, in
the passage with which we began, a story told by Rabbah b. Bar Hana about an Arab
woman is used to demonstrate the nature of a bodily defectlarge breasts. The question introducing the storyis there even such a thing?may well be secondary.84

breasts, we would seem to have either more discussion about the ideal female bodytype, or perhaps a further attempt to explain that the handbreadth refers not to
overly developed breasts, but to the space between them. Indeed, this might explain
the original context of this seemingly context-less observation: It should be read as a
reinterpretation of the text attributed to R. Nathan himself.85
So much for the protracted and complex textual development of this sugya both in
tannaitic literature and in the Babylonian Talmud, which can be summed up as follows:
The Babylonian Talmud preserves a baraita attributed to R. Nathan that lists relatively
75

Shai Secunda
in Palestinian rabbinic sources, and it seems to have emerged from a complex set of
textual processes in which a tannaitic discussion about inappropriately permissive and
immodest behavior with people (even women) from the neighborhood, employing certain metaphorical terminology (libbah gas), ended up joining an (adjacent) discourse
about blemishes, causing this terminology to be understood differently in the Babylonian context. This led to the Babylonian Talmuds attempt at explaining this new
or, apparently, by marshaling a Rabbah b. Bar Hana tale. Further discussion about the
space between the breasts seems to be connected to these processes, and may have
emerged from an attempt to explain the meaning of the oversized measurement of a
handbreadth.
Though it includes material attributed to Palestinian rabbis, this discussion, precupation. Could this preoccupation have emerged if the Babylonian rabbis had lived
out their lives in a ghetto unconnected to larger society, solely as a result of internal
did work within the
dynamic context of Sasanian Iran, where they came into constant contact with nonrabbinic Jews and also with various non-Jewish communities.86
Within the Sasanian Middle Persian Zoroastrian corpus and its literary progeny,
of consideration in this regard, though the relevant discourses occur in a poetic rather
than a legal register. The Iranian texts can be split into two categories: devotional (yet
courtly panegyrics to the perfect woman, somewhat akin to the so-called blasons of
the early modern period.87
In the Avesta, we have descriptions of female spiritual beauty as a means of per-

most powerful and high-born, well-shaped and girded high, upright and splendid
in her brilliance, wearing a coat with long sleeves, with rich designs, embroidered
with gold. Ever and again, carrying barsom
brooch upon her beautiful neck and tighten her waistband to enhance her breasts.88
While earlier in the hymn the goddess is depicted (and understood) as an immense
and purifying river, here her greatness is articulated via comparison to the shape
of a beautiful woman. As such, although this text relates directly to a goddess, it
BCE.
Notably, this ideal female type is no petite beauty. She is powerful,89 tall, bedecked

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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
90

that greets the soul upon death in the form of a correspondingly beautiful or ugly
formwe read of a strong (and young) woman who, among other qualities, is tall and
has prominent breasts.91 This passage in particular has been demonstrated to have a
strong erotic element.
The poetics at work in these and other related Avestan texts seem to have deep roots
in ancient Iranian culture, and their afterlife is quite remarkable.92 Nevertheless, there
does seem to be evidence of some development which comes into view when we look
carefully at related Middle Persian articulations from perhaps a millennium (or more)
later. For one, the ideal female has been cut down to size, so to speak. For example,
of the perfect woman as follows:
A woman is good who is inwardly in love with the man, and (for her) his increase
is wealth. (Whose) stature is medium, and whose breast is broad, (whose) head,
buttocks and neck are compact, whose legs are short, whose waist is narrow,
soft, strong and full, possessing quince breasts, and whose nails are like snow, and
whose complexion is like pomegranate.93
This ideal womans height is now described as medium (
), and her
breasts are depicted as quince-like (
),94 which seems also to take things
in the direction of typical and thus perfect proportions. Even more, in a parallel
account preserved by the Arabic historian al-Tabari95
Persian re-articulation of that text96
Most tellingly, the following line from another Middle Persian description of the
somewhat more contained proportions:

is, her breasts sit back].97

(
), dutifully rendered by the Middle Persian Zand (commentary) on
that passage as erect breasts (
), this Sasanian Middle Persian gloss of
the term
is less faithful. Instead of referring to the height of the breasts,
the Middle Persian contains them by emphasizing that they sit back on the body
and do not jut out. In short, there seems to be evidence that, despite the traditions
continuity, Iranian depictions of ideal beauty contained in Sasanian works evince a
Sasanian Zoroastrian glossators.
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Shai Secunda
In his article on priestly blemishes in rabbinic literature, Ishay Rosen-Zvi demonstrates that already in the Mishnah, the rabbis developed a thoroughgoing aesthetic
program regarding the ideal human body.98 Unlike classical writers primarily interested in the masculinity of the male body, in rabbinic texts it is symmetry that
remains the most central concern. In our discussion of the preferred contours of the
the Babylonian Talmud a wholly novel concern with overly large breasts, along with
an associated attempt to describe and depict the preferred proportions of the female
body. There is some evidence that the body of a large-breasted Arab woman at one
point served the Talmud as a prime example of this new blemish. In this exaggerated
ethnographic passage, an Arab woman throws a breast over her shoulder and nurses
apparently their Iranian neighbors, saw as defective. Compactness and containment
were evidently great aesthetic ideals, and overgrown breasts disturbed that perfect
as uncontained in other ways that were problematic for the rabbis.
We also saw that the sugya contains further discussion of the symmetry of the
female breasts, a discussion that had to be reconstructed on account of complicated
redactional processes. According to our reading of the sugya, different rabbis mainaverage. Further redactional development perhaps led to a discussion of the space
between the breasts.
In all, it is noteworthy how, despite the differences in subject matter (Jewish marital law versus Iranian poetic descriptions of the female body), both the Babylonian
Talmud and Middle Persian literature are preoccupied with the preferred contours
of the female body. Together, they seem to develop a preference for a taut and more
restrained bodily aesthetic. There is no reason to point to Iranian aesthetical preferences as directly
rabbinic conceptions. Instead, we seem to have analogous
and apparently linked endeavors to depict the ideal female body in contemporaneous
Sasanian rabbinic and Zoroastrian discourses.

Conclusions
At this point in the research, one can only speculate about what the material discussed
in these three excursuses might have meant for the body politic of both Babylonian
Jewish and Iranian societies, and, further, how these aesthetic preferences and costhe different communities that made up the colorful mosaic that was the Sasanian
Empirealong with their medieval and modern inheritors. The project of reading the
female body in rabbinic literature in light of Iranian parallels is still in its early stages.
Nevertheless, this paper demonstrates some of the possible uses to which parallel
Iranian texts can be put in such an endeavor.
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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
First it is worth noting that Iranian literature can even illuminate rabbinic texts
produced in Roman Palestine, beyond what is usually seen as the orbit of Iranian
culture. In other instances, as in the second example, Middle Persian literature can
philological work on the protracted development of sugyot in the Babylonian Talmud
can be illuminated by also looking beyond internal textual concerns to consider the
Iranian contextwhich often can also be measured in terms of the evolution of its discultural processes. The research involved in comparing discourses can sometimes
seem overly intricate and time-consuming. Yet, there is the hope and promise that the
results of this long-term endeavor will be worth the hard work.

Notes:
Acknowledgements: This article evolved out of a course taught at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem while I was a Mandel fellow in the Scholion Interdisciplinary Center in Jewish Stud-

ment. Finally, a special thanks goes to the readers and especially the skilled editors at Nashim
1. Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (The New Historicism,
2.
Foucault, Jewish Quarterly Review
The Dialogical Talmud: Daniel Boyarin and Rabbinics, Jewish Quarterly Review, 101
(2011), pp. 245254.
3. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, The New Spatial Turn in Jewish Studies, AJS Review,
33 (2009), pp. 155164
4. Carnal Israel
and medieval thought. But, to its credit, the book is interested in medieval and contemporary applications of certain strains in rabbinic thought. See, e.g., the discussion of
Maimonides interpretation of Eve (pp. 5760), and the reference to women and Talmud
5. Michael L. Satlow, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1995).
6.
in Sasanian Mesopotamia, in Rivka Ulmer (ed.),
Context, and Non-Text in Rabbinic Judaism (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,
2007), pp. 129163.
7. For an important discussion of the Christian material on this question, see especially
Wayne A. Meeks, The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest
Christianity, History of Religions, 13/3 (1974), pp. 165208.

79

Shai Secunda
8. See Boyarin, Carnal Israel (above, note 1), pp. 3142. Two decades hence, this scheme
comes off as a bit mechanical and binary, which in the course of my argument may appear
even more exaggerated. Still, the basic claim put forward in Carnal Israel remains an
important one. At least initially, I will rely on Boyarins text and encourage the interested
reader to consult his bibliographical references.
9. Boyarin, in Carnal Israel
10. Genesis rabbah 8:1, corresponding to Chanoch Albeck and Julius Theodor, Midrash
bereshit rabbah
of MS Vatican 60, while the translation derives from Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 4243,
with some changes. There are a number of parallels to this midrash, including Leviticus
rabbah 14:1 and BT Berakhot 61 = BT Eruvin 18a.
11. For a detailed discussion of the Bundahin, see D.N. Mackenzie, Bundahin, Encyclopedia Iranica, IV (1990), pp. 547551.
12. Reuven Kiperwasser and Dan D.Y. Shapira, Irano-Talmudica I: The Three-Legged Ass
Talmud and in Ancient Iran, AJS Review, 32/1 (2008), pp. 101116.
13.
14. Greater Bundahin 6F, ed. Behramgore Tahmuras Anklesaria, Zand-Akasih: Iranian or
Greater Bundahisn (Bombay: Rahnumae Mazdayasnan Sabha, 1956).
15. It should be noted that there are also possible genetic connections between the Iranian
and Semitic myths. These were explored at some length in A. Christensen, Les types du
premier home et du premier roi dans lhistoire lgendaire des iraniens (Archives dtudes
First Man, First King: Notes on Semitic-Iranian Syncretism and Iranian Mythological
Transformations, in S. Shaked, D. Shulman and G.G. Stroumsa (eds.), Gilgul: Essays
on Transformation, Revolution and Permanence in the History of Religions Dedicated
to R.J. Zwi Werblowsky
238256.
16.
46:37, in Alan V. Williams, The Pahlavi Rivayat
Accompanying the Dadestan i Denig 2: Translation, Commentary and Pahlavi Text
(Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1990), p. 76.
17.
The Spirit of Zoroastrianism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 108109, with slight changes.
18. See Shaul Shaked, The Notions
and
in the Pahlavi Texts and Their Relation
to Eschatology, Acta Orientalia, 33 (1971), pp. 59107.
19.
the activities of the being who eventually becomes a woman and the one who eventually
becomes a man, not because they are themselves aware of their gender from the beginning.
20.
The Spirit (above, note 17), p. 110.
21.
Encyclopaedia Iranica
at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/marriage-next-of-kin (updated June 29, 2011).
22. See idem, Zoroastrian Dualism, in Armin Lange et al. (eds.), Light against Darkness:
Dualism in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and the Contemporary World (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), p. 70. The birthing of the placenta, experienced during
every vaginal birth, has essentially been forgotten by contemporary Western culture. It is,

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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
for example, completely ignored in pop-cultural representations of birth scenes. We may
speculate that humans in the past were vexed by this second labor, resulting in the birth
not of another child but of a bloody mass.
23. This twin is known in Avestan as Yima, paralleling Vedic Yamaalthough in Indian
tradition it is a primal human named Purusha, meaning cut up.
24. See Eric Pirart and Xavier Tremblay, Zarathushtra entre lInde et lIran: tudes indoiraniennes et indo-europennes offertes Jean Kellens loccasion de son 65e anniversaire
Indo-European Poetry and Myth
25. Boyarin, Carnal Israel
see Galit Hasan-Rokem, Erotic Eden: A Rabbinic Nostalgia for Paradise, in Markus
N.A. Bockmuehl and Guy G. Stroumsa (eds.), Paradise in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian
Views (CambridgeNew York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 156165.
26. For a survey of these passages see Judith Reesa Baskin, Midrashic Women: Formations
of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England,
2002), pp. 4464.
27. This topic, although often noted in the scholarly literature, has yet to merit exhaustive
treatment. Important sources include Mishnah Ohalot 1:8, which lists the 248 limbs/
organs (evarim) that legally constitute a human (adam) corpse for the purposes of ritually
impurity. The Mishnah itself apparently does not differentiate between male and female
bodies, though a purportedly tannaitic tradition at BT Bekhorot 45a claims that women
possess an extra four limbs/organs. Two amoraim
either because the organs are legally inconsequential (Rava) or because men also possess themeven if they are boneless (Abaye). For further sources that point towards an
essential female biological otherness see Baskin, Midrashic Women (above, note 26).
28. See Evyatar Marienberg, Niddah: Lorsque les Juifs conceptualisent la menstruation
(Paris: Belles lettres, 2003), pp. 4356. I (and, to my understanding, Marienberg) do not
articulation of this idea in the Babylonian Talmud, where it predates its non-rabbinic
parallels by quite some time.
29.
30. The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 56:6 seems to bear some relation to Gen. 3:1619, and
it mentions renewed blood in this context. However, the reference seems to be to death,
not menstruation. See David Gurtner, Second Baruch (London: T. & T. Clark, 2009), pp.
9899.
31. Genesis rabbah
Theodor (above, note 10), p. 190.
32.
getes all debated the reading, meaning and implications of the text. For a useful survey
of the debates regarding Gen. 3:16 as it was, see Hannake Reuling, After Eden: Church
Fathers and Rabbis on Genesis 3:1621 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 2328.
33. Notably, according to some ancient interpreters your suffering and your pregnancy in
the verse is a hendiadys and should be read as sufferings of childbirth.
34. I will greatly multiply your suffering in the blood of virginity and in your pregnancies
. . . Cf. Michael Maher, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis

81

Shai Secunda
note apparently reads
(and your times), possibly referring to the menstrual
period.
35. For an important source-critical discussion of this sugya, see Aviad Avraham Stollman,
(Jerusalem: Society for the
Interpretation of the Talmud, 2008), pp. 221238. Stollman persuasively argues that R.
Yitzhaks statement originally contained seven items (as I have quoted it), and that the Talmuds addition of three more curses is contrived. This led to the redactional complications
that engendered the suyga as we now have it.
36.
37. BT Eruvin 100b according to MS Vatican 109. The translation is based on the Soncino
in this paper are based on the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmudic Database, accessible at
http://www.lieberman-institute.com/.
38. The preceding section of Genesis rabbah interprets these words as well, as part of a
separate discussion regarding the duration of human gestation.
39.
shall you bear children is interpreted.
40.
Munich (above, note 36).
41. See, e.g., Avot deRabbi Natan A 1:1.
42. There appear to be two amoraim of this name, but the third-generation Babylonian
to that image. See the sources collected in Hanokh Albeck, Mavo laTalmudim (Tel-Aviv:
Dvir, 1969), p. 294.
43. Genesis rabbah
Shabbat
Midrash
, ed. Buber (Vilna, 1885), Noah
Avot deRabbi Natan B 9:13a.
44. According to Genesis rabbah, God gave the menstrual commandment to women
because Eve spoiled (kilkel) Adam. The Jerusalem Talmuds version of this teachformulation in parallel passages in Avot deRabbi Natan B and the

is that Eve

Elisheva Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 229, note 40, which also
emphasizes that the menstrual laws are not conceived here as a punishment.
In the parallel in the Babylonian Talmud, it becomes even clearer that menstruation
was not conceived as a curse. The passage, marked as Palestinian in provenance, provides
a different explanation for why women who are lax in these three commandments die in
childbirth. The menstrual laws are presented not as a means of expiation, but as an expression of gratitude for Gods gifts of blood and the soul to humankind, and of chosenness
to the Jewish people:
ter (riviya) of a log of blood in you. Therefore I commanded you concerning blood.
of

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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
Shabbat 31b32a,
These sources have lately merited a good deal of scholarly attention. For the now-classic
feminist reading, see Boyarin, Carnal Israel (above, note 1), pp. 8894.
45. The exception is a related formulation in the
literature
, ed. Buber (above, note 43), Metzora
sion of the
reproduced in Jacob Mann, The Bible as Read and Preached in the
Old Synagogue
Yalkut talmud torah, Genesis, letter
zayin
Talmud.
46.
The Spirit (above, note 17), p. 96.
47. See Geo Widengren, Primordial Man and Prostitute: A Zervanite Motif in the Sassanid Avesta, in E.E. Urbach et al. (eds.), Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to
Gershom G. Scholem (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967), pp. 227234.
48.
Tradition, Numen (forthcoming).
49. See Jamsheed Kairshasp Choksy, Evil, Good, and Gender: Facets of the Feminine in
Zoroastrian Religious History (New York: P. Lang, 2002), pp. 5174.
50. See the references to the
in note 45 above.
51. For an explanation of impurity in Zoroastrianism see Jamsheed K. Choksy, Purity and
Pollution in Zoroastrianism: Triumph over Evil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989).
52. See Shai Secunda, Zoroastrian and Rabbinic Genealogies of Menstruation: Medicine,
Myth, and Misogyny, in Shaul Shaked (ed.), Irano-Judaica, VII (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi
Institute, forthcoming).
53. See Samuel Israel Secunda, DashtanaKi derekh nashim li: A Study of the Babylonian
Rabbinic Laws of Menstruation in Relation to Corresponding Zoroastrian Texts (Ph.D.
Dissertation, Yeshiva University, 2008).
54. For a recent and important discussion, with bibliographical references, see Charlotte
Elisheva Fonrobert, Regulating the Human Body: Rabbinic Legal Discourse and the
Making of Jewish Gender, in eadem and Martin S. Jaffee (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), pp. 274280.
55.
Dine Israel, 26/27 (2008/9), pp. 91119.
56. MSS Budapest, AkademiaKaufman A 50 and Parma Biblioteca Palatina 3173 (de Rossi
138).
57. Saul Lieberman, Tosefta According to Codex Vienna (New York: JTSA, 1995), IV, p. 81.
58. JT Ketubot
Ketubot 75a. It also appears in readings of the Mishnah preserved in other witnesses. In general, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, The Body and the Book:
The List of Blemishes in Mishnah Tractate Bekhorot and the Place of the Temple and Its
Worship in the Tannaitic Beit Ha-Midrash, Madaei hayahadut, 43 (2005/6), p. 78, note
111. Rosen-Zvi notes the reading of the best manuscripts, but is surprisingly hesitant to
admit that this reading does not fully equate the priestly list of blemishes with those that
might be found in married women.

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Shai Secunda
59. Notice that this formula is used in Mishnah Bekhorot 7:1 and Tosefta Bekhorot 5:1 to

60. The Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds incorporate tannaitic material about priestly
defects in their discussions of female blemishes. See, e.g., Tosefta Bekhorot 5:5.
61. Rabbi Nathan in the Vilna edition and MS Vatican 130.
62. This word is usually interpreted as a geographical place name. See, e.g., Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-GanBaltimore: Bar Ilan University PressJohns Hopkins University Press,
2002), p. 205, s.v.
. There does seem to be an amora named R. Yirmiyah associated
with a place called
. However, in this context, the meaning cavity should probably
be maintained.
63. The bracketed material appears in full in MS St. Petersburg RNL Evr. I 187 and partially
in MS Vatican 130.
64. MS Vatican 130 again has R. Nathan taught (tanni R. Nathan).
65. The translation is based on the Soncino edition, and the text mainly follows MS St.
Petersburg (above, note 63).
66. Rashi ad loc. explains that Abaye is referring to the ideal space between the breasts. Aside
from there being no hint of this in Abayes words, this interpretation needs to account
for how Abaye is responding to a discussion that took place generations after his death.
67. Ed. Lieberman (above, note 57), IV, p. 80.
68. Indeed, see Mishnah Sotah 1:5, discussed below.
69. For a discussion of the term and its various meanings, Ishay Rosen-Zvi, The Rite that was
Not: Temple. Midrash and Gender in Tractate Sotah (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2008),
pp. 9194.
70. For this interpretation, see ibid., pp. 9498. See also Mishnah Gittin 7:4.
71. The above translation of Tosefta Ketubot
albibliothek Cod hebr. 20, and, partially, the genizah fragment T-S E2.141. MS Erfurt,
male) neighbors. In the parallel passage at
Tosefta Sotah 5:9, MS Erfurt similarly records: at ease with her (male) slaves . . . (male)
neighbors instead of slaves . . . maidservants. MS Erfurt thus essentially solves the
problem: The woman is censured for her inappropriate relationships with the kind of
men that she comes into regular contact with, namely male servants and neighbors. See
Saul Lieberman, Tosefta kifeshutah: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta (New
YorkJerusalem: JTSA, 1995), VI, p. 291.
72. The relevant texts and their interrelationships have been dealt with masterfully by RosenZvi in The Rite that Was Not (above, note 69).
73. See parallels at JT Sotah 1:7 (17a) and BT Gittin 90ab.
74. The female plural form is almost certainly a mistake. MS Erfurt once again changes
the text and records her brothers, while the parallels in the Jerusalem and Babylonian
Talmuds record (male) relatives instead.
75. Thus, at least according to the better manuscript readings. Again, MS Erfurt seems
to hyper-correct the text to conform to gender normsa phenomenon worthy of more
extensive study.

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The Construction of the Female Body in Rabbinic Literature and Iranian Texts
76. Rosen-Zvi, The Rite that Was Not (above, note 69), pp. 2544, discusses the connection
between the two discourses.
77. Note that in his discussion of the Tosefta Ketubot passage (p. 291), Lieberman is of the
opinion that (female) neighbors was originally a correction for her maidservants,
which actually should have read her (male neighbors). To my mind, however, this does
not seem plausible.
78. The problem with spinning clothdeemed the quintessential female work in many cultures, including rabbinic societyapparently lies in the woman exposing her body in
public.
79. Thus, the loudmouth (kolanit) of Mishnah Ketubot 7:6 (particularly according to MS
Cambridge, Add. 470. 1) and Tosefta Ketubot 7:7 appears in the list of inappropriate
behaviors but is understood by the Babylonian Talmud to constitute a bodily defect. See
Lieberman, Tosefta kifeshutah (above, note 71), VI, p. 292.
80. To be sure, it is not entirely clear why Abayes question would have migrated prior to
the citation of the R. Nathan baraita.
81.
shel Rabbah bar Bar Hana, in Ariel Hirschfeld et al. (eds.), Sifrut umered (Jerusalem
82. The rendering is based on MS St. Petersburg RNL Evr. I 187. The phrase about her
appears only in this MS.
83. It seems fairly clear that the phrase said a word originally referred to a hex cast by
Rav Ukba upon the women on account of her licentious behavior. For this well-attested
meaning of Aramaic milta see Sokoloff, A Dictionary (above, note 62), p. 668, s.v.
,
no. 4.
84.
beyond the range of possible female physiology.
85. The text may even point in this direction by associating the term tanni with the tanna
R. Nathan. The term is often used in association with brief glosses. The omission of
Nathans regular title, Rabbi, may also point in the direction of a brief explanatory gloss
used to explain his statement in the baraita.
86. I am not aware of any relevant discussions of the ideal female body that have survived in
the literatures of other Sasanian religious communities. What we do have is Syriac Christian texts whose focus on the female breast and its qualities is not explicitly erotic, but is
relevant texts, see Isobel H. Combes, Nursing Mother, Ancient Shepherd, Athletic Coach?
Some Images of Christ in the Early Church, in Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes and
David Tombs (eds.), Images of Christ: Ancient and Modern
quite ancient beliefs and represents a dominant way of relating to the female breast in
surviving Western literature from antiquity. See Marilyn Yalom, A History of the Breast
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), pp. 948.
87. Yalom, History of the Breast (above, note 86), pp. 4990.
88.
The Spirit (above, note 17), pp. 6263.
Encyclopaedia Iranica, I (1985), pp. 10031011.

85

Shai Secunda
89. For example, earlier in the hymn (Yasht 5.7) her arms are described as Beautiful, indeed
. . . white and thicker than the thighs of a horse.
90. Yasht 5.128129.
91.
Hadoxt Nask 2: Il racconto zoroastriano della sorte
dellanima
92. See Fereydun Vahman, A Beautiful Girl, in Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin (ed.), Papers
in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce
93.
96, according to Vahman, A Beautiful Girl (above, note. 92). Cf. Davoud
Monchi-Zadeh,
(Acta
94. Later New Persian articulations of this text refer to pomegranate-sized breasts. See
Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, Erotic Literature, Encyclopaedia Iranica, VIII (1998).
95. I.1206. For an English translation, see Muhammad Ibn-Garir Tabari, The Hstory of alTabari: The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen, V (English transl. by
96.

(French transl. by Hermann

97. Faridun Vahman, Arda Wiraz Namag: The Iranian Divina Commedia (London

glosses terms translated directly from the earlier (generally, Avestan) source.
98. Rosen-Zvi, The Body and the Book (above, note 58).

Nashim 23 (2012)