Body of the Whore, Body of the Story and Metaphor of

the Body
Reuven Kiperwasser
This study1 is actually a note on the margin of the important and significant
book by Charlotte Fonrobert, 2 in which a strange story about the disciples of
Rabbi Yishmael and the corpse of a harlot (bBekh 45a) was over-interpreted and
far-reaching observations about the nature of gender metaphors for the human
body in rabbinic literature were made. I studied this text before I read Fonroberts comments.3 However, at that time I was occupied with the textual aspects and the realistic background of the story, and not with its gender aspects
and now I take the opportunity to reread the text critically, in light of the mishnaic Tractate Ohalot, and to consider its gender significance. Let us begin by
reading the abovementioned story.
bBekh 45a4
' "
Rav Yehudah related in the name of
:"
Shmuel: The disciples of Rabbi
Yishmael once soaked (in water) [the .
body of] a whore who had been con
demned to be burnt by the king. They
examined [her body] and found two
hundred and fifty-two [evarim]
They came and inquired of Rabbi , :
Yishmael: Rabbi, How many bones has .' ?
the human body? [He replied:] Two
?
hundred and forty eight. [Thereupon
1 The drafts of this article were read by Tal Ilan, Amram Tropper and Dan Shapira I
am thankful to them for their help.
2 F ONROBERT , Menstrual Purity.
3 K IPERWASSER, The 248 Parts: A Study of the Mishnah Oholot 1:8, 29-64. This article was actually a seminar paper written for my teacher Prof. Daniel Sperber who encouraged me to publish it. I would like to thank him here again.
4 Based on the Geniza fragment Bodly 2661.32, which is, according to my impression,
slightly better than other manuscript versions. A few textual errors were corrected. For the
comparison of the versions see K IPERWASSER, The 248 Parts, 54-55.

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Reuven Kiperwasser

they said to him:] But we examined and

found two hundred and fifty-two?
He replied of them: Perhaps you made
the examination on a woman, to whom
Scripture adds two hinges and two
doors?

,
?

It was taught: Rabbi Eliezer says: As a

house has hinges, so a womans body
has birth pangs (tsirim) as it is written
(in Scripture): She knelt and gave
birth, for her pangs (tsirim) came suddenly upon her (I Sam 4:19).

: :
": ,
.) " ("

Rabbi Yehoshua says: As a house has

doors, so a womans womb has doors,
as it is written (in Scripture): Because
he shut not up the doors of my
(mothers) womb (Job 3:10).

, :
" :
.)" (

Rabbi Aqiva says: As a house has a key

(mafteah), so a woman has a key, as it is
written (in Scripture): And opened
(patah) her womb (Gen 30:22).

, :
" " : ,
.)(

According to the opinion of Rabbi

Aqiva, is there not a difficulty in connection with what Rabbi Yishmaels
disciples discovered? It may be that
since it (i.e. the key) is small it dissolved (in the water in which the bones
were soaked).

,
?
.

This story had interested both Katzenelson and Preuss, 5 because it is the only
report in all rabbinic literature of a scientific experiment carried out for the sake
of the study of a human corpse, and the first one in the entire history of dissec-

5 P REUSS, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, 62. The work of Katzenelson was written originally in Russian, but translated soon after into German, see KATZENELSON, Die normale und
pathologische Anatomie. I have used the Hebrew revised version, whose title he himself translated as Talmud und Medizin, Berlin 1928, 235-250. Mention should also be made of the following relevant studies: RABBINOWICZ , La medecine du Thalmud, 192 and LUZZATTO, Kerem
Hemed, 39-45.

Body of the Whore, Body of the Story and Metaphor of the Body

307

tion practices. Unlike Katzenelson and Preuss, Fonrobert6 focused on the potential legal import of the storys midrashic logic, proposing that it does not
entail full burning of the body but rather concurs with the execution described
in the Mishnah, of pouring molten lead into the mouth of the condemned (mSan
7:2), thus preserving her body. But this hypothesis is clearly wrong because the
king in this story is a Roman ruler and the punishment is not halakhic. Under
such circumstances it is quite reasonable to expect that a corpse would be given
over to students for experimentation after execution, but why would a group of
rabbinic students explore the structure of the corpse, other than for a common
rabbinic purpose, namely resolving a halakhic difficulty? It should be noted in
this context that, except for one legendary account about an Alexandrian king
(mentioned by Galen, Rufus and Celsius and even echoed in tNid 4:17 and bNid
30b this circumstance caused certain scholars to suppose that traces of Alexandrian medicine are evident in the Talmudic corpus) 7 no notion of the dissection of corpses in Late Antiquity is known to us. 8 We may inquire, whether the
students were indeed interested in checking the number of bones in the human
body, and if so, why? The number was already known to them from the Mishnah, and it is doubtful whether they intended to contest this information. Let us
leave aside for a moment our strange story and check this, no less strange mishnaic tradition, on which much scholarly debate has concentrated during the 20 th
century.

. : :
. , , , ,
, , , . : .
. , .
. , , ,
, ? .
.) (' ,
There are two hundred and forty-eight evarim in a human being (adam): Thirty in the
foot (and leg): six in each toe. Ten in the ankle, two in the lower leg, five in the knee,
one in the thigh, three in the hip. Eleven ribs.9 Thirty in the hand (and arm): six in
6

FONROBERT , Menstrual Purity, 56-59.

KOTTEK, Alexandrian Medicine in the Talmudic Corpus, 80-90; BAR-ILAN, Medicine in Eretz Israel, 31-78.
8 S CARBOROUGH , Roman Medicine, 74; BAR-ILAN, Medicine in Eretz Israel, 35-42;
KIPERWASSER, The 248 Parts.
9 The number of ribs is problematic. K ATZENELSON , Talmud und Medizin, 277-280 proposed an explanation for this, according to which the missing rib was included in the hyp othetical structure of the mentioned below, which was understood by him as the
key of the heart. PREUSS, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, 64, disagreed: The Mishnah only
enumerates eleven ribs, because it was thought that the twelfth rib, which ends unattached
(to the rib cage), should not be counted. This reason, naturally, is not valid; for the eleventh
7

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Reuven Kiperwasser

every finger. Two in the forearm, and two in the elbow, one in the upper arm, and
four in the shoulder, one hundred and one on one side and one hundred and one on
the other side. Eighteen vertebra in the spinal column, nine in the head, eight in the
neck,10 six in the opening of the heart and five in its pinholes. 11 Each single (evar) can
communicate uncleanness by contact, by carrying and by overshadowing. When?
When they have their proper flesh (on them), but if they do not bear flesh, they render unclean by contact and by carrying, but they do not convey uncleanness by ove rshadowing (mOhal 1:8).12

This very strange text raises many questions about its contents and its place in
the context of the tractate. 13 On several points regarding the nature of evar and
the counting of bones tOhal 1:7 sheds light:

. ,
. , .
.) ('
What has on it tendons and bones, lo, this is an evar, and whatever does not have
tendons and bones on it is not an evar. One who has extra [evarim] lo, these are
rib also does not reach the breastbone, nor is it attached to another rib. I find nothing
mentioned about a difference between true and false ribs.
10 K ATZENELSON, Talmud und Medizin, 279-284 assumed that the Mishnah refers to the
seven cervical vertebrae and the lingual bone when it speaks of the eight bones of the
neck, but P REUSS Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, 65 thought that the statement about the
eighteen vertebrae (hulyot) is easily explained; twelve thoracic and six lumbar vertebrae.
Even if the normal number of lumbar vertebrae is only five, in exceptionally tall individuals
one can also observe six.
11 K ATZENELSON, Talmud und Medizin, 277-279 believed that this expression should be
understood as the key of the heart and it means the sternum bone with the two high ribs
which look together like a modern key. The problem is that ancient keys usually looked
different (see SPERBER Material Culture, 49-55). Furthermore this entire explanation is problematic as shown by PREUSS, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, 65-6 who wrote: The heart-key
mentioned in the Mishnah might be interpreted to have the same meaning as the kleis of
the Greeks and the clavicula of the anatomists of the Middle Ages, namely the clavicle. To
be sure, it does not have six parts as stated in the Mishnah. Note also that one would only
obtain the form of a key if one completely excises the breastbone and the two upper ribs,
which would represent the grip of the key together with the vertebrae attached thereto,
after one has removed the shoulder certainly not a simple task. Here I propose a different
reading for the . According to my understanding not the key of the heart
( ) is implied here but the opening of the heart )( , another expression
which sometimes occurs in the rabbinic literature, see PesK, 461 and AdRN B 16. It looks
like the cleavage of a dress. For a detailed explanation of this reading see KIPERWASSER,
The 248 Parts, 61-63.
12 For the Hebrew text and the critical commentary on it see G OLDBERG , The Mishnah
Treatise Ohaloth, 9-10. The translation is based on DANBY, The Mishnah, 651, with minor
changes.
13 G OLDBERG, The Mishnah Treatise Ohaloth, 10; N EUSNER, History of the Mishnaic Law of
Purities,33-34

Body of the Whore, Body of the Story and Metaphor of the Body

309

above the [normal] count [of 248]. One who lacks [the normal numbers of
evarim], is one who has in him only two hundred, and one who exceeds [the normal number of evarim], is one who has in him two hundred eighty. They all join
together [to be subjected to] the number of one hundred and five and twenty
(tOhal 1:7).14

This Tosefta adds to what is found in the Mishnah, that a person can have more
than 248 bones, even up to 280, and also less then 248, even as few as 200.
From the point of view of content if we take evarim to mean bones, it is now
scientifically proven that a person has somewhat less than 248 in his/her body,
and that the number can vary depending on age but will reach neither the mishnaic 248, and certainly not the maximal number of 280 mentioned in the Tosefta, nor even the minimal number of 200 mentioned therein. 15 However, the
number 248 does not of itself seem quite fantastic, and therefore Katzenelson
suggested that the story from bBekhorot demonstrates how the students of Rabbi
Yishmael arrived at the number 248. He understood this as an anatomical experiment cooking the corpse of a minor with a view to deciding the number
of bones therein. Yet since in persons who are not fully adults, not all the bones
are completely joint, they were divided in the cooking process at the ossification
points and produced the results presented in the text. The naivet of this a pproach has been shown by contemporary scholars, who maintain that the story
from bBekhorot is a later rationalization, and an explanation in narrative, of a
mishnaic tradition. But if so, how did the Mishnah itself originally arrive at this
number? Abraham Goldberg suggested that the primary number of evarim, i.e.
bones, the rabbis counted, and from which these other numbers were produced,
was the rounded 125, which they counted as the greater part of all the evarim,
whose maximal sum must therefore be less than 250 and from it emerged 248 as a minimum majority. 16 Margalit, on the other hand, suggested that the number 248 is a typological number indicating the number of positive commandments,17 but in tannaitic literature 248 evarim are found, as we saw, only in the
context of the laws of ritual purity and only in the amoraic aggadah was this
number symbolically interpreted.18 Therefore, to conclude something of this
nature is to turn cause and effect upside down.
So, let me try my hand at this. I believe that among the ancient thinkers there
indeed existed a notion that people have more bones than we know today. Thus,
the ancient Indian treatise Garbha Upanishad (2b.c) relates the optimum number

14

ZUCKERMANDEL, Tosefta, 598, English translation in NEUSNER, The Tosefta, 82.

See LOWREY , Growth and Development of Children, 295, MALINA, Maturation and Physical
Activity, 107.
16 See G OLDBERG , The Mishnah Treatise Ohaloth, 9-15.
17 See M ARGALIT , Number of Commandments.
18 See K IPERWASSER , The 248 Parts, 48-49.
15

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Reuven Kiperwasser

of human bones as 360,19 which is not so far removed from the number in the
Mishnah. The tannaim, I suppose, had some empirical evidence about their
number theory for example from people who were responsible for the collection of bones from graves ( ) and based on our own modest
knowledge of anatomy 20 we may conclude that in mOhal they divided the even
number of 248 evarim between parts of the human body basing themselves on
the principle of symmetry. In other words, I am arguing for an empirical basis
for the number 248 but not one dependent on the fictional account of the
whore whom Rabbi Yishmaels disciples cooked, but on general empirical
knowledge.
Let us now note the existence of a contradiction between this mishnaic paragraph about the 248 evarim and the previous one in mOhalot that claims that
bones defile under any circumstances and in any quantity:

' ,
.) (' ,
The evarim have no measurement. Even less than about an olives bulk from the
corpse, and less than about an olives bulk from carrion, and less than about a
lentil of a creeping thing convey their uncleanness (mOhal 1:7).21

mOhal 1:8 is based on the assumption that at least one complete bone defiles,
and less then the complete bone does not defile. This means that it is not the
substance that defiles but a complete part of the human body. 1:7 is based on
the assumption that any portion of a bone already defiles, indicating that the
very tissue contracts impurity. 1:8 is clearly not as strict as 1:7. Thus Neusner
was right when claiming that there is a conflict between mishnayot 7 and 8 and
their different origins.22
With this contradiction in mind, let us return to the Bavli. Our story appears
within a completely different halakhic framework bent on proving that the
19 DEUSSEN , Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, 610; see also K UTUMBIAH , Ancient Indian
Anatomy, 1-32; RAJGOPAL, History of Anatomy in India, 243-245. According to these
modern Indian scholars, ancient Indian anatomists belonging to the Atreya-Charaka school
counted 360 bones in the human body while those of Susrutas school only 300. In order to
explain the inaccuracies in the counting, it was proposed that they included teeth, nails,
cartilages and the bony prominences and protuberances as separate bones, a fact that accounts for the large number at which they arrived. The same explanation regarding mOhalot
was proposed by L UZZATO, Kerem Hemed 7, 43-44 and rejected by KATZENELSON, Talmud
und Medizin, 291-294.
20 For the excellent knowledge of anatomy of certain Jewish physicians see for example
tOhal 4:2 and the tendency of melakte atsamot to speculate based on the form of the bones
they collected is evident in GenR 99:2. Regarding burial procedures that required bone collection see MEYERS, Jewish Ossuaries.
21 G OLDBERG, The Mishnah Treatise Ohaloth, 8-9.
22 NEUSNER, History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities, 33-34.

Body of the Whore, Body of the Story and Metaphor of the Body

311

greater part, or majority ( ) of the number of the evarim of the human

body is 125 and no more, citing the baraita of tOhal 1:7 to prove this. Their discussion of this text leads them to the apparent contradiction shown above between the two mishnayot mOhal 7-8, and in their usual style, they assume that
the two texts actually refer to different situations. While mOhal 1:7, which refers
to the defilement of the substance, handles the transference of impurity in general, mOhal 1:8 refers only to the contraction of impurity in a tent. For the latter
to occur, they maintain, the presence of a greater part of a corpse is required.
In order for human remains to have been evaluated as a greater part of a
corpse, with a corresponding effect of impurity in the Tent, one needed to
know how many bones constitute the greater part of a body. Thus, the rabbis
suppose that the average human has 248 bones, a person with an excessive
amount of bone has 280, 23 and a person with an insufficient number has 200. If
the number 248 is a rough average, it is reasonable, that the average number of
bones that constitute the greater part of the body is 125, or to put it in a
mathematical equation (m/2+1=248/2+1=125). Our story, however, is presented as qushya on this neat conclusion. The disciples of Rabbi Yishmael show
that the total amount of bones in a (in this case female) body is 252 and thus
125 is not the greater part of it. The Bavli, however, is bent on resolving this
new conundrum by explaining the anatomical difference between men and
women. So why is it so important for the Bavli to relate a story about a poor
whore who had 252 evarim? It does not, after all, fall outside the upper border of
bone amounts that this sugya imagines.
It is easy to see that although the Mishnah speaks of evarim it actually only
implies bones supporting the human skeleton which, in its view, are absolutely
identical in men and women. For mOhalot an evar is part of the skeleton, constructed from bones and sinews, and not an internal organ at all; nor is it part of
the reproductive system, in which differences between male and female bodies
are obvious. From a gendered perspective, the Mishnah proclaims a certain level
of equality between male and female bodies, at least in the context of their su bjection to the laws of ritual purity. And indeed so was this mishnaic text understood by one of its Palestinian readers, the translator of Gen 1:27 into Aramaic:

.) , (


And God created Adam in his own likeness. In the image of God he created him,
with two hundred and forty-eight members, with six hundred and sixty five tendons,

23

tOhal 1:7 see above

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Reuven Kiperwasser

and he formed a skin over him, and filled it with flesh and blood, male and female in
their appearance he created them (Tg. Ps.-J. to Gen 1:27).24

Given that the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is a multi-layered text, and includes

teachings of tannaim as well as later, post-talmudic layers,25 I cannot posit a specific date for this tradition, but it is obviously of Palestinian origin.26 This author
clearly understood that, as far as the basic structure of the bones and tendons of
the body is concerned, male and female bodies are equal.
Why then has the narrator in the Bavli decided to remove the tradition of the
248 bones from its original context, and to include among the number of evarim
female body parts that represent their reproductive organs, which have no
bones at all? I will attempt to answer this question after analyzing the story itself
in detail.
What is the Bavlis proposed picture when telling the story of Rabbi
Yishmaels disciples? From the point of view of the narrator, the number 248
was already known to Rabbi Yishmaels disciples and they were willing to verify
it empirically. They did this by treating in some way a corpse of a condemned
prostitute. Let us examine the details of the Babylonian story which seem
strange: A certain prostitute is sentenced to death by burning, and I imagine
that, after the death penalty was enforced, the remains of the woman were treated with water .
Although the defining event in this story is usually translated as cooking27
the verb shlika actually describes any procedure undertaken with the help of
water and probably, in the different layers of the language, received various
meanings. Actually the verb can be used to refer to the different forms of treatment in which solids are immersed in liquids. Between different meanings of
this verb in Aramaic dialects even cleanse by boiling 28 should be taken into
consideration. I propose that in our story it actually means that the body was

24 CLARKE , Text and Concordance Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, 2; MAHER , Targum PseudoJonathan, Genesis 18.
25 C OOK , Rewriting the Bible; HAYWARD , Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and Anti-Islamic Polemic, 77-93; HAYWARD , The Date of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, 7-30; WERNBERGMLLER, Recently Discovered Palestinian Targum, 312-330.
26 MAHER, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Genesis 8-11; SHINAN, The Palestinian TargumsRepetitions, 72-87.
27 As understood by KATZENELSON, Talmud und Medizin, 237-241. The suggestion raised
by traditional medieval authors that in the Bavli shlika means overcooked, but in the
Yerushalmi it means insufficiently cooked, was accepted by E PSTEIN, Introduction to the
Mishnaic Text, 267. See also LIEBERMAN, Tosefta ki-feshuta, vol.1, 446. By a survey of all usages of shlika in these texts, the reader can easily receive the impression that the meanings
of the word are not uniform, and it is not at all clear which sort of preparation is mea nt,
except that it has something to do with the usage of liquids.
28 See S OKOLOFF , A Syriac Lexicon, 1569.

Body of the Whore, Body of the Story and Metaphor of the Body

313

soaked in water.29 If so, the assumption that we are dealing with post-mortem
dissection is probably wrong. I assume that cleaning incinerated bones was pe rformed with the help of water and this procedure was quite familiar to both the
narrator and the reader, since execution of criminals by burning is well documented in Roman law.
Burning was quite a common Roman punishment and Roman historians tell
us repeatedly about such executions. An example is the following statement
found in Codex Theodosianus: Those persons who furnish assistance to a ravisher, whether they be men or women, shall be consumed by fire.30 In this example, a metonymical proximity between promiscuous behaviour and execution
by burning, is presented.
While, execution by burning was totally forbidden in Sasanian Babylonia by
Zoroastrian law, it was known to have taken place elsewhere in the world, and
would have been acceptable to Babylonian storytellers and their audience as a
description of an event which happened in Roman Palestine. Therefore the
whore and her punishment can be understood as a kind of literary topos, not
without its historical background. Even to the strange circumstances of the
cleaning of the burnt remnants with hot water we find a parallel in a document
dated to late antiquity: a certain Maria from the Egyptian village Aphrodito
complains to the authorities about her husbands murder: 31
When Heraclius, my wretched husband, had been killed and his remnants had been
given to the fire so that they might be burned, they again poured water on the same
remains and they threw his bones in a basket and buried them, I do not know where.
I asked, therefore, that they be given to me so that I can bury them but they were
not given.

We have before us a sad story of a murder and a cynical extortion by criminals

from the widow. A woman wants to bring the bones of her husband to their last
rest in an appropriate place, but those in possession of the bones keep them in
marketable condition, cleaned by water, and away from the reach of the widow.
Unburied remains were treated in antiquity with extreme trepidation. Lack of
burial was often considered as more dangerous than death itself. 32 Therefore,
against the background of the common culture of Late Antiquity, the elements
KIPERWASSER, The 248 Parts, 60-61.
Participes etiam et ministros raptoris citra discretionem sexus eadem poena
praecipimus subiugari, et si quis inter haec ministeria servilis condicionis fuerit
deprehensus, citra sexus discretionem eum concremari iubemus (CTh 9.24.1.5). See
PHARR et al. (eds.), The Theodosian Code.
31 For the following text publication see S IJPESTEIJN The Aphrodito Papyri, 659-674. For
the text and commentary see M ACCOULL, Coptic Perspectives on Late Antiquity; MACCOULL,
The Aphrodito Murder Mystery, 103-107; an argument contra M ACCOULL was presented
by KEENAN, The Aphrodito Murder Mystery, 136.
32 See LIEBERMAN , Afterlife, 517.
29

30

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Reuven Kiperwasser

of the talmudic story appear as less bizarre. Consequently, we are left with the
question, why was it so important for the Bavlis narrator to make the female
body different? Note that the additional evarim which the Bavli assigns to women
are metaphorically described as doors and hinges. Let us now closely investigate
the doors and hinges passage with the help of a parallel, Palestinian tradition,
which obviously influenced it. In LevR we read:
LevR 14:433
Who shut up the sea with doors,
when it broke forth, and issued out of
the womb (Job 38:8)? Rabbi Eliezer
and Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Aqiva.

" " (
: ' ' ' .)

Rabbi Eliezer said: Just as a house has

doors, so a woman, too, has doors, as
it is written: Because he shut not up
the doors of my [mothers] womb
(Job 3:10).

:''
" : ",
.)" (

Rabbi Yehoshua said: Just as for a

house there are keys (maftehot), so,
likewise, there are keys for a woman,
as it is written: And God hearkened
to her, and opened (patah) her womb
(Gen. 30:22).

:''
" : ",
.) " (

Rabbi Aqiva said: Just as a house has

hinges (tsirim), even so has a woman
birth pangs (tsirim), as it is written:
She knelt and gave birth, for her
pangs (tsirim) came suddenly upon her
(I Sam. 4:19).

:''
" : ",
.) " ("

Since this is a Palestinian tradition, the Bavli narrator obviously borrowed it

from its original context and adapted it to his narrative needs, mainly in order to
declare that a basic difference between the female and male body exists. It is
difficult to say why this was important for the Bavli editor, but if one compares
it with another metamorphoses of a Palestinian tradition transmitted to Babyl onia which I have also discussed elsewhere namely the embryological concept
of the three partners active in the conception of a fetus (God, man and woman)
there too we find the transformation from an egalitarian representation of
33 It should be noted that the MSS of LevR vary greatly especially in the attribution of
the sayings to the rabbis, see now http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/midrash/VR/outfiles/OUT1404.htm. However, this tradition is different from the Bavlis version.

Body of the Whore, Body of the Story and Metaphor of the Body

315

male and female contribution to the embryogenesis to a particularly gendered

hierarchy, in which the female contribution is subsumed under the males,
namely they became one. 34 It seems likely that the Babylonians inhabit a culture
in which it is obvious that women are different or as the Bavli voices elsewhere: Women are a nation unto themselves ( ( ) bShab 62b).35
Having undertaken the task of reading the body hidden in the rabbinic text as
text, we discover that, just as the differences between literary texts say something about the differences between their parent cultures, bodies found in the
rabbinic text too are pure cultural constructs. 36 The Babylonian sages womans
body is different from that constructed by their Palestinian brethren.
So let me return to Charlotte Fonroberts interpretation. She writes:
BT concretizes female difference around the birthing motif, in direct opposition to
the Aristotelian model of sexual difference, which defines the female as lacking.
However, this leads to no advantage concerning the representation of women in the
cultural language of the rabbis, since the female body as surplus serves in the story to
underline the equivalence between woman and house. Thus, whereas Aristotle and
his successors may speak the language of womens exclusion from the equation h uman = male, the Rabbis speak the metaphorical language of womens confinement to
house (bayit).37

Let me answer this argument in two parts: first as regards the metaphor and
second as to the actual meaning of the Hebrew word bayit in this context.38 As
KIPERWASSER, Three Partners.
Concerning the place of gender research in Jewish studies see I LAN, Jewish Womens
Studies, 770-796, esp. 780; BOYARIN, Gender, 117-135. Concerning the differences
between Palestinian and Babylonian sages in their attitudes to gender see B OYARIN , Carnal
Israel, 46-57; FONROBERT , Menstrual Purity, 1-14; F ONROBERT , Regulating the Human
Body, 270-94.
36 Regarding this attempt, in which anthropology meets gender studies, see for the time
being RUBIN, From Corpse to Corpus: The Body as a Text in Talmudic Literature, 171183; KOSMAN, The Female Breast and the Male Mouth, 293-312; HASAN-ROKEM, Between Narrating Bodies and Carnal Knowledge, 501-507.
37 F ONROBERT, Menstrual Purity, l58-159. When the article was already finished, the book
of Labovitz, Marriage and Metaphorbecame accessible to me and the explanations of the
author for the metaphors of the female body are worthy of a deeper discussion. In this
book the author has collected an immense amount of material on the metaphorical image
of the female body, see pp. 97-133, but unfortunately it does not take into account the
polysemia of the word house in Rabbinic literature and its usage for the spatial
measurements, but only its architectural value. I think also that in the literary approach
which takes into account differences between the Bavli and the literature of the Land of
Israel can highlight nuances and differences to which she had not paid enough attention.
38 Semantically, proximity between the words woman and tent is also known. In
Biblical Hebrew as in Mishnaic Hebrew the basic meaning of tent is a mobile living
space, but in Arabic the basic meaning of the similar word is a woman, family or household members. Likewise the word which also indicates a place to live in, is used in the
34

35

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Reuven Kiperwasser

to the metaphor of the body, it should be emphasized that not only a womans
body in talmudic literature is metaphorically rendered as an architectural co nstruction. In one midrash from the Land of Israel the male body too is likened
to a house where humans reside, as is evident from the following text:

. , : '
, ,
.) ( ,
Rabbi Levi bar Hayatha said: If a mortal king builds a palace and sets its sewage
at its entrance, it is unbecoming. Yet the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One,
blessed be He, created man and set his sewage spout at his entrance, and that
constitutes his beauty and his pride, (GenR 12:1).

As can be seen from the description of the location of the excretory parts in the
human body, this parable implies precisely the male body, wherein the rabbis
maintain that the presence of a fluid excretory device in front does not make all
the structure ugly. This is but one example with which I have chosen to demonstrate my argument, and others can easily be found.
Secondly, as to the actual meaning of the Hebrew word bayit; in her theory
that the sages have turned a woman into a house to live in and to rule over,
Fonrobert does not take into account the fact that the word bayit in talmudic
literature appears in two separate semantic fields. In addition to its meaning as
the domestic unit and architectural structure, bayit appears as a measuring unit,
and as such its most common usage is conjugated (smikhut).39
Actually in mishnaic Hebrew there is no specific word to describe the mea surement of a square, or a general term for square. 40 The development of such a
term begins with the word bayit signifying a living surface in such terms as beit
seah or beit kor. These measurements define the area which a person should plow
and sow. In the same way, the human body is perceived as territory, different
areas of which have different functions, and because these units of the body are
measured by square units, they receive names which include the word bayit in
them, some having a sexual connotation such as beit ha-starim or beit ha-kematim.41
This is often the meaning of bayit, when applied to the womens body. Of
course in an androcentric culture men often develop concepts of the womans

language of the Bible and in Mishnaic Hebrew and in Jewish Aramaic also to specify a
group of people, a family and a woman. See SAGIV, When Slaughtering Means Pulling
and A Tent Means A Wife, 11.
39 See S ARFATTI , Mathematical Terminology, 33-35.
40 S ARFATTI , Mathematical Terminology, 33-35.
41 As is evident also from mMiq 8:5: The intimate parts ( ) and the wrinkles
( ) and also 9:2 and tMiq 6:9. Beit ha-starim in these texts refers to the intimate
organs of both men and women. See Labovitz, Marriage and Metaphor 132-138.

Body of the Whore, Body of the Story and Metaphor of the Body

317

body as a territory, but it is significant to note that the male body is perceived
similarly, as for example in the following midrash, again from the Land of Israel:

,) " " (: ' ' .)" " (

(,) " " (. ,) " " (.
.)
A garden shut up is my sister, my bride; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed (Song
4:12). Rabbi Pinhas explained: A spring shut up (ibid.) these are the virgins; A
garden shut up (ibid.) these are married women, and A fountain sealed (ibid.) these are the males (LevR 32:5).

The exegesis on Song of Songs describes here a body of a human being as a

limited space, private property, the entrance to which is forbidden to others.
Penetration into the territory is an act of possession. Thus, the body of the virgin is taboo territory for a certain category of strangers, but as a married wo man, she becomes a territory which belongs to her husband. The body of a man,
too, is territory containing the fountain, and as such it may also be the object of
possession, but invasion into this enclosed area is completely prohibited.42
Thus, while investigating the Babylonian story about the dismembered corpse
of a prostitute, we discovered the composite nature of the re-membered body of
the story and found that the model of the human body, which is quite
schematically treated in the Mishnah, was interpreted by Palestinian Judaism as
equal in males and females, but in Babylonian Judaism it was accepted as a
teaching about the qualitative difference between women and men. 43 In this
strange story in the Bavli, the narrator, interpreting the Mishnah, included a
number of literary topoi of late antiquity. In discussing the metaphorical
perception of the human body, we noticed that in midrashim from the Land of
Israel not only the female but also the male body is perceived more as a limited
area than as an architectural structure, but also as a structure and as territory,
metaphorically identical for male and female. Summing up, I hope that scholars
of gender in Talmudic Judaism would be more attentive to cultural differences
between Babylonian and Palestinian Judaism, both on a terminological and a
cultural level, because in essence we are talking about two cultures that, despite
their proximity and commonality of sources, developed in a different historical
context and put different emphases on cultural values.

42 It is interesting to note that the ancient parallels to this tradition do not mention men,
but only virgins and women. See MdRY, bo 5, There both garden shut up and fountain
sealed are betrothed women (arusot). Does it follow that there was some sort of transformation of gender attitudes in the amoraic period in the Land of Israel? It is hard to say.
43 K IPERWASSER, Three Partners in a Man.

318

Reuven Kiperwasser

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