On tomorrow’s daf (Ketuboth 17) the Talmud describes the importance of dancing and making merry in front of a bride at her wedding.

I was struck by the strange addition that is wedged in between quoting lyrics of a song sung to the bride and a passage describing the types of juggling performed for her. The flow of the Gemarah jumps from songs for a bride (“you don’t need eye shadow nor rouge- you are beautiful) to songs for Rabbis. First the Rabbis sing the very same song about natural beauty that doesn’t require make up to Rav Zeiri at his misibat smicha (his ordination party). Then it describes songs sung about he intelligence of the smicha students being ordained, and lastly the Gemarah records the song of peace sung by the women of the Caesar’s palace who greet the visiting Rabbi. All songs that focus on the beauty, intelligence, and prestige of men.

And then without a blink of an eye the Gemarah returns to the wedding, returns to dancing with the bride.

What came to mind was a chapter in Boyarin’s book Carnal Israel. He advances a theory that the Rabbis are more in love with their learning and their chavrutot (male learning partners) than their wives. He doesn’t go so far as to call the Rabbis gay- but I think he may be hinting at it (as far as I can remember). In our Gemarah as well the discussion about singing songs of women’s beauty makes the Rabbis think of each other and not the women who they have been objectifying as virgins and non virgins for the last 17 pages.

In fact I’m not sure if the Rabbis are genuine at all when they sing and dance in front of the bride. Hillel says in his humane tone, that one should praise the beauty of a bride even if she is not beautiful. He compares her to a piece of bad merchandise, which should be praised only if it can’t be returned to the shuk. If anything it is for the husband, who has already chosen his produce to whom the song is meant to comfort. Hillel could or should have said, every bride has something genuinely worth admiring, instead of suggesting that some occasions it is appropriate to lie.

Also the Gemarah tells us of Rav Acha who used to dance with the bride on his shoulders. When other Rabbis enquire whether they should follow his example, they are told they too can carry the bride on their shoulders only if they can envision the bride as a board (a non arousing image). I’m not arguing that lustful Rabbis should go around carrying other men’s brides on their shoulders. In fact I didn’t miss it at my wedding, and I think a chair carried by strong modern women, does the same trick. But I am disturbed by the detachment that these Rabbis must summon in order to falsely praise brides that they don’t find attractive and coldly carry around brides they in fact do fancy. What must they be thinking about as they detach from their true emotions? Maybe their chavrutas.

I was fascinated to learn this piece of halachik sociology on daf 6a of Ketuboth. There is a debate over whether a man can have sex with a virgin on a Friday night, for it is normally prohibited to wound or draw blood on Shabbat.

In the end the Rabbis decide that one is allowed to sleep with his virgin bride on a Friday night. However, in one beit midrash they allow it and believe that the rival beit midrash does not allow it; while in the very same rival beit midrash they do allow it but believe that their counterparts do not.

There seems to be a deep seated desire, that when permitting a leniency and allowing a certain act that might have originally been assur (prohibited), to know that someone out there is still being Machmir, some other group is maintaining the stringency.

I wonder if we see this today in Israeli society, where many Israeli’s are not religious but they still think of “authentic” Judaism as being the charedi way. They unfortunately do not see the beauty in modern versions of halacha. More accurately perhaps for this gemarah, I also think we in the modern orthodox community like the taste of rebellion and the feeling of testing the limits while others tow the line.

This thought is two day late if you are following the Daf Yomi cycle, but I only really understood the absurdity of what I learned a few days later in review.

Even though a virgin is supposed to get married on a Wednesday, there are exceptions. In a period of danger the custom was changed to Tuesday. What was the danger? First night rights, the practice where a ruler rapes the virgin bride-to-be on her wedding night (a la Braveheart).  Good reason to change your wedding day, don’t you think?

But the Gemarah isn’t sure that such a danger would warrant changing this very solid custom. The real problem is those stubborn righteous (modest) women who would prefer to be killed than submit to the violence of rape. The rabbis, consternated by the modest women, propose that maybe they should teach publicly that rape is not considered adultery. You are still allowed to go back to your husband, no need to give up your life, no long term damage done.

On the other hand the Rabbis don’t want to publicize that first night rights is not considered adultery because then the lascivious women will enjoy the first night rights and therefore actually be prohibited from returning to their husband having chosen to have sex and not been raped.

The fact that rape is not really given a standing of its own in Jewish law, that it is only a problem when it's adulterous, is astounding to me every time I come across it. In the context of this Gemarah, where it is so important that the woman’s virginity be saved for her husband alone – the intention behind the Wednesday wedding– I am baffled that the rabbis would even consider maintaining the custom at the cost of the woman’s rape.  Is the first night of sex not traumatic enough; we shouldn’t even entertain the possibility, no matter how theoretical, of accepting the barbaric practices of virgin up for grabs to the most powerful.

The world of Talmud though sometimes arcane and distant (especially the Aramaic parts) is actually a lot closer to home than you might think. That’s why I’m so interested in it after all.  

For example yesterdays daf speaks to the issue of making a commitment to a marriage or any project and accepting it with the joy of adventure versus starting a new venture with the fear that you will wake up the next morning regretting it.

As a teacher of mine, Rav Daniel Epstein, said today, his daughter complained on the first day of elementary school, “you didn’t tell me it would be like this.” Many forces foreign to ourselves impact us daily and shake our sense of control and ability to anticipate change. I definitely felt overwhelmed yesterday, the first day back at school, by the foreign forces dictating my schedule. A bit of independence that I had become accustomed to over the summer was snatched away. The cycle of the Daf Yomi determines what I will learn as well as the teachers- all out of the locus of my control. But I chose to be here and arcane or not will find myself even in the Daf Yomi, as the pages assert themselves upon me.

Anyway if my Hebrew and Aramaic is confusing you here is a link to a Talmud introduction. Or feel free to ask. 

On the opening daf of Ketuvot, (todays daf yomi) the Mishna announces that virgins marry on Wednesday and widows remarry on Thursday.

Why? The Mishna explains: if a man, after sleeping with his new wife, finds that she is not a virgin, he is supposed jump out of bed the next morning and run to the local beit din - open only Mondays and Thursdays (and between 9:00 and 11:00 like some offices I know here in Jerusalem). Perhaps he wants his money back- this was not the pure innocent virgin he bargained for. Maybe he wants an immediate divorce from his surprisingly experienced mate. Rashi warns that if he doesn’t wake up Thursday morning, directly after his discovery and rush to the court in the heat of his anger, he might decide he actually likes her and doesn’t care that she wasn’t a virgin (maybe he even enjoyed it). Hence the Wednesday wedding.

But the Gemarah gives an opposing explanation for why “the women” convinced the Rabbis to require a Wednesday or Thursday wedding. A virgin woman is married on a Wednesday so that her husband will have enough time to prepare the stately feast for the wedding day itself – no excuse to skimp. The widow remarries on a Thursday so her new lover won’t be tempted to go back to work, rather he will take Friday off and luxuriate at home, as a newlywed should, for a long weekend.

The Gemrah’s explanations of wedding preparations and honeymoon weekends (quoted as the voice of women!) speak to me more than the Mishna. Weddings should be sensuous beautiful moments that celebrate the love and companionship that can follow. The Mishna’s darker reasoning of preserving the ability to run to the beit din, reveals doubt at the lasting quality of marriage, especially pessimistic about the reliability of women to be true, and begins imagining divorce even before the ceremony begins- so much for marriage counseling.