Shlomos Drash Tzaria-Metzora: A Woman Comes First

Moving from all the death of animals for food and death of offspring in industrial accidents of last week, this week we read the rest of the biblical public health code in a double portion. We start with the procedure for a mother after giving birth, we then move into the beginning of a rather long two portion discussion of the issue of what in that text is called tzarat and at a later time would be translated leprosy, both of people, clothes and of buildings. We end with the procedures for the disease Tzav, today regarded as an STD. Yet this time it is a rather odd little bit of Talmud related to the beginning of the parsha that caught my eye. We read this week:

1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2. Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If a woman conceives, and bears a male child; then she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of her menstruation, shall she be unclean. 3. And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.

Circumcision of course was first commanded of Abraham back in Genesis, so there is not much new there. It is the phrase “if a woman conceives, and bears a male child” that is the interesting part. And the word for which our portion is named Tzaria which is the critical word the Rabbis of the Talmud play with to write a rather startling little passage found in Niddah 31a:

R. Isaac citing R. Ammi stated: If the woman emits her semen first she bears a male child; if the man emits his semen first she bears a female child; for it is said, If a woman emits semen and bears a man-child. (Leviticus 12:1)

In Hebrew, the root word for seed is Zayin-Resh-Ayin. Its meaning changes between agricultural seed and the word for semen. It can be a verb that could mean to emit or plant seed. In the human case that would be male ejaculation, and thus orgasm. Parallel to this, it means for women is for them to conceive. The Rabbis in our Talmud text, however, imply that the multiple meanings of the word means that both conception and the female emission of seed, orgasm, are the same thing. In short, through playing with the word tzaria and its usual meaning of conception when used concerning women, the Rabbis changed it to orgasm: If you want a boy, a woman comes first.

Word play was not a sufficient proof text for the rabbis however, as they continue on Niddah 31b.

Our Rabbis taught: At first it used to be said that ‘if the woman emits her semen first she will bear a male, and if the man emits his semen first she will bear a female’, but the Sages did not explain the reason, until R. Zadok came and explained it: These are the sons of Leah, whom she bore unto Jacob in Paddan-aram, with his daughter Dinah, (Gen 46:15) Scripture thus ascribes the males to the females and the females to the males.

Unsatisfied with the lack of a strong proof text, R. Zadok teaches that Genesis 46:15 is the proof text. Genesis 46:8-14 gives the names of Leah’s sons and grandchildren ascribing them to Leah. Yet in Genesis 15 it ascribes Dinah, Leah’s only daughter, not to Leah but to Jacob. This Zadok concludes, is the proof text that if a man ejaculates first he has a daughter, and if a woman does he has a son.

R. Zadok’s proof text has quite an implication, however. With twelve sons and one daughter, Jacob was quite the lover, able to satisfy not just one, but four women. We know from Genesis 26:8-9, Jacob’s parents Isaac and Rebecca both had an active sex life, with either a streak of exhibitionism in it, or such desire they forgot to close the window shades occasionally. In the episode where Abimelech finds Isaac and Rebecca together, it is interesting to note that it is not sex they are caught doing but Isaac is fondling and exciting Rebecca. Though the word for fondling might be also translated they were merely joking around, it is clear by context they were making out. They were not caught in the act of intercourse, but in foreplay.

Foreplay gets a big underlined comment from Rashi. Rashi interprets another passage in B. Shabbat where R. Hisda cryptically instructs his daughters on what to do with their husbands, adding to Hisda’s comments:

When your husband caresses you to arouse your desire for intercourse and holds the breasts with one hand and “that place’ [that is the vagina] with the other give the breasts [at first] to increase his passion and do not give him the place of intercourse too soon until his passion increases and he is in pain with desire (Rashi on b. Shabbat 140b “he had a pearl in his hand”)

Rashi probably was indirectly instructing his male students what to do with their wives in this passage. Others, such as the authors of the medieval German Piest work Sefer Hasidim quoted the Talmud passage about making a woman emit seed first almost verbatim. Another medieval work, the Iggeret ha Kodesh goes even further. Most noted for its passage in chapter two which refutes Maimonides that sex is bad, it is by far no mere sex manual. Instead based on Niddah 31a, the Talmudic discussion of onah, and the cryptic comments of R. Hisda in Shabbat 140b, the whole book is how to have the perfect and holy intention that when one has sex so that a father does not have just a boy, but the child ends up a Torah scholar.

Yet that is not the only meaning of the Iggeret ha Kodesh. It is one of the early works of the circle of Moses de Leon, the group of mystics we call today the early Kabbalists. To the Kabbalists, this has meaning about the way to excite holy energies which are enumerated by gender. One had to excite the female energies before the male ones in order to provide the proper holy union. And one had to be careful how one did that, for there were two types of female energies, good and bad. Thus all this sexual talk, for the Kabbalists, was not about this world, but the world above. Yet the Kabbalists also maintained that what happened in this world affected the world above, thus the sexual union of man and wife effected the unifications of these energies in the heavens.

I wonder when all these sages engaged in sex with their wives, how much they care about their wife and how much did they care about Torah? Did one eclipse the other? I believe that the rabbis of the Talmud, as holy as they were, also were enormously practical people. They saw that there were two issues about sex and both were vitally important. The first and foremost was procreation. The second, was the psychological and sexual well being of a husband and wife. Without the sexual well being of a wife, who had no legal way to express her sexuality, she would turn to illegal and immoral promiscuous acts. A healthy and frequent dose of satisfying sex with her husband was required to keep women from straying and committing adultery. Adultery, in turn makes procreation and inheritance a more complex issue. Yet between a husband and wife, it could not be mindless procreation either, otherwise there would be no sexual satisfaction, and the need to turn to adultery or other promiscuous acts would be there. So the Rabbis I believe combined the two in our odd little passage about making sure women orgasm first. In their misogynistic world, men wanted a boy as both an heir and as the person they could teach Torah to; girls could have neither. In order to get what the husband wanted in sex, he had to give the wife more than just sperm.

Much had changed in the last two millennia. The status of women, their role in modern inheritance, and their ability to learn Torah, and for many movements even the ability to become a rabbi and Torah scholar have all changed. What the majority of modern Jews would consider immoral from the Talmudic Rabbis standpoint is different as well. Most of course do not believe in such superstitions. Yet there is still that odd little desire to determine the gender of one’s children. There are some people, both Jews and non Jews, who go to certain extents to determine the gender of their children, including exploiting supposed differences in behavior of X and Y chromosome sperm. I had originally thought to write about that issue, but instead I keep thinking about something else: Sexual satisfaction, and the very odd thought for a guy that women need sexual satisfaction.

And what I mean by odd is that through the self-protecting behavior of women, our entire social ritual of dating, and a commercial system which requires us not to fulfill those needs in order to buy consumer goods to replace or try to fulfill them, men generally are clueless of what a woman really wants. Indeed as men are generally the ones in the relationship who repeatedly had to be rejected, many men, including myself, end up intimidated into initiating anything. A whole subculture has arisen of pick up artists, men who have spent most of their lives totally intimidated by women, in reaction, subverting the system and objectifying women to fulfill their own immediate sexual needs. Their fascinating, and rather disturbing subculture was chronicled in Neil Strauss book The Game. Yet, I think it is this little passage in B. Niddah which puts all the sex manuals and pick up books into perspective. From the biblical stories of Eve, Rebecca and the rest, it becomes clear that sexual satisfaction for women is always an issue, that mere intercourse was never enough, but as Rashi makes clear desire increases for both through the loving use of all the body, through foreplay. Women really do want this with the right guy.

For a guy who is still afraid to ask for a phone number, or ask a woman out for a cup of coffee, because he is certain it will end in rejection, this is a surprising and encouraging message.



For more about the mitzvah of onah, and female sexual satisfaction, see my commentary for Parshat Mishpatim 5766