Signs of Virginity: Testing Virgins and Making Men in Late Antiquity

329 Pages·2018·1.61 MB·English

by  Michael Rosenberg

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Signs of Virginity
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Signs of Virginity
Testing Virgins and Making
Men in Late Antiquity
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MICHAEL ROSENBERG
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For my father, Joshua Baruch Rosenberg, of blessed memory.
This is not the book that he wanted to write, but I think
he would have understood that, at its roots, I’m struggling
with the same questions.
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Contents
Acknowledgments  ix
Abbreviations  xiii
Introduction: Defining Virginity, Making Men  1
PART I. Testing Virginity in the Body 
1. Virginity and Violence in Cross- Cultural Perspective  21
2. Bloodied Sheets: The Biblical Nuptial Bed as Rape Scene  31
3. “Trustworthy Women” and Other Witnesses: Tweaking
Deuteronomy in Pre- Rabbinic and Early Rabbinic Judaism  44
PART II. Testing Virginity through Faith 
4. Doubts and Faith: Possible Alternatives in
Three First- Century Jewish Authors  79
5. Struck by Wood, Struck by God: Virginity Beyond/ Despite
Anatomy  90
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PART III. Subjecting Virginity 
6. Open Doors and Accused Brides: Subjectivity and
a New Standard for Virginity Testing in Rabbinic Babylonia  119
7. Impure Nuptials and Sex as Work: The Bavli’s Attempted
Divorce of Virginity from Violence  148
8. (De)Mythologizing the Hymen: Augustine, the Bavli, and the
Rejection of Force  182
Epilogue  207
Notes  215
Bibliography  289
Index  305
Index of Primary Sources 309
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Acknowledgments
If the only reward for the time I’ve spent on this book is the opportu-
nity to thank some wonderful people, it will have been worth it. To begin,
many institutions and teachers have been critical to my development as
a reader of text and cultures—m ore than I can thank here. But particular
thanks are due to my teachers at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS),
including Eliezer Diamond, Judith Hauptman, and Neil Danzig, and espe-
cially to Israel Francus, who taught me how to read for inconsistencies that
can point to a world of meaning, and who demonstrated a love for Tractate
Ketubot. Though my own love for this challenging and perplexing trac-
tate has developed in ways that are perhaps far from Prof. Francus’s own
research interests, it still takes its roots in Dr. Francus’s passion.
During my time at JTS, I was fortunate to be a recipient of the Wexner
Graduate Fellowship, a beneficence that not only freed me to explore
widely in my learning, but also put me in contact with outstanding schol-
ars and phenomenal thinkers working in a variety of fields. My debt to
the Wexner Foundation and to the members of WGF Class 14 is palpable.
I also benefited from a Hadassah- Brandeis Institute research award, which
supported my early research on virginity testing in Rabbinic literature.
My doctoral advisor at JTS, Richard Kalmin, has been an incredible
resource, both patient and critical. When I decided not to turn my dis-
sertation into a book, for the time being, but rather to take one tangen-
tial point from it and spend years expanding it into the volume in front
of you now, he supported me and offered advice and guidance that went
beyond any reasonable expectation. His model of careful, critical research
coupled with the very best of scholarly kindness has been and remains an
inspiration to me.
Many of the ideas for this book first percolated in my head when I was
a rabbinical student at Yeshivat Ma’aleh Gilboa, on Kibbutz Ma’aleh Gilboa