Rav's Dilemma

• In Event: Graduate Student Lightning Session: Rabbinic Literature and Culture

Abstract

B.Yebamot 45a recounts a story in which the Babylonian AMORA Rav issues a ruling stating that the child of a non-Jew may marry a Jew. When confronted with such a suitor seeking to marry his own daughter, however, he recants (and ultimately kills the man). My paper will argue that this story reveals the conflict resulting from the intersection of Rav’s competing identities of rabbi and father. This passage is one example of a larger phenomenon of the rabbis wrestling with the consequences remaining part of a family structure rather than eschewing such structures in favor of monasticism.

Author

• Miriam-Simma Walfish, Harvard University