"Overturning the 'Table'": The Hidden Meaning of a Talmudic Metaphor for Coitus

• In Event: New Readings of Talmudic Phrases

Abstract

A long sugya found at Nedarim 20a-b describes various deviant methods of copulation and the eugenic effects of this deviant behavior on offspring conceived through such sexual acts. Among these is "overturning the table." Traditional commentaries produced by medieval scholars provide three difference understandings of the overturning of this metaphoric table. The first, and perhaps most famous explanation is that the woman in the story expected vaginal intercourse from her husband, but engaged instead in anal sex. The second, and the one preferred by most modern scholars, is that while the woman expected to lie in a supine position, she was instead on top of her husband. Finally, some commentators assume that whereas the woman expected ventro - ventro coitus from a supine position, her husband entered her from a ventro-dorsal pose from behind. Despite their variety, what all of these explanations share is their assumption that the standard position is what we might call "the missionary position," with the man lying on top of the woman. Such an assumption might also be made by contemporary readers, for whom the missionary position is also likely the default one, and which is assumed to be most "natural." Yet this basic assumption about the sexual behavior described on Nedarim 20a-b is unfounded on both biological and cultural grounds.
In this paper, I will show that no Taanaitic sources display a preference for the "missionary" position, and that all Rabbinic sources which do display such a preference are, when analyzed using historical-critical methodologies, a product of later authors or editors. Instead, using texts about sexual positions from the broader greco Roman context, it will be demonstrated that "overturning the table" once meant precisely the opposite, namely that a couple began sexual intercourse in a ventro-dorsal pose from behind but at some point switched to the "missionary" position. As such we will also seek to explain this discrepancy in cultural assumptions between earlier and later layers of the Talmud.

author

• Noah Benjamin Bickart, The Jewish Theological Seminary