Competing Discourses on Gestation in the Bavli and Leviticus Rabbah in Light of their Cultural Context

• In Event: Cycle of Life in Sasanian Iran: Jewish Texts and Cultural Subtexts

Abstract

Rabbinic literature, both halakhic and midrashic, offers competing images of pregnancy and childbirth. Texts originating in the Land of Israel, Leviticus Rabbah in particular, by and large marginalize the active role of the pregnant mother and deem the process of gestation as a dangerous and foreboding time for the fetus. The Bavli, in contrast, presents a surprising exception to this picture; making reference to the biological contributions of the mother along with an idyllic image of the womb. In a well-known tradition, the Babylonian Talmud (b.Nid. 30b) reports a statement of R. Simlai who describes the wealth of knowledge a fetus acquires in utero, being taught the Torah in its entirety, and deems it the happiest time in a person’s life. The idyllic image conveyed in this Bavli account stands in stark contrast to the bulk of rabbinic texts, exemplified by Leviticus Rabbah, which imagines the womb as a dark, dangerous, and isolating place, in which the fetus would fall out, starve, and die were it not for the kindness and care of God. In a similar manner, the Bavli attributes seed on the part of the mother, which contributes to the formation of the fetus and recognizes the mother as a partner in creating a child equal to the father and God. This is as opposed to Lev. Rab. 12, which consistently disregards the mother’s contributing seed, viewing the father as the lone physical contributor and God as the ultimate force. This paper explores the ways in which differences in culture and medical theories of the milieus of Sassanian Persia versus Greco-Roman Palestine contributed to these competing notions regarding the relationship between fetus and mother.

Author

• Shana A. Strauch Schick, Haifa University