Demonic Desires: "Yetzer Hara" and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity 9780812204209

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Demonic Desires

Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion Series Editors: Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, Derek Krueger A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

Demonic Desires Yetzer Hara and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity

Ishay Rosen-Zvi

University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia

Copyright © 2011 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rosen-Zvi, Ishay. Demonic desires : yetzer hara and the problem of evil in late antiquity / Ishay RosenZvi. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Divinations : rereading late ancient religion) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4339-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Yetzer hara (Judaism) 2. Good and evil—Religious aspects—Judaism. I. Title. II. Series: Divinations. BJ1406.R64 2011 296.3'16—dc22 2011011169

‫לאבא‬

Contents

Introduction. The Riddle, or: How Did the Evil Yetzer Become a Mighty King?  1 Chapter 1. “The Torah Spoke Regarding the Yetzer”: Tannaitic Literature  14 Chapter 2. Yetzer and Other Demons: Patristic Parallels  36 Chapter 3. Yetzer at Qumran: Proto-Rabbinic?  44 Chapter 4. Coming of Age: Amoraic Yetzer 65 Chapter 5. Refuting the Yetzer: The Limits of Rabbinic Discursive Worlds  87 Chapter 6. Sexualizing the Yetzer 102 Chapter 7. Weak Like a Female, Strong Like a Male: Yetzer and Gender  120 Afterword: Toward a Genealogy of the Rabbinic Subject  127 Notes 135 Bibliography 215 Subject Index  239 Source Index  243 Acknowledgments 255

Introduction

The Riddle, or: How Did the Evil Yetzer Become a Mighty King?

Shortly before coming to a close, Ecclesiastes tells us of a small city that was besieged by a great king. The city was saved by the wisdom of a “poor wise man,” who, however, was forgotten a short while later. Ecclesiastes dryly comments: “So I observed wisdom is better than valor, but a poor man’s wisdom is scorned and his words are not heeded” (9:16). This critique of urban warfare and politics did not seem to interest the rabbis. Although they still understood these verses as reflecting on the themes of power, wisdom, and military tactics, for them the narrative was referring to an entirely different kind of warfare; not one of siege engines and adjutants but rather a form of combat completely private and internal.1 R. Ammi bar Abba said: What is the meaning of the passage: a little city, with few men in it? (Ecc 9:14) A little city—is the body; with few men in it—these are the limbs; and to it came a great king, who besieged it—this is the evil yetzer; and built mighty siege works against it—these are sins. A poor wise man was in the city (v. 15)—this is the good yetzer; who saved it with his wisdom—this is repentance and good deeds. But nobody thought of that poor man—for when the evil yetzer [­dominates], the good yetzer is not remembered. (b. Ned 32b) This passage envisions the individual as a site of conflict that involves control, repression, and submission, that can best be described using the image of a city under siege. This use of the public sphere as a metaphor for the private is of course a commonplace in the Classical and Hellenistic tradition. It goes back



2 Introduction

at least to Plato, who famously portrayed the individual as a microcosm of the city-state.2 The players in our rabbinic drama, however, are quite different from the standard Hellenist dramatis personae. While Philo and Paul, to take two famous examples, present conflicts between soul and body, or mind and desires, this homily presents a race for control between two tendencies inside the soul itself: the good yetzer and the evil yetzer. Several other aspects of this battle are noteworthy. First, the two opposing powers in this struggle are not symmetrical. The evil yetzer is a “great king.” The good yetzer, though “wise,” is a “poor man,” who despite his wisdom and tactical maneuvering cannot change the basic balance of power. Second, contrary to prevalent Hellenistic conceptions, the evil yetzer is not identical to the body; in the parable, the body is the city, the neutral battleground for the two yetzarim. The struggle is between two forces inside the body, not body and soul.3 Moreover, the evil yetzer is an invader, laying siege to the body from outside, not an integral part of it. Third, the evil yetzer is clearly antinomian. It does not attempt to draw the person to questionable behavior in general, but specifically to sins. Similarly, the good yetzer wages war by means of “repentance and good deeds.” The adversaries in this battle are not wisdom and passions; they are obedience to God and transgressions. The asymmetric balance of power between the king and the poor man compels the latter to engage in various stratagems in order to defeat the king and lift the siege. To the rabbis, this is the picture of a person’s struggle against the evil yetzer, a contest in which all manner of ploys must be implemented, and yet the balance of power between the great king and the poor man can never be altered. This vivid portrayal of the evil yetzer as a dominant, antinomian entity raises a series of questions. This figure of the yetzer is unparalleled in pre-rabbinic literature. Even the term “yetzer (ha)ra” itself appears only a few times before the rabbis. Who, then, crowned the evil yetzer a “great king,” capable of besieging and even conquering the whole city, and why? How did it acquire such a central place in rabbinic anthropology? More than anything, what drives this study is the enigmas posed by the fundamental place of the yetzer and the powerful demonic traits ascribed to it in the world of the rabbis. The “good yetzer” is yet another problem. While the term “evil yetzer” does exist in pre-rabbinic literature (albeit in a very minor fashion), its good counterpart is virtually unknown outside of rabbinic literature.4 Even in this homily, the good yetzer is quite pale in comparison to the evil one. What is the source of the good yetzer, and what is its role in rabbinic anthropology? Is

Introduction 3

the chief adversary of the evil yetzer its good counterpart, or the human being as a whole? In short: does a person really have one yetzer or two? It was not always this complicated. The biblical beginnings of the yetzer are quite modest and hardly foreshadow the glorious career awaiting it. The root ‫ יצר‬appears in the Hebrew Bible approximately seventy times, usually in verbal forms, and denotes the creating, fashioning, and designing of objects (mostly made of clay). Such a fashioning can be ascribed to both humans and God, and indeed the creation of humanity and of the world at large is described with verbs derived from this root.5 The noun ‫ יֵ צר‬indicates the result of this craft: an object or a creature (Hab 2:18). By extension, it also includes the things created in or by the mind, such as thoughts, devices, and inclinations.6 This latter meaning seems to appear in only six verses, most of which present the human yetzer or thoughts as natural or even positive (cf. Is 26:3).7 However, two verses in Genesis, ascribed to J by modern biblical scholarship, explicitly present yetzer as evil: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on earth was, and how every plan devised by his mind (‫ )יצר מחשבות לבו‬was nothing but evil all the time” (Gen 6:5); “The Lord said to himself: Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the devisings of man’s mind (‫יצר לב‬ ‫ )האדם‬are evil from his youth” (8:21). Taken alone, the word yetzer in these two verses might denote “what is created,” and thus they might be read as saying simply that “every product of the thought of man’s mind” is evil.8 Other verses (e.g., Deut 31:21 and Ps 103:14), however, indicate a more developed meaning: human thoughts, plans, imagination, or even dispositions and tendencies.9 Nothing in these two short verses prepares us for the crucial role they play in post-biblical anthropology, especially in its rabbinic version. We should be wary of anachronistic over-readings of the biblical yetzer, which probably denotes no more than “thoughts created by the mind,” perhaps with the additional sense of devices and tendencies. None of the verses treat yetzer as an entity, let alone an evil one. Even these two famous verses from Genesis tell us nothing more than that God discovered, to his great dismay, that the yetzer of the human heart is indeed evil.10 What, then, might account for this radical transformation from the biblical to the rabbinic yetzer?

From Theodicy to Askesis: Rabbinic Yetzer in Scholarship Only two studies, an essay and a monograph, are dedicated to rabbinic yetzer. Frank C. Porter’s “The Yeçer Hara: A Study in the Jewish Doctrine of Sin” was



4 Introduction

published in 1902.11 This extremely erudite work is outdated in much of its analysis, especially of the pre-rabbinic origins of the yetzer, written half a century before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. A greater deficiency is the explicit polemical context of this study. Confronted by scholars who read Pauline dualistic anthropology against the backdrop of rabbinic discourse of two ­yetzarim, Porter insists that the rabbinic yetzer is “genuinely Hebraic [i.e., biblical] in nature” (97). The rabbinic concept of yetzarim is a legitimate descendant of the Bible’s monist anthropology. Much of his study is accordingly a refutation of the scholarly image of the rabbis’ dualistic worldview, manifested by their (alleged) identification of the evil yetzer with the body. The veracity of his thesis notwithstanding, Porter discusses the issue from a single perspective, quite narrow and extremely polemical. Geert H. Cohen Stuart’s published dissertation, “The Struggle in Man between Good and Evil: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Rabbinic Concept of Yetzer Hara,” is the only monograph dedicated to the rabbinic yetzer.12 However, even this study is largely occupied with pre-rabbinic appearances of yetzer, as well as related terms and concepts. The book is well informed and knowledgeable, but the author’s attempt to prove his thesis that rabbinic yetzer is an innovation of the mid-second century causes him to under-read (and sometimes distort) pre- and early rabbinic material. The last part of the book, which discusses rabbinic material chronologically, is based solely on the names of sages cited in the traditions, totally ignoring the compositions in which they appear. Early and late, Babylonian and Palestinian sources are conflated. While acknowledging its debt to Cohen Stuart’s pioneering work, the present study offers a significantly different phenomenological and historical account of the material. The singularity of Cohen Stuart’s monograph belies a much wider scholarly interest in the yetzer. Rabbinic yetzer is part of almost any discussion of rabbinic theology, anthropology, nomism, and sexual ethics. Scholars in adjacent fields, such as Second Temple literature, treat rabbinic yetzer as a pre­rabbinic heritage and track all sorts of parallel terms and concepts, while New Testament scholars cite the yetzer as a parallel to the Pauline concept of “Sin” residing in the body. Abundance has its price, however. For the most part, rabbinic yetzer is not analyzed by studies dedicated specifically to this issue but only in a comparative perspective. More often than not, this leads to a schematic and partial treatment of the yetzer. Scholars tend to pick sources that suit their thematic interests, and the images of the rabbinic yetzer in these studies are thus fragmentary and in many cases distorted.

Introduction 5

Presentations of the rabbinic yetzer are also especially vulnerable to changing scholarly conceptions and reflect changing interests in the study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. In the work of early twentieth-century scholars, yetzer was discussed first and foremost in the context of theodicy, together with other explanations for the source of human sinfulness: Sirach’s free choice, Paul’s “law of the flesh,” Qumranic cosmological determinism, and Fourth ­Ezra’s “evil heart.”13 In recent years, scholarly interest shifted from theology to anthropology— the psychological dynamics and inner world of humans.14 The effect on the study of the yetzer was rather dramatic: sin was converted into desire, and rabbinic yetzer became associated more with Hellenistic askesis than with pre-rabbinic theology and demonology. Yetzer became analogous to the lower parts of humans, rather than to external demons such as Mastema, Belial, and Satan. Consequently, the struggle against it was now compared to the Platonic struggle between mind and body or to Hellenistic self-training and fashioning.15 Rabbinic yetzer was placed in the context of “philosophers throughout late antiquity [who] subscribed to this understanding of the soul, with its inner conflict between its rational and irrational (appetitive) parts.”16 The changed perspective is manifest in the titles themselves. Old titles such as “The Evil Yetzer: The Source of Rebellion,” “The Yeçer Hara: A Study in the Jewish Doctrine of Sin,” and “The Origin of Sin”17 were replaced by more current ones: “Dialectic of Desire,” “The Redaction of Desire,” and “Rabbinic Asceticism.”18 Recent attention to rabbinic sexual ethics and gender economy led scholars to concentrate on the alleged sexual context of the yetzer, while current interests in the inner struggle within humans led scholars to emphasize the model of the two yetzarim. As a result, a new scholarly consensus emerged in which the evil yetzer denotes bodily appetites that are essentially sexual in nature. As such, it is in fact not truly evil, but only dangerous: it can be tamed and even enlisted, by way of askesis and self-control.19 This book reexamines these conceptions, points out their biases and errors, and offers an alternative narrative. A systematic analysis of all available rabbinic material on the yetzer leads to conclusions that diverge widely from this consensus. For the most part, rabbinic literature discusses only one yetzer that is completely evil in nature and lacking any specifically sexual characteristics. Humans are to fight the yetzer uncompromisingly to the ultimate victory, not enlist or tame it. The book also wishes to examine the origins of the currently prevailing conceptions. One of its main arguments is that the rabbinic concept of yetzer



6 Introduction

hara has been incorrectly contextualized, as part of the ancient discourse of self-control and self-fashioning. It should be understood instead as part of the biblical and post-biblical search for the sources of human sinfulness. Rabbinic yetzer should therefore not be read in the tradition of the Hellenistic quest for control over the lower parts of the psyche, but rather in the tradition of ancient Jewish and Christian demonology. Medea’s chilling statement, “I learned what sort of wicked things I intend to do, but passion (θύμος) has gotten the better of my plans” (Euripides, Medea, 1078–79), is but one manifestation of the plentiful ways the cultures of Greece and the Hellenistic world provide us to discuss the inner struggle within humans. 20 From Leontius’s failed struggle with his eyes not to gaze at the corpse dropped outside the walls of Athens21 to Paul’s confession, “What I want to do—I do not do, but what I hate—that I do,”22 this inner struggle—­between logos and desire, mind and body, or rational and irrational appetites—is taken to be the center of human ethics and psychology of action.23 The most systematic (and influential) conceptualization of this struggle was suggested by Aristotle in his famous definition of the “weakness of will” (or incontinence, ἀκρασία): “the incontinent man, knowing that his appetites are bad, does it as a result of passion.”24 Modern theorists added their own nuances to this struggle, which in turn further influenced scholarly conceptions. Some chief exemplars are William James’s “Homo Duplex” and the Freudian battle between ego and id,25 but one might cite also the divisions between wills of the first and second order in contemporary analytic philosophy.26 Against this background, ancient and modern, rabbinic yetzer was almost inevitably read as yet another example of this trans-historical inner human struggle.27 In what follows, I attempt to refute this reading, claiming that far from being a blind appetite, the rabbinic (evil) yetzer is a sophisticated antinomian enticer, struggling to trap humans. I further attempt to recontextualize yetzer as one of many explanations the ancients had for the source of human sins, rather than as an account of the “weakness of will.” Lastly, I attempt to locate the yetzer in the Jewish demonological tradition, alongside entities such as Satan, Mastema, and Belial. This book is thus a concerted effort to render the yetzer without recourse to psychology, reading it instead as a component of the ontology of evil.28 Indeed, much of the analytic effort in this book is dedicated to dissociate the rabbinic yetzer from the discourses of “divided self”—whether figurative29 or real30 —and relocate it as part of the demonological tradition. Rabbinic yetzer should not be conflated with ancient concepts of the multiplicity of the

Introduction 7

psychic realm, even when taken literally as metaphysics rather than psychology. Even if one accepts the Platonic view of reason (or conscience) as a divine spirit, a daemon, “the part or non-part of me which is spectator . . . the voice of a wider and greater spirit than our common self,”31 it should still be distinguished from the idea of the yetzer as an external intruder into humans. The Platonic account should be compared and contrasted with the rabbinic discourse of the soul )‫ נשמה‬,‫(נפש‬,32 rather than that of the demonic yetzer.33 We should not, however, set aside all Greek imagery in order to explore the yetzer in its proper demonological context. Rather, we might return to older, pre-Platonic, Greek imageries. “In Athenian homes and cities, daemons were a force as live and considerable as electricity in ours.” This force was not only manifested in the material world, but also in that of human emotions and feeling: “Most daemonic metaphors of emotions represent it as animate onslaught. Emotion’s daemonic relation to innards carries out the overall pattern expressed in physiological imagery of innards: something ‘comes in’ from outside.”34 Ruth Padel’s study, from which these citations are taken, is imperative for my thesis, not only for its meticulous documentation of this phenomenon, but also for her insistence not to dismiss the demonic language and imagery as mere metaphor. Instead, she considers it an integral part of the cosmology of the tragedians and their audiences.35 My thesis, however, is more than a contention that there are some or even many demonological characteristics in the rabbinic yetzer. It is also a concrete historical claim, locating the yetzer in a specific demonological tradition, and tracing its evolution as part of a historical process of internalization of cosmic forces. In this context, Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity are of course a more relevant background than Classical Athens. Thus, while some of the comparative efforts in this book (see “Methodology,” below) are dedicated to analyzing phenomenological similarities (e.g., the discussions of Plato in Chapter 1), others are devoted to establish the historical thesis (the discussions on Qumran in Chapter 3). Yet the yetzer cannot be fully explained in the framework of ancient demonology either. Unlike Mastema and Satan, it is not a cosmic being but a fully internalized entity that resides inside the human heart. This phenomenon can be found in various Jewish texts, from Philo to Fourth Ezra, but the most obvious parallels are found in patristic texts. These are discussed in Chapter 2. Following Peter Brown, I also offer a reading of rabbinic internalized demonology as part of a wider koine of late antiquity, in which cosmic multiplicity was transferred into the human mind, creating a “multiplicity of the self.”



8 Introduction

This dual contextualization—both as part of ancient demonology and of processes of its internalization—warrants a reevaluation of yetzer discourse, not only as part of the ancient demonic traditions but also as an opposition to them; accepting forces that lead humans astray only in the form of an internalized battle inside the heart, leaving no place for external cosmic foes.

Tools, Methods, and the Art of Eclecticism An integrated and multilayered method is needed to tackle these issues. This study combines several methods of analyzing sources: broad mapping, close philological and literary readings, cultural-historical comparisons, and archaeology of discourses. While none of these tools alone presents an eminent theoretical novelty, their combination yields a picture that is markedly different from the prevailing one. The study is based on a systematic and comprehensive analysis of all of the some hundred and fifty appearances of the evil yetzer in classical rabbinic literature. These sources have been analyzed using a variety of criteria, including chronological, geographic, and source-critical factors. Hence I distinguish between tannaitic and amoraic, Palestinian and Babylonian sources, and further consider the different layers of redaction of the texts themselves. I am well aware that analysis based on statistics is problematic in many ways (after all, in culture, unlike board games, the biggest number does not always win). It is nonetheless crucial in this case as I attempt to replace one paradigm with another, and so must demonstrate that it better explains the largest portion of relevant material. But since numbers can give only a very partial picture, the broad overviews in each chapter are accompanied by detailed, text-centered studies of specific sources on the yetzer. This microscopic point of view allows me to go beyond the perspective of “rabbinic thought,” to focus on the very texture of the texts: their terminology, rhetoric, and metaphors. Such a “literary turn” is unavoidable when dealing with a concept that is almost solely discussed by means of similes and metaphors.36 Next is cross-cultural comparison. The evaluation of the rabbinic use of yetzer, its novelty and uniqueness, requires reading it in conjunction with other cultural possibilities tackling similar problems. However, potential comparative materials, old and new, are endless. Virtually every culture has a way of talking about human inclinations and tendencies. Even if we narrow the comparison to

Introduction 9

the Hellenistic and Christian cultures of late antiquity, the relevant material is still too abundant for comparison to be effective. I therefore concentrate first and foremost on sources that use the specific term yetzer. Thus two bodies of literature are systematically compared to the rabbinic corpus: Qumran on the one hand and early eastern Christian literature written in Syriac on the other. These two comparisons have proven themselves extremely useful in shedding new light on the issue, as shown in Chapters 3 and 6, respectively. I have also allowed the sources to lead to several broader comparative studies. The demonic characteristics of the rabbinic yetzer led me to compare it with other demonic and semi-demonic entities (from Philo and Paul to Fourth Ezra, Pseudo-Clement, and The Shepherd of Hermas). This comparative journey culminates with early Christian writings. The closest parallels to the rabbinic account are found in Alexandrian monastic accounts on the struggle against demons. The similarity between the patristic demons and the rabbinic yetzer, especially the detailed and systematic demonology of Evagrius Ponticus, plays a crucial role in establishing the demonic character of the latter. This brings me to the telos of the study, which is neither philology nor literary analysis (let alone statistics), but an inquiry into rabbinic anthropological discourse. Let me elaborate a bit on each item in this combination: Anthropology. I use this term throughout the book to designate an ancient discursive area —reflections about the formation, nature, and limits of human beings—rather than of a modern research field (“cultural anthropology”). This study is about rabbinic anthropology, as it centers on perceptions about body and soul, birth and creation, moral and religious duties, and the basic human divisions (male vs. female, Jew vs. gentile, sage vs. am haaretz).37 But rabbinic anthropology might be just as much a matter of demonology and physiology as that of mentality and psychology. Thus, all along, I strive to avoid any presupposed distinction between inside and outside, real and imaginary. Discourse. This study is not a query of the explicit conceptualizations of the “human nature,” but a quest for the “field of strategic possibilities” that gives meaning to these conceptualizations and, at the same time, limits them.38 What is included in the rabbinic conceptualization of humans? Is it fundamentally about body and soul? Is this division only one component of the system or its very foundation? Does it include reflections about human agency (or autonomy)? What does agency mean in a world of divine commandments? Is it about free will? How does it limit religious and ethical responsibility? Is the distinction between God and humans a matter of binary dichotomy or of gradation? Where do angels, demons, and spirits stand on



10 Introduction

this spectrum and how do they affect moral consciousness? While I concentrate on one specific component of this discourse—the struggle of humans against the evil yetzer that resides in them—I hint to several larger implications along the way, and reflect on them further in the afterword. The transformation from the analysis of diverse anthropological issues to the inquiry into their discursive limits and unity is almost inevitable in a study that centers on the question of whether or not rabbinic anthropology includes demonology as an integral component. In many ways, this study continues my book on tractate Sotah.39 The issue there was the place of the Temple and its cult in post-destruction literature, while this book is about anthropology. But both share a deep interest in rabbinic gender economy and take part in an ongoing endeavor to combine philology and cultural criticism and bring together the scholarly fruits of both Jerusalem and Athens (or Berkeley).

The Plan of the Book The book’s overall arrangement runs according to the chronology of rabbinic literature: tannaitic, amoraic, and (in the case of the Bavli) post-amoraic sources. Non-rabbinic literatures are cited to elucidate rabbinic yetzer, reveal its sources, and point to its possible contexts. Therefore, the chapter on yetzer at Qumran appears only after the one on the Tannaim, as its major function is to explicate the roots of the rabbinic yetzer. This book’s argument advances thus: Chapter 1 discuses the appearances of the term yetzer and yetzer hara in tannaitic literature. It shows that the evil yetzer appears only in the tannaitic school of Rabbi Ishmael, while the yetzer in the school of Rabbi Akiva has neutral traits, similar to those found in the Bible. It is also much less popular in this school. Rabbi Ishmael’s midrashic school develops a concept of one, entirely evil yetzer that struggles against the attempt of humans to fulfill their religious duty in this world (as we shall see, “humans” in this context really means “Jewish men”). It thus functions as an explanation of human sinfulness. The rest of the chapter examines the appearances of the yetzer in Mishna and Tosefta, revealing significant differences (possibly developments) between these two compositions. In order to substantiate the demonic characteristic of the yetzer as revealed in the tannaitic texts, Chapter 2 examines the discourse on daimones in early Christianity. It concentrates specifically on the Alexandrian patristic tradition

Introduction 11

(Clement, Origen, Antony, Athanasius, and Evagrius Ponticus), showing that it discusses daimones in a remarkably similar fashion to the rabbinic discourse of the yetzer. The detailed similarities between the literatures also serve to clarify some cryptic passages in rabbinic literature, as the Christian writers discuss these issues both more systematically and in greater length. Chapter 3 examines the roots of the tannaitic yetzer in Second Temple literature, and especially at Qumran, where we find the set phrase “yetzer hara” for the first time. It claims that rabbinic yetzer is a product of a process of internalizing “real” demonic figures, and that the rise of the yetzer in early rabbinic literature is a result of the rejection of all external, cosmic entities, thus leaving the yetzer alone to account for human sins. Chapter 4 moves on to amoraic literature, Palestinian and Babylonian. It discusses several developments in the roles and images of the yetzer, claiming that Rabbi Ishmael’s single, evil yetzer clearly won the day in amoraic literature, and that the alternative models, dualistic as well as dialectic, remained marginal in these texts. Chapter 5 is an interlude in the sequence of the argument, analyzing one specific genre in which the yetzer raises claims against the Torah. It examines what kind of arguments are ascribed to the yetzer and how one is instructed to answer it. The result is a rather surprising account of the limits of rabbinic dialogic culture. Chapter 6 examines the sexual context of the yetzer, a popular theme in recent scholarship. It claims that the sexual overtone of the yetzer appears only in the Bavli, mainly in its later, post-amoraic layers. The second part of the chapter suggests contextualizing the sexualization of the evil yetzer in the Bavli, as part of a larger process in which sex becomes a privileged lens through which the world is examined. It also offers a parallel to this phenomenon in contemporary Syriac-speaking Christianity. Chapter 7 is dedicated to examining the question of woman’s yetzer in rabbinic literature. Its conclusion is as straightforward as it is disappointing: women probably have a yetzer, but it does not really interest the rabbis, who instruct the Jewish adult male (especially the Torah scholar) how to fight his yetzer and prevail. The book ends with an afterword suggesting some thoughts on the broader anthropological implications of the rabbinic yetzer discourse and raising several questions for future studies. Reading ancient yetzer is not only historiography. It is part of a heritage that influences conceptualizations of the self to this very day. Although this



12 Introduction

study is limited to the very early stages of the formation of the yetzer, it is ­unavoidably (scholarly caution notwithstanding) also a journey to our most basic assumptions about ourselves. It is a chapter in a genealogy of the present. I wish to end the introduction by marking the boundaries of this study. My goal in the book is to explicate rabbinic discourse of the yetzer; both the content and structure of the book are shaped according to this end. Other texts are presented to serve as comparative tools or possible hints at roots and origins. I do not try to cover all the appearances of “yetzer” in Second Temple literature, a project that requires a systematic reconstruction of the term from Greek, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Latin translations of lost Hebrew works. Some of this work was done in the past, but much is still waiting for specialists in these literatures. The contribution of the present study to such effort is mainly a corrective one: warning scholars against searching in Second Temple literature for the roots of phenomena that were mistakenly considered as basic traits of rabbinic yetzer, especially the duality and sexuality of the yetzer. I also avoid discussing the Sasanian context of the Babylonian yetzer, which demands the treatment of specialists in the Middle Persian language and Zoroastrian culture. This area is flourishing recently: several papers and dissertations comparing rabbinic and Sasanian corpora on various subjects have been published, especially by Yaakov Elman and his students. In this context, the contribution of this study is mainly in locating the sexual characteristic in time and place, and contextualizing it as part of a much larger process of hyper-sexualization, unique to the Bavli. It thus intends to prevent a misunderstanding of the Bavli’s yetzer. I do not discuss systematically later midrashim in which a yetzer discourse distinct from the one found in both tannaitic and amoraic literature is manifest. These sources should be studied in light of literary and ideological developments of the early medieval period in both Muslim and Christian environments.

Language, Terminology, and Citation Policy The term yetzer, the focus of this book, has been translated in numerous ways (“inclination,” “tendency,” “disposition,” “instinct,” “desire,” etc.). None of these is satisfactory, especially since they fail to present the yetzer as a reified object residing inside a person, so I render it simply as yetzer (plural: yetzarim) and discuss its meanings and contexts as I go along. The terms yetzer and evil yetzer are freely interchangeable in rabbinic sources,40 and I use mainly the former,

Introduction 13

except in contexts where further specification is required. I also follow the sources in referring to yetzer with a definite article (“the yetzer”), except when dealing with sources (mostly pre-rabbinic) that do not yet have a definite concept of yetzer as a proper noun.41 I use tannaitic and amoraic (as well as post-amoraic) when referring to one of the periods specifically, and rabbinic, rabbis, or sages when discussing the corpus as a whole. I use midrash to refer to rabbinic exegetical compositions (such as Mekhilta or Genesis Rabba) and homily for a specific passage that expounds a biblical verse.42 Sugia (plural: sugiot) is used for a coherent passage in either of the two Talmuds. Lastly, I have used human or a human for the Hebrew adam throughout the book, even if the English idiom had to be stretched a bit. When gender biased language is used (e.g., “a man’s yetzer”), it is a deliberate mirroring of rabbinic discourse itself (whether explicit or implicit).43 Although women did have a yetzer according to the rabbis, rabbinic yetzer discourse is manifestly masculine in character. This bias and its implications on rabbinic gender economy are analyzed in Chapter 7, where I also consider the ethnic assumptions behind the yetzer discourse. Rabbinic texts are cited according to the manuscripts chosen by the Historical Dictionary of the Academy of Hebrew Language (available at maagarim: http://hebrew-treasures.huji.ac.il). Text-critical discussions are kept to the necessary minimum, citing only variants crucial to the issue. Translations are mine (consulting existing translations where available) and are kept as literal as possible, even at the expense of literary refinement. I have added punctuation, references to biblical verses, and a few glosses (marked by square brackets). Page numbers in parentheses match the following critical editions: Tosefta: ed. ­Lieberman (New York, 1956–88) for Berakhot–Baba Batra and ed. Zuckermandel (Trier, 1881; reprint, Jerusalem, 1970) for the remainder. Mekhilta: ed. Horowitz-Rabin (Breslau, 1930). Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon: ed. EpsteinMelamed (Jerusalem, 1956). Sifra: ed. Weiss (Vienna, 1862). Sifre Numbers: ed. Horo­witz (Leipzig, 1917). Sifre Deuteronomy: ed. Finkelstein (Berlin, 1939). Genesis Rabba: ed. Theodor-Albeck (Berlin, 1936). Leviticus Rabba: ed. Margulies (Jerusalem, 1958). Pesikta de-Rav Kahana: ed. Mandelbaum (New York, 1987). The editions from which other sources are cited are detailed in the relevant footnotes.

Chapter 1

“The Torah Spoke Regarding the Yetzer”: Tannaitic Literature

Tannaitic midrashic literature is divided by scholars into two major schools, named after two teachers associated with them: Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael.1 In the case of the yetzer this division yields a systematic, significant difference. I thus begin the study of the tannaitic yetzer by analyzing each school independently. The following three chapters are one continued inquiry into the birth and origins of the rabbinic yetzer, divided only for the sake of convenience. In this chapter I map and characterize the various trends in early rabbinic (i.e., tannaitic) sources, move on to compare them to parallel monastic literature in Chapter 2, and then move back to Second Temple literature to trace the sources of these trends in Chapter 3. While I find this reversed structure inevitable, it does demand some endurance on the part of the reader. Many phenomena revealed in the first chapter will be clarified, or at least contextualized, only in the second and third.

R. Akiva’s (Natural) Yetzer The idiom “Torah spoke regarding2 the yetzer” appears only three times in tannaitic literature. The following occurrence is from Sifra, Kedoshim 3:9 (ed. Weiss, 90b): And on the fifth year you may eat its fruit, that its yield to you may be increased (Lev 19:25)—R. Yose ha-Glili says: It is as if you are adding the produce of the fifth year to the produce of the fourth. . . . R. Akiva says: The Torah spoke regarding the yetzer (‫)דיברה התורה כנגד היצר‬, so that a



Tannaitic Literature 15

person would not say: for four years I have troubled myself for nothing. Therefore, it is said: that its yield to you may be increased. Leviticus 19:23–25 regulates the status of fruits during the first four years of the growth of fruit trees. Fruits are forbidden for any consumption for three years after planting, while in the fourth year they are considered holy and permitted to the owners under several restrictions (detailed by the rabbis in tractate Maaser Sheni). The passage ends with a verse concerning the fifth year that promises plentiful crops from then on. Simply read, this last verse adds no new law and is seemingly redundant. R. Yose ha-Glili deduces an additional law from the last verse, which pertains to the halakhic standing of the fruits (the exact nature of which is beyond the present scope), in order to overcome this alleged redundancy.3 R. Akiva, on the other hand, reads the verse literally, as a promise, which he explains is necessary for addressing the yetzer. Since the Torah is aware of the difficulties of working the land for so many years without benefiting from the fruits, the passage adds a promise of reward in the fifth year. A similar homily in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai on Exodus 34:24, discussing the obligation to make pilgrimage to the Temple three times a year, was reconstructed by the editors of this midrash:4 I will drive out nations from your path [and] . . . no one will covet your land (Ex 34:24)—the Torah spoke regarding the yetzer (‫דיברה התורה כנגד‬ ‫)היצר‬, so that Israel will not say, “How can we leave our land, our homes, our fields, and our vineyard and make pilgrimage, lest others come and dwell in our places?” Consequently, the Holy One, blessed be He, guaranteed (‫ )ערב‬them: no one will covet your land when you go up to appear [i.e., to make pilgrimage to the Temple]. While the attribution of this reconstructed exegesis to the Tannaim is not certain, the similarity to the previous exposition in both content and form is striking. Both homilies expound on verses of assurance that follow commandments, justifying the need for such promises (lest they be seen as redundant in the legal context of the verse). Each explains the promise as the Torah’s response to fears identified with the yetzer. In both homilies, after the formula “the Torah spoke regarding the yetzer,” certain fears are explicated and, in both, these fears are not ascribed to the yetzer but to the individual, or collective, themselves: “so that a person would not say . . .” or “so that Israel would not say. . . .” The expounded verse is presented as a positive



16 Chapter 1

response to these apprehensions: “It is therefore said . . . ” or “Consequently, the Holy One, blessed be He, guaranteed them. . . .” Both homilies appear in midrashim, or parts of midrashim, identified with the school of R. Akiva, as does the third occurrence of the idiom in Sifre Deuteronomy. This homily discusses the obligation to return a lost ox or sheep “to your fellow”: Your fellow’s ox (Deut 22:1)—this is only regarding your fellow’s ox, whence do we know that this applies to your enemy’s ox? Scripture teaches (Ex 23:4): your enemy’s ox [indicating that this applies] in all cases. If so, then why does it say your fellow? To teach that the Torah spoke only regarding the yetzer. (‫ ;לא דברה תורה אלא כנגד היצר‬Sifre Deut 222, ed. Finkelstein, 255) The homily points out a contradiction between the verses that command the return of lost property. In Deuteronomy, the obligation is to return “your fellow’s ox,” whereas Exodus is concerned with “your enemy’s ox.” The homilist concludes that lost property should be returned to all people, even to an enemy. How shall we thus read the verses in Deuteronomy? The homily is rather cryptic at this point; what does the yetzer have to do with returning a lost property? A parallel homily helps clarify: “If you subject your yetzer and treat (‫)לעשות‬ your enemy as your friend, I promise you that I will make (‫ )עושה‬your enemy into your friend.”5 The verses in Deuteronomy are thus reread as saying that one should treat enemies as if they were friends, and it is this instruction our homily considers as “speaking regarding the yetzer.”6 The yetzer here stands for the natural human predisposition to treat a foe and a friend differently, a natural tendency that one should overcome and subject to higher moral precepts.7 “The yetzer” thus seems to indicate nothing more than the normal human tendency toward self-interest. This is also the case in the two other occurrences of “the Torah spoke regarding the yetzer,” which point out the selfish but conventional and understandable concerns for property. As far as I can tell, these are the only references to the yetzer in homilies identified with the school of R. Akiva. We have already seen that the term yetzer, in the Bible, carries a neutral meaning: human tendency, proclivity, or choice.8 A similar meaning or semantic field seems to appear in R. Akiva’s homilies. Before I consider the implications of these findings on the assessment of R. Akiva’s school and its characteristics, we should contrast it with the image of the yetzer in homilies from the school of R. Ishmael.



Tannaitic Literature 17

Although the idiom “the Torah spoke regarding the yetzer” does not appear in R. Ishmael’s midrashim, they do contain similar formulae. Here are two examples: [You shall not make yourself a sculptured image of any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on earth below], or in the waters under the earth (Ex 20:4)—. . . [Scripture] went to such lengths in pursuit of the evil yetzer in order not to leave room for any pretext9 of permission [for idolatry]. (‫ ;אמתלת התר‬Mek. RI, Bahodesh 6, ed. Horowitz-Rabin, 243 [ed. Lauterbach, 2:243]) Nor shall you follow their laws (Lev 18:3)—still, the evil yetzer can think to say, their [laws] are better (‫ )יפים‬than ours. Scripture therefore teaches (Deut 4:6): Observe them faithfully, for they are your wisdom and discernment [in the sight of the peoples].10 (Sifra Aharei Mot 13, ed. Weiss 86a)11 The homily in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael explains why the Torah went into great detail in its prohibition of the making of any image “of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth” (Ex 20:4); the one in Sifra resolves the need for positive formulations to be added to the prohibitions of following foreign laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Hermeneutically, these two homilies are very similar to “The Torah spoke regarding the yetzer” homilies. Both groups explain seemingly superfluous wordings in the Torah as directed toward the yetzer. However, despite their similar interpretive function, these two homilies exhibit a completely different attitude to the yetzer than that revealed in R. Akiva’s homilies. The disparity is both in the nature of the yetzer’s claim and in the Torah’s response. Both schools link the yetzer’s objections to the observance of the commandments. However, for the school of R. Akiva, the yetzer fears the subsequent loss of property (“For four years I have troubled myself for nothing,” “lest others come and dwell in our places”), while, for the school of R. Ishmael, it seeks to negate the very existence of the commandments (by looking for permission to engage in idolatry, or by preferring foreign laws to “ours”). The Torah’s response to this claim changes accordingly: for the school of R. Akiva the response is the compensatory promise in the verse expounded, while the school of R. Ishmael strengthens the prohibition. In one school the Torah gives the yetzer a positive answer, and in the other a sharp negative one.



18 Chapter 1

This also explains the different terminology: according to the school of R. Akiva, the Torah always speaks to an undefined “yetzer,” while the school of R. Ishmael specifies “the evil yetzer.” A study of all sources that mention the yetzer in the halakhic midrashim reveals the conceptual significance as well as the stylistic consistency of this difference, as the term “evil yetzer” does not appear even once in midrashim from the school of R. Akiva. Further, the evil yetzer, as presented by the school of R. Ishmael, is not a natural disposition or a simple embodiment of human desires, but an antinomian entity residing within humans that incites them against the Torah. Two innovations can thus be attributed to the school of R. Ishmael. Not only did it develop the image of the yetzer into a demonic enemy, it also placed it at a central point in its anthropology. Both stand in contrast to what we find in the school of R. Akiva, where the yetzer stands for the simple human tendency (or weakness) and occupies a marginal place.12 The two differences are connected: along with the change of its image, the yetzer received a more central place, as the explanation of human tendency to sin.

R. Ishmael’s Evil Yetzer A clear manifestation of the new, developed image of the yetzer in R. Ishmael’s midrashim appears in a homily in Sifre Numbers, which reads (or retells) the biblical story of the nocturnal encounter between Boaz and Ruth on the threshing floor (Ruth 3:6–15). This event, the focal point of the entire Book of Ruth, transforms the heroine from a childless refugee to the intended wife of Boaz and eventually the matriarch of the royal line of David. Concealing more than he reveals, the narrator describes this meeting in a laconic and enigmatic fashion. Here as elsewhere Midrash uncovers what Scripture hides. The following expansion unfolds the entire erotic drama played out that night on the threshing floor, to which the Bible only hints. To the reader’s great surprise, however, the drama in this retelling is not between Boaz and Ruth at all, but between Boaz and himself; to be more precise, between Boaz and his evil yetzer: As the Lord lives! Lie down until morning (Ruth 3:13)—because his evil yetzer sat and importuned him the entire night. It said to him: “You are unmarried and you want a woman, and she is unmarried and she wants a man (teaching that a wife is acquired by sexual intercourse).13 So go and have intercourse with her, and she will be your wife.” He took an



Tannaitic Literature 19

oath against his evil yetzer (‫)נשבע ליצרו הרע‬: As the Lord lives!—I shall not touch her; and to the woman he said: Lie down until morning. (Sifre Num 88, ed. Horowitz, 88) At the end of their charged encounter on the threshing floor Boaz promises Ruth: “If he [i.e. the closer relative] will act as a redeemer, good; let him redeem. But if he does not want to act as a redeemer for you, I will do so myself, as the Lord lives! Lie down until morning” (Ruth 3:13). Simply read, this verse relates to the anticipated debate the following day at the city gate, concerning Ruth’s marriage: Boaz reassures her that someone will indeed marry (“redeem”) her, and she can therefore sleep soundly. According to our homily, however, the vow has nothing to do with the expected struggle over Ruth’s redemption, but to the situation of the lonely woman that night on the threshing floor. In this reading, the vow is not directed at Ruth, but at Boaz! The yetzer importunes Boaz “the entire night” to sleep with Ruth. Boaz adopts an exceptionally potent weapon against his yetzer and fetters it with a vow in the name of the Lord. Only this will enable him to assure the woman that nothing will happen between them that night: “as the Lord lives! Lie down until morning.” Beyond its interpretive creativity and dramatic eroticism, several features of this homily are worthy of attention. The appearance of the evil yetzer moves the venue from the interpersonal sphere to the arena of the protagonist’s desires and proclivities. As a result, the sexual drama here is focused on thoughts and reflections no less, and possibly even more, than on actions. Human beings are threatened from within. We should also note the arresting and highly sophisticated nature of the argument advanced by the evil yetzer as it seeks to persuade Boaz to sleep with Ruth. The yetzer does not simply entice Boaz to sexual sin, but makes a persuasive and cogent legal argument. It appears as a learned Torah scholar who sets forth a full halakhic claim, beginning with a description of the legal situation (“you are unmarried . . . and she is unmarried”), and ending with the evident conclusion: “Go and have intercourse with her, and she will be your wife.” Indeed, Boaz is incapable of contending with such a convincing argument, and so must bind himself using a vow. The image of the evil yetzer depicted here is not one of blind and unbridled passion. Rather, it is the image of a sophisticated enticer that cleverly tries to lead humans astray. Based on pseudo-halakhic arguments, or “pretexts of permission,” the yetzer draws people to illicit acts.14 Additional sources show that this is not a single literary instance, but a consistent anthropological model that presents the evil yetzer as an independent



20 Chapter 1

entity, which is distinct from humans though it resides in their bodies. This externalization is highly significant for characterizing the image and character of humans in tannaitic literature. Boaz does not lust for Ruth; the initiative to sleep with her comes from the evil yetzer alone. Boaz is cast as battling with his yetzer and successfully taming it. The struggle on the threshing floor between Boaz and his evil yetzer appears in yet another homily identified with the school of R. Ishmael (Sifre Deut 33, ed. Finkelstein, 59–60).15 Here, however, it appears within a longer list of sins against which an oath in the name of the Lord is a useful preventive remedy: On your heart (Deut 11:18)—This was the source of R. Josiah’s saying: A person must adjure his yetzer (‫)להשביע את יצרו‬. For you find everywhere that the righteous adjure their yetzer (‫)משביעים את יצרם‬. Abraham says (Gen 14:22): I lift up my hand to the Lord. Boaz says (Ruth 3:13): As the Lord lives! Lie down until morning. David says (1 Sam 26:10): As the Lord lives, the Lord Himself will strike him down. And Elisha says (2 Kgs 5:16): As the Lord whom I serve lives, I will not take anything. This homily, attributed to a leading sage of the school of R. Ishmael, is a classical “index homily”—a collection of a series of verses with a common motif.16 In our case, the shared motif is the formula for swearing by the Lord’s name.17 A closer look reveals that a profound thematic resemblance lies behind the shared linguistic motif. Despite their variegated contexts, all these verses speak of borderline cases, in which the status of the forbidden act is undefined. This is exactly the case in the relations between Ruth and Boaz, as seen above, and the other examples are no different: Abraham’s taking of booty following the war of the four kings against the five, in Genesis; David’s opportunity to kill Saul, who is pursuing him, in Samuel; and finally, Elisha’s taking of wages for healing Naaman, in Second Kings. Each of these acts could easily be justified, but the biblical heroes in this homily refrain from doing them by taking an oath, tethering themselves to fight the temptations of their yetzer. The homily transforms these apparently borderline activities into ones that are completely prohibited by identifying them with the yetzer. Halakhic permission to engage in such matters is now a mere “pretext of permission.” A sophisticated battle must be waged against the yetzer. Good will is not enough; different strategies must be employed to extricate oneself from the yetzer’s wiles and exhortations, such as taking an oath in God’s name. The most popular tool, however, is not an oath but Torah study: “The school of



Tannaitic Literature 21

R. Ishmael taught (‫)תנא דבי ר’ ישמעאל‬: If this repulsive one (‫ )מנוול‬assails you—drag him (‫ )משכהו‬to the study hall” (b. Kid. 30b; Suk. 52b). The same idea appears in greater detail in Sifre Deut 45 (ed. Finkelstein, 103–4):18 Therefore impress these My words upon your heart (Deut 11:18)—this tells us that the words of Torah are like an elixir of life (‫)סם חיים‬. This is comparable to a king who was angry with his son, struck him a violent blow, and placed a bandage on the wound. He told him: My son, as long as this bandage remains on your wound, you may eat whatever you please and drink whatever you please, and bathe either in hot or cold water, and you will come to no harm. But if you remove it, it will immediately fester. Thus the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel: I created your evil yetzer, and there is nothing more evil than it, [but] If you do right, there is uplift (Gen 4:7)—Be occupied with words of Torah and it will not reign over you. But if you abandon words of Torah, then it will gain mastery over you, as it is said (ibid.): sin (‫ )חטאת‬crouches at the door, its urge is toward you—it has no business other than with you. But if you wish, you can rule over it, as it is said (ibid.): yet you can be its master: If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat . . . you will be heaping live coals on his head . . .” (Prov 25:21). The evil yetzer is evil, the one who created it [himself] testifies that it is evil, as it it said: since the yetzer of man’s heart is evil from his youth (Gen 8:21). This complex homily opens with a quotation from Deuteronomy 11 and ends with one from Genesis 4. It begins with a reading of ‫( ושמתם‬Deut 11:18) as an acronym for “‫סם תם‬,” an effective remedy.19 Since the remedy is “these My words,” it is read as the words of Torah, and since it is to be placed “on your heart,” the homilist concludes it is meant as a remedy against the yetzer, which dwells inside the heart. The midrash then uses a parable to develop this motif, and ends with a picturesque description of the evil nature of the yetzer, all the while expounding Genesis 4:7 phrase by phrase.20 This is the longest and most developed presentation of the evil yetzer in the entire tannaitic corpus, but it presents a picture fundamentally similar to what we have already seen in other sources from the school of R. Ishmael. This view may be distilled into three main principles: a. Humans have a single yetzer given them by God, which is evil in nature.



22 Chapter 1

b. Humans are in a constant struggle with their yetzer, which seeks to dominate (‫ )שלט‬them, ensnaring them to sin (following Gen 4:7: “sin crouches at the door, its urge is toward you”). c. The yetzer may be overpowered (“yet you can be its master,” ibid.) with the aid of the Torah. That principle (a) is itself an important lesson for the homilist is made clear from the statement appended to the very end of the homily: “The evil yetzer is evil (‫)רע הוא יצר הרע‬.” This statement may sound like a tautology, which might well be the homilist’s rhetorical goal, but we should bear in mind that the term yetzer ra itself is not a rabbinic innovation, but a legacy of the Second Temple period, and therefore the manner in which it is used by the homilist requires specification. The homilist’s elaborated account is meant to present the old yetzer as the new key to human evilness. It is this fresh conceptualization that is the homilist’s main innovation. Indeed, the idea that attraction to evil is the product of the yetzer is anything but trivial, even in the tannaitic discourse itself (as we have seen, Rabbi Akiva’s homilies do not “know” as much). It is thus precisely this lesson that our homily aims to teach. This is also the source of the discrepancy between the parable and the lesson attached to it. Unlike the father who only tells his child how to treat the injury (for the son feels the blow himself, and probably also sees the bandage), the lesson begins with the divine assertion (confession?) about the very creation of the wound/yetzer (“I created your evil yetzer, and there is nothing more evil than it”) before it explains how to contend with it. It then repeats the message at the end of the homily (“The evil yetzer is evil . . .”).21 Both statements, however, do not explain why God created something He himself admits to be evil. We never hear the father’s reason for wounding his son, which may be read as a subtle sign of discontent on the part of the homilist.22 The good news is that the same father who struck the blow also provided the remedy. But how is the remedy expected to work? The verse cited is quite laconic: If you do right, there is uplift (Gen 4:7), but the homily is specific enough: “Be occupied with words of Torah (‫ )היו עסוקין בדברי תורה‬and it will not reign over you.” In the tannaitic literature the idiom ‫ לעסוק בדברי תורה‬denotes only one thing: Torah study.23 It is thus not by fulfilling the law, or “being under the law” (Rom 6:14), that one can be saved, but only through actual study. The yetzer is not an uncontrolled id to be cultivated by living according to a nomos (or superego), but a demonic enemy to be fought with ceaseless study. Note that



Tannaitic Literature 23

Torah study does not appear here as a transformative device. There is no hint that the Torah changes man, making him (!)24 less vulnerable to the plots of the yetzer. Rather, it is presented as a talisman that protects only when actually worn.25 This seems to be the lesson encoded in the bandage metaphor.26 The Torah’s aid is neither theoretical nor general; only when the words of the Torah are literally upon your heart (Deut 11:18) are you protected.27 I cannot think of a better campaign for the ethos of the house of study,28 appearing as the ultimate (and virtually only) remedy for the disease which is the yetzer. This is especially noteworthy in light of the previous homilies discussed above. In Sifre Numbers 88, Boaz resists the yetzer by adjuration, and Sifre Deuteronomy 33 ascribes this technique to the “righteous” (‫)צדיקים‬, rather than to sages.29 While these homilies seem to preserve the more traditional ethical model, our homily begins a process of subjugation of the yetzer discourse to the ethics of the house of study, which will expand in later literature. Thus in a byzantine Jewish Aramaic poem Boaz himself becomes a sage, overpowering the yetzer by studying Torah: The righteous one put on his clothing And conquered his evil yetzer And imprisoned it until the morning And occupied himself with the Torah, sweeter than honey.30 The sages present their own craft as the ultimate talisman against the yetzer. Such a claim for expertise in the struggle against the yetzer, and the attribution of this skill to the knowledge of Torah, is noteworthy, as the rabbis are hesitant to do so in other areas that demand special powers, like exorcism and rainmaking. According to various rabbinic narratives, these powers are held in the hands of non-rabbinic professional wonder workers, most notably the hasidim.31 Evidently, the yetzer became such an important component of the rabbinic conceptualization of humans and their religious duty that it could not be left in the hands of non-rabbinic specialists, or be tamed with anything other than Torah study. Propaganda aside, such a conceptualization is extremely demanding. If the bandage helps only when it is on, it can never be removed. Such a notion may explain radical assertions such as R. Yaakov’s: “One who walks down the road studying and ceases his study (‫ )מפסיק משנתו‬to say ‘how fine is this tree’ . . . is considered as if he is liable for death” (‫ ;מעלין עליו כאילו מתחיב בנפשו‬m. Avot 3:7), or “the words of Torah, As long as man labors over them (‫)עמל בהן‬, they



24 Chapter 1

give him life, but if he leaves them, they immediately kill him” (Sifre Deut 343, ed. Finkelstein, 400). Later sources add institutional aspects to this concept, ascribing the remedy both to the study house32 and to the synagogue, where the general public should be exposed to rabbinic sermons.33 Since both obeying the law and engaging in study are called “Torah,”34 it is at the same time the therapeutic tool for tackling the yetzer and the central object of its attacks. In fact, in some Ishmaelian homilies the yetzer specifically resists Torah study.35 For instance, the homily in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael Amalek 2 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin, 201) reads: “that your hand be with me ‫ ;והיתה ידך עמי‬1 Chron 4:10)—that I shall not forget my learning (‫ )משנתי‬. . . and make me not suffer (‫ ;לבלתי עצבי‬ibid.)—so that the evil yetzer shall not disrupt me (‫)יעציבני‬36 from engaging in the study of your Torah.”37 Compare also Sifre Numbers 119 (ed. Horowitz, 143): “Hold me up and save me (‫ ;סעדני ואושעה‬Ps 119:117)—that I shall not learn Torah and forget it, that I shall not learn Torah and the evil yetzer will not let me repeat it.” These two homilies appear in different contexts and expound different verses, but they share the same basic characteristics. Both refer to biblical prayers (The prayer of Jaabetz in First Chronicles 4,38 and the prayer of David in Psalm 119) and interpret them as discussing the difficulties of Torah study. Both homilies begin with prayers against forgetfulness (“that I shall not forget my learning,” “that I shall not study Torah and forget it”), and then request that the yetzer shall not hinder the study. The relationship between the two requests is clearly presented in Sifre: while David asks God for mere support (‫)סעדני‬ against the first, natural difficulty, he asks for divine salvation (‫)ואושעה‬ against the unnatural one that comes from the yetzer. The homilist thus distinguishes natural difficulties in the process of learning (i.e., forgetfulness)39 from unnatural ones (inability to learn? distractive temptations?) that are ascribed to the evil yetzer. The yetzer is identified as the force that fights specifically against Torah and its study. A similar image is depicted in an Ishmaelian homily in Sifre Deuteronomy 43 (ed. Finkelstein, 96), discussing the second passage of the Shema liturgy (Deut 11:13–21):40 Another thing: you shall eat and be filled; beware [lest your heart be lured away] (‫ ;יפתה‬Deut 11:15–16)—he told them: beware lest the evil yetzer deceive (‫ )יטעה‬you and you shall abandon the words of Torah (‫ותפרשו‬ ‫)מדברי תורה‬, for when a man abandons the words of Torah he clings to foreign worship (‫)הולך ומדבק בעבודה זרה‬.



Tannaitic Literature 25

The first verses of this famous biblical passage discuss the general obligation to love and worship God, but are interpreted by the Sifre as a specific obligation to study Torah.41 The following verses, which present the other side of the equation (“beware lest your heart be lured away”), should, according to this logic, discuss the abandonment of Torah and its study. But verse 16 presents idolatry as the threat that should be faced (“and you shall go astray and you shall worship other Gods”). The homilist’s solution to this alleged inconsistency is to present the neglect of the study of Torah42 as the first step in a downfall that will eventually lead to idolatry. The phrase “and you shall go astray” (‫)וסרתם‬, which comes before “and you shall worship other gods” (11:16), is therefore explained as a reference to leaving the “words of Torah,” which is the first stage downhill toward idolatry. This slippery slope narrative is prefaced in our homily with yet another stage: “lest the evil yetzer lead you astray.” This statement is the homilist’s translation of the first words of verse 16: “lest your heart seduce you.”43 Note, however, that the yetzer in the homily is not simply a synonym for the biblical “heart,” as is clear from the change in moods: the biblical heart is passively seduced, lured away (‫)יִ פתה‬, while the midrashic yetzer actively deceives (‫)יַ טעה‬. The Torah warns that the heart might (God forbid) simply go astray, while the Midrash presents it as being deliberately deceived. The rules have changed: the heart is not to blame, for the yetzer seduces it from within.44 Far from being a simple passion or appetite, the yetzer is a deceiver who initiates the ride down the slippery slope from the neglect of study to idolatry, and from there, as we shall see below, to death. Several homilies consequently present the yetzer as a danger that requires “protection” )‫(שימור‬,45 a term used in apotropaic contexts, usually applied to demons and other cosmic forces.46 The preeminent source of danger to people is transferred from the outside world into the human heart.47 The attractiveness of sin qua sin is an old theme, going back to Proverbs 9:17: “Stolen waters are sweet.”48 One of the most vivid accounts of this dynamic appears in Augustine’s famous story of the pears’ theft: My desire was to enjoy not what I sought by stealing but merely the excitement of thieving and the doing of what was wrong. . . . We carried off a huge load of pears. But they were not for our feasts but merely to throw to the pigs. Even if we ate a few, nevertheless our pleasure lay in doing what was not allowed. . . . I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. (Conf. 2.4.9)



26 Chapter 1

My feasting was only on the wickedness which I took pleasure in enjoying. If any of those pears entered my mouth, my criminality was the piquant sauce. (2.6.12) Therefore in the act of theft what was the object of my love, and in what way did I viciously and perversely imitate my Lord? Was my pleasure to break your law, but by deceit since I had not the power to do that by force? Was I acting like a prisoner with restricted liberty who does without punishment what is not permitted, therefore making an assertion of possessing a dim resemblance to omnipotence? (2.7.14)49 Augustine knows who is responsible for his seduction, as is clearly asserted just before the theft narrative: “the invisible enemy trampled on me and seduced me because I was in the mood to be seduced” (2.3.8).50 Nonetheless, when accounting for the case itself, the attraction to sin is narrated in purely psychological terms (along with a sociological analysis of group mentality, in 8.16– 9.17). The homilies of the school of Rabbi Ishmael, in contrast, do not turn to the inner dynamics of the psyche for an explanation. They use demonology instead: there is an entity in the heart that constantly incites its host to sin.51 Thus, rather than aggressively reducing their account back to psychology, explaining away the demonic language as a mere figure of speech, I wish to take this depiction seriously and uncover its most basic discursive assumptions. My goal is to explicate the way these homilies account for human attraction to sin, and not to offer a translation of this account into more familiar psychological terms.

The Singular Service versus the Dual Yetzer The homilies of the school of R. Ishmael present a yetzer that differs significantly in character and scope from R. Akiva’s “the Torah spoke regarding the yetzer.” Both schools, however, posit only one yetzer—a natural human tendency in one school, and a demonic entity in the other (thus the term “evil yetzer”). This simple fact runs contrary to the conventional scholarly view which holds that the rabbinic yetzer system has two yetzarim, good and evil.52 This is not a minor misrepresentation: taking the one-yetzer model seriously demands a thorough revision of the conventional theory of rabbinic anthropology. Rather than a neutral battleground for an inner struggle, humans are actually positive in nature, constantly fighting their evil yetzer. Strong, sophisticated, and demonic as the yetzer may be, it is still external; a “mighty king”



Tannaitic Literature 27

invading the body from outside. Boaz does not need a good yetzer to best his evil one; he struggles with it and defeats it himself. Similarly, Sifre Deuteronomy deduces that “everywhere, you find that the righteous adjure their yetzer”—“the righteous,” not their good yetzer. It is thus not surprising that in most Ishmaelian sources the evil yetzer is simply called “the yetzer,”53 for it is the only yetzer they know. The entire tannaitic corpus affords a single exception to this rule: the Mishna, at the end of tractate Berakhot, reads the verse “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deut 6:5) as referring to “both your yetzarim, the good yetzer and the evil yetzer.”54 The homily reads the word bekhol (“with all”) as an indicator of a multiplicity existing inside the heart,55 and requires that all its parts be recruited to God’s service. A similar situation is discussed in Sifra Shemini 1 (ed. Weiss 43d):56 This thing is what the Lord has commanded that you do (Lev 9:6)—remove that evil yetzer from your hearts, so that all of you will be as one in awe and of one mind to serve God. Just as He is singular (‫ )יחידי‬in the world, so let your service be singular (‫ )מיוחדת‬before Him. For it is said: Cut away, therefore, the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more (Deut 10:16). On what account? For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords (Deut 10:17). If you do this, then the presence of the Lord shall appear to you (Lev 9:6). The homily states that the presence of the evil yetzer is an obstacle for the service of God and thus its removal is a prerequisite for such service. It then offers a precise analysis of the nature of this obstacle: the yetzer creates a duality within the human heart, preventing the singularity that is necessary for the service of God.57 One cannot serve the Lord “with all your heart” when the evil yetzer resides in it. The yetzer thus must be extracted in order to attain the desired unity. This homily repeatedly emphasizes the principle of unity: “Just as He is singular in the world, so let your service be singular before Him.”58 A similar connection between circumcision of the heart and singlemindedness appears in several early Syrian church fathers discussing the entrance into the covenant.59 Note that the problem raised in these sources is a religious problem, not a psychological one. Becoming a true worshiper of God demands an inner unity.60 Thus, Mishna Berakhot and Sifra Shemini cope with the same basic problem: the duality of the heart caused by the evil yetzer. Their proposed resolutions,



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however, are different and even contradictory. While the Mishna attains the desired unity by mobilizing the evil yetzer in the service of God, Sifra demands a removal of the yetzer, using the metaphor of circumcision. In the third chapter, after discussing the roots of the rabbinic yetzer at Qumran, I offer an explanation for this exceptional appearance of two yetzarim in the Mishna. And so, the terminological divergence between the two schools (the Akivan “Torah spoke against the yetzer” vs. the Ishmaelian “evil yetzer”) represents a major ideological difference. The developed tripartite doctrine of the evil yetzer—its reification, antinomianism, and the imperative to struggle against it—appears only in the school of Rabbi Ishmael. Ishmaelian homilies repeatedly present the yetzer as a reified being, which resides in people’s hearts, and struggles against their religious obligations. It is a sort of parasite, a foreskin to be circumcised or a wound inflicted by an angry father, which must be perpetually dressed. Ishmaelian homilies seem to agree about the basic dangers of the yetzer, but not on the techniques of the struggle and the possibility of breaking free from its yoke. Some contend that either people (“remove the evil yetzer from your hearts”) or God (“and keep you—from the evil yetzer”) are capable of doing so. Most homilies, however, present the evil yetzer as a permanent presence in humans, who should lead a lifelong struggle against its dominion (“it will not reign over you,” Sifre Deut 45).61 This struggle is facilitated by various techniques, primarily the study of Torah, the elixir of life. Since the discovery of the two tannaitic schools, several attempts have been made to identify differences between the schools beyond hermeneutic method. The most comprehensive attempt was made by Abraham Joshua Heschel, who wished to ascribe an independent theology and metaphysics to each of the schools.62 Later studies pointed out the problematic methodology used by Heschel and attacked his far-reaching conclusions.63 Recent studies suggested more specific differences, regarding the authority of the biblical text,64 the relationship between Jews and gentiles,65 types of religiosity,66 and more. We can now make a case for another theological and anthropological difference between the schools. Not only is the yetzer referred to differently in each of the schools, but its content is clearly different, revealing a wide systematic distinction regarding human nature and character. The division between the tannaitic schools also allows us to begin uncovering the story of its birth and development. The yetzer in rabbinic literature is a mature being, presented as if it has been around forever. It does not easily betray the story of its inception and development. The discovery that



Tannaitic Literature 29

the evil yetzer exists in only one tannaitic school is an important corrective to this impression, encouraging us to look further for its inception and roots, which we do in the next chapters. First, however, the textual survey of the tannaitic material should be completed by examining the appearances of the yetzer in the Mishna and Tosefta.

Human Anger or Foreign God? “Yetzer” in Mishna and Tosefta Yetzer appears only four times in the Mishna. One appearance, the famous Mishna at the end of tractate Berakhot referring to two yetzarim, was mentioned above and is discussed at length in Chapter 3. All the other occurrences are, quite expectedly, in tractate Avot.67 In m. Avot 2:11 we read: “R. Joshua says: an evil eye (‫ )עין רעה‬and an evil yetzer and a hatred of people remove a human (‫ )מוציאין את האדם‬from the world.” Here, the term yetzer seems to carry a different import than the Ishmaelian term. R. Joshua’s “yetzer” is not a being but a character trait, like the evil eye and the hatred of people. It is a characteristic of some people, and not inherently present in all people (pace Albeck’s commentary, ad loc). Indeed, in the same group of homilies,68 R. Eliezer explicitly characterizes “evil eye” as “the evil way which a human should turn away from” (‫;דרך רעה שיתרחק ממנה האדם‬ 2:9).69 Further support for this interpretation may be cited from a saying by R. Elazar Hakapar, which seems to be modeled on R. Joshua’s earlier saying: “Jealousy and covetousness )‫(תאוה‬70 and honor remove a human from the world” (4:21).71 If the correspondence between the two sayings is taken literally, R. Eleazar ­understands “evil yetzer” as a character trait, similar to covetousness. M. Avot 4:1 states: “Ben Zoma says: . . . Who is a hero? One who conquers (‫ )כובש‬his yetzer, as it is said: the patient is better than a hero, and the ruler of his spirit (‫[ )מושל ברוחו‬is better] than a capturer of cities” (Prov 16:32). While the book of Proverbs assumes that heroism is indeed demonstrated on the battlefield but is surpassed in quality by the ruler of his spirit, Ben Zoma goes one step further and asserts that true heroism is self-control. Not being content with the famous Hellenistic comparison between control of others and self-control,72 he reduces one to the other. The verse cited by Ben Zoma reveals the meaning of “conquering the yetzer” even more specifically: it is patience. Yetzer here means “anger” and its defeat is therefore “anger management.”73 The two appearances of the phrase “conquered his yetzer” (‫)ܟܒܫ ܝܨܪܗ‬ in the works of the fourth-century Persian church father Aphrahat also carry



30 Chapter 1

the same ­import, as do other appearances in Syriac, which may imply a common ­midrashic tradition.74 The mishnaic terms yetzer and yetzer hara do not seem to mean the same thing as in the Ishmaelian corpus. They mark a human trait, not an antinomian being, much as in the homilies from the school of R. Akiva.75 A similar use of yetzer may be discerned in Tosefta (Hor. 1:5): “Who is an apostate? (‫ )משומד‬. . . R. Shimon b. Eleazar says: even one who does things that the yetzer does not covet (‫)שאין היצר תאב‬.” This baraita presents a list of specific transgressions that mark the transgressor as an apostate, who has chosen to remove him or herself from the Jewish community, such as eating pork, drinking wine of idolatrous libations, desecrating the Sabbath, and reconstructing a foreskin.76 R. Shimon b. Eleazar (a disciple of R. Meir, a disciple of R. Akiva) expands the definition to any transgression, but only if the action testifies that it has not been committed for pleasure but to defy the law and its authority. The apostate’s behavior becomes antinomian only when it transcends the yetzer’s desire. The yetzer in R. Shimon’s saying thus stands for simple hunger,77 the opposite of antinomianism, much like R. Akiva’s concept of the yetzer discussed above. However, other places in the Tosefta point to a more developed entity, closer to the Ishmaelian concept: R. Shimon b. Eleazar says in the name of R. Hilfai b. Agra who said in the name of R. Johanan b. Nuri: Anyone who pulls out his hair, rends his garment, breaks his vessels, throws money in rage, should be viewed as a worshipper of idols (‫)עובד עבודה זרה‬, for if his yetzer were to tell him to worship idols (‫)לך ועבוד עבודה זרה‬, he would; for such is the ­worship (‫ )שכך היא עבודתו‬of the evil yetzer. (t. Bab. Kam. 9:31 [ed. ­Lieberman, 49]) At the end of the chapter dedicated to physical injuries (m. Bab. Kam. 8, t. Bab. Kam. 9), the Mishna and Tosefta discuss damaging oneself. But while the Mishna (8:6) says only that it is forbidden (though not carrying a penalty), the Tosefta elaborates on the ethical and religious dimensions of these injuries. Parallel homilies (b. Shab. 105b, Nid. 13b, AdRN A 3, ed. Schechter, 8) offer a slightly different version of the last sentence: “for such is the craft (‫ )אמנותו‬of the evil yetzer,” meaning that the slippery slope from anger to idolatry, narrated here, is but another devious scheme of the yetzer to lead people to sin. The yetzer’s craft (‫ )אמנות‬is its ability to lead people astray, step by step.



Tannaitic Literature 31

This, however, cannot be the meaning of our Tosefta, for the term avodato does not refer to acts done by the yetzer, but to the worship of the yetzer by others. This is proven not only by the general use of avoda in rabbinic literature,78 but from this source itself. The previous sentence—“should be viewed as a worshipper of idols (‫)עובד עבודה זרה‬, for if his yetzer were to tell him to worship idols (‫ )עבוד עבודה זרה‬he would”—leaves little doubt that avodato at the end means “worship” (‫ )עבודה זרה‬of the yetzer.79 The comparison between anger and idolatry is thus explained in this source in two distinct ways: on the one hand, anger leads to idolatry (“ for if his yetzer were to tell him to worship idols, he would”), and on the other anger itself is a form of idolatry, “yetzer-worship” (“ for such is the worship of the evil yetzer”). It seems likely that both are elaborations of the short, cryptic (and probably original) statement: “should be viewed as a worshipper of idols (‫יהא‬ ‫)בעיניך עובד עבודה זרה‬.” How does anger become idolatry? The first explanation views anger as a catalyst for a tumble down a slippery slope to idolatry. The yetzer entices people to increasingly severe misdeeds, from anger and self-mutilation to idolatry. These actions do not have much in common (anger is not even a formal transgression), except for being evil—the evil that is identified with the evil yetzer. The antinomian context, associated with idolatry, is here merely one facet of the inherent evilness of the yetzer.80 The second explanation goes further to present yetzer itself as a foreign god, one who has rites that can be observed (such as self-mutilation). Thus pulling out hair or rending a garment in anger are no longer mere self-destruction, but forms of idolatry.81 This second interpretation is more likely to be the original explanation of the phrase “should be viewed as a worshipper of idols” (compare: “Anyone who obeys their yetzer is like an idolater. What is the reason? You shall have no foreign gods in you” [Ps 81:10]; [y. Ned. 9:1, 41b]; “What foreign god is in a person’s body? Say that it is the evil yetzer” [b. Shab. 105b]), while the first seems to be a softening of this stark picture of yetzer worship; similar to transformation of “this is the worship (‫ )עבודתו‬of the yetzer” into “this is the craft (‫ )אמנותו‬of the yetzer” in later sources. We have already encountered a connection between yetzer and anger in Mishna Avot 4:1 above. However, while in the Mishna yetzer is a code name for anger itself, here it is a being that feeds off anger and encourages it. An amoraic legal ruling based on this tannaitic moral statement makes this even clearer. R. Abin rules that although destructive actions (‫ )מקלקל‬on Shabbat usually carry no liability, the tearing of clothes in anger on Shabbat is punishable, for the render “gives pleasure to his yetzer” (‫ ;עביד נחת רוח ליצרו‬b.



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Shab. 105b). Such descriptions may recall several demonic creatures, first and foremost Asmodeus (‫)אשמדיי‬, the demon of wrath and anger.82 Another explanation: Like one who binds a stone in a sling (‫כצרור אבן‬ ‫[ )במרגמה‬is he who gives honor to a fool] (Prov 26:8)—just as a person who throws a stone to Mercurius is liable for death (‫)מתחייב בנפשו‬, so is one who uses (‫)משתמש‬83 his yetzer is liable for death. (t. Av. Zar. 6:17 [ed. Zuckermandel, 471]) This homily is a component of a series of homilies on Prov 26:8, appended to the end of the laws of idolatry in Tosefta Avoda Zara (chapters 1– 6) in order to employ these specific laws for general moral lessons. The homilies share the interpretation of the cryptic biblical idiom “a stone in a sling” as indicating the cult of Mercurius (‫מרקוליס‬, Hermes-Mercury, who is portrayed as being worshipped by throwing stones onto a heap),84 thus reading the verse as equating giving “honor to a fool” with idolatry. But who is the “fool” in this verse? While the preceding homily reads it as referring to an evil person, ours applies it to the yetzer. Giving honor to the yetzer is thus an idolatrous practice. Note that the homily assumes that the yetzer is an element inherent in all humans and the only choice is whether to “honor” it or not. As in the previous source, the comparison to Hermes-Mercury presents the yetzer as a foreign god and surrendering to it as a cultic activity. Shimon the Righteous said: I have never eaten a nazirite’s guilt-offering, except once. A man came to me from the south and I saw he was beautiful of eyes and good looking and his hair was curly, and I said to him: My son, why do you want to destroy that beautiful hair? He said, I was herding sheep in my town and came to fill water from the river and looked at my reflection (‫)בבואה‬, and my yetzer rushed (‫ )פחז‬over me and wished to remove me from the world. I said to it [the yetzer]: Evil one (‫)רשע‬, did you not find anything better to take pride of (‫)להתגאות בו‬,85 other than something that is not yours, something that will be dust and maggots and worms?! I am going to shave you for the sake of heaven. I [Shimon] lowered his [the nazirite’s] head and kissed it, and said: My son, may those like you who obey the will of the Omnipresent (‫)המקום‬ increase in Israel. You have fulfilled the verse, a man or a woman who shall vow extraordinarily (‫ ;יפליא לנדור‬Num 6:2). (t. Nez. 4:7 [ed. Lieberman, 138–39])



Tannaitic Literature 33

This story gained much scholarly attention.86 Here I shall only concentrate on the function of the yetzer in the narrative. In the parallel version (Sifre Numbers 22, ed. Horowitz, 26), “heart” is used instead of “yetzer,” and some scholars believe that this is the older, more original version,87 which Tosefta supplanted with a more current term. The context of the story, however, points to the opposite direction. The “heart” in this narrative in (R. Ishmael’s!) Sifre Numbers seems to function as a metonymy for the yetzer and not the other way around.88 It appears in the story as an independent entity with whom the young nazirite can engage in dialogue, just like Boaz in Sifre Numbers 88.89 The homily from Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael (Bahodesh 6), discussed above, further supports this premise: “under the water—including the reflection (‫)בוביא‬. [Scripture] went to such lengths in pursuit of the evil yetzer in order not to leave room for any pretext of permitting it (‫אמתלת‬ ‫)התר‬.” The word ‫ בוביא‬here is an alternative spelling of ‫בבואה‬, reflection, at which the nazirite gazed.90 Worship of one’s reflection is thus considered the advice of the evil yetzer. The nazirite narrative reveals an essential distinction between the human and the yetzer. The distinction lies not so much in the act of conversing with the yetzer, which may be read as a mere literary device, but in holding it morally accountable.91 The young nazirite is ethically, not just rhetorically, separated from his yetzer, and thus can reprimand it: “Evil one, you should not have taken pride.”92 The nazirite does not appear in the position of defendant, but rather of an educator, struggling against his yetzer and managing to subdue it: “I am going to shave you for the sake of heaven.”93 Indeed, it is exactly this separation between the nazirite and his yetzer that allows him to overpower the narcissistic temptation and thus bring the story to its happy end, in a stark contrast to Ovid’s tragic narcissus.94 The platonic model of the soul, for all its differences from the rabbinic yetzer discourse, can help us clarify this point. At the end of the fourth book of Plato’s Republic, Socrates cites a story about Leontius who is angry with himself for gazing at the corpses of executed criminals. “For a while he struggled and covered his face. But finally, overpowered by the desire, he opened his eyes wide, ran toward the corpses and said: Look, you damned wretches (κακοδαιμόνες; literally, possessed by daimones), take a fill of the fair sight” (439d–440a).95 The gesture is remarkably similar to the scene of the young nazirite rebuking his yetzer, also revealed as a forbidden gaze: “I looked (‫)נסתכלתי‬ at my reflection.”96 But is this rebuke only a figure of speech? Socrates, for one, does not think so: “This speech, I said, certainly indicates that anger sometimes



34 Chapter 1

makes war against the desires as one thing against something else (ὃς ἀλλὸ ὃν ἀλλό)” (440a). Indeed, the whole point of this story is to prove that the spirited part (θύμος) and desire (ἐπιθυμία) are separate divisions of the psuche.97 The same point is made there also in regard to the relations between the spirited and the rational parts (441b–c) and between the rational and the desiring parts (439b),98 thus completing a tripartite division of the soul. Socrates claims that a man (!) may be deemed “marshaling himself” (κρείττει αὐτοῦ) when he is able to exert the influence of the better part of his soul over the lesser parts (431a). His example is no less than Odysseus, who “rebuked his heart” (κραδίεν ἐνίπαπε) in order not to reveal himself to the suitors too early (441c). Although their anthropologies differ (the yetzer is an external intruder rather than an integral part of the psyche),99 both Plato and the rabbis agree that the soul is made up of separate parts. Thus both Boaz and Odysseus were able to “marshal themselves,” and, in the same manner, both the nazirite and Leontius rebuked their eyes or desire. In both cases one part, identified with the true self, is in conflict with another, whether it is the θύμος, ἐπιθυμία, or yetzer.100 The readings above highlight the difficulty of decisively marking different uses of the term yetzer. The sources are laconic and there is no true dichotomy between character and being, only a spectrum of levels of reification of the yetzer in different sources. However, we can hesitantly suggest that unlike in the Mishna, we can already discern in the Tosefta a yetzer that is an independent entity, a “foreign god inside a person’s body.” Like the Ishmaelian midrashim, these passages from the Tosefta dissolve any possible distinction between “yetzer” and “evil yetzer.” Even without trying to resolve contentious issues of redaction and dating of Mishna and Tosafta, these sources may point to the spread of the Ishmaelian image of the yetzer during or close to the tannaitic period.101 This process will intensify in amoraic literature, which repeatedly uses “yetzer” and “yetzer hara” to refer to a reified demonic being.102 In his recent book on rabbinic “mythmaking,” Michael Fishbane explained his choice of treating certain rabbinic narratives of the divine realm as myths rather than metaphors: “The metaphor is a phrase isolated from a larger whole; and the mythic rereading of it is one feature of a larger drama,” thus “one way to assess whether a given figure was a myth or a metaphor was to consider whether related elements occurred in the same contexts.”103 The large number of sources on the yetzer, all pointing to the same basic picture of a



Tannaitic Literature 35

­ emonic entity, makes its reading as a mere metaphor for conflicting psychod logical tendencies unlikely.104 Despite their different contexts and diverse midrashic needs, the various tannaitic sources discussed above point to a basic consistent picture of the yetzer as an evil entity created by God (“I created your evil yetzer”)105 residing in human heart, and yet independent of it (“remove that evil yetzer from your hearts”).106 The vast majority of the sources present one evil entity (“nothing is more evil than it”), which drags humans to sin and which must be struggled with ceaselessly. The sources offer several war tactics such as prayer, adjuration, or, most commonly, Torah study.

Chapter 2

Yetzer and Other Demons: Patristic Parallels

In the previous chapter I used the term “demonic” to describe the tannaitic (Rabbi Ishmaelian) yetzer. While this term can be employed in various ways, and with varying degrees of literalness, I use it here in the strictest and most literal manner possible. Rabbinic yetzer is a demon that inhabits the human heart. In order to substantiate such a bold claim one may choose either to show that the yetzer originated or developed in a demonological context or that it functions in a manner similar to that of demons. In the next chapter I move to the historical claim (through the analysis of the usage of yetzer at Qumran). Here I wish to show that the yetzer functions in the very same way as demons in contemporaneous literatures. To that end, I dedicate this chapter to comparing the yetzer to the conceptualizations of daimones in various early Christian compositions. I begin the survey with the “Jewish-Christian” pseudo-Clementine ­Homilies, a contemporary description of demons and the way they act in the human body. The ninth book of the second-century “Jewish-Christian” pseudo-Clementine Homilies 1 discusses the dangers of demons (δαιμόνες) and the ways to overpower them. The comparison with R. Ishmael’s yetzer is fascinating. In the Homilies, demons are sophisticated spirits (πνεύματα), made of fire, which come from the outside to live in human bodies.2 They try to deceive humans and control their souls by putting foreign thoughts in their minds: “Whence many, not knowing how they are influenced, consent to the evil thoughts suggested by the demons, as if they were the reasoning of their own souls” (Hom. 9:12). This could have well been a description of Boaz’s yetzer attempting to drag him to sin through “evil thoughts” about having intercourse with the unmarried Ruth. Demons act on humans by suggesting “to every one’s mind desire after what things they please” (9:11). Their ultimate goal, however, is much more



Patristic Parallels 37

sinister: “In order that he may neglect his savior” (9:11). If you just replace the Christian homily’s “savior” (σωτῆρ) with the rabbinic “world to come” (‫)עולם הבא‬, the tactics of the yetzer would be accurately depicted.3 Just like the rabbinic yetzer, demons can be fought and bested using several tactics, mostly purity, abstinence, and prayer. They, too, have no control over the true believer: “But with those who thoroughly believe and who do good (εὖ πραττοῦσιν), they cannot remain even for a moment” (9:11), “For they know those who have given themselves up to God, wherefore honoring them they flee affrighted” (9:19). Compare Sifre Deuteronomy 45, quoted above: “Be occupied with words of Torah and it will not reign over you.” This comparison may shed light on the Tosefta’s warning against worshiping the yetzer (‫)כך היא עבודתו‬. The warning recalls the Homilies’ claim that the demons are mistakenly worshiped as gods due to their power (9:15– 17). The accusation that pagans worship demons—a very popular theme in early Christianity4—may elucidate the sources discussed above (y. Ned. 9:1, 41b; b. Shab. 105b) that present the yetzer as a foreign god, and surrendering to it as idolatry. If we agree that “there can be no doubt that we are dealing with two groups in close proximity that maintain intellectual contact with each other,”5 we may speculate about a direct influence between the early rabbis and the community that produced the Homilies. Without a smoking gun, however, it suffices to talk about a shared cultural atmosphere. The demons in the Homilies have traits that the tannaitic yetzer does not, such as mantic powers and the ability to physically damage and heal (which is why some mistake them for gods). However, as we see in the following chapters, this difference is blurred as amoraic sources invest the yetzer with new, similar powers, which make it increasingly demonic. The amoraic yetzer can harm humans spiritually and physically, as well as mislead the Jewish nation and humanity at large. One difference between the yetzer and pseudo-Clementine’s daimones, however, remains stable: the total absence of an ascetic ethos in rabbinic literature. Unlike the Homilies, rabbinic yetzer is not identified with the body and its pleasures,6 and “abstinence and fasting and suffering of affliction” (9:10) is nowhere suggested as a cure for the yetzer.7 In their stead, the house of study is the major weapon with which yetzer is fought in tannaitic literature. That the comparison with early Christianity should not be confined to “Jewish-Christian” sources is made abundantly clear by examining the Alexandrian



38 Chapter 2

patristic tradition, from Clement to Evagrius. The second century’s Clement of Alexandria may well be one of the most philosophical (i.e., Hellenistic) church fathers,8 and his anthropology is a sophisticated amalgam of middle Platonism and Stoic conceptions. Thus in chapter 20 of the second book of the Stromateis, passions are conceptualized as “imprints” on the soul, according to the Stoic manner. The source of these imprints, however, is not the senses, as in the philosophical account,9 but external spiritual powers: “The simple message of our philosophy says that all passions (πάθη) are imprints made in the soul (ἐναπερείσματα τῆς ψυχῆς) when it is malleable and yielding, and like seal impressions of the spiritual powers (τῶν πνευματικῶν δυνάμεων) against whom we are wrestling” (Strom. II 20, 110, 1).10 Clement goes on to explicate these powers: “I suppose it is the job of the powers of wickedness (ταῐς κακούργοις δυνάμεσιν) to try to implant something of their own nature in each being, with a view to wrestling down and securing power over those who say No to them” (110, 2). This picture is a result of a fascinating blend: “Whilst this idea was common to both stoics and Philo, Clement adds a new twist by seeing behind this disruptive activity the work of the demons.”11 This added twist injects ideas found in the New Testament, as well as in other Jewish sources,12 to create a new type of demonology, one that is inseparable from the discourse about human actions and their religious endeavor. Clement thus continues: “It follows reasonably enough that some loose the boat, but all who undertake the contest with better equipment for it, fight with all the weapons at their disposal and keep it until they have won the crown, whereas the powers just mentioned eventually succumb among the pools of blood in admiration at the victors” (110, 3). For Clement, however, demons ultimately remain outside of humans, even while influencing them through their “impressions.”13 It is only with his famous student, Origen, that demons were allowed deep into the soul, “brought home to each human heart,”14 thus creating, for the first time, a systematic demonological anthropology. In the third book of Peri Archon (On First Principles),15 Origen employs the theory of evil angelic beings (“opposing powers”)16 to explain the dynamics of human sinfulness and the way to resist it.17 He begins with a list of passages from both Testaments proving that evil angelic forces indeed exist: “Through all these instances, therefore, the divine scripture teaches us that there are certain invisible enemies (invisibiles hostes) fighting against us, and it tells us that we must be armed to meet them” (De principiis III 2.1). According to Origen, demons are intruders who invade the minds of humans and possess them:18 “By a certain kind of action



Patristic Parallels 39

or a certain kind of inaction a ‘place’ in the mind is given to the devil with the result that, when once he has entered our heart he either takes possession of us, or at any rate pollutes the soul” (III 2.4).19 These external powers—identified here with “the devil,” but more often with “demons”—take possession of people who are inherently intemperate and indulgent, exploiting their natural, bodily weakness: “These opposing powers (contrariae istae virtutes), that is, the demons (daemones), have been allowed to occupy a place in their minds, a place that intemperance first laid open, and have taken complete possession of their intelligence” (III 2.2).20 Sin is thus a result of a combination of natural weakness and demonic taking over: We derive the beginnings and what we may call the seeds of sin from those desires which are given to us naturally for our use. But when we indulge these to excess and offer no resistance to the first movements towards intemperance, then the hostile powers, sizing the opportunity of this first offence, incite and urges us on in every way, striving to extend the sins over a larger field; so that while we men supply the occasions and beginnings of our sins, the hostile powers spread them far and wide and if possible endlessly. (III 2.2) A similar description appears in Genesis Rabba 22:6 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 210–13; discussed in detail in Chapter 4 below): “When he [the evil yetzer] sees a man rub his eyes, fix his hair, hang upon his heels [examples of immodest behavior], he says: this one is mine.” Origen also details the specific tactic of the demons: “One that is negligent and slothful, being less cautious, gives a place to those spirits which, like robbers (latrones) lying in ambush, contrive to rush into the minds of men whenever they see a place offered to them through slackness” (III 3.6). A remarkably identical metaphor appears in Genesis Rabba (III 3.6), where the yetzer appears as a robber (‫ )לסטים‬waiting to seize weak people.21 According to Origen, God has ordained that humans should be able to conquer the powers opposing them: “The strength, therefore, which is given to us in order that we may be able to conquer, we by the exercise of our free will either use diligently and conquer or feebly and suffer defeat” (III 2.3). This is highly important to Origen, not only in order to preserve free will, but also to maintain the idea of a struggle. For Origen, inner war has an independent religious value, which is revealed in his insistence that God-given power should be neither too weak nor too strong, but one that enables a fair fight:



40 Chapter 2

“For if it were given to us in such completeness as to ensure our victory by all means, that is, to prevent us from being by any possibility conquered, what reason for struggling would remain to him who could not be conquered?” (III 2.3). Origen repeats his principle of human ability and responsibility to resist the demonic vices several times: “For it is possible for us, when an evil power has begun to urge us on to a deed of evil, to cast away the wicked suggestions and to resist the low enticements” (III 2.4). At the same time, he also emphasizes the need for constant divine assistance in this war: “So I think that a man can probably never by himself overcome an opposing power, but only by the use of divine help” (III 2.5). Several rabbinic statements and prayers regarding the yetzer present the very same picture of the never-ending struggle as the most fundamental religious mission entrusted to humankind, enacted through a combination of divine assistance and free will. In both cases the basic metaphor is that of war.22 Origen’s account is remarkable not because of the central place it gives to demonology—demons and evil spirits occupied a privileged place in both ancient Judaism and early Christianity long before him23 —but due to his making demons part of the psyche, and his use of them to account for human sinfulness and their moral struggle.24 The detailed resemblance between Origen’s account of the demonic assault and the way the rabbis narrate the saga of the yetzer—the dynamic of its entry to humans, its mental destructiveness and the religious war against it—is striking. 25 Origen’s demonology had a thorough influence on the nascent monastic discourse in Egypt.26 As David Brakke demonstrated in his Demons and the Making of the Monk, the monastic literature fully adopted Origen’s ethical reading of demons: Origen treated demons primarily in terms of their resistance to the human being’s effort to love God and do the good, and the monks of the fourth century followed him by focusing on their own progress toward virtue and on how demons paradoxically facilitate that progress by providing the resistance they had to overcome. (13) Following in Origen’s steps, monastic demonology underwent a thorough ethical turn, without losing its traditional role as endangering the physical wellbeing of humans. “Monastic demons certainly appeared to people, casted diseases, and even possessed people, but they more often suggested evil thoughts, provoked disagreements between monks, or stirred up a monk’s passions.”27



Patristic Parallels 41

This is not a small change. Dale Martin, in his Inventing Superstition, shows that Plotinus’s successors, Porphyry and his student Iamblichus, developed their own demonology at exactly the same time as Origen and his followers. Martin thus suggests that Origen be read as part of “broader shifts in the intellectual culture of the period”28 in which the assumption that there is a perfect match between cosmic and moral hierarchies, and that therefore divine entities must be moral, was undermined. “In late ancient philosophy there is still an ontological hierarchy and there is still an ethical hierarchy, but the two hierarchies are no longer expected to match one another.”29 This is how the idea of evil divine entities became legitimate. However, by pointing toward the shared formation of demonology in late antiquity, Martin overlooked one major distinction. While for Prophyry and Iamblichus demons cause illness and suffering,30 for Origen and his students demonology appears first and foremost in the context of human sinfulness.31 Such moral demonology is not found in contemporaneous “pagan” cycles, and thus should be read as Jewish and Christian contributions to ­Hellenistic anthropology. The comparison between the rabbinic yetzer and monastic demonology goes beyond this basic function, and includes specific images and metaphors as well as common strategies. Demons endanger the “integrated personality” of the monks in their ceaseless effort to become “single ones.”32 This echoes a similar rabbinic concern, presented most sharply in Sifra Shemini 1 (ed. Weiss 43d), discussed above: “Remove that evil yetzer from your hearts, so that all of you will be as one in awe and of one mind (‫ )עצה אחת‬to serve God. Just as He is singular (‫ )יחידי‬in the world, so let your service be singular (‫ )מיוחדת‬before Him.”33 Similarly, Saint Antony’s claim in his letters that demons intrude the body as “robbers in our house”34 recalls an identical image in Genesis Rabba 22:6, where the yetzer is presented as an external intruder who gradually usurps control until it becomes “the master of the house” (‫ ;בעל הבית‬i.e., the body, based on the parable of the “poor man’s sheep” in 2 Sam 12:4). The Alexandrian monastic demonological tradition reached its most systematic formulation in the writings of Evagrius Ponticus, during the last decades of the fourth century.35 In his work Peri Logismōn (On Thoughts)36 he suggests a typology of demonic thoughts (λογισμοί)37 and passions,38 and instructs the advanced monk how to resist them.39 Evagrius, like his predecessors, emphasizes that demons only attack those who are feeble and vulnerable.40 However, in his account the mental drama is demonic through and through. Once people have fallen into the hands of one of the major demons



42 Chapter 2

(gluttony, avarice, and vainglory), they will fall into the hands of the others as well. He thus begins: “Among the demons who set themselves in opposition to practical life, those ranged first in battle are the ones entrusted with the appetites of gluttony (γαστριμαργίας), those who make to us suggestions of avarice (φιλαργυρίαν), and those who entice us to seek human esteem (δόξαν). All the other demons march along behind these ones and in their turn take up with people wounded by these.”41 He then goes on to order the different thoughts that come from various demons, prescribing a specific remedy (mostly ascetic practices) for each. Demons that attack the irascible part (θυμός) are to be fought with “fasts, vigils and sleeping on the ground,” while those attacking the desiring part (ἐπιθυμία) can be bested “with patience, freedom from resentment and almsgiving.”42 Evagrius’s analysis is more comprehensive and all-embracing than anything we find in rabbinic literature,43 but the basic themes are similar. Anger management, avoidance of pride, and fighting all sorts of desires (for money, honor, and sex)44 are also popular themes in the rabbinic accounts of the yetzer cited above.45 Evagrius also emphasizes the sophistication of the demons and the various deceits they use, in a manner quite similar to the tannaitic discussions of “pretexts of permission” (‫)אמתלת היתר‬. For example: “There are certain impure demons (ἀκαθάρτων δαιμόνων) who always sit in front those engaged in reading and try to seize their mind, often taking their pretexts (ἀφορμὰς) from the divine scriptures themselves and ending in evil thoughts.”46 His narration of the guiles of the demon of greed—“deceiving the soul little by little in this way, he encompasses it with the thoughts of avarice and hands it over to the demon of vainglory”47—evokes the homilies about the gradual development of the yetzer in Genesis Rabba 22 and b. Sukka (both discussed in Chapter 4 below). Like the yetzer, “the demons conceive of all these things . . . so as to wage war against the anchorites.”48 In both cases it is a struggle for life and death.49 This very partial list of comparisons50 leaves little doubt that the yetzer is indeed conceptualized in rabbinic literature in demonological terms. It also serves as a reminder of the proximity between rabbinic and monastic anthropologies— over and above the differences in their attitudes toward sexual morality and ascetic practices—a proximity scholars tend too often to play down.51 The fact that the instructions regarding the yetzer refer mainly to students in the study house makes it especially akin to the patristic instructions regarding demons, intended especially (and in some cases solely) for monks.52 Differences notwithstanding, both rabbis and early monks dedicated their lives to



Patristic Parallels 43

learning, which was for them a fundamental religious activity rather than just an intellectual endeavor, and associated study with ascetic practices.53 Both also connect their practices to the special war they particularly must fight against the yetzer/demons. Compare b. Suk 52a: “[The yetzer] leaves the other nations and attacks only Israel.. . . Abaye said: [the yetzer attacks] sages more than anyone (‫ ;”)ובתלמידי חכמים יתר מכולן‬to Athanasius’s Life of Antony: “The demons, therefore, if they see all Christians—monks especially (μάλιστα δε μοναχούς), labouring gladly and advancing, they first attack and tempt them” (Vita Antonii 23).54 It is thus not surprising to find that both literatures developed a similar body of cardiognosis, knowledge of the heart. The comparison with fourth-century Athanaisus and Evagrius is even more compelling if we consider that these images become increasingly radical and developed in amoraic literature, as we see in Chapter 4 below. Comparison, however, also highlights the distinctiveness of the yetzer. For the rabbis there is a definite division between the yetzer discourse and the treatment of “classic” demons. Demons are an integral part of their normal experience,55 but they have no role in their account of the source of human sinfulness.56 Only the demonic-yet-fully-internalized yetzer appears in this context. Thus, while Origen and his followers discuss a variety of demons, appearing both as individuals and in groups,57 the rabbis know of only one, single yetzer, penetrating humans. For the rabbis, unlike in monastic literature, there is no simple continuity between the yetzer and “real,” external demons. The rabbis developed a sophisticated division of labor, in which external demons account for external dangers such as illness and suffering, while the (internal) yetzer accounts for human sinfulness. This dichotomy is further clarified in the next chapter, in which we discuss the appearance of “evil yetzer” in relation to cosmic demonic figures at Qumran.

Chapter 3

Yetzer at Qumran: Proto-Rabbinic?

Comparison of the rabbinic yetzer and its biblical roots reveals a conceptual gap that should be accounted for. How did yetzer, which denotes thoughts or plans in the Bible, become a reified being? How did a rather marginal biblical term come to the heart of rabbinic anthropology? What are the origins of the phrase “yetzer ra”? Most of tannaitic literature, as we have seen, presents yetzer as a mature and developed term from its earliest strata, and so cannot be expected to yield answers to these questions. The first significant use of the term yetzer 1 as well as the first known occurrence of the idiom “yetzer ra” are both found at Qumran, and it is there we begin to look for answers. This chapter examines the contribution of the Qumranic yetzer to our understanding of the term in rabbinic literature. I contrast these corpora in two ways. First, I examine and compare processes of reification of the yetzer (or “ontologization,” “hypostazation”), which culminate in its portrayal as an independent being living inside the human heart. Second, I assess the role of yetzer in the wider anthropological and cosmological systems in these two corpora. My claim is that at Qumran yetzer occupies a middle ground between the biblical “thought” and the reified rabbinic being. I also argue that Qumranic material sheds new light on the role of the rabbinic yetzer as a substitute for the grand cosmological structures that functioned as the central explanation for human attraction to sin in much of the Second Temple literature. Qumranic texts thus contribute to our understanding of the rabbinic yetzer both heuristically and historically. They present different possible contextualizations2 of yetzer in the larger theological and cosmological structures and, at the same time, exemplify what it looks like in a post-biblical, prerabbinic period.3 Most studies on the yetzer work in the opposite direction and elucidate Qumranic material by using the more detailed and developed imagery of the

Qumran 45

rabbinic corpora. I would like to reverse this direction and use Qumran as a backdrop for the place of the yetzer in rabbinic literature (this is also why the chapters are ordered as they are). Where scholars asked how far we should identify Qumranic yetzer with the more developed rabbinic one,4 I would ask how Qumranic texts assist us in understanding the rise of yetzer in tannaitic literature. Ultimately, I try to show that rabbinic yetzer is much closer to the Qumranic one than previously believed and in both cases it is a part of a wider discussion regarding the source of sin and evil in this world.5

The Reification of the Yetzer and the Birth of the Term “Yetzer Ra” Scholars have long debated how different the Qumranic usage of the root ‫יצר‬ is from the biblical one. Does the Qumranic term denote a reified being, as in rabbinic literature, or is it merely an extension of the biblical meaning(s), ­signifying creation or creatures, and by extension thought, plans, or disposition?6 A clear example of this problem would be the relationship between yetzer and heart at Qumran. Based on the two verses in Genesis that combine heart and yetzer together (‫ יצר מחשבות לבו‬,‫)יצר לב האדם‬, the two appear as synonymous several times throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls.7 This may indicate that the term does not yet denote an independent anthropological phenomenon. In rabbinic literature, on the other hand, yetzer becomes separate from the heart.8 For example, on the words “lest your hearts shall be led astray” (Deut 11:16), the tannaitic homilist comments: “Lest yetzer hara deceive you” (Sifre Deut 43, ed. Finkelstein, 96). I already noted the change of voices that takes place here: the heart is led astray (‫)יִ פתה‬, while the yetzer actively deceives (‫)יַ טעה‬. The homily thus assumes what is explicated in other places: the yetzer is not identified with the heart but is an entity in the heart that leads it astray. Similarly, the midrash describes the yetzer as the foreskin of the heart, which must be circumcised (Mekhilta de-Miluim, Sifra Shemini 1, ed. Weiss, 43d, referring to Deut 10:16). In contrast, the Rule of the Community that paraphrases the same verse simply supplants yetzer for “heart”—‫“( למול ביחד ערלת יצר‬to circumcise in the community the foreskin of his yetzer”; 1QS V 5).9 Reification of yetzer at Qumran is best exemplified through the different usages of the term yetzer ra. Although the basic meaning of biblical yetzer is neutral, in two verses in Genesis mentioned above (6:5, 8:21) it appears in a



46 Chapter 3

clearly negative context, thus marking a specific human tendency toward evil. Regardless of their original intention, these two verses had a decisive impact on later literature and occupied a central part in various post-biblical discussions about the source of evil and sinfulness. Sirach’s usage of “yetzer” does not differ significantly from the biblical basic sense of “tendency” or “disposition,”10 although it is part of a more systematic anthropology than the biblical one.11 Even Sirach 17:31: ‫“( ורע יצר בשר ודם‬yetzer of flesh and blood is evil”) is not more than a simple paraphrase of Gen 8:12.12 A more significant development of the uses of the biblical idioms coined in these two verses (‫מחשבות האדם‬/‫ )יצר לב‬can be seen in Jubilees 35:9, a Hebrew fragment of which was preserved at Qumran (1Q18:3–4): ‫כי יודע אתה את‬ ]‫“( יצר עשו אשר הו[א רע מנעוריו‬for you know the yetzer of Esau which i[s evil from his youth]”).13 This text parts with the biblical phrase on two points: the yetzer is no longer related to the heart, and it is not the yetzer of all people that is evil, but that of specific evil persons. The evilness of human yetzer—which Genesis considers a basic trait of all human beings—becomes “sectarian” and is identified only with the wicked, such as Esau and his camp. A different development appears in the Qumranic wisdom composition called “Sapiential Work A” or 4QInstruction, (4Q417 2 II 12),14 which commands: ‫“( אל תפתכה מחשבת יצר רע‬let not the plan of yetzer ra mislead you”). “Heart” disappears from the biblical idiom here as well, leaving “yetzer” on its own. However, unlike in Jubilees, the biblical yetzer is not ascribed to evil people alone. Even the member of the yahad, the Qumranic community, can be enticed by it. Furthermore, evil yetzer here is an active agent that can entice people to evil. This wording must assume at least some measure of separation between humans and their yetzer as well as a measure of activism on the yetzer’s behalf.15 The most important innovation in this text, however, is the very appearance of the phrase yetzer ra. This phrase does not appear in the Bible, where yetzer never stands alone (but with “heart” or “thoughts”), and “evil” appears as a predicate adjective of yetzer rather than part of a set phrase. Unlike Belial, Satan, and evil spirits, all of which are found in various Second Temple traditions, it is most doubtful whether yetzer ra is attested at all in contemporaneous texts outside Qumran.16 We should thus try to decode not only the exact meaning of yetzer ra in Qumranic literature, but also the role it plays there. What lacunae does yetzer ra fill in the anthropology of the scrolls, and how does it fit into their cosmology and demonology? Eigbert Tigchelaar correctly distinguishes between verses paraphrasing Genesis—such as 4QInstruction above, or this quote from 4QadmonFlood

Qumran 47

(4Q370 I 3): ]‫“( וישפטם יהוה כ[כל] דרכיהם וכמחשבת יצר לבם ה[רע‬and YHWH judged them according to [all] their ways and according to the thoughts of the [evil] yetzer of their heart”)—and those texts in which yetzer ra appears alone, not accompanied by the biblical “heart” or “thought.”17 A yetzer independent to a certain degree from its biblical origins appears only in this second context, thus marking the beginning (!) of its reification. This phenomenon can be clearly identified in two places only: a. 4Qbarki Napshic (4Q436 1 I 10): ‫יצר רע גער[תה מן כליותי רוח קוד]ש שמתה‬ ‫“( בלבבי‬Yetzer ra you have rebuk[ed from my kidneys, a holy spiri]t you have placed in my heart”). Yetzer ra appears here as part of a list of bad tendencies (such as harlotry of the eyes, a stiff neck, and haughtiness of the heart and eyes), and Tigchelaar suggests it might also be a bad tendency. On the other hand, he remarks that the word ‫ גער‬suggests a being, such as Satan or an evil spirit, which can be “rebuked” (see, e.g., Zac 3:2, 1QM XIV 10).18 The passage might therefore be describing a process of cause and effect: the dismissal of demonic beings, such as the heart of stone and the evil yetzer, causes the removal of bad tendencies. Tigchelaar concludes cautiously that “there is not always a clear distinction between virtues and vices and spirits as personifications of those virtues and vices.”19 It seems, however, that the context points indeed to yetzer’s identification with an evil tendency rather than a demonic being. Note that yetzer is not identified with the human “heart,” which appears in the preceding verse,20 for unlike the heart, which is to be purified (‫)ותשם לב טהור תחתיו‬, yetzer is to be removed altogether (according to the editor’s reconstruction, from the kidneys),21 as are the other bad tendencies mentioned in this passage (all connected to specific bodily organs: ‫ גבה לב‬,‫ זעף אף‬,‫זנות עיניים‬, etc.). b. 11QPsa Plea (11Q5 XIX 15–16): ‫אל תשלט בי שטן ורוח טמאה מכאוב ויצר רע אל‬ ‫“( ירשו בעצמי‬Let not satan rule over me nor an evil spirit; let neither pain nor yetzer ra take possession of my bones”).22 As Cohen Stuart notes, the cataloglike nature of the verse makes its exegesis extremely difficult. Are the items synonymous? Do some parallel others? Several scholars have correctly suggested that Satan and the spirit of defilement should be differentiated from pain and yetzer ra, due to the verbs associated with them; the latters seem to be the result of the “rule” of the formers over humans.23 Thus yetzer here appears as a trait rather than a thing, just like “pain” with which it is grouped. Jack Sanders, in his editio princeps, was the first to compare “yetzer” in this list with that of rabbinic literature: “Here also are found Satan and the evil inclination of rabbinic literature rather than Belial and the spirit of wickedness of Qumran” (76). This observation was developed by David Flusser,24 who



48 Chapter 3

c­ ompared the request here with the one in the Aramaic Testament of Levy: ‫אל‬ ‫“( תשלט בי כל שטן‬and may no adversary rule over me”; 4QLevib ar [4Q213a 1 I 17]), as well as with several later prayers that contain a supplication to be released from the dominion of yetzer hara. Flusser reads all these as elaborations of Ps 119:133: “Do not let any iniquity (‫ )און‬dominate me,” maintaining that the fear of demons became greater between Psalms and the later supplications. We should note, however, that yetzer enters this field rather late: the dominion of ‫ און‬from Psalms is “translated” in various ways in Second Temple compositions—‫ רוח בליעל‬in Jubilees, ‫ כל שטן‬in the Testament of Levy, and ‫שטן ורוח‬ ‫ טמאה‬in the Psalms scroll.25 The Bavli, however, is the first to record: ‫ואל ישלוט‬ ‫“( בי יצר הרע‬Do not let yetzer hara dominate me”; b. Ber. 60b). The two sources that explicitly mention yetzer ra present us with a similar dilemma, and in both it ultimately seems that yetzer is not yet a reified being. Rabbinic literature betrays a much stronger processes of ontologization of the yetzer, and its image undergoes additional development in amoraic literature. Synonyms are indicative of this process: in the Bible yetzer parallels “thought”; at Qumran it is interchangeable with “heart.” In later rabbinic literature, in contrast, we already find “heart” that is in fact yetzer.26 The question of reification hides a more basic dilemma. It is impossible to say to what extent yetzer functions as a technical term at Qumran. On the one hand, it is detached from the biblical “heart” and “thoughts,” forms a set phrase, yetzer ra, and is featured in a demonological semantic field (temptation, dominion, and banishment). On the other hand, yetzer still betrays its biblical roots in many Qumranic texts, and more often than not its meaning is quite fluid. Similar doubts exist regarding other quasi-demonic terms in Qumran as well.27 But even if yetzer is not a completely defined term at Qumran, it plays there a rather fixed role and appears in limited contexts. A closer look at these contexts may yield more unequivocal answers than those regarding the unsolved issues of reification. This will also allow us to plot a development from Qumran to the rabbinic usage of “yetzer.”

The Role of Yetzer at Qumran: Demonology and the Sources of Sin At first, it seemed possible to distinguish between two distinct contexts of yetzer at Qumran: an element of every person’s anthropology on the one hand, and a component of a dualistic cosmology on the other. The first context is prominent,

Qumran 49

especially in the Thanksgiving Scroll (Hodayot). The term keeps the basic biblical meaning of creation and disposition in most of its occurrences, but reinterprets it to express the Qumranic ideology of the deplorable state of humanity.28 While yetzer may appear in neutral contexts (‫כי אתה ידעת כל יצר מעשה‬, “for you know the yetzer of every creature,” XV 13), or even positive ones (‫ואתה ידעת יצר‬ ‫ נש]ענתי להרים ל[ב] ולהעיז בכוח‬...[ ‫עבדך כי לא‬, “and you know the yetzer of your servant, that I . . . did not [re]ly to uplift the hea[rt] and seek shelter in strength,” XV 26; cf. the various appearances of ‫יצר סמוך‬, “a staunch yetzer”), most of its appearances in the Hodayot are unambiguously negative, in accordance with the yahad’s famously pessimistic anthropology.29 This is true both with regard to the basic, physical meaning of yetzer, such as ‫יצר חומר‬, “creature of clay,”30 as well as its more developed meanings as thought or disposition (‫ ואכירה] לחטאה ויגון‬...[ ‫יצרי גבר‬ ֵ ‫בדעתי‬, “When I knew man’s yetzers [ . . . and paid attention] to sin and the anguish of guilt,” XIX 20). The negative imagery of the yetzer in these sources is merely a reflection of the general negative attitude toward humanity (including the members of the yahad). Yetzer in the Thanksgiving Scroll is thus not essentially evil, but an expression of the basic shameful state of humans, creatures of clay.31 Alongside these general expressions of human nature, several verses specifically describe the yetzer of the wicked. This yetzer is indeed inherently evil and is explicitly identified with Belial: ‫השם לבבי ממחשבת רוע כי בליעל עם הופע‬ ‫“( יצר הוותם‬my heart is horrified at evil plans, for Belial is present when their destructive yetzer becomes apparent,” XV 3–4).32 The yetzer of the wicked is also called ‫“( יצר אשמה‬yetzer of guilt”), specifically marking, in both its appearances (1QHa XIV 32, CD 2:16), the opponents of the poet (‫בני אשמה‬, “sons of guilt”; 1QHa XIV 29–30) who persecute him.33 Other proximate terms seem to function in a similar manner (esp. ‫ יצר רמיה‬and ‫יצר עולה‬, “yetzer of deceit,” “yetzer of injustice,” 1QHa XXI frg. 3 9–10).34 In the Damascus Document the attraction to ‫ יצר אשמה‬parallels “stubbornness of heart” (‫)שרירות לב‬, a term that specifically characterizes the violators of the covenant: 35 ‫ולא לתור במחשבות יצר אשמה ועיני זנות כי רבים תעו בם וגבורי חיל נכשלו בם‬ ‫מלפנים ועד הנה בלכתם בשרירות לבם נפלו‬ And not allow yourselves to be attracted by the thoughts of a yetzer of guilt and lascivious eyes, for many have gone astray due to them and brave heroes stumbled on account of them, from ancient times until



50 Chapter 3

now, for having walked in the stubbornness of their hearts they fell (CD II, 16–17)36 This specific identification of the yetzer with the evil opponents of the poet parallels the process we have already seen in Jubilees (35:9), in which the yetzer of Genesis 8 is attributed specifically to Esau. It thus seems that yetzer appears in two different contexts: the anthropological and the demonological. Yetzer is the thought/intent/inclination/nature of humans, which in regard to the poet is shameful but subject to God (according to the anthropology of the Thanksgiving Scroll), but in the wicked it is demonic and under the dominion of Belial (according to its cosmology). This neat dichotomy is broken, however, by at least one occurrence of yetzer in the Thanksgiving Scroll: ‫“( ולא עזבתני בזמות יצרי‬and you did not abandon me to the plots of my yetzer,” XIII 6). Yetzer here does not simply signify human deplorable nature here. The use of the word “plot” (‫)מזמה‬37 testifies that yetzer is an independent component, with sinister intent (compare: ‫זמות בליעל יחשובו‬, “they devise the plots of Belial,” XII 13).38 A parallel phenomenon is revealed regarding the phrase ‫יצר רע‬. Unlike ‫יצר אשמה‬, which only the wicked have, the enticements of ‫ יצר רע‬are something that even the member of the yahad should be cautioned against. Thus, 4QInstructionc 2 II 12 and 11QPsa Plea XIX 15–16, mentioned above, contain requests for divine assistance in the struggle against it. Although the possibility of different sources should not be ruled out, the difficulty of making clear-cut distinctions within the Thanksgiving Scroll itself,39 and the existence of intermediate terms (such as ‫)זמות יצרי‬, makes a source-critical solution especially problematic. Instead, I suggest acknowledging a basic inconsistency or tension in the cosmology of the yahad. Such an inconsistency was identified by many scholars in the context of the “doctrine of two spirits” (1QS III 13–IV 26).40 At the beginning of this famous passage, the two spirits control different groups: the sons of righteousness are led by the prince of light, and the sons of wickedness by the angel of darkness; but by the end, the spirits are transformed from cosmic to psychological beings, contained within all people: ‫“( עד הנה יריבו רוחי אמת ועול בלבב גבר‬until now the spirits of truth and injustice fight in the heart of man,” IV 23). The spirit of injustice dwells in every person, which is why even the elect must be purified at the end of days (IV 20–21).41 Source-critical solutions were offered for this problem as well, but in this case the inner ideological tension is obvious: the cosmology of the yahad can account for the election of the sect, but not for the depravity and sinfulness of

Qumran 51

its members. The combination of election with sinfulness requires a more complex and conflicted system.42 Evidence for this tension appears in a short addendum at the end of the first part of the doctrine (III 21–22), pointing out that the Angel of Darkness and his spirits are a stumbling block to the Children of Righteousness: ‫“( וכול נגועיהם ומועדי צרותם בממשלת משטמתו‬and all their afflictions and their periods are caused by the dominion of his enmity”).43 It is not surprising that eventually the struggle enters the very heart of each individual. A similar inner tension explains the dual appearance of the demonic yetzer, both as characterizing the evil opponents of the poet and as residing in the hearts of the members of the yahad themselves. The demonic yetzer that characterizes the wicked is brought into the hearts of the members of the yahad in order to explain the source of their own sins in terms of foreign influence. The double move identified above—transferring cosmic dualism into the hearts of people,44 and identifying human shameful yetzer with Belial’s demonic plots— is meant to explain the temptation of the sons of light toward sin, and their feelings of depravity. It is this explanatory need that breaks the neat dichotomy between the yetzer of the members of the yahad and that of their wicked opponents; both are demonized. The need for such a radical solution becomes apparent when we realize that most Qumranic texts, including the Thanksgiving Scroll, did not adopt the psychological dualism of the doctrine of two spirits, and remained only with the neat cosmic and social divisions. As Jorg Frey put it: “The idea of an internal struggle between good and evil within the heart of any human being has been abandoned completely. Now the ethical criteria of good and evil seem to be firmly related to definite social groups.”45 The carnal, evil, and even demonic yetzer thus serves as an alternative explanation for the sinful consciousness of the members of the yahad, which could not be understood in light of cosmic dualism alone. And so we can say that biblical yetzer found its way into the world of Qumran in two complementary ways. It was adapted to their pessimistic anthropology and took on a negative bent (as in ‫)יצר חמר‬, while at the same time it was incorporated into their cosmology and associated with Belial and his dominion (as in ‫)יצר אשמה‬. These contexts, however, are not fully separate, just as the spirits of Belial and those that exist in the hearts of the members of the yahad are not completely distinct. Yetzer ra can therefore be identified both with the poet and with the wicked group against whom he is fighting. Unveiling the double context of yetzer in Qumran moves us back to rabbinic literature. Rabbinic anthropology is very remote from the pessimist



52 Chapter 3

­ nderstanding of humanity at Qumran. Unlike Qumranic texts, the rabbinic u sources discussed above do not identify the yetzer with human inner corruptness and baseness. On the contrary, they consider the yetzer as separate from humans, enticing them to sin against their inner will. The cosmological context is more complex. Rabbinic yetzer is not portrayed as being subject to external cosmic demons, which the rabbis do not use to explain human sinfulness at all. But, as seen above, yetzer is something of a demon itself: an independent evil being dwelling in the hearts of humans, pulling them deliberately and consciously away from God. The homily in Sifre Deuteronomy discussed above sheds light on this demonic aspect of the yetzer (or some remnant of it): “On your heart (Deut 11:18)—This was the source of R. Josiah’s saying: A person must adjure (‫ )להשביע‬his yetzer” (Sifre Deut 33, ed. Finkelstein, 59–60). Adjuration of demons and spirits is a common magical technique, known both from Qumran and from Byzantine Aramaic bowls and amulets.46 Rabbinic literature, however, mentions the technique only regarding the yetzer. In amoraic sources, as we shall se below, we even find yetzer in universal and eschatological contexts, similar to the cosmic demons in Second Temple literature. The yetzer, unlike more standard demons, is already associated in the Bible with the human heart, thus allowing for a more internalized depiction of the source of sinfulness. Yetzer may be under the dominion of Belial and its spirits, but it still dwells within humans. The appearance of yetzer ra is therefore a demonstration of an inward motion of demonology that already existed at Qumran.47 The “evil heart” in Fourth Ezra48 and yetzer hara in rabbinic literature—both of which have no association with external cosmological ­beings—are the culminations of this process. Qumranic yetzer helps us understand the rabbinic one by presenting an early stage in the development of a term that we find fully developed in later literature. Two processes that had their primal stages at Qumran—reification and internalization—mature in the homilies of Rabbi Ishmael, where the yetzer becomes a demonic, antinomian being, which resides inside humans.49 Above all, Qumranic literature helps us identify the context within which we should locate rabbinic yetzer. At Qumran yetzer is the source of human sinfulness, in both its demonological context—as a counterpart of Satan, Belial, and the spirits of impurity—and in an anthropological one—as a component of human depravity. Rabbinic anthropology and demonology are markedly different—but the role of yetzer in both is the prime explanation for human sinfulness.50

Qumran 53

So we conclude: yetzer ra functioned at Qumran first and foremost as an explanation to the attraction of the members of the yahad to sin, despite their election. It was vastly developed by the rabbis, as a result of their rejection of the cosmology used to account for human sinfulness at Qumran and other groups. Qumranic literature thus helps illuminate rabbinic yetzer as it presents a stage in which yetzer still appears with grand cosmic powers, such as Belial (i.e., ‫כי בליעל עם הופע יצר הוותם‬, “for Belial [is present] when their destructive yetzer becomes apparent,” 1QHa XV 3–4). Similar intermediate demonic figures are found living inside humans and tempting them to sin in neighboring literatures, such as Pseudo-Clementine’s homilies. These sources help establish the demonic context from which rabbinic yetzer developed. They also, however, may account for the great popularity of the yetzer in rabbinic literature, more than anything we find in any other pre-rabbinic literary corpus. The refusal of the rabbis to accept the grand cosmological models subjecting humans to external superhuman forces left the yetzer alone to account for their sinfulness, thus making it the center of their anthropology. To be sure, rabbinic demonology is a rather developed body of knowledge, but, as we have already seen, it is almost nowhere connected to their discussion of the sources of human sinfulness, in stark contrast with Second Temple demonology,51 including, of course, Qumran.52 It is no accident that Belial and Mastema, the main figures responsible for misleading people in Second Temple literature (along with their evil spirits), are totally absent from rabbinic corpus.53 Rabbinic literature also does not turn to the story of the fallen angels (“Watchers”) to explain the origin of sin, as in the Enochic tradition.54 Since the rabbis did not refrain from demonology in other contexts, their disregard for it in the context of human sinfulness is most likely not the result of purist monotheism but rather of their insistence on free choice and human responsibility. In rabbinic literature, the only ‫“( מנוול‬repulsive one,” b. Kid. 30b) left as a force dragging the individual to sin is the evil yetzer, which can and should be confronted and defeated.

Philo, Paul, Hermas: Internalization in Context Ancient Jewish demonology supplies the closest parallel to the function and characteristic of the rabbinic evil yetzer. The material for comparison changes rather dramatically, however, when we examine processes of internalization of cosmic forces analogous to those found in tannaitic literature. While we did



54 Chapter 3

find some hints for processes of internalization at Qumran, more complete rejections of external demons, and their replacement with intra-personal powers, are to be found in Jewish Hellenistic and especially early Christian writings. 55 Philo presents the clearest case of rejecting demonology as an explanation of human actions.56 Discussing the story of the Watchers as a common etiological explanation of sin in Second Temple literature, Archie Wright notes: “Philo was not willing to accept this rationale and chose to explain the struggles of humanity in light of individual responsibility to overcome the temptations of evil.”57 An explicit statement in this vein indeed appears in Philo’s allegoric reading of the Priestly garments, where he remarks that Falsehood (ψεῦδος) “has been banished entirely [from heaven, which the High Priest’s tunic symbolizes] to the earthly regions and has its lodging in the souls (ψυχαῖς) of accursed men” (De Spec. Leg. I 89).58 This is a clear example in which demonology is suppressed. To understand the origins of rabbinic yetzer, however, suppression is not enough. Rabbinic yetzer should be located in a process of the internalization of demons that preserves demonic traits while locating them inside the human mind. Such a phenomenon cannot be found in the Philonic corpus, but may be found in the Pauline discourse of Sin (ἁμαρτία) as a hypothesized entity, developed most powerfully in Romans 7. As scholars have already noted, there are various associations between this figure and the rabbinic yetzer.59 First, in both cases the evil being causes the emergence of passions or appetites (ἐπιθυμίαι), but these are revealed as only vehicles for its ultimately antinomian goals. Paul’s statement—“Sin, using the commandment, seized any opportunity and produced every desire (ἐπιθυμίαν) in me” (Rom 7:8, cf. 11)—should be compared to the rabbinic assertion: “The evil yetzer desires (‫ )תאב‬only what is forbidden for it” (y. Ned. 9:1 [41b], Yom. 6:5 [43c]). Second, the rabbis read the biblical verse in which sin is most plainly ­personified—“sin (‫ )חטאת‬crouches at the door, its urge is toward you” (Gen 4:7)—as referring to the yetzer.60 Lastly, both Paul and the rabbis assume a real separation between “me” and the sinning subject: “it is no longer I (ἐγώ) who bring it about, but the sin (ἁμαρτία) dwelling (ὀικοῦσα) in me” (Rom 7:20). The differences should not be overlooked, either. First, tannaitic yetzer, unlike Paul’s sin, has nothing to do with one’s flesh (σάρξ)61 and carnality.62 It is also much more powerfully personified and hypostasized then the Pauline concept of sin. 63 Lastly, Paul’s hamartia, unlike the rabbinic yetzer, is not unequivocally antinomian.64 Law and sin are anything but opposites for Paul.65 It seems that we are faced here with a similar phenomenon to the one presented above in

Qumran 55

Qumran. The rabbis reconfigure and intensify existing notions and models, to create their own solution to the problem of evil. What appears as but one dimension of Paul’s complex and conflicted explanation of human sinfulness (conflating νόμος, ἁμαρτία, σάρξ and ἐπιθυμία), came to the fore as the sole player in the rabbinic discourse of sin. The closest similarities to the process of internalization of dualistic forces into the human heart are to be found in the apocalypse known as The Shepherd of Hermas, dated to the first half of the second century, possibly of Jewish origin but quite Christian in its present form.66 In Mandate 6, the shepherd instructs Hermas regarding the two angels living in his heart: There are two angels with man—one of righteousness (δικαιοσύνη), and one of wickedness (πονερία). “How then, sir,” said I, “shall I know their working (ἐνεργεία), because both angels dwell (κατοικοῦσιν) within me?” “Listen,” said he, “and understand them. The angel of righteousness is delicate and modest, and meek and gentle. When, therefore, he ascends into your heart, he at once speaks with you of righteousness, of purity, of ­reverence, of self-control, of every righteous deed and of all glorious virtue. When all these things come into your heart, know that the angel of righteousness is with you. These things, then, are the deeds of the angel of righteousness. Therefore believe (πιστεύε) him and his works. Now see also the works of the angel of wickedness. First of all, he is ill tempered, and bitter, and foolish, and his deeds are evil, casting down the servants of God. When ever therefore he comes into your heart, know him from his works.”67 Here comes a long list of the “works” (ἐργά) of the wicked angel: anger, love of luxury, eating and drinking, women and pride, “and whatever things are akin to and like (ὁμοία) these.” The similarity to the tannaitic yetzer is unmistakable. In both cases the evil yetzer/angel leads humans to all kinds of misdeeds: from anger and foolishness to desire for food and sex. Its ultimate goal, however, is nothing less than “casting down the servant of God (δοῦλος τοῦ θεοῦ)” (mand. 6 II 4).68 Also similar is the difficulty to identify the evil yetzer/angel, which is “hidden in a man’s heart” (b. Suk. 52a), and thus recognizable only through its moral effects: “When anger comes upon you, or harshness, know that he is in you (ἔν σοι)” (mand. 6 II 5).69 The idea of two angels advocating two opposite ways for humanity appears in various earlier texts.70 As David Flusser and others have shown, it was



56 Chapter 3

a popular theme among several groups in the late Second Temple era.71 Hermas, however, is unique in his unequivocal internalization of the two angels, making them an integral part of every human psyche. The shepherd’s image of two angels in the heart is markedly similar to Mishna Berakhot 9:5 that assumes the existence of two yetzarim in the heart. Indeed, in the twelfth mandate of Hermas, two desires (ἐπιθυμίαι) appear instead of angels but are nonetheless described in a remarkably similar fashion. The wicked desire (ἐπιθυμὶα πονέρα) is cruel and may destroy the servant of God (mand. 12 I 2). It is recognizable by its deeds (ἐργά), which are similar to the list mentioned above: foolishness, wealth, sex, and so on. (mand. 12 II 1). The good desire (ἐπιθυμὶα τῆι ἀγαθῆι) is once called, like its angelic counterpart, “the desire of righteousness” (ἐπιθυμὶα τῆς δικαιοσύνης). Nonetheless, there still remains some difference between the desires of mandate 6 and the angels of mandate 12—making the claim that “‘desires’ and ‘spirits’ in Hermas are cognate,”72 questionable. Unlike the angel of wickedness, the evil desire can and should be resisted (“put on the desire of righteousness and resist them,” mand. 12 II 4), overcome (νικήσας), and, in striking similarity to our Mishna, “subdued to your wish” (5).73 The comparison goes further. One of the main moral issues discussed in Hermas is the danger of double-mindedness (διψυχία). It is a severe obstacle to the service of God, specifically associated with the “evil desire” residing in humans.74 As we have seen, the rabbis also considered the existence of a division (‫ )מחלוקת‬in the heart a fatal result of the evil yetzer, which must be removed in order that “your service be singular before Him” (Sifra Shemini 1, ed. Weiss, 43d).75 In his discussion of Hermas, Cohen Stuart rejects the theory of a stoic background for the doctrine of desires. “The use of ‘good desire’,” he maintains, “shows a non-stoic influence. It must have a more dualistic background.”76 He goes on to identify this background with the “Rabbinic ideas of the two inclinations,” but the marginality of the two yetzarim model in rabbinic literature, and its virtual nonexistence in pre-rabbinic texts, calls for a more reliable “dualistic background.”77 Be that as it may, The Shepherd of Hermas manifests a similar processes of internalizing dualistic forces as those discussed above. It is perhaps no coincidence that the closest parallels to this internalized demonology (the late firstcentury Fourth Ezra, and second-century Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Hermas) were formed at the same time as the inception of the rabbinic movement.

Qumran 57

Hermas is especially informative for our purpose because it presents an intermediate stage of internalization. Two angels (ἀγγελοί) reside in the heart,78 which are (partially at least) interchangeable with desires (ἐπιθυμίαι). The fact that these dynamics appear in Hermas in a less mature manner (thus easier to trace) than in Mishna Berakhot makes it especially valuable for reconstructing the developments of the early rabbinic yetzer discourse.79 But, as we demonstrated, the prevalent model in rabbinic literature is that of one yetzer rather than two. Hermas’s model of angels-in-the-heart is thus unsuitable for (most of) the rabbis. The internalized cosmic war must manifest itself differently in rabbinic literature: as a war between God and the single evil yetzer. Several hints to this battle appear in the tannaitic sources,80 but it becomes explicit in two homilies cited in the name of the third-century Palestinian sage Rabbi Simon (in the Bavli named R. Shimon ben Pazzi): What is vayyitzer (‫ ;וייצר‬and the Lord formed, Gen 2:7, spelled with a double yud)? Rabbi Shimon b. Pazzi said: Woe unto me from my creator and woe unto me from my yetzer. (‫ ;אוי לי מיוצרי ואוי לי מיצרי‬b. Ber. 61a, Erub. 18a) Said Rabbi Simon . . . A slave free of his master (‫ ;עבד חפשי מאדוניו‬Job 3:19)—This man, as long as he lives he is a slave of two masters (‫)אדונים‬81—a slave of his creator (yotzer) and a slave of his yetzer. When he does the will of his creator he makes his yetzer angry and when he does the will of his yetzer he makes his creator angry. When he dies—he is freed: a slave free of his master. (Ruth Rab. 3:1)82 Shmuel Safrai and David Flusser convincingly showed that these two sources are different versions of the same homily, which they dated quite early and posited as the basis of Jesus’ saying: “No servant can be a slave of two masters” (Matt 6:24, Luke 16:13).83 They further connected it to the dualistic war tradition at Qumran and related texts (esp. 2 Cor 6:14–15),84 in which a battle is waged between God and Belial or between the Prince of Light and the Prince of Darkness. “The Two masters,” they conclude, “exclude one another, and you can serve only one of them: choose God and not wickedness.”85 Leaving aside the possible prehistory of these amoraic homilies, it is clear that they create a surprising symmetry of power between God (the yotzer) and the yetzer. That an entity of the size of a grain of wheat (to borrow



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Shmuel’s depictions of the yetzer in the same sugia in the Bavli) can compete with the mighty Creator seems to hint to the cosmic, external origins of the yetzer before it was confined to the human heart.

Antony’s Multiple Wars: Remythologizing Demons We have thus traced two trails leading to the rabbinic yetzer discourse: that of ancient Jewish demonology and that of processes of internalization. The two meet most powerfully in early Christian sources, which indeed show the closest affinity to the rabbinic yetzer. In the previous chapter we have seen both the Homilies and Origen and his disciples narrate the intrusion of the demons who take possession over humans. This internalized demonology is presented most clearly in the assertion of Antony, the founding desert father, that demons are totally spiritual and can only materialize by operating inside human souls, motivating them to do evil. Thus: “We are their bodies.”86 The ultimate goal of the struggle is therefore to achieve simplicity and singleness of heart, to counter the multiplicity that demons bring in it.87 Ancient demonology, however, does not move only in the direction of internalization. As David Brakke shows, Antony’s internal war, as revealed in his letters, is substituted by a very different war in Athanasius’s Vita Antonii:88 “Hardly the subtle markers of the fault lines of differentiated existence traced by Antony himself, Athanasius’s demons brutally attack Antony visually, vocally and physically, leaving him near death.”89 Interestingly enough, Athanasius acknowledges this dynamic, but presents it as determined by the tactics of the demons themselves. This is how it is put in Antony’s mouth: Should they see any Christians—monks, especially, laboring gladly and advancing, they first attack and tempt them, placing stumbling blocks in the way. Their stumbling blocks consist of evil thoughts (ῥυπαροὶ λογισμοί). But we need not fear their suggestions, for by prayers and fasting and by faith in the Lord they are brought down immediately. But even after they fall they do not cease, but approach again, with malice and cunning. When they are unable to deceive the heart be conspicuous and filthy pleasure (ἡδονῆς), again they make another kind of assault, and pretend to frighten (ἐκϕοβεῖν) it by fabricating phantasms, transforming themselves, and imitating women, beasts, reptiles, and huge bodies and thousands of soldiers. Nevertheless we need not fear their apparitions, for they are nothing

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and they disappear quickly—especially if one fortifies himself with the sign of the cross. (Vita Antonii 23) This transformation is illustrated in Antony’s own trials. He is first tempted by the demons, working through both evil thoughts and bodily passions, but then, and throughout most of the Life, he is frightened by them, through visions and physical attacks.90 Moreover, both assaults appear in ­visual forms, as women, gold, beasts, and so on. Here is Athanasius’s account of the end of the very first battle: From the Scriptures, Antony learned that the treacheries of the enemy are numerous, and he practiced the discipline with intensity, realizing that although his foe had not been powerful enough to beguile him with bodily pleasure, he would surely attempt to entrap him by some other method, for the demon is a lover of sin. (ἔστι γὰρ ϕιλαμαρτήμων ὁ δαίμων; Vita Antonii 7) 91 According to Brakke, the physicality and visuality of Antony’s trials is connected to the fact that “Athanasius consistently subordinates the psychological drama of ascetic temptation to the larger drama of Christ’s victory over Satan and the gods/demons.”92 Another explanation connects it to the fact that Athanasius sees the monk as “a daily martyr” (Vita Antonii 47), and so much of the imagery regarding him is taken from the realm of martyrdom.93 But, as Origen’s demonology shows, Athanasius’s narrative only brings a much broader blend to an extreme (and a great extreme it is). Unlike rabbinic literature, patristic writers do not firmly separate internal and external demons. In this respect they are closer to the Qumranic yetzer that remains tightly connected to cosmic, external forces. Further inquiry is warranted here. Obviously, rabbinic yetzer is more systemically internalized than its patristic counterparts, as well as its early Jewish ones. This difference bears important consequences. At Qumran, a tension between social and psychological dualism can be discerned. The evil yetzer is ascribed both to the wicked (the yetzer of Esau, the yetzer of the camp of Belial, etc.) and to the members of the yahad community themselves (“the plots of my yetzer,” “let not the plan of yetzer ra mislead you”). A similar dialectic can be found in Patrisric demonology, functioning both as something that the monk himself struggles against, and as a specific characteristic of the heretics (pagans, Jews, and “Heterodox” Christians). As Elaine Pagels shows in The Origin of



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Satan, Early Christian used demonology quite from the beginning to “demonize their opponents.”94 To be sure, the rabbis had their own ways to demonize their enemies,95 but the evil yetzer was not part of this discourse. The rabbis do not ascribe the yetzer (or even a special kind of yetzer) to “Others.” Quite to the contrary, the yetzer is discussed mainly in the context of the righteous, on whom the obligation to conquer their yetzer is most incumbent.96 However, for our purpose, the crucial importance of this comparison lies not in the differences it reveals, significant as they may be, but in the fact that it helps us place the rabbinic yetzer discourse in its correct context. The juxtaposition of these texts proves as conclusively as possible that the rabbinic yetzer should indeed be placed in the sphere of internalized demonology. Nonetheless, there is something quite unique about rabbinic demonology. It is not grounded in the process of internalization per se, but rather in the stark rejection of writing sin off to the body in the process,97 which is not shared by any of the Jewish Hellenistic or early Christian sources discussed above. In these sources, bodily pleasures and demonology are combined in various ways, from the notion that demons live in the body or are nurtured by it, to the demonization of the body itself.98 In contrast, the rabbis rarely associate their discussions of the yetzer with those on the division of body and soul.99 They did not partake in the shared conception of both Christian thinkers and pagan philosophers in late antiquity that “man’s true nature manifests itself according to the extent to which the mind can tame the body and reign over it.”100 Indeed, in the few cases that the rabbis do refer to the yetzer in the context of the body/soul bond, it is associated with the soul, the source of human energy and life, no less than with the body.101 This can be exemplified by two early (probably Byzantine) Palestinian liturgical poems, written in Hebrew, which narrate disputes between the body and the soul. In a poem for the Day of Atonement recently published by Yosef Yahalom, the yetzer appears in an accusation that the body raises against the soul, rather than vice versa: “The flesh will answer: the soul has led me in devious ways: thought of the heart and gaze of the eye and arousal of yetzer (‫ הירהור‬// ‫ נתיב עקלקלות‬/‫נפש הידריכתני‬/‫הבשר יען‬ ‫והערת יצר‬/‫ ומראית העין‬/‫)הלב‬.”102 However, in another anonymous poem from the Geniza, the accusation goes exactly in the other direction: “the soul mourns it [the body] and says: why are you arguing against me . . . your yetzer tempted me, like a snake it bit me” (‫] ויצרך השיאני‬...[ ‫ על מה תריבני‬/ ‫ תאבל ותאמר‬/ ‫ונפש עליו‬ /‫) כמו פתן נש[כני‬.103 The sinful yetzer can be ascribed both to the body and to the soul for it is part of the whole human being.

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This conceptualization marks an undeniable difference between rabbinic yetzer and other, both Jewish and Christian, discourses of sin. This is the reason why the yetzer remains ultimately the sole explanation of human sinfulness for the rabbis; the only substitute for the grand cosmological structures that preceded it.

The Origin of the Two Yetzarim Qumran may also help us solve the puzzle of the good yetzer. As we have seen above, the dualistic model of Mishna Berakhot 9:5, in which the evil yetzer is part of a binary system of two opposing yetzarim, is unique in tannaitic literature. What could have triggered its appearance? Some scholars suggest a pre-rabbinic source for the dual-yetzer doctrine, but, as far as I know, none have succeeded in pointing out even one pre-rabbinic source that explicitly refers to two yetzarim, or even simply mentions a good yetzer.104 Other scholars point to the midrashic technique of reading double ­lettered words (‫ לבבך‬in Deut 5:5 or ‫ וייצר‬in Gen 2:7) as indicating a double reality.105 Such homilies, however, appear only in later, amoraic, sources;106 besides, it is hard to see any midrashic reading as the sole source for such an innovative (and unique) doctrine. Daniel Boyarin offered an original solution to this riddle. He suggested that two conflicting models existed side by side in rabbinic literature, the dualistic and the dialectic. According to the former, there are two yetzarim in every person (good and evil), while the latter discusses only one yetzer that is neither good nor evil, but dangerous. Sources using the term yetzer (and not “evil yetzer”) usually refer to the dialectic model. Boyarin further suggested that the dual-yetzer model was inherited from earlier dualistic sources, such as those found in the Community Rule or the Testament of Asher, while the dialectic one represents the rabbis’ own ideology.107 These observations require several reservations in light of the discussions thus far. First, we should distinguish between different strata and schools in rabbinic literature. While midrashim of the school of R. Akiva do not mention the term yetzer hara at all, those derived from the school of R. Ishmael use yetzer and yetzer hara interchangeably, and the former functions as shorthand for the latter.108 Second, the dualistic model appears in but one tannaitic homily, and there is no reason to see it as the origin of R. Ishmael’s popular yetzer discourse. The evil yetzer is not one component of a two yetzarim system, but a result of



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identifying the single yetzer (which appears, for example, in Sirach, as well as in the homilies of the school of R. Akiva) as evil in nature. Similar processes are already found at Qumran. Lastly, the unique homily that mentions “both your yetzarim” combines dualistic and dialectic models, making their analysis as two exclusive alternatives unlikely.109 I believe Boyarin is right in connecting the two yetzarim to pre-rabbinic cosmologies,110 but I would explicate this relationship somewhat differently. There is no need for the exceptional dualistic model in order to spot connections between Qumranic and rabbinic yetzer discourse. After all, Qumranic literature knows of “two spirits,” but only one yetzer, just like most of rabbinic literature.111 I offer that the single evil yetzer of the school of R. Ishmael is itself a reaction to pre-rabbinic conceptions of evil and specifically a result of rejecting two prevalent models for explaining the source of sin in pre-rabbinic literature. The first is the simple (naïve?), biblical model of free will, adopted and developed especially by Sirach.112 The other is the cosmological (thus also dualistic and deterministic) model, prevalent in Qumranic and related literature, where sin is attributed to external cosmic forces ruling humans. Tannaitic midrash argues against the former that sin is not a simple consequence of men’s free will, but is caused by an independent entity, the evil yetzer in the heart, and against the latter, that the yetzer is not an external cosmic force, and that humans are capable of prevailing over it. This twofold repudiation led to the birth of a complex and distinctive model that could explain human tendency to sin without compromising individual agency. Sin is caused by the evil yetzer that dwells within people, who nonetheless have the ability to fight it and prevail.113 This set of linguistic and thematic connections, established between Qumran and R. Ishmael’s evil yetzer, may now help us solve the riddle of Mishna Berakhot 9:5. The exceptional dual-yetzer homily is an amalgam of an external dualistic model with the single yetzer doctrine, creating a double yetzer structure. Judging from the context in which the homily appears, at the very end of Mishna Berakhot, this combination probably has its roots in an anti-dualistic polemic. The focus of the last chapter of Mishna Berakhot is the obligation to praise God for bad and good events alike. The second mishna there rules that for good tidings one says, “Blessed is [He], the benevolent and the benefactor (‫)הטוב והמטיב‬,” while for bad tidings one must say: “Blessed is [He], the true judge (‫ ;”)דיין האמת‬the third mishna rules that “a man should say a benediction on misfortune just as on good fortune”; and the fifth mishna cites the biblical source for these obligations. Our two-yetzarim homily appears here.114 This

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c­ ontext makes polemic with dualistic doctrines quite fitting,115 and may account for its exceptional picture of two yetzarim. A dual yetzer structure internalizes dualism, and submits it to the free will of the person hosting the yetzarim. In this polemical, anti-dualistic context, it is quite understandable that the same homily that presents a rare dualistic model also presents an exceptionally dialectic one. The evil yetzer is not necessarily an enemy, for it too can be enlisted in God’s service. The (complex and conflicted, to be sure) connections revealed between R. Ishmael’s and Qumranic conceptualization of the yetzer should not ­surprise us. Scholars have already pointed out possible connections between these schools.116 The same holds true for the discovery that R. Akiva’s homilies maintain the biblical, naturalistic meaning of the yetzer. Several recent studies have revealed the conservative orientation of Rabbi Akiva’s homilies, which struggle to preserve older traditions while establishing them on firm scriptural bases.117 R. Akiva’s avoidance of expounding the divine chariot (‫ )מעשה מרכבה‬and the creation narrative (‫)מעשה בראשית‬, probably not shared by R. Ishmael or his school,118 may also indicate this school’s theological conservativism.119 R. Akiva’s homilies are thus not reactionary oppositions to R. Ishmael’s developments; rather, the two schools continue two different strands. R. Akiva continues the biblical concept (found also in Sirach) while R. Ishmael the Qumranic one (whether or not we assume a direct contact between the corpora). But while R. Akiva’s homilies left the biblical yetzer intact, R. Ishmael’s school made it the basis of its anthropology, developing and reifying it more than ever before. The evil yetzer—conceived in two verses in the Genesis flood narrative and born in Qumranic cosmology as a tool to fill a bothersome lacuna—reached maturity only in tannaitic literature, when it was disconnected from any external metaphysical being. It was there that the yetzer received, for the first time, a central place in anthropological discourse, without however being assimilated as a mere psychic force. Joshua Levinson noted a transformation of emphasis in rabbinic literature, in both its halakhic and aggadic parts, from external to internal conflicts. He combined a literary phenomenon—a new interest in the inner world of the characters in rabbinic narratology (in deep contrast to biblical conventions)— with a halakhic one—the appearance of intention (‫)כוונה‬, thought (‫)מחשבה‬, and will (‫ )רצון‬as fundamental categories in various legal areas (e.g., the laws of purity and sacrifice)—to assert a new rabbinic discourse of “subjectivity.”120 Our case reinforces Levinson’s insight but complicates it as well. First, it teaches that processes of internalization are not unique to the rabbis, but are



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part of a larger transformation in late antique religious sensitivities.121 Second, one should question whether the yetzer changes the rabbinic concept of “subjectivity,” and if so, how. The rabbis’ yetzer resides inside humans, but they maintain a clear distinction between it and them nonetheless. Like the demons in monastic writings, the rabbinic yetzer is separated from the people struggling against it, even when it enters into them and dwells there. It is this separation that allows the rabbis (and some of the church fathers) to have positive views of human beings, while portraying a demonic and antinomian yetzer in them. It is also this hierarchy that permits them to imagine an ultimate victory over this fully internalized yet always foreign intruder.

Chapter 4

Coming of Age: Amoraic Yetzer

A Visitor, a Dog, a Robber: Images of the Yetzer in Palestinian Literature In Palestinian amoraic literature,1 Rabbi Ishmael’s yetzer has clearly won the day. Most sources develop the model of one evil yetzer further,2 refine it and deck it out with all manner of sinister attributes. A comparison of Sifre Deuteronomy 45, discussed above, with a homily in Genesis Rabba can exemplify both the differences and similarities between the tannaitic yetzer and the amoraic one: Therefore impress these My words upon your heart (Deut 11:18)— this tells us that the words of Torah are like an elixir of life )‫)סם חיים‬. This is comparable to a king who was angry with his son, struck him a violent blow, and placed a bandage on the wound. He told him: My son, as long as this bandage remains on your wound, you imay eat whatever you please and drink whatever you please, and bathe either in hot or cold water, and you will come to no harm. But if you remove it, it will immediately fester. Thus the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel: I created your evil yetzer, and there is nothing more evil than it, [but] If you do right, there is uplift (Gen 4:7). Be occupied with words of Torah and it will not reign over you. But if you abandon words of Torah, then it will gain mastery over you, as it is said (ibid.): sin )‫ )חטאת‬crouches at the door, its urge is toward you— it has no business other than with you. But if you wish, you can rule over it, as it is said (ibid.): yet you can be its master; If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat . . . you will be heaping live coals [on his head]. (Prov 25:21–22; Sifre Deut 45, ed. Finkelstein, 103–4) When man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him (Prov 16:7) . . . R. Joshua b. Levi said: it refers to the evil yetzer.



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Usually if one is brought up along with another for two or three years he becomes closely attached to him, but this one grows with man from his youth until his old age and yet if he can, he strikes him down even in his seventies or his eighties. This is [the meaning of] what David said: You save the poor from one stronger than he, the poor and needy from his despoiler (‫ ;גוזלו‬Ps 35:10). R. Aha said: is there a greater despoiler than it [the yetzer]? This is [the meaning of] what Solomon said: If your enemy is hungry, feed him bread. (Prov 25:21; Gen Rab. 54:1, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 575) These homilies share both the image of the yetzer as a heavy burden, accompanying humans for their entire lives, and the possibility of being saved from its curse through Torah study. Both end with reading “your enemy” in Proverbs 25:21 as referring to the yetzer. The amoraic homily, however, presents a yetzer much more developed and refined than the tannaitic one. Where the Sifre likened the yetzer to a static object, a wound, Genesis Rabba presents an active subject: a thief or trickster, “stronger” than man, patiently waiting for the right time to trap him, for as long as seventy or eighty years. Still, the fundamental similarity between the two sources—drawing on the same image of the yetzer as a demonic enemy of humanity—cannot be denied. In both cases the demonic yetzer does what it does simply because, as Athanasius (Vita Antonii 7) sharply asserts, “the demon is a lover of sin.” The yetzer drags humans to severe sins like murder and idolatry,3 but it is also responsible for more mundane passions and moods that lead to improper actions: anger, jealousy, or pride,4 as well as recklessness and neglect of Torah study.5 The sources present specific characteristics in accordance with local interpretive and thematic needs, but all share a basic image of the yetzer as an evil entity that leads humans astray from their religious duties. The basic function of the yetzer, from hatred to levity, remains one: an explanation of the difficulty to become and remain a servant of God. A long sugia in Genesis Rabba, fully dedicated to the yetzer, may exemplify both trends, that of continuing the tannaitic image, and that of amplifying and developing it.6 The sugia is based on Cain’s struggle with “sin” (‫ )חטאת‬in Genesis 4:7 and utilizes it to narrate a vivid and audacious saga of the evil yetzer and its struggle against humanity. [a] Sin (‫חטאת‬, feminine) crouches at the door (Gen 4:7)—it does not say “crouches” in the feminine (‫)רובצת‬, but in the masculine (‫—)רובץ‬first it is weak, like a female, and then becomes strong like a male.

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[b] R. Akiva said: first it is like a spun thread, and then becomes like a ship’s rope, as it is said: Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope (Is 5:18). [c] R. Isaac said: at first it is a visitor (‫)אכסניי‬, then it becomes a guest (‫)אוריח‬, then it becomes the master of the house (‫)בעל הבית‬. This is the verse: and a passer-by (‫ )הלך‬came to the rich man—a walking foot [i.e., visitor]; and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the guest—thus a guest; and he took the poor man’s lamb and dressed it for the man that was come to him—thus the master of the house (2 Sam 12:4). [d] R. Tanhum b. Marion said: There are dogs in Rome which know how to beguile (‫)למשדלה‬.7 They go and sit in front of a bakery and make themselves appear sleeping and the owner of the bakery nods off and [the dog] knocks the bottom loaf to the ground [causing all the loaves to collapse], and until [the baker] gathers them, [the dog] grabs a loaf and leaves with it. [e] R. Abba b. Yudan said: It is like a powerless (‫)שפוף‬8 highway robber on a crossroads. He would tell all the passers-by: give me everything you’ve got. A clever man went by and saw he was useless (‫)שאין בו תוחלת‬9 and began to beat him. So too yetzer hara destroyed several generations, the generation of Enosh and of the flood and of the dispersion, and when Abraham stood and saw he was impotent, he began to crush it (‫)מכתתו‬, this is the verse: and I shall beat (‫ )וכתותי‬his enemies from him and his haters I shall smite (Ps 89:24). 10 [f] R. Ammi said: Yetzer hara does not walk on the side ways, but in the middle of the road, and when he sees a man rub (‫)משמשם‬11 his eyes, fix his hair, hang upon his heels, he says: this one is mine (‫)הדין דידי‬. Why? You have seen a man wise in his eyes—the fool is hopeful with regard to him (‫ ;תקוה לכסיל ממנו‬Prov 26:12).12 [g] R. Avin said: Anyone who indulges his yetzer in his youth shall be mourned (‫ )מנון‬13 it in his old age. Why? An indulger of his slave from youth shall at the end be ‫( מנון‬Prov 29:21). [h] R. Hanina b. Papa and R. Simon. R. Hanina b. Papa said: If your yetzer tries to drive you to frivolity (‫)להסחיקך‬,14 throw the words of Torah at it like a spear (‫)רומחיהו בדברי תורה‬, 15 [as it is said] the confident yetzer you guard in perfect peace (‫ ;יצר סמוך תצור שלום‬Isa 26:3). And if you do so, I shall consider it as if you had created peace: the verse does not say “guard (‫ )תנצור‬peace” but “make (‫ )תצור‬peace.” And if you should



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say it is not in your power, it says because he trusts in you (ibid.), and I have dictated to you in the Torah, its urge is toward you, and you shall rule over him (Gen 4:7). [i] R. Simon says: If your yetzer tries to drive you to frivolity (‫)להסחיקך‬, gladden it with words of Torah (‫)שמחיהו בדברי תורה‬, [as it says] gladden the yetzer (‫ ;יצר סמוך‬Isa 26:3). And if you do so, I shall deem you as if you had created two worlds. It does not say “keep peace” but peace peace (ibid.). And I have dictated to you in the Torah, its urge is towards you. (Gen 4:7; Gen Rab. 22:6, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 210–13)16 Although the term yetzer does not appear until homily [e], the identification of the “sin” that “crouches at the door” (Gen 4:7) with the yetzer, found already in Sifre Deut 45, is the backdrop of the entire sugia. 17 The homilies beginning and ending this cycle focus directly on the biblical verse; [a], [d], and [e] expound the threat, “sin crouches,” while [h] and [i] point out the possibility to overpower it: “and you shall dominate it.” The remaining homilies develop the character of yetzer and the struggle against it. The first homily reads the transition in the verse from the (alleged) feminine noun ‫ חטאת‬to the masculine verb ‫ רובץ‬as a development in the strength of sin (becoming more and more “masculine”).18 The following two homilies ([b] and [c]) continue the escalation and intensification of the yetzer (“first . . . then it becomes . . .”) using additional images of gradual radicalization, an ever thickening rope and a domineering guest. Homilies [d] and [e] present two parables based on the description of sin in the verse as “crouching” (‫)רובץ‬. In the first homily the yetzer is a sneaky (and hungry) dog next to a baker, and in the second it is a highway robber, staking out in the crossroads. Both are vivid illustrations of “crouching,” read here as a depiction of the craftiness of the yetzer. Homilies [f] and [g] move on to describe those people whom yetzer is capable of bringing down—the man who is “wise in his eyes,” and the one who “spoils his slave” i.e., his yetzer—as opposed to Abraham, who appears in homily [e] as an example of someone who was able to defeat the yetzer. The last two homilies read Is 26:3—“The confident yetzer (‫ )יצר סמוך‬you shall guard in perfect peace, because he trusts in you”—as defining the strategies for defeating the yetzer. Although these last homilies are exceptionally cryptic, it is clear that both recommend “the words of Torah” as the ultimate weapon against the yetzer, whether they are used for direct fight (“throw like a spear”) or as tools of solicitation (“gladden it”).

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The cycle can be divided into three groups of three homilies each. Homilies [a]–[c] present various images of yetzer in which it develops from an innocuous presence into a dangerous predator. Homilies [d]–[f] present ways in which yetzer operates, describing its activity in the public sphere: first the bakery, then the crossroads, and finally the city square (‫)פלטיא‬. Lastly, [g]–[i] present ways by which yetzer can be contended with, first by not indulging it (‫)מפנק‬, and then by actively besting it with words of Torah. Taken as a whole, the cycle presents a wide-reaching doctrine of the yetzer’s characteristics and modes of operation, complemented by methods with which it can be resisted. The homilies differ in their portrayal of the yetzer’s capabilities: Homilies [d] and [e] portray it as powerless (‫ )רובץ‬but wily. The Roman dogs take the bread only when nobody is looking, and the highway robber looks threatening but is in fact impotent, as Abraham discovered. This befits the depiction of the yetzer as a slave in [g]. In contrast, R. Ammi in [f] portrays the yetzer as walking in the middle of the road, not on the side ways, doing as it wishes. These two pictures seem at first to be contradictory, but comparison to the monastic material shows that this is not the case. The homilist asserts that the yetzer looks for arrogant people: “and when he sees a man rub his eyes, fix his hair, hang upon his heels, he says: this one is mine (‫)הדין דידי‬.” This recalls Evagrius’s claim that monks who fall for anger (θυμός) “are the demons’ playthings (ὑπὸ δαιμόνων ἐμπαίζονται).”19 In another text Evagrius uses an even closer imagery: “Each of the demons guards his own boundaries and observes the monk who passes by to see whether he inclines to the right or to the left or walks the Royal Road.”20 In Evagrius’s text it is humans rather than demons who walk in the middle of the road, but the picture is similar: yetzer/demons stroll in the streets and seize the right people according to their public behavior. The picture of the cunning dogs in Rome is yet another parallel to Evagrius’s demonology, since for him also “Demons are like animals with very acute senses.”21 The imagery of these homilies becomes even clearer when compared to Athanasius’s Life of Antony. One of Athanasius’s major themes in this composition is that Jesus triumphed over Satan and his evil powers. 22 They are thus like tyrants fallen from power: “Since the Lord made his sojourn with us the enemy is fallen and his powers diminished. For this reason, though he is able to do nothing, nevertheless like a tyrant (τύραννος) fallen from power he does not remain quiet, but issues threats, though his threats were only words” (Vita Antonii 28). Athanasius thus repeats the assertion that demons use all kinds of guises to conceal the fact that they are truly weak: “The demons, however,



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­ nable to affect anything, play parts as if they were on stage changing their u forms and striking fear in children by the illusion of the hordes and their shapes. For these antics they deserved to be ridiculed as weaklings” (ἀσθενεῖς; ibid.).23 It is in this context that Athanasius uses the very same metaphor of a noisy but useless robber (ληιστής; the same word as the rabbinic homilist!), claiming that the demons make “the sort of disturbance one might expect from tough (ἀπαιδεύτων, “uneducated”) youths and robbers” (Vita Antonii 36). The similarity is thematic as well as linguistic, for both texts use the metaphor of the robber to assert the actual impotency of the seemingly powerful foe. Both rabbinic Abraham and Athanasius’s Antony understand that the “robber,” while making lots of noise in front of the passersby, is in fact impotent, thus opening the door to fight him and prevail. This also explains the other image that appears in Genesis Rabba: the yetzer walking on the street looking for arrogant people to seize. Being powerless, the demons can seize only weak people: “Should they find us frightened and distressed, immediately they attack, like robbers (ληισταί), having found the place unprotected . . . It was for this reason that the enemy, seeing Job so defended, departed from him; but finding Judas unarmed with these, took him captive” (Vita Antonii 42). The two neighboring metaphors in Genesis Rabba— the powerless robber and the kidnapper on the middle of the road—which seemed at first sight rather diverse, are combined together as part of a single image of the impotent yet cunning demons in Athanasius’s account. The monastic writers also engage with refuting the alleged powers manifested by demons. Athanasius explains the demons’ ability to foretell the future as a fraud, based on their speed (Vita Antonii 31–33), and Evagrius denies their apparent capacity to know what is in our heart, claiming instead that they deduce our thoughts from external behaviors (On Thoughts 37; Praktikos 47). In both cases the demons are presented as cunning tricksters rather than as possessing real powers, quite similar to the “powerless highway robber (‫ ”)ליסטים שפוף‬in Genesis Rabba. Amoraic yetzer is thus more developed than in tannaitic homilies. It is a well-defined figure, wily and sophisticated. It grows with humans and develops in stages to become a dangerous foe (cf. “first sweet, and then sour”; y. Shab. 14:3, 14c). Homily [c], a reading of the parable of the poor man’s sheep in 2 Samuel 12, is especially telling in this context. Based on the changing names of the guest in the verses (first ‫ הלך‬and then ‫)אורח‬, the homily develops a narrative in which the yetzer comes to the rich man as a mere visitor (or “stranger,” ‫)אכסניי‬, only to gradually become the master of the house himself. Note that

Amoraic Yetzer 71

the verses in this parable never call the guest a master (‫)בעל הבית‬: his “mastery” is deduced in the homily from the fact that the rich man is willing to steal the poor man’s sheep only to satisfy his guest. This, for the homilist, indicates that the visitor has overpowered his host. This is a new peak in the reification of the yetzer: a “stranger” coming from outside to dwell inside humans, and who controls them by causing them to commit atrocities. The conceptualization of the yetzer as an external intruder is not uncontested in rabbinic sources. While some sources narrate the evil yetzer as coming from the outside to take control of people,24 others present it as an integral part of human creation.25 This debate may help us decode Antoninus’s famous dialogue with Rabbi in Genesis Rabba 34:10 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 320–21). Antoninus asks two successive questions: “From when is the evil yetzer placed in humans (‫ ”)מאמתי יצר הרע נוּתן בו באדם‬and “From when is the soul placed in humans (‫)נשמה מאימת נתנת באדם‬.” Scholars have assigned profound philosophical meanings to the second question,26 but did not try to connect it to the first one.27 The message of the homily, I contend, lies exactly in the differences between Antoninus’s responses regarding the two questions: that which regards the soul and that which discusses the yetzer. In the case of the soul, Antoninus teaches Rabbi that it must be placed in humans at their very inception, for no life is possible without it: “Leave meat without salt for three days, he said, will it not rot?” His attitude toward the yetzer is markedly different. The evil yetzer is not essential for life itself, but is the source of human violence (‫חוטט את בני‬ ‫[“ ;מיעיה ויוצא‬the fetus] would dig through [its mother’s] guts and leave [the womb]”),28 and therefore must be placed only upon emerging from the womb. While both soul and yetzer are believed to enter humans at early stages in their lives, there is a clear ontological hierarchy between them. Antoninus reveals the secret of hierarchy to Rabbi by asking him the two questions successively. Antoninus’s attitude toward the yetzer, eventually adopted by Rabbi, is somewhere between the two extreme attitudes above. It allows thinking of the yetzer as an intruder, even while conceptualizing it as an integral part of humanity. The metaphoric language used in Genesis Rabba 22:6—a highway robber, a fool and a slave—is also more refined and developed than what we encountered in tannaitic literature. In some cases the distinction between the “real” yetzer and its metaphoric representations seems to be deliberately blurred. The anecdote about the Roman dogs [d] is not presented, strictly speaking, as a parable, but as an illustration, and so no explicit lesson is ­attached to it. The highway robber [e] already appears as a parable along with its tenor (“So too yetzer



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hara”). In the next homily [f], however, the yetzer itself, not its figurative representation, is depicted as walking in the city roads, misleading people.29 The re­ ification of the yetzer and its appearance as an independent being inevitably blur the distinction between vehicle and tenor, metaphor and reality. Amoraic literature exceeds the tannaitic in its treatment of the yetzer in breadth as well as in content. This cycle of nine homilies combined into a wellstructured sugia in Genesis Rabba is unparalleled in the tannaitic corpus. Genesis Rabba alone contains about twenty-five homilies on yetzer, more than in the entire tannaitic corpus. Moreover, in most of these homilies it is hard to trace specific linguistic or thematic triggers for the appearance of the yetzer,30 except for the general theme of humans struggling to fulfill their religious obligations. More than anything, this phenomenon points to the central place the yetzer came to occupy in amoraic anthropology. The dangers presented by yetzer and the magnitude of the struggle against it are portrayed in this cycle in an extreme and vivid way. Other homilies are more laconic, but the verses they cite paint a picture no less dramatic. Thus in y. Ber. 1:1, 2d (=PdRK 7:4, ed. Mandelbaum, 124), we read that David would rise before dawn “and his yetzer would confront him and say: David, kings should be wakened by the dawn, but you say: I will awaken the dawn.” The debate might seem quite tame, until one reads the verses cited in the homily (Ps 119:61–61, 57:7–9) presenting a life-and-death struggle with evil demons who “have prepared a net for my steps” and “dug a pit before me.” A similar pattern can be shown in many Palestinian amoraic homilies. Many, but not all. One homily in Genesis Rabba presents a picture radically different from what we have seen thus far: Behold, it was very good (Gen 1:31): refers to the good yetzer; and behold (‫)והנה‬, it was very good (ibid.): refers to the evil yetzer. But is evil yetzer good (‫ אתמהא‬,‫ ?)וכי יצר רע טוב‬Rather (‫ )אלא‬without evil yetzer no man would build a house, take a wife or beget children. (Gen Rab. 9:7, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 72)31 This homily presents a dualistic model of two yetzarim, alongside a dialectic one—an evil yetzer that can be nonetheless designated as “very good” due to its constructive effects on men.32 Recent scholarship is quite enamored with this homily, and it may well be the single most cited source regarding the yetzer.33 In a way it became the interpretive key, through which all other sources are (re)read. However, our systematic review demonstrates that this homily is exceptional in both its dualistic and dialectic aspects. Moreover,

Amoraic Yetzer 73

this homily itself should not be separated from its local interpretive context in Gen 1:31. Although its explicit prooftext is the redundant vav of “ve-hine,” it seems in fact to engage with the verse as a whole: “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” If all that God made is good, it must include even the evil yetzer. The evil yetzer thus appears as the ultimate evil, which must be accounted for if all of creation is to be described as good.34 This source cannot possibly teach that the evil yetzer is good (an idea which is presented by the homilist as absurd).35 If anything, it teaches that the evil yetzer is considered as the worst thing on earth. It is thus the specific problem of theodicy (everything that God created must be “very good”) that gave rise to this celebratory, but extremely rare, dialecticization of the yetzer. Just like its tannaitic precedent in Mishna Berakhot 9:5, this homily in Genesis Rabba combines dualistic and dialectic pictures. I was able to track only a few other amoraic sources promoting a dialectic attitude toward the evil yetzer,36 and only a couple that mention two yetzarim (out of fifty-five sources discussing the yetzer in Palestinian literature).37 Interestingly enough, one of the other two appears in the context of the creation narrative in Genesis Rabba as well. It deduces that a human being has two yetzarim, from the double yud of the word ‫“( וייצר‬and the Lord formed,” Gen 2:7). This homily reveals interesting affinities with the homily on ‫( והנה טוב מאוד‬Gen 1:31), discussed above, and both differ from most Palestinian sources, including in Genesis Rabba itself. Our homily continues: For if an animal [in whose creation narrative only one yud appears: ‫ויצר‬, Gen 2:19] had two yetzarim, it would die of fear (‫ )מושחרת ומתה‬immediately upon seeing a human holding a knife to slaughter it. (Gen Rab. 14:4, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 128) The description of the evil yetzer here is rather enigmatic, but it seems to indicate some kind of human consciousness of mortality,38 which animals lack.39 The similarities between these two homilies (both in their allusion to two yetzarim and in the unique way they describe the evil yetzer) and the appearance of both at the beginning of Genesis Rabba may not be accidental. One can speculate as to a common origin, possibly in a Midrash on the creation narrative (‫ )מעשה בראשית‬of some kind.40 Be that as it may, the vast majority of Palestinian sources have only one yetzer, the evil one, against which humans must wage a constant battle. Thus, for example, we read in a prayer in y. Ber. 4:2 [7:4]:



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R. Tanhum Scholasticus (‫ )בר איסכולסטיקא‬prayed: May it be thy will, Lord my God, God of my fathers, that you break and vanquish the yoke of the evil yetzer from our hearts (‫)שתשבור ותשבית עולו שליצר הרע מלבינו‬. For you thus created us to do your will and we are obligated to do your will. You desire, and we desire, and what prevents us? The leaven in the dough (‫)שאור שבעיסה‬. It is obvious to you that we do not have the strength to resist it. So let it be thy will, Lord my God and God of my fathers, that you vanquish it from before us and subdue it, so that we may do thy will as our own will with a whole heart.41 The good yetzer is totally absent here, and in fact it is hard to imagine how it could possibly fit into the picture. Just like Boaz and the other biblical figures in the tannaitic homilies discussed above, the supplicant wishes to act in accordance with divine will, but his yetzer fails him again and again. If the basic image is that “You wish and we wish,” what possible role remains for the good yetzer? Scholars have long noticed that “the Rabbis did not have a doctrine of original sin or of the essential sinfulness of each man in the Christian sense.”42 In his classic work The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, Efraim E. Urbach further claims that the rabbis were acquainted with, and conducted a polemic against, the Pauline idea of human sinfulness as inherited from Adam.43 Urbach reads several homilies as acknowledging this concept, even while “voiding it of all meaning.”44 Whether or not we accept Urbach’s specific exegesis, the homilies on the yetzer approve this basic view. The yetzer is nowhere connected to Adam’s sin,45 or appears in the context of rabbinic homilies on the Garden of Eden, in stark contrast to both Paul and Fourth Ezra.46 Its origins are ascribed instead to the very creation of Adam, as is clear in the creation homilies above.47 Against this background, we can better understand the insistence of several homilies to present the yetzer as an integral part of the original act of creation,48 as well as to every creature’s physiology.49

The Little Fly That Destroyed the Temple: The Babylonian Yetzer The image and function of the yetzer undergo several developments in the Bavli, of which I will focus especially on two: the acquisition of physical characteristics by the yetzer and its transformation into a national enemy. The first appears in a single sugia in Bavli Berakhot 61a, which gathers various sources on the two yetzarim. This passage is based on the homily in Mishna Berakhot

Amoraic Yetzer 75

9:5 (“with all your heart—with both your yetzarim, the good yetzer and the evil yetzer”), but goes much further, presenting, for the first time, the two yetzarim as physical organs, located “between the two openings of the heart.” [a] R. Nahman b. R. Hisda expounded: What is meant by the verse, then the Lord God formed (‫ )וייצר‬man? That God created two yetzarim [deduced from the double yud in the word ‫]וייצר‬, one good and the other evil. R. Nahman b. Isaac objects: according to this, animals, of which it is not written ‫[ וייצר‬with two yods] have no evil yetzer, yet we see that they injure and bite?50 Rather [the explanation of the double yud is] according to R. Jeremiah b. Eleazar; for R. Jeremiah b. Eleazar said: God created two faces (‫ )דו פרצוף‬in the first man, as it says, behind and before have You formed me.51 [b] Rav52 said: The evil yetzer resembles a fly, and dwells between the two openings (‫ )מפתחי‬of the heart, as it says, deadly flies make the ointment of the perfumers fetid and putrid (Ecc 10:1).53 Samuel said: It [the yetzer] is a like a kind of wheat (‫)חטה‬, as it says, sin (‫ )חטאת‬crouches at the door (Gen 4:7). [c] Our Rabbis taught: a human has two kidneys, right and left; the one on the right side advises good and the one on the left advises evil, as it is written, a wise heart is at his right hand, and a fool’s heart is at his left (Ecc 10:2). [d] It has been taught: R. Jose the Galilean says, the righteous are ruled (‫ )שופטן‬by their good yetzer, as it says, My heart is slain (‫ )חלל‬within me (Ps 109:22). The wicked are ruled by their evil yetzer, as it says, [Transgression speaks to the wicked inside his heart]54 there is no fear of God before his eyes (Ps 36:2). Average people are ruled by both good and evil yetzarim, as it says, Because He stands at the right hand of the needy, to save him from them that rule (‫ )משופטי‬his soul (Ps 109:31). [e] Rabba said: People such as we are average. Abaye said to him: Master, you give no one a chance to live [in the world to come; for no one is righteous]! Rabba also said: Let a man know, concerning himself, whether he is completely righteous or not, for Rabba said: the world was created only for either the totally wicked or the totally righteous. Rabba also said: The world was created only for Ahab son of Omri and for R. Hanina b. Dosa; this world for Ahab son of Omri, and the future world for R. Hanina b. Dosa. Ahab b. Omri was never ruled (‫ )שלט‬by his good yetzer [Hanina b. Dosa was never ruled by his evil yetzer].55



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[f] Our Rabbis taught: the heart discerns, the kidneys prompt, the wind-pipe produces the voice, the mouth shapes [the words], the tongue articulates, the gullet takes in and lets out all kinds of food, the lungs absorb all kinds of liquids, the liver enrages, the gall lets a drop fall into it and allays it, the milt produces laughter, the large intestine grinds [the food], the maw sleeps [or brings sleep], and the nose awakens. If the awakener sleeps or the sleeper rouses (‫)נינער הישן וישן הנינער‬, [human] pines away. It is taught: If both [induce] sleep or both awaken, [human] dies forthwith. The sugia as a whole is constructed around a motif of duality of good and evil, following the mishna that requires worship “with two yetzarim.”56 The duality in the sugia, however, is not specifically of yetzarim: the two kidneys (homily [c]) and the two openings of the heart (homily [b]) stand for a dual system of good and evil. The duality of yetzarim is hardly central to this sugia, which can envision one yetzer between the two openings of the heart without difficulty. The real innovation of the sugia is its representation of the yetzer as a physical entity, almost part of the body, which is why it ends with a list of different body parts and their functions. The biblical association of yetzer with the heart (i.e., mind)57 is interpreted physiologically. Rav and Shmuel are the first to ascribe a physical shape to the evil yetzer, as well as a location in the body. In his commentary on the Bavli, Rav Hayya Gaon explains that the fly and wheat simply represent small objects.58 One may, however, speculate about stronger readings of these metaphors, which Rav Hayya may in fact be silently opposing, connecting the yetzer to Cain’s sin (“sin [‫ ]חטאת‬crouches at the door”)59 or to demonic beings (“deadly flies”).60 The homilies attributed to Rav and Shmuel are short and cryptic, but a physiological model can be tentatively reconstructed from them. The yetzer resides between the two chambers (“openings”) of the heart,61 triggering one chamber or the other, causing one to act accordingly, much as the kidneys are described in the following baraita.62 People are expected to trigger their heart in the proper direction (“the wise heart to his right”) and resist its movement in the other direction. Several amoraic homilies indeed present the yetzer as kinetic: “your yetzer moved (‫ )זע‬on you” (Gen Rab. 99:4, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1253);63 “the evil yetzer moved (‫ )הזיע‬a bit” (Song Rab. 4:4). This description may resemble the way wisdom controls impulse in Plato’s Timaeus (69e–70b), a process that may be summarized thus: “The immortal

Amoraic Yetzer 77

soul might receive contrary motions through the marrow from the body. This would indicate that the body was undergoing some assault of improper motions from either outside or within itself. It could then moderate the motion of the soul/body by sending a harmonizing motion. The heart would pass this motion on throughout the body.”64 Our homily may have even closer affinities to the Stoic physiology in which feelings are a result of the soul’s movement in the direction opposing its natural course.65 Early Monastic literature has combined these theories of psychic movement together with their demonology, thus constructing a detailed mechanism through which the demons act on the psyche. Thus, for Origen and Evagrius, the irrational parts of the soul “if not managed by the nous . . . act against nature (παρα ϕύσιν), and are susceptible to ‘movement’ by . . . logismoi of demonic origin.”66 It seems quite possible that a similar adaptation of the Hellenistic movement theory was conducted in the yetzer homilies cited above. The yetzer wishes to move the soul to the left, and thus swerving it to the right is the ultimate victory, just as “Abraham our father made the evil yetzer good” (y. Ber. 9:5, 14b). But admittedly, these homilies are too laconic and cryptic to serve as a base for any far-reaching conclusions.67 Yet the picture presented in this sugia is anything but common in the Babylonian or Palestinian Talmuds. Letting statistics into the discussion once more reveals that this source is the only explication of the physiological nature of the yetzer (which does not help decode it), while two yetzarim, not essential even here, appear only in three other Babylonian sources. Furthermore, at least two of these sources testify to the marginality of the dualistic model even while presenting it:68 R. Ammi bar Abba said: What is the meaning of the passage (Ecc 9:14): a little city, with few men in it? A little city—this refers to the body; with few men in it—this refers to the limbs; and to it came a great king, who invested it—this is the evil yetzer; and built mighty siege works against it—this refers to sins. In the city was a poor wise man (Ecc 9:15)—this is the good yetzer; who saved it with his wisdom—this refers to repentance and good deeds; but nobody thought of that poor man—for when the evil yetzer [dominates], the good yetzer is not remembered. (b. Ned. 32b) This homily, already discussed in the introduction, portrays the two struggling powers as totally asymmetrical. The evil yetzer is a great king, while the good one is a poor man. Indeed, the last sentence, indicating the tendency to



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“forget” the good yetzer altogether, might very well serve as a summary of rabbinic yetzer discourse itself.69 This is even more explicit in a second homily discussing various stratagems to strike the evil yetzer: R. Levi b. Hama says in the name of Reish Lakish: A man should always incite the good yetzer against the evil yetzer. For it is written: tremble (‫ )רגזו‬and sin not (Ps 4:5). If [the evil yetzer] leaves, good. If not, let him study the Torah. For it is written: commune with your own heart upon your bed (ibid.). If it leaves, good. If not, let him remind himself of the day of death. For it is written (ibid.): and be still, Selah. (b. Ber. 5a) The first sentence clearly presents two yetzarim fighting with each other. As the homily goes on, however, the good yetzer disappears, leaving the person to struggle against the single evil yetzer in other ways. The good yetzer is only one technique, certainly not the most powerful, to beat the evil one. This further strengthens the hypothesis that the dualistic structure was artificially imposed on the yetzer discourse without actually changing its nature. The struggle remains that of a human against the single, evil yetzer.70 A second innovation found in the Bavli is the appearance of the yetzer as a national enemy. We already encountered in Genesis Rabba above (22:6, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 210–11) a yetzer that is not a personal enemy (as in “when he sees a man,” [f]) but functions instead on a cosmic scale. In this context it is not individuals who learned how to fight the yetzer as they grew up, but generations of humanity, thus transforming a biographical coming of age into a historical one: “The evil yetzer destroyed several generations” until “Abraham stood!” [e]. Such a universal context, totally absent from tannaitic literature, appears in few other amoraic, Palestinian as well as Babylonian, homilies,71 one of which even speculates about the yetzer’s eschatological defeat: “The evil yetzer is a great obstruction (‫ )מכשול‬to the world, carve it (‫ )סתתוהו‬little by little, until I will ultimately cut it off from the world” (PdRK 24:17, ed. Mandelbaum, 376). The Babylonian sugia in tractate Sukka (50b–52a), the longest, most developed sugia on the yetzer in all of rabbinic literature, presents a further development, not found in any Palestinian source. The yetzer appears not as an enemy of humanity at large but specifically of Israel. In fact, one homily in this sugia seems even to explicitly account for the transformation of the yetzer from a universal to a national enemy. In Joel 2:20, God promises to cast away the locusts destroying the land. The symbolic name for the locusts, “the northerner” (i.e., one who comes from the north), and the intense imagery of the verse, led the

Amoraic Yetzer 79

homilist to seek for another, less trivial, enemy in the verse, one who might also be relevant for his own experience. The “northerner” (‫ )צפוני‬is thus read as the yetzer, hidden (‫ )צפון‬in every person’s heart: 72 Our Rabbis taught: but I will remove far off from you the hidden one (Joel 2:20)—This is the evil yetzer which is hidden in human’s heart;73 and will drive him into a land barren and desolate means—to a place where there are no humans for it to attack;74 with his face toward the eastern sea—[implies] that it set its eyes against the first Temple and destroyed it; and his hinder part toward the western sea—[implies] that it set its eyes against the second Temple and destroyed it,75 and killed the sages therein. That his foulness may come up and his ill-savor may come up—[implies] that it leaves the other nations and attacks only Israel. Because he has done great things—Abaye said: [the yetzer attacks] sages more than anyone. The sugia as a whole moves back and forth from individual images of the yetzer to collective ones (compare, for example, “The greater the man, the greater his yetzer” with “Remove the obstacle from the road of my people”).76 Against this backdrop, our homily may be read as an account for the transformation of the yetzer from the intra-personal entity it is in most of rabbinic literature to an external one. The yetzer is “hidden” in every person’s heart, but is revealed as an enemy on a cosmic scale, who must be exiled to “a place where there are no people to attack.” At a specific point, however, the enemy of all humanity “leaves the other nations, and attacks only Israel.”77 Besides its dramatic effect, there is also a clear interpretive benefit from this double move: the multiple and potentially redundant descriptions of the struggle against the “hidden one” in the verse are read as a process of radicalization, from personal to universal to national.78 These developments change not only the image of the yetzer but also its role. The cosmic yetzer becomes responsible not only for personal sinfulness but for all evil and suffering in this world: “As long as the evil yetzer is in this world, [there is] darkness and gloom (‫ )צלמות‬in this world” (Gen Rab. 89:1, ed. ­Theodor-Albeck, 1086). It gets ever closer to the cosmic demonic figures prevailing in Second Temple literature, such as Belial, the Prince of Mastema and Azzazel. The most explicit statement in this context is attributed (only in the Bavli!) to Reish Lakish: “Satan is yetzer hara is the angel of death” (‫הוא שטן הוא‬ ‫)יצר הרע הוא מלאך המוות‬. This is a powerful homily that becomes even more powerful when we realize that it is not concerned with yetzer hara at all, but



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with Job’s Satan. Reish Lakish, unlike the other opinions voiced in the sugia, identifies Satan not as a messenger of God, but as a demonic being.79 The yetzer is an example of such powers with which Satan might be equated. These Babylonian sources make the yetzer especially similar to Fourth Ezra’s “evil heart” (cor malum, ‫)לבא בישא‬,80 which appears both as a cosmic and a national enemy while residing inside the body. The “evil heart” is responsible for Adam’s first sin (3:21) and from there all human history is nothing but a series of failures stemming from it (4:30), culminating in the destruction of the Temple (3:27; according to the narrative this is the First Temple; according to scholars, the Second). Evil will cease from the world (6:27) when the “evil heart” will be fully removed in the future (8:6, 53) and replaced with a new heart (6:26), at which point a new era will commence for the remaining few (7:47).81 This unique image of a demon-like entity, which resides inside humans but acts as a national and cosmic enemy,82 is shared by both Fourth Ezra’s “evil heart” and the amoraic, especially Babylonian, evil yetzer. The appearance of these themes in Fourth Ezra indicates that the cosmic and national contexts of the yetzer are not late Babylonian innovations, but rather Palestinian traditions, which for some reason found their way into rabbinic literature relatively late. Instead of speculating about apocalyptic themes penetrating rabbinic culture from the outside only in the amoraic period,83 I wish to suggest the opposite: an old Jewish tradition consciously ignored by early rabbis.84 I would suggest that tannaitic literature neglected the cosmic and national contexts of the yetzer (found already in Qumran) due to the major role in which it is cast in that literature, as the source of human sinfulness. This role led the rabbis to concentrate on the personal rather than the collective context. Only when the yetzer was taken to new spheres in amoraic literature did the collective context reappear, in cosmic or national form. This may account for the fact that the Babylonian yetzer seems much closer to Second Temple demons than to the tannaitic one. 85 We should, however, be wary of overstating the transformation from the personal to the collective contexts. Most amoraic sources present a personal yetzer and only a small minority moves to a collective one. Even these are woven integrally with the personal context, as seen in both Genesis Rabba 22:6 and b. Sukka 50b–52a, a fact that hardy support a sharp rift between the two contexts. When reading the yetzer in the context of bildung and self-control, as many scholars do, it is almost impossible to explain the shift from personal to collective contexts. After all, what does self-fashioning have to do with cosmic demons? The discussion above, however, has shown that the yetzer

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should be placed in the context of human evil and sinfulness, rather than of self fashioning and control. In this context the transfer from private to collective, or even universal evil, is much less dramatic. If the yetzer can account for personal sins, why not for collective evil? When combining the processes of reification and demonization of the yetzer with the central place it came to occupy in amoraic literature, such a transformation seems to be almost an inevitable byproduct. The development of the rabbinic yetzer made it “useful” in the context of the source of evil and suffering in the world as well as for personal sins.86 Thus, when the demonological background of the yetzer is taken seriously, its appearance in cosmic contexts is anything but surprising. If anything, it is the delay of the full blown demonic appearance of the yetzer that should be accounted for. More than a radical change in the function and characteristics of the yetzer, these developments thus attest to its growing popularity, as it becomes the center of rabbinic reflections about humans.87 Daily apotropaic prayers requesting protection from the yetzer, found in both Talmuds (y. Ber. 4:2, 7d; b. Ber. 17a and 60b), demonstrate its growing centrality even in everyday practice. Yet another testimony of the fundamental role the yetzer came to occupy in amoraic literature is its interchangeability with “heart.”88 The metonymic use of “heart” for yetzer (and not vice versa, as in Qumran!) can only be created when there is a developed doctrine of a yetzer residing in human heart. Developments in the image of the yetzer prompt counter developments in the protective techniques against it. Tannaitic literature mentions three main techniques: adjuration in the name of God, prayer, and, most commonly, the study of Torah. Amoraic literature supplies us with several additional weapons. Most of these descriptions are unfortunately too general to decipher, 89 but in one sugia (b. Ber. 5a) we do encounter two specific techniques: angering (‫ )הרגזה‬the yetzer, and recalling mortality. 90Luckily, both techniques are described in detail in monastic instructions. Meditation on death is mentioned by several church fathers, and detailed by Evagrius.91 The Latter’s extended account of anti-demonic techniques may also help decode the cryptic rabbinic idea of “angering the yetzer.” Let us examine this technique as it appears in Pesikta de-Rav Kahana: Be angry and do not sin (‫ ;רגזו ואל תחטאו‬Ps 4:5) . . . R. Yaacob b. Avina says: make your yetzer irritated (‫ )ארגז‬and it will not make you sin; and the Rabbis say: make your yetzer angry (‫ )אכעיס‬and do not come to a sinful act (PdRK 24:4, ed. Mandelbaum, 352).



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Is there a debate between these two almost synonymous formulations? I suspect there is.92 R. Yaacob uses the original scriptural word ragaz, and thus probably refers to its biblical meaning: “awaken,” “disturb,” or “excite.”93 Admittedly, however, his exact intention can only be guessed.94 The sages, on the other hand, translate the biblical ragaz into kaas, thus referring unequivocally to anger. But what might angering one’s yetzer mean? The Bavli’s version could be of help here: “One should always make his good yetzer angry (‫ )ירגיז‬at his evil yetzer.” According to this version the idea is not to make your yetzer angry, but rather to be angry at it. While the Bavli’s formulation may be an attempt to adapt this saying to the two yetzarim model, the idea of becoming angry at one’s yetzer finds a surprising parallel in Evagrius’s instruction. For Evagrius anger is one of the most deadly sins and is only legitimate when directed against demons, where it functions as a powerful weapon. This is especially true in the case of the demon of fornication: “Against such thoughts, the boiling heat of the irascible part directed against this demon is extremely useful. The demon fears this wrath most of all when it is stirred up against these thoughts. . . . This is what scripture text refers to: Be angry and do not sin (Ps 4:5). This is a useful remedy when it is applied to the soul in these temptations.”95 The technique is not only identical to the rabbinic one, but is based on the very same biblical verse. It is now useful to look at these phenomena more broadly: amoraic literature uses yetzer imagery that is different both qualitatively and quantitatively from that found in tannaitic literature. Amoraic yetzer is more developed, reified, and demonized; it acquires a distinct character and even physical shape. It is compared to other demonic beings and acquires a place in cosmological structures. The ever more explicit demonization of the yetzer in amoraic literature brings it closer than before to patristic writings on demons that fight monks. Thus, the analogies to monastic literature, confined in tannaitic literature (Chapter 2 above) to general themes, become in amoraic midrashim (Pesikta de-Rav Kahana here and Genesis Rabba above) specific linguistic and thematic analogies. These analogies to Athanasius’s and Evagrius’s fourth-­century monastic demonologies cannot be explained away as mere accidents or even a shared zeitgeist, but point toward actual interconnections between the two traditions, which flourished in a proximate time and space. Scholars have recently sought phenomena that might be considered shared Jewish Christian (or even Judeo-Christian) formations.96 The internalized demon/yetzer seems a good candidate for this title. True, the laconic and cryptic

Amoraic Yetzer 83

rabbinic homilies are not even close to the detailed and systematic accounts of war techniques in Evagrius and patristic literature in general,97 but this has to do more with the nature of rabbinic literature than with yetzer discourse per se.98 That this proximity was not acknowledged by scholars (unlike other phenomena in the areas of magic and demonology) is probably due to the deep psychologization of the rabbinic yetzer in contemporary research. As for the Bavli: although some of the motifs, such as the physical and national attributes of the yetzer or the two yetzarim model, are more pronounced in the Bavli, the character of the sources does not allow us to treat them as solely Babylonian traits. These differences might be simply another demonstration (if we still need any) of the yetzer’s multifaceted character in the sources. Thus, for example, while we do not find a physiology of the yetzer in the Yerushalmi and Palestinian midrashim similar to that depicted in Bavli Berakhot 61a, a strikingly similar description does appear in a Hebrew poem from Byzantine Palestine composed by Yosse ben Yosse. In his confession hymn ‫אז לראש תתנו‬, the yetzer (“we did not subdue yetzer,” ‫)לא כפפנו יצר‬ appears between the heart (‫ )כיבדנו לבב‬and the kidneys (‫ )מר לכליות‬in a list of organs (!) that sinned.99 The only point on which there is indeed a clear, systematic gap between the two Talmuds is the question of the ability to overpower the yetzer. Babylonian literature is far more optimistic regarding the chances of success in the struggle against the yetzer. The Bavli uses verbs of dominion and control over the yetzer (e.g., ‫ לייסר‬/ ‫ לשלוט‬/ ‫ לכוף‬/ ‫ להתגבר‬/ ‫ )למשול‬much more often than Palestinian sources.100 For example, the prayer for protection from the yetzer in y. Ber. 4:2, 7b and b. Ber. 16b is virtually identical, but only the Yerushalmi takes care to add: “You know we have no power to resist it.” The Bavli alone also allows for total destruction of the yetzer, and some biblical characters are portrayed in it as completely outside of the dominion of yetzer hara.101 Developments, intensifications, and diversity should not, however, blur the basic continuity uncovered in this chapter. The most striking feature of comparison between the tannaitic and amoraic corpora is their similar view of the yetzer’s role. The yetzer battles humans and entices them away from doing good, especially from Torah and mitzvot. In most sources there is only one yetzer, evil in nature, against which humans are instructed to battle, using various techniques, most commonly the study of Torah. My reading suggests that the question of function should be given precedent over that of context. Although yetzer appears in many different contexts, from frivolousness to hatred to fear to robbery, it has but one basic function,



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which is to explain why the worship of God is so difficult. The local contexts are for the most part but specific realizations of this basic function, shared by both Tannaim and Amoraim. This explains why the yetzer is mostly described as simply evil, without any further specification, for it is the enemy of humans in the widest sense possible. Rabbinic yetzer is not the “irrational animal part of man.”102 In fact, we have seen an amoraic tradition above, which explicitly claims that the evil yetzer does not reside in animals.103 Other amoraic sources similarly emphasize the essential connection between the evil yetzer and humanity.104 For the same reason, we should avoid reading the struggle against the yetzer as a platonic battle of reason against appetites, or as ascetic exercises to fight the body and its pleasures.105 Far from being a blind appetite, rabbinic yetzer is a wily demon who works patiently to achieve its goals. It does not aim to satisfy bodily appetites but to violate the Torah. It is interested in deeds rather than thoughts, and so deeds must be used in the battle against it.106 All these characteristics come directly from the function of yetzer as an explanation for the human sinfulness. Demons residing in the heart, such as the spirits of Belial in The Testament of Reuben107 or the “Evil heart” in Fourth Ezra and, above all, the monastic daimones, are thus much closer, in both function and battling techniques, to the rabbinic yetzer than Hellenistic appetites. Its image may have developed and become more central over time, but its antinomian character and its role as the source of human sinfulness remain ultimately the same.

Excursus: Yona Frankel and the Psychologization of the Yetzer The psychological fallacy so common in the study of rabbinic yetzer can be exemplified in the work of Professor Yona Frankel.108 Frankel, one of the most influential scholars of Aggada,109 discusses the literary function of the yetzer on two separate occasions. While studying the story of Abaye and the couple in Bavli Sukka 52a, he writes: Abaye’s soul is split. The hated yetzer comes as if from the outside (‫כאילו‬ ‫)בא מבחוץ‬, and [Abaye] refers to “himself” in the third person. He takes all the responsibility upon “himself” and goes to one of the bridges on the lake in despair. His understanding that he cannot “stand up” to the yetzer proves the extreme polarity of the two parts of the story, the

Amoraic Yetzer 85

c­ onfident Abaye and the Abaye in despair. The split structure of the story reflects this description of the split soul.110 The narrative itself is discussed in Chapter 6 below; here, I focus on Frankel’s commentary and especially his use of the term “split soul” in his analysis. What is it and where is it taken from? This matter becomes clearer in another study of Frankel’s, devoted to the story of the nazirite from the south (t. Nez. 4:7; see Chapter 1 above), where he explicitly invokes William James’s “Homo Duplex”: “The gaze in one’s image brings to a mental situation which William James calls ‘the split self.’ . . . In the second part of the story, the segment of the soul which speaks for the protagonist, the ‘self,’ turns to the other part of the soul, called ‘my yetzer,’ and reproaches it rhetorically.”111 Frankel discusses the interesting phenomenon of speaking to one’s yetzer in the second person: “Evil one, you should not have taken pride in something that is not yours.” In order to account for this phenomenon, Frankel uses James’s terminology, taken from his eighth lecture in The Varieties of Religious Experience, entitled “The Divided Self and the Process of its Unification.” In this lecture James uses the term Homo Duplex to analyze a common religious experience of being split between different emotions and wills, especially divine and mundane. After analyzing the “normal” manifestations of such a split, James adds: This amount of inconsistency will only count as amiable weakness; but a stronger degree of heterogeneity may make havoc of the subject’s life. There are persons whose existence is little more than a series of zig-zags, as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. Their spirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and mistakes.112 James argues that such a plurality is abnormal, at least partially a genetic pathology. He thus devotes the second half of the chapter to the “unification” of the self, i.e., the return of the believer to a religious state of mind that is normal and healthy. Frankel’s adoption of this psychological model to explain the rabbinic yetzer is based on the assumption that the split of the self into “me” versus “my yetzer” in these narratives is a mere rhetorical device: a literary dramatization of inner tension or poor mental state (“split personality”).113 Rabbinic plurality,



86 Chapter 4

however, is not simply rhetorical. It is a matter of anthropology, not literary flourish. The key to decoding it rests in analyzing culture-specific anthropology, not a-historical psychology. Rather than narrating a sense of plurality, rabbinic homilies present an anthropology of duplication. In this context David Brakke’s warning against the psychologization of patristic demonology is apt: “Because Evagrius virtually identified the demons with such passions as sadness, anger and pride, his science of the demons looks to us very much like a psychology in the modern sense—that is a science of the inner self. But in fact, Evagrius’s gnostic monk kept his gaze resolutely outward, focused on his unseen enemies.”114 The Mekhilta Demiluim discussed above demands a termination of this plurality as a precondition to true worship: “Remove that evil yetzer from your hearts, so that all of you will be as one in awe and of one mind to serve God. Just as He is singular (‫ )יחידי‬in the world, so let your service be singular (‫)מיוחדת‬ before Him” (Sifra Shemini 1, ed. Weiss 43d). The singularity of God requires worshiping him with a single heart, but the yetzer, residing in the heart, is an impediment to such worship, and should therefore be removed. The way to overcome this split is not a Jamesian self-reconciliation, but rather an inner struggle with the wily yetzer, which ends only when it is finally cut off from the heart. For the rabbis this life and death struggle is not a symptom of psychosis, as per James, 115 but a basic feature of the human condition.

Chapter 5

Refuting the Yetzer: The Limits of Rabbinic Discursive Worlds

Being fully internalized, the evil yetzer cannot use direct coercion, as other demons do. It is restricted to inner, dialogical means in its attempts to achieve the sinister goal of leading its host astray. Various arguments are thus cited in the name of the yetzer in rabbinic literature, and these are the focus of this chapter. Ascribing an argument to the yetzer has an immediate discursive effect. Even an allegedly local, harmless controversy becomes acute, and dangerous, when identified with the yetzer. My basic argument in this chapter is that the rabbis use the yetzer exactly for this purpose: to mark potentially risky areas. Identifying a question or refutation as belonging to the yetzer automatically disqualifies it and thus serves as a hazard sign, warning the audience to keep away from ideologically dangerous zones. By ascribing arguments to the yetzer, the homilists prevent their audience from actually engaging them.

Know Your Enemy: The Yetzer’s “Pretexts of Permissions” We have already seen Boaz’s dramatic encounter with his yetzer on the threshing floor (Sifre Numbers 88) and analyzed the characteristics of the yetzer and its arguments in this classic R. Ishmaelian homily in detail. One question, however, remained unanswered: why does Boaz keep so quiet? Why does he not even try to refute his yetzer’s argument? Or, if the yetzer’s claim is indeed irrefutable, why doesn’t Boaz listen to it? What is wrong with accepting the yetzer’s advice (in accordance with an explicit mishna), and why doesn’t the homilist explain this outright? A similar phenomenon was revealed in Sifre Deuteronomy 33, citing the struggle between Boaz and his evil yetzer as part of an “index” of negative



88 Chapter 5

acts, from which biblical heroes refrain by taking an oath: Abraham’s taking of booty following the war of the four kings against the five in Genesis; David’s opportunity to kill his pursuer, Saul, in Samuel; and, finally, Elisha’s taking of wages for healing Naaman in Second Kings. Although each of these acts could be easily justified (which other exegeses do),1 the biblical heroes, as this exposition has it, refrain from doing so by taking an oath. They tether themselves in order to fight the yetzer’s temptations. By identifying them with the yetzer, the homily transforms these apparently borderline activities into prohibitions. According to the midrashic exegeses, the halakhic arguments that would seem to permit Boaz to sleep with Ruth, as well as the other permissive rulings, are themselves the counsel of the evil yetzer. The yetzer is thus used by the exegete as a code name for the resolving of halakhic doubts: what appears doubtful looks that way only because of the advice of one’s yetzer, while in actuality it is illegitimate. This is made clear by the ending of the homily: “And just as the righteous adjure their yetzer not to do [these things listed above] so too the evildoers adjure their yetzer to do [them; ‫]כך רשעים משביעין את יצרן לעשות‬.” The choice is binary: either you struggle against the yetzer or you are in league with it; there is no middle way. A similar doctrine appears in two other homilies from the school of R. Ishmael discussed above: Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, Bahodesh 6 (ed. HorowitzRabin, 243; “Scripture went to such lengths in pursuit of the evil yetzer in order not to leave room for any pretext of permitting [‫[ ]אמתלת התר‬idolatry])” and the Mekhilta Dearayot in Sifra Aharei Mot 13 (ed. Weiss, 86a; “Still, the evil yetzer can think to say, their [laws] are better than ours. Scripture therefore teaches: observe them faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment [Deut 4:6]”). In the Mekhilta on Exodus, the yetzer’s deduction, which Scripture foresees and preempts, was a specific legal loophole, while in Sifra it is a meta-legal conclusion regarding the value of “our” laws in comparison to “theirs.” In both cases Scripture’s instructions must be specific enough in order to block the yetzer from using vague statements to argue against the laws. Though the yetzer does not struggle against the precepts of the Torah directly but only through “pretexts of permission,” its goal is still destructive. Its claims are to be rejected not on the basis of their content, which might appear legitimate, but on the basis of its hidden agenda. The alleged permission is only a vehicle to drag humans to sin. This slippery slope is explicitly narrated in several homilies (Sifre Deut 43, ed. Finkelstein, 96; t. Bab. Kam. 9:31, ed. Lieberman, 49) that reveal some of the yetzer’s crafty techniques: dragging humans through



Refuting the Yetzer 89

deception to matters which are seemingly insignificant, only to end with idolatry, the worst of sins. This is the reason why there is no use arguing with the yetzer, for it is not the content of its advice in and of itself that is problematic, but the agenda hidden behind it. The yetzer seeks to trap humans through the acts of negotiation regarding “pretexts of permission.” One can only lose by confronting it, and so it is better to avoid it completely, ignoring its provocations altogether. The Torah teaches us to do this by repeating its prohibitions, and the biblical heroes comply by taking oaths (adding individual prohibitions!). The most explicit statements in this regard appear in the following homily in the Mekhilta Dearayot in the Sifra: My rules (‫ )משפטי‬shall you observe (Lev 18:4)—this refers to maters that are written in the Torah but if they had not been written, it would have been logical to write them. . . . And faithfully follow my statutes (‫—)חוקותי‬these are matters that are written in the Torah against which the yetzer argues and the nations of the world argue. . . . In this regard scripture says, I am the Lord (Lev 18:4)—I have made these statutes and you have no right to argue (‫ )להשיב‬against them. (Sifra Aharei Mot 9:13, ed. Weiss, 86a)2 The repetition in the verse “my rules . . . my statutes” (Lev 18:4) is explained as referring to two different kinds of commandments: those that make sense, independent of their appearance in the Torah, and those that do not. The latter group is marked as being subject to questions of the yetzer and the nations. But of course it is the rabbis themselves who divide the commandments into two groups, indicating that it is they who question the logic behind some of the laws. Ascribing the questioning to the yetzer and to the nations of the world (both internal and external “Others”) should thus be read as a way to externalize the doubts. The yetzer’s claims are rejected not because they are false, but, quite to the contrary, because they are convincing. The very act of identifying these seemingly good arguments with the yetzer is meant to discredit them, marking them as forbidden. Other figures—such as philosophers, heretics, or Roman matrons—function in a similar manner in rabbinic aggada. The yetzer, however, is unique in that the sources never present a straightforward dialogue with it.3 While we have seen various techniques of resisting the yetzer in rabbinic literature in the previous chapters, none involved any discursive component. Indeed, the whole idea of “taking an oath” is to forcibly



90 Chapter 5

­ revent any possible dialogue. The yetzer thus serves not only to mark certain p claims as foreign or even illegitimate, but specifically as non-negotiable. In what follows I examine the cases in which the yetzer’s arguments are specified more closely, in order to spot these “dangerous” areas.

Sheol versus Resurrection, Judgment versus Forgiveness: The Yetzer’s Arguments In Sifre Numbers 88 cited above, the yetzer attempts to induce the bachelor Boaz to have intercourse with Ruth and thus marry her. The homily does not specify why Boaz turned down the yetzer’s allegedly sound advice. Other sources helped us complete the picture: the yetzer used the legal claim as a “pretext of permission” to entice Boaz to sexual licentiousness. We find no explicit objection to betrothing women through sexual intercourse in tannaitic literature, but such an objection does appear in the Babylonian Talmud. Rav, a prominent Babylonian sage of the early third century, is said to have flogged people who betrothed wives using intercourse alone.4 Other sources emphasize the problematic inherent to marital sex, which is at one and the same time a religious obligation,5 an act with great legal power,6 and a means of satisfying carnal lust.7 One homily put an opposition between pure and selfish intentions during intercourse into the mouth of King David himself, ascribing the selfish, bodily, motivation to his own parents (and so to virtually every couple): David said before the Holy One, Blessed be He: O Lord of the Universe! Did my father Jesse have the intention of bringing me into the world? Did he not intend only to satisfy himself (‫ ?)לצורך עצמו‬The proof for this is that after they [i.e., any couple] accomplish their desire he turns his face in one direction and she turns her face in the opposite direction, and You cause every single drop [of semen] to enter, and this is what David meant when he said, For though my father and my mother forsook me, the Lord gathered me in. (Ps 27:10; Lev Rab. 14:5, ed. Margulies, 308–9) When sexual pleasure ends, conception begins. This, however, does not seem to be of interest to the couple, who simply turn their backs and fall asleep. It remains for God to turn selfish sex into life-giving copulation.8 The yetzer’s argument to Boaz thus illustrates a basic dilemma in the rabbinic



Refuting the Yetzer 91

r­ eflection on marital sex: moving back and forth between procreation, obligation, and passion. Additional sources present similar dilemmas in other areas of rabbinic discourse. A mishna in tractate Avot ascribes an original (and rather convincing) argument regarding the impossibility of future judgment to the yetzer: He [R. Eleazar haKappar] used to say: The born are to die, and the dead are to live, and the living are to be judged; to know and to make known and to understand (‫ )לידע ולהודיע ולהיוודע‬that He is God, He is the maker, He is the creator, He is the discerner, He is the judge, He is the witness, He is the plaintiff, and He shall judge. For in whose presence is neither guile nor forgetfulness nor respect of persons nor taking of bribes; for all is His. And know that everything is according to the reckoning (‫)ודע שהכל בחשבון‬. And let not your yetzer promise you that Sheol is a refuge [from divine retribution]. For you were made despite yourself (‫)על כורחך‬, and born despite yourself, and live despite yourself and die despite yourself, and despite yourself you shall give account and reckoning before the King of kings of kinds, the Holy One, blessed be He. (m. Avot 4:22) The false promise of the yetzer appears in the midst of a developed doctrine of divine judgment. The sequence of the opening statement: “The born are to die, and the dead are to live and the living are to be judged (‫הילודים‬ ‫ ”)למות והמתים לחיות והחיים לידון‬clarifies that the subject of the maxim is not the judgment of individual (immortal) souls subsequent to death, but the future collective judgment (‫)והחיים לידון‬, which is to take place only after the resurrection of all dead (‫)והמתים לחיות‬.9 Other tannaitic sources equally emphasize that in order to be performed on a complete human being, soul and body together, the future judgment must be preceded by resurrection.10 The maxim begins and ends with the doctrine of future judgment (“He shall judge,” “you shall give account”).11 In between, it engages two possible oppositions regarding human accountability. First, it rejects the possibility of falsifying divine judgment by bribing the judge or counting on his faulty memory, presenting instead a fatal combination of complete records and an impartial judge.12 The second possible reservation, attributed to the yetzer, is more sophisticated: even if the final judgment is indeed impartial and total, you still have to be brought to the courthouse first. However, after death humans go to Sheol,



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the underworld, and disappear there. The yetzer promises that Sheol is an asylum, the perfect place for hiding from future judgment. 13 Sheol is a biblical term (the rabbis always use Gehena, except when citing verses).14 According to a prevalent biblical view, it is not only the ultimate hiding place,15 but also a place from which one can normally not be retrieved.16 Far from being an empty excuse, the yetzer’s objection points to an essential gap between biblical and rabbinic doctrines of the afterlife. This is nowhere better attested than in the long passage in the Babylonian Talmud (b. San. 90a–92b) dedicated to prove the biblical roots of resurrection.17 The passage is explicitly polemical, narrating debates with various “others,” from Sadducees,18 Samaritans (‫)כותיים‬, Romans, and Heretics (‫ )מינים‬to Caesar and Cleopatra. The heart of the passage is a series of homilies finding proofs for resurrection in the verses. The passage uses sophisticated exegetical devices in order to show that resurrection does indeed have biblical roots. But, of course, for historians it proves exactly the opposite: “The forced nature of the exegeses in question testify to the gap between the religious culture of the rabbis, on the one hand, and that of their scriptural sources on the other.”19 “If anything, the defensive nature of this exercise reflects the fact that, apart from Daniel and Isaiah, the rabbis could not find the doctrine in the Torah, but felt they must.”20 Here is one such “defensive” homily: R. Tabi said in R. Josia’s name: What is meant by: Sheol and the barren womb; and the earth that is not filled by water (Prov 30:16): what connection has Sheol with the womb? [The verse is meant] to teach you: just as the womb receives and brings forth, so Sheol too receives and brings forth (‫)מכניס ומוציא‬. Now, does this not furnish us with an argument a fortiori? If the womb, which receives in silence (‫)בחשאי‬, brings forth amid great cries (‫ ;)בקולות‬then Sheol, which receives the dead amid cries, will much more so bring them forth amid great cries (‫)בקולי קולות‬. This refutes those who maintain that resurrection does not appear in the Torah. (‫ ;אין תחית המתים מן התורה‬b. San. 92a = Ber. 15b) Rather than simply citing biblical precedent for resurrection, this homily attempts to reconcile it with the biblical concept of Sheol, claiming that Sheol, like a womb, brings forth just as it takes in. Interestingly, a very similar argument is offered by Fourth Ezra: “The underworld (Syriac: ‫ ;ܫܐܘܠ‬Latin: inferno) and the treasuries of the souls are like the womb; for just as a woman about to bear [a] child strives to bring to the end the inevitable [anguish] of d ­ elivery, so



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also do these places strive to expel those things that were committed to them from the beginning” (4:41–42).21 Unlike the biblical metaphor of Sheol as a mouth, irreversibly swallowing people (Num 16:32–33; Isa 5:14), both Fourth Ezra and the Talmud liken it to a womb, holding the dead inside, only to bring them out when the right time comes. In contrast, Mishna Avot suggests no such refutation of the yetzer’s presentation of Sheol as an asylum. No counterclaim of the kind that repeatedly appears in Bavli Sanhedrin is cited here. This fact is even more disturbing in light of the fact that the first objection in the Mishna (which is not ascribed to the yetzer) is being elegantly (if also laconically) refuted there (“for all is his”).22 It thus seems that for this mishna identifying a claim with the yetzer (the second objection) functions similarly to refuting it explicitly (the first objection). The very identification of an objection with the yetzer discredits it entirely and so no other counterargument is needed. In amoraic sources we find additional arguments identified with the yetzer: R. Judah son of R. Nahmani, the speaker of Reish Lakish, expounded: What is the meaning of the verse: Trust not in a friend, Rely not on an intimate (Mic 7:5). If the evil yetzer tells you to Sin and that the Holy One, blessed be He, will pardon (‫—)חטא והקב”ה מוחל‬believe it not, for it is said: Trust not in a friend, and friend (‫ ֵ)ר ַע‬means none other than the evil yetzer, for it is said: For the yetzer of man’s heart is evil (‫ ַ;רע‬Gen 8:21). And intimate (‫ )אלוף‬means none other than the Holy One, blessed be He, for it is said (Jer 3:1): You are the friend (‫ )אלוף‬of my youth. (b. Hag. 16a) 23 Why would the yetzer promise that God will forgive sins, and why does the Talmud think people would be tempted to believe it? It is probably because God is indeed portrayed, in numerous biblical as well as rabbinic sources, as merciful and forgiving. The tension between divine justice and mercy runs through rabbinic literature. For the rabbis, “justice and mercy were not attributes of a divine being, but the character of a personal God, whom they could not imagine as either unjust or unmerciful; hence they did not even see the difficulty the theologian finds in reconciling the attributes.”24 Not articulating it as a contradiction in the logical sense, the rabbis presented this tension as a conflict between two divine “measures” (‫מידת הדין‬ vs. ‫)מידת הרחמים‬,25 or as an indication to the double status of God’s people: as both subjects (or slaves) and sons.26



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Nowhere is this tension more apparent than in the context of the High Holidays. Several homilies explain how Rosh Hashana can be both a day of judgment and a festive celebration of the New Year.27 According to one homily, the secret is that the judgment is a fraud, for the judge himself is on “our” side:28 R. Hama the son of Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Hoshaya: One said, is there a nation like this nation? Customarily, a man who knows that he is on trial wears black, and wraps himself in black, and lets his beard grow, for he doesn’t know how his trial will turn out. But Israel are not like this, rather they wear white, and wrap themselves in white and trim their beards and eat and drink and rejoice. They know that the Holy One Blessed be He does miracles for them [‫עושה להן ניסים‬, i.e., acquits them]. (y. R. H. 1:3, 57b)29 Atonement and absolution, however, can be abused: “If one says: ‘I will sin and repent (‫)אחטא ואשוב‬, sin and repent’—then he is given no chance to repent. ‘I will sin and the Day of Atonement will atone’—then the Day of Atonement effects no atonement” (m. Yom. 8:9). Both statements are not rejected by the mishna because they are untrue; in fact the previous mishna stated explicitly that repentance and the Day of Atonement have the power to atone.30 Some sages even state that Yom Kippur can atone even without repentance,31 a view suspiciously similar to the anonymous claim (“if one says”) rejected here. It is therefore not the opinions themselves that make the mishna condemn those who hold them, but the way they abuse the atonement system (note the repetitive language, meaning that one plans to make it into a pattern). The same is the case with the yetzer above. Had its claim simply been false, there would have been no special need to warn so strongly against it. But it is not: it identifies a real contradiction, a lacuna in the system (in this case, the inherent tension between justice and mercy), and abuses it to entice the person to sin. It is this hidden agenda that leads Rav Yehuda to warn against it. Warn, not refute; for here again the yetzer’s claim is not confronted (unlike Mishna Yoma, which explicitly states that such a plan cannot work), but is simply discredited. No counterargument is offered, and in its stead the homily warns: “Do not believe in it.” A similar phenomenon can be found in the Palestinian Talmud, narrating Abraham’s dialogue with God after the binding of Isaac: R. Bibi Abba in the name of R. Johanan: Abraham said before the Holy One, blessed be He: Lord of the worlds! You know that when you told



Refuting the Yetzer 95

me to offer up Isaac my son [as a sacrifice], I had a good answer to give you (‫)היה לי מה להשיב‬: yesterday you told me: for through Isaac shall your descendants be named (Gen 12:21). Now you tell me: offer him there as a burnt offering (Gen 22:2). But I did not [give you that answer], but overcame (‫ )כבשתי‬my yetzer and did your will. Now may it be pleasing to you, O Lord my God, that when the children of Isaac my son come to a time of trouble and will have no one to speak on their behalf, you will speak on their behalf. (y. Taan. 2:4, 65d)32 Abraham could have questioned God’s command, revealing its inconsistency with former promises, but he didn’t, and this avoidance should stand to his descendants’ credit for future redemption.33 What is more, the very inclination to question God is marked as the yetzer’s advice, which Abraham successfully overcame. Other sources, however, present Abraham as indeed questioning God’s order with very similar claims: R. Aha said: [Abraham wondered] surely You too indulge in prevarication (‫)אף את לפניך שיחות‬:34 Yesterday you told me: for in Isaac shall seed be called to you (Gen 21:12). You retracted and told me: take your son (Gen 22:2). While now you tell me: lay not your hand upon the boy! Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to him: O Abraham: My covenant I will not profane (Ps 84:35). When I said, “Take your son,” I will not alter that which is gone out of my lips (Ps 84:35)—did I tell you: “slaughter him” (‫[ ?)שחטהו‬No, rather I told you] take him up (‫)העלהו‬. You have taken him up,now take him down! (Gen Rab. 56:8, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 603–4) The opposition in Genesis Rabba appears in the very same words as in the Yerushalmi: “yesterday you told me . . . and now you tell me.” There is, however, one crucial difference between the two sources, which makes Abraham’s argument legitimate in one case but not the other. In the Yerushalmi, the (hypothetical) objection is raised in the middle of the act, and thus must be overcome in order to fulfill his duty, while in Genesis Rabba it is only raised after the fact (adding a third stage: “now you tell me lay not your hand upon the boy”). When everything is over, Abraham can ask for explanations, and God is willing to answer (rather formally: He never actually asked Abraham to slaughter Isaac; thus no contradiction).35 During the act, however, questioning the command is a sin. Once again we notice that the idea to question the divine



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c­ommand is marked as the advice of the yetzer, not because of its content (which appears elsewhere as legitimate) but due to the agenda behind it (preventing Abraham from fulfilling the divine commandment). Another homily states this explicitly: On the way Satan came towards him and said to him. Old man, where are you going? Not to bind your son? If one ventures a word with you, will it be too much? . . . See, you have instructed many, and strengthened failing hands. Your words have upholden him that was falling, and you have braced feeble knees. But now it is come upon you, and you faintest (Job 4:2–5). He replied, I will walk in my integrity (Ps 26:11). But, said [Satan] to him, is not your piety your confidence (Job 4:6)?36 He retorted, Think now, whoever perished, being innocent? (Job 4:7). Seeing that he would not listen to him, he said to him, a thing was secretly brought to me (Job 4:12)—Thus have I heard from behind the curtain: The lamb, for a burnt-offering (Gen 22:8), and not Isaac for a burnt-offering. He [Abraham] replied, it is the penalty of a liar, that even should he tell the truth, he is not regarded. (‫ שאפלו אומר דבר אמת אין משגיחין בו‬:‫;כך עונשו של בדאי‬ b. San. 89b) The homily brilliantly combines Genesis 22 with Psalms 26 and Job 4,37 reading the latter as a dialogue between Abraham and Satan.38 At first, Satan tries to prevent Abraham from fulfilling the divine commandment, but when this doesn’t work, he moves to plan B and becomes a spoiler, taking the point out of the test by revealing its pre-planned happy end. Both his plans fail, however, for Abraham refuses to even enter into a dialogue with him. Abraham refrains from engaging Satan directly and instead insists on sticking to his original “integrity” (or “piety,” quoting Ps 26:11: ‫)ואני בתומי אלך‬.39 In a similar homily in Genesis Rabba (56:4, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 598–99), Abraham answers all of Satan’s arguments (there named Samael) with the same token: “never­ theless” (or “in spite of all this,” ‫)אף על פי כן‬, until Satan eventually loses hope and moves on to try and tempt Isaac. Abraham’s scripturally based dialogue with Satan, as narrated in the Bavli, shows interesting affinities with the “temptation narrative” of the Gospels (Mat 4:1–10, Luk 4:1–12).40 In both cases the Satan provokes the hero (Abraham, Jesus) through biblical verses to act against God’s command but is rejected. The comparison, however, also highlights a basic difference: while Abraham refuses to engage in discussion with Satan, sticking instead to his original



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“piety,” Jesus is narrated as answering him to the point, using verses as counterarguments..41 This technique becomes systematized in Evagrius’s Antirrhetikos (“Counter Arguments”), which provides biblical verses with which the monk can oppose 487 different temptations.42 Interestingly enough, Evagrius is completely aware that refuting the demons can bring about an even harsher attack from their side. Thus he confesses in the prologue of the composition: “This much we know, beloved; to the extent that we stand against them in the struggle and answer the demons verbally, they will be increasingly embittered against us.”43 But while Evagrius imitates Jesus’ encounter with Satan,44 other patristic sources react in a manner quite similar to the midrashic Abraham. Compare, for example, the midrashic paradoxical assertion that Satan is a liar (‫ )בדאי‬even while telling the truth, to Athanasius’s Life of Antony: “The Lord himself, even if the demons (δαίμονας) spoke the truth (cf. Luke 4:41) . . . still silenced them and prevented their speaking, so they would not sow their own evil with the truth, and in order that He might train us never to heed to such as these even if they seem to speak the truth (ἀληθῆ) . . . for the demons do all things . . . but if one should pay no attention to them they cry out and lament as though vanquished” (Vita Antonii 26).45 While discussing Satan or Samael rather than yetzer, these homilies show fundamental affinities with the previous ones,46 and are in fact a concise summary of the attitude toward the yetzer seen above: his arguments are rejected not because they are false, but because they are his! In all these cases, the yetzer does not simply appear as a lowly seducer, but represents a serious discursive threat on the rabbinic worldview, designating real conflicts in rabbinic law or ideology. Although the specific halakhic and aggadic arguments identified with the yetzer are varied, they all mark a tension or inconsistency in rabbinic discourse, or between it and biblical heritage. In the case of Abraham and Satan the tension appears as a direct contradiction between verses, but similar conflicts are also present in the other cases cited above: the tension between the legal power of sex and its licentious nature, in Sifre Numbers; between rabbinic doctrine of resurrection and biblical Sheol, in Mishna Avot; and between God as a merciful father and as an impartial judge, in Bavli Hagiga. The yetzer does not use cheap lies, but takes advantage of real problems, contradictions, and lacunae in rabbinic doctrine to drag humans to sin. Surprisingly, the way to handle its arguments is not to refute them but to ignore it altogether—just as Abraham did on his way to bind Isaac—even if in order to do so one has to bind oneself artificially—like Boaz and his fellow biblical



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“righteous.” These are radical acts that characterize rabbinic techniques of fighting dangerous temptations;47 only here the temptation is discursive, and so the hero must bind himself not only from following the yetzer’s advice but from even conversing with it. The yetzer is thus given the same treatment as certain minim (heretics), with whom the sources teach to avoid any discourse, as indicated in the famous story about R. Eliezer’s forbidden pleasure (‫ )הנאה‬from Yaakov of Sikhnin’s homily cited from the name of Jesus (t. Hulin 2:24; b. Av. Zar. 17b; Ecc Rab. 1:8). The verses cited by R. Eliezer to validate the banning of such interaction demonstrate the grave dangers the rabbis ascribe to even discoursing with tempters: “Keep yourself far away from her and do not come near the doorway of her house” (Prov 5:8), “for she has brought many victims down” (Prov 7:26).48 The fact that other sources do contain refutations to very similar arguments shows that the reason the sources that mention the yetzer contain no refutations is didactic in nature. It teaches us not to listen to the yetzer even (perhaps especially) when it sounds convincing, “not to believe him” even when one does not have answers at hand. Sometimes the best way to treat such questions is to avoid them altogether, and keep one’s “integrity” (‫ )תום‬intact. Sometimes not only certain deeds but thoughts and arguments must be avoided; not because they are false but because they are dangerous. The yetzer serves as a marker of these cases. This didactic function explains the alleged paradoxical fact that the sources chose to “silence” an argument by presenting it out loud. The catch, however, lies in the manner the argument is cited. Put in the mouth of the yetzer, the dangerous position is presented and dismissed at one and the same time, teaching the students how to handle such claims. This lesson is not limited to the themes explicitly engaged by the sources, for the diligent student will know how to apply it to other dangerous areas as well.49 The reason the yetzer can function in such a way in rabbinic literature is due to its common representation as the quintessential enemy of the Torah. As we have seen above, in most of its appearances, rabbinic yetzer does not represent bodily desires or carnal weaknesses, but a highly sophisticated enemy of the Torah. Identifying an argument with the yetzer thus is equivalent to marking it as forbidden or dangerous (even if under the cover of “pretext of permission”). It is exactly due to its antinomian figure that the yetzer can function as a marker of dangerous areas, signifying the limits of the legitimate academic dialogue. Here, too, Evagrius’s On Thoughts suggests a more elaborate and reflective parallel. Evagrius offers a detailed technique of observation and record, in order



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to identify demonic influence on the mind: “One should do the following after the withdrawal of the demon. Sit down and recall for yourself the things that happened to you—where you started from, where you went, and the place in which you were caught by the spirit of fornication or anger or sadness, and how in turn these things took place. Examine these events carefully and commit them to memory that you may be able to expose him when he approaches.”50 As the last sentence makes clear, this meticulous record is not made for scientific goals but functions as a technique for the advanced monk51 to best the demons. Thus “if you want to get him really mad, expose him immediately when he presents himself; and with a word show him the first place he entered, then the second and third, for he gets extremely vexed and cannot bear the shame.” Identifying a thought or passion as demonic is enough to defeat the demon: “for it is impossible for him to stand his ground after he has been openly exposed.”52 I would argue that the rabbinic homilies assume something quite similar to what Evagrius states explicitly. The yetzer, just like the demons, can work only incognito. Therefore identifying a specific argument as the advice of the yetzer neutralizes its effect.53 In his work on the (long, late) partition of Judaism and Christianity, Daniel Boyarin criticizes Alan Segal’s thesis that the doctrine of “Two Powers in Heaven” was a “very early category of heresy . . . by which the rabbis perceived the new phenomenon of Christianity.”54 The rabbis, claims Boyarin, did not inherit this belief (or set of beliefs) as heresy (‫ )מינות‬but named them as such, as part of the project of constructing Jewish orthodoxy. “While I am in total sympathy with Segal’s critique of those who see rabbinism as a doctrine-free orthopraxy, from my point of view, the orthodoxy that the Rabbis were concerned about was an orthodoxy that they were making by constructing ‘Two Powers in Heaven’ as heresy, just at the same time that bishops were declaring the belief in ‘One Power in Heaven’—‘Monarchianism’—a leading heresy of Christianity.”55 Our case is yet another example of such process of “discrediting by naming,” and thus can be considered part and parcel of the construction of “Jewish Orthodoxy.” In our case this marking is even more constructive than in regard to the heretics (‫)מינים‬, for the opinions and practices the sources mark as coming from the yetzer are thematically quite diverse and not easily recognizable as sinful. Only the homilist knows when a halakhic permission is actually a “pretext of permission,” and a borderline case is in fact totally forbidden. This is exactly the power of these homilies, marking allegedly “kosher” practices and opinions as sinister tricks of the yetzer. After all, if not for the homilist, how would we know that all these cases in which the righteous “adjure



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their inclination” are indeed forbidden? In this, the rabbis function similarly to the church fathers, teaching their flock which thoughts and passions are demonic in origin, even (especially) if they seem harmless at first sight.56 Yet the sources cited above also emphasize the distinctiveness of rabbinic enterprise of identity construction, and the differences between it and the Christian heresiology, emerging at about the same time. First, it deals with illegitimate legal issues as well as theological opinions, thus integrating orthopraxy and orthodoxy. Second, and even more important, the limit itself is not constructed by marking an opinion as false, but by marking it as nonnegotiable: “You have no right to argue (‫ )להשיב‬against them” (Sifra Aharei Mot 13, ed. Weiss, 86a). In the rabbinic version of heresiology, the limit is not between true or false beliefs (for no source suggested that the belief in Sheol as an asylum, or in God’s repeated forgiveness, is simply false), but between what is legitimate part of rabbinic discourse and what is not. One should not negotiate with the yetzer even when it offers halakhically legitimate practices (Boaz), uncovers real contradictions between verses (Abraham), or repeats established ideas regarding the forgiving power of God. To demonstrate both the similarity to contemporary Christian discourse and the difference from it, we turn, once again, to patristic theory of Demons. For Origen, apart from evil passions and uncontrollable feelings, demons cause also deceiving thoughts and false knowledge (Princ. III 3). Here is how he reads Song of Songs 2:15: “Catch us little foxes that destroy the vines: the foxes must be understood as the opposing forces and the wicked powers of demons who by means of base thoughts and perverted notions destroy the bloom of the virtues of the soul and ruin the fruit of faith.”57 The weaponry against such “base thoughts and perverted notions” is discussed by Evagrius: “When one of the enemies approaches to wound you and you want to ‘turn his own sword back against his heart’ . . . then do as I tell you. Distinguish within yourself the thought he has launched against: as to what it is; how many elements it consists of; and among these what sort of thing it is that most afflicts the mind.” Here comes a long paragraph specifying the mental procedure, after which he concludes: “As you engage in this careful examination, the thought will be destroyed and dissipate in its own consideration, and the demon will flee from you when your intellect has been raised to the heights by this knowledge.”58 Since the temptation is first and foremost mental,59 so is the cure. One has to engage with the demonic thought head-on by analyzing it carefully. This is radically different from the rabbinic instructions to avoid any discursive engagement with the yetzer’s advice.



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Unlike the patristic tradition discussed above, the rabbis did not consider thoughts and beliefs to have a privileged standing in their conceptualization of the struggle against their adversaries.60 Rabbinic yetzer is not interested in thoughts and beliefs on their own, but uses them to drag humans to sinful acts. This is why the yetzer’s statements above specifically deny divine retribution. The battleground is that of sinful deeds; while dangerous (but not false!) ideas are but one tool to achieve that. It is thus better sometimes to just ignore these thoughts altogether than to enter into conversations, which might eventually lead to actual sinfulness. The term used in the Sifra above, “to argue” (‫)להשיב‬, is a terminus technicus for counter arguments in the study house.61 It is the bread and butter of the rabbinic practice: “One should only refute his fellow according to his manners (‫ )אין משיבין את האדם אלא כמדותיו‬. . . one should not refute his fellow more than three times (‫( ”)לא ישיב את חבירו יתר משלש תשובות‬t. San. 7:6, ed. Zukermandel, 426). What is rejected in our case is thus exactly the kind of argument that the sages are so accustomed to raising in all matters. One is not banned from thinking, reflecting, or speculating, but from refuting and answering. The rabbis imagine the individual as a micro house of study, arguing with oneself (just as they imagine God as part of a heavenly house of study).62 The yetzer takes the role of the heretical partner with whom the very act of negotiation is to be avoided. Scholars have long noticed the strong dialogic nature of the rabbinic study house;63 the yetzer, in the sources cited above, marks the limits of such dialogism.64 And so, identifying arguments with the yetzer points to conflicts, self-contradictions, and lacunae, which do not have satisfying resolutions in rabbinic discourse. The rabbis cannot ignore these issues altogether, but the very act marking them is already part of the solution, for it teaches the audience to stay away from dangerous areas. The sources above handle such dangerous arguments not by refuting them but by marking them as “the advice of the yetzer.”

Chapter 6

Sexualizing the Yetzer

Thus far, this book has signaled a sharp departure from the prevailing yetzer discourse. Students of the rabbinic yetzer usually discuss it in sexual terms, so much so that “yetzer” has become almost synonymous with “sexuality.”1 In fact, I suspect that the rabbinic yetzer has come to the forefront of scholarship in recent years precisely because of the interest in sexuality and the body in Jewish studies, and particularly in talmudic scholarship. I have discussed the ideological roots of the current scholarly trend elsewhere;2 here I wish to detect the inner rabbinic origins of the sexual yetzer. As the following survey shows, such origins can be found solely in Babylonian literature and mostly in its post-amoraic layers. After mapping this development I suggest locating it in a broader context of the Bavli’s unique sexual ethics.

(Much) More of the Same? The Palestinian Yetzer Sexual yetzer appears in a single tannaitic homily, expounding the narrative of Boaz and Ruth on the threshing floor (Sifre Numbers 88). Even in this single source, however, the case is more complicated, as can be seen from the tannaitic list of those biblical heroes who “adjured their yetzer” (Sifre Deuteronomy 33; discussed in Chapter 1 above). In this list, the evil yetzer draws “the righteous” to all manner of sins. It draws Boaz to sex, just as it draws David to murder and Abraham to theft. Other sources discussed above strengthen the conclusion that the sexual context has no privileged standing in tannaitic midrash. In Palestinian amoraic sources the ratio does not change much. Two out of twenty occurrences of yetzer in Genesis Rabba reveal a sexual context,3 and



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none in Leviticus Rabba4 and Pesikta de-Rav Kahana.5 The sexual context is more popular in the Palestinian Talmud, comprising five out of twenty ­occurrences, but only when explaining mishnaic laws of separation between the sexes, a context also shared by the Bavli.6 These numbers cannot possibly support the generalization that “yetzer” in rabbinic literature means, by and large, “sexual desire.” The scholarly consensus seems to be a result of the habit of basing conclusions on a selection of sources, combined with the tendency to become very generous when marking content as sexual. This is the case, for example, with the famous homily in Genesis Rabba 9:7 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 72): Behold, it was very good (Gen 1:31): refers to the good yetzer; and behold (‫)והנה‬, it was very good (idem): refers to the evil yetzer. But is evil yetzer good (‫ אתמהא‬,‫ ?)וכי יצר רע טוב‬Rather (‫)אלא‬, without the evil yetzer no man would build a house, take a wife or beget children and thus Solomon says: [I have also noted that all labor and skillful enterprise] come from man’s rivalry with his neighbor. (Ecc 4:4) Daniel Boyarin comments on this homily: “Sexuality according to them is neither in itself evil (as apparently many first-century Jews held), nor is it an uncomplicated good, despite the fact that it leads to building the houses, marrying, procreation and eggs!7 It is called the Evil Instinct solely because of its destructive side.”8 Other scholars similarly infer from this homily: “Sexuality, nevertheless, is good.”9 But does “yetzer” here refer solely or even primarily to sexuality? I suspect not. True, the yetzer appears here as an Eros-like figure, but only in the most general sense of a creative drive or force. The homily quotes a verse that explicitly states that envy and competition are the issues at hand, and while they may lead to marriage and procreation, they are also the source of “all labor and skillful enterprise.”10 The appearance of envy as a product of the yetzer should not surprise us, for similar descriptions appear with regard to other dangerous passions and moods such as anger 11 and pride.12 Some homilies separate yetzer from sex quite explicitly. Thus Genesis Rabba 20:7: There are four urges (‫)תשוקות‬. The urge of a wife is for none but her husband: Your urge shall be to your husband (Gen 3:16); the urge of the



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evil yetzer is for none but Cain and his associates: Its urge is toward you (Gen 4:7); the urge of rains is for none but the land: You have cared for the earth and irrigate it (‫ ;ותשוקקיה‬Ps 65:10); and the urge of the Holy one, blessed be He, is for none but Israel: His urge is for me. (Song 7:11; ed. Theodor-Albeck, 190–91) While both the evil yetzer and sexual passion are part of this list of “four urges,” the two are separate.13 The yetzer is associated with Cain the murderer and his fellows. But murder is not privileged in amoraic sources more than sex, as both are but local manifestations of the same yetzer, dragging a human to all sorts of sins, as well as dangerous urges and behaviors. Another example can be found in R. Ammi’s homily, which is part of the extended sugia in Genesis Rabba 26:2, discussed in Chapter 4 above: R. Ammi said: Yetzer hara does not walk on the sideways, but in the middle of the road, and when he sees a man rub (‫ )משמשם‬his eyes, fix his hair, hang upon his heels, he says: this one is mine. Why? You have seen a man wise in his eyes—the fool is hopeful with regard to him (‫תקוה‬ ‫)לכסיל ממנו‬. (Prov 26:12;14 ed. Theodor-Albeck 211–12) The verse cited from Proverbs, about “a man wise in his eyes,” focuses specifically on pride, not sex.15 This is also the context of the other two occurrences of the tripartite phrase: “rub eyes, fix hair, hang upon heels” in Genesis Rabba, both connected to the story of Joseph. The first reads Joseph’s preening not as a mark of nascent sexuality but as a sign of boyishness (84:7, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1008). The second offers a parable: “To a hero standing in the plaza, who rubs his eyes, fixes his hair, and hangs upon his heels. He says: ‘I am beautiful. I am a hero’ (‫ אנא גיבור‬,‫)אנא יאי‬. They said to him, if you are a hero, there is a (female) bear (‫ )דובה‬coming at you” (87:3, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1063). Joseph is unjustly proud of his heroism, and so is attacked by Potiphar’s wife, “a bear.” The trial is indeed sexual, but the boasting is about heroism as much as it is about beauty; 16 the real issue is once again pride. I do not wish to claim that yetzer has no connection to sexuality, but that this connection is not more privileged than any other evildoings and prohibitions. The forbidden acts change according to the specific midrashic context, but one thing remains stable: the evil yetzer is constantly struggling to entrap people in forbidden acts and away from the worship of God.



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Statements versus Redaction: The Babylonian Yetzer The picture seems to change radically in the Babylonian Talmud. Thirty out of eighty occurrences of the yetzer in the Bavli have a clear sexual context. There is no doubt that this is the source of the common scholarly perception of the yetzer as a primarily sexual desire. Taking the Bavli as representative of “rabbinic” beliefs in general is a common scholarly bias.17 But is this conclusion justified even for the Bavli? Not until we narrow it further. Take, for example, the longest, most developed, sugia on the yetzer in the Bavli, Sukka 51a–52b. This sugia seems to be a mixture of sexual and nonsexual contexts. A more careful inspection, however, shows that the sexual contexts appear only in specific layers of the sugia. Its first appearance is an anonymous explanation of the mishnaic ruling requiring separation between the sexes during the Temple Sukkot festivities. As already noted, the most common occurrence of the yetzer in the two Talmuds, and probably the earliest, is explanations of severe rules of sexual separation in the Mishna as regulations against the yetzer. A similar explanation appears indeed in the Palestinian Talmud (y. Suk. 5:2, 52b).18 The Bavli, however, presents the yetzer in a sexual context in two additional places within the sugia, not paralleled in the Yerushalmi. The first is a narrative that appears after the homily on Joel 2:20. I have already discussed this homily above,19 but let me cite it once more, this time with the narrative that follows: Our Rabbis taught (‫)תני רבנן‬: But I will remove the hidden one far off from you (Joel 2:20)—This is the evil yetzer which is hidden in human’s heart; and will drive him into a land barren and desolate means—to a place where there are no humans for it to attack; with his face toward the eastern sea (‫—)הים הקדמוני‬that it set its eyes against the First Temple and destroyed it, and killed the sages therein; and his hinder part toward the western sea (‫—)הים האחרון‬that it set its eyes against the Second Temple and destroyed it, and killed the sages therein. That his foulness may come up and his ill-savor may come up—that it leaves the other nations and attacks (‫ )ומתגרה‬only Israel. Because he has done great things—Abaye said: [the yetzer attacks] sages more than anyone (‫ובתלמידי חכמים יתר‬ ‫)מכולן‬. As was the case when Abaye heard a certain man saying to a woman, “Let us arise early tomorrow and go on our way.” [Abaye] thought: “I will go and keep them away from transgression.” He



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f­ ollowed them for three parasangs in the meadow. When they parted they said: “Our way is long and our company is pleasant” and they went each to their own way. Abaye said, “If it were me, I could not have restrained myself,”20 and so he went and leaned against a doorpost in despair.21 A certain old man came up to him and taught him: “The greater the man, the greater his yetzer (‫)כל הגדול מחבירו יצרו גדול ממנו‬.” Abaye, the famous fourth-century Babylonian sage, cannot imagine himself strolling with a woman without taking sexual advantage of her. He is in great despair, perhaps about to take his own life, until an old man reveals a secret: “The greater the man, the greater his yetzer.” The boldness of this ending becomes clear when comparing it to the Palestinian sources discussed above, which claim that the yetzer specifically seeks weak and feeble people to seize. Now the picture seems to be reversed: it is especially the great people, the sages, who are most vulnerable. A possible reading of this new conception could be: “The very same passion that drives Abaye to study Torah and become a ‘great man’ . . . is the same passion that would have prevented him from simply saying good-bye to the woman and parting from her without sex.”22 The yetzer clearly appears in this story as a sexual appetite. This also seems to be the case in regard to Abaye’s preceding statement: “[The yetzer acts] against sages more than anyone [else].” Or does it? When juxtaposed with the narrative, Abaye’s statement certainly looks like another version of the old man’s lesson, and thus similarly sexual. Such a reading, however, cuts Abaye’s statement off from the preceding homily that is its direct context. This is proven from the abbreviated language of the statement, completed above in square brackets, which makes sense only in light of the preceding homily (especially in its last words: “and attacks only Israel”). The yetzer is first depicted as the enemy of humanity as a whole, who must be exiled to “a place where there are no people to attack.” As the homily progresses, however, we learn that at a certain time it turned into a national enemy, which “leaves the other nations and attacks only Israel.” At this point in the homily Abaye remarks: “sages more than anyone.” From where did Abaye get the idea that the yetzer discriminates against sages? Probably from the homily’s previous assertions that the yetzer “set his eyes against the first/last Temple and destroyed it, and killed the sages therein (‫)והרג תלמידי חכמים שבו‬.” While the beginning of these two similar statements is required for the complete exegesis of the verse (interpreting the cryptic phrases: ‫האחרון‬/‫)הים הקדמוני‬, their last part,



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r­ egarding the fate of the sages, is hermeneutically redundant, and seems to be a purely ideological statement. Thus, in ascribing the struggle of the yetzer specifically to the sages, Abaye simply follows in the steps of these statements. Perhaps the statements should be read as an attempt to balance the transformation of the yetzer from a personal figure to a historical (cosmic) one, and remind us that it is still a personal, existential foe. Yes, they say, the yetzer may be a foe on a universal, collective, scale, but we, the sages, still suffer from it personally every day, in our attempt to worship God.23 Nowhere in this process does the yetzer acquire any sexual connotation. Only when the statement and the narrative are read together do the sexual overtones appear. It is thus a result of a conscious redaction rather than of the tannaitic or amoraic statements themselves. The yetzer seems to appear in a sexual context once again toward the end of this exceptionally long sugia. These are the five final homilies: 1. R. Samuel b. Nahmani in the name R. Jonathan said: The evil yetzer entices man in this world, and testifies against him in the world to come, as it is said, A slave pampered from youth, becomes a ‫מנון‬24 at the end (Prov 29:21). . . .  2. R. Huna pointed out an incongruity. It is written, for the spirit of harlotry has caused them to err (Hos 4:12), but is it not also written, for the spirit of harlotry is within them (Hos 5:4)? [The resolution is:] First it causes them to err, but ultimately it enters into them (,‫בתחילה הטעם‬ ‫)לבסוף בקרבם‬. 3. Rava said, First it is called a passerby (‫)הלך‬, then it is called a guest (‫)אורח‬, and finally it is called a man (‫)איש‬, for it is said, and a passerby came to the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the guest, but took the poor man’s lamb and dressed it for the man that was come to him (2 Sam 2:12). 4. R. Johanan said, there is a small organ in a man. When it is made hungry—it is satisfied; when it is satisfied—it becomes hungry (- ‫מרעיבו‬ ‫ רעב‬- ‫ משביעו‬,‫)שבע‬. 5. R. Huna b. Adda stated: There are four things of which the Holy One, blessed be He, regrets having created: the Chaldeans, the Ishmaelites, exile, and the yetzer; the Chaldeans, since it is written, Behold the land of the Chaldeans—this is the people that was not (Isa 23:13); the Ishmaelites, since it is written, The tents of the robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure, since God brought them with His hand (Job 12:6); exile,



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since it is written, Now, therefore, what do I here, says the Lord, seeing that My people is taken away for naught (Isa 52:5); the evil yetzer, since it is written, [And I will gather her that is driven away] and her that I have afflicted (Mic 4:6).25 At first glance the homilies seem to characterize the yetzer in multiple ways, some sexual and others not. The yetzer entices man to sin (1); becomes more and more self-assured (3); causes fornication (2); and sexual hunger (4). Note however, that both statements which have a sexual context (2, 4) do not mention yetzer at all, while those that do show no such context. Two of these amoraic homilies portray the yetzer as a dynamic figure that evolves into an increasingly demonic entity, one that first entices man and then testifies against him (1), and is transformed from an apparently innocent guest to the master of the house (3). The last homily adds a theological consolation in which God himself regrets creating the yetzer (5), presenting a fine closure to the whole sugia. None of these homilies discuss the yetzer in sexual terms. Only careful redaction achieves such an impression by alternating between homilies on the yetzer and those on fornication and sexual desire. This is indeed fine editorial work, but we should be careful not to mix it with the amoraic statements themselves, which reveal no such context. This in fact holds true for the Bavli at large. There are dozens of amoraic statements and homilies, both aggadic and halakhic,26 which mention the yetzer in the Bavli, but only one or two have sexual connotations.27

The Stam and the Birth of Sex in the Bavli This does not mean that the yetzer in the Bavli lacks such connotations altogether. In fact is has quite a lot of them. Redactional activity is but one factor in accounting for this gap between the amoraic materials and the Bavli as a whole; no less important is the anonymous (or “stammaitic”) discursive stratum of the Bavli (“the Stam”).28 In this layer (or layers) the yetzer becomes almost exclusively sexual. Out of fourteen occurrences of the yetzer in the Stam, I found only one that mentions a non-sexual yetzer—for theft—and even there it is employed only to contrast it with the yetzer for fornication (to the advantage of the latter). Thus m. Hag. 2:1 says: “Forbidden sexual relationships (‫ )עריות‬may not be expounded before three [people].” The Bavli explains that the prohibition is



Sexualizing the Yetzer 109

grounded in the fear that people will “come to permit the prohibited.”29 The sugia then continues: If so, [the rule should apply to] the whole Torah also! Forbidden sexual relations are different, as the sage said: a man’s soul covets and lusts for robbery and forbidden sexual relations (‫גזל ועריות נפשו של אדם מתאוה להן‬ ‫)ומחמדתן‬. If so, [the rule should apply to] robbery also! Forbidden sexual relations, for which the yetzer is strong, whether [the opportunity] be before him or not before him, one comes to lust; robbery, for which the yetzer is not strong, if [the opportunity] is before him, he comes to lust, but if it is not before him, he would not come to lust. Note that the tannaitic statement (“the sage said,” referring to m. Mak. 3:15) speaks simply of desire (‫ תאוה‬and ‫ )חימוד‬for fornication and robbery. It is only the stammaitic discussion which translates it into yetzer. This is indicated in additional sugiot: “Rav stated: A man who willfully causes erection [in himself] should be placed under a ban (‫)יהא בנידוי‬. But why did [Rav] not [simply] say: This is forbidden [and instead used such harsh language]? Because [one who does that] incites his evil yetzer against himself (‫[ )מיגרי יצר הרע בנפשיה‬thus the need to ban it forcefully]” (b. Nid. 13b). While Rav specifically discusses forbidden sexual acts, the stammaitic explanation transfers them to the realm of the yetzer. The popularity of the sexual yetzer in the stammaitic layer brought it to develop special terms to describe the dynamic of the yetzer in the specific context of fornication: “yetzer forced her”30 and “his yetzer attacks him.”31 These terms are found exclusively in the Stam; here are two examples, one for each kind: For Rava said: every [sexual act] which begins under compulsion (‫כל‬ ‫)שתחילתו באונס‬, even if at the end she said, “leave him” (‫)הניחו לו‬,32 that if he had not made the attack upon her, she would have hired him [to do it]—she is permitted [to her husband]. What is the reason?—[the rapist] plunged her into yetzer (‫)יצר אלבשה‬.33 (b. Ket. 51b) Rav said: [one who testifies to marrying a woman] is trustworthy (‫)נאמן‬ [enough] to [make him] give her a bill of divorce, but is not trustworthy [enough] to take her [as a wife]. He is trustworthy to give her a bill of divorce—[for] no man sins without profit. But he is not trustworthy to take her—[for] I might say that his yetzer attacks him (‫ ;יצרו תוקפו‬b. Kid. 63b).



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In the first case the idiom is cited in order to explain Rava’s ruling that even if a woman says she wants an act of rape to continue, the act is still classified as rape and she is not considered an adulteress.34 In the second, it explains Rav’s ruling, limiting the reliability of a man who claims (without further proof to support it) that he married a woman. In both cases the idioms are not part of the amoraic statements themselves, but were added by the Stam: in the first case it is clear from the stammaitic term “what is the reason?” and in the second from the explanatory repetition of Rav’s words. The same holds true for the other occurrences of these terms: they all appear in the Stam, and always in a sexual context. This stammaitic terminology appears for men and women alike but functions in opposite directions. Yetzer increases responsibility for men35 while decreasing it for women. Thus the appearance of the yetzer in the stammaitic layer of b. Ket. 51b changes the status of intercourse from voluntary to compulsive.36 Similarly, the sugia in b. Ket. 54a declares that although a widow who adorns herself is liable to lose her alimony (for she shows a willingness to find a new husband), if she fornicates (‫ )זינתה‬she does not lose it, for in this case “yetzer forced her (‫ ”)אנסה‬to do so against her will. This Janus-faced terminology is understood in light of the rabbinic ethos of fighting the yetzer. As Michael Satlow elegantly summarizes: “Women are thought to have an evil inclination at least as strong as men,” but “only men are thought in rabbinic sources to have ability to subdue those desires.”37 This opposition is embedded in the terminology itself: men are “attacked” by their yetzer and bound to fight back, while women are “forced” by it, thus lacking responsibility. Note also that men are attacked by “their” yetzer, while women by an unspecified one. When the basic rabbinic “division of labor” between the sexes is read against this fact, we are faced with the remarkable situation of similar terminology functioning in dramatically opposing ways. The transformation of an alleged voluntary intercourse into a forced one is one example of the permeating influence that the introduction of the yetzer into the Stam had on the Bavli’s sexual discourse. Another example, only hinted at above, is the ruling against masturbation. While amoraic statements concentrate on the physical act itself—wasting seed 38 —the Stam adds another level of forbidden thoughts and inclinations.39 A third domain of influence is that of “forbidden gaze.” As I have shown elsewhere, the entrance of the yetzer into the discussions on capital punishments limits the permission of the crowd to gaze at (naked) women condemned to death.40 In all these cases the penetration of the evil yetzer into the stammaitic discussion of



Sexualizing the Yetzer 111

sexual ethics changes it dramatically, usually in the direction of more stringent rulings. There is yet another genre in the Bavli in which the sexual context of the yetzer is clearly privileged. Eight out of nine narratives that mention the evil yetzer in the Bavli discuss sexual issues.41 Despite their variegated topics, they all present an image that is fundamentally similar: the yetzer appears as sexual desire, with which men, usually sages, are in constant struggle, and that demands external assistance or supervision in order to win. The struggle can take the form of a betrothed couple who do not touch each other when sleeping on the same bed (b. Git. 57a), two sages debating if they should pass next to a brothel (b. Av. Zar. 17a), or of a sage praying every single day to be saved from the temptations of his own wife (b. Kid. 81b). Assistance can appear in the form of “the sages” coming to save the “pious” Rav Amram from taking sexual advantage of a helpless woman staying in his house (b. Kid. 81a), and in the form of a group of sages rebuking Rav Gidel for sitting near the women’s bathhouse (b. Ber. 20a). Since “the greater the man, the greater his yetzer,” a sage cannot even imagine himself walking in private with a woman without abusing her (b. Suk. 52a). Lastly, one narrative fantasizes a world to come in which there will be no evil yetzer, and thus even intimate activities between husband and wife will not be considered shameful (b. Bab. Bat. 58a).42 To summarize my findings thus far: sexual yetzer does not appear in amoraic statements in the Bavli, but is present in three other strata of Babylonian sugiot: (a) Redaction (revising, recasting and grouping tannaitic and amoraic statements), (b) stammaitic give and take, and (c) anonymous aggadic narratives. Can we assume that all three originated in the same circles? This question is debated between two prominent scholars of the Stam. David Weiss Halivni and some of his students tend to associate all components of the sugia that are not amoraic statements with the “Stammaim.”43 Shamma Friedman, on the other hand, separates the constituent parts of the sugia quite strongly, ascribing them to separate groups as well as periods.44 In our case, the similarities between the anonymous give and take, the redaction and the narratives, do seem to indicate that these phenomena are indeed linked together. I would hesitate to ascribe them to the same group,45 but nonetheless claim that they are all the products of a post-amoraic period (as the consistent gap between them and the amoraic statements indicates), and are thus affected by the same historical processes. In what follows, however, I offer a different type of explanation of the phenomenon revealed above. Our case seems to be part of a certain discursive



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move that takes place in the Bavli. At the end of the chapter I return to the question of periodization, once again to claim that this process influenced the yetzer discourse relatively late, and corroborating this hypothesis with a comparison to parallel discussions on the evil yetzer in Syriac Christianity.

Sex and the Bavli: A Reevaluation Here are three successive narratives from b. Kid. 81a:46 Certain [redeemed] captive women came to Nehardea. They were taken to the house of R. Amram the pious. As one passed by, light came in through the window;47 [thereupon] R. Amram seized the ladder, set it up and proceeded to ascend. When he had gone half way up the ladder, he cried out: A fire at Amram’s! A fire at Amram’s! The rabbis came and reproved him: You have shamed us! He said to them: It is better that you should be shamed by me in this world and not be shamed by me in the world to come. He then adjured [the evil yetzer],48 and it issued from him in the shape of a fiery column. He said to it: See, you are fire and I am flesh, yet I am stronger than you. R. Meir used to mock transgressors. One day Satan appeared to him as a woman on the opposite bank of the river. As there was no ferry, he seized the rope and proceeded across. When he was halfway along the rope, he [Satan] let him go saying: Had they not proclaimed in Heaven, “Take heed of R. Meir and his learning,” I would have valued your life at two farthings. R. Akiva used to mock transgressors. One day Satan appeared to him as a woman on the top of a palm tree. Grasping the tree, he went climbing up: but when he was halfway up the tree he [Satan] let him go, saying: Had they not proclaimed in Heaven, “Take heed of R. Akiva and his learning,” I would have valued your life at two farthings. Despite differences in details, these three successive narratives of temptation share a similar structure. A prominent sage, expected to be especially pious, is tempted to transgress sexually after seeing a woman, only to be saved at the very last moment (in all three cases he is described as being “half way”)



Sexualizing the Yetzer 113

by an external event (the coming of the sages in the first case,49 and Satan revealing himself in the other two). All three narratives satirize the sage, portraying him as wont to lose both mind and pants immediately upon seeing a woman.50 The narratives differ only on the driving force of temptation: in the first case it is the yetzer, while in the other two, Satan. This, however, does not make any significant difference in the narratives, for both equally function as tempters. Not only these two. The entire sugia (b. Kid. 80b–82a) is full of sexual temptations: in the cemetery, during funerals and mourning rituals; between (male) students studying and living together; between a shepherd and his flock, between a father and his (young) daughter, brothers, and sisters. Temptation is omnipresent, with or without yetzer and Satan.51 In Tasting the Dish, Michael Satlow argues that “Babylonian sources reflect a much more complex and conflicted set of sexual assumptions than do the Palestinian sources,” and then adds, “When, following a well worn apologetic, modern scholars argue that Judaism has a ‘positive’ view of sex, the majority of sources to which they invariably refer are Babylonian.” 52 Without contesting this statement, I wish to radicalize and thus recontextualize it. Babylonian sources not only show a more complex, or even positive, attitude toward sexuality, but multiply and increase sexuality itself. Peering at the world through sexual lenses, they see sex all around them. Numerous statements, homilies, and narratives, all over the Bavli, tend to present their protagonists—biblical heroes53 as well as rabbinic sages54 —in a stark sexual manner, unparalleled in Palestinian literature. Biblical events are loaded with sexual content in the Bavli, even when there is scarce basis for that in the Bible itself. Some specific topics, such as sages patronizing prostitutes55 or measures of penises,56 are almost exclusively Babylonian. It does not come as a surprise, then, that the conceptualization of marriage as intended, first and foremost, to protect men from their uncontrollable sexual passions is also Babylonian in nature.57 Take, for example, the series of narratives on R. Eleazar the son of R. Shimon (b. Bab. Mez. 83b-85a), a “rabbinic grotesque” full of “male bodies, sexuality and reproduction.”58 Shamma Friedman demonstrated that this series is a Babylonian recasting of Palestinian tradition, one version of which appears in Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 11:15–25.59 Friedman did not note, however, that the major difference between the two is that the Palestinian version lacks all the grotesque, bodily, and sexual parts of the Babylonian sugia! This oversight is symptomatic: although scholars have studied processes of sexualizing biblical themes and narratives in Midrash,60 to the best of my knowledge the major role of the Bavli in this process has not been acknowledged.



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This example is for from being an exception. A large majority of the sexual homilies and statements appear in the Bavli alone, and the collection, contextualization, and redaction of these homilies are unprecedented and unparalleled in any Palestinian source. I would thus claim that this exclusively Babylonian discourse influences, among other things, the understanding and usage of yetzer. In other words, it is not the yetzer that becomes sexualized in the Bavli, but reality as a whole. The yetzer is only one segment (Satan is another) of a much larger process in the Bavli, in which sex is transformed into the locus of its interest. In his analysis of the ascetic and monastic practices in early Christianity, Michel Foucault claims that in late antiquity sex was transformed from an interpersonal to an inner-personal phenomenon, and with it to the hidden truth of one’s personality. “Christianity,” he says, “proposed a new type of experience of oneself as a sexual being.”61 Quoting Peter Brown, he adds: “What we have to understand is why it is that sexuality became, in Christian cultures, the seismograph of our subjectivity.”62 Mutatis mutandis, it seems that a similar phenomenon can be discerned in the Bavli. The deep sexualization of both biblical and rabbinic figures in the Bavli seems to function as a way of defining the very nature of these characters; as if only sexual descriptions can reveal something of their true inner character. I discuss this phenomenon in detail elsewhere, and attempt to establish more solid criteria to confirm the intuition about the Babylonian hyper-sexualization of reality, in both halakhic and aggadic contexts.63 Here I shall confine myself to two illustrations, one aggadic and one halakhic, followed by some general observations. 1. The long aggadic sugia at the end of the first chapter of Bavli Sotah (9b–14a) retells a series of biblical stories, placing them in a blatant sexual context, even when this context is hardly suggested by the verses. Thus, the first part of the sugia retells the story of Samson as a sexual saga. It luridly retells not only in those parts of his life where the Bible’s sexual innuendo is obvious enough, like his relationship with Delilah (“what does and she pressed him [‫ותאלצהו‬, Jud 16:16] mean? R. Isaac said, R. Ammi said: she slipped out from under him before he ejaculated”), but also in completely unexpected points in his life, like his childhood (“The boy grew and the Lord blessed him [Jud 13:24]—how did He bless him? R. Yehuda said in the name of Rav: he blessed him in his penis [‫]באמתו‬. His penetration [‫]ביאתו‬64 is as all men, but his sperm was like a raging river”), or his imprisonment (“And he was grinding [‫ ]טוחן‬in the prison [Jud 16:21]—R. Johanan said . . . from this we learn



Sexualizing the Yetzer 115

each man brought his wife to him, to the prison, to be impregnated by him”). The first homily is attributed to Rav while the second to R. Johanan, but both appear specifically in the Bavli as part of an overarching narrative presenting Samson as a sexual being from beginning to end. This presentation stands in stark opposition not only to the biblical narrative, 65 but to the parallel cycle of tales in the Yerushalmi (y. Sot. 1:8, 17a–b), which lacks most of the sexual homilies. The only sexual homily in the Yerushalmi is on Judges 13:24: “and the Lord blessed him,” and even it appears in a much milder version. 66 The following cycle in the Bavli (b. Sot. 11a–13a) is a collection of Babylonian and Palestinian homilies expounding the saga of the Israelite slavery in Egypt (Ex 1:8–2:9). Joshua Levinson’s analysis of this sugia revealed that though much of the material is cited in the name of Palestinian sages, the cycle as a whole is clearly Babylonian in character.67 Levinson also demonstrated that the order of the verses is not the only unifying structure of the cycle, which is characterized by an underlying thematic unity associated with rebellion against power. “The redactor nicely highlighted the role of women throughout the sugia to create a cycle of rebellion: as the Egyptians rebel against the kingdom of God, so Pharaoh’s daughter rebels against her father, and the women of Israel, the midwives, righteous women, and Miriam, rebel against the Egyptians or their fathers. The redactor means to say that his interest lies not in the demonstration of divine power, but in the stories of those who must cope with oppression.” One point should be added to this fine analysis: the feminine rebellion in the cycle is explicitly sexual. The midwives resisted the “sexual entreaties” (‫ )שתבען לדבר עבירה‬of Pharaoh (11b), 68 the righteous women seduced their husbands in the fields (“they would wash them, and anoint them and give them food and drink, and then they would sleep with them between the pots [‫בין‬ ‫]שפתים‬,” 11b), and Miriam convinced her father to return to his wife, saying “your decrees are worse than Pharaoh’s” (12a). Even when presenting Miriam’s greatness, the homilies concentrate on her physical, rather than spiritual, traits: “that every one who saw her would take a gift [to induce her to have sex with him] (‫ )אתנן‬to his wife” (12a). The story of the Israelites in Egypt is indeed retold in the Bavli as a story of wily rebellion of the underprivileged, but first and foremost from a sexual perspective. These homilies, we should add, have no basis in the biblical text, and no Palestinian parallel. 69 The systematic nature of this phenomenon is especially remarkable. All the biblical heroes and heroines discussed in the aggadic passages in Bavli



116 Chapter 6

Sotah 9b–12b are heavily charged with sexuality: Samson (9b–10a), Judah (10a), Absalom (10b), the righteous women in Egypt (11b), the midwives (11b), and Miriam (12a). Sex directs the mannerisms, behavior, and tribulations of these protagonists and becomes an integral part of their character narration. 2. The same phenomenon is revealed also in halakhic sugiot. In this context, moreover, we can point to original Babylonian sexual discourse, rather than “mere” redaction and reworking of primarily Palestinian material, as in the case of Aggada. A comparison of the two Talmuds on m. Yevamot chapter 6 (“‫ )”הבא על יבימתו‬can serve as a demonstration of this phenomenon. Both Talmuds follow the Mishna in discussing the definition of partial intercourse (‫)העראה‬, the manners of intercourse that render women unfit for marriage to priests, and the definition of the biblical “harlot” (‫)זונה‬. The Bavli, however, considers a series of additional topics—all based on amoraic statements (mostly attributed to Rava)—which are not mentioned in the Mishna and have no parallel in the Yerushalmi: “he who fell from the roof and was stuck” (‫ )נתקע‬in his levirate wife (54a); “he who intended to penetrate the wall and penetrated his levirate” (54a);70 “he who penetrates [with a] dead [penis] (‫( ”)המשמש מת‬55b);71 “there is no fornication (‫ )זנות‬with animals” (59b);72 “he who shoots like an arrow” (65a), and more.73 Various processes of hyper-sexualization are thus revealed in halakhic and aggadic material, from very early amoraic statement to the stammaitic layers (forming halakhic discourse and perhaps aggadic stories) as well as in the compilation and redaction of older material in the Bavli. In the context of the yetzer, however, we have discerned a clear gap between amoraic statements, on the one hand, and stammaitic discussion, anonymous narratives, and redaction, on the other. Only in the latter do we find a clear sexual context for the yetzer. This gap between amoraic statements and the Stam suggests that while hyper-sexualization is a product of a long process in the Bavli, which began with the Amoraim and culminated in the redaction and composition of sugiot, the yetzer was placed in this sexual context only in a comparatively late, mostly post-amoraic, period. This complex reconstruction may be supported by comparing it to the Demonstrations of Aphrahat, a Christian scholar who lived and preached in Sasanian Persia during the first half of the fourth century. Several scholars have showed that Aphrahat was well acquainted with rabbinic traditions,74 and that his sexual discourse is very similar to that of the rabbis. Naomi Koltun-Fromm pointed out several similarities between the proto-monastic group he names “sons of the covenant” (‫ )ܒܢܝ ܩܝ�ܡܐ‬and the rabbis.75 Shlomo Naeh further



Sexualizing the Yetzer 117

a­ ssociates Aphrahat’s descriptions with the sugia discussing forbidden seclusion of men and women (‫ )יחוד‬at the end of Bavli Kiddushin.76 Naeh limits his comparison of Aphrahat and the Bavli to their similar use of a single term: ‫חרותא‬, but the similarity between the two texts is more overreaching. Aphrahat’s sixth demonstration (“regarding the sons of the covenant”)77 deals with the seductions of the Satan, and although he mentions all kinds of temptations, his main interest is clearly in sexual lust. Aphrahat’s Satan operates mainly through women, who become tools for his seductions.78 Similarly, in Bavli Kiddushin 80b–82a, Satan/yetzer operates through female characters, and thus all women are temptresses whether they choose to be so or not. Similar phrases and idioms appear in both texts, such as the descriptions of Satan’s masquerading and appearing in different guises (both texts use the term ‫אידמי‬, “he appears as”),79 the simile associating Satan’s temptations with arrows (‫)גירא‬,80 and the prohibition on “exploiting” (‫ )להשתמש‬women.81 However, in all these discussions Aphrahat does not mention the term yatzra (the Syriac equivalent of the rabbinic yetzer) at all. The sexual enemy is named Satan, “evil one” (‫ )ܪܥ‬and “enemy” (‫ ܒܥܠ ܕܪܢ‬,‫)ܒܥܠ ܕܒܒܐ‬, but never yetzer. Aphrahat does mention yetzer several times in his sermons, and in a way that closely resembles the rabbis—he twice uses the phrase “their evil yetzer” (‫)ܝܨܪܗܘܢ ܒܝܫܐ‬82 and twice the phrase “conquer yetzer” (‫)ܟܒܫ ܝܨܪܗ‬,83 both closely resembling the tannaitic uses of the same phrases. But he never mentions it in a sexual context.84 Similarly, in the Acts of Judah Thomas,85 another Syriac work full of lust and temptation, the seducers are called “Satan” and “enemy,” but not yetzer, while the only occurrence of “evil yetzer” in the entire work has no sexual connotations.86 This is also the case in the fifteenth chapter of the Syriac Book of Steps, which discusses the birth of sexual lust (‫ ܪܓܬܐ‬,‫)ܡܪܕܝܬܐ‬87 and does not mention yetzer even once. The same holds true for other appearances of “evil yetzer” (‫ )ܝܨܪܗ ܒܝܫܐ‬in early Sriac literature.88 This is not marginal evidence, for this term undoubtedly reached Syriac literature from Jewish tradition.89 Had the Jewish idiom any sexual connotation it would be reasonable to expect it to leave traces in Syriac literature as well.90 The Syriac compositions thus provide us with evidence that in the third century and the first half of the fourth, sexual discourse is profound and fruitful but has not yet incorporated the yetzer into its vocabulary. This fact dovetails nicely with our findings regarding the gap between the yetzer in amoraic statements in the Bavli and its appearance in the Stam and the stories. It seems



118 Chapter 6

the Babylonian sages, like their Syriac counterparts, created a developed sexual discourse, but it only extended to yetzer in post-amoraic times. This phenomenon may be connected to the function of the yetzer as the source of human sinfulness, and the stark demonic nature it received in rabbinic literature. This character—a demon dragging humans to sin—makes it hard to incorporate the yetzer into a sexual discourse. Only when sexuality deeply permeated the Bavli was the yetzer incorporated into this discourse as well. Perhaps there is more than an analogy here. A partial explanation for the hyper-sexualization of the Bavli may be found in its contact with Eastern Christianity.91 Christians in the east, much more than their western counterparts, focused on deep and fundamental sexual asceticism.92 The Babylonian Jewish scholars seem to be diametrically opposed to these attitudes; after all, they brag about their sexual powers, not their ascetic skills, but both parties are focused intensively on sexuality, and transformed it into one of their discursive focal points. Contrasting attitudes toward sex should therefore be brushed aside, to see the shared “tools created in order to speak about sex, to create speech about it, to make it actually speak.”93 One should also consider a possible Zoroastrian-Sasanian background for this phenomenon. Scholars have noticed several parallels between rabbinic and Sasanian sexual legislations and concepts.94 Moreover, the rabbis themselves talk explicitly (and sometimes positively) about Persian sexual habits (b. Ket. 48a; Ber. 8a; Meg. 13a).95 However, Yaakov Elman’s claim that “the more relaxed attitude to these matters among the Iranians left their mark on . . . the Babylonian Talmud”96 may hold true in regard to sexual practices,97 but hardly to conceptualizations of sexual lust and its dangers; as the sexualization of the evil (!) yetzer in the Bavli alone clearly indicates. Perhaps, thus, we should again look for resemblance not so much in specific conceptions but in the highly sexualized perception of reality itself. There are obviously other possible contexts to consider, but this is not for a text-centered study like this to decide.98 Thus, instead of raising additional speculative explanations, I leave the question of further historical contexts for historians to contend with. One last, especially bothersome issue must, however, be engaged before we can move on. What enables the late, probably post-amoraic, strata of the Bavli to identify the old demonic yetzer with sexual attraction? Scholars have long tried to convince us that sexual desire is not necessarily negative for the rabbis, but merely dangerous; but the yetzer tells a different story. Rabbinic (tannaitic as well as amoraic) yetzer is indeed evil, even demonic in nature—in fact it must



Sexualizing the Yetzer 119

be so, for it accounts for human attraction to sin—and it is exactly this evil yetzer that the Bavli associates with sex. At least in the post-amoraic period the demonic yetzer was indeed identified with sexuality, thus giving it a clear negative flavor. This must lead us to a thorough reconsideration of the Bavli’s attitude toward sex in general, one that will separate between different layers (amoraic and post-amoraic) and genres (legal discussions, stories) while distinguishing the discourse of sexual practices from attitudes toward passions and desires. The Bavli (Yom. 69b, San. 64a) narrates a magnificent myth of the historic capture of the “Wickedness” (Zac 5:8). 99After crying desperately to God, the sages get a unique opportunity to extinguish the “yetzer for idolatry.” Encouraged by their success, they ask to rid themselves of the “yetzer for (sexual) transgression” as well.100 They manage to capture it, but realize that without it they cannot find a single egg (for even animals did not mate). Eventually the sages only “blacken the yetzer’s eye,” a compromise that reduces sexual desire to the point “that one does not lust for female relatives.” Boyarin justly remarks that this story points out the inseparability of sexual practices from desire.101 However, it also presents the fantasy of doing exactly that: getting rid of desire, once and for all, leaving only procreational sex. This is the meaning of the petition of the sages to receive only “half” of the “yetzer for transgression”—only the part that is responsible for creating eggs, the purely biological aspect of sex, with no added desire. The petition is turned down, to be sure, but the fantasy remains active; and in the Bavli more than anywhere else.

Chapter 7

Weak Like a Female, Strong Like a Male: Yetzer and Gender

Do women have a yetzer? The question is far more complex than it might sound. Most rabbinic sources do not use gender-specific language, but their usage might nonetheless imply some sort of gendering. Sources that use the word adam (‫ )אדם‬are especially tricky: Rabbinic Hebrew usually uses ish (‫ )איש‬in opposition to isha (‫ ;אשה‬woman), thus marking men specifically.1 Adam, on the other hand, does not have a decisive gender tag, and might refer to all humans.2 However, sometimes adam is also gendered, such as in the idiom “adam takes a wife” (‫ )נושא אדם אשה‬and the like.3 When Rabbi Johanan says: “There is a small organ in adam. When it is made hungry—it is satisfied; when it is ­satisfied—it becomes hungry” (b. Suk. 52b), he definitely means “man.” Context is thus the only tool to determine the gender charge of each statement, sometimes only hesitantly. When Antoninus asks Rabbi: “When is the evil yetzer placed in adam?” the question seems gender-neutral, as can be deduced from Antoninus’s following question: “When is a soul placed in adam?”4 for in rabbinic literature the soul is present in all humans. However, R. Levi b. Hama’s homily, “Adam should always incite the good yetzer against the evil yetzer,”5 seems to be directed exclusively at men, for one of the tactics mentioned there is Torah study, from which women are excluded.6 But what about maxims such as “The yetzer of adam overpowers him every day,”7 or “Adam’s soul covets and lusts for robbery and forbidden sexual relations,”8 and “Even at a time when adam is entrusted with the burial of a relative (‫ )אונן‬his yetzer overpowers him”?9 And so we are left without a decisive conclusion. Women seem to have a yetzer, though the sources hardly say so outright (except the stammaitic layer, as discussed above). The key to resolving this confusion lies in the observation that the gender bias of the yetzer is located not in its very existence but in the struggle against it. Women probably have a yetzer, since it is a basic human

Gender 121

characteristic, but the rabbis are not really concerned with it. The yetzer holds their interest only inasmuch as it can be overpowered and resisted, which women are not capable of doing. The tannaitic homily “I have created the evil yetzer and created the Torah as a ‘spice’ (‫( ”)תבלין‬b. Kid. 30b; cf. Sifre Deut 45, ed. Finkelstein, 103) clearly demonstrates that yetzer discourse is inextricably intertwined with the struggle against it. The vanguard of this struggle is the study of Torah, which the rabbis placed exclusively in the male sphere. Such a gender division is far from self-evident even for the rabbis’ time. In the Shepherd of Hermas, both men and women are expected to fight their “evil desire” and subjugate it to the good one.10 Discussing these passages, Geert Cohen Stuart laconically notes: “The ‘equal’ treatment of man and woman indicates a difference with the rabbis.”11 Indeed, a very deep one. The diverging gender economy encoded in the rabbinic and the early Christian sources leads also to profoundly diverse kinds of piety.12 The rabbinic story of the struggle against the yetzer is clearly a masculine one, and so images of virility and heroism are its building blocks. The yetzer, at first, is “weak, like a female, and then becomes strong like a male” (Gen Rab. 22:6, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 210); the Mishna remarks that a hero is someone who can “conquer (‫ )כובש‬his yetzer” (m. Avot 4:1), and, of course, “it is the way of men to conquer (‫ )לכבוש‬and not the way of women to conquer” (b. Yev. 65b). This division is presented most clearly in a homily in b. Av. Zar. 19a: Happy is a man fearful of God, he is greatly desirous of His commandments (Ps 112:1)—Happy is the man, but not the woman (‫אשרי איש ולא‬ ‫ !?)אשרי אשה‬Rav Amram said, and some say it in the name of Rav Nahman in the name of Rav: Happy is he who repents (‫ )עושה תשובה‬when he is [still] a man (‫)כשהוא איש‬. R. Joshua b. Levi said: Happy is he who overpowers his yetzer like a man (‫)מתגבר על יצרו כאיש‬. The textual basis for this homily is the unique idiom “happy is a man” (‫)אשרי איש‬, 13 which appears only in this psalm instead of the more common “happy is a person” (‫)אשרי אדם‬.14 Why did the term change here, and how is it connected to the fact that the ish referred to here is “fearful of God” and “desirous of the commandments”? Rav reads ish as “virile” or “young” and explains that the verse extols those who repent young and do not wait for old age (which they may or may not attain). 15 R. Joshua b. Levy, on the other hand, translates ish as “hero,” and connects it with the struggle against the yetzer. The yetzer, we should note, is not hinted in the verse in any way, and



122 Chapter 7

only appears in connection with ish, read as “hero” (‫)גבר‬. The heroic struggle against the yetzer is thus the business of men, not of women. In fact, the very question with which we began our section is somewhat misleading, for it assumes that rabbinic literature presents a systematic anthropology in which women have a yetzer, but this yetzer is nonetheless absent for some mysterious reason. Rabbinic literature, however, does not have an interest in anthropology as such, only in its ethical implications. The focus of these homilies is not the nature of the yetzer itself, but is rather the question of how people should cope with their attraction to sin and evil. This instruction is limited to men, who are exhorted to overpower and conquer their yetzer. A good test for this hypothesis would be the question of the yetzer of gentiles. Various sources portray the yetzer as characteristic of all humans: the creation of the yetzer in Adam,16 its role in distinguishing humans from animals,17 and its place in human physiology.18 Antoninus’s interrogation of Rabbi to identify the exact moment at which the yetzer is placed in humans (Gen Rab. 34:10, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 320; b. San. 91b) clearly indicates that the homilist sees the yetzer as a general human characteristic, concerning Antoninus no less than Rabbi.19 Nonetheless, almost all the homilies are directed at male Jews, especially those concerned with the confrontation between yetzer and Torah and the struggle of the yetzer with the worship of God. 20The universalistic anthropology of the rabbis, in which yetzer is a part and parcel of the way humans are created, is subjected to their particularistic ethics, aimed at teaching the Jewish adult male how to become a servant of God. Some homilies have an even narrower audience in mind. Thus, when the victim of the yetzer is exhorted to “drag him (‫ )משכהו‬to the study hall,” this victim is not any person, not even any male Jew, but a scholar or sage, for whom the study house is a natural setting.21 This brings us to one of the most complex dilemmas for scholars of rabbinic literature: who are the sages addressing, what is the purpose of their homilies, and how much of an interest do they take in what goes on outside their small circle. These questions have been dealt with extensively of late,22 and we shall not discuss them further. There is yet another reason for the special difficulty of the rabbis to explicitly discuss women’s yetzer—their tendency to associate women with the other side of the yetzer economy, as its allies, not its victims. Such association appears even before the yetzer has gained any special sexual connotation, as in the famous baraita: “Yetzer, children, and women should be repelled by the left hand and brought near with the right.”23 Note also the cycle of homilies in Genesis Rabba on the verse When the Lord is pleased with the ways of a man, he shall bring

Gender 123

peace between him and his enemies (Prov 16:7), in which the word “enemies” is read successively as “his wife,” “the snake,” and, lastly, “the evil yetzer.”24 In both cases women and yetzer appear side by side, as two potential stumbling blocks to man, who must contend with them in order to achieve his goals. I found only one maxim in all tannaitic and amoraic sources that explicates the fact that women have a yetzer: R. Hayya b. Yosef said to Samuel: What is the difference between a recalcitrant husband and a recalcitrant wife (‫ ?)מה בין מורד למורדת‬He said: Let us learn from the harlot market (‫)שוק של זונות‬. Who hires whom? Another explanation: This one has his yetzer on the outside, and that one has hers on the inside (‫)זה יצרו מבחוץ וזו יצרה מבפנים‬.25 Rav Hayya asks why the Mishna (Ket. 5:7) rules that a husband who refuses to have sexual relations with his wife is fined three dinar a week, while the recalcitrant wife is fined more than double, seven dinar.26 Samuel explains that men are more interested in sex than women, as can be seen from “the harlot market,” and thus require less financial incentives. The second answer gives the first a physiological grounding: the yetzer, here identified with the genitalia, is more pronounced in men. This identification, however, is unique in rabbinic literature, and since it appears as “another thing” (‫ )דבר אחר‬it may in fact not be part of Samuel’s original maxim at all.27 As seen above, it is the anonymous layer of the Bavli that first attributes an explicit sexual context to the yetzer. This transformation forces the Bavli to distinguish between male and female yetzer. It is thus not surprising that it is in this anonymous layer that we also first hear of a female yetzer; not just a yetzer which can be attributed also to women, as discussed above, but one that is identified specifically as relating to women, as in the idioms: “yetzer forced her” and “plunged her into yetzer.”28 When the yetzer becomes sexual, it necessarily also acquires a gender, and the undefined yetzer must be divided into “his yetzer” and “her yetzer” (or, more exactly, the yetzer forcing her). However, the presence of female yetzer does not in any way erase the differences between the sexes, but, quite to the contrary, makes them explicit: passive women are “forced” by their yetzer, while active men are “attacked” by it, and thus expected to fight back. It is worth comparing the sexual ethics of the stammaitic sugiot with that of the anonymous narratives in the Bavli, whether or not we ascribe them to the same layer. Let us read, for example, a story from b. Gittin 57a:



124 Chapter 7

A tale about a betrothed couple (‫ )ארוס וארוסתו‬who were taken captive among the gentiles, and they have forced them to marry [in order to take their offspring for slavery].29 She said to him: please, do not touch me, for I have no marriage contract (‫ )כתובה‬from you, and he did not touch her until the day of his death. And when he died, she30 said [to the eulogizers]: eulogize this one who controlled his yetzer (‫)פטפט ביצרו‬31 more than Joseph, for with Joseph it was only one hour, and this one every day; Joseph was not in the same bed, and this one was in the same bed; with Joseph it was not his wife, and here it was his wife. The story of the betrothed couple appears in a series of nostalgic tales about “the village of Sekhania in Egypt”; a lament of a lost world that is a part of the long sugia on the destruction (‫אגדות החורבן‬, b. Git. 55b–58a). Both partners are presented as models of modesty and righteous, but it is specifically she who requests excessive abstinence (‫)אל תגע בי‬. Nonetheless, only he is presented as fighting his yetzer and is compared with Joseph. This inevitably casts her in the role of Potiphar’s wife, the temptress whom all men must resist.32 The poor woman is not equated with Potiphar’s wife due to her actions, as her behavior is flawless, but due to the very structure of the situation: a struggle between the pious protagonist and his yetzer, aroused by the female’s presence. Blameless as she may be, the fiancée is cast as a temptress, regardless of her specific behavior or will. Passive or not, she is considered a potential temptress and must be resisted. A similar female role appears in other stories, such as the story of the freed captive women who were lodged in the attic of R. Amram “the pious.” The mere appearance of one of them caused R. Amram to feel so much passion that only his cry “Fire at Amram’s,” calling in all the sages to his aid, stopped him from sinning.33 The women in this story have no idea they are temptresses. In fact, it is exactly this involuntary temptation which is the basis of the entire discussion regarding forbidden seclusion (‫ )יחוד‬of an unmarried men and women in the sugia at the end of Bavli Kiddushin (80b–82a). All women, including relatives, small girls, and passersby, are considered as potential temptresses, while all men, including the greatest of sages, can be tempted. The culmination of this logic is found in the story of “Heruta,” in which the married husband requests salvation from the evil yetzer every day, until his frustrated wife, who understands that the “evil yetzer” is none other than herself, exchanges unconscious temptation for outright seduction. 34 The gender burden of the yetzer-struggle tales is even more apparent from the other side of the equation. There is not a single story, in the Palestinian as

Gender 125

well as the Babylonian literature, of a woman struggling against her yetzer.35 Although there are many tales of biblical heroines, and although, in their rabbinic portrayal, biblical heroes spend a great deal of time struggling with their yetzer, there is not one description of a biblical heroine who had to struggle with her yetzer. Biblical and talmudic women, whether relatives of rabbis or Roman matrons, are only a source of temptation, never tempted themselves.36 Note that this phenomenon is evident even before the yetzer acquired sexual connotations, when women and yetzer were still two different potential stumbling blocks for the Jewish male. These rabbinic tales are markedly different from contemporary medical and philosophical Hellenistic literature, which engages in the study of female passion, if only for the purpose of learning how to avoid and control it. 37 The pinnacle of this enterprise is the Greek novels, flourishing approximately at the same time as rabbinic literature. These stories are not only full of detailed descriptions of female passion, but also depict female self-control and women struggling against their passions. 38 In fact, the very structure of the genre reflects this: “Hero and heroine are always young, wellborn, and handsome; their marriage is disturbed or prevented by separation, travel in distant parts, and a series of misfortunes, usually spectacular. Virginity or chastity, at least in the female, is of crucial importance, and fidelity to one’s partner, together often with trust of gods, will ultimately guarantee a happy ending.”39 The young lovers must overcome obstacles, including seduction, on their way to their ultimate reunification. The heroine’s loyalty against all odds is what gives the novels their dramatic flair. Scholars have noted several fascinating parallels between the Greek novels and midrashic tales,40 but these parallels also illuminate a major gap between the two genres.41 Rabbinic women never struggle with their passions or against seduction.42 Only men struggle against the temptations of women, who are always cast in the role of willing or unwilling seductresses. The rabbis are focused on the danger arising from women, and not on the psychological sources of these dangers. The Bavli does hint, in several places, that women have passions.43 The term “yetzer forced her,” discussed above, is one example. Another is the bloody vaginal discharge the Bavli attributes to sexual arousal (‫)דם חימוד‬.44 One sugia cites a homily on Eve’s curse: “and you shall lust for your husband (Gen 3:16)—this teaches that a woman lusts after her husband when he is goes on a journey” and deduces a bold legal ruling from it: “a man must ‘visit’ (‫ )לפקוד‬his wife before leaving on a journey.”45



126 Chapter 7

Depictions of female passion may be found in aggada as well, as the description of the exiled Israelites as so handsome that “when the Chaldean women saw them they would start dripping (‫)שופעות זבות‬.”46 However, passion is never problematized in these sources, nor is it presented as something that should be avoided and struggled with, as it the case with men’s yetzer. And so, while most sources do not use gender-specific language regarding the yetzer, their context implies that the “person” struggling with the yetzer is a man, for whom the Torah was created as a drug and who is expected to drag his yetzer to the house of study. Women are sometimes even placed in the same category of “stumbling block” as the yetzer itself. A female yetzer appears only in the Stam, due to the explicit sexual nature of the yetzer in this layer. But even then its context is very limited: exemption from punishment (unlike men, for whom ‫ יצרו תוקפו‬is an indictment). The Bavli yetzer narratives, which focus on sexual seduction, never portray female protagonists. Only men struggle with their yetzer; while women are—willingly or unwillingly—the source of this yetzer, or at least its trigger. While the Bavli’s sugiot usher in a new era for the yetzer and its discourse, the gender economy basically remains the same. Although the sexualization of the yetzer in the Bavli unavoidably genders it, making room for a specific female yetzer, the interest in such a yetzer is limited to the narrow context of criminal culpability. The struggle against the yetzer, the main interest of the rabbis, remains men’s business.

Afterword

Toward a Genealogy of the Rabbinic Subject

Let us return to where we began. The central argument of this book is that recent scholarship mistakenly contextualized the rabbinic yetzer as part of the Hellenistic discourse of self-control and self-fashioning. It should instead be read as part of the biblical and post-biblical search for the sources of human sinfulness, closely linked at least since Second Temple times with demonological concepts and conventions. The affinity between yetzer and demonology is demonstrated in the imagery of the evil yetzer in rabbinic literature (a wicked, sophisticated figure ceaselessly attempting to trap humans), its representations (a personal, national, and cosmic enemy), the idioms associated with it (first and foremost, “the evil yetzer”), as well as the techniques of fighting it (e.g., “to adjure the yetzer”). This characterization is strengthened by the appearance of yetzer at Qumran alongside “classic” demons such as Satan, Belial, and “impure spirits.” It is further substantiated by comparison to patristic and early monastic writings on demons and the spiritual combat with them, which use remarkably similar concepts and metaphors. Combined, these analogies show that the best way to account for the unmistakable antinomian characteristics of the rabbinic yetzer is through placing it in the context of the history of ancient demonology. Yet this new contextualization revealed the yetzer as a special kind of demon: dangerous and powerful but fully internalized, not attached to any external cosmic being. This combination allows the rabbis to point at a specific source for human sins, rather than simply ascribing it to free choice, without however having to compromise human agency. The yetzer is a demonlike figure limited to the heart, and thus can and should be resisted. Similar processes of internalization are apparent in the rabbis’ surroundings: Fourth Ezra’s “evil heart”—an inner power that is also a national and cosmic enemy—



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as well as in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies and The Shepherd of Hermas. The latter two compositions are especially important for the present reconstruction, as they reveal an intermediate stage in which external angels and demons enter the human hearts, cunningly enticing their hosts to sin. But while these texts explain the background of the rabbinic yetzer, its vast popularity should still be accounted for. I claimed that the rise of the yetzer, from a rather marginal figure to the center of rabbinic anthropology, is a result of the rejection of the main theodicies prevailing at the time. The rabbis did not accept the attribution of sin to external cosmological entities. Rabbinic “classic” demonology—rather developed in and of itself—lost its traditional function as an explanation for human sinfulness. The rabbis, however, also rejected the common Hellenistic conception of the body and its passions as the source of sin. These two lacunae were filled by the yetzer, which thus became the sole explanation of human evil. For the rabbis, evil comes neither from above (cosmological beings) nor from below (bodily appetites or the bestial parts of the soul).1 The struggle against it is horizontal: between humans and human-like (or even sage-like) figures residing in them. Far from being a result of a linear development of any kind, rabbinic yetzer is a result of a combination of various traditions: the biblical monistic heritage, post-biblical and apocalyptic demonology, and processes of internalization that can be found in Jewish-Hellenistic and early Christian compositions. These traditions were fused by the rabbis for their own, innovative solution: one evil yetzer, which resides in the heart and accounts (alone!) for human sinfulness. The novelty of the rabbinic amalgam may explain the fact that it was quite short-lived. After the Bavli, the dualistic, two-yetzarim model gained more and more popularity, as even a superficial review of late midrashic compilations (Tanhuma-Yelamdenu, Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy Rabba, Pesikta Rabbati, etc.) will demonstrate. Later sources looked also for other explanations for the source of human sinfulness, metaphysical as well as cosmological, a move that culminated in medieval Kabbala. It would be a mistake, however, to read this study as a defense of the uniqueness of the rabbinic yetzer. Rather than claiming that the yetzer is sui generis, I am offering to recontextualize it—not within the context of platonic self-control and ascetic exercises, but as part of an ancient demonological discourse. More specifically, it should be seen as part of a larger move toward placing demons inside the human psyche. The clearest parallel to this move is to be found in early monastic discourse, as shown above, especially through the Alexandrian patristic tradition, from Clement and Origen to Antony, Athanasius,

Afterword 129

and Evagrius. In these texts we found not only parallel themes but similar assertions, homilies, and metaphors, which have led me to read the rabbinic yetzer and monastic demonology as a shared formation. We have thus come full circle: beginning from dissociating the yetzer from Hellenistic as well as early Christian askesis and ending with associating it in another way with early Christianity, through monastic demonological discourse. More broadly yet, rabbinic yetzer may be contextualized as part of a larger tendency in late antiquity. In his formative study “The Making of Late Antiquity,” Peter Brown criticizes Eric Dodds’s influential thesis that “late antiquity is marked by a sharpening of the dichotomy between the self and the body.”2 Instead, he claimed that “for Late Antique people, the more fruitful gift of Greece was the sense of the multiplicity of the self.”3 Brown’s example is the increasing popularity of the idea of an accompanying δαίμων: “a powerful invisible being entrusted with the personal care of the individual and conceived of, very largely, as an upward extension of that individual.”4 Brown did not discuss rabbinic literature in his book, nor did he attempt to incorporate the rabbis into the portrayal of new psychological developments in late antiquity. Had he done so, he could have added rabbinic yetzer as a clear example of this phenomenon. The yetzer, as shown above, is never identified with the body, and is not modeled on the body-soul dichotomy. Rather, it creates a multiplicity (‫ )מחלוקת‬in one’s heart and therefore must be cut off (“circumcised”) in order to allow people to become “single-minded” in the service of God. Thus, one of the goals of the present study is to bring rabbinic literature into the scholarly discussions of late antiquity, from which it is too often excluded. While the rabbinic yetzer fits well into this late antique koine, it also blurs the all-too-neat picture scholars tend to present, especially since the yetzer is anything but an integral part of the “self.” 5 The rabbis took pains time and again to distinguish “me” from “my yetzer.” Indeed, they could imagine the ultimate defeat over the yetzer only because, strong and sophisticated as it may be, it always remains an intruder. In fact, the yetzer discourse seems to be an important tool of constructing the very notion of “self” in rabbinic literature—the true “me,” set against other parts in “me” that are nonetheless not really “me.” In this sense the yetzer is a result of a double, and somewhat contradictory, motion: the source of evil was inserted into humans (unlike ancient demonology) but remained as a separate agent (in a stark contrast to the biblical monism), thus creating both duplication and hierarchy in the person. Thus analyzed, the rabbinic yetzer discourse



130 Afterword

demands a revision in the common descriptions of rabbinic anthropology. The rabbis were not dualists in the common sense of the term, but they were not simple monists either. Rather, they created a sophisticated inner division between “me” and “my yetzer.” This is nowhere more apparent than in Rabbi Simon’s statement: “Woe unto me from my creator and woe unto me from my yetzer” (b. Ber. 61a, Erub. 18a). I discussed above the striking symmetry that this aphorism creates between God and the evil yetzer. Here I would like to concentrate on the third figure: the “I” caught in the middle between these two powerful forces. Such a depiction cannot but remind us of the role of the logos in the Platonic tripartite soul. However, unlike the famous picture of the winged chariot in the Phaedrus, in which the higher part of the soul has to control the other two parts— the good and the bad horses (θύμος and ἐπιθυμία, respectively)—Rabbi Simon’s “charioteer” is not one part of the soul, but the whole person, “me.” This poor person does not lead any horse, but is doomed to endlessly maneuver between two mighty forces: God and yetzer. We are thus able to add another reason for the pairing together of God and the yetzer: “I” am caught between them two, meaning that both are not “me.” True, the yetzer is “my yetzer,” just as the creator is “my creator,” but it is definitely not “me” in the eyes of the homilist. The division between self and yetzer is one of the most stable phenomena in the rabbinic discussions of the yetzer, regardless of their specific themes.6 Throughout this study, I have insisted that this separation is not just a figure of speech but a firm anthropological model, which functions as one of the foundations of rabbinic ethics. For the rabbis, the true “self” is essentially good in nature, and therefore can and should strive to be a worshiper of God; just as in the Platonic model, the identification of the inner man (ὁ ἔντος ἄνθροπος)7 with the mind ensures the possibility of a life of mastery of the higher over the lower parts. Similarly: “The monk healed himself, not by ‘owning’ his negative thoughts, but by rejecting them as foreign to his nature.”8 Only thus is the composer of the famous prayer able to turn to God and say: “You desire, and we desire (‫)את חפץ ואנו חפיצים‬, and what prevents us? The leaven in the dough” (i.e., the evil yetzer; y. Ber. 4:2, 7d).9 The evil yetzer may not wish to worship God, but “we” do. Note also the preceding sentence in this prayer: “For you thus created us to do your will, and we are obligated to do your will (‫שכך בראתנו לעשות רצונך‬ ‫)ואנו חייבים לעשות רצונך‬.” 10 The double assertion (“you created us . . . and we are obligated . . .”) makes sense only when we acknowledge that the first sentence

Afterword 131

does not refer to the purpose of human creation (“you have created us to fulfill your will”)—which is the theme of the second sentence—but to its very nature (“you have created us in a manner that enables us to fulfill your will”). This is the exact meaning of the idiom: ‫שכך בראתנו‬, you created us thus, in this manner. A similar expression appears in a tannaitic homily: “Without inequity (Deut 32:4)—that He did not create humans to be wicked but to be righteous (‫שלא‬ ‫)ברא בני אדם להיות רשעים אלא להיות צדיקים‬, and thus it is said, behold, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices” (Ecc 7:29; Sifre Deut 307, ed. Finkelstein, 344). Here again, the verse cited from Ecclesiastes makes it clear that the homily refers to the very nature of humans, and not only to the purpose of their creation. Although the rabbis’ sense of Torah is very different from the Philonic “law of nature,”11 they do seem to assume some sort of natural human capacity to fulfill the law (which is God’s will).12 Once again the closest analogy is the monastic ethic of “self preservation”: “The monk does not form his self essentially through conflict with demons. Rather, the monk’s basic ascetic task is to preserve his ‘natural’ self from the corruption of the passions.”13 But the rabbinic case is more intricate than the monastic one, if only for the reason that the yetzer is more fully and systematically internalized. Both the narratives on Boaz and on Antony teach how to distinguish between them and the yetzer/­ demons trying to take hold of them. But the effort to separate the real “me” from external intruders is much more complicated when facing the sound ­halakhic advice of the yetzer rather than the fearful devil accompanied by a host of his demons. To be sure, it is hard to become a true worshiper of God, and divine aid is required (hence the prayer!), but it is only possible because “we desire” it in the first place. Thus R. Shimon b. Lakish expounds: “Man’s yetzer overpowers him every day and attempts to kill him, as it is said: the wicked watches for the righteous seeking to put him to death (‫צופה רשע לצדיק ומבקש המיתו‬, Ps 37:32), and without divine help one cannot best it, as it is said: The lord will not abandon him to his power” (Ps 37:32; b. Suk. 52b). Again, the verse cited leaves little doubt—it is a life and death struggle between the wicked and the righteous. The equation is rather straightforward: when the yetzer becomes a deadly demon, humans become “righteous.”14 True, the hierarchy between good and evil in humans is gravely weakened when the good yetzer is added to this equation,15 but this tradition remained marginal all along rabbinic literature, as I have attempted to prove above. The story of the yetzer is thus a central chapter in the genealogy of the rabbinic “self,” which is yet to be written.



132 Afterword

Michel Foucault’s account of the transformations of the subject in late antiquity—converting the Hellenistic “ethics of the self” into the Christian “hermeneutic of the self,” the latter “much more concerned with thought than with action”16 —led some scholars to attempt incorporating Judaism into this picture. Various studies claimed that Judaism in late antiquity also espoused a strong interest in the “inner world” of humans. Scholars have noted the rise of a new “subjectivity,” manifest in various areas, such as sexual ethics (concentrating on thoughts rather than deeds), the significance of intention (in both civil and ritual law), new techniques of narratology (which emphasize the internal rather than the external worlds of the heroes), and more.17 A recent work by Guy Stroumsa even suggested that the new Christian “care of the self” is in fact Jewish in nature, and that “it is with Jewish weapons that Christianity conquered the Roman Empire.”18 Without disqualifying it, the discourse of yetzer somewhat complicates this effort. Rabbinic yetzer cannot be simply considered part of the “new care of the self,” for its basic decree is not to “conquer oneself,”19 but rather conquer your yetzer (m. Avot 4:1), and this yetzer is not the irrational or lower aspect of the self, but a demonic entity residing in the heart. Nonetheless, this demonic entity does indeed reside in the heart. For the first time there are no external metaphysical enemies to account for human sinfulness. It is the demon inside that alone leads humans to sin, internal and nonetheless independent. This inner demon is occupied with forbidden acts rather than doctrines.20 Far from representing the dark, mysterious depths of one’s mental world, it is portrayed in rabbinic literature as a wiseguy Torah scholar. If this is to be incorporated into a new discourse of subjectivity, we have to be willing to question the basic assumptions of the discourse itself. We have to acknowledge, first and foremost, that the demonological background of the yetzer had not disappeared altogether when it became internalized in the human heart. Its traces are manifest in the hierarchy inherent in the rabbinic self, demonstrated by the division the sources make between “me” and the external intruder, which, while residing in me, is not “me.” Although expressions of such distinctions may be found in rabbinic literature quite frequently, they were ignored by scholars who studied the yetzer in the context of an ascetic struggle for self control. This led many to overlook the demonic character of the yetzer and the anthropological hierarchy that flows from it. Taking demonological discourse seriously thus demands a fresh look at the most basic assumptions of the rabbinic concept of “self.” Such a discourse, still absent from rabbinic scholarship, can be found in adjacent fields,

Afterword 133

most prominently Homeric studies. Scholars have long debated the kind of agency Homer allowed for his characters, given the active, and intimate, involvement of the gods in human decision making in both The Iliad and The Odyssey. Bruno Snell argues that such involvement indeed denies real agency (and thus a full concept of self). The Homeric man (as he puts it) is but a conglomeration of thoughts, feelings, and decisions that take place in various limbs.21 Bernard Williams vehemently rejects this inference. Among other proofs, Williams cites the Homeric (highly anthropomorphic) depiction of the gods themselves. Such depiction assumes exactly the agency that Snell denies, for Homer “could not apply to the gods a concept of decision he did not have.”22 The rabbis did not have that problem. They certainly did not think that the yetzer denies human agency by residing in a person. But it does redefine its limits. The rabbis did not offer a theory of agency any more than Homer, but they did reflect on human responsibility and its limits in the face of the yetzer. The prayer cited above ends thus: “It is obvious to you that we have no strength to resist it (‫)שאין בנו כח לעמוד בו‬.23 So, let it be your will Lord my God and God of my fathers, that you vanquish it from before us and subdue it, so that we may do your will as our own will with a whole heart (‫)בלבב שלם‬.” This prayer yearns for a future in which there will be no inner struggles, a world of “whole heartedness.” Meanwhile they continue fighting, yes, but what gives this fight a chance, what makes it even possible, is the fact that all along the way “You desire, and we desire.” Rabbinic self is thus layered, but not closed. The very need to create the hierarchy between the true “me” and the other, external parts of “me” comes from the fact that the self is actually perforated and penetrable. The rabbis do not know as yet the kind of inner self that is categorically different from anything outside, an intra-personal sphere that is essentially distinct and separate from both society and cosmos.24 For them, as for their patristic contemporaries, there is still a continuity between the cosmic world and that of the self. The yetzer comes from the outside into the heart/mind to rule “me,” thus the need to distinguish, time and again, between the yetzer and the true “me” who desires to remain a servant of God. The lack of a clear-cut separation between the inside and the outside explains not only the sages’ anthropology but also their ethics. Subduing the yetzer is not itself a mitzvah in rabbinic literature, but it is a (the) precondition to fulfilling the commandments, always practical and physical in nature: “Remove that evil yetzer from your hearts, so that all of you will be as one in awe and of one mind to serve God” (Sifra Shemini 1, ed. Weiss 43d).25



134 Afterword

The foundation of rabbinic anthropology lies therefore in its stark rejection of both cosmic demonology and human carnality as the sources of sinfulness. Their choice of the yetzer is understandable in light of their insistence on a concrete and real source for sin, which at the same time would not compromise human choice and responsibility. These choices uncover the affinity of the rabbis with the Pharisees (at least as they are portrayed by Josephus): preaching free choice, not determined by fate (εἱμαρμένη), and asserting human carnality, as revealed in their insistence on bodily resurrection.26 The textual analysis offered above complicates the historical narrative, revealing that this anthropology is not shared by all segments of rabbinic literature. It was conceived only in one school of the tannaitic literature, that of Rabbi Ishmael, while the midrashim of the school of Rabbi Akiva keep presenting a neutral, biblical-like yetzer. A few later sources continue Rabbi Akiva’s model, but the vast majority of amoraic sources adopt and develop the Ishmaelian evil yetzer. A second major development appears in the Bavli, where the yetzer becomes sexualized and identified with erotic passions and desires. A closer look, however, located this transformation specifically in the later, post-amoraic layers of the Bavli. Two eras and two protagonists, both collective and anonymous, thus stand at the center of this book: Rabbi Ishmael’s tannaitic school and the post-amoraic editors of the Bavli. The latter have gained a reputation in the past several decades for their silent refashioning of rabbinic ethos in almost every possible sphere, both legal and aggadic. The former, in contrast, is considered a rather marginal school in the history of rabbinic ideas, for it is the school of Rabbi Akiva whose midrashic techniques and ideology have come to dominate rabbinic literature. The exceptional success of the evil yetzer of Rabbi Ishmael’s school testifies first and foremost to the sophistication and elegance of the answer it offers to the eternal problem of the sources of sin and evil. Transition from textual findings to historical reconstructions is never simple. I have offered some chronological observations (such as dating the process of internalizations, in its final stages, to the post-destruction era and that of sexualization to the post-amoraic one) and hinted at possible historical contexts and comparisons. These observations, however, consciously remained on the margins of this study, which concentrates on uncovering the foundations of the rabbinic discourse of the yetzer, along with its normative, theological, and anthropological implications. The maxim of the sages (m. Avot 2:16) is so very assuring: “It is not upon you to finish the task, nor are you free to desist from it.”

Notes

Introduction 1. The affinity with the monastic literature, especially Origen, cannot be overlooked, even at this stage: “In his exegetical and homiletic works, Origen read the stories of warfare in the Old Testament as allegories of the spiritual battle between Christians and diabolic forces.” Thus, in his Homilies on Joshua, “the conquest of the Promised Land by the Israelites becomes a metaphor for the individual believer’s gradual victory over the demons that hold sway within the soul” (Columba Stewart, “Evagrius Ponticus and the ‘Eight Generic Logismoi,’” in In the Garden of Evil: The Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages [ed. R. Newhauser; Toronto: PIMS, 2005], 3–34, 11–12). The full breadth of this comparison becomes clear in the following chapters. 2. Torsten J. Andersson, Polis and Psyche: A Motif in Plato’s Republic (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1971). 3. Following Gen 6:5 and 8:21, the yetzer is more specifically associated with the heart. The exact physiology of the yetzer is discussed in Chapter 4 below. 4. On several attempts to reconstruct the good yetzer in pre-rabbinic literatures, see Chapters 1 and 3 below. 5. Pottery (Is 29:17, Hab 2:18), creation of the world (Jer 10:16, Is 45:7) and humanity (Gen 2:7, cf. 1:27). For a full review of the word and its various appearances, see B. Otzen, “Yasar,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (ed. G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren; Grand Rapids, Mich., 1980–2006), 4: 257–65. 6. Cf. also the translation in Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: Norton, 1996), 28: “scheme.” 7. Gen 6:5; 8:21; Deut 31:21; Ps 103:14; 1 Chron 28:9; 29:18. 8. Thus Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis: The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 47. 9. Marcus M. Kalisch, Historical and Critical Commentary of the Old Testament (London, 1858), 177, and Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaft­liche Buchgesellschaft, 1976), 410, both treat ‫ יצר‬and ‫ מחשבות‬as (near) synonyms, and ‫ יצר מחשבות‬as



136 Notes to Pages 3–5 repetitive language (explaining the interchangeability of ‫ יצר מחשבות לב‬and ‫ יצר לב‬in these verses). Others interpret it as “imagination” (Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis [London: Westminster John Knox, 1961], 113), “disposition” (John E. Hartley, Genesis: International Biblical Commentary [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2000], 97), or the like. 10. This revelation functions in two different and contradictory ways in the verses: God’s understanding that “every plan devised by his mind (‫ )יצר מחשבות לבו‬was nothing but evil” (i.e., the totality of human evilness) leads Him to exterminate humanity, while his realization, after the flood, that “the devising of man’s mind (‫ )יצר לב האדם‬is evil from his youth” (i.e., that it is inherent in humanity) brings Him to promise not to do so again. On the flood and God’s psychology, see Yair Lorberbaum, ‘”The Rainbow in the Cloud’: An Anger Management Device,” Journal of Religion 89 (2009): 498–540. 11. Frank C. Porter, “The Yeçer Hara: A Study in the Jewish Doctrine of Sin,” in Biblical and Semitic Studies: Critical and Historical Essays by the Members of the Semitic and Biblical Faculty of Yale University (New York: Scribner’s, 1901), 93–156. 12. Geert H. Cohen Stuart, The Struggle in Man Between Good and Evil: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Rabbinic Concept of Yeser Hara (Kampen: Kok, 1984). 13. See, e.g., Hans J. Schoeps, Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History (London: Luttonworth, 1961), 184–87; Peter W. Macky, “The Importance of the Teaching on God, Evil and Eschatology for the Dating of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1969), 257–59; Alden L. Thompson, Responsibility for Evil in the Theodicy of IV Ezra: A Study Illustrating the Significance of Form and Structure for the Meaning of the Book (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1977), 51. 14. This is not only true for rabbinic studies. See, e.g., Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 191–96, and Moshe Idel, “On the Theologization of Kabbalah in Modern Scholarship,” in Religious Apologetics—Philosophical Argumentation (ed. J. Schwartz and V. Krech; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 123–74. The spirit (or phantom) of Foucault cannot be missed in these cases. Though this trend has proven fruitful in many areas of scholarship, the manner in which it has recontextualized the rabbinic discourse of the yetzer should be problematicized. 15. Esp. Jonathan W. Schofer, The Making of a Sage: A Study in Rabbinic Ethics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). 16. Michael L. Satlow, “And on the Earth You Shall Sleep: Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism,” Journal of Religion 83 (2003): 204–24, 212. Compare also his “Male and Female They Created Her,” in Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine (ed. Lee I. Levine; Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2004), 486–504, 497 (Hebrew). Cf. the intermediate position taken by Marin Hengel, for whom the yetzer “stands between Essene speculation on the two spirits and Hellenistic anthropology with the distinction between the higher and lower power of the soul in human beings” (Martin Hengel, The Hellenization of Judaea in the First Century after Christ [London: SCM Press, 1989], 48). 17. Solomon Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (2nd ed.; New York: Schocken, 1961), chap. 15; Porter, “The Yeçer Hara”; George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First



Notes to Pages 5–7 137

­ enturies of the Christian Era, the Age of the Tannaim (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniC versity Press, 1924), chap. 3. 18. Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 61–76, Jonathan W. Schofer, “The Redaction of Desire: Structure and Editing of Rabbinic Teachings Concerning ‘yeser’ (‘Inclination’),” JJS 12 (2003): 19–53; Satlow, “Rabbinic Asceticism.” 19. This description is based especially on the following studies (and others founded on them): Emero Stiegman, “Rabbinic Anthropology,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 2.19.2 (Berlin: De Greuter, 1979), 487–579; Jeremy Cohen, “Original Sin as the Evil Inclination—A Polemicist’s Appreciation of Human Nature,” Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980): 495–520; Cohen Stuart, Struggle; Thompson, Responsibility; Boyarin, Carnal Israel; Satlow, “Rabbinic Asceticism”; Schofer, “Redaction of Desire.” For recent summaries of this trend, see Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, “Art, Argument, and Ambiguity in the Talmud: Conflicting Conceptions of the Evil Impulse in b. Sukkah 51b–52a,” HUCA 73 (2002): 97–132; Peter W. van der Horst, “Religion and the Self in Antiquity,” JSJ 38 (2007): 349–50. 20. For the use of these lines in later philosophical (especially Stoic) reflections on the passions, see Salvatore R. C. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 88–89. 21. Plato, Republic, 439d–440a. See Chapter 1 below. 22. Rom 7:15. For the numerous readings of this statement, see Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 462–64. 23. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). 24. Nicomachean Ethics 1145b 12–14. On this concept and its deep influence on modern philosophers, see Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 44. 25. See the excursus to Chapter 4 below. 26. Harry G. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” in The Importance of What We Care About (ed. Frankfurt; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 11–25. 27. A clear example of this tendency can be found in Arthur Green, “Yetzer,” in These Are the Words: A Vocabulary of Jewish Spiritual Life (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 1999). 28. For this concept, see Adi Ophir, The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals (New York: Zone Books, 2005). 29. As in William James’s “Homo Duplex,” in Chapter 4 below. 30. Such as the Platonic tripartite soul in Chapter 1. 31. Stephen R. L. Clark, “Reason as Daimon,” in The Person and the Human Mind: Issues in Ancient and Modern Philosophy (ed. C. Gill; Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 187–206, 197. Clark’s paper is a fascinating (and rare) attempt to defend such a metaphysical account of human reason philosophically. 32. On rabbinic ‫ נפש‬as a divine spirit given to humans by God, see, e.g., Gen Rab. 14:7–9, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 130–34. and b. Nid. 31a. For the differences between



138 Notes to Pages 7–13 r­ abbinic accounts of body and soul and Platonic dualism, see the sharp summary of Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994): 180–82. For the dissociation of soul and yetzer in rabbinic literature, see Chapter 3 below. 33. At this point I hope it is already clear that I use “demonic” in the cosmic rather than the figurative, psychiatric sense. For the latter, see Rollo May, “Psychotherapy and the Demonic,” Myth, Dreams and Religion (ed. J. Campbell; New York: Dutton, 1970), 196–210 (“I define ‘daimonic’ as any natural function in the individual that had the power of taking over the whole person. Sex and eros, anger and rage and the craving for powers are examples,” 196). 34. Ruth Padel, In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 114–37 (citations from 114, 134). 35. Per Padel, the very attempt to distinguish between literal and metaphorical in the context of the Athenians in the fifth century b.c.e. is an anachronism: “Our distinctions rest on distinctions drawn first in the fourth century, in Aristotle’s generation.” Here comes a useful example: “We take the Greek image of cosmic order as justice to be metaphor, an import from morality to cosmology, therefore not the explanation of cosmic order and relationships. Before Aristotle, to call it justice is to explain its working” (Padel, In and Out, 34, emphasis in the original). Thus “it might be worth the effort to imagine a use of language in which both the abstract and the concrete coloring of each word are part of its sense” (40). Cf. Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay in Constitutive Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 17–26. While I do not claim that this holds true for the rabbinic literature in general (after all, the rabbis had a highly sophisticated conceptualization of parables, ‫)משלים‬, I use Padel’s insight in specific cases, when such a blurring seems to be taking place. See esp. Chapter 4 nn. 29 and 67 below. 36. Thus special attention is given to the extended sugiyot on the yetzer in Genesis Rabba as well as the Bavli, which give a vivid and dynamic picture of the way the yetzer functions and develops. 37. For these three divisions together, see t. Ber. 6:18 (ed. Lieberman, 38). 38. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith; New York: Pantheon, 1972), 37. My understanding of both the Foucauldian project and its limits is deeply influenced by Beatrice Han, Foucault’s Critical Project: Between the Transcendental and the Historical (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002). 39. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, The Rite That Was Not: Temple, Midrash and Gender in Tractate Sotah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008) (Hebrew) (English version forthcoming from Brill). 40. The few exceptions from the school of Rabbi Akiva are discussed in Chapter 1. 41. For a fuller discussion on the partial use of the definite article in the set phrase yetzer hara, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “ ‘Torah Spoke Regarding the Yetzer: The School of R. Ishmael and the Sources of Yetzer Hara,” Tarbiz 76 (2007): 41–79, 46–47 n. 22 (Hebrew). 42. I use this word simply as the best translation of the Hebrew drasha, without any further connotation. 43. As in the case of sources discussing the obligation to study Torah, to fulfill commandments restricted to men, or to “take a wife.”



Notes to Pages 14–16 139

Chapter 1 1. On these two schools, the history of their scholarly reconstruction, and the parameters of identifying specific midrashic units with one or another, see Menachem Kahana, “The Halakhic Midrashim,” in The Literature of the Sages, Part 2 (ed. S. Safrai et al.; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006), 1–103, 17–39. 2. On ‫ כנגד‬as “regarding” (and not “against”), see Wilhelm Bacher, Die exegetische terminologie der Jüdischen traditions Literatur (Leipzig, 1905), 124–25. 3. On redundancies as a prime motivation for midrashic exegesis, see Ishay RosenZvi, “When the Philosopher Meets the Rabbi,” Theory and Criticism 15 (1999): 109–26, 118 (Hebrew). 4. This homily, not preserved in any known Geniza fragment, was reconstructed from the thirteenth-century Yemenite anthology Midrash Hagadol (ed. Hoffman, 164; ed. Epstein-Melamed, 223). For the history and reconstruction of the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon, see Kahana, “Halakhic Midrashim,” 72–77. 5. Mek. RS 23:5, ed. Epstein-Melamed, 215. For a fuller analysis, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “ ‘Torah Spoke Regarding the Yetzer’: The School of R. Ishmael and the Sources of Yetzer Hara,” Tarbiz 76 (2007): 41–79, 43–44. Cf. the shared tradition of the Targums, reading the idiom azov taazov (‫ ;עזוב תעזוב‬literally, “you must raise it”) in Ex 23:5 as ordering one to release (‫ )תשבוק‬grudges in the heart against an enemy and thus to help him. The yetzer in this homily of Mek. RS is nothing more than the “heart,” the mind or thoughts, of the Aramaic Targums. Indeed, the targumic tradition seems to be the source of this homily (and its parallel in Sifre Deut 222). My brother Assaf Rosen-Zvi discusses these issues as part of a commentary he is currently preparing on Mekhilta Kaspa. I thank him for this (and other) insights. 6. Adiel Schremer recently suggested to read “your enemy” (‫ )אויבך‬in Sifre Deut 222 as referring to a national rather than a personal foe (i.e., to gentiles). See Adiel Schremer, “Other Brothers,” Reshit 1 (2009): 165–86; Schremer, Brothers Estranged: Heresy, Christianity and Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 137. According to such a reading the idiom “the Torah spoke only regarding the yetzer” does not engage with one’s personal, natural tendency (favoring friends for enemies) but with the legal status of non-Jews, an important ideological issue. However, such reading does not fit the other occurrences of this idiom and cannot stand in our case either. All the other homilies cited by Schremer as reading “your enemy” in a national sense (Mek. RI, Kaspa 20, ed. Horowitz-Rabin, 324; Sifre Zut Deut 22:1, ed. Kahana, 327; Mek RS 33:4, ed. Epstein-Melamed, 215) do so explicitly. Furthermore, the parallel homily in Mek. RS 33:4 clearly indicates a personal rather than national reading of “your enemy.” “You shall not see your fellow’s ox (Deut 22:1)—this tells me only regarding your fellow’s ox, whence do we know that this applies to your enemy’s ox? Scripture teaches (Ex 23:4): your enemy’s ox [indicating that this applies] in all cases.” Up to this point the homily is identical to Sifre Deut 222, but then it adds: “Could it be that [you should act the same] toward [the ox] of others (i.e., gentiles; ‫ ?)יכול אף שלאחרים כן‬Scripture teaches your brother (Deut 22:1). . . .” This clarifies that the enemy discussed at the beginning (the part which parallels the Sifre’s homily) is a personal rather than a national one.



140 Notes to Pages 16–19 7. The homily demands that formal duties be exceeded. The Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon uses semantics of moral excellence, not those of legal obligation: “If you subject your yetzer . . . I promise you that . . .” This is also true for the cryptic parallel homily in Sifre Deuteronomy. Note that the homily distinguishes between the precept encoded in the words “your enemy’s ox” (a legal duty to return lost property, even to an enemy) and that encoded in “your fellow’s ox” (a further requirement to overcome the yetzer and treat an enemy like a friend). In the first case the language is clearly normative (“whence do we know that this applies to your enemy’s ox? Scripture teaches . . .”) while in the second it is not. The attachment of the phrase “the Torah spoke regarding the yetzer” to the words “your fellow’s ox” rather than “your enemy’s ox” indicates that it does not serve simply as a justification of the obligation to return lost property to enemies, but is rather a call to exceed formal requirements and “treat your enemy as your friend.” Indeed, the phrase ‫ דברה תורה כנגד היצר‬is nowhere coupled with a simple normative statement. Rather, it is a request to overcome natural difficulties, combined with promises of divine assistance. For the place of moral excellence and virtuous behavior in the normative discourse of the Tannaim, see Zvi Novick, “Duties and Ends: On the Structure of Normativity in Tannaitic Judaism” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2008). 8. This neutral meaning is not contradicted by the two verses in which God finds out that human yetzer is actually bad (Gen 6:5; 8:21). If we can learn something from the divine disappointment in these verses, it is that yetzer (whatever its exact meaning) is not inherently evil—otherwise there would be no reason for disappointment or surprise. 9. ‫ אמתלה‬is an explanation justifying a problematic action or statement. Cf. m. Git. 9:9, b. Ket. 22a. 10. The use of Deuteronomy 4:6 as an answer to the yetzer’s claim that “theirs are better than ours” becomes even clearer when reading the next verses, which emphasize the advantage of Israel over all other nations. 11. This homily is part of Mekhilta DeArayot, identified with the school of R. Ishmael. See Jacob N. Epstein, Prologomena ad litteras Tannaiticas (Jerusalem: Magnes and Dvir, 1957), 640 (Hebrew). While R. Akiva’s homilies on Lev 18 concentrate on the sexual prohibitions only, R. Ishmael read these verses as a polemic against “the wisdom of the nations.” See Marc G. Hirshman, Torah for the Entire World (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999), 48–53 (Hebrew), and cf. Beth Berkowitz, “The Limits of ‘Their Laws’: Ancient Rabbinic Controversies about Jewishness (and Non-Jewishness),” JQR 99 (2009): 121–57. 12. Appearing only as part of the idiom “the Torah spoke regarding the yetzer.” On the possibility of an appearance of the statement “the Torah spoke regarding the evil [sic] yetzer” in two reconstructed homilies from the school of R. Ishmael, see Rosen-Zvi, “R. Ishmael,” 47 n. 25. 13. On the strange syntax of this sentence and the possibility that it is an insertion, see Menachem Kahana, “Foreign Passages from ‘Deve Rabbi’ in the Halakhic Midrashim,” in Studies in Scripture and Talmud (ed. S. Yefet; Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1987), 76–77 (Hebrew). 14. Although the homily does not specify why Boaz refused the yetzer’s legal advice, it seems clear that it assumes the yetzer uses the legal claim as a “pretext of permission”



Notes to Pages 20–23 141

for sexual licentiousness. Indeed, Rav, an early third-century Babylonian rabbi, is said to have flogged whoever married through intercourse (b. Yev. 52a, Kid. 12b). See further in Chapter 5 below. 15. For the attribution of Sifre Deuteronomy 31–36, 41–47 (on Deut 6 and 11) to the school of R. Ishmael, see David Z. Hoffmann, “Einleitung in die Halachischen Midraschim,” Jahresbericht des rabbiner-seminars zu Berlin (1886–87): 1–91, 66–67; Abraham Goldberg, “The School of R. Akiva and R. Ishmael in Sifre Deuteronomy 1–54,” Teuda 3 (1983): 9–16, 14 n. 14 (Hebrew); Menachem Kahana, “Quotations from Mekhilta Deuteronomy for Parashot Ekev and Haazinu,” Tarbiz 56 (1987): 19–59, 30–31 (Hebrew). 16. On this midrashic device, see Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 26–30. 17. See Novick, “Duties and Ends,” which reads this homily as part of the tradition of swearing to uphold the law (as in Ps 119:106; 1QS V:8; m. Shev. 3:6). Note, however, the oath here is a concrete response to the yetzer’s temptation (as is clearly narrated in Sifre Num 88, regarding Boaz). Adjuration is but one among a variety of techniques to resist the yetzer’s incitements, as I demonstrate below. 18. See n. 15 above. On the conceptualization of the Torah and its study in Sifre Deuteronomy at large, see Steven Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). 19. The same symbol (“elixir of life”) is used in Syriac literature to denote the eucharist. See Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 76–79. 20. The message implicit in the transition between the two parts of the exposition is that the same “One” who created man’s evil yetzer also provided the remedy, the “elixir of life,” which is Torah. 21. Both statements are not founded on Gen 4:7 on which the rest of the homily is based. The second is based on Gen 8:21, while the first appears with no reference at all. 22. Amoraic sources explicate this discontent. See Chapter 4 n. 48. 23. See, e.g., m. Avot 3:6; Mek. RI, Vayasa 1 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin, 159), and many more. 24. See n. 42 below. 25. Cf. Gen Rab. 70:8 (n. 33 below): “when they left [the synagogue] the evil yetzer would return to its place.” For specific magical terminology regarding the yetzer (‫וישמרך‬, ‫)להשביע‬ ׁ in rabbinic literature, see n. 45 below and Chapter 3 n. 46. As elsewhere in this study, I avoid psychological readings (e.g., ceaseless Torah study is exhausting and leaves no energy for dangerous desires), suggesting instead that the homilist views both the dangers of the yetzer and the remedy (‫ )סם תם‬as entirely real. Protection from the yetzer should be thus read just like any other danger from which the sage is said to be protected through Torah. See, e.g., “When you lie down it [Wisdom, i.e. Torah] will watch over you (Prov 6:22)—in the time of death” (Sifre Deut 34, ed. Finkelstein, 62), “and what caused the Israelites to be saved (from drowning in the sea)? . . . On their right (Ex 14:28)—due to the Torah (‫( ”)בזכות תורה‬Mek RI, Beshalach 6, ed. Horowitz-Rabin, 111). Therefore: “sages need no [earthly] protection” (b. Bab. Bat. 7b).



142 Notes to Page 23 26. For the talismatic power of Torah, cf. the Bavli’s statement cited above—“If this repulsive one assails you—drag him to the study hall. If he is (like a) stone he will melt (‫ )נימוח‬and if he is (like) iron he will explode (‫—”)מתפוצץ‬to Athanasius’s account of the sign of the cross that makes the demons “melt (τήκεται) like wax” and “vanish (ἐκλείπει) like smoke” (Vita Antonii xiii; see William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 86. Athanasius repeats the image of demons melting or vanishing upon hearing the Lord’s name or seeing his sign (cf. VA 11; 35) several times. On this theme, cf. Helen Rhee, Early Christian Literature: Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries (London: Routledge, 2005), 74– 75. Cf. also Clement: “Do you not rather desire to put on the heavenly amulet (τὸν οὐράνιον αὐτὸν περιάψασται), the Word who truly saves, and, by trusting to God’s enchantment, to be freed from passions, which are diseases of the soul and to be torn away from sin?” (Protr. 115.2; Clement Alexandrini, Protrepticus, ed. M. Marcuvich [Leiden: Brill, 1995], 166; English trans., G. W. Butterworth, Clement of Alexandria [LCL; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1919]). 27. Since rabbinic study was oral, the Torah was to be literally inscribed upon the heart (‫)על לבבכם‬, and thus may function as a talisman. For the specific process of study and mnemonics encoded in this idiom, see Shlomo Naeh, “The Art of Memory: Constructions of Memory and Patterns of Text in Rabbinic Literature,” Mehkerei Talmud 3 (2005): 543–89, esp. 554–63 (Hebrew). This seems to also be the basis for the comparison, in the previous homily in the Sifre, between Torah study and phylacteries, the quintessential Jewish talisman: “Impress these my words upon your heart (Deut 11:18)—this is Torah [study, as made explicit in the next sentence]; and bind them as a sign on your hand (ibid.)—these are phylacteries” (Sifre Deut 44, ed. Finkelstein, 103; cf. “and what caused the Israelites to be saved? . . . On their right (Ex 14:28)—due to the Torah . . . and on their left (ibid.)—refers to [the] phylactery [single, i.e., the ‫ תפילה‬that is put on the left hand],” Mek. RI, Beshalach 6, ed. Horowitz-Rabin, 111). Cf. the observation of Pedro Lain-Entralgo regarding Hellenistic ritual: “Magic formulas have passed through the following phases: at first they were sung; then they were recited; finally they were written upon a material object worn in some case as an amulet” (Pedro LainEntralgo, The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970], 45, cited in Yehuda B. Cohen, Tangled Up in Text: Tefillin and the Ancient World [Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2008], 100). On the talismatic, protective power of phylacteries in rabbinic literature, see Cohen, Tangled Up, 151–69, and Dror Yinon and Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Male Jewels/Female Jewels: A New Look at the Religious Obligations of Women in Rabbinic Thought,” Reshit 2 (2010): 55–79. Since the hand phylactery is also considered to be opposite the heart (‫ ;מכוון כנגד הלב‬Mek RI, Pascha 17, ed. Horowitz-Rabin, 67), both phylacteries and Torah protect men while they are actually upon the heart. Cf. also “whoever wears phylacteries [is considered] as if he reads the Torah and whoever reads the Torah is exempt from phylacteries” (Horowitz-Rabin, 68) and see Louis Ginzberg, Commentary on the Palestinian Talmud (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1941), 1, 283 (Hebrew). 28. For a recent summary of the depth and intensity of this ethos, in theory and practice, see Yaakov Zussman, “Torah She-Beal Pe—Literally: The Power of the Jot and Tittle,” Mehkerei Talmud 3 (2005): 209–384, 245–58 (Hebrew).



Notes to Pages 23–24 143

29. On the title “righteous” in rabbinic literature and the complex attitude of the sages toward it, see Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 483–511. 30. ‫ ואתעסק באוריתא דחליא‬/ ‫ ויתה עד צפרה חבש‬/ ‫ ויצרה בישה מניה כבש‬/ ‫צדיקה מאנוי לבש‬ ‫מן דבש‬. Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Israel Academy for Sciences and Humanities, 1999), 106–7 (Hebrew). See the parallel homilies cited there, n. 36. 31. This is more apparent in earlier traditions, while later versions (especially in the Bavli) tend to “rabbinicize” the wonder makers. However, even there the rabbis must compete with other, no less powerful, non-rabbinic (and sometimes non-Jewish) magical experts. See Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 156–66; Baruch Bokser, “Wonder Making and the Rabbinic Tradition: The Case of Hanina ben Dosa,” JSJ 16 (1985): 42–92; Richard Kalmin, “Holy Men, Rabbis, and Demonic Sages in Late Antiquity,” Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire (ed. R. Kalmin and S. Schwartz; Leuven: Peters, 2003), 213–47; David Levine, “Holy Men and Rabbis in Talmudic Antiquity,” Saints and Role Models in Judaism and Christianity (ed. M. Poorthuis and J. Schwartz; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 45–57; Chana Safrai and Zeev Safrai, “Rabbinic Holy Men,” Saints and Role Models (ed. M. Poorthuis and J. Schwartz; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 59–78; Yuval Harari, Early Jewish Magic: Research, Method, Sources (Jerusalem: Mossad ­Bialik, 2010), 286–97 (Hebrew); Joshua Levinson, “Enchanting Rabbis: Contest Narratives between Rabbis and Magicians in Late Antiquity,” JQR 100 (2010): 54–94. 32. “If this repulsive one assails you—drag him to the study hall” (b. Kid. 30b; Suk. 52b). 33. “There before his eyes was a well in the field (Gen 29:2)—this is the synagogue . . . The stone was large (ibid.)—this is the evil yetzer. And all the flocks were gathered there (29:3)—this is the public. And they would roll the stone (ibid.)—for from there they would hear the Torah (‫)שמשם היו שומעים את התורה‬. And they would put the stone back (ibid.)—for when they left [the synagogue] the evil yetzer would return to its place” (‫ ;שכיון שהיו יוצאים להם יצר הרע חוזר למקומו‬Gen Rab. 70:8, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 808). 34. A fact that causes some uncertainty. See, for example, the scholarly debate whether the idiom ‫( עשה תורה‬m. Avot 2:8, Sifra Aharei 8:3, ed. Weiss, 86b) refers to fulfillment of the law or its study (Hirshman, Torah, 53–54). 35. Cf. b. San. 103a: “No evil will befall you (Ps 91:10)—that the evil yetzer will not rule over (‫ )ישלוט‬you,” to which the Yemenite MS Jerusalem (Yad Harav Herzog 1) adds: “and prevent you from studying.” 36. The term ‫ יעציבני‬is a hapax legomenon, and is taken by the homilist from the biblical verse expounded here (1 Chron 4:10). In this context it seems to denote “disturb,” “disrupt,” or the like. 37. Although this homily is part of the aggadic cycle shared by both Mekhiltot, it is absent from the parallel passage in Mek. RS (18:38, ed. Epstein-Melamed, 135), and the tradition seems to have been adapted in accordance with Ishmaelian tendencies. On this phenomenon, see Menachem Kahana, The Two Mekhiltot to the Amalek Portion (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 23–24 (Hebrew).



144 Notes to Pages 24–25 38. The homily is an exegesis of the cryptic story of Jabetz in 1 Chron 4:10, which the rabbis associate with the town bearing the same name in 1 Chron 2:55. Jabetz is portrayed as the teacher of the Rekhabites, and his prayer as associated with the study and instruction of Torah. The yetzer is not the subject of the homily at all. Its appearance here is due to its major explanatory role, justifying the sages’ difficulty to cling to the Torah. This is another example of the centrality of the yetzer to the homilist’s thought. 39. Memory and its shortcomings are central themes in tannaitic literature. See Naeh, “Memory.” For quests for divine aid and adjurations for learning and avoidance of forgetfulness in Hekhalot literature, see Rebecca M. Lesses, Ritual Process to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations and Revelation in Early Mysticism (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity, 1998), 176–203. For magical practices for memory, see Yuval Harari, “Laasot Petichat Lev: Magical Practices for Knowledge, Understanding and Memory in Ancient and Medieval Judaism,” in Shefa Tal: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and Culture Dedicated to Beracha Zack (ed. Z. Gries, Ch. Kreisel, and B. Huss; Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2005), 303–47 (Hebrew). An intriguing comparison between rabbinic literature and the Hekhalot corpus on the issue of divine-aided memory of Torah was offered recently by Moulie Vidas, “Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2009), 193–234. 40. For the identification of these passages in Sifre Deut 41–47 as R. Ishmael’s, see n. 15 above. 41. See e.g. Sifre Deut 41 (ed. Finkelstein, 87) “‫ – ולעבדו‬that is study (‫)תלמוד‬,” and more, throughout the pericope. See Naeh, “Memory,” 544; Fraade, Tradition, 89–92. 42. This reading is according to the best MSS as well as the Geniza fragment (Menachem Kahana, The Geniza Fragments of the Halakhic Midrashim, Part I [Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005], 268 [Hebrew]), which have ‫ותפרשו מדברי תורה‬, you shall abandon the words of Torah, i.e., study (cf. Mek. RI, Vayasa 1 [ed. Horowitz-Rabin, 154], in which “the elders and the prophets” established the custom of reading Torah publicly three times a week to avoid “abandoning of the words of Torah [‫ ]פרשו מדברי תורה‬for three [consecutive] days”; cf. m. Avot 3:2 and n. 23 above). The synonymous idiom in the next sentence is even more unequivocal: “cease from [studying] the words of Torah” (‫ ;פוסק מדברי תורה‬cf. m. Avot 3:7). For this reason I translate ‫ אדם‬in these homilies as “man” rather than “person,” for it specifically refers to those who are obligated to study Torah according to rabbinic halakha. Ed. Finkelstein follows ed. Princ. and some indirect witnesses in reading ‫ותפרשו מן התורה‬, thus losing the specific intellectual context of the homily. Compare Mark 4:15 where Satan takes away the logos sown in some of the disciples. 43. The homily reads the apparent redundancy in the verse as marking different stages in the fall: “(a) take heed to yourself, less your heart be lured away [by the evil yetzer], (b) and you will go astray [=leave the Torah] and [thus, eventually] (c) worship other gods.” Although the following homily on 1 Sam 26:19 seems to imply a metaphorical use of idolatry (“it is considered as if it were foreign worship,” cf. t. Av. Zar. 4:5), this usage does not fit the logic of our “slippery slope” homily, which ends with idolatry, the worst of sins. That idolatry is not a metaphor in this homily is proven from the citation of Ex 32:8 (“they have made themselves a molten calf ”) and the uses of the verb ‫יטעה‬, which specifically points to



Notes to Pages 25–26 145

idolatry (cf. Sifre Num 131, ed. Horowitz, 172; Sifre Deut 88, ed. Finkelstein, 151, and SokoloffYahalom, Poetry, 227; cf. also Sifre Deut 323, ed. Finkelstein, 374). 44. Cf. Sifre Deut 45 discussed above: “Put these my words [of Torah] on your heart [where the yetzer resides].” Here, too, the yetzer is not simply synonymous with “heart,” but is narrated as a defect in it, like the wound inflicted on the son in the parable. Cf. b. Suk. 52a: “Yetzer is hidden (‫ )צפון‬in every human’s heart.” 45. See Sifre Num 40 (‫)וישמרך – מיצר הרע‬. The demonic nature of the yetzer is proven from the prooftext (Prov 3:26) as well as from the other homilies there, which read the quest for divine “protection” (‫ )וישמרך‬as referring to demons (‫ )מזיקים‬and Gehenna. Cf. also b. Ned. 40a, in the name of Rav: “The Lord will keep him (‫—)ישמרהו‬from the yetzer; and keep him alive (‫—)יחייהו‬from afflictions (‫)ייסורין‬.” For possible connections to the Qumranic Psalms Scroll, see Moshe Weinfeld, “The Morning Benedictions in Qumran and in the Daily Prayer,” in Early Jewish Liturgy (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2004), 205–7, 211– 12 (Hebrew). 46. See David Flusser, “Asher Kidash Yedid Mibeten,” in Second Temple Judaism: Sages and Literature (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2002), 183–90 (Hebrew); Weinfeld, “Biblical Sources,” 136–41. 47. An interesting parallel to the antinomian nature of the tannaitic yetzer appears in the late first-century Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum: “Because the desire of sin (cupiditas pecandi) shall cease [after death] and the evil yetzer (plasmatio inqua) shall lose its power” (33:3; The Biblical Antiquities of Philo [trans. M. R. James, ed. L. H. Feldman; New York: Ktav, 1971], 179). The word plasma unmistakably translates the Hebrew yetzer (see Howard Jacobson, A Commentary on Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum [Leiden: Brill, 1996], 902; Geert H. Cohen Stuart, The Struggle in Man Between Good and Evil: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Rabbinic Concept of Yeser Hara (Kampen: Kok, 1984), 142; Menachem Kister, “The Yetzer of Man’s Heart, the Body and Purification from Evil: Between Prayer Terminologies and World Views,” Megillot 7 [2010], n. 90), which is explicitly equated with the desire to sin. 48. Rabbinic sources use this verse to account for severe rulings against especially dangerous situations. For example, a husband who suspects his wife of adultery should take her to the Temple for examination as a sotah. Quite exceptionally, the Mishna (Sot. 1:3) mandates an escort for the couple. The Tosefta (Sot. 1:2; ed. Lieberman, 152) explains that since the wife is forbidden to the husband, his sexual appetite for her is potentially uncontrollable, for “stolen waters are sweet.” Cf. also b. San. 26b, 75a. 49. Translation from Henry Chadwick, Saint Augustine: Confessions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). James O’Donnell’s explanation of Augustine’s choice to elaborate this anecdote especially is relevant for rabbinic material as well: “Of no sexual transgression could he have said unequivocally (or had any hope of convincing us) that what appealed to him was not the thing itself but the wrongness itself” (James J. O’Donnell, Augustine Confessions II: Commentary on Books 1–7 [Oxford: Clarendon, 1992], 126). See further his comparison of this episode to the Fall narrative in Gen 3. 50. The allusion to Ps 56:3 (55:3 in the Vulg.; O’Donnell, Commentary, 125) leaves no doubt that the “enemy” is metaphysical in nature.



146 Notes to Pages 26–27 51. The obvious literary and rhetorical differences between Augustine’s Confessions and rabbinic aggada are not my focal point here, but rather their distinctive explanatory methods. See further my discussion in the Afterword below. 52. Here are several characteristic statements (organized chronologically): “The doctrine of the yeser hatob and the yeser hara is the rabbinic method of meeting the problem” (Frank S. B. Gavin, Aphraates and the Jews: A Study of the Controversial Homilies of the Persian Sage in Their Relation to Jewish Thought [Toronto: JSOR, 1923], 46). “He has good impulses as well as bad . . . accordingly we find the doctrine of the two impulses early established” (George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, the Age of the Tannaim [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924], 484). “The overwhelmingly prevailing view was that the sphere where the struggle for mastery between the evil and the good impulses occurred was the heart” (William D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology [rev. 3rd ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1967], 21). “The rabbinic doctrine of the struggle of the ‫ יצר הרע‬with the ‫[ יצר טב‬sic], which obviously was a favorite theme of discussion in the age of Paul” (Hans J. Schoeps, Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History [London: Luttonworth, 1961], 185). “The stereotyped phrase ‘the evil inclination’ to express the antithesis of ‘the good inclination’ was coined by the sages” (Urbach, Sages, 472). “For the rabbis it seems to have been self-evident that man has two inclinations” (Cohen Stuart, The Struggle, 10). “The concept of the good and evil inclinations, each pulling the individual toward and away from God, is fundamental to rabbinic anthropology of all times and places” (Michael L. Satlow, “And on the Earth You Shall Sleep: Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism,” Journal of Religion 83 [2003]: 204–24, 209). “The widespread Goethean concept of the existence of ‘zwei seelen in meiner Brust’ was given expression by the early rabbis in a theory of two yetsarim” (Peter W. van der Horst, “Religion and the Self in Antiquity,” JSJ 38 [2007]: 349–50). Exceptions to this scholarly consensus are hard to come by, even though some scholars (especially the older ones) did admit that the good yetzer is less central then the evil one: “It is natural that, as the focus of temptation, the root of sin, the evil impulse should first engage Jewish thought” (Moore, Judaism, 484). Solomon Schechter (Aspects of Rabbinic Theology [2nd ed.; New York: Schocken, 1961], 243) hesitantly suggested that the good yetzer may be a later addition to the rabbinic doctrine of a single yetzer: “It is not impossible that the expression Good Yezer, as an antithesis of the Evil Yezer, is a creation of a later date.” 53. For example, cf. Sifre Deut 33, ed. Finkelstein, 59: “A person must adjure his yetzer (‫ ”)להשביע את יצרו‬to Sifre Num 88, ed. Horowitz, 88: “He took an oath against his evil yetzer (‫ ;”)נשבע ליצרו הרע‬y. Yom. 6:5 [43d], “the evil yetzer desires (‫ )יצר הרע תאב‬only what is forbidden for it” to the parallel y. Ned. 9:1 [41b]: “the yetzer desires (‫)היצר תאב‬ etc.” I have been unable to find any consistency in using one term or the other, except the trivial fact that “yetzer” usually appears alone when declined: “yitzri,” “yitzrach,” etc. For a fuller discussion, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Yezer Hara in Amoraic Literature: A Reevaluation,” Tarbiz 77 (2008): 1–38, n. 1 (Hebrew). 54. M. Ber. 9:5 and parallels: t. Ber. 6:7, Sifre Deut 32, ed. Finkelstein, 55. 55. Most commentators assume that the homily is based on the double letter bet in the word ‫לבב‬. However, a similar homily appears regarding the other ‫ בכל‬statement in



Notes to Page 27 147

the verse (t. Ber. 6:7: “in all your soul [‫—]בכל נפשך‬in each and every soul [‫]בכל נפש ונפש‬ He created in you”; cf. the end of our Mishna: “in all your might [‫—]בכל מאודך‬in all be thankful to him [‫)”]בכל הווי מודה לו‬. Homilies expounding the “double bet” regarding the yetzer appear only in amoraic homilies. See y. Ber. 9:5 [14b], Gen Rab. 48:11 (ed. ­Theodor-Albeck, 489). 56. This is part of R. Ishmael’s Mekhilta Demiluim (Epstein, Prolegomena, 641). The immediate context of the homily is the consecration ritual of the priests (Lev 9), read in the Midrash as atonement for the sin of the golden calf (Ex 32, Deut 9). The verses from Deuteronomy 10 expounded in the homily come indeed immediately after the golden calf episode. This explains the emphasis on the singleness (‫ )יחידי‬of God in the homily. On this context, see further Abraham Shammah, “The Mekhiltot That Are Appended to the Sifra: Mekhilta De-Miluim and Mekhilta Da-Arayot” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 2008), 114–15. 57. On the ideal of “singleness (ἁπλότης) of heart” in ancient Jewish literature, see H. C. Kee, “The Ethical Dimensions of the Testaments of the XII as a Clue to Provenance,” NTS 24 (1978): 259–70, esp. 265; David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon (Anchor Bible; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979), 101; David Flusser, “A New Sensitivity in Judaism and the Christian Message,” in Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988), 469–89, 486. Cf. Sifre Deut 32 (ed. Finkelstein, 55), “With all your heart (Deut 6:5)—that your heart should not be divided (‫ )חלוק‬with regard to God,” and Sifre Deut 31 (ed. Finkelstein, 53), in which Jacob asks his children whether there is a division (‫ )מחלוקת‬within their heart, and they answer with Deut 6:4: “The Lord is our God, the Lord is one (‫)אחד‬.” On the term ‫יחידי‬, single, as designating a specific religious obligation, cf. the Syriac ‫ ܝܚܝܕܝܐ‬which denotes not only celibacy but “singlemindedness,” in a similar manner to the Sifra. See Robert Murray, “The Exhortation to Candidates for Ascetical Vows at Baptism in the Ancient Syriac Church,” NTS 21 (1975–76): 59–80; Sidney H. Griffith, “Asceticism in the Church of Syria: The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Monasticism,” in Asceticism (ed. V. L. Wimbush and R. Valantasis; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 223–29. See also below, Chapter 2, regarding the struggle to achieve “singlemindedness” in monastic demonological discourse, and Chapter 3 on doublemindedness (διψυχία) in The Shepherd of Hermas. 58. Cf. Mat 5:48: “Be perfect (τέλειοι), therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (τέλειος).” The Greek τέλειος is used in LXX to translate the Hebrew word ‫( תמים‬Francis W. Beare, The Gospel According to Matthew [San Francisco: Harper, 1981], 163) and is thus closely associated with the rabbinic statements about the desired unity of the heart. Cf., for example, “that you vanquish [the yetzer] from before us and subdue it, so that we may make Your will as our own will with a whole heart” (‫ ;בלבב שלם‬y. Ber. 4:2, 7d). 59. Murray, Symbols, 16. The sources cited by Murray illuminate the context of our homily, in which the Israelites enter the covenant when the Tabernacle was dedicated (the eighth day of Miluim). 60. This unity is a requisite for being a good person, rather than for just being a person. The latter view might be ascribed to Plato, assuming that without at least some unity of the various parts of the soul there is no person(ality), just as a polis without unity



148 Notes to Pages 28–29 is not a polis at all, but an anarchy. For such a reading of Plato, see Christine M. Korsgaard, Self Constitution: Agency, Identity and Integrity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 61. Amoraic literature developed this idea further. Cf. Gen Rab. 9:5 (ed. Theodor­A lbeck, 71) in the name of R. Johanan: “Why were the righteous destined to die? While the righteous live, they struggle with their yetzer, and when they die they rest.” Cf. Ruth Rab. 3:1. 62. Abraham J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations (trans. and ed. G. Tucker with L. Levin; New York: Continuum, 2005). 63. For a critique of Heschel’s method, see Hirshman, Torah, 13. Against his thesis of R. Ishmael’s rationalism, see Kahana, “Halakhic Midrashim,” 26, and Azzan Yadin, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 106–7. Our findings are also incongruous with Heschel’s claim that R. Akiva focuses on faith whereas R. Ishmael emphasizes religious acts. 64. Yadin, Logos. 65. See Menachem Kahana, “Pages from Mekhilta Deuteronomy, Parashot Haazinu and Vezot Haberakha,” Tarbiz 57 (1988): 165–201, 185, 200–201 (Hebrew); idem, Sifre Zutta Deuteronomy (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 328 (Hebrew), and Hirshman, Torah. 66. David Henshke, “A Positive Commandment Overrides a Negative One: The Tannaitic Source of This Principle and Its History,” Tarbiz 68 (2009): 279–322, 321 (Hebrew). 67. I discuss the first two occurrences here. Avot 4:22 will be discussed in Chapter 5 below. 68. Both statements are part of a series of sayings of the students of R. Johanan b. ­Zakkai (2:8–13). See Judah Goldin, “A Philosophical Session in the Tannaite Academy,” in Studies in Midrash and Related Literature (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988), 57–76. 69. Cf. AdRN A 14, ed. Schechter, 58, b. Kid. 66a. The same holds true for the “evil heart” (‫)לב רע‬, cited there by R. Elazar as “the evil way” (pace Cohen Stuart’s comparison with Fourth Ezra’s “evil heart,” Struggle, 169). 70. I prefer this instead of the common translation, “lust,” for ‫ תאוה‬carries no sexual connotations in tannaitic literature, referring instead to any kind of coveting. See t. Hor. 1:5, Mek. RI Pascha 16 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin, 61; [ed. Lauterbach 1:137–38]), and below, n. 77. Cohen Stuart’s claim that yetzer hara here is also sexual is ungrounded. 71. See Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 170, and Myron B. Lerner, “The Tractate Avot,” in The Literature of the Sages, Part 1 (ed. S. Safrai; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1987), 263–76. According to this reading, ‫ עין רעה‬is interpreted by R. Eleazar Hakapar as “jealousy,” yetzer hara as covetousness, and hatred of people as “honor,” i.e., narcissism. The exact correlation between the two mishnayot demands further examination. 72. On the Hellenistic ethos of self-mastery and its political context, see Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), 42–52. On its impact on rabbinic literature, see Michael L. Satlow, “ ‘Try to Be a Man’: The Rabbinic Construction of Masculinity,” HTR 89 (1996): 19–40. 73. Urbach, Sages, 417; see also Jonah Frankel, Darke Haagada Vehamidrash (Givataim: Yad Latalmud, 1991), 404 (Hebrew), and cf. b. Yom. 69b, “that is his heroism . . .



Notes to Pages 30–32 149

who is a hero, one who marshals his yetzer, and the Holy One is patient to the evil,” which obviously refers to anger. 74. William Wright, The Homilies of Aphraates (London: Williams and Norgate, 1869), vol. 1, 44, 257. Cf. De Beato Simeone Bar Sabba’e, 46 (Ionnes Parisot et al., Patrologia Syriaca [Paris, 1894], vol. 2, 858). Cf. also Syriac Ben-Sira 17:31. For a more detailed comparison between Aphrahat and the rabbis, see Chapter 6 below. On ‫ כבש‬as a technical term for controlling demons in magical texts, see Harari, Magic, 171. 75. Although the scholarly consensus is that the Mishna is a composition of the school of R. Akiva, the current status of scholarship on the relationship between the two corpora makes the question of the appearance of the term yetzer (ha)ra in the Mishna (Ber. 9:5; Avot 2:11) but not in the Midrash impossible to answer. 76. On apostates in rabbinic literature, see Haym Milikowsky, “Hell and the Sinners of Israel in Seder Olam,” Tarbiz 55 (1986): 311–43, 332–33 (Hebrew), and the literature in notes 93–94 there. 77. Cf. y. Maas. 2:4, 50a (“As you want [‫ ;כנפשך‬Deut 23:25]—anything the yetzer lusts after [‫ )”]תאב‬and contrast it with y. Yom. 6:5, 43d (“The yetzer lusts [‫ ]תאב‬only after things that are forbidden to it”). 78. In rabbinic Hebrew ‫ עבודה‬usually means religious worship (whether normative or “foreign”), while work is ‫מלאכה‬. 79. For the idiom ‫ כך היא עבודתו‬cf. the rabbinic prohibition of urinating (‫)פוער עצמו‬ in front of ‫ בעל פעור‬or throwing stones at a ‫( מרקוליס‬n. 84 below), for “such is its worship (‫( ”)זו היא עבודתו‬m. San. 7:6; cf. Sifre Num 131, ed. Horowitz, 171). In both Mishna Sanhedrin and Tosefta Baba Kamma the activities discussed are not generally associated with worship, but are nonetheless forbidden due to their association with cults of specific gods, whether that of Baal Peor, Hermes-Mercury, or yetzer hara. 80. Cf. AdRN A 16, ed. Schechter, 62–63, in which yetzer causes a child both to desecrate the Shabbat in a fit of antinomianism and to damage himself by placing his hand on a snake. See Moore, Judaism, 482: “Since it compasses man’s undoing by leading him into sin, it is thought of as maliciously seeking his ruin . . . throughout his life, from infancy to old age, it pursues its deadly purpose, patiently biding its time.” 81. Cf. the first opinion in the Tosefta, which rules that one who harms oneself “is not culpable by the laws of man but is culpable by the laws of heaven (‫)בדיני שמיים‬.” Cf. also m. Bab. Kam. 8:6: “Even though it is not allowed, he is not liable (‫)פטור‬.” While this halakha deals with self-inflicted damage (‫)נזקי עצמו‬, our statement goes one step further to criticize the anger that brings about such behavior. Furthermore, the anger is attributed to the yetzer, which allows the Tosefta to transform self-destruction into idolatry. This gives new meaning to the ruling that such behavior is forbidden. Note that although the statement is attributed to R. Johanan ben Nuri, apparently of the school of R. Akiva, the saying here is composite. I would guess that R. Johanan’s statement ends at “should be viewed as a worshipper of foreign worship,” and the following are its two alternative interpretations. 82. Shlomo Pines, “Wrath and Creatures of Wrath in Pahlavi, Jewish and New Testament Sources,” Irano-Judaica 1 (1982): 76–82; M. Hutter, “Asmodeus,” Dictionary of



150 Notes to Pages 32–33 Deities and Demons in the Bible (ed. K. van der Toorn et al; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 106–8. On the fatal results of Asmodeus’s wrath, see Tobit 3:8 and Esther Eshel, “Demonology in Palestine during the Second Temple Period” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1999), 154–57 (Hebrew). Cf. also the demonic “spirit of anger” in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (esp. The Testament of Dan 1:8; 2:4, etc.; see Peter W. Macky, “The Importance of the Teaching on God, Evil and Eschatology for the Dating of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs” [Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1969], 206–7). 83. In Rabbinic Hebrew ‫ משתמש ב‬usually means to “make use” or “take advantage”; see Menachem Moreshet, A Lexicon of Verbs Introduced in Rabbinic Hebrew (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1980), 372 (Hebrew). Cf. m. Avot 1:13: ‫ ;ודי ישתמש בתגא חלף‬b. Kid 70a: ‫אין משתמשין באשה‬. 84. See m. San. 7:6 and Saul Lieberman, “Palestine in 3rd and 4th Centuries,” JQR 37 (1944): 42–54. 85. Thus in MS Erfurt and the Geniza fragment (similarly in Sifre Num 22, ed. Horowitz, 26, and b. Ned. 9b, Naz. 4b: ‫)מתגאה‬. MS Vienna and ed. princ. read ‫להתגרות‬ (to excite, provoke). This seems to be corrupted, since the following words, “in something that is not yours,” are then meaningless. 86. See David Halivni, “On the Supposed Anti-Asceticism or Anti-Naziritism of Simon the Just,” JQR 58 (1968): 243–52; Leo Landman, “The Guilt Offering of the Defiled Nazrite,” JQR 60 (1970): 345–52, Jonah Frankel, “Halakha in Aggadic Stories,” Mehkerei Talmud 1 (1990): 205–15, 213–14 (Hebrew); Moshe H. Spero, “The Talmudic Perception of Narcissus: The Subversion of Mirroring by Symbolizing Death,” Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 17 (1994): 137–69; Efraim E. Urbach, “Asceticism and Affliction in Rabbinic Thought,” in From the World of the Sages (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), 437–58 (Hebrew). I also consulted Menachem Kahana’s forthcoming commentary on this passage of Sifre Numbers, and Dina Stein’s Mirror on the Wall: Aspects of Rabbinic Self Reflectivity (forthcoming). 87. Especially when compared to Ben Sira 19:2 (MS C): “‫יין ונשים [יפח]יזו לב‬.” Cf. ­Segal’s commentary ad loc. n. 1, and Jonas C. Greenfield, “The Meaning of phz,” in From Babylon to Canaan: Studies in the Bible and Its Oriental Background (ed. S. E. Loewenstamm; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992), 35–40. However, the sexual meaning of ‫ פחז‬does not fit our context, which explicitly deals with pride (‫)מתגאה‬. For yetzer and pride, cf. b. Yom. 35b, “he was proud and preoccupied by his yetzer,” and Gen Rab. 22:6, ed. ­TheodorAlbeck, 211, “Yetzer hara does not walk on the sideways . . . You have seen a man wise in his eyes—the fool is hopeful with regard to him (Prov 26:12).” 88. This metonymy becomes quite common in amoraic literature; cf. e.g. Gen Rab. 67:8 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 763): “the evil are dominated by their hearts . . . the righteous dominate their hearts,” in which “heart” obviously means yetzer (cf. b. Av. Zar. 5b: “while they are engaged in Torah and deeds of lovingkindness they dominate their yetzer and their yetzer does not dominate them”). 89. As Spero, “Narcissus,” notes, yetzer attempts to destroy people, not only cause them to sin. Cf. Sifre Zut. Num 6:44 (ed. Horowitz, 247) and y. San. 10:11 (28a), in which the yetzer is reputed to remove people from this world.



Notes to Pages 33–34 151

90. See Gerald J. Blidstein, “Rabbinic Legislation on Idolatry: Tractate Avodah Zarah Chapter 1” (Ph.D. diss., Yeshiva University, 1968), 381–83. Cf. the reading of ed. princ. of the Tosefta: ‫בבוביא שלי‬. 91. Cf. Gen Rab. 8:3 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 59) which reads the words “let us make man” (Gen 1:26) as referring to God’s heart (‫)בליבו נמלך‬. The homily further quotes another verse “and it grieved him to his heart” (‫ויתעצב אל לבו‬, Gen 6:6), which it interprets with a parable of a king who failed to built a palace or do business and blamed his architect (‫ )אדרכל‬or messenger (‫)סרסור‬. See Menachem Kister, “‘Let Us Make Man’: Observations on the Dynamics of Monotheism,” in Sugyot bemechkar hatalmud (Jerusalem: Israel Academy for Sciences and Humanities, 2001), 28–65, 44–45 (Hebrew). Kister reads the parable as meaning that “his heart,” with which God consulted before creating man, is not a simple figure of speech, but a reference to God’s hypostasized wisdom, the logos. In both cases it is the act of casting responsibility that leads to read the distinction between the nazirite and his yetzer, or between God and his heart, as real rather then rhetorical. 92. Cf. y. San. 2:2 (20a): “[David] would say to his yetzer: you lusted (‫ )תאבת‬for things forbidden to you [i.e., Bat Sheva], by your life I shall make you lust (‫)אני מתאיבך‬ for things permitted to you [i.e., David’s concubines].” In both narratives the protagonists speak to the yetzer in the second person and the vocative. Furthermore, in both narratives ascetic action is portrayed as an educational act against the yetzer: the young man becomes a nazirite, and David avoids his concubines. 93. The idiom “I must shave you (‫ ”)לגלחך‬seems to associate the yetzer with the hair (or the body at large). Note, however, that in MSS Vatican and Berlin of Sifre Numbers the version is “shave it” (‫)מגלחו‬. Even according to the version in Tosefta, the yetzer is clearly separated from the body; otherwise the nazirite could not rebuke it for taking pride in “something that is not yours.” 94. My analysis here differs from that of Spero, “Narcissus,” and Stein, Mirror on the Wall, who see the speech to the yetzer as nothing but a manifestation of “self reflection” and “internal alienation.” 95. Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato Translated, with Notes, and an Interpretive Essay (2nd ed.; New York: Basic Books, 1991). On this passage, see David Allen, “Envisaging the Body of the Condemned: The Power of Platonic Symbols,” Classical Philology 95 (2000): 133–50. Allen presents Leontius’s failed attempt to avoid gazing at the corpse, as an opposition to the Athenian punitive norms, not as fighting curiosity or necrophilia. In his stark distinction between passion and anger, he opposes the “ethics of anger” governing the Athenian code. 96. On the connection between gaze and (forbidden) desires, cf. Sifre Num 115 (ed. Horowitz, 127). 97. See Allen’s observation (“Envisaging”) that the dialogue moves from the common word for anger, ὀργή, to the invented θυμοεῖδες, marking its connection with the intermediary part of the soul, θύμος, which is responsible for anger. 98. On these three examples and their function in the dialogue, see G. R. F. Ferrari, “The Three-Part Soul,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic (ed. Ferrari; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 165–201. See also T. M. Robinson,



152 Notes to Page 34 ­ lato’s Psychology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 39–46, and Mariana AnP agnostopoulos, “The Divided Soul and the Desire for Good in Plato’s Republic,” in The Blackwell Guide to Plato’s Republic (ed. G. Santas; Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 166–87. Cf. also the location of the three psychic elements in different bodily parts—head, breast, and belly—in the Timaeus (69d–70a), which further strengthens the substantiality of the Platonic division. 99. The quality of the difference depends on how we understand Plato’s desires: as a pure appetite, blind to good and evil, or as antinomian in nature. For the former, see Terrence Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 206–11, and for the latter see Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 30–33. 100. On the platonic identification of the λόγος with the true self, see W. K. C. Guthrie, “Plato’s Views on the Nature of the Soul,” Entretiens 3 (1955): 3–19. On the nachleben of this Platonic theme, see John M. Rist, “Platonic Soul, Aristotelian Form, Christian Person,” in Self, Soul, and Body in Religious Experience (ed. A. I. Baumgarten et al.; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 347–62. This identification is implicit in Plato’s metaphoric language, presenting “spirit as a lion within us, appetite as a many-headed monster, but reason as a man” (A. W. Price, “Plato and Freud,” in The Person and the Human Mind: Issues in Ancient and Modern Philosophy [ed. C. Gill; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990], 247–70, 265). On the “inner person” (ὁ ἒντος ἂνθροπος) in Plato, designating the reason (νοῦς) as the true person inside, see Wilhelm Burkert, “Toward Plato and Paul: The Inner Human Being,” in Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Bible and Culture: Essays in Honor of Hans Dieter Betz (ed. A. Y. Collins; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 59–82. These observations run against Ferrari’s reading of Leontius’s episode: “His anger becomes public cursing as he makes a vain attempt to dissociate himself from his eyes and thereby from his conduct” (Ferrari, “Three-Part Soul,” 181). Inasmuch as Leontius’s eyes represent his θύμος, it is really not he who did it, for “he” is first and foremost his λόγος (and the θύμος when it aligns to it). On the intermediate position of the θύμος, which can align itself with one side or the other, see William H. Thompson, The Phaedrus of Plato (London: Arno Press, 1968), 164–68; Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 126–28; and Robinson, Plato’s Psychology, 44–46. 101. On the dating of the Tosefta to a generation or two after the Mishna, see Hermann L. Strack and Gunther Stemberger, Introduction to Talmud and Midrash (trans. M. Bockmeuhl; Missoula, Mont.: Fortress, 1992), 157. The recent studies by Shamma Friedman and Judith Hauptman on the relationships between Mishna and Tosefta have proven the need to reevaluate the relationships of specific materials in these compositions, but not the relationships of the two compositions as compositions. See Shamma Friedman, Tosefta Atikta: Pesach Rishon (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002) (Hebrew), and Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). For a similar evaluation of these studies, see Chaim Milikowsky, “On the Formation and Transmission of Bereshit Rabba and the Yerushalmi,” JQR 92 (2002): 523–24.



Notes to Pages 34–36 153

102. We also encounter a yetzer more developed than the one found in the two mishnayot discussed above, in m. Avot 4:22, which are studied in Chapter 5 below. Indeed, this mishna is ascribed to R. Elazar b. Hakapar, of the last generation of the Tannaim, the age of R. Judah the Prince. Chapters 3–4 in m. Avot are structured chronologically, beginning with sages who lived during the time of the Second Temple and ending with the last generation of the Tannaim. On these chapters, see Lerner, “Avot,” 266–67; Amram Tropper, Wisdom, Politics and Historiography: Tractate Avot in the Context of the Greco-Roman Near East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 24. 103. Michael Fishbane, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 224–25. Fishbane’s criterion is helpful mainly regarding sources that are less explicit in their presentation of the yetzer. The multiplicity of sources presenting yetzer as an independent, sinister entity residing in the heart suggests such a strong reading in these sources as well. 104. Cf. Yehuda Libes, “ ‘De Natura Dei’: On the Development of the Jewish Myth,” in Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 1–64, 151–69, which reads human yetzer, as well as divine middot, as “psychological traits.” Libes insists that rabbinic myth (e.g., God’s changing moods, His love/envy relationship with his people, and His need of mental support) is real and not figurative (see his debate with Shalom Rosenberg in Madaei Hayahadut 38 [1998]: 181–85), but nonetheless sees this myth as psychological in nature (becoming reified only in medieval mystical literature). Without taking sides on the question of divine middot in rabbinic literature, Libes’s picture does not fit the rabbinic yetzer discourse. 105. Sifre Deut 45. Cf. “There are four things of which the Holy one, blessed be He, regrets creating . . . and the Evil yetzer” (y. Ber. 4:2 [7d], b. Suk. 52b). 106. Sifra Shemini 1, which treats yetzer as “‫ערלת לבבכם‬.” Cf. the homilies in Sifre Deut, which read the words “‫לבבכם‬/‫ ”לבבך‬as referring to the evil yetzer (Sifre Deut 32: “‫בכל לבבך‬,” 33: “‫על לבבך‬,” 45: “‫)”על לבבכם‬. Cf. b. Suk. 52a: “This is the evil yetzer which is hidden in man’s heart.”

Chapter 2 1. B. Rehm, Die Pseudoklementinen I: Homilien (Berlin, 1953); English translation in The Ante Nicene Fathers (ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1995), vol. 8. Cf. Recognitions IV: 15–19. For recent reviews of scholarship on these compositions and their social background, see Graham Stanton, “Jewish Christian Elements in the PseudoClementine writings,” in Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (ed. O. Skarsaune and R. Hvalvik; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2007), 305–24; Stanley F. Jones, “The PseudoClementines,” in Jewish Christianity Reconsidered (ed. M. Jackson-McCabe; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 285–304. For a recent rejection of the concept of Jewish-Christianity altogether (thus the quotation marks above!), see Daniel Boyarin, “Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category,” JQR 99 (2009): 7–36. 2. Compare Satan entering Judas Iscariot in Luke 22:3 (cf. John 13:2, 27). Commentators note that this verse alludes back to Luke 4, which describes how Satan “departed from



154 Notes to Page 37 [Jesus] for a while” (4:13) after testing him (see discussion of these tests in Chapter 5 below). Now “Satan is renewing the attack” (International Critical Commentary, 490; cf. Anchor Bible, 1374); the same Satan who appeared as an external force in front of Jesus at the beginning of the book reappears by the end, possessing one of his disciples. It can thus be both an external and an internal figure. 3. See, for example, t. Nez. 4:7 in which the yetzer tempts the lad through his own beauty, ultimately planning “to remove me from the world (‫)להעבירני מן העולם‬,” referring, of course, to the world to come. Compare also b. Suk. 52b: “The evil yetzer seduces man in this world and then testifies against him in the world to come” (‫יצר הרע מסיתו‬ ‫)לאדם בעולם הזה ומעיד בו לעולם הבא‬. 4. For early Christian accusations that pagans worship demons, taking them for real gods (based on LXX to Deut 32:17, “They sacrifice to daimones and not God,” and Ps 96 [95]:5, “For all the gods of the nations are daimones”), see 1 Cor 10:20; Clement, Protrepticus 3.2; 40.1; Origen, Contra Celsum 7:67; Athanasius, Vita Antonii, 37. See also Wayne A. Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), 116; Helen Rhee, Early Christian Literature: Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries (London: Rutledge, 2005), 63; David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 24. As Dale B. Martin, in Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), meticulously shows, the accusation is not completely false. It stems from a deep discrepancy between pagans and Christians regarding the nature of daimones—lesser gods or evil creatures. Thus Robin Fox: “To the Jews, demons were not the ambiguous intermediaries whom pagans placed between gods and men: they were outright agent of evil, the troupe of Satan himself. The Christians’ view was similar” (Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians [New York: Knopf, 1989], 327). On Celsus’s conceptualization of daimones, see Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), xvii–xx, and Elaine Pagels, The Origins of Satan (New York: Vintage, 1995), 138–44. On Origen’s “rabbinic” concept of idolatry in Contra Celsum, see Nicholas de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations in Third-Century Palestine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 42–43. 5. See Albert I. Baumgarten, “Literary Evidence for Jewish Christianity in the Galilee,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity (ed. L. I. Levine; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 39–50, 47. Baumgarten contends that the more plausible influence is from the rabbis to the Clementine texts, rather than vice versa. For while “the PseudoClementine texts exhibit detailed and specific knowledge of rabbinic Judaism,” including “information uniquely characteristic of the rabbinic world,” and “admired rabbinic Jews and their leaders” (47), the admiration (and detailed knowledge) was unreciprocated (49). Cf. Annette Y. Reed, “ ‘Jewish Christianity’ after ‘The Parting of the Ways,’ ” in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ed. A. J. Becker and Annette Y. Reed; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 189–231. Reed is more hesitant to assert whether “the Jews with whom [the redactor of the Homilies] seems to interact can indeed be identified with the Rabbis” (229).



Notes to Pages 37–38 155

6. “Being spirits (πνεύματα), and having desires after meats and drinks and sexual pleasures, but not being able to partake of these by reason of their being spirits, and wanting organs fitted for their enjoyment, they enter into the bodies of men in order that, getting organs to minister to them, they may obtain the things that they wish” (9:9). 7. This is the closest parallel to the nazirite shaving his hair “for the sake of heaven.” This can hardly be considered as an ascetic practice comparable to “abstinence and fasting and suffering of affliction,” however. 8. See Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 31–65. 9. Salvatore R. C. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 84–92, claims that while Clement’s formal definition of the passions is Stoic in origin, its substance is Middle Platonic, since he identified it with the irrational parts of the soul as well as with the body and its sensations, instead of considering it as a product of a wrong judgment of reason, as Zeno and Chrysippus did. Cf. Eric Osborn, Clement of Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 240–41. 10. Clement Alexandrinus, Stromatra I–VI (Die griechischen christlichen Schrift­ steller; ed. O. Stahlin; Akademie Verlag: Berlin, 1960). The English translation is taken from John Ferguson, Clement of Alexandria: Stromateis Books One to Three (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1991). 11. John Beher, Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 148. For Clement’s special debt to Philo, “who had paved the way of Hellenization for Christian thinkers,” see Annewies van der Hoek, Clement of Alexandria and His Use of Philo in the Stromateis (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 209. Cf. Lilla, Clement, 5 n. 1: “The fact is beyond any doubt that Clement knew Philo virtually by heart.” 12. For the fundamental role of demons in Second Temple Judaism, see Esther Eshel, “Demonology in Palestine during the Second Temple Period” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1999) (Hebrew) and nn. 55–56 below. For the New Testament, see Clinton Wahlen, Jesus and the Impurity of Spirits in the Synoptic Gospels (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). For early patristic literature, see Everett Ferguson, Demonology of the Early Christian World (New York: E. Mellen Press, 1984); Rhee, Literature, 72–79; Meeks, Christian Morality, 111– 29. As scholars have shown, the centrality of demons in ancient Jewish and early Christian writers has to do, quite paradoxically, with their insistence on monotheism, which allows only for intermediate, lower, demonic forces. See Ramsy McMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire: AD 100–400 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), 28. Cf. Pagels, Satan; Larry W. Hortado, How on Earth did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about the Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005). A systematic bibliography (updated to 1992) of ancient Jewish and Christian demonology can be found in Michael Mach, Entwicklungsstadien des Judischen Engelglaubens in Vorrabbinischer Zeit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 351–416. 13. See, for example, Clement’s reading of Barnabas: “He is saying that sinners perform actions comparable to those of evil spirits; he is not saying that the actual spirits live in the soul of the man without faith” (Strom. II 117, 1; emphasis added). Cf. Clement’s



156 Notes to Pages 38–39 r­ ejection of Basilides’ view of the soul as a Trojan horse “enfolding in one body an army of so many different spirits” (113, 2), or an inn “filled with filth” (113, 5). What makes these metaphors unacceptable for Clement is the fact that they compromise human agency and responsibility. See Brakke, Demons, 40–41, Peter Karavites, Evil, Freedom and the Road to Perfection in Clement of Alexandria (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 43–46. For Clement’s debate with Alexandrian Gnosticism, see John E. L. Oulton and Henry Chadwick, Alexandrian Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954), 21–33. 14. Columba Stewart, “Evagrius Ponticus and the ‘Eight Generic Logismoi,’ ” in In the Garden of Evil: The Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages (ed. R. Newhauser; Toronto: PIMS, 2005), 3–34, 9. 15. Origene, Traite Des Principes, Tome III (SC 268; h. Crouzel et M. Simonetti; Paris: Cerf, 1980). The English translation is taken from George W. Butterworth, Origen: On First Principles (New York: Harper, 1966). The third book is among the parts of the Origenic corpus that were not preserved in the original Greek but only in Rufinus’s Latin translation. For the reliability of this quite liberal translation, see Butterworth, Origen, xlvi–lii. 16. The theory of their formation as a result of a willful fall is developed in De Principiis I 6–8. See Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 85–89; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 163–64; Pamela Bright, “The Combat of the Demons in Antony and Origen,” in Origeniana Septima (ed. W. W. Bienert and U. Kuhneweg; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999), 339–43; Stewart, “Logismoi,” 20–21. For two attempts (unconvincing, in my mind) to downplay the significance of demonology in Origen’s theory, see Jean Laporte, “Models from Philo in Origen’s Teaching on Original Sin,” Laval theologique et Philosophique 44 (1988): 191–203, esp. 196, and Mark J. Edwards, Origen against Plato (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 91–92. 17. As Stewart, “Logismoi,” shows, there is a subtle but significant transformation here. While second-century compositions like Hermas and Barnabas used transgressions and wrongdoings mainly as indications of the presence of the evil angels, Origen and his followers made these the center of their investigation. Demonology became now part of the “etiology of sin” (9) rather than vice versa. 18. On the concept of hostile invasions into the body in Hellenistic literature, see Dale B. Martin The Corinthian Body (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), 146–53. For its Christian adaptation, see Rebecca Lyman, “Origen as Ascetic Theologian: Orthodoxy and Authority in the Fourth Century Church,” Origeniana Septima (ed. W. A. Bienert and U. Kuhneweg; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999), 187–94. 19. Cf. Antony’s claim in his letters that “if the mind spurns the testimonies which the Spirit has given it, then evil spirits override the [natural] constitution of the body and stir up these movements” and thus “through desire and greed for food and drink not a few have fallen with the demons” (Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995], 200–201). 20. Cf. Rufinus’s assertion, in his preface to the translation of the third book, that Origen shows how the demons “deceive weak and feeble souls.”



Notes to Pages 39–41 157

21. Cf. also Gen Rab. 54:1 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 575), which vividly presents the image of the patient, cunning, thief: “[The yetzer] grows with man from his youth until his old age and yet if he can, he strikes him down even in his seventies or his eighties. This is [the meaning of] what David said: You save the poor from one stronger than he, the poor and needy from his despoiler (‫ ;גוזלו‬Ps 35:10). R. Aha said: is there a greater despoiler than it [the yetzer]”? 22. Cf. Origen’s reading of Ps 27:3, “though a host encamps against me” (III 2.5), to the rabbinic homily in b. Ned. 32b (discussed in the introduction) on Ecc 9:14: “and built mighty siege works against it.” In both cases the siege described in the verses is read as the assault of the yetzer/demons, against which men must fight with the help of divine aid. Cf. Athanasius’s reading of Ps 118:7, “God is my helper and I shall look down on my enemies” in regard to Antony’s first battle against the devil (Vita Antonii 6). See further in the next chapter, “Antony’s Multiple Wars.” 23. See n. 12 above. 24. This distinction is somewhat blurred by Martin, Inventing Superstition, who disputes the novelty of Origen’s demonology: “It is clear that he is drawing on Jewish and Christian rhetoric before him, which had already identified the gods of ‘the nations’ with daimons and which has already tended to treat those daimons as malevolent and dangerous” (188). True, but the process of internalization, which made demons part of human psyche, presents a significant transformation in this tradition. 25. Note that Peri Archōn is one of Origen’s early works, written “not later than A.D. 225” (Butterworth, Origen, xxx), simultaneously with the final redaction of tannaitic literature. On Origen’s knowledge of Jewish traditions, see de Lange, Origen; Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Sabbath Law and Mishna Shabbat in Origen De Principiis,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 17 (2010): 160–89, and the vast bibliography cited there, note 2. Cohen rereads Origen’s reference to Jewish Sabbath laws in De Principiis IV 3:2. Where previous scholars have found only general similarities to rabbinic laws, Cohen claims that Origen is specifically referring to rabbinic (perhaps proto-mishnaic) rulings, such as those found in m. Shab. 6:2 and 10:3. Cohen concludes: “Surely Origen had a rabbinic informant” (187). While I cannot point to such a direct dependency in the case of the yetzer (due, among other things, to the fact that Origen never mentions this biblical term), I try to show that here too the similarities cannot be accidental. 26. See Samuel Rubenson, “Origen and the Egyptian Monastic Tradition of the Fourth Century,” Origeniana Septima (ed. W. A. Bienert and U. Kuhneweg; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999), 319–37, concluding that “the legacy of Origen was of importance for one of the mainstreams of the monastic tradition from its early inception” (324). Cf. Michael O’Laughlin: “There was philosophy in the desert, and the philosophy of the early monastic communities was a direct extension of that prevailing in Christian Alexandria” (Michael O’Laughlin, “Closing the Gap between Antony and Evagrius,” Origeniana Septima, 345–54, 346). 27. Brakke, Demons, 10. Cf. Brown, Body and Society, 213–40. 28. Martin, Inventing Superstition, 188–89. 29. Ibid., 237. Martin’s explanation for this transformation is sociopolitical: “Just as the classical medical systems were expressions of principles derived partly from democratic



158 Notes to Page 41 and republican ideologies . . . so the late ancient assumptions about disease and healing are expressions of late ancient ideologies supporting empire and monarchy” (238). 30. Thus, while Origen’s demons enter the soul, and the rabbinic yetzer lives in the heart, “according to Porphyry, daimons live in people’s stomach, feeding on the flesh rotting there in the process of digestion” (Martin, Inventing Superstition, 195–96). Iamblichus’s demonology is more ambiguous, but lacks also any quality related to intentionally misleading or failing humans. See Martin, Inventing Superstition, 198–200; Emma C. Clarke, Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis: A Manifesto of the Miraculous (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2001), 107–9. 31. Some of the confusion comes from the fact that Martin’s account of Origen’s demonology is based on Contra Celsum while mine is on De principiis. But although it is true that Contra Celsum does give place to the physical and cosmic damages caused by demons (see, e.g., 1.31; 8.31), it also stresses their role in leading people astray (4.92: “they want to lead the human race away from the true God” [Chadwick, Contra Celsum, 257]; 5.5: “they lead men astray and distract them, and drag them down from God” [267]; cf. 6.11; 8.43), a role which is totally absent from the accounts of Porphyry and Iamblichus. Cf. Fox, Pagans and Christians, 328. 32. Brakke, Demons, 22. 33. The dangers of multiplicity caused by demons are discussed in these compositions on two different levels: “Through embodied vice they encourage a movement away from invisible unity of spiritual essence, and through interpersonal strife they incite division within the social unity of the Church” (Brakke, Demons, 19). Both levels, the social and the existential, are represented in the Sifra’s homily: “that all of you will be as one” and “let your service be singular” (the same Hebrew root: ‫ד‬-‫ח‬-‫—י‬one, single—appears in both sentences!). Further, both levels are combined in the tannaitic concept of ‫מחלוקת‬, as in Sifre Deut 32 (ed. Finkelstein, 53), in which Jacob’s sons tell him: “Just as your heart is not divided (‫ )אין בלבך מחלוקת‬so is our heart not divided . . . but the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” (Deut 6:4; Sifre Deut 32, ed. Finkelstein, 53), thus combining both internal and external unity. These homilies also feature a third, theological unity (“just as he is singular,” “the Lord is one”), which is the basis for the other two. For the theme of singleness of heart in Ancient Judaism, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Bilhah the Temptress: ‘The Testament of Reuben’ and the Birth of Sexuality,” JQR 96 (2006): 65–94, and n 57 in Chapter 1 above. 34. Rubenson, Letters, 211, 218 (and discussion on 71); Brakke, Demons, 20–21. 35. “The first complete system of Christian spirituality” (Louis Bouyer, The Spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers [New York: Seabury, 1982], 381); “the most accomplished theorist of the monastic life” (Brakke, Demons, 48); “He was able to translate and transform Coptic spirituality for the Greek-Speaking world, systematizing its insights into a gemlike brilliance” (William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], 312); “no other ascetic writer, before Evagrius or since, has been so systematic” (Stewart, “Logismoi,” 16). On Evagrius’s extensive debt to the Alexandrian monastic tradition and particularly Origen, see Rubenson, “Monastic Tradition,” 328; Michael O’Laughlin, “Evagrius Ponticus in Spiritual Perspective,” Studia Patristica 30 (1997): 224–30.



Notes to Pages 41–42 159

36. Evagre Le Pontique, Sur Les Pensees (SC 438; ed. Paul Gehin, Claire Guillaumont, and Antoine Guillaumont; Paris: Cerf, 1998). The English translation is taken from Robert E. Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 153–82. I also consulted the recent translation by Augustine Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus (London: Routledge, 2006), 91–116. For studies of Evagrius’s demonology, see Brakke, Demons, 48–77; Harmless, Desert, 322–29 (and the annotated bibliography on 333–36). 37. Most famously eight (Gluttony, Fornication, Avarice, Sadness, Anger, Acedia, Vainglory, and Pride), but as Stewart, “Logismoi,” shows, Evagrius actually uses different lists, and “the schema of eight thoughts was simply a pedagogical device” (19). 38. On the relations between thoughts and passions in Evagrius, see Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 357–71. 39. Being “an advanced tactical manual” (Sinkewicz, Evagrius, 137), On Thoughts narrates the more sophisticated tactics of the demons and the way the advanced monk can resist them. It is this quality that makes this composition especially valuable for comparison with rabbinic yetzer discourse. On On Thoughts as part of “a trilogy on the psychodynamics and theology of prayer” meant for the advanced monk (i.e., teacher), see Columba Stewart, “Imageless Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001): 173–204, citation from 182. Evagrius also dedicated works (especially the Praktikos) to beginning monks. 40. Cf. “the demons fight directly against anchorites; but in the case of those who practice virtue in the monasteries or in communities they equip the most negligent among the brethren with their weapons” (Praktikos 5, emphasis added; Evagre Le Pontique, Traite Pratique Ou Le Moine [Sources chrétiennes 171; ed. C. Guillaumont and A. Guillaumont; Paris: Cerf, 1971]; English trans., Sinkewicz, Evagrius, 95–114). 41. On Thoughts 1; cf. “When our irascibility has been set unnaturally in motion, it strongly contributes to the aim of the demons and becomes extremely useful for all their wicked schemes” (4). Thus, “those who are pure and imperturbable never suffer such an incident” (4). Cf. the amoraic homilies on those whom the evil yetzer cannot control, discussed in Chapter 3 below. 42. Ibid., 3. Cf. Praktikos 15. Evagrius bases his analysis on the tripartite Platonic division of the soul. For his assigning the various demonic thoughts to the Platonic classification, see Brakke, Demons, 53, Stewart, “Logismoi,” 25–26. 43. In the forty-three chapters of On Thoughts, Evagrius analyzes the basic eight demonic thoughts, as well as adjacent ones (drowsiness, wandering, suspicion, anxiety, etc.) during prayer, study, sleep, labor, solitude, gathering, appointments, and more. He also suggests all kinds of typologies regarding various kinds of yawns, dreams, psychic impressions, and ascetic motivations. “For Evagrius the devil really is in the details” (Brakke, Demons, 69). 44. Unlike in monastic discourse, gluttony is not a central theme in rabbinic literature. For the increasing centrality of the theme of food and diet to monastic instructions, see Robert A. Kitchen, “The Lust of the Belly Is the Beginning of All Sin,” Journal of Syriac Studies 13 (2010): 49–63.



160 Notes to Page 42 45. Another interesting similarity to the rabbinic yetzer discourse is that (his own biography notwithstanding) Evagrius does not count sex as one of the greatest threats to monastic life. Fornication is one of the eight basic demonic thoughts, but it is not among the three primary ones. Unlike those persistent temptations, sexual thought “is not one of the temptations that lasts for long, since short prayer and a strict regimen, with vigils and exercises of spiritual contemplations, will drive him away like a waterless cloud” (On Thoughts 16). The reason is that “those [demons] who preside over the passions of the soul hold out until death; [but] those that preside over those of the body withdraw more quickly” (Praktikos 36), and thus “the irascible requires more remedies that the concupiscible” (Praktikos 38). Accordingly, the thoughts that occupy Evagrius most are anger and vainglory rather than fornication. Cf. Athanasius’s account of Antony’s victory over “the spirit of lust” at the very beginning of Vita Antonii (6), after which he did not suffer from sexual temptation ever again, but continued to suffer from other, more persistent, demonic obstructions. 46. On Thoughts 33. 47. Ibid., 21. According to Evagrius, avarice becomes vainglory through charity: “Do not desire to possess riches in order to make donations to the poor, for this is a deception of the evil one that often leads to vainglory” (Foundations 4, cited in Sinkewicz, Evagrius, 270 n. 30). 48. On Thoughts 27. This is what unites all the different demons: “If they opposed to one another in their dispositions, they agree on one thing alone, the destruction of the soul” (Praktikos 44). 49. There are many other, more specific similarities between Evagrius’s demons and the rabbinic yetzer, such as the metaphor of the demons as “idols in the mind” (On Thoughts 16; cf. y. Ned. 9:1 [41b]; b. Shab. 105b), or of their representation as a “dog” (On Thoughts 5 and 13, Praktikos 23; cf. Gen Rab. 22:6), or the usage of Ps 4:5, “Be angry and do not sin,” as a device against demons/yetzer (On Thoughts 16; cf. PdRK 23:4; b. Ber. 5a), or the comparison of entrance of demons into the soul to an invasion of a city (On Thoughts 13; cf. b. Ned. 32b), or the idea that the yetzer/demons walk in the streets and seize arrogant people (On Thoughts 32 and Letter 16; cf. Gen Rab. 22:6). There are, of course, far-reaching differences as well. Evagrius’s systematic engagement with mapping and creating categories, and his developed philosophy of mind (on which see Stewart, “Imageless Prayer,” 186–91) has no parallel in rabbinic literature, which has a rather different set of literary and cultural conventions. The distinctive addressees of each literature are different as well. Though not disconnected, the struggles of monks and those of students in the house of study bare some differences. See, e.g., Evagrius’s long discussion of the demon Πλάνος (“Wanderer”), who seduces monks to leave their cells (On Thoughts 9). Cf. his claim that contact with sick and oppressed people makes us compassionate, however: “We lack these opportunities because of the desert and the rarity of sick people among us” (On Thoughts 11; emphasis added). 50. In order not to make this book into a shopping list, I resist the temptation to cite many more passages from Origen, Antony, Athanasius, and Evagrius, which show affinities with rabbinic homilies and narratives on the yetzer. I cite only texts that help to decode



Notes to Pages 42–43 161

l­aconic midrashic texts. For a comparison of (mostly Babylonian) rabbinic material and the “Sayings of the Desert Fathers” (Apophthegmata Patrum), see Michal Bar Asher-Siegel, “Literary Analogies in Rabbinic and Christian Monastic Sources” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2010). See esp. the list of “common themes” she offers in chapter 3, and her conclusion “that the quantity and quality of analogies between rabbinic and monastic sources is strongly suggestive of mutual knowledge, and a common world view” (77). 51. On this issue, see further Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Yetzer Hara, Sexuality and Yihud: A Chapter of Talmudic Anthropology,” Theory and Criticism 14 (1999): 55–84 (Hebrew). 52. On this point there is diversity among the writers discussed in this study. While Athanasius directed his Vita to multiple audiences, both lay persons and monks (David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism [Oxford: Clarendon, 1995], 142–200), Evagrius writes specifically to professional monks, as the passages cited above clearly indicate. 53. On the connection between Torah study and askesis, see Eliezer Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 21–58. For comparisons between rabbinic and monastic ascetic practices in general, see Fraade, “Ascetical Aspects”; Michael L. Satlow, “And on the Earth You Shall Sleep: Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism,” Journal of Religion 83 (2003): 204–24; Jonathan W. Schofer, “Spiritual Exercises in Rabbinic Culture,” AJS Review 27 (2003): 203–25; and the bibliography cited in Diamond, Holy Men, 7–8. However, none of these studies mentioned patristic demonology. 54. I discuss these sources further below (Athanasius’s Vita in Chapters 3 and 4 and b. Sukka in Chapter 6). 55. For a list of demons in rabbinic literature, see Reuven Margalioth, Malachei Elyon (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1987) (Hebrew). Demons, spirits, and evil angels function in rabbinic literature mainly as pests—causing harm, illnesses, and death (therefore named ‫—)מזיקין‬or as heavenly adversaries, against individuals, Israel, or humanity at large. For the former, see Harari, Magic, 302–9, and for the latter, see Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 166–83, and Peter Schäfer, Rivalität zwischen Engeln und Menschen: Untersuchungen zur rabbinischen Engelvorstellung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975). On the vast occupation with defensive magic in rabbinic literature, see Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 351–425. 56. Satanic incitements to sin (in the manner of Mark 1:13, Luke 22:3, 1 Cor 7:5, and the like) are extremely rare in rabbinic literature. They appear almost exclusively in the Babylonian Talmud, and do not depart much from their biblical precedents. On possible Persian influence on the demonology of the Bavli, see Alexander Kohut, Uber die Jüdische Angelologie und Damonologie in ihrer Abhangigkeit vom Parsismus (Leipsig, 1866). I found Satan as an inciter only in the following: b. Ber. 62b (following 1 Chron 21:1); Git. 52a; Kid. 81a–b; Bab. Bat. 15b–16a (following Job 1); San. 89b; 107a. Most rabbinic sources that mention Satan, including the Bavli, portray him as a harmful pest (‫ )מזיק‬or an adversary (‫ )מקטרג‬rather than as an inciter (‫)מסית‬. Cf. “you should give [an offering] into the mouth of Satan . . . lest he will harm you (literally, “satanize you,” ‫ )יסטנך‬when you



162 Notes to Pages 43–45 enter the temple” (Sifra Shemini 1, ed. Weiss 43c). Consider also “The angel in charge of lust” (‫ )מלאך שהוא ממונה על התאוה‬who appears in positive rather then sinful contexts (Gen Rab. 53:6, 85:8, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 560, 1042; cf. “an angel who is in charge of anger,” Esther Rab. 3:13). Compare the single source presenting Samael as an inciter: Gen Rab. 56:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 598–99). On Samael, see Gershom Scholem, Devils, Demons and Souls: Essays of Demonology by Gershom Scholem (ed. E. Eshel; Jerusalem: Machon Ben Zvi, 2004), 54–59 (Hebrew); Raanan S. Boustan, From Martyr to Mystic (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 190–93; and the vast literature cited there. Boustan shows that the appearance of Samael as Israel’s heavenly adversary is for the most part a post-rabbinic phenomenon. The exceptional source narrating the demonic attempts to convince Abraham to refuse God’s command to slaughter Isaac demonstrates the extent of the domain of yetzer. In Gen Rab. 56:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 598–99), these attempts are ascribed to Samael, and in b. San 89b to Satan, but in y. Taan. 2:4 (65d) they come from Abraham’s own yetzer. See also Chapter 4 below on Reish Lakish’s identification of Satan and yetzer hara, and Chapter 6 on the interchangeability of yetzer and Satan in b. Kid. 80b–82a. Such interchangeability continues in the scribal traditions. See, e.g., the various manuscript traditions of b. Yom. 67b. 57. See, e.g., Origen’s discussion of the numerical economy of the struggle in III 2.5. Cf. Athanasius’s narration of Antony’s dialogue with the devil that comes to fight him “with a multitude of demons”: “ ‘If there were some power among you, it would have been enough for only one of you come. But since the Lord has broken your strength, you attempt to terrify me by any means with the mob” (Vita Antonii 9). For the image of groups of angels and demons in rabbinic literature, see, e.g., Mek. RI Beshalach 2 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin, 94–95) and b. Hag. 16a.

Chapter 3 1. Around seventy times. See The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance (ed. M. G. Abegg et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 1, 319. 2. On this concept, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, The Rite That Was Not: Temple, Midrash and Gender in Tractate Sotah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), 168–71 (Hebrew). 3. Both these goals do not depend on questionable, and hotly debated, divisions between “sectarian” and “non-sectarian” texts at Qumran. On this issue, see Devora Dimant, “Criteria for the Identification of Qumran Sectarian Texts,” in The Qumran Scrolls and Their World (ed. M. Kister; Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2009), 49–86 (Hebrew), and, in the same volume, cf. the skeptical response of Menachem Kister, “Some Further Thoughts on Identifying Sectarian Writings at Qumran,” 87–90. 4. See especially Roland E. Murphy, “Yeser in the Qumran Literature,” Biblica 39 (1958): 334–43; Geert H. Cohen Stuart, The Struggle in Man Between Good and Evil: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Rabbinic Concept of Yeser Hara (Kampen: Kok, 1984), 94– 100. Scholars also looked to Qumran for the roots of conceptions that they (mistakenly) thought to be central for rabbinic thought, such as the model of the two yetzarim and the sexual yetzer. See, e.g., Eibert Tigchelaar, “The Evil Inclination in the Dead Sea



Notes to Pages 45–46 163

Scrolls,” in Empsychoi Logoi: Religious Innovations in Late Antiquity (ed. A. Houtman et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 347–57, 351. 5. Due to the philological focus of this chapter (which discusses etymologies, synonyms, declinations, etc.), I make an exception and cite Hebrew texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls in Hebrew (followed by a translation in brackets). 6. For a summary of the different approaches, see Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 94–100. Different approaches can already be spotted in the various translations for the term in Qumran: “tendency” (Murphy, “Yeser,” 344), “basic attitude,” “character,” “essence” (Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 96), “disposition” (Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 97), “mind,” “character” (Svend Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot: Psalms from Qumran [Copenhagen: Aarhuus 1960], 27), “longing,” “desire” (92), “intention,” “action” (132) “aspiration,” “nature” (230). See also the multiple interpretations cited by Jacob Licht, The Thanksgiving Scroll: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1957), 248 (Hebrew). 7. See IQS V 5: ‫ כיא‬,‫אשר לא ילך איש בשרירות לבו לתעות אחר לבבו ועינוהי ומחשבת יצרו‬ ‫יצר‬. ‫ אם למול ביחד עורלת‬Compare IQS I 6: ‫ ולוא ללכת עוד בשרירות לב אשמה‬with the similar formula in CD II 16: ‫במחשבות יצר אשמה‬. Cf. also the parallelism “,‫וסבבוני [בהוות] לבם‬ ‫( ”ויצרם הופיע לי למרורים‬1QHa XIII 31–32) and the Barkhi Nafshi (n. 19 below), which, according to the editors, may contain a parallelism between “the heart of stone” and “the evil yetzer” (4Q436 1 I 10; M. Wienfeld et al., DJD XXIX [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999], 297). See also Alfred R. C. Leany, The Rule of Qumran and Its Meaning (London: SCM, 1966), 167. Yetzer and heart appear as parallels also in Sirach 23:2, as reconstructed by Rudolf Smend, Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach: Erklart (Berlin, 1906), 204, followed by Moshe Z. Segal, The Complete Book of Ben Sirah (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1953), 136 (Hebrew) and Menachem Kister, “The Yetzer of Man’s Heart, the Body and Purification from Evil: Between Prayer Terminologies and World Views,” Megillot 8–9 (2010): 241–82, 262 (Hebrew): ‫ ועל לבי שבט מוסר‬,‫מי יקים על יצרי שוט‬. Cf. also Segal’s own reconstruction of Sirach 17:6: ‫ ולב להבין נתן להם‬,‫( יצר ולשון ועינים ואזניים‬cf., however, Smend’s preference of the Syriac reading of ‫ יצר‬as a verb). 8. But not in the school of Rabbi Akiva, as argued above (see Chapter 1 n. 5). 9. Compare also 4Qbarki Napshia (4Q434) 1 4. On the motif of circumcision of the heart in Qumran, see David R. Seely, “The Circumcised Heart in 4Q434 Barki Nafshi,” RevQ 17 (1996): 527–35; Menachem Kister, “Demons, Theology, and Abraham’s Covenant,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls at Fifty (ed. R. A. Kugler and E. M. Schuller; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 167–84, 180. 10. On the basic neutral character of yetzer in Sirach, see Segal, Ben Sirah, 108, Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1974), 140 (“the power of distinction in man”), and Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 91 (“the possibility to choose”). I accept Cohen Stuart’s conclusion that we should not read the later rabbinic meaning of the yetzer into Sirach (contra Frank C. Porter, “The Yeçer Hara: A Study in the Jewish Doctrine of Sin,” in Biblical and Semitic Studies: Critical and Historical Essays by the Members of the Semitic and Biblical Faculty of Yale University [New York: Scribner’s, 1901], 93–156, 136–46; Murphy, “Yeser,” 337–38). This conclusion stems directly from his decision to base the analysis on the two verses in which the term yetzer was preserved in the Hebrew



164 Notes to Pages 46–47 fragments (15:14; 27:6), before discussing speculative reconstructions from the Greek and the Syriac (see n. 7 above). I adhere to a similar (even more rigorous) minimalist position in this book, basing the reconstruction of the history of the term (though not its contextualizations) on clear Hebrew witnesses only. See further below, nn. 16, 104. 11. “The term ‘yeser’ gained its central anthropological significance in the sense of ‘character,’ ‘disposition’ for the first time in Ben Sira” (Hengel, Judaism, 140). 12. Smend, Weisheit, 162. Hengel’s paraphrase of this verse as “the ‘evil impulse’” is anachronistic ( Judaism, 141). 13. J. C. VanderKam, Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees (Missoula, Mont.: Eisenbraun’s, 1977), 83–84, VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (Leuven: Peeters, 1989), II, 233, and H. W. Attridge et al., Discoveries in the Judaean Desert vol. 13 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 105. For a discussion of the passage, see Hans Lichtenberger, “Zur Vorkommen und Bedeutung von ‫ יצר‬in Jubiläenbuch,” JSJ 14 (1983): 1–10, 5–6. 14. On this work, see Daniel Harrington, Wisdom Texts from Qumran (London: Routledge, 1996), 40–59. 15. Cf. the description of the temptress in 4Q184 1 17: ‫להשגות אנוש בדרכי שוחה‬ ‫“( ולפתות בחלקות בני איש‬to sidetrack man into the ways of the pit, and seduce the sons of men with smooth words”). See Harrington, Wisdom, 33. 16. Segal reconstructed the term in Sirach 37:3 from the Greek, but the Hebrew MSS have here “‫( ”הוי רע‬MS D vocalizes ra, while the marginal note in MS B vocalizes reia), and the context is indeed that of a ‫רע‬,ֵ a loved one, who becomes an enemy. See Segal, Ben Sirah, 235; Murphy, “Yeser,” 338; Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 91–92. 17. Tigchelaar, “Evil Inclination.” 18. On ‫ גער‬as a technical word for expulsion of demons, see Harari, Magic, 170 n. 31. 19. Part of the crux lays in the reconstruction of the previous sentence. The editors suggest two alternatives: ‫[“( [לב האבן גערתה ממני] ותשם לב טהור תחתיו‬the stone heart you have removed from me] and have placed a pure heart in its stead,” 297); or alternatively: [‫[“( ]כל שטן גערתה ממני‬all adversaries you have removed from me],” 302). The latter reconstruction points to a distinctly demonic context, as does their subsequent reconstruction (right after the appearance of the evil yetzer): ‫[“( ]ורוח קודש שמ]תה בלבבי‬and a holy spirit] you have [placed] in my heart,” according to Ps 51:12–13). These two reconstructions would suggest external forces at work. For the holy spirit at Qumran, see Arthur E. Sekki, The Meaning of Ruach at Qumran (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 71–93, 207–8. 20. Pace Seely, “Circumcised Heart,” 533. 21. The reconstruction is based on the verses above that twice present “kidneys” as a parallel to “heart.” In any case, “[a holy spiri]t you have placed in my heart” clearly proves that the yetzer is not in the heart. 22. The text is cited according to E. Chazon et al., DJD vol. 29 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 297, 302–3. See also David R. Seely, “Implanting Pious Qualities as a Theme in the Barki Nafshi Hymns,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years after Their Discovery (ed. L. H. Schiffman et al.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 322–31. Jack Sanders points out that “The Psalm is biblical in vocabulary, form and content” (J. A. Sanders, DJD vol. 4 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965], 76); cf. idem, “Non-Masoretic



Notes to Pages 47–49 165

Psalms,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. J. Charlesworth; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 193. Others claim a non-sectarian origin for the Psalms scroll as a whole (Peter W. Flint, The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls and the Book of Psalms [Leiden: Brill, 1997], 201). However, the fact is that the set phrase yetzer ra has not yet been found in Second Temple literature outside Qumran. 23. “The two demons exercise their influence by means of negative attitudes and qualities” (Armin Lange, “Considerations concerning the ‘Spirits of Impurity’ in Zech 13:2,” in Dämonen [ed. A. Lange et al.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003], 254–68, 262); “The plea is made for deliverance from a ‘satan’ and an ‘impure spirit’ on the one hand and the inward press of evil inclination and pain on the other” (Wahlen, Impurity of Spirits, 43). On physical pain as caused by demonic possession, see Kister, “Demons,” 170. 24. David Flusser, “Qumran and Jewish Apotropaic Prayers,” IEJ 16 (1966): 194– 205. Flusser’s claim was expanded by Menachem Kister, “Studies in 4QMMT and Its World: Law, Theology, Language and Calendar,” Tarbiz 68 (1999): 317–71, 352–54 (Hebrew). Kister reads several additional sources, such as Jubilees 1:20 and the end of 4QMMT as various manifestations of a stable apotropaic formula. 25. On “satan” in these sources as “a name of a type or class of evil spirits” rather than a proper noun (Satan), see Michael E. Stone et al., The Aramaic Levy Document: Edition, Translation, Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 129–31. 26. On this amoraic development, see n. 88 in Chapter 4 below. 27. On “Belial,” see Annette Steudel, “God and Belial,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years after Their Discovery, 332–40; On “Ruach,” see Sekki, Meaning. 28. Compare Sekki, Meaning, 95 regarding ‫רוח‬: “ruah as man’s spirit in the non­biblical, Hebrew scrolls, seems for the most part to reflect Biblical categories but with a more negative emphasis” (cf. 97 n. 7; 222). On sectarian reinterpretations of biblical terms in Hodayot, see Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 267. 29. See Murphy, “Yeser,” 344. Cf. M. Delcor, ed., Les Hymnes de Qumran (Hodayot) (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1962), 50; Eugene H. Merrill, Qumran and Predestination: A Theological Study of the Thanksgiving Hymns (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 38. 30. Similar terms are ‫ יצר עפר‬and ‫“( יצר בשר‬creature of dust,” “creature of flesh”; 1QHa XXI top 16, bottom 14; 1QHa XVIII 23, XXIV 5). Cf. also ‫ובשר מיצר ח[מר] יכבד‬ (“flesh is more respected than something made from c[lay], 1QHa XVII 16). These contexts stress disgraceful carnality of humans, which is not stressed (and probably not even implied) in the biblical usage of the term. 31. See J. Philip Hyatt, “The View of Man in the Qumran Hodayot,” NTS 2 (1955– 56): 276–84. 32. Cf. ‫ ויצרם הופיע לי למרורים‬,‫“( וסבבוני [בהוות] לבם‬they have surrounded me [with the destructive thoughts of] their heart and their yetzer appeared to me as bitterness,” XIII 31– 32),. note the word ‫( הוות‬wickedness, destruction), which appears in both sources. 33. A similar meaning appears in the reconstructed text of 4Q286 (4Qblessingsa) 7 ii 7: ]...‫ מלא]ך השחת ורו[חי אב]דון בכו[ל] מחשבות יצר א[שמתכה‬...‫“( ו[ארור‬And [cursed be . . . the ange]l of the pit and the sp[irits of des]truction in al[l] the plans of [your] yetzer of g[uilt].”



166 Notes to Pages 49–51 34. Compare ‫( יצר נתאב‬1QHa XXIII frg. 2 i 17–18). 35. On “stubbornness of heart” as a violation of the covenant, cf. 1QS III 25–26; V 5. 36. A similar term, ‫“( לב אשמה‬guilty heart”), appears at the beginning of the Rule of the Community (1QS I 5–6), which parallels this passage from the Damascus Covenant. On this passage, see Philip R. Davies, The Damascus Covenant (Sheffield: JSOT, 1983), 76–77. 37. The term ‫ זמות‬appears in two more passages (4Q165 6:5; 4Q177 I 6), quoting Isa 32:7: “he forges plots (‫)זמות‬.” All occurrences of the term at Qumran therefore refer to “plot.” 38. Murphy, “Yeser,” 342–43, reads both 1QS XIII 32 and XV 3 as the psalmist’s complaint about “the evil perpetrated against him by his persecutors.” However, in these texts the yetser of the evil injures the righteous rather than penetrates them. An explicit penetration into the members of the yahad is described only regarding the Angel of Darkness (1QS III 23–24). 39. The term ‫ זמות יצרי‬appears in the Psalms of the Teacher of Righteousness (1QHa X–XVII). Since Gert Jeremias, Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), some have considered them a separate unit. However, this group of psalms also contains neutral terms (‫ )כל יצר מעשה‬and positive ones (‫)יצר סמוך‬, as well as the term ‫ יצר אשמה‬that is explicitly identified with the wicked. 40. For the independent source of the doctrine of two spirits, see Sarianna Metso, The Textual Development of the Qumran Community Rule (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 18–25; Jorg Frey, “Different Patterns of Dualistic Thought in the Qumran Library,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues (ed. M. Bernstein, F. García Martínez, and J. Kampen; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 275–335, 289–90, 296 n. 83. 41. “The contrast between good and evil is internalized and seen to be an opposition not between two groups of people but between principles or impulses waging battle within man” (Frey, “Patterns,” 285); “In 3:13–4:14 the two spirits divide humanity into two opposed spiritual groups of good and evil, but in 4:15–26 they divide the individual into two opposed spiritual dispositions of good and evil. The problem then is one of consistency” (Sekki, Meaning, 213–14). 42. The main solution in the Community Rule is of course the very existence of the yahad, which monitors and reduces the sinfulness of its members (through hierarchy, discipline, rebuke, etc.). This is, however, missing from Hodayot, which concentrates on the experience of the individual instead. See, e.g., 1QHa 4:17–25 in which the member of the yahad thanks God for being chosen, and at the same time asks for deliverance from sin. Carol Newsom remarks: “The very possibility of a moral life depends upon God’s action of choosing one. Even then . . . the inclination of the person is to sin and he is only prevented from his natural tendency by God’s initiative” (Newsom, Self, 265). 43. See Aharon Shemesh, Punishments and Sins:; Ffrom Scripture to the Rabbis (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2003), 78 (Hebrew). 44. On the interchangeable formulations regarding the wicked, “those who fulfill your [i.e., Malkiresha] plan in their heart” (4Q280 6) and “those who fulfill their plans in their hearts” (4Q286 7 II 1), see Menachem Kister, “On Good and Evil: The Theological



Notes to Pages 51–52 167

Foundations of the Qumran Community,” in The Qumran Scrolls and Their World (ed. Kister; Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2009), 497–528, 509 (Hebrew) . 45. Frey, “Patterns,” 304; on the various types of dualism, see 282–85 and J. H. Charlesworth, “A Critical Comparison of the Dualism in 1QS 3:13–4:26 and the ‘Dualism’ Contained in the Gospel of John,” in John and the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Charlesworth; New York: Crossroads, 1991), 76–106 n. 1. 46. On adjuration as the quintessential magical practice, see Harari, Magic, 132–34. On adjurations in Qumran, see Esther Eshel, “Genres of Magical Texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Dämonen (ed. A. Lange; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 395–415, 403. On Byzantine amulets, see Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1987). For possible connections between the two corpora, see Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 111–12. 47. Cf. also 4Q186, which determines the ratio of light and darkness in each person through physiognomy (for example: “his spirit has six parts in the house of light and three in the house of darkness”). On this text, see Francis Schmidt, “Ancient Jewish Astrology: An Attempt to Interpret 4Qcryptic,” in Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. M. E. Stone and E. G. Chazon; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 189–205; Matthias Albani, “Horoscopes in the Qumran Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: After Fifty Years (ed. P. W. Flint and J. C. VanderKam; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 279–330. 48. On Fourth Ezra’s “evil heart” and its affiliation with the rabbinic evil yetzer, see Chapter 4 below. 49. Note that demonization and internalization do not contradict each other. Tying the yetzer in the heart to Belial is clearly a process of demonization (reflecting a certain degree of reification). However, it also indicates a tendency to seek the source of sin inside humans, rather than in external cosmic entities. Furthermore, in the case of rabbinic literature these two developments are tightly connected: only when the yetzer is sufficiently reified can it replace the cosmic demons. 50. The claim that Qumranic literature is the missing link between biblical and rabbinic yetzarim is feasible whether we assume a (direct or indirect) acquaintance of the rabbis with Qumranic ideas, or whether we assume more complex relationships with similar cosmologies and demonologies. Acquaintance with Qumranic ideas in rabbinic literature has been pointed out by several scholars, who have noticed the various points of contention and agreement between Qumranic and rabbinic halakha and exegesis. See, e.g., Steven Fraade, “Shifting from Priestly to Non-Priestly Legal Authority: A Comparison of the Damascus Document and the Midrash Sifra,” DSD 6 (1999): 109–25; Aharon Shemesh, “Scriptural Interpretation in the Damascus Document and Their Parallels in Rabbinic Midrash,” in The Damascus Document: A Centennial of Discovery (ed. J. Baumgarten, E. Chazon, and A. Pinnik; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 159–75; Adiel Schremer, “ ‘[T]he[y] did not Read in the Sealed Book’: Qumran Halakhic Revolution and the Emergence of Torah Study in Second Temple Judaism,” in Historical Perspectives (ed. D. Goodblatt et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 105–26.



168 Notes to Pages 53–54 51. See, among others, 1 Enoch 10:15; Jubilees 10:8; 11:5, CD XVI:4–5. See also Macky, “Testaments,” 175–264; Eshel, “Demonology,” 91–135. It is indicative that in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs Belial is named “the prince of deceit (τῆς πλανῆς; T. Sim. 2:7, T. Jud. 19:3) and its powers: “spirits of deceit” (T. Sim. 6:6, T. Jud. 14:7, 20:1, T. Iss. 4:4, T. Zeb. 9:7, T. Asher 6:2). For a survey of the various explanations for the origin of evil in Second Temple literatures, see Michael Segal, The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 97–101. 52. Belial’s main role at Qumran is to drag humanity, especially members of the sect, to sin. See esp.: ‫אשר יניח להמה מכ[ול] בני בליעל המכשילים אותמה לכלותמ[ה בעונ]מה כאשר באו‬ ‫במחשבת [ב]ל[י]על להכשיל ב[ני] או[ר] ולחשוב עליהמה מחשבות און למ[ען ית]פסו לבליעל במשגת‬ ‫“( א[ש]מה‬that he will obtain for them rest from all the sons of Belial, those who make the, fall, to destroy them of account of their sins, when they come with the plan of Belial to make the sons of light fall, and to plot against them wicked plans so that they are trapped by Belial because of their guilty error,” 4QMidrEschata (4Q174) 1i 21,2 7–9; compare 4Q177 [MidrEschatb] II 4–7; IV 12). See George J. Brooke, Exegesis at Qumran: 4Q Florilegium, Its Jewish Context (Sheffield: JSOT, 1985), 194–97. Cf. also 1QS I 17–18; 1QM XIII 11; CD IV 15; XII 2; 11Q13 (Melch) II 12. See also Steudel, “Belial,” Kister, “Demons.” 53. The term ‫ בן בליעל‬appears in rabbinic literature only in its biblical, non-demonic, sense of “worthlessness,” “wickedness.” 54. The bibliography on the Watchers is almost infinite. For an updated discussion and references, see Loren T. Stukenbruck, “The Origins of Evil in Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition: The Interpretation of Genesis 6:1–4 in the Second and Third Centuries B.C.E.,” in The Fall of Angels (ed. C. Auffarth and Loren T. Stukenbruck; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 87–118. For the remnants of this tradition in rabbinic literature, see Annette Y. Reed, “From Asael and Semihazah to Uzzah, Azzah and Azael: 3 Enoch 5 and Jewish Reception History of 1 Enoch,” JSQ 8 (2001): 105–36. 55. In Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Bilhah the Temptress: ‘The Testament of Reuben’ and the Birth of Sexuality,” JQR 96 (2006): 65–94, I analyzed this dynamic in detail regarding the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. I now wish to extend this claim to additional works. 56. In this respect, the Alexandrian Christian tradition (see especially the discussions of Origen, Antony, Athanasius, and Evagrius above) is not inspired by Philo’s work. Indeed, in his comprehensive catalogue of Philonic passages that may have influenced Origen, van der Hoek does not cite any parallel to the third book of On First Principles, in which Origen’s demonological anthropology is explicated (Annewies van der Hoek, “Philo and Origen: A Descriptive Catalogue of Their Relationship,” Studia Philonica Annual 12 [2000]: 44–121, 110). The same holds true for Clement’s Stromateis II 20 discussed above (Annewies van der Hoek, Clement of Alexandria and His Use of Philo in the Stromaties [Leiden: Brill, 1988], 185–86). 57. Archie T. Wright, “Some Observations of Philo’s De Gigantibus and Evil Spirits in Second Temple Judaism,” JSJ 36 (2005): 471–88; 487. 58. Cf. b. Suk 52b: “First it caused them to err, but ultimately it was in them (‫בתחילה‬ ‫)הטעם לבסוף בקרבם‬.” On Philo’s adaptation of Plato’s tripartite division of the soul see Thomas R. Billings, The Platonism of Philo Judaeus (Chicago, 1919), 47–52; David Runia,



Notes to Pages 54–55 169

Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Kampen: Kok, 1983), 261–70. Billings shows that the exact number of psychic parts was unimportant for Philo, who presented various inconsistent options, “except for the main one which gives the two parts: rational and irrational” (52). 59. The analogy is discussed by William D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (rev. 3rd ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 24–29, and Schoeps, Paul, 184–86. Both, however, assume some sort of dependence of Paul’s ἁμαρτία on the yetzer, which they take to be an ancient Jewish concept. I suggest instead reading both as part of a shared tradition. 60. Sifre Deut 45, ed. Finkelstein, 103–4. Compare Gen Rab. 22:6 (ed. Theodor­A lbeck, 210–13), discussed in Chapter 4 below. 61. On σάρξ in Paul’s anthropology and its much debated relations with σῶμα, see the detailed survey in Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 49–95. 62. Pace Schoeps, Paul, 187, and Davies, Paul, 27. 63. Scholars still debate to what extent Paul’s ἁμαρτία is hypostasized and where its personification stands on the spectrum from rhetoric to ontology. Compare Walter Grundmann, “āmartano,” TDNT vol. 1, 311 (“demonic power”), to Bultmann, Theology, 245 (“figurative”), and Jewett, Romans, 467. The debate is nourished by the inconsistency of the conception of sin even in Romans itself: “Sin in Rom. 1–3 is conceived of as consisting of man’s transgression, while in chapter 6 sin suddenly becomes exclusively singular and is conceived more in terms of a power which controls man” (E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism [London: SCM, 1977], 486). The dispute is also related to the question of whether the Pauline concept of personified ἁμαρτία should be read in the context of Jewish apocalypticism (thus demonized) or Hellenism (thus figurative). See, e.g., Stowers, Romans, who forcefully advocates the latter, claiming that Paul’s language is no more than a rhetorical device: “this language comes from the tradition of the fragmented personality. Paul unsurprisingly uses Greek traditions to convince Greeks” (280). A very similar interpretive move (Hellenistic in origin ergo metaphorical) was offered to the rabbinic yetzer, as seen above. 64. For “‘Desire’ can express itself nomistically just as much as anti-nomistically” (Gunther Bornkamm, “Sin, Law and Death: An Exegetical Study of Romans 7,” in Early Christian Experience [trans. Paul L. Hammer; New York: Harper and Row, 1969], 83–94, 90). 65. On the complicated net of interconnections between νόμος and ἁμαρτία (so much so that Paul needs to reject the possibility that they are in fact identical, Romans 7:7), see “nomos,” TDNT 4: 1073–75. 66. For a summary of the (far from conclusive) arguments for a Jewish origin of this composition, see J. Reiling, Hermas and Christian Prophecy (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 25–26. 67. The Shepherd of Hermas, mand. 6 II 1–4 (The Apostolic Fathers, 2, LCL 25, 97). 68. Cf. mand. 12 I 2: “The wicked desire is cruel . . . especially if a servant of God (δουλὸς θεοῦ) falls into it.” 69. James 3:14–17 requires that its audience distinguish between the wisdom that comes from above and that which is demonic (δαιμονώδης). Cf. Antony’s claim, discussed



170 Notes to Pages 55–57 further below, that demons, being spiritual, are “all hidden, and we reveal them by our deeds” (Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995], 220; David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006], 17). 70. Cf. 1QS III 18–22; T. Asher 1:3–9; 2 Cor 6:14; Ps Barnabas 18:1; Mart. Isa. 2:2–5. See Peter Tomson, “2 Cor 6:14–7:1 Viewed in the Spectrum of Ancient Judaism,” 2 Corinthians and Late Second Temple Judaism, CRINT 14 (ed. R. Bieringer, E. Nathan, D. Pollefeyt, and P. J. Tomson; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). I would like to thank Peter Tomson for sharing his paper before its publication and discussing its implications with me. 71. David Flusser, “There Are Two Ways,” in Jewish Sources in Early Christianity (Tel Aviv: Poalim, 1979), 235–52 (Hebrew). Cf. idem, “The Dead Sea Sect and Pre-Pauline Christianity,” in Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988), 23–74, esp. 25–28; Huub van de Sandt and David Flusser, The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity (Assen and Minneapolis: Royal Van Gorcum and Fortress, 2002), 143–55. Van der Sandt and Flusser (131; cf. Flusser, “Two Ways,” 243) speculated (based on Ps. Barnabas 18:1 and the Latin version) that two angels appeared also at the beginning of the original Didache. 72. Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 148. 73. The angels might in fact act contrary to the host’s tendency: “For though a man be faithful (πιστὸς ανήρ), if the thought of that [evil] angel rises in his heart, it must be that that man or woman commit some sin” (mand. 12 II 7), and vice versa. However we account for the connection between external spirits and internal desires (cf. for example: “the spirit which . . . speaks according to the desire of man,” mand. 11 5), we cannot simply assume they are one. Note also that while the good desire only demands submission (mand. 12 II 5), the angel of righteousness demands belief (mand. 6 II 3, 6). 74. Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 151. On διψυχία, see also Reiling, Hermas, 32–33. 75. Cf. the allusion to Deut 6:5 (LXX) in Hermas’s command, “Remove from yourself double mindedness . . . but turn to the Lord ‘with all your heart’” (mand. 9 1–2), to the homily in Mishna Berakhot 9:5 on the very same verse. Cf. also Jacob’s children’s confession to him: “Just as your heart is not divided (‫ )אין בלבך מחלוקת‬so is our heart not divided . . . but the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” (Deut 6:4; Sifre Deut 32, ed. Finkelstein, 53). 76. Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 147. 77. Such as was offered by Guy G. Stroumsa and Paula Frederiksen, “The Two Souls and the Divided Will,” in Self, Soul and Body in Religious Experience (ed. A. I. Baumgarten et al.; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 198–208. 78. However, unlike the constant inner struggle depicted in The Doctrine of the Two Spirits (‫)עד הנה יריבו רוחי אמת ועול בלבב גבר‬, only one angel resides in a person in any given moment (thus the idiom “when then he comes [ἀναβῆι] into your heart” appears separately for each angel). 79. Referring to my “ ‘Torah Spoke Regarding the Yetzer’: The School of R. Ishmael and the Sources of Yetzer Hara,” Tarbiz 76 (2007): 41–79, Kister, “Yetzer,” 266–67, accepts the thesis of yetzer as internalized demonology (see especially ibid., 264 and n. 115) but claims that it predated the rabbis by several centuries. His main proof is taken from



Notes to Pages 57–58 171

Sirach 22:27–23:2 (see n. 7 above) where he reads demonological language ascribed to bodily parts. His textual analysis is sound, but I fail to see how it lessens the novelty of the rabbinic yetzer. As Kister meticulously shows, Sirach uses demonological imagery when actually ascribing the source of sinfulness to humans themselves. Rabbinic yetzer, in contrast, belongs to the sphere of ontology, rather than to that of rhetoric. Far from being a discourse of self-responsibility in disguise, the yetzer discourse espouses a whole new anthropology, quite remote from Sirach’s pious voluntarism. 80. See especially the portrayals of Torah as the enemy of the yetzer, and the quests for divine help in besting it, discussed in Chapter 1 above. 81. For this version (rather than ‫)לשני יצרים‬, see Myron B. Lerner, “Midrash Ruth Rabba” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1971), 3, 25 n. 7 82. It is clear that the pun yetzer/yotzer is based on Gen 2:7 “vayyitzer,” cited in Rabbi Simon’s other homily. Shmuel Safrai and David Flusser, “The Slave of Two Masters,” in Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988), 169–72, read this homily as saying that “in death man is freed from one master, his inclination, and belongs only to the other master, to God” (170). Since, however, ‫ אדוניו‬can be read as plural as well as singular, it is quite possible that the rabbis read Job 3:19 as claiming that after death (the topic of Job’s speech in these verses) man is freed from both his masters! After all, Job is waiting to become free first and foremost from his abusing God. Cf. “Free among the dead (‫ ;במתים חפשי‬Ps 88:6)—when a man dies he becomes free from the commandments” (y. Kil. 9:4 [32:1], Ket. 12:3 [34:4], b. Shab. 30a, 151b, Nid. 61b), famously similar to Rom 7:4. 83. Safrai and Flusser, “Slave.” They claim that the exchange of yetzer for mammon in Jesus’ saying is an “Essene influence.” This highly speculative part of the thesis will not be discussed here. 84. Cf. Tomson, “2 Corinthians.” 85. Safrai and Flusser, “Slave,” 171. The dynamics of choosing between God and Belial is explicated most rigorously in the Testaments. See Rosen-Zvi, “Bilhah the Temptress,” 83–86. 86. Letter VI (Rubenson, Letters, 219). Cf. Brakke, Demons, 17, 20. For the basis of this concept in Antony’s Origenist (thus Platonic) anthropology, see Rubenson, Letters, 68. 87. Brakke, Demons, 22. 88. Athanase D’alexandrie, Vie D’Antoine (CS 400; ed. G. J. M. Baterlink; Paris: Cerf, 1994). The English is taken from Robert C. Gregg, Athanasius: The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (New York: Paulist Press: 1980). On the Christian biographies, see Patricia Cox, Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). For comparisons between the Christian biographies of holy men and the rabbinic chria-like anecdotes about the sages, see Alan J. Avery-Peck, “Rhetorical Analysis of Early Rabbinic Pronouncement Stories,” Hebrew Annual Review 13 (1991): 1–23; Catherine Hezser, “Die Verwendung der hellenistischen Gattung Chrie im frühen Christentum und Judentum,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 27 (1996): 371–439 Richard Kalmin, “Holy Men, Rabbis, and Demonic Sages in Late Antiquity,” Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire (ed. R. Kalmin and S. Schwartz; Leuven: Peters, 2003);



172 Notes to Pages 58–60 Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (forthcoming). 89. Brakke, Demons, 23; on the visuality of demons in Athanasius but not Antony, cf. 42. Compare Rubenson, Letters, 132: “The most striking contrast between the Vita and the letters is the contrast between the emphasis of the first on spiritual warfare and the second on knowledge.” Cf. Samuel Rubenson, “Origen and the Egyptian Monastic Tradition of the Fourth Century,” Origeniana Septima (ed. W. A. Bienert and U. Kuhneweg; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999), 319–37, esp. 320–24. Brakke follows Rubenson in accepting the authenticity of Antony’s letters. For views on Antony preceding Athanasius’s biography, see Brakke, Athanasius, 203–16. 90. Evil thoughts and temptations: “doubt” (Vita Antonii 5), “lust” (5–6), “money” (12). Fear and pain: “black boy” (6), “multitude of demons (8), “earthquake” (9), “wild beasts” (9; 51–53). Cf. Brakke, Demons, 27–30. As Peter Brown (The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity [New York: Columbia University Press, 1988], 214) justly noted, sexual temptations occupy only a marginal place in Antony’s Life. This is true for the rabbinic (Palestinian) yetzer as well, as I show in Chapter 6 below. For a sharp analysis of Antony as an ideal man, uncovering “the gendering of Athanasius’s theory of human subjectivity,” see Virginia Burrus, ‘Begotten, Not Made’: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), 68–78 (citation from 78). 91. Interestingly enough, Evagrius presents an opposite dynamic, from fear to temptation: “Sometimes even when they waken they are encircled again by the same beasts and see their cell filled with fire and smoke. And when they do not succumb to these appearances or give in to fear, again they see at once demons turning themselves into women who are shamefully degenerate and want to cavort disgracefully” (On Thoughts 27). 92. Brakke, Demons, 162. Cf. Robert Cregg’s (Life, 7) psychologization of Athanasius’s demonology. 93. Brakke, Demons,, 24–25, 31. For the idea of the “daily martyr,” cf. Sifre Deut 33 (ed. Finkelstein, 55), in which Simon ben Menasia objects reading the verse “with all your soul” (Deut 6:6) as referring to martyrdom, asking: “How can one possibly be killed every day (‫ ”?)וכי היאך איפשר לו לאדם ליהרג בכל יום‬According to MS Berlin and some indirect witnesses, he (or the Midrash) continues: “Rather the Lord treats the righteous as if they are killed each and every day” (‫)אלא מעלה הקב”ה על הצדיקים כאילו הם נהרגים בכל יום‬. Interestingly enough, the homily preceding it demands to enlist the evil yetzer to the love of the Lord (see ed. Finkelstein, ad. loc.). 94. Elaine Pagels, The Origins of Satan (New York: Vintage, 1995), xvii; cf. 14: “Jesus’ followers did not invent the practice of demonizing enemies within their own group, although Christians (and Muslims after them) varied this practice further than their Jewish predecessors had taken it, and with enormous consequences.” 95. Through, among other things, presenting them as God’s own enemies. For the development of the conceptualization of Rome as God’s opponent in early rabbinic literature, see Adiel Schremer, Brothers Estranged: Heresy, Christianity and Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).



Notes to Page 60 173

96. In Chapter 7 below I discuss the question whether the rabbis ascribed yetzer to women and gentiles at all. 97. A fact justly emphasized by Porter, “Yecer,” 93–97, George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, the Age of the Tannaim (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924), 485–86, and Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 39–66. 98. On the combination of bodily impulses and demons in creating forbidden thoughts and passions according to Origen, see Brown, Body and Society, 164–67. On Athanasius’s version see Brakke, Demons, 39. Cf. Alvyn Pettersen, Athanasius and the Human Body (Bristol: Bristol Press, 1990), 94–103. For the “division of labor” between demonology and condemnation of the body in The Thanksgiving Scroll, see Newsom, Self, 261–73. 99. On rabbinic ethical monism, see my analysis of the parable of the lame and the blind (Mek. RS 16:1, ed. Epstein-Melamed, 77 and parallels) in Chapter 5 below. Note that in Lev Rab. 4:5, ed. Margulies, 88 the parable is attributed to “The School of Rabbi Ishmael,” which develops the concept of a yetzer independent of one’s self. A clear example of the inseparability of the “self” from the body in rabbinic literature appears in b. Shab 152b, where souls are presented as royal garments, while humans themselves (“they”) are nothing but their bodies: “Of the wise [the king] said: Let my robes be placed in my treasury and they can go home in peace . . . Thus too, with the Holy One, blessed be He: concerning the bodies of the righteous He says: He enters into peace, they rest in their beds (Isa 57:2); while concerning their souls He says: ‘yet the soul of my Lord shall be bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God’ (1 Sam 25:29).” “They” clearly means “their bodies,” as noted by Yitzhak Baer, Studies and Essays in the History of the Jewish People (Jerusalem: Israeli Historical Society, 1985), vol. 1, 83 (Hebrew). Compare also Gen Rab. 14:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 128) stating that had God not tied souls into humans, “when a misfortune (‫ )צרה‬would come to him he would throw [his soul] away [and die].” 100. Han J. W. Drijvers, “The Saint as Symbol: Conceptions of the Person in Late Antiquity and Early Christianity,” in History and Religion in Late Antique Syria (Brookfield: Variorum, 1994), 142. Compare: “Christians such as Gregory of Nyssa or Augustine of Hippo could have been particularly sharp in their negativity toward pagan philosophers— and vice versa. But the understanding of the mind-body problem on both sides of this kind of divide was really remarkably similar” (Henry Chadwick, “Philosophical Tradition and the Self,” in Late Antiquity [ed. G. W. Bowersock, P. Brown, and O. Grabar; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999], 60–81, 61). If the division between body and “self” was the basis for “all ancient Greek and Roman anthropology and ethics” (Hans D. Betz, “The Concept of the ‘Inner Human Being’ in the Anthropology of Paul,” NTS 46 [2000]: 315–41, 323), the rabbis are definitely not part of this club. 101. See Gen Rab. 14:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 128), which portrays the soul as the living force, which the yetzer—appearing as the consciousness or fear of death—­attempts to discard. Cf. Antoninus’s two questions to Rabbi in Gen Rab. 34:10 (ed. Theodor­A lbeck, 320–21, and the parallel b. San. 81b): “From when is the evil yetzer placed in humans (‫ ”)מאמתי יצר הרע ניתן בו באדם‬and then “since when is the soul placed in humans (‫)נשמה מאימת נתנת באדם‬.” The context of the two questions is rather different; the former



174 Notes to Pages 60–61 is about the source of human destructive potential, while the latter is on the force of life. Both sources are further discussed in Chapter 4 below. 102. Yosef Yahalom, “The World of Grief and Mourning in the Geniza,” Ginzei Kedem 1 (2005): 117–37 (Hebrew). The text appears also in Yahalom, “ ‘Syrian for Dirges, Hebrew for Speech’—Ancient Jewish Poetry in Aramaic and Hebrew,” in The Literature of the Sages, Part 2 (ed. S. Safrai et al.; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006), 375–92, 388. Yahalom’s translation there for ‫והערת יצר‬, “and waking of lust,” misses the point: the yetzer is a bodily organ, just like the heart and the eye. Cf. below Chapter 4, n. 99. The association of soul and the yetzer is hinted to once more in the poem, when the poet says: “You have put a soul in him as a leaven in the dough” (‫)שמתה בו נפש כישאור לעיסה‬, a metaphor both Talmuds use specifically regarding the yetzer. This poem, along with other Hebrew and Aramaic poems presenting disputes between body and soul, was discussed by Ophir Münz-Manor, “Reflections of the Characteristics of Jewish and Christian Poetry in Late Antiquity,” Peamim 119 (2009): 131–72, 142–48 (Hebrew). 103. T-S H 18.42. My thanks to Ophir Münz-Manor, who is preparing the poem for publication, for sharing it with me. Münz-Manor dates this poem to the Byzantine period as well. This dating makes a diachronic explanation for the difference between the two poems unlikely. 104. The most common source cited by scholars is the beginning of the Testament of Asher, which mentions two διαβούλια (cf. also T. Jud. 20:1: two πνευμάτα). Hollander and de Jonge remark, however, “It should be stressed that the author speaking about two diaboulia does not intend to say that there are ‘zwei Seelen in einer Brust’. Every person has one diaboulion which has two options and is, after the choice has been made, either good or bad. . . .  It seems best, therefore, not to translate it as ‘inclination’ but as ‘disposition’ in the sense of ‘the predominant or prevailing tendency of one’s spirit’” (Harm W. Hollander and Marinus de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary [Leiden: Brill, 1985], 339). Other sources do not discuss yetzarim but spirits (‫ רוחות‬in 1QS 3:18–19 cited by Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 70) or advisors (βουλή in Prov 2:12 [LXX], cited by Johann Cook, “The Origin of the Tradition of the ‫יצר הטוב‬ and ‫יצר הרע‬,” JSJ 38 [2007]: 80–91), or do not present any multiplicity (like Sirach 15:14, cited by both). Scholars have wrongly assumed that the common rabbinic doctrine is one of two yetzarim, and so went to find its origins in Second Temple sources. See, for example, Preben Wernberg-Møller, “A Reconsideration of the Two Spirits in the Rule of the Community,” RevQ 3 (1961): 413–41, 422; Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 363. 105. Solomon Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (2nd ed.; New York: Schocken, 1961), 243; Moore, Judaism, 483; Alden L. Thompson, Responsibility for Evil in the Theodicy of IV Ezra: A Study Illustrating the Significance of Form and Structure for the Meaning of the Book (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1977), 51; Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 10; Porter, “Yecer,” 110. 106. On ‫ לבבך‬see y. Ber. 9:5 [14b], Gen Rab. 48:11 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 489). On ‫ וייצר‬see Gen Rab. 14:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 128), b. Ber. 61a. 107. “My hypothesis here is that those rabbinic texts which speak of the Evil Desire as being necessary and even good represent a dialectical anthropological tradition that



Notes to Pages 61–63 175

stands in opposition to an alternative dualist one. . . . There is a strong tendency in the dialectical tradition to dispense with the term “Evil Desire” entirely and refer to that entity simply as ‘Desire’” (Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 67). “My hypothesis is that the Rabbis inherited the term ‘Evil Instinct’ from the first century Judaism much more averse to sexuality than they were, and unable to dispense with it, they ironized the term—‘the evil instinct is very good.’ . . . It is called the Evil Instinct solely because of its destructive side” (Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 63; emphasis in the original). Cf. Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 160, Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, “Art, Argument, and Ambiguity in the Talmud: Conflicting Conceptions of the Evil Impulse in b. Sukkah 51b–52a,” HUCA 73 (2002): 97–132, 115–17, and Peter W. van der Horst, “Religion and the Self in Antiquity,” JSJ 38 (2007): 349–50, 64. 108. Cf., for example, Sifre Num 88, ed. Horowitz, 88, “he took an oath against his evil yetzer” to the parallel homily in Sifre Deut 33, ed. Finkelstein, 60, “for we find everywhere that the righteous adjure their yetzer.” On a similar phenomenon in amoraic literature, see Chapter 4 n. 2 below. Schechter, Aspects, 262, already noted: “Yezer without any further specification is often meant the Evil Yezer.” My supplement is that this phenomenon originated in the school of R. Ishmael. 109. The more developed dialectic statements—those cited by Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 61–67—appear only in later, amoraic sources. See Chapter 4 below. 110. Pace van der Horst, who argues against Boyarin: “There is no proof whatever that the rabbis inherited a term they actually disagreed with, on the contrary, there is a clear evidence that they themselves invented and coined it” (Peter W. van der Horst, Jews and Christians in Their Graeco-Roman Context: Selected Essays on Early Judaism, Samaritanism, Hellenism, and Christianity [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006], 64). The term “evil yetzer” could not possibly have been invented by the rabbis, since it already appears at Qumran. 111. The absence of a good yetzer at Qumran can be further proven from the Barkhi Nafshi prayer quoted above: “yetzer ra you have rebuk[ed from my kidneys, a holy spiri]t you have placed in my heart” (4Qbarki Napshic [4Q436] 1 I 10). The text lacks some words and the reconstruction is hypothetical (see above), but the single remaining letter (‫ )[רוח קד]ש‬clearly indicates that ‫ יצר טוב‬cannot be the missing phrase. Had the poet had a concept of a good yetzer, would he not cite it as the opposite of evil yetzer? 112. On Sirach’s “naïve” account of the problem of evil, see John J. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 80–96. 113. Cf. Thompson’s analysis of Fourth Ezra’s evil heart: “By pushing his ‘theodicy’ all the way back to the evil yetzer tradition, he virtually admits the inadequacy of any of the other solutions to the theodicy problem” (Thompson, Responsibility, 340). Thompson refers to Sirach’s free will, Qumranic cosmological dualism, and Pauline original sin. 114. On the issue of responses to evil as the organizing principle of this chapter as a whole, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Blessing as Mapping: Reading Mishna Berakhot Chap. 9,” HUCA 78 (2009): 25–46. 115. For other polemical statements against dualism in rabbinic literature, see Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977).



176 Notes to Pages 63–66 116. See Azzan Yadin, “4QMMT, Rabbi Ishmael, and the Origins of Legal Midrash,” DSD 10 (2003): 130–49; idem, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 155–68. Cf. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “The Polemic on the Obligation to Destroy Idolatry in Tannaitic Literature,” Reshit 1 (2009): 91– 115, 107 n. 42 (Hebrew). For possible priestly roots of Rabbi Ishmael’s school, see also Marc G. Hirshman, Torah for the Entire World (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999), 118 n. 212, 123 n. 223, 172. 117. See Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Mishna Sotah Chapter 5 and the Midrash of Rabbi Akiva,” Tarbiz 70 (2006): 95–128 (Hebrew) and the references there. 118. Menachem Kahana, “The Halakhic Midrashim,” in The Literature of the Sages, Part 2 (ed. S. Safrai et al.; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006), 24–26. 119. Contrary to the prevailing image of R. Akiva’s school, promoted mainly by Heschel’s work. See my discussion of his studies in Chapter 1 above. 120. Joshua Levinson, The Twice Told Tale (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 128–29 (Hebrew). For a different contextualization of this process, see Rosen-Zvi, “Bilhah the Temptress.” 121. For a similar contextualization of the “discovery of the religious individual,” see Martin Hengel, The Hellenization of Judaea in the First Century after Christ (London: SCM Press, 1989), 48–50.

Chapter 4 1. “Palestinian Amoraic Literature” includes the Palestinian Talmud and the three classic aggadic Midrashim: Genesis Rabba, Leviticus Rabba, and Pesikta de-Rav Kahana. On the conventional, but not uncontested, dating of these compositions to the fifth or early six centuries, see Myron B. Lerner, “The Works of Aggadic Midrash and the Esther Midrashim,” in The Literature of the Sages Part 2 (ed. S. Safrai et al.; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006), 133–230, and the literature cited there. In order to keep the analysis as focused as possible and avoid mixing possible later developments, I refrain from discussing other midrashic compositions, which are probably later, such as Song of Songs Rabba, Ecclesiastes Rabba, and Avot Derabbi Natan. Dating these compositions is a tricky business and I prefer to err on the side of caution rather than of confusion. 2. The terms “yetzer” and “yetzer hara” are freely interchangeable in amoraic literature, just as they are in R. Ishmael’s midrashim. Compare, e.g., y. Yom. 6:5 (43c), “the evil yetzer desires only what is forbidden for it” to its parallel in y. Ned. 9:1 (41b): “the yetzer desires, etc.” 3. Murder: Gen Rab. 20:7 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 190); idolatry: t. Av. Zar. 6:17, y. Ned. 9:1 (41b). 4. Anger: t. Bab. Kam. 9:31; jealousy: Gen Rab. 9:7 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 72); pride: Gen Rab. 22:6 (ibid., 212). 5. Recklessness: Gen Rab. 22:6 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 212); neglect of Torah study: Sifre Deut 43 (ed. Finkelstein, 103). 6. I use the term sugia here to describe a cycle of homilies about the yetzer. The Bavli has three such sugiyot about the yetzer (in Berakhot, Sukka, and Kiddushin), but this is the only Palestinian one. Bernard Mandelbaum appended another cycle at the end of his ­edition



Notes to Pages 67–69 177

of Pesikta de Rav Kahana, but it is not part of the original composition. See also AdRN A 16 (ed. Schechter, 62–63) and Jonathan W. Schofer, “The Redaction of Desire: Structure and Editing of Rabbinic Teachings Concerning ‘Yeser’ (‘Inclination’),” JJS 12 (2003): 19–53. 7. Following Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1990), 538. 8. For this meaning of ‫שפוף‬, see Gen Rab. 25:3 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 242). 9. For ‫ תוחלת‬as a variant of ‫( תועלת‬use), see Yehezkel Kutscher, Studies in Palestinian Aramaic (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1950), 46 (Hebrew). 10. The verses in Psalms are about David, but were reascribed quite early to other figures, since they promise his sons an eternal covenant, a promise was not fulfilled with the Davidic dynasty. See Benjamin Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), 115. 11. Sokoloff, Palestinian Aramaic, 559. See, however, Theodor’s interpretation of ‫ משמשם‬as putting mascara (‫ )סם‬on the eyes (Gen Rab. [ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1063]). 12. I translated the verse according to the homilist’s reading of the “fool” as the yetzer, which hopes to trap the “wise in his eyes.” Literally the verse says: “There is more hope for the fool than for him.” 13. ‫ מנון‬is a cryptic hapax; see Ben-Yehuda’s Thesaurus, 3091, and Moshe Z. Kadari, Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2006), 628 (Hebrew). The midrashic interpretation is similar to that of LXX: mourning (cf. ‫)אונן‬. 14. ‫ שחוק‬has a wide range of connotations, from amusement to licentiousness. The context of this homily hints at the latter rather than the former. 15. ‫ רומחהו‬also in MSS Paris 149 and Oxford 3. MS London Add. 27169 (Cat. Margoulioth 340) reads ‫ רומיהו‬and MS Munich 97 reads ‫וכחהו‬, but both seem to be “corrections.” Perhaps ‫ רומחהו‬is the verb used to denote the throwing of a spear (‫)רומח‬, as in the Kallirian piyyut for Tisha B’Av: ‫ויורו בו חיצי קשת‬/]...[ ‫( וירמחו בו רמחים‬T-S H 14.25, l. 207). The next homily, in contrast, reads ‫שמחהו‬, gladden (reads ‫ סמך‬as ‫)שמח‬, as an answer to the light-headedness of the yetzer (‫)להסחיקך‬. The two homilies thus debate the proper way to best the yetzer: war or reconciliation. For a fuller analysis of the extremely cryptic homilies [h] and [i], see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Yezer Hara in Amoraic Literature: A Reevaluation,” Tarbiz 77 (2008): 1–38, 75–78. 16. Cited according to MS. Vat. Ebr. 60 (facsimile ed.; Jerusalem 1972, 77). 17. Homily [b] has a parallel in b. Suk. 52a (in the name of R. Assi), where it is identified explicitly with the yetzer. 18. The homilist makes use of the fact the suffix ‫ת‬- usually denotes the feminine. 19. On Thoughts 32. 20. Letter 16, cited in Robert E. Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 255 n. 54. 21. William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 328. 22. Ibid., 85–87. On this theme in Early Christianity at large, see Gustaf Aulen, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement (New York: Macmillan, 1951).



178 Notes to Pages 70–73 23. Cf. Antony’s explanation that the spirit of lust appears in the guise of a black boy because it is “black of mind and powerless (ἀσθενὴς) like a child” (VA 6). 24. See the comparison to the demonic overtaking in patristic sources in Chapter 1 above. 25. See below nn. 48–49. The other side of this debate is the question of whether humans can cast off their yetzer completely. See below, n. 101. 26. See Luitpold Wallach, “The Colloquy of Marcus Aurelius with the Patriarch Judah I,” JQR 31 (1940): 259–86; Steven Newmyer, “Antoninus and Rabbi on the Soul,” Koroth 9 (1988): 108–23, and the literature cited there. 27. The two questions are also juxtaposed in b. San. 81b, where a third question was added regarding the rising of the sun in the east. 28. Cf. b. Ber. 61a: “Animals . . . have no evil yetzer, yet we see that they injure and bite.” 29. My claim is not that this depiction is narrated as straightforward reality, although it is not an image impossible for the homilist to believe in (demons, after all, do exactly that). Rather, I claim that the figurative status of the image is vague and blurs any clear distinction between the literal and metaphoric. Compare Ruth Padel, In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 34. However, while Padel claims that such a distinction is simply an anachronism for poets of the fifth century bce (“If the distinctions and meanings are ours, not theirs, then there were no two things for them to blur or be ambiguous about,” 39), I would claim that our homily intentionally distorts these distinctions. 30. For such possible linguistic triggers, see, for example: “he was saddened in his heart” (Gen Rab. 27:4 [ed. Theodor-Albeck, 258]), “the ruler of all that is his” (Gen Rab. 59:8 [ed. Theodor-Albeck, 636]), “the stone on the well was large” (Gen Rab. 70:8 [ed. ­Theodor-Albeck, 808]). 31. According to a Geniza Fragment. See Michael Sokoloff, The Geniza Fragments of Genesis Rabba (Jerusalem: Israel Academy for Sciences and Humanities, 1982), 99. 32. Despite the alleged neutral language (‫ )אדם‬in this homily, the gender bias is obvious from the subsequent description (“take a wife or beget children”). On this issue, see in Chapter 7 below. 33. I suspect every study of the rabbinic yetzer discussed in this book mentions this source at least once. Jeremy Cohen, “Original Sin as the Evil Inclination—A Polemicist’s Appreciation of Human Nature,” HTR 73 (1980): 495–520 presents this homily as a condensed expression of the rabbinic conceptualization of the evil yetzer: “A divinely created aspect of human nature . . .  man must therefore seek to subdue—not to obliterate—it by pursuing the life prescribed in God’s revealed law. . . .  For it comprises an essential constitutive element of man and the world, without which men would not have formed families, built communities, or undertaken to earn a living, quite simply, civilized society would never have come into existence” (502). 34. This problem does not exist, of course, if you accept Isaiah’s claim that God created evil (45:7). On this biblical debate, see Israel Knohl, The Divine Symphony: The Bible’s Many Voices (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003), 51–70.



Notes to Page 73 179

35. The answer to the (rhetorical) question “But is evil yetzer good (,‫וכי יצר רע טוב‬ ‫ ”?)אתמהא‬is, of course, “No!”—as is clear from what follows: “Rather, without it. . . .” It is exactly this unthinkable idea that the evil yetzer is good that gives this homily its wit. 36. These are the sources: Gen Rab. 9:7 (discussed above), b. Sot. 47a: “Yetzer, child and woman—let the left hand thrust them away and the right hand draw them near.” y. Ber. 9:5 (14b): “Abraham our father made the evil yetzer good. As it is written: and you found his heart faithful before You.” These sources in fact espouse three different types of dialectic attitudes. The first claims that the evil yetzer is not actually evil, the second that it should not be dismissed (but treated with caution), while the third that it can be converted (cf. m. Ber. 9:5). However, all three share the rejection of the treatment of the yetzer as totally evil, denying the demand of most sources for a total battle against it. Cf. the homily in Gen Rab. that reads Prov 16:7 “When man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him (‫ ”)גם אויביו ישלים עמו‬as referring to the yetzer (Gen Rab. 54:1, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 575). As shown above, this homily presents the yetzer in stark demonic colors, claiming that with divine help even the yetzer, man’s greatest enemy, will surrender to him (for ‫ ישלים‬as surrender, see Sirach 23:6, Moshe Z. Segal, The Complete Book of Ben Sirah (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1953), 138; b. Suk. 52a: “do not read: God will pay you [‫ישלם לך‬, Prov 25:21], rather: will make peace with you [‫[ישלימנו לך‬.” 37. Gen Rab. 14:4 (discussed below) and Lev Rab. 34:1 (ed. Margulies, 771): “Happy is he that deals wisely with the poor; Abba b. Jeremiah in the name of R. Meir said that this refers to one who enthrones the good yetzer over the evil yetzer.” The homily appears in a series of interpretations to the term “poor” in Ps 41:2. The term “good yetzer” appears in two additional places in the Palestinian Talmud (y. Ber. 4:2 [7d], San. 1:6 [19c]) as part of a list of good things a person might acquire. However, it does not appear as part of a two yetzarim system, but as a characterization of the (one) yetzer as good, thus probably indicating a dialectic rather then dualistic model. This is especially clear in the first source, a plea to God “to give me a good heart, good fate, a good yetzer, a good soul” that necessarily means: “Transform my yetzer, fate, heart, soul to good.” On this prayer see Ginzberg, Commentary, 3, 230–32. On “‫ ”חלק טוב‬as the Greek εὐμοίρος, good fate, see Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II–IV Centuries CE (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1942), 72–75. 38. See the following discussion, which concludes that had God not tied the soul in humans (‫)צרורה בקרבו‬, “when misfortune (‫ )צרה‬would come to him he would throw [his soul] away (and die).” This unique description is based on the contrast between a soul that is “bound” (‫ )צרורה‬and one that is “flung away” (‫)יקלענה‬, in 1 Sam 25:29. Cf. Sifre Deut 357 (ed. Finkelstein, 428), Sifre Zut. Num 27:12 (ed. Horowitz, 319). 39. Compare also Antoninus’s assertion that had a fetus been in possession of a yetzer, “it would dig through [its mother’s] guts and leave” (Gen Rab. 34:10, ed. TheodorAlbeck, 320), thus portraying the yetzer as an id-like tendency to violence. 40. Cf. m. Hag. 2:1. On a possible connection between the beginning of Genesis Rabba and the ‫ מעשה בראשית‬homilies alluded to in the Mishna, see Menachem Kahana, “On the Order of the Bereshit Passage in Genesis Rabba,” in Higayon Leyonah (ed. J.



180 Notes to Page 74 Levinson et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006), 347–76, esp. 373–76 (Hebrew). Kahana limits his analysis to chapters 1–11 of Genesis Rabba (which expound Gen 1:1–2:3), but there is no doubt that Gen 1:26–27 and 2:7 (the two accounts of human creation) were expounded jointly (see, e.g., Menachem Kister, “‘Let Us Make Man’: Observations on the Dynamics of Monotheism,” in Sugiot bemehkar hatalmud [Jerusalem: Israel Academy for Sciences and Humanities, 2001], 28–65, 44) (Hebrew). 41. Cf. the Babylonian version, b. Ber. 16b, in which the prayer is ascribed to R. Alexander rather than R. Tanchum, and appears in the context of private prayers rather than of prayers said while entering the house of study. Two thematic differences are worth mentioning. First, the Bavli adds “subjugation to the nations” as another reason for deviating from divine will, and, second, it omits the sentence “You know we have no power to resist it.” Both changes are telling: The first hints to a political recontextualization of the yetzer in the Bavli, as is apparent in other passages as well (n. 76 below). The second indicates a more positive evaluation of human potency against the yetzer (n. 100 below). 42. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM, 1977), 114. The classic study of this issue is still Frederick R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin (Cambridge, 1903). See also the sources cited by Stanley E. Porter, “The Pauline Concept of Original Sin in Light of Rabbinic Background,” TynBul 41 (1990): 3–30, 3 n. 2. 43. Ephraim E.Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 420–30. I am not interested here in the differences between the Pauline account of Adam’s sin and the “Adamic fall” and “original sin” in the later Christian sense (see, e.g., Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994], 86–92). 44. Urbach, The Sages, 428. See especially his analysis of two Babylonian homilies on the serpent: “When the serpent came upon Eve he instilled filth into her (‫הטיל בה‬ ‫( ”)זוהמה‬b. Shab. 145b–146a; Yev. 103b; Av. Zar. 22b) and “Four died because of a serpent (‫( ”)בעטיו של נחש‬b. Shab. 55b, Bab. Bat. 17a). For other possible polemics against the idea of original sin in rabbinic literature, see Burton Visotzky, Fathers of the World (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 101–2; Gwynn Kessler, Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 121. 45. Few homilies link the yetzer to the narratives of Cain (Gen Rab. 22:6 [ed. TheodorAlbeck, 210–13]) and the Flood (Gen Rab. 34:10 [ed. Theodor-Albeck, 320–32]). However, none of these claim that it originated there. Cohen, “Original Sin,” reads AdRN B 42 (ed. Shechter, 116) as ascribing the entrance of the yetzer to Adam’s curse. However, as I have shown elsewhere (Ishay Rosen-Zvi, The Rite That Was Not: Temple, Midrash and Gender in Tractate Sotah [Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008], 31–32), this list discusses the human condition, and makes no chronological claim. Cohen bases his comparison between original sin and the evil yetzer on Raymond Martini’s Pugio fidei, which attempts to prove the acceptance of original sin in rabbinic literature by citing the rabbinic concept of yetzer hara. However, this comparison should be read in the context of medieval Christianity, rather than of ancient rabbinic Judaism. 46. On the association of the “evil heart” (or “seed”) with Adam, see 4 Ezra 3:21, 26, 4:30, 7:118, and John R. Levison, Portraits of Adam in Early Judaism (Sheffield: JSOT,



Notes to Pages 74–75 181

1988), 113–27. On the thorough difference between Fourth Ezra and the Rabbis on this point (pace Karina M. Hogan, Theologies in Conflict in 4 Ezra [Leiden: Brill, 2008], 114), see Michael Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 64, and the sources cited in n. 80 below. 47. Gen Rab. 9:4, 14:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 72, 128). 48. Note especially the appearance of the terms ‫ ברא‬and ‫( יצר‬alluding to Gen 1:27, 2:7) in this context: “Thus the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel: I created (‫)בראתי‬ your evil yetzer, and there is nothing more evil than it. . . . The one who created it (‫)ברא‬ is also the one who testifies on it that it is evil“ (Sifre Deut 45, ed. Finkelstein, 103–4), “and the lord formed (‫—)וייצר‬two yetzarim (Gen Rab. 14:4, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 128; b. Ber. 61a), “how miserable is the plant (‫ )מטעת‬of which the one who planted it (‫שמי‬ ‫ )שנוטעה‬testifies that it is evil” (Gen Rab. 34:10, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 320). Compare also God’s regrets for creating the yetzer: “Had I not created (‫ )בראתי‬the evil yetzer in him he would not have rebelled against me” (Gen Rab. 27:4, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 258); “the Holy One, blessed be He, created (‫ )ברא‬three [things] which He regretted creating (‫תהא‬ ‫)שבראן‬: the Chaldeans, the Ishmaelites, and the evil yetzer (y. Taan. 3:4 [66c], cf. b. Suk. 52b). Cf. the manner in which Fourth Ezra shies from explicitly ascribing the creation of the evil heart to God (Alden L. Thompson, Responsibility for Evil in the Theodicy of IV Ezra: A Study Illustrating the Significance of Form and Structure for the Meaning of the Book [Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1977], 336–37). 49. See the next section on the physiological aspects of the yetzer. 50. Ed. princ. adds here, “Rather it is according to R. Shimon b. Pazi; for R. Shimon b. Pazi said: Woe unto me from my creator (‫ )יוצרי‬and woe unto me from my yetzer.” I discuss this statement, transferred from the sugia below (see next note), in the afterword. 51. I shall not discuss the long, independent passage on the creation of man and woman appearing here (cf. b. Eruv. 18a and Gen Rab. 8:1, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 55). On this sugia see Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 42–46. 52. Thus MS Munich 95 and ed. princeps; MS Paris 671 reads ‫ ;רבה‬MS Oxford Opp. Add. 23 (Cat. Neubauer 366) reads ‫רבא‬. Several yetzer homilies are attributed to Rava, some of which specifically raise the question of human moral responsibility in light of the existence of the yetzer. See b. Sot. 81, Bab. Bat. 16a, San. 108b. 53. “Deadly flies” (‫ )זבובי מות‬are the yetzer. Compare y. Kid. 1:10 (61d) in which Ben Azzai divides the words differently, ‫זבוב ימות‬, reading it, somewhat more laconically, as “a dead fly”; cf. Choon L. Seow, Ecclesiastes (Anchor Bible; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1997), 311–12. 54. The beginning of the verse is cited in MSS Paris 671, Munich 95 and Oxford 366. These MSS read ‫לבו‬, contra the Masoretic version but corresponding with several biblical textual witnesses; see Benjamin Kennicot, Vetus testamentum hebraicum cum variis lectionibus, II (Oxonii, 1776–1780), 334. The homily probably reads that the “wicked one,” the yetzer, dwells in the heart (‫ )בקרב לבו‬of those who have no fear of God. In the heart of the righteous, on the other hand, the yetzer is dead (‫ ;חלל‬cf. y. Ber. 9:5, 14b). The word ‫שופט‬, an allusion to Ps 109:31 cited at the end of the homily, means



182 Notes to Pages 75–77 “ruler” here, as is explicated in Rabba’s statement below (‫)שלט‬. Thus, the homily portrays the righteous as controlled by the good yetzer, and not as controlling the evil one. 55. The bracketed words are missing from MS Oxford 366 (as a result of homoioteleuton) and were added according to MS Paris 671. 56. The sugia begins with a homily by R. Nahman on the creation of the two yetzarim (‫)וייצר‬, and then a description by Rav of the evil yetzer as a fly residing between the two openings of the heart. The verse “A wise heart at his right and a foolish one at the left” (Ecc 10:2), on which Rav’s homily is based, prompts a baraita based on the same verse, regarding the two advising kidneys, and then another one on two yetzarim that judge people (citing a similar verse: “it shall stand at the right of the poor man,” Ps 109:31). Rabba responds to this baraita with a series of sayings about the righteous and the evil. The sugia ends with a baraita enumerating the functions of various organs, among them the heart and kidneys, which were previously discussed. 57. Gen 6:5; 8:21. On “heart” as mind, see Hans W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (London: SCM Press, 1974). 58. Jacob Mann, Texts and Studies (Cincinnati, 1931), 593. 59. Since this verse was already read as referring to the yetzer in tannaitic times (cf. Sifre Deut 45, above) the homilist probably tried to explain why Scripture used this exceptional name—‫—חטאת‬to represent the yetzer. 60. For flies as demons, see Charles Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Cambridge, 1897), 37–38. Yaakov Elman compared this homily with Zoroastrian demons, also portrayed as flies; see his “ ‘He in His Cloak and She in Her Cloak’: Conflicting Images of Sexuality in Sasanian Mesopotamia,” in Discussing Cultural Influences: Text, Context and Non-Text in Rabbinic Judaism (ed. R. Ulmer; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2007), 129–63, 148. 61. One should not confuse it with ‫ מפתח הלב‬of m. Ohol. 1:9, which is a bone; see Meir Bar Ilan, “Medicine in Palestine in the First Centuries of the Common Era,” Kathedra 91 (1999): 31–78, 34 (Hebrew). 62. The homilist reads “wise” and “foolish” as describing two sides in the heart of every human (a wise heart and a foolish heart), rather than as a description of different people’s heart (a heart belonging to the wise, etc.), as the plain meaning of the verse suggests. “Left” and “right” are therefore her physical locations and not simply metaphors for moral judgment (as, e.g., in Gen 24:49, Jonah 4:11; see Seow, Ecclesiastes, 312–313). 63. On this homily, based on sophisticated acronym, see Menachem Kahana, The Two Mekhiltot to the Amalek Portion (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 306 (Hebrew). 64. John M. Reynolds, Toward a Unified Platonic Human Psychology (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2004), 157 65. Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 4.2.12, SVF III, 462. For the stoic physiology of feelings, see Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 155–65; A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 410–23; Julia Annas, The Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 106–8. 66. Stewart, “Logismoi,” 23. See, e.g., On First Principles III 3.2 and Praktikos 48.



Notes to Pages 77–79 183

67. The vagueness is inherent to the issue itself, and nonetheless the consistent engagement with bodily parts and their functions in our sugia shows that it in fact deals with physiology rather than being merely metaphoric. We can use Ruth Padel’s insights here as well: “I suspect that all fifth-century [bce] uses of these words [employing bodily parts to describe emotions and feelings] have some somatic tinge, more or less strong in different contexts, but always available, in direct relationship (here the contrast with us is very strong) with what Greeks believed was inside people” (Padel, In and Out, 36). 68. The third one is too laconic to indicate (b. Shab. 63b). 69. In most MSS this sentence appears in Aramaic and thus might be seen as an addendum to the Hebrew homily. See, however, the Geniza fragment that cites this sentence also in standard Rabbinic Hebrew: ‫( אין זכור ליצר הרע‬A. Liss, ed., Tractate Sotah with Variant Readings from Manuscripts [Jerusalem: Israeli Complete Talmud Institute, 1977–79]). 70. A similar dynamic appears in Gen Rab. 14:4. The homily sets forth a model of two yetzarim, but later “forgets” the good yetzer, which is irrelevant to human struggle. 71. See Gen Rab. 22:6 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 210–13): “How many generations the yetzer destroyed, until Abraham came”; Gen Rab. 89:1, idem, 1086: “as long as there is evil yetzer in the world, darkness and the shadow of death are in the world.” Some homilies add the hope for a future extermination of the evil yetzer from the world. See Geert H. Cohen Stuart, The Struggle in Man Between Good and Evil: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Rabbinic Concept of Yeser Hara (Kampen: Kok, 1984), 72. 72. The source is cited according to MS Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliotek 140). I refer to important variants in the two Yemenite MSS (=Y), Oxford, Cat. Neubauer 2677 and NY, JTS Enelow 270, which represent a different textual family, in the notes below. 73. Y: It is called “the hidden one” for the evil yetzer is hidden in man’s heart. 74. Y: ‫להתגדר עליהן‬, other MSS ‫להתגרות בהן‬. The meaning is the same. 75. The phrases “the eastern/western sea” (‫האחרון‬/‫ )הים הקדמוני‬may signify temporal as well as spatial positions. Thus, the homilist could read them as indicating periods (old vs. new) rather than directions (western vs. eastern), and thus interpret them symbolically as referring to the two destroyed Temples. 76. In order to show the dialectic movement of this sugia between personal and collective contexts, I present the sequence of the homilies, marking their context—P(ersonal) or C(ollective)—in parentheses: Rav Yehuda: yetzer shall be slain at the end of days (P: righteous vs. wicked); Rav Assi: the yetzer as floss and rope (P: “the pullers of sin”); Rav Ezra: the seven names of yetzer (P and C: see below); Baraita: yetzer as ‫( צפוני‬C: “it gazed upon the first temple and destroyed it”); Story: Abaye and the couple (P: “the greater a man the greater his yetzer”); Rav Isaac: the daily renewal of the yetzer (P); R. Shimon b. Lakish on the renewal of the yetzer (P); Tanna deve Rabbi Ishmael on the house of study (P: “if that repulsive one assails you”); Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani (P: “the yetzer incites man in this world”); Rav Huna (C: Hos 4:12); Rava on the poor man’s sheep (P: “and a vagrant came to the rich man”); R. Johanan (P: “man has a small organ”); R. Huna b. Adda on the things God regrets creating (C: “Chaldeans, Ishmael, exile, and the evil yetzer”); R. Hamma b. Hanina (C: Jer 18:6). Some homilies mix personal and collective contexts together. Thus in R. Ezra’s homily on the seven names of the yetzer, it is presented as a personal enemy (“the



184 Notes to Pages 79–80 yetzer of a man’s heart is evil from childhood,” Gen 8:21) as well as a collective one (“remove the obstacle from the way of my people,” Isa 57:14, cf. Ezek 36:26; Joel 2:20). Similarly, the ‫( צפוני‬Joel 2:20) is “hidden in a man’s heart” but responsible for the destruction of the Temples. This mixture allows for insertion of the national perspective into the more common personal image of yetzer. Indeed, the sugia as a whole ends with the former and it seems to be constructed to lead in that direction. 77. This seems to be exegetically based on the previous verse “I will no longer let you be a mockery among the nations” (Joel 2:19), which indicates a national context for the “northerner.” 78. It is against this backdrop that Abaye’s final remark, “Against sages more than against anyone,” should be understood. See Chapter 6 below on the sexualization of the yetzer in this sugia. 79. Satan as a messenger of God: “R. Johanan said: [Satan was] like a man who is incited by others”; “R. Isaac said: Satan’s grief was stronger than Job’s”; “R. Levi said: Satan was acting ofr the sake of Heaven (‫)לשם שמים‬.” On this sugia, see Hananel Mack, He Was Nothing but a Parable: Job in Rabbinic Literature (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2005), 25 (Hebrew). 80. For comparisons between Fourth Ezra’s evil heart and rabbinic yetzer, see Wolfgang Harnisch, Verhängnis und Verheissung der Geschichte. Untersuchungen Zum Zeitund Geschichtsverständnis im 4. Buch Esra und in der Syr. Baruchapokalypse (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 1969), 44–51; Egon Brandenburger, Die Verborgenheit Gottes im Weltgeschehen: Das Literarische und Theologische Problem Des 4. Esrabuches (Zürich: Theologisches Verlag, 1981), 169–76; Klaus Koch, “Esras erste Vision,” BZ 22 (1978): 46– 75; Stone, Fourth Ezra, 63–64; Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 142–44, Thompson, Responsibility, 49–65. Some scholars (Porter, Stone) emphasize the similarities between the “evil heart” and the yetzer, while others (Harnish, Thompson) stress the differences. Karina Hogan recently returned to the theory discussed (and rejected) by Koch, “Erste Vision,” 60–61, n. 10, that Fourth Ezra’s “cor maglinum” is nothing but a translation of the rabbinic ‫יצר הרע‬, since “in rabbinic texts the term ‫ יצר‬is used almost interchangeably with ‫לבב‬, heart” (Hogan, Theologies, 114). This thesis, however, is very hard to maintain for “evil heart” does not appear in Qumran or in rabbinic literature as a set-phrase at all (the only exception is “evil heart” in m. Avot 2:9, which is a mode of behavior rather than an entity; see my discussion of in Chapter 1 above, as well as in “Deve R. Ishmael,” 61 n. 87). While “yetzer” and “heart” are indeed interchangeable in these corpora, this is nowhere true for the idiom “evil yetzer.” “Evil heart” may indeed come from the same verses in Genesis as “evil yetzer,” but also has other, independent biblical sources (Jer 3:17, 7:24, 11:8, 16:12, 18:12; Prov 25:20, 26:23). Furthermore, as several scholars have noted (Koch, “Erste Vision”; Cohen Stuart, Struggle, 143; Thompson, Responsibility, 333–36), Fourth Ezra does not have a consistent terminology, and the “evil heart” is rather freely interchangeable with “evil seed” (4:28–32, 8:6, 9:31), “evil root” (3:22, 8:53), and even “evil thought” (7:92). 81. The evil heart appears both in the speeches of Ezra (first in 3:21) and Uriel (4:4). While the two protagonists debate its moral and eschatological consequences, the basic



Notes to Pages 80–81 185

a­ nthropological model is shared by both. If we are to accept the idea that “the author was representing a debate that was going on in his time” (Hogan, Theologies, 36), then we must conclude that the existence of the evil heart was shared by both parties, whoever they were. 82. On the double, cosmic-national, characteristic of the “evil heart” (and thus of Fourth Ezra’s ethics), see Thompson, Responsibility, 267–69. 83. See Urbach’s thesis on “external” dualistic concepts “penetrating” rabbinic literature in the post-tannaitic era in The Sages, 248–50. 84. This implies, of course, that Fourth Ezra was not created in the circle of the Yavne sages, pace Bruce W. Longenecker, “Locating Fourth Ezra: A Consideration of Its Social Setting and Functions,” JSJ 28 (1997): 271–93. For a critique of Longenecker, see Hogan, Theologies, 225–27. 85. B. Yom. 69b led many to believe that the Bavli ascribed an evil yetzer even to God himself. Although I find this idea theologically appealing (see, e.g., David Hartman, A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism [New York: Free Press, 1985], 215–17), I suspect its textual basis is rather shaky. The Bavli explains that the men of the Great Assembly renamed God “powerful” (‫)גיבור‬, claiming that “this is his true power, that He dominates His yetzer, for he is patient to the wicked.” This reading, however, is found only in MSS Oxford 366 and Vat. Ebr. 134. In contrast, MS Munich 95 and a Spanish edition read only: “This is His power, that he dominates His anger,” without any reference to the yetzer. MS Munich 6 and MS JTS Enelow 271 add: “Power, [for] the powerful one is he who dominates his yetzer and the Holy One is patient to the wicked.” This reading quotes Mishna Avot to prove that patience is indeed power, but does not attribute a yetzer to God himself. It seems that the prooftext from Avot was only later embedded into the statement itself, producing the image of God controlling his yetzer. Cf. the parallel statement in y. Ber. 7:3, 11c: “He is indeed powerful; for he sees his home destroyed and is silent.” 86. This is not an isomorphic model, equating the soul with the cosmos and selfcontrol with political control, but a mythological one, in which the yetzer responsible for personal sin is also responsible for collective suffering. 87. Compare the development of the image of Shekhina in rabbinic literature. See Peter Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), 79–102. 88. E.g., y. Ber. 9:5, 14b: “Abraham made his evil yetzer good . . . but David . . . killed it in his heart, since it says: and my heart is slain (‫ )חלל‬within me (Ps 109:22).” B. Ber. 61a: “The righteous are ruled by their good yetzer, as it says: and my heart is slain (‫ )חלל‬within me (Ps 109:22).” The ‫ חלל‬heart of the verse (read as “slain” and not as “hollow”) becomes in the homilies a slaughtered yetzer. Cf. b. Kid. 40a (and parallels, op. cit.): “If a man sees he is being overpowered by his yetzer he should wear black clothes and go far away where he is not known and do what his heart wants,” and compare Gen Rab. 67:8, ed. Theodor­A lbeck, 763: “The evil ones are dominated by their hearts . . . but the righteous dominate their hearts,” in which “heart” means “the yetzer” (as in b. Av. Zar. 5a: “Their yetzer is given to them, they are not given to their yetzer”). See also Gen Rab. 47:4, ed. TheodorAlbeck, 258, in the name of R. Eibo, on the words and he was saddened unto his heart (Gen 6:6)—“I regretted creating the evil yetzer in him.”



186 Notes to Pages 81–83 89. See e.g. y. Ber. 9:5, 14a: “made the evil yetzer good”; San. 10:1, 28a: making a “prod” (‫ )דרבן‬for the yetzer; b. Ned. 32a: “repentance and good deeds”; Sot. 47b: “the left should push away and the right should bring closer”; San. 43b: “one who sacrificed his yetzer.” 90. MS Florence and a gloss in MS Munich 95, as well as Ed. Princeps in b. Ber. 5a, present another technique: “If he is able to defeat him, good, and if not, he should read the Shema, for it says on your beds”; this sentence, however, is absent from MSS. Oxford, Paris, and Munich and seems to have been added in order to fit the context of the sugia. 91. On this technique, see Sinkewicz, Evagrius, 256 n. 59 and the references cited there. Here is Evagrius’s version: in order to “escape defiling and harmful thoughts,” he instructs: “Seated in your cell, gather together your mind, give heed to the day of your death, and then look at the dying of your body. Consider the situation, accept the suffering, condemn the vanity that is in this world” (The Foundation of the Monastic Life, 9; Sinkewicz, Evagrius, 9–10). On the systematization of the demonological tradition in Evagrius, see Chapter 2 above. 92. Mandelbaum’s explanation of the debate (ad loc.) is not clear to me. 93. E.g., 1 Sam 28:15, Isa 14:16, and 23:11, Job 9:6. See Ludwig Koehler et al., The Hebrew Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 1182–83. The root ‫ רגז‬is used in rabbinic literature only when paraphrasing biblical language. 94. He may mean something like training the yetzer by bringing it close enough to sin for arousal without actually committing the sin. Such a practice is apparent in the narrative about the two sages who walk by the brothel “to dominate their yetzer” (b. Av. Zar. 72a), as well as the description of David gazing at his concubines daily without having intercourse with them, in order to irritate his evil yetzer (y. San. 2:2, 20a). 95. On Thoughts 16. Compare: “the angels . . . urge us to turn our irascibility against the demons. These latter, on the other hand, drag toward worldly desires and compel the irascible part, contrary to its nature, to fight with people” (Praktikos 24; cf. 42). See Sinkewicz, Evagrius, 140; Columba Stewart, “Evagrius Ponticus on Prayer and Anger,” Religions of Late Antiquity (ed. R. Valantasis; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 65– 81, 67. For the origins of this reading of Ps 4:5 in monastic literature, see David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 54–55, Richard A. Layton, “Propatheia: Origen and Didymus on the Origin of the Passions,” Vigiliae Christianae 54 (2000): 262–82, 266. 96. See esp. Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999); idem, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); G. Hasan-Rokem, Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Hasan-Rokem uses the concept of cultural interchange (28–54), while Boyarin that of blurred boundaries (1–33); both, however, share the criticism of the concept of “influence.” Cf. Israel J. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (trans. B. Harshav and J. Chipman; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 97. See, e.g., Rufinus’s preface to the third book of Origen’s On First Principles, promising that it reveals “all the dark and hidden ways in which they [the demons] creep into the



Notes to Pages 83–84 187

hearts of men.” Cf. Athanasius’s assertion that “one who receives through the Spirit the gift of discrimination of spirits might be able to to recognise [the demons’] traits—for example, which of them are less wicked, and which more; and in what kind of pursuit each of them exerts himself, and how each of them is overturned and expelled” (Vita Antonii 22). 98. Indeed, later literature has more detailed and systematic treatment of this issue. See, e.g., Moshe Idel, “The War between the Yetzarim,” in Peace and War in Jewish Culture (ed. A. Bar-Levav; Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2006), 99–144. 99. ‫] בטמאינו‬...[ ‫] סררנו ברך‬...[ ‫] נמלאו מיעינו‬...[ ‫] מר לכליות‬...[ ‫] לא כפפנו יצר‬...[ ‫כיבדנו לבב‬ ‫( ’ירך וכו‬Aharon Mirsky, Yosse ben Yosse: Poems [Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1991], 221 [Hebrew]). Cf. Chapter 3 above, n. 102 100. See, for example, “when [Israel] are engaged in Torah and good deeds, they are handed their yetzer (‫ )יצרן מסור בידן‬and not handed to their yetzer” (b. Av. Zar. 5b); “Rulers (‫—)מושלים‬those are those who rule the evil yetzer” (b. Bab. Mez. 32b); “that is the man who can tyrannize (‫ )הרודה‬his yetzer . . . the man who can overpower (‫ )המתגבר‬his yetzer” (b. Meg. 15b), and more. The Bavli’s optimism regarding the yetzer was already noticed by Michael L. Satlow, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 158. Cf. also Hogan’s observation that Uriel and Ezra represent two different views regarding human ability to overcome the “evil heart” in Fourth Ezra (Theologies, 119). 101. See b. Bab. Bat. 17a: “Three were not controlled (‫ )שלט‬by their yetzer: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for concerning them it was written: ‫ כל‬,‫ מכל‬,‫בכל‬.” That the blessing “in all things,” ‫בכל‬, is read as referring to control of the yetzer means that it is viewed as the hardest task of all. Cf. also Gen Rab. 59:7, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 636: “And God blessed Abraham in all things—He granted him control over his yetzer (‫)שהשליטו ביצרו‬.” Note that while, in Genesis Rabba, “control” (‫ )שלט‬means dominion, in the homily in b. Bab. Bat. “not controlled” means a complete release from the yetzer (just as in the following homily about those who were not controlled by the angel of death, i.e., they did not suffer death). Indeed, “control” regarding yetzer can simply mean existence: b. San. 91b asks “from when does yetzer control man,” while in Gen Rab. 34:10 (ed. Theodor­A lbeck, 321) the question is “when is yetzer planted in man.” Cf. also “yetzer does not control (‫ )שולט‬angels” in Gen Rab. 48:11 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 488). 102. Michael L. Satlow, “Male and Female They Created Her,” in Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine (edited by Lee I. Levine; Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2004), 486–504, 497 (Hebrew). Cf. also: “Middle Platonists, Neoplatonists, and even some church fathers (most notably Origen) essentially followed the Platonic notion that the soul had a rational part that struggled with its ‘lower’ part(s). . . . When the Rabbis, then, understood what it meant to be human . . .  they drew on ideas that were popular in the non-Jewish, and some segments of the Jewish world around them” (Michael L. Satlow, “And on the Earth You Shall Sleep: Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism,” Journal of Religion 83 [2003]: 204–24, 212). 103. Gen Rab. 14:4, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 128, cf. b. Ber. 61a. Its specific exegetical context (accounting for the different spelling of the word ‫וייצר‬, “and God created,” as it appears in regard to the creation of man [with a double yud] and that of animals [a single yud]) notwithstanding, this homily unmistakably deals with the singular connection



188 Notes to Page 84 between the evil yetzer and humans. This is clear from its unique presentation of the yetzer as human consciousness of mortality, which animals lack (see n. 38 above). This context is further strengthened by the redaction of the cycle, which places it right after a series of homilies discussing the intermediate position occupied by humans in the cosmic hierarchy, between animals and angels (‫ יצירה מן העליונין ויצירה מן‬:‫ שתי יצירות‬- ‫וייצר‬ ‫התחתונין‬, “vayizer [Gen 2:7]—two creations: creation from above and creation from below [i.e., angel-like vs. animal-like]”). The homilies list both similarities and differences between humans and animals (‫)בהמה‬, and in this context yetzer hara should be read as yet another difference between them. Thus, although I would hesitate to read this homily as a conscious polemic against the Platonic identification of evil with the bestial part of humans, it clearly takes a very different, even opposite, position. On the bestiality of human lower parts in the Platonic model, see Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 31. On its influence on Jewish Hellenistic writers see Chapter 3 n. 58 above. 104. See Chapter 6 n. 16 below 105. This is not to say that the rabbis did not share many of those practices, but that these practices are not to be found in the struggle against the yetzer. Among the practices detailed in the sources above (especially adjuration, Torah study, and different kinds of prayers), there is none that resembles the classic ascetic activities, i.e., partial or total abstention from food, sex, or wealth. On the popularity of such practices in late antiquity among pagans, Christians, and Jews, see Richard Finn Op, Asceticism in the GraecoRoman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Cf. Steven Fraade, “Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism,” in Jewish Spirituality, vol. 1: From the Bible through the Middle Ages (ed. A. Green; London: Routledge, 1986), 253–88. 106. Not only does the adjuration of the yetzer resemble a well known anti-demonic practice (see Chapter 3 n. 46 above), but also prayers are known to be effective for these purposes (David Flusser, “Qumran and Jewish Apotropaic Prayers,” IEJ 16 [1966]: 194– 205). On demons and Torah study, see Joshua Levinson, “Enchanting Rabbis: Contest Narratives between Rabbis and Magicians in Late Antiquity,” JQR 100 (2010): 54–94. 107. See Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Bilhah the Temptress: ‘The Testament of Reuben’ and the Birth of Sexuality,” JQR 96 (2006): 65–94, 83–86. 108. The rabbinic yetzer is of course only one victim of a wider tendency to “psychologize” in modern scholarship. “Modern scholars are in varying degrees the heirs of the Romantic movement of northern Europe. They have tended to emphasize the subjective religious experience as the stuff of religious history” (Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978], 9). 109. For descriptions of Frankel’s method of “midrash as high literature,” see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 8–10; Joshua Levinson, “Introduction,” in Higayon LeYona (ed. J. Levinson et al; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006), 28–31 (Hebrew). On his deep influence on the study of talmudic aggada (especially in his opposition to the “kernel of truth” school), see Hillel Newman, “Closing the Circle: Yonah Frankel, the Talmudic Story, and Rabbinic History,” in How Should Rabbinic Literature Be Read in the Modern World? (ed. M. Kraus;



Notes to Pages 85–86 189

Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2006), 105–35. Cf. also Frankel’s own testimony in the introduction to his latest book: “We can see the universities, the colleges and the other institutes of higher learning filling lecture halls and seminar rooms with classes in Midrash and Aggadah as Hebrew literature, specifically as Hebrew literature. . . . What does this generation find in aggada? . . . Our academic youth is enamored with aggada because it understands, deeply and truly, human as human. To this we should add that the beautiful and sharp forms of the aggada can only be discovered using modern literary theory, and now we have the answer to the question of the power of Aggada in our time” (Jonah Frankel, The Aggadic Story: Unity of Form and Content [Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001], 9 [Hebrew]; translation and emphasis mine). For two current readings that develop Frankel’s psychological approach to aggada, see Admiel Kosman, Tractate Women: Wisdom, Love, Faithfulness, Passion, Beauty, Sex, Holiness (Jerusalem: Keter, 2007) (Hebrew), and Ruth Calderon, Market, Home, Heart (ed. H. Pesah; Jerusalem: Keter, 2001) (Hebrew). 110. Frankel, Form and Content, 101. 111. Jonah Frankel, Darke Haagada Vehamidrash (Givataim: Yad Latalmud, 1991), 498 (Hebrew). 112. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Glasgow, 1902), 174–75. 113. Frankel follows in the footsteps of many theologians, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, who tended to read ancient Jewish and Christian anthropologies with a heavy psychological bent. See Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 61–62. The Bultmanian reading of Romans 7 is telling in this regard: “‘I’ and ‘I,’ self and self, are at war with each other; i.e. to be innerly divided, or not to be at one with one’s self, is the essence of human existence under sin” (Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament [London: SCM, 1952], 245; cf. Rudolf Bultmann, “Romans 7 and the Anthropology of Paul,” in Existence and Faith [trans. Schubert M. Ogden; London: Meridian, 1960], 175, and the critique of his position by Sanders, Paul, 474–85). See also Charles Dodd’s reading of Romans 7 as an “intense experience of divided personality. So complete . . . that the man feels that some alien power in him is actually performing his actions” (Charles H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans [London, 1932], 114). On the split “ego,” cf. Hans D. Betz, “The Concept of the ‘Inner Human Being’ in the Anthropology of Paul,” NTS 46 (2000): 315–41, 337. For these writes also alien powers are but literary manifestations of (perverted) human feelings. For modern psychologizations of the struggle with evil powers, see the survey of Linwood Urban, A Short History of Christian Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 112–16. 114. Brakke, Demons, 52. Cf. “The familiarity of this scenario can seduce the modern reader: Evagrius, it seems, has identified the mixed motives and pleasure in virtue that run through the ego. . . . But he interprets this experience not in terms of mixed motives and a divided self (!), but in terms of successive demons that cooperate in a multistage attack” (62). As Brakke (245) shows the psychologization of Evagrius’s demonology begun already with his student, John Cassian, who transformed his eight demons into “vices.” For Cassian’s adaptation of Evagrius’s “eight thoughts,” cf. Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 65–66.



190 Notes to Pages 86–89 115. This opposition is not necessarily true for the Freudian tripartite Soul. The ontological status of the Freudian divisions of the soul might be much higher and much closer to the classical divisions than the Jamesian, as Price claims (A. W. Price, “Plato and Freud,” in The Person and the Human Mind: Issues in Ancient and Modern Philosophy [ed. C. Gill; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990], 247–70). Cf., however, Grasimos Santas, Plato and Freud: Two Theories of Love (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), and Nancy Sherman, “Emotional Agents,” in The Analytic Freud (ed. M. P. Levine; London: Routledge, 2000), 154–76. For a strong argument against Freudian readings of ancient “psychology” in general, see S. R. F. Price, “The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidoros,” in Before Sexuality (ed. D. A. Halperin et al.; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 265–387. A wider discussion of this major issue is beyond the scope of this study.

Chapter 5 1. See, e.g., b. Ber. 10b regarding the legitimacy of Elisha’s acceptance of benefits for his service. 2. The Sifra lists five biblical laws as vulnerable to the doubts of the yetzer (as well as the “nations of the world”): “eating pork, wearing two diverse kinds together (‫)כלאיים‬, the rite for one who refuses a levirate marriage (‫)חליצת יבמה‬, purifying the leper, and the ritual of the scapegoat.” In the amoraic version of this homily in Pesikta de-Rav Kahana the list has been modified to only four items: the rite of ‫ כלאיים‬,‫חליצה‬, the scapegoat, and the red heifer. The amoraic list, unlike the tannaitic one, includes only commandments described in Scripture as “statute” (‫)חקה‬. The logic of this modified list is further clarified from the explanations added to it in this homily, according to which the shared principle of all these commandments is not simply their strange character, as in the Sifra, but, more specifically, their inner paradoxical nature. Thus, for example, a man is forbidden from taking his sister-in-law (Lev 18:16), but is obliged to do so in the context of a levirate marriage (Deut 25:5). In the homilist’s words: “When his brother [is] alive [his wife] is forbidden to [her brother-in-law]; when he dies without sons she is suddenly permitted?!” (PdRK 4:6, ed. Mandelbaum, 71). It is thus the self-contradictory nature of these statutes that make them especially vulnerable to the provocations of the yetzer. Indeed, the whole context of this passage in PdRK is the paradoxical nature of the law of red heifer: “All that have the care of a Red Heifer make their garments ritually unclean but the Red Heifer itself makes clean the unclean. Who other than the One can do so? . . . Is it not the ‘Unique One of the world’ (‫( ”?)יחידו של עולם‬PdRK 4:1, ed. Mandelbaum 54). B. Yom. 67b lists a different (and much longer) series of commandments that are vulnerable to doubt. See Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 378–79 and nn. 40–41, Moshe Weinfeld, “Things Which Satan/the Nations/Yetzer Hara Criticize,” in Atarah leHayim (ed. D. Boyarin et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000), 105–11, Shlomo Z. Havlin, “Hukim Umishpatim: In the Torah, Rabbinic Literature and Maimonides,” Bar Ilan 26–27 (1995): 155–66. 3. The closest is Abraham answering the yetzer that “I shall walk in my integrity” (‫ ;אני בתומי אלך‬b. San. 89b) or “never the less” (‫ ;אף על פי כן‬Gen Rab. 56:4).



Notes to Pages 90–91 191

4. B. Yev. 52a, Kid. 12b. Note the Talmud’s explanation that the objection is “due to licentiousness” (‫)משום פריצותא‬. 5. From very early on. See David Daube, “The Duty of Procreation,” PCA 74 (1977): 10–25, and Jeremy Cohen, Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). 6. The legal power of intercourse is developed especially in m. Yev. chap 6, which begins thus: “A man who had sex with his deceased brother’s wife, whether in error, under constraint or willingly . . . has thereby acquired her [as a wife]; and there is no distinction regarding the manner of intercourse.” 7. This problematic is by no means limited to the rabbis, for “many Jews of the first century had a sense that they were commanded by God to do that which God himself considered sinful” (Boyarin, Radical Jew, 159, referring especially to Paul, Philo, and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs). Their solutions, however, differ, as Boyarin convincingly shows. On proper and improper intentions during marital intercourse in rabbinic literature, see Michael L. Satlow, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 296–302. 8. Gwynn Kessler reads this homily as part of a larger process of “theologizing procreation,” which takes place in Lev Rab. 14 as a whole: “The passage emphasizes and concretizes that verse—God literally gathers David in when God inserts the semen into his mother’s womb—in keeping with the emphasis placed on God’s, not one’s mother or father’s, role in procreation set forth in almost the entirety of Leviticus Rabbah 14” (Gwynn Kessler, Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009], 98). She further places this theologization in the larger context of the anxiety about sex, namely that “this (the embryo, and ultimately the child) can come from that (sex, semen, all the more so blood).” Thus “In Leviticus Rabbah 14 . . . there is hardly any sex” (123). For an (unlikely, to my mind) reading of this homily as a parody of Jesus’ miraculous conception, see Burton Visotzky, Fathers of the World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 104–5. 9. This, rather than the immortality of the soul, is the prevalent meaning of “the world to come” (‫ )עולם הבא‬in rabbinic literature. See Peter Schäfer, “Die Lehre von zwei Welten Im 4. Buch Esra und in der Tannaitischen Literature,” in Studien Zur Geshichte Und Theologie des Rabbinischen Judentums (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 245–54; Chaim ­Milikowsky, “Gehenom and the Sinners of Israel in Seder Olam” Tarbiz 55 (1986): 311–43 (Hebrew). Milikowsky (ibid., n. 40) is correct in criticizing Schäfer’s attempt to supply a conclusive ratio, for many sources can be read either way. In fact, the two doctrines—remote in origin as they might be—are so blended in rabbinic literature that it is questionable whether the rabbis had a clear distinction between the two at all, as was observed already by ­Joseph Klausner, The Messianic Idea in Israel, from Its Beginning to the Completion of the Mishnah (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 408. 10. Cf. m. Avot 3:1 in which one’s future “account and reckoning” (‫ )דין וחשבון‬comes only after one has become “worm and maggot” (‫)לרימה ולתוליעה‬, thus evidently referring to post-resurrection judgment. Compare: “So will the Holy One bring the soul, put it into the body, and judge them together as it is said ‘He summoned the heaven above’—this



192 Notes to Pages 91–92 refers to the soul, ‘and the earth’—this refers to the body, and only then: ‘to judge him’ [Ps 50:4]” (Mek. RS 16:1, ed. Epstein-Melammed, 77, cf. Lev Rab. 4:5, ed. Margulies, 87–91; b. Shab. 91a–b). On this parable, see Marc Bregman, “The Parable of the Lame and the Blind: Epiphanius’ Quotation from an Apocryphon of Ezekiel,” JTS 42 (1991): 125–38; Marc G. Hirshman, Torah for the Entire World (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999), 154–57 (Hebrew); Menachem Kister, “Achor Vakedem,” in Higayon Leyonah (ed. J. Levinson et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2007), 231–59, 254–59. The same homily appears in Sifre Deut 306, ed. Finkelstein, 341, with an appendix explicitly mentioning resurrection: “and whence do we learn that this refers to the resurrection of the dead? From the verse Come from the four winds, O breath, and breath upon those slain that they may live (Ezek 37:9).” The homily thus substitutes the post-mortem judgment of the soul (alluded to in Antoninus’s question to Rabbi: “when man dies and the body ceases to be, does God then make him stand trial?”) with future resurrection, when body and soul can be judged together. Both Mishna Avot and this Mekhilta specifically discuss resurrection in the context of the future judgment, using it as a way to mete out judgment to the complete individual. For the rabbis, therefore, resurrection must be universal and cannot be kept for the righteous only (as per the belief Josephus attributes to the Pharisees), as it is a necessary prologue to the future judgment. I thus agree with Hayim Milikowsky’s assertion that for the rabbis “the term ‘the world to Come’ has more to do with the area of reward and punishment . . . than to the future redemption” (“Gehenom” 321 n. 40). 11. I divided the maxim according to my analysis, which identifies a tripartite structure. It begins and ends with two doctrines of judgment, both deducing from the ordinary, habitual state of affairs (“the born are to die,” “born despite yourself”) the judgment expected in the future (“He shall judge,” “you shall give account”; note the future tense: -‫עתיד ל‬, in both cases). In between, the maxim refutes some possible reservations regarding the future judgment. This creates a developmental deduction (which explains the transformation from “He” at the beginning, to “you” at the end): If (a) he is going to judge (as is deduced from the current state of affairs), and (b) you have no escape, then (c) you are going to be judged, whether you like it or not. 12. Compare “the account book (‫ )פנקס‬lies open, and the hand writes” (m. Avot 3:16). 13. Yitzhak Baer, Studies and Essays in the History of the Jewish People (Jerusalem: Israeli Historical Society, 1985), 82 (Hebrew), noticed the proximity between our Mishna and Plato, Phaedo 107c: “For if death were an escape from everything, it would be a boon to the wicked, for when they die they would be freed from the body and from their wickedness together with their souls. But now, since the soul is seen to be immortal, it cannot escape.” Note, however, that Plato discusses the immortality of the soul (and thus judgment in the afterlife), while the rabbis talk about the future judgment of humans after resurrection, soul and body together. 14. See, e.g., t. San. 13:1 “Those who are average go down to Gehenna and scream and come up again and are healed. . . . And concerning them, Hannah said: the Lord kills and brings to life, brings down to Sheol and brings up (1 Sam 2:6).” In our case, unlike most appearances of Sheol in rabbinic literature, there is no specific biblical quotation (the hapax term ‫ בית מנוס‬is not biblical), but simply an allusion to the biblical concept



Notes to Pages 92–93 193

i­tself. On rabbinic Gehenna, see Saul Lieberman, “Some Aspects of Afterlife in Early Rabbinic Literature,” in H. A. Wolfson Jubilee Volume (ed. Lieberman et al.; Jerusalem: Merkaz, 1965), 2, 495–532. 15. See Ecc 9:10; Ps 6:6, 115:17; Job 7:9, 14:13. Cf., however, Job 14:13, Amos 9:3, and Ps 139:7–8, which claim in a clear polemic tone that God’s control reaches even to Sheol. According to these verses, “Yahweh claims dominion over all areas. His power must therefore extend even into the gloomy reaches of Sheol” (James Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993], 32). 16. This may be a contested point in biblical theology, for while some writers insist that “he who goes down to Sheol does not return.” (Job 7:9), others claim the exact opposite: “The Lord . . . casts down into Sheol and raises up” (1 Sam 2:6). This is especially true of many Psalms, of which Jon Levenson remarks: “Given how widespread the belief is that there is no return from Sheol, is it not ironic how much of our information about it comes from those who thank God for redeeming them from it or who petition him to do so?” (Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel:‎The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006], 46). See also Barr, Garden, 28–36. 17. Cf. Sifre Deut 306: “R. Simai used to say: There is no scriptural lesson lacking a reference to the resurrection of the dead but we do not know how to interpret it properly” (ed. Finkelstein, 341); t. Hul. 10:16: “R. Yaakov says: there is no commandment in the Torah which does not have . . . resurrection in it” (ed. Zukermandel, 512). 18. The Sadducees are presented both by Josephus (War 2:165; Ant. 13:297; 18:17) and by Acts (23:8) as opposing resurrection, probably due to the assumption, shared also by modern scholars, that it is not mentioned in the Bible. 19. Levenson, Resurrection, 33. On this passage in the Bavli, see also Christine E. Hayes, “Displaced Self-Perceptions: The Deployment of ‘Minim’ and Romans in B. Sanhedrin 90b–91a,” in Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine (ed. Hayim Lapin; Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 1998), 249–89. 20. Neil Gillman, The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 1997), 129. 21. Cf. 7:32. On the possible relationships between the “underworld” and the “treasury of souls” here, see Michael E. Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 99; Stone, Features of the Eschatology of IV Ezra (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 145. There are, of course, other possible midpoint doctrines between the extremes of Sheol on the one hand and resurrection on the other. See, for example, the one offered by 2 Baruch (21:23–24; 23:4–5; 30:1–2). On these and other speculations regarding the place of the souls and their fate, see Harry Sysling, ­Tehiyyat Ha-metim: The Resurrection of the Dead in the Palestinian Targums of the Pentateuch and Parallel Traditions in Classical Rabbinic Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 192–209. 22. “For all is His” (thus he cannot take bribes, even if he should wish to) and “­everything is according to the reckoning” (thus humans are totally accountable for their deeds).



194 Notes to Pages 93–95 23. In a typical midrashic move the homilist reads rea (friend) as ra (evil), thus interpreting the verse as saying: “Do not believe in the evil [yetzer] when it tells you to trust the ‫[ אלוף‬the forgiving God].” 24. George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, the Age of the Tannaim (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924), vol. 1, 393. 25. Urbach, Sages, 448–61. 26. Ibid., 525–41, b. Bab. Bat. 10a. 27. Such a tension is already present in Neh 8:9–12. Cf. “[God] said to them: Is it possible that a King sits on the seat of judgment and both the books of the livings and the books of the dead are open in front of me, and Israel will sing praise to me?” (b. R. H. 32b; Arak. 10b). 28. Some homilies present the very act of blowing the Shofar as generating the transformation from judgment to mercy: “When Israel take up their Shofarot and blow them, the Holy One Blessed be He rises from the throne of judgment and takes his seat on the throne of mercy, and is filled with mercy for them and turns the measure of justice into the measure of mercy” (PdRK 23:3, ed. Mandelbaum, 336–37). The next homily summarizes: “Happy are the people, knowers of trumpeting—happy are the people who know how to seduce (‫ )לפתות‬their creator with their [shofar] blast” (PdRK 23:4, ed. Mandelbaum, 338). 29. The scandalous nature of such behavior for a defendant is well exemplified by Josephus, who ascribes similar behavior to Herod, when brought before a Sanhedrin as a suspect of (mass) murder (Ant. 14:171–73). Compare also the (coercive) change of clothing, from white to black, of the woman suspected of adultery (m. Sot. 1:6). 30. The Mishna (8:8) mentions repentance, sacrifice, the Day of Atonement, and death as vehicles for atonement. Other sources add suffering. On the tradition of “four divisions of atonements” (t. Kip. 4:6–8 and parallels), see Avraham Aderet, From Destruction to Redemption: The Way of Yavneh in Reconstruction of the Nation (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), 158–68 (Hebrew). 31. Sifra Emor 12:2 (ed. Weiss 91d–92a); b. Ker. 7a; Shev. 13a. 32. Cf. Gen Rab. 56:10 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 607); Lev Rab. 29:9, ed. Margulies, 682; PdRK 23:9, ed. Mandelbaum, 342. 33. The narrator presents the logic of “measure for measure” using legal metaphor: Abraham was defending God from this accusation, and so he asks God to be the advocate (‫ )סניגור‬of his descendants when they get in trouble. 34. On ‫ שיחות‬as deception, see Theodor-Albeck ad loc. 35. The formal answer suffices since Abraham did not argue for the inherent immorality of the command, but only the contradiction with previous commandments. Other homilies, however, do raise moral issues. See the following homily in Gen Rab. 56:10 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 607), which parallels the Yerushalmi, but instead of “I have overcome my yetzer,” it reads “I have overcome my mercy”! Compare also the homily presenting the angels crying when they see the sight (Gen Rab. 56:5, quoting Isa 33:7). On the various rabbinic traditions regarding the Akeda, see Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice: The Akedah (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 1993).



Notes to Page 96 195

36. I translated according to the simple meaning of the word in the Bible (cf. Job 8:14, 31:24). See, however, in note 38 below that the Midrash may well have interpreted it differently. 37. The comparison of the test of Abraham to that of Job allows the homilist to speculate that in Abraham’s case also “the test was initiated not by God but by Satan” (James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998], 301). More specifically, Job 4 shares many linguistic and thematic similarities with Gen 22. Cf. “If we assay to commune (‫ )הנסה‬with you” (Job 4:2) with “and God put Abraham to the test (‫”)נסה‬ (Gen 22:1), and “thy fear” (‫ ;יראתך‬Job 4:6) with “for now I know that you fear (‫ )ירא‬God” (Gen 22:12). The obvious trigger is Job 4:7, “Remember, whoever perished, being innocent?” which is easily read as referring to Isaac, who, being innocent, did not perish by God (eventually). Ps 26:11 “I will walk (‫ )אלך‬in my integrity” evokes the various “walking” verbs in Gen 22 (four times! vv. 2, 5, 6, 8), adding to them judgmental information. The clear gain of this intertextual reading is that it fills the famous three-day gap of silence in the story of the binding of Isaac. “The journey is like a silent progress through the indeterminate and the contingent, a holding of the breath, a process which has no present” (Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003], 10). On the midrashic technique of reading verses in the Prophets and the Writings as complementary of and commentary to narratives in the Torah, see Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). 38. The homily seems to read v. 6 ‫ כסלתך‬as “fullness” (cf. the homily cited by Jacob Mann, The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue: A Study in the Cycles of the Readings from Torah and Prophets, as Well as from Psalms, and in the Structure of the Midrashic Homilies [Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1940], 1, 64: “The Satan said to [Abraham]: the piety you have is actually fullness”), contradicting v. 7, which approves of such piety. This alleged inconsistency is solved by presenting it as a dialogue. On this interpretive technique of transforming cryptic, redundant, verses into dialogues, see Boyarin, Intertextuality, 96–98. 39. On the multi-meaning of ‫תם‬, see New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (ed. W. A. VanGemeren; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997) , vol. 4, 306–8. 40. See Hermann L. Strack and J. Billerbeck, Komnentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (Munich: Beck, 1922–1961), 1, 141. For the possibility that the dialogue between Jesus and the devil reflects a “rabbinic model of haggadic disputations,” see Joseph Fitzmyer, Luke 1–9 (Anchor Bible; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979), 508. On the possible familiarity of Babylonian sages with the gospels, see Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), 122–24. Note that the same verses cited first by Satan in the temptation narrative (Ps 91:10–12), are interpreted in the Bavli (San. 93a) as a polemic against Jesus. For another example of polemic against the Gospels in the Bavli, see Shlomo Naeh and Moshe Halbertal, “Maayney Ha-yeshua,” in Higayon Leyonah (ed. J. Levinson et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2007), 179–98 (Hebrew).



196 Notes to Pages 97–99 41. On the logic of the verses cited by Jesus (all from Deuteronomy), see Hamish Swanston, “The Lukan Temptation Narrative,” JTS 27 (2001): 71; G. H. P. Thompson, “Called-Proved-Obedient: A Study in the Baptism and the Temptation Narratives of Matthew and Luke,” JTS n.s. 11 (1960): 1–12. 42. “A Notebook of day-to-day temptations” (Brown, Body and Society, 374). The temptations are arranged according to Evagrius’s eight thoughts, and in each one verses are cited according to their biblical order. For the Syriac text (along with a reconstruction of the lost Greek original), see Wilhelm Frankenberg, Euargius Pontikus (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1912), 472–545. Partial English translations appear in Stewart, “Anger” (book 5 only) and Michael O’Laughlin, “Evagrius Ponticus, Antirrheticus (Selections),” Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook (ed. V. L. Wimbush; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 243–62 (samplings of books 3, 4, and 5). 43. Cited by Michael O’Laughlin, “The Bible, The Demons and the Desert: Evaluating the Antirrheticus of Evagrius Ponticus,” Studia Monastica 34 (1992): 201–15, 205. 44. As stated explicitly in the prologue to Antirrheticus. See William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 329. 45. Cf. Antony’s assertion to the Satan in reaction to his confession: “You who are ever a liar (ψεύστης) and never speaks the truth, [but] this at length, even against your will, you have truly (ἀληθές) spoken.” 46. On the identification of Satan with the yetzer, see Chapter 4 above. 47. Cf. the techniques of fighting sexual temptations in b. Kid. 40a, 81a, AdRN A 16. See on that Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Yetzer hara, Sexuality and Yihud: A Chapter of Talmudic Anthropology,” Theory and Criticism 14 (1999): 55–84 (Hebrew). 48. On this narrative see Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 26–41; Schafer, Jesus, 41–51. Cf. Martin Goodman, “The Function of ‘Minim’ in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” Geschichte - Tradition - Reflexion; Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag (ed. H. Cancik et al.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), Bd. I: Judentum, 501–10. 49. Put differently, while the arguments ascribed to the yetzer in rabbinic sources share specific traits, as we have seen, they may also function as an exemplar for any discursive dangerous area the student might come across. 50. On Thoughts 9. Compare: “If one of the monks should wish to acquire experience with the cruel demons and become familiar with their skill, let him observe the thoughts and let him note their intensity and their relaxation, their interrelationship, their occasions” (Praktikos 50; cf. 43). On the seeds of the “interrogation” technique in Origen and Antony, see Stewart, “Logismoi,” 15. 51. The “Gnostic” monk, for only he can take such risks (David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006], 70–72). Cf. n. 59 below. 52. On Thoughts 9. 53. True, the rabbis do not offer a metaphysical account such as Evagrius’s description of the demonic reactions to their exposure (“cannot bear the shame”). I suspect,



Notes to Pages 99–100 197

however, that behind Evagrius’s myth lies a more simple assumption about the liberating power of exposing the “true” demonic source of thoughts for the monk. Brakke, Demons, 70, connects it with “the traditional ability to repel demons by naming them,” but he also admits that there is more to it for Evagrius. Cf. Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 364–67. 54. Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977), ix, quoted in Daniel Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (ed. H. Najman et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 331–70, 333. 55. Boyarin, “Two Powers,” 332. Compare also Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 130. See, however, his later refinement of the thesis in “Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category,” JQR 99 (2009): 7–36, 33–36. 56. Cf. Evagrius: “After lengthy observation we have learned to recognize this difference between angelic and human thoughts, and those that comes from the demons” (On Thoughts 8; emphasis added). Compare his detailed discussion on drowsiness during the reading of Scripture: “It sometimes happens that [the impure demons] force [the monks] to yawn more than they are accustomed and they instill a very deep sleep quite different from usual sleep. Whereas some of the brothers have imagined that it is in accordance with an unintelligible natural reaction, I for my part have learnt this by frequent observation” (On Thoughts 33). Evagrius proceeds to instruct the reader on the intricate distinctions between natural and demonic sleepy gestures. The need for a professional diagnosis is especially acute in cases which the demons imitate the ascetic practices themselves, causing the monk to adopt overly excessive measures (On Thoughts 35, 112–13). On this issue in general, see Michel Foucault’s concept of “Pastoral Power” in his essay “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry 8 (1982): 777–95. 57. R. P. Lawson, Origen: The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies (New York: Newman, 1956), 255. 58. On Thoughts 19. 59. “For Evagrius, apatheia comprises not only the external self-control (enkrateia) that prevents one from committing sins actively, but also the interior serenity that prevents one from having impassioned thoughts” (Brakke, Demons, 51). “Evagrius, more than any of his Christian predecessors, is responsible for producing an internalized and mental understanding of sin” (Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992], 78). In fact, “Evagrius speaks of ‘thoughts’ and ‘demons’ as though they were synonyms” (Harmless, Desert, 327). This is specifically true for monks, for “the demons war with seculars (κοσμικοῖς) more through objects, but with monks they do so especially through thoughts, for they are deprived of objects because of the solitude” (Praktikos 48). Here is a typical Evagrian temptation: “I get a thought of offering hospitality and this I have thanks to the Lord, but this gets cut off when the temper comes along and suggests offering hospitality for the sake of esteem” (On Thoughts 7). The act is



198 Notes to Pages 101–102 the same in both cases; the struggle is about purity of mind alone. This is deeply rooted in Evagrius’s ideal of gnosis as the goal of ascetic life. On his mystical theology see Harmless, Desert, 345–58, Robert E. Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) , xxxii–xxxvii. 60. This is clear when comparing Evagrius’s developed typology of demonic thoughts with the (rare!) rabbinic specifications of different types of yetzerim, such as “yetzer of idolatry” (‫)יצרא דעבודה זרה‬, “yetzer of (sexual) sin” (‫ ;יצרא דעבירה‬b. Av. Zar. 69b), “yetzer of harlotry” (‫ ;יצר זנות‬Song Rab. 7:8), and “yetzer for libation of wine” (‫ ;יצרא דיין נסך‬b. Av. Zar. 70a), which concentrate on forbidden acts, rather than thoughts 61. See, e.g., m. Pes. 6:2, Yad. 4:3, t. Mik. 7:11 (ed. Zukermandel, 660), Ohol. 2:7–8 (ed. Zukermandel, 599). See Menachem Kahana, “Reading Debates in the Mishna,” Tarbiz 73 (2003): 51–81; 55–56 n. 16 (Hebrew). 62. B. Ber. 18b, Taan. 21b, Sot. 7b. See David Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 85–86. 63. On debates as typical rabbinic practice, see David Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 100–102. On multiple interpretations and opinions as a characteristic (and unique) mark of midrashic literature, see Steven Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 15–19. On rabbinic “unwillingness to decide between competing views” (which, however, should not be mixed up with radical doubt and indeterminacy), see David Stern, “Midrash and Indeterminacy,” Critical Inquiry 15 (1988): 132–62; Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 25–29. 64. This study aims at uncovering (some of) the limits of rabbinic dialogue, not questioning it altogether. For a more radical skepticism regarding rabbinic dialogism and multivocality, see Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, “Legal Narratives in the Babylonian Talmud” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2005), and Daniel Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Chapter 6 1. Here are some representative quotes (arranged chronologically to indicate the relative novelty of this phenomenon): “Sensual passion is regarded as the main manifestation in which the evil inclination reveals itself” (Geert H. Cohen Stuart, The Struggle in Man Between Good and Evil: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Rabbinic Concept of Yeser Hara [Kampen: Kok, 1984], 28) ; “Although they considered the yetzer to be the force that drives man toward all types of sin, they associated it primarily with sexuality” (David Biale, Eros and the Jews [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997], 44); “Sexuality . . . is called the Evil Instinct solely because of its destructive side” (Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995], 63); “The clearest expression of this Palestinian Jewish negative affect around sexuality is, of course, the term ‫ יצר הרע‬itself, the evil inclination as a near synonym for sexual desire” (Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity [Berkeley: University of California Press,



Notes to Pages 103–104 199

1994], 160); “Babylonian rabbis shared with their Palestinian counterparts an understanding of the human body as having two competing desires, one of which—the sexual—they termed ‘evil’” (Michael Satlow, “Marriage, Sexuality and the Family,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period [ed. Steven T. Katz; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 612–26, 621); “the evil inclination is a necessary and even essential element in human life on earth in that it is also the source of sexual passion and hence of procreation” (Peter W. van der Horst, Jews and Christians in Their GraecoRoman Context: Selected Essays on Early Judaism, Samaritanism, Hellenism, and Christianity [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006], 60). See also the scholars cited in n. 57 below, discussing the role of marriage as a protection against sexual temptation. All (including, alas, myself) use the term yetzer, despite the fact that the sources cited there (b. Pes. 113b, Kid. 29b, Yev. 63a–b) do not mention yetzer, but “sin” and “transgression.” 2. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Misogyny and Its Discontents,” Prooftexts 25 (2005): 217–23. 3. Gen Rab. 46:2, 98:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 462, 1253–54). 4. Lev Rab. 23:11 (ed. Margulies, 543–45) discusses three who “their yetzer attacked, and they took an oath against it: Joseph, David and Boaz.” The appearance of David, striving not to kill Saul who is chasing him (1 Sam 26:10), between the sexual tests of Boaz (Ruth 3:13) and Joseph (Gen 39:9), shows that the context here is not exclusively sexual (just as it is not in Sifre Deut 33). 5. These two compositions together share ten occurrences of the yetzer, excluding parallels in Genesis Rabba and the Palestinian Talmud. 6. Y. Suk. 5:2, 55b: mishnaic separation between men and women during the celebration of Sukkot at the Temple; Sot. 3:1, 18c: the mishnaic ruling that the priest must put his hands under the hands of the suspected adulteress, touching her, when bringing her sacrifice; Kid. 4:12, 66b: mishnaic laws against seclusion with women, Av. Zar. 2:1, 40c: mishnaic laws against seclusion with gentiles. There is only one sexual appearance of the yetzer, which does not discuss the mishnaic laws of separation: San. 2:2, 20a which narrates David’s struggle against his yetzer. 7. The eggs are taken from another homily (b. Yom. 69b) discussed below. 8. Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 63. 9. Emero Stiegman, “Rabbinic Anthropology,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 2.19.2 (Berlin: De Greuter, 1979), 487–579,” 517. 10. Compare the version “and would not negotiate (‫ ”)ולא נשא ונתן‬attested in some MSS as well as in Yalkut Shimoni, ad loc. 11. M. Avot 4:1; t. Bab. Kam. 9:31; y. Ned. 9:1, 41b; b. Shab. 95b; b. Nid. 31b. 12. Gen Rab., 22:6, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 210–13; b. Yom. 35b, Ned. 9b. 13. Compare b. Shab. 89a, in which “evil yetzer” and “idolatry” appear as two separate vices. 14. See above, Chapter 4 n. 12. 15. Pace Efraim Lior, “Yetzer Hara and Its Meanings in Rabbinic Literature” (M.A. thesis, Tel Aviv University, 1998), 98–101, who reads all the similes in the sugia as phallic symbols (the thickening thread, the lying dog, and the crouching highway robber who spring to life), and the cycle as a whole as discussing “the sexual urge and its implications.”

200 Notes to Pages 104–108 16. In several textual witnesses, “I am beautiful” (‫נאה‬/‫ )אנא יאי‬is missing, and the only boast is “I am a hero” (‫)אנא גיבור‬. Note also that several MSS have “there is a bear, strike it (‫ קפחנה‬,‫)הא דובה קמך‬,” instead of “there is a bear jumping at you (‫)הא דובה קמך קופצה‬.” See ed. Theodor-Albeck, ad loc. 17. See on that Adiel Schremer, “Stammaitic Historiography,” in Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada (ed. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 219–35. 18. For a detailed analysis of this segment of the sugia and a comparison with the Palestinian Talmud ad loc., see Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, “Art, Argument, and Ambiguity in the Talmud: Conflicting Conceptions of the Evil Impulse in b. Sukkah 51b– 52a,” HUCA 73 (2002): 97–132. 19. See the variant readings in Chapter 4, n. 72 ff. 20. Yemenite MSS : “I could have been saved only with the help of great mercy” (i.e., from heaven). Cf. the adjacent homily from Reish Lakish: “and without divine help one cannot best it [the yetzer] (‫)אלמלא הקב”ה עוזרו אין יכול לו‬, as it is said, The lord will not abandon him to his power (Ps 37:32).” If the version of the Yemenite MSS is the original version here (as I suspect), it explains well the appearance of this homily immediately after the narrative of Abaye and the couple. 21. In the Yemenite MSS the gesture becomes explicitly suicidal: “He was about to jump off the planks of the bridge.” See Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (Ramat Gan and Baltimore: Bar Ilan University Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 278. 22. Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 65. 23. Abaye’s statement is an integral part of the homily, not only from the thematic perspective but also from the hermeneutic one, for the homily is not complete without Abaye’s explanation of the last part of the verse: Because he has done great things (‫)כי הגדיל לעשות‬. The words “Abaye said” (missing in MS London 400 [Harley 5508]) may have been added by a later redactor in order to connect the homily to the narrative. The alternative option, that the words “and killed the sages therein” were added to the homily in accordance with Abaye’s statement, seems less likely. 24. This hapax is read here as meaning “witness.” Compare Gen Rab. 22:6 (ed. ­Theodor-Albeck, 210–13), which interprets manon as “mourner” (as LXX ad loc.). 25. The sugia cites another homily on Mic 4:6 here, which is not relevant to our analysis. 26. For the appearance of the yetzer in legal discussions in the Bavli, see, e.g., R. Abin’s ruling regarding tearing clothes on the Sabbath (b. Shab. 105b), discussed in Chapter 1 above. 27. B. Ket. 64b (a legal reasoning appearing as “another interpretation,” thus doubtfully amoraic) and San. 107a (an aggadic homily by Rava). Sexual yetzer appears also in two tannaitic traditions (baraitot) in the Bavli: b. Kid 21b and 40a. 28. Literally “anonymous.” On this term, see David W. Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 76–92, and Shamma Friedman, “Perek Haisha Raba in the Bavli, with a



Notes to Pages 109–111 201

General Prologomenon on the Study of the Sugya,” Sources and Traditions 1 (1978): 275– 442 (Hebrew). It is now almost universally accepted that at least most of the anonymous dialectic discourse represents a later layer than the amoraic statements. The debate is mostly limited to the existence of an “early stam” (‫ )סתמות קדומות‬in some sugiot. The sharp distinction in our case between the ways amoraic and anonymous material use the term yetzer confirms the diachronic model. 29. B. Hag. 11b. See Menachem Kahana, “The Halakhic Midrashim,” in The Literature of the Sages, Part 2 (ed. S. Safrai et al.; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006), 1–103, 24–25. 30. B. Ket. 51b; 53a; 54a; Kid. 81b (in some textual witnesses). 31. B. Kid. 63b; Av. Zar. 23a; Bek. 46a. Cf. the proximate terms in Shab. 110a, Bab. Bat. 3b. 32. Thus MS Vatican 113 and Vatican 487 and the ed. Princ.; MS Vatican 130 and Munich 95 have “leave me” (‫ )הניחו לי‬instead. 33. Literally, “He has dressed (or enveloped) her with yetzer”; see Sokoloff, Babylonian Aramaic, 618. Compare the contextual translation, “she was sexually aroused,” in Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987), 86. 34. See Hauptman, Rereading, 85–88. 35. B. Bek. 46a explains why the sanctions on transgressing marital prohibitions are more severe than other priestly obligations; Av. Zar. 23a explains the special cautions taken in the case of bestiality; Kid. 63b explains the especially severe demands for testimony regarding marriage. In all three cases the idiom accounts for specific rulings that increase the legal demands in cases possibly involving sexual prohibitions. 36. Note that Rava’s statement can be easily explained on its own as ruling simply that it is enough for an act to begin as rape in order to be considered as such. It is only the Stam that adds the assumptions about the yetzer. 37. Satlow, “Masculinity,” 27–28; cf. idem, “Male and Female They Created Her,” in Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine (ed. Lee I. Levine; Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2004), 486–504, 500. 38. Cf. Sifre Deut 254, ed. Finkelstein, 280 (and b. Ket. 46a): “[Scripture] warned you not to ponder sexually during the day and [so] come to waste seed at night.” Compare Philo’s natural attitude toward nocturnal emissions in De Spec. Leg. I 119. 39. B. Nid. 13b. On this sugia compare Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Yetzer hara, Sexuality and yihud: a Chapter of Talmudic Anthropology,” Theory and Criticism 14 (1999): 55–84 (Hebrew), 56–57, to Michael L. Satlow, “ ‘Wasted Seed’—The History of a Rabbinic Idea,” HUCA 65 (1994): 137–75. See Rav Huna’s statement in b. Kid 29b: “a twenty-year-old [man] who has not married a woman is in sin all his days (‫)בן עשרים שלא נשא אשה כל ימיו בעבירה‬.” The Stam cannot simply accept this statement and thus modifies it slightly: “in sinful thoughts all his days (‫)כל ימיו בהרהור עבירה‬.” See also the Stam’s question regarding the baraita discussing theodicy (t. Hul. 10:16): “but maybe he [the person who died while doing good deeds] was thinking sinful thoughts” (‫ ;ודלמא מהרהר בעבירה הוה‬b. Kid. 39b). 40. See b. Sot. 8a, San. 45a, and Ishay Rosen-Zvi, The Rite That Was Not: Temple, Midrash and Gender in Tractate Sotah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), 76, 209 n. 123 (Hebrew). 41. The only exception is b. Shab. 156b, which discusses theft.

202 Notes to Pages 111–113 42. Some of these stories have been read and discussed in detail by scholars. On b. Kid. 81b, see Shlomo Naeh, “Heruta,” Sugyot bemechkar hatalmud (Jerusalem: Israel Academy for Sciences and Humanities, 2001), 10–27. On Yom. 69b, see Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 62–63. On Git. 57a, see Galit Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 169. On Bab. Bat. 58a, see Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” HTR 87 (1994): 180–82. 43. See Halivni, Midrash, 67–68, and idem, “Aspects of the Formation of the Talmud,” in Creation and Composition, 339–60. Cf. “Halivni’s terminology may have been a factor in creating the impression that all these functions were carried out by the same individuals” (Shamma Friedman, “A Good Story Deserves Retelling: The Unfolding of the Akiva Legend,” in Creation and Composition, 71–100, 73 n. 15). On ascribing aggadic sections to the Stammaim, see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 5–7, 22; idem, “Criteria of Stammaitic Intervention in Aggada,” in Creation and Composition, 417–510; Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 151–201. 44. “The creative rewording of Tannaitic material in the Bavli . . . may certainly have taken place long before the discursive anonymous commentary was composed, and is not of one cloth with its style and thrust. The same observation could apply to recasting memrot and, as we shall suggest below, aggadic narratives” (Friedman, “A Good Story,” 73). On the issue of dating reduction and composition see further below. 45. The strongest argument against identifying the creators of the halakhic giveand-take with the compositors of the aggadic narratives—except for being produced by different specialists: “masters of Talmud” (‫ )בעלי תלמוד‬vs. “masters of aggada” (‫בעלי‬ ‫—)אגדה‬is the fact that in many cases the sugia seems not to “understand” the aggada and forces it into halakhic logic. See Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, “Legal Narratives in the Babylonian Talmud” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2005). Cf. Kalmin’s reservation: “If the anonymous editors authored the Talmud’s greatest stories, why do the overwhelmingly prosaic, legal, preoccupations of these commentators thought the Talmud reveal them to be the very antithesis of deft story-tellers and imaginative artist?” (Richard Kalmin, “The Formation and Character of the Babylonian Talmud,” in Cambridge History of Judaism, 4:840–76, 846). The aesthetic hierarchy assumed by Kalmin may, however, be questioned. 46. According to MS Vatican (Biblioteca Apostolica Heb 111). 47. Sokoloff, Dictionary, 124. 48. The words “the evil yetzer” appear only as a gloss in MS Vatican 111 (cf. the early “Spanish” edition, “his yetzer”), but the interpretation seems sound, especially in light of the next sentence, in which “it” is revealed to him “in the shape of a fiery column.” See Sagit Mor, “The Status of Jewish Captives upon their Return to the Community in Rabbinic Literature,” Madaei Hayahadut 42 (2003–4): 107–18, 115–16. 49. Though in this case the sage himself calls for help. Rashi (ad loc.) maintains that R. Amram had managed to stop himself even before calling the sages, but his reading is not grounded in the text. See Sokoloff, Dictionary, 942; Mor, “Captives,” 115–16.



Notes to Pages 113–114 203

50. Note that the narratives avoid describing the women as exceptionally beautiful or attractive (the first story talks about anonymous “captive women,” while the last two say simply “appeared as a woman”), thus presenting the sages as indiscriminately pouncing on the first available opportunity. On the sexual vulnerability of redeemed captive women, see b. Ker. 23a. 51. See my “Rabbinic Anthropology” 52. Michael L. Satlow, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 319. 53. See, e.g., the homilies on Adam (b. San. 38b), Abraham (Bab. Bat. 58a), David (San. 22a), Nebuchadnezzar (Shab. 159b), Esther (Meg. 15a), and Maacha (Av. Zar. 44a). All have no parallels in Palestinian literature. 54. See the descriptions of the extraordinary sexual potency of the sages in b. Hag. 14b, Nid. 31a, and Ned. 20a. 55. See b. Ber. 23a; Pes. 113a; Hag. 15a; Bab. Mez. 85a; and Av. Zar. 17a, 18a, 65a, and 69b. There is only one similar narrative in Palestinian literature: Sifre Num 115. Compare also the narrative of Elisha ben Avuya in y. Hag. 2:1 (77b) to the Babylonian version in b. Hag 15a, which adds an encounter with a prostitute. 56. See b. Sot. 10a, Bab. Mez. 84a, Shab. 149b, and Av. Zar. 22b. 57. Isaiah Gafni, “The Institution of Marriage in Rabbinic Times,” in The Jewish Family: Metaphor and Memory (ed. David Kraemer; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 13–30; Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 134–46; Rosen-Zvi, “Prohibitions of Yihud,” 64–65; Michael L. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 26–30; Adiel Schremer, Zakhar vnekeva beraam: Marriage at the End of the Second Temple Period and in the Rabbinic Period (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2003), 94, 308–10. 58. Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 197–212. 59. Shamma Friedman, “Literary Development and Historicity in the Aggadic Narrative of the Babylonian Talmud,” in Community and Culture: Essays in Jewish Studies in Honor of the Ninetieth Anniversary of the Founding of Gratz College, 1895–1985 (ed. Nahum M. Waldman; Philadelphia: Gratz College, 1985), 67–80. 60. See esp. James L Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (San Francisco: Harper, 1990), and Judith R. Baskin, Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2002). 61. Michel Foucault, Religion and Culture (ed. Jeremy R. Carrette; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 184. See also Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject (trans. Graham Burchell; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 254–58; Luther H. Martin et al., eds., Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 43–49; Jeremy R. Carrette, Foucault and Religion: Spiritual Corporality and Political Spirituality (London: Routledge, 2000), 109– 28; Daniel Boyarin and Elisabeth Castelli, “Foucault’s The History of Sexuality: The Fourth Volume, or A Field Left Fallow for Others to Till,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (2001): 357–74. 62. Foucault, Religion and Culture, 183.

204 Notes to Pages 114–116 63. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Hyper-Sexualization in the Bavli: An Initial Survey,” Midrash and the Exegetical Mind (ed. L. Teugels and R. Ulmer; Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, forthcoming). 64. Thus MS Oxford 2675.2 and another Geniza fragment; see A. Liss, ed., Tractate Sotah with Variant Readings from Manuscripts (Jerusalem: Israeli Complete Talmud Institute, 1977–79), 117 n. 6. 65. The biblical story totally concealed any reference to Samson’s sexual capacities, which usually characterize such Hercules-like narratives. See Yair Zakovich, The Life of Samson (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1989), 136 (Hebrew). Josephus (Ant. 5:285–317) also did his best to neutralize both the erotic and the mythic overtones of the story. 66. “R. Huna said in the name of R. Yossi that his intercourse was similar to all men (‫( ”)תשמישו שוה לכל אדם‬y. Sot 1:8 [17b]). The homily is based on a proximity of verses: “the boy grew” (which for the homilies means that he grew to superhuman proportions: “his steps were from Zora to Eshtaol”), and nonetheless “the Lord blessed him,” in that his intercourse was normal. The Bavli adds a description of Samson’s fantastic sexual prowess: “His penetration is as all men, but his sperm was like a raging river (‫)וזרעו כנחל שוטף‬.” Another homily (on ‫ )ותאלצהו‬appears in y. Ket. 5:7, 30b. 67. Joshua Levinson, The Twice Told Tale (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 291–95 (Hebrew; the citation from 305). On the reworking of Palestinian Aggada in the Bavli, see also Friedman, “Literary Development.” Note, however, that the Babylonian redaction of this cycle may well have predated its current positioning in b. Sotah (David Rosenthal, “Early Redactions in the Babylonian Talmud,” Mehkerei Talmud 1 [1990]: 169 n. 25). 68. The expression ‫ דבר עבירה‬appears in a sexual context in b. Ber. 22a (immersion after sex), Meg. 12b (Ahasuerus and Vashti), and Sot. 36b (Joseph and Potiphar’s wife). The last two sources are based on a similar homily (‫שניהם לדבר עבירה נתכוונו‬, “both intended to sin”), which has no parallel in Palestinian literature (cf. Gen Rab. 87:7 [ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1072]). 69. The homily about Amram is the only one with Palestinian parallels (Mek. RS 6:20, ed. Epstein-Melamed 6; Ecc Rab. 9:17; cf. also Pseudo-Philo 9:2–9), but it was recast in an entirely different light in the Bavli, as shown by Levinson, Tale, 302. 70. Both sayings are attributed to Rava. The discussion of intent originated in the Mishna and is discussed in the Yerushalmi as well (about the deaf); the novelty lies in the developed sexual imagination in the Bavli. 71. This saying is attributed to Rava as well, and appears also in b. Shev. 18a (where Abaye differs). Cf. also b. San. 55a, and Rava’s cycle of homilies on Esther in b. Meg. 11a– 14b. For Rava’s centrality in the Bavli’s sexual sayings and tales, see Yaakov Elman, “ ‘He in His Cloak and She in Her Cloak’: Conflicting Images of Sexuality in Sasanian Mesopotamia,” in Discussing Cultural Influences: Text, Context and Non-Text in Rabbinic Judaism (ed. R. Ulmer; Lanham: University Press of America, 2007), 129–63, 129 and nn. 1–2. For Rava’s central place in Babylonian Aggada in general, see also Moshe D. Herr, “Aggadah and Midrash in the World of the Palestinian Rabbis,” in Higayon Leyona (ed. J. Levinson et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006), 131–49 (Hebrew), 140. 72. B. Yev. 59b; Sot. 26b.



Notes to Pages 116–117 205

73. The same holds true for the aggadic segment of the sugia: “Issac was sterile (‫)עקור‬,” “Abraham and Sarah were tumtumim,” “Sarah our mother was an ailonit” (64a– b). On this aggadic sugia regarding the value of marriage in the Bavli (62b–64a), see Satlow, Marriage, 4–12. 74. On the deep affinity between Aphrahat’s homilies and rabbinic literature, see Simon Funk, Die haggadischen Elemente in dem Homilien des Aphraates des persischen Weisen (Vienna, 1891); Louis Ginzberg, Die Haggada bei den Kirchenvatern (Amsterdam, 1899); Frank S. B. Gavin, Aphraates and the Jews: A Study of the Controversial Homilies of the Persian Sage in Their Relation to Jewish Thought (Toronto: JSOR , 1923); Jacob Neusner, Aphrahat and Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 1971); Sebastian P. Brock, “Jewish Traditions in Syrian Sources,” JJS 30 (1979): 212–32. Gavin ascribes this connection to the Jewish origins of the Christian community in northern Mesopotamia. This thesis was elaborated in Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 6–19, concluding that “the number of significant elements of Jewish character remaining in Syriac Christianity make it clear beyond doubt that here must be found the principal surviving heirs of Jewish Christianity” (5); but see the reservations of Han J. W. Drijvers, History and Religion in Late Antique Syria (Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1994), 138–41. Be that as it may, the comparisons themselves are undeniable. Indeed, even Neusner, who strongly rejects the maximalist thesis that Aphrahat “shows himself a docile pupil of the Jews” (as per Louis Ginzberg, “Aphraates, the Persian Sage,” Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 1, 663), admits that “no reader of Aphrahat familiar with rabbinic literature can fail to compile a long list of parallel concepts, words, expressions, rhetorical devices, interpretations of men, events, and doctrines” (Aphrahat, 153). 75. Naomi Koltun-Fromm, “Sexuality and Holiness: Semitic Christian and Jewish Conceptualizations of Sexual Behavior,” VC 54 (2000): 75–395; idem, “Yokes of the HolyOnes: The Embodiment of a Christian Vocation,” HTR 94 (2001): 207–20. For the distinctiveness of eastern asceticism, see Sebastian P. Brock, “Early Syrian Asceticism,” Numen 20 (1973): 1–19; Murray, Symbols; A. Vööbus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient (Leuven: Peeters, 1988), 3:18–27; Peter Brown, The Body and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 323–38; Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Sidney H. Griffith, “Asceticism in the Church of Syria: The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Monasticism,” in Asceticism (ed. V. L. Wimbush and R. Valantasis; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 220–45. 76. Naeh, “Heruta.” 77. This demonstration is not included in Neusner’s translation, but was translated into English (among other languages) by John Gwenn, in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, 13:2, 362–75. 78. Demonstrations VI: 6 (William Wright, Homilies of Aphraates [London, 1869], 1: 113). Women are described there as both Satan’s weapon and musical instrument. See also Aphrahat’s description of the Satan temptation of Job: “When he could not prevail over him, he went and brought against him his armour, and he came, bringing with him a daughter of Eve, who has caused Adam to sink, and through her mouth he said (‫ܘܐܡܪ‬ ‫ )ܒܦܘܡܗ‬to Job. . . . ” (VI: 2, Wright, 110).

206 Notes to Pages 117–118 79. B. Kid. 81a; Aphrahat VI: 2. 80. B. Kid. 81a; Aphrahat VI: 1. 81. B. Kid. 81b; Aphrahat VI: 4. 82. XV: 5; XX: 1. The evil yetzer of the Israelites appears in Dem XX: 1 as an explanation for the promise in Lev 25:21 to increase the produce of the sixth year (before the sabbatical year), in a manner similar to the Akivan “the Torah spoke regarding the yetzer” homilies. There is probably a common tradition behinds these homilies, explaining promises of wealth and prosperity in the Torah in conjunction with certain mitzvot (‫ עלייה לרגל‬,‫ ערלה‬and ‫ )שמיטה‬as directed against the yetzer. 83. XIV: 10; III: 1. In both cases “conquering the yetzer” appears in Aphrahat in the context of anger, similar to m. Avot 4:1. Cf. ‫“( ܝܨܪܗܘܢ ܐܠܨܝܢ‬pressing their yetzer”) in IX: 3. 84. For a full index of the appearances of yetzer, in Aphrahat, see Ionnes Parisot et al., Patrologia Syriaca, 2: 263. On the relations between Aphrahat’s yetzer and the rabbinic one, see Gavin, Aphraates, 51. 85. On the dating of this work, see A. F. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 15. On its sexual context, see Drijvers, History, 132–33. 86. See W. Wright, ed., Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (London, 1871), 1: 240. 87. M. Kmosko, ed., “Liber Graduum,” Patrologia Syriaca, vol. 3 (Paris, 1926), 335–86. 88. As those referred to in Brock, “Jewish Traditions,” 221 n. 31. 89. Gavin, Aphraates, 51; Brock, “Jewish Traditions,” 221. 90. The same logic holds for the concept of two yetzarim, which does not exist in early Syriac literature (as noted by Brock, “Jewish Traditions”). 91. The depth of this contact has just recently begun to be acknowledged. See Adam H. Becker, “Beyond the Spatial and Temporal Lines: Questioning the ‘Parting of the Ways’ Outside the Roman Empire,” The Ways That Never Parted (ed. A. Y. Reed and A. H. Becker; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 373–92, Richard Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 5–7; Daniel Boyarin, “Hellenism in Rabbinic Babylonia,” in The Cambridge Companion to Rabbinic Literature (ed. C. E. Fonrobert and M. Jaffee; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 336–63. 92. On the ascetic foundations of Syriac Christianity, see Vööbus, Asceticism; Drijvers, History, 129–137; and idem, East of Antioch: Studies in Early Syriac Christianity (London: Variorum, 1984), 3–7. On the thesis of Jewish sectarian (Essenes-Qumranic) origins of Syriac Asceticism, see Murray, Symbols, 17; idem, “The Characteristic of the Earliest Syriac Christianity,” in East of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the Formative Period (ed. N. L. Garosian et al.; Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1982), esp. 8–9; Neusner, Aphrahat, 3. On the character of Syrian asceticism in its pre-monastic era, see Griffith, “Asceticism,” 222; A. Kitchen and M. F. G. Parmentier, trans., The Book of Steps (Kalamazoo: Cisterian, 2004), xlix–lvi. 93. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Vol. 1 (trans. R. Hurley; London: Penguin, 1976), 34.



Notes to Pages 118–120 207

94. See esp. Yaakov Elman, “Sexuality”; idem, “Marriage and Marital Property in Rabbinic and Sasanian Law,” in Rabbinic Law in Its Roman and Near Eastern Context (ed. C. Heszer; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 227–76. On rabbinic adoption of Persian norms, see also idem, “Acculturation to the Elite Persian Norms and Modes of Thought in the Babylonian Jewish Community of Late Antiquity,” Netiot Ledavid: Jubilee Volume for David Weiss Halivni (ed. Y. Elman et al.; Jerusalem, 2004), 31–56, and Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia. 95. See Eliezer Segal, The Babylonian Esther Midrash: A Critical Commentary (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), vol. 2, 62. 96. Elman, “Sexuality,” 155. 97. Cf. Satlow, Marriage, 319: “Whether or not it is useful to ask if Babylonian rabbis charged sex as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, it does appear that they were more accepting of non-marital and non-procreative expressions of sexuality that were Palestinians.” 98. Take, for example, the moral reform of the late fifth century in Persian Christianity, which came as a reaction to intensifying Zoroastrian influence, and “profoundly affected Christians of both clerical and lay status” (Stephen Gero, Barsauma of Nisibis and Persian Christianity in the Fifth Century [Leuven: Peeters, 1981], 79–88, 79). The reform combined lenient decrees, compromising with existing sexual practices (e.g., allowing priests who cannot keep their vows to marry), with stark rejections of practices considered as abominations (e.g., polygamy and “temporary marriage”). We might speculate either a similar Jewish reaction to Zoroastrianism or even a direct influence of the Christian reform. 99. The “Wickedness” is explicitly identified in a few MSS with “the yetzer for idolatry (‫)יצרא דעבודה זרה‬,” but this is probably a gloss (penetrating the text in two different points) that comes from a summary of our story in b. Ara. 32b. Nonetheless, it seems to be a correct interpretation for the “Wickedness” here. Compare the story in b. Av. Zar. 17a, which is also apparently reliant on our myth: “Let us go to the gates of the house of idolatry, for its yetzer has been killed,” and Song Rab. 7:8: “The Holy one created two yetzarim in his world, the yetzer for idolatry and the yetzer for harlotry. The yetzer for idolatry has been uprooted and the yetzer for harlotry is still extant.” 100. For “transgression” (‫ )עברה‬as sexual transgression, see, e.g., b. Ber. 22a, Meg. 12a, Sot. 11b. 101. Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 62.

Chapter 7 1. This is the basis for homilies that ask: “ish—this assumes only men, how do we know this about women (‫ אשה מניין‬,‫)אין לי אלא איש‬,” which are very common in the halakhic midrashim. See Chana Safrai and Avital Campbell Hochstein, Women Out—Women In: The Place of Women in Midrash (Tel Aviv: Yediot Acharonot, 2008) (Hebrew). 2. E.g., “both males and females suffering from a gonorrheaic flux (‫)הזבין והזבות‬, menstruants and birthing women . . . are allowed, and all other people [‫]שאר כל אדם‬, may not” (m. Mo. Kat. 3:2). “Adam” obviously implies both men (opp. ‫ )זבין‬and women (opp. ‫)זבות‬.



208 Notes to Pages 120–122 3. See Eliahu Ahdut, “The Status of the Jewish Woman in Talmudic Babylonia” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1999), 26 (Hebrew). 4. Gen Rab. 32:10 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 320); b. San. 91b. 5. B. Ber. 5a; see Moshe Benovitz, Talmud Haigud: Berachot Cap. 1 (Jerusalem: Association for the Exegesis of the Talmud, 2006), 177 (Hebrew). 6. Even according to Ben Azzai, who said “a man must teach his daughter Torah” (m. Sot. 3:2; See Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995], 170–80), women themselves are never instructed to study. 7. B. Suk. 52b; Kid. 30b. 8. M. Mak. 3:15. 9. B. Kid. 80b and y. Kid. 4:12, 66b. 10. See The Shepherd of Hermas mand. 6 II 7 (LCL, 99); 12 II 1 (LCL, 127). 11. Geert H. Cohen Stuart, The Struggle in Man Between Good and Evil: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Rabbinic Concept of Yeser Hara (Kampen: Kok, 1984), 147. 12. Cf. Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 180–200. 13. Cf. Ps 1:1, “Happy is the man (‫)אשרי האיש‬,” which is also expounded in this sugia. 14. Three times in Proverbs and three times in Psalms. The idiom appears in various rabbinic homilies also. 15. Cf. m. Avot 2:10: “Repent one day before you die,” i.e., every day. The homily might also be saluting those who repent young, when temptations are greater. 16. Gen Rab. 9:7, 14:4, 27:4, 34:10, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 72, 128, 258, 320, and elsewhere. 17. Gen Rab. 14:4, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 128; b. Ber. 61a. See Chapter 4 n. 103 above. 18. B. Ber. 61a–b. 19. Just as the following question regarding the soul is the concern of both (“Antoninus asked Rabbi: since when is the evil yetzer placed in humans . . . since when is soul placed in humans”). Physiological differences between Jews and gentiles are medieval innovations, foreign to rabbinic discourse. See Menachem Kellner, Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization 2006), 216–22. 20. Both in a positive context of God-fearing and worship (e.g., “Remove that evil yetzer from your hearts, so that all of you will be as one in awe and of one mind to serve God,” Sifra Shemini 1, ed. Weiss, 43d), and in a negative one, of sins (e.g., “The yetzer desires only what is forbidden for it,” y. Ned. 9:1, 41b; Yom. 6:5, 43d). 21. Cf. Abaye’s remark in b. Suk. 52a, “against sages more than against anyone,” discussed above. Cf. Evagrius’s instruction for the monk who fights against the demon of acedia (boredom or listlessness): “You must not abandon the cell in the time of temptati on. . . . Rather, you must remain seated inside, exercise perseverance, and valiantly welcome all attackers” (Praktikos 28). The monk is expected to be in his cell at all times, and so the test is to simply stay there. The sage, on the other hand, can be tempted anywhere, and so must run immediately to his natural place (his “cell”?)—the study house. 22. See, e.g., Lee I. Levine, The Place of Sages in Eretz Israel in the Time of the Mishna and Talmud (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1986) (Hebrew); Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Place of



Notes to Pages 122–125 209

the Rabbi in Jewish Society of the Second Century,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity (ed. L. I. Levine; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), 157–73; Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 103–28. 23. B. Sot. 47a, San. 107b. The yetzer here, like babies and women, is a being, and should be treated with care but not totally negated. On the dialectic attitude toward the yetzer, see Chapter 4 above. 24. Gen Rab. 54:1 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 575–76). The first homily is attributed to R. Johanan, the second to R. Shmuel b. Nahman, and the third to R. Joshua b. Levi. 25. B. Ket. 64b. For the location of sexual desire in the sexual organs themselves, compare Plato, Timaeus 91b–c: “Wherefore in man the nature of the genital organs is disobedient and self-willed . . . and in women again, owing to the same causes, whenever the matrix or womb . . . remains without fruit long beyond the season it is vexed and takes it ill . . . until the desire (ἐπιθυμία, grammatically feminine!) and love (ἐρῶς, grammatically masculine!) of the two sexes unite them.” 26. The possibility that the woman is refusing to work and not refusing to have sex (‫ )מורדת ממלאכה‬is considered but (justly) rejected in the sugia (66a). 27. Yetzer, elsewhere, is associated with the heart (see, e.g., the various homilies in Sifre Deut 32, 33, 45, ed. Finkelstein, 55, 59, 103, and others which associate yetzer with the word ‫)לב‬. One later homily (AdRN A 16) associates it with “the first drop a man places in a woman.” On the physiology of the yetzer, see further in Chapter 4 above. 28. Yetzer is also first explicitly attributed to gentiles in the stammaitic layer (b. Av. Zar. 23a). 29. Cf. the narrative about the son and daughter of R. Ishmael who were taken captive and were sold to two different masters. “One said: I have a slave the most beautiful in the world. The other said: I have a female slave the most beautiful in the world. They said: Let us marry them to one another and share the offspring” (‫ ;נחלק בוולדות‬b. Git. 58a, see further n. 42 below). 30. This is the reading of Ed. Princ. and MS Vatican 140. MS Vatican 130 reads “they said” (‫ )אמרו‬and MS Munich 95 ‫אמר‬, which might be an abbreviation for both. 31. For this translation of the unique term ‫פטפט ביצרו‬, which appears exclusively regarding Joseph (b. Sot. 43a, Bab. Bat. 109b and parallels), see Ben Yehuda’s Thesaurus, 4897 n. 3. 32. For the centrality of Potiphar’s wife in midrashic literature, see James Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990) . 33. B. Kid. 81a. 34. See Naeh, “Heruta”; and Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Yetzer hara, Sexuality and Yihud: A Chapter of Talmudic Anthropology, Theory and Criticism 14 (1999): 55–84 (Hebrew). 35. The narrative that comes closest is the one on Beruria’s sister in the prostitute booth (b. Av. Zar. 18a–b). The issue there, however, is not self-mastery (sex is not a temptation for woman forced into prostitution!) but sexual purity (“she has committed no transgression,” ‫)לא עבדא איסורא‬. Cf. Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the



210 Notes to Page 125 Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 72–73. On the non-talmudic “story of Beruria” (Rashi on b. Av. Zar. 18b), see Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 181–96. 36. See Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987), 30–59; Judith Baskin, Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature (Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 2002), 29–36. 37. For female passion in Greek medical literature, see Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), 200–205. For Hellenistic philosophy, see Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), esp. chaps. 5 and 13. 38. For the heroine in the Greek novel, see Katharine Haynes, Fashioning the Feminine in the Greek Novel (New York: Routledge, 2003). For the transformation of this figure in Christian martyrologies, see Kate Kooper, The Virgin and the Bride (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 39. B. P. Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 2. See also Reardon, The Form of the Greek Romance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991). 40. See David Stern, “The Captive Woman: Hellenization, Greco-Roman Erotic Narrative and Rabbinic Literature,” Poetics Today 19 (1998): 91–127; Joshua Levinson, “An-Other Woman: Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife: Staging the Body Politic,” JQR 87 (1997): 269–301. Stern focuses on the homilies of the captive wife (‫ )אשת יפת תואר‬in the tannaitic midrashim, and Levinson on the story of Potiphar’s wife in Genesis Rabba and the Bavli. Both are interested in the use the homilists make of the theme of seduction as a measure of the preservation of ethnic-cultural boundaries (also used in the Greek novels): the seductresses are not Jewish, and they present both a sexual and ethnic threat. While Stern sees this adoption as a mark of “deep Hellenization” (116), Levinson sees it as “mimicry” (298). Agreeing with much that is said in these two superb papers, I wish to highlight the character of the heroine as one area of stark distinction between rabbinic Midrash and the Greek novel. 41. Rabbinic literature is exceptional also in comparison with Hellenistic Jewish literature, in which heroines such as Susannah and Aseneth struggle with their passions: see Alice Bach, Woman, Seduction and Death in Biblical Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 65–71; Sidnie A. White, “Judith as Heroine,” in Nobody Spoke Ill of Her: Essays on Judith (ed. J. VanderKam; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 5–16, and Ross S. Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 191–221. For the influence of Greek erotic terminology on Hellenistic Jewish literature, see Stern, “Captive,” 93–94; Martin Braun, History and Romance in Graeco-Oriental Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1938); and Richard Pervo, “Aseneth and Her Sisters: Women in Jewish Narratives and the Greek Novels,” in Woman Like This (ed. A. J. Levine; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 145–60. For an anti-erotic polemic in Hellenistic Jewish literature, see Braun, History, 45. Compare Bach’s reading of the Testament of Joseph as an “anti-novel” (Bach, Woman, 80). 42. In the homily on Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, studied by Levinson, “Woman,” there is only a male protagonist and a female seductress. Stern parallels the Greek plot to



Notes to Pages 125–129 211

the story of the Sons of Zadok / Ishmael the High Priest (Lam Rab. 1:16 and b. Git. 58a, respectively). But even if we grant the existence of sexual tension between the siblings in this narrative (a point debated between Hasan-Rokem, Web, 42–46, and Jonah Frankel, The Aggadic Story: Unity of Form and Content [Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001], 247 n. 50 and 249 n. 59 [Hebrew]), it is far from being a temptation narrative. Furthermore, the fact that these two are the only stories that were found suitable to exemplify the parallel testifies to the remoteness of the genres. It also explains the swift move to other, closer genres in these two papers: the Mime (Levinson, “Woman,” 286) and erotic literature (Stern, “Captive,” 98). For the centrality of the symmetrical model of the Greek novel, in which both partners must struggle with seduction and temptation, see David Konstan, Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); Simon Goldhill, Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 43. A rare reference to women’s sexual passion appears in Gen Rab. 17:8 (ed. TheodorAlbeck, 159): “Man is easy to be tempted, but woman is not (‫)אין האשה נוחה להתפתות‬.” The context there (just before two statements which discuss male demand for sex [‫תובע‬ ‫ ]באשה‬and insemination [‫ )]מפקיד זרע באשה‬leaves little doubt that the temptation at stake is sexual (pace Minhat Yehuda ad loc.). 44. B. Nid. 20a. See Tirza Meacham, “Mishna Niddah with a Preface: A Critical Edition with Discussion Text, Exegesis and Chapters of Halakhic History and Realia” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989), 182. Cf. Charlotte Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), 261–62, n. 39, which claims that there is no point in searching for the physiological basis for “lust blood,” for it might as well be simply a “logical” transference from male physiology, in which passion leads to ejaculation. 45. B. Yev. 62b. See also David Henshke, “Hayotze Laderech: An Ambiguity and Its Results,” Leshonenu 66 (2004): 87–102 (Hebrew). 46. B. San. 92b. Compare Esther’s bleeding (‫ )פרסה נידה‬when she entered the King’s chamber (b. Meg. 15a).

Afterword 1. For this spatial imagery, see Chapter 4 n. 103 above. 2. See esp. E. R. Dodds, Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 35. For a critique of Dodds’s thesis from a Jewish studies perspective, see Michael L. Satlow, “And on the Earth You Shall Sleep: Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism,” Journal of Religion 83 (2003): 204–24, 212. For a more general critique of Dodds’s rationalistic, anti-Christian project, see Averil Cameron, “Rereading the Map: Early Christian Territory after Foucault,” JRS 76 (1986): 266–71. 3. Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 68. 4. Compare Dale Martin’s thesis on a new consensus between Christian writers and pagan philosophers in late antiquity regarding the role of demons in humans’ fate in this



212 Notes to Pages 129–130 world (Dale B. Martin, Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004], 187–206, 237–39). See, however, my reservation in Chapter 1 above. Like Brown, Martin totally ignored rabbinic literature in his discussion of “the Late Antique Shift in Demonology” (204–6). 5. I follow in the steps of Dodds and Brown in using the fuzzy concept of “self,” and so I clarify. I use “self ” here to denote the most basic reflective consciousness of “me” and “my” boundaries (before any further discussion of “my” identity and unity, let alone personality). “Self ” involves the idea of a core as well as a hierarchy between what is really “me” and what is not (logos vs. desires, soul vs. body, etc.). Not everything I do defines “me” or even feels like coming from “me.” Some (many) things could be deemed accidents, results of coercion, or simply, to use the Aristotelian concept, “weakness of the will.” During the previous century, but especially since Marcel Mauss’s 1938 lecture “A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person; the Notion of Self” (trans. W. D. Halls, in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History [ed. M. Carruthers et al.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 1–25), scholars came to acknowledge that such consciousness, like any other formation of the self, is culturally constructed. (For attempts to identify the universals behind the culturally specific notions of “self,” see Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], 111–14; Andre Cetel, Categories of Self: Louis Dumont’s Theory of the Individual [New York: Berghahn, 2005], 173–75.) In fact, it may well be that such a concept of “inner self ” did not exist at all before Plato’s tripartite division of the soul (thus Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993], 42–44). Note that this conceptualization of the “self” is quite different from the Foucaultian concept of the “technologies of the self” (see below), which assumes a process of self-fashioning and of becoming what you are not yet (Luther H. Martin et al. eds., Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault [Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988], 18). It also does not require the notion of “interiority” or “inwardness”; i.e., the assumption that this core is unique to “me” and accessible only to “me” (for Platonists, my soul is all but unique to me!), which characterized modern conceptions of the “self ” (Taylor, Self, 124, and n. 24 below). I should add that I am not troubled at all with the philosophical question of the ontological adequacy of these ancient concepts (or of the concept of self in general). For the use of “self” to discuss cultures that do not have a term to denote it (or do not “make ‘self’ into a noun,” as Charles Taylor elegantly put it [Self, 113]), see Richard Sorabji, “Soul and Self in Ancient Philosophy,” in From Soul to Self (ed. M. J. C. Craabe; London: Routledge, 1999), 14–32. 6. Compare statements like “Let not thy yetzer promise you” (m. Avot 4:22), “A person must adjure his yetzer” (Sifre Deut 33), “remove that evil yetzer from your hearts” (Sifra Shemini 1, discussed above), and many more discussed above. 7. On the Platonic concept of ὁ ἔντος ἄνθροπος and its identification with the νοῦς, see Theo Heckel, Der innere Mensch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993), and my discussion in Chapter 1 above. 8. David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 77.



Notes to Pages 130–132 213

9. The prayer as a whole was cited and discussed in Chapter 4 above. I fail to see any positive or even dialectic attitude toward the yetzer encoded in the metaphor of leaven (‫)שאור‬, as some suggest. The leaven makes the dough sour (‫ )חמץ‬and therefore forbidden (on Passover and for sacrifice). This is made clear in the next sentence of the prayer: “Let it be thy will Lord my God and God of my fathers, that you vanquish it from before us (‫)שתשביתהו מעלינו‬.” Vanquishing, ‫השבתה‬, is the biblical term (Ex 12:15) used by the rabbis to designate the legal demand to eliminate hametz on Passover (another option is to nullify the leaven, ‫ ;ביטול‬cf. ‫ בטל רצונך‬below). For a similar metaphoric use of leaven, see 1 Cor 5:6–8. Also cf. Hans Conzelman ad loc.: “The leaven becomes the symbol of that which is unclean and indeed actively polluting” (Hans Conzelman, 1 Corinthians [Hermeneia; Fortress Press: Philadelphia, 1975], 98). The rabbinic metaphor may have yet another aspect: leaven becomes part of the dough, which is why only God can isolate it and vanquish it from our heart. On ‫ שאור‬and yetzer, see also M. B. Lerner, “Interpretations in Sifre and Mekhilta Ekev,” Tarbiz 57 (1988): 602–3. 10. Cf. the Bavli’s version of the prayer: “It is known full well to Thee that my will is to perform Thy will (‫)שרצוני לעשות רצונך‬, and what prevents me? The leaven in the dough and subjection to the nations” (b. Ber. 17a). There is no necessary contradiction between this statement and that of Rabban Gamliel the son of Rabbi Judah the Prince in Mishna Avot: “Nullify your will before His will (‫( ”)בטל רצונך מפני רצונו‬m. Avot 2:4), for it may well be that while our general will is to be God’s servants, in everyday life it demands us to overcome our specific wishes and desires (in a quite similar fashion to Harry Frankfurt’s distinction between first and second order will; see Harry G. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person, in The Importance of What We Care About [ed. idem; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], 11–25). 11. See Hindy Najman, “The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic law,” Studia Philonica Annual 11 (1999): 55–73. 12. This capacity enables them “to do (‫ )לעשות‬you will” or “to be (‫ )להיות‬righteous,” rather than to comprehend the truth as in the Platonic tradition. Cf. n. 20 below. 13. Brakke, Demons, 37. 14. Wicked people, according to this logic, are those who surrender to their yetzer, and thus become evil like it. 15. See, e.g., “Happy is he that deals wisely with the poor (Ps 41:2) Abba b. Jeremiah in the name of R. Meir said that his refers to one who enthrones (‫ )ממליך‬the good yetzer over the evil yetzer” (Lev Rab. 34:1, ed. Margulies, 771). Such homilies bring rabbinic teaching much closer to the Hellenistic task of empowering one part of the psyche to control the others. See Sorabji, “Soul and Self,” 20. 16. Martin, Technologies, 45. 17. See esp. Boyarin and Castelli, “The History of Sexuality”; Rosen-Zvi, “Bilhah the Temptress”; Joshua Levinson, The Twice Told Tale (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 128–29 (Hebrew). 18. Guy G. Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformation in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 11. 19. Ibid., 21.



214 Notes to Pages 132–134 20. The ideas ascribed to the yetzer in rabbinic literature are only those likely to damage one’s obedience to the Torah (e.g., divine automatic forgiveness or the absent of future judgment). As I tried to show in Chapter 4 above, their danger is practical rather than dogmatic. 21. Bruno Snell, “Homer’s View of Man,” in The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature (New York: Dover, 1982), 1–22. 22. Williams, Shame and Necessity, 31. For the implications of this debate on contemporary philosophy of mind, see Sorabji, “Soul and Self,” 29. 23. On the absence of this sentence from the parallel version in the Bavli and its significance, see above Chapter 4 n. 41. 24. For this kind of inner self, “an inner room that no one else can enter,” see Philip Cary, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 115–24, 123. Cary narrates two key moments in the development of this concept: Augustine’s rejection of the Platonist conception of the divinity (and thus commonality) of the soul, and John Locke’s conceptualization of the mind as camera obscura. 25. A separate concept of mental duties appears for the first time in the eleventh-century “Guide to the Duties of the Heart” by Bachya ibn Pakuda. See Adam Afterman, “Intimate Conjunction with God: The Concept of ‘Devekut’ in the Early Kabbalah (Provence and Catalonia)” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2008), 59–69 (Hebrew). 26. War 2:162–63. Cf. Epiphanius, Panairon 16.2.1. Such an affinity does not require a direct dependence; suffice it to acknowledge the deep dependence of both groups on biblical heritage—with its repeated emphasis on free choice and anthropological monism.

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Subject Index

Names of modern scholars were not included. Works and authors were listed only if they were discussed themselves (not cited or quoted for another purpose). Sages were listed only if they were subjects of direct discussion. Hebrew words defined in the book are listed at the end of this index. Abaye, 106 Abraham, 20, 67, 68, 77, 78, 88, 94–97, 102 Acts of Judah Thomas, 117 Adam, 74 Afterlife, 92. See also Resurrection, Sheol Agency, 133 Akiva, school of, 63, 134 Alimony, 110 “All,” 73 Amram, R., 124 Amulets, 52 Angel: of darkness, 51; of death, 79; fallen, 53; in the heart, 55–57 Anger, 31, 66, 69, 82, 1515. See also Spirit of Anger Animals, 73, 75, 122 Anthropology, 9, 19, 35, 38, 41, 48, 50–51, 63, 72, 122, 128, 134, 214; Christian, 173; ethical monism, 173 Antony, 131 Aphrahat, 29, 116, 205 Apocalyptic, 80 Apostate, 29 Apotropaic, 25 Appetites. See Passions Arrogance, 69 Asceticism, 5, 114, 118 Asmodeus, 32 Atonement, 93–94 Augustine, 214 Babylonian Talmud, 105, 113–14; anonymous layer of, 108, 116, 123, 202, 209; anonymous

layer of, terminology, 110–11; narratives in, 111, 116; polemic with the Gospels, 195; redaction of aggadic cycles, 204; reworking in, 135, 202, 204; and sexuality, 114, 155 Bachya ibn Pakuda, 214 Bear, 104 Belial, 51, 53, 57, 84 Beruria’s sister, 209 Betrothal, 90 Bildung, 80 Biography, 171 Blood, vaginal, 125–26 Boaz, 18, 27, 33–36, 87, 90, 102, 131 Bowls, magic, 52 Burial, 120 Cain, 66, 104 Cardiognosis, 43 Carnality, 54, 134 Christianity, early, 114; eastern, 118; Persian, 207; Syriac, 27, 112, 132, 206 Clement, 38; and Philo, 155 Clothing, 94 Conception, 90 Cosmology and human evil, 53; at Qumran, 50 Covenant, sons of, 116 Creation, 73 David, 18, 20, 72, 88, 90 Day of Atonement, 94 Death, 81, 186 Delivery, 93

240 Subject Index “Demonic,” 138 Demons, 5–8, 25, 26, 32–36, 38–43, 47, 50, 51, 69, 84, 100, 127, 131, 132, 134; acedia (boredom or listlesness), 208; adjuration of, 52, 188; apparitions of, 58–59; in the Babylonian Talmud, 161; and bodily impulses, 173; and Celsus, 154; cosmic, 79; as deceivers, 156; guises of, 69; internalized, 53, 128, 170, 186; major, 42; melting, 142; and monotheism, 37, 154–55; and multiplicity, 158; nature of, 154, 155; in Origen, 156, 157; physiology of, 37, 58, 158; powers of, 70; and psyche, 77; rabbinic and Qumranic, 53; in rabbinic literature, 161; role in human fate, 211–12; supression of, 54; techniques against, 82, 83; terminology, 149; as thoughts, 197; and Torah study, 188 Desire, 109 Destruction, 124 Dialogism, rabbinic, 101 Dualism, 138, 185 Egypt, 40, 124 Ejaculation, 211 Eleazar, Rabbi, the son of R. Shimon, 113 Eliezer, R., 98 Elisha, 20, 88 Enemies, 60, 117, 172 Enosh, 67 Envy, 103 Eros, 103 Erotic literature, 211 Esau, 46, 49 Esther, 211 Ethics, 122, 132–34 Evagrius Ponticus, 41–42, 86, 160, 198; Antirrhetikos, 97; demons in, 159; On Thoughts, 159; sex as sin in, 160 Evil, 79, 81, 129, 134; creation of, 178 Evil desire, 121 Evil eye, 29 Exorcism, 23 Fourth Ezra, 74, 80, 92; and rabbinic literature, 181, 184–85; terminology, 184 Free choice, 39, 214 Gaze, 110, 151 Gender, 5, 121, 126 Genesis Rabba, 102 Genitals, 209 Gentiles, 122, 208; seclusion with, 199

God, attributes of, 93. See also Yetzer, of God Haruta, 117, 124 Heart, 27, 75–76; divine, 151; as mind, 182; singleness of, 147; two sides of, 182; unity of, 158; and Yetzer, 150, 153, 184. See also Heart, evil Heart, evil, 5, 52, 80, 84, 127, 132; synonyms for, 184; and yetzer, 182–83 Hellenism, 127, 132, 213 Hellenistic-Jewish literature, 210 Heretics, 98, 99–101 Hermes, 32 Hero, 121–22; biblical, 125; female, 210 Homer, 133 Homilies: acronyms, 182; based on the previous verse, 184; on double letters, 61, 73, 130, 146–47; “index,” 20; jointly on two verses, 180; prophets and writings as commentary on Torah, 195; reading verses as dialogues, 195; on repetition, 89 Horses, 130 House of study, 24, 101, 122 Idolatry, 30–32, 37, 207 Images, 17 Intercourse, 18–19; legal power of, 191 Isaac, 94–96 Ishmael, school of, 134 J (source), 4 Jesus, 69, 97; homily cited in the name of, 98; speaking with the devil, 195 Job, 70 Joseph, 104, 124 Josephus, 134 Judas, 70 Judgment, divine, 91 Kabbala, 128 Late Antiquity, 129; koine, 82–83 Law: and sin in Paul, 169; of the Flesh, 5 Leaven, and yetzer, 213 Legal arguments, 88, 101 Leontius, 33, 146–147 Leviticus Rabba, 103 Locke, John, 214 Logos, 130; in Plato, 152 Man, inner, 130 Marriage, 113

Martyrdom, daily, 172 Martyrologies, 210 Masculinity, 121 Mastema, 53 Masturbation, 110 Matrons, 125 Mekhiltot, 143 Men, 110, 113 Mercurius. See Hermes Midrash, late, 12, 128 Mime, 211 Mind, 214 Mishnah and Tosefta, redaction of, 34, 120 Mishnah, school of R. Akiva, 149 Monasticism, 40, 131 Murder, 104 Myth, rabbinic, 34, 153

Subject Index 241 Potiphar, 124 Potiphar’s wife, 209 Prayer, 73–74, 81; biblical, 24 Pre-Platonic, 7 Procreation, 191 Property, lost, 16 Prostitute, 113, 209 “Protection,” 25 Pseudo-Clementine homilies, 128; and the Rabbis, 154 Psychology, 5, 26, 34–35, 51, 84–86; divine, 136 Punishment, capital, 110 Qumran: Holy spirit at, 165; and the school of R. Ishmael, 62–63

Odysseus, 34 Organs, function of, 76 Origen, 38–41; demons in,158; and Jewish traditions, 157 Ovid, 33

Rabbi (Judah the Prince), 71 Rabbis, and monks, 43 Rainmaking, 23 Reality, perception of, 118 Reason, 7 Rebellion, 115 Redaction, 107–8 Redemption, 95 Reflection, worship of. See Nazirite, from the south, story of Repentance, 94, 208 Resurrection, 92 Robber. See Yetzer as robber Rome, opponent of God, 172 Rosh Hashana, 94 Ruth, 18, 24

Passions, 38, 40, 41, 54, 66, 84, 124; female, 126, 210–11 “Pastoral power,” 197 Paul, 74. See also Sin, Pauline; Law Penises, 113 Persian norms, rabbinic adoption of, 207. See also Sassanian, Zoroastriansim, Sexual habits, Persian Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, 103 Pharisees, 134 Philo, 38, 54, 131; adaptation of Plato, 168–69 Physical injuries, 30 Physiology, 77, 208, 211 Pilgrimage, 15 Plato, 2, 7, 84, 130, 213; conception of divinity of the soul, 214; desires in, 152; and logos, 152; soul in, 147–48, 159, 212 Platonism, Middle, 155 Plotinus, 40

Samael, 97 Sassanian, 12, 118. See also Persian, Zoroastriansim Satan, 59, 69, 79, 80, 96, 114, 117; in Aphrahat, 117; as Liar, 96–97; messenger of God, 184; in rabbinic literature, 161; and Yetzer, 162 Saul, 20, 88 Savior, 37 Seclusion, forbidden, 117, 124 Seduction, 210 Self, 129, 131, 133, 212; care of, 132; -control, 127; -mutilation, 30, 31; rabbinic, 133 Semen, 209 Sex: ethics, 5; forbidden, 109, marital, 90–91; procreative, 119; sinful, 191 Sexuality, 118; of sages, 203 Sheol, and Gehenna, 91–93, 192–93 Shepherd of Hermas, 55–56, 121, 128 Sin, 18, 39, 41, 43, 62, 79, 81, 94, 127, 132, 134;

Naaman, 20, 88 Narcissus, 33 Narratology, 132 Nations of the world, 89 Nazirite, 32–33 Nazirite, from the south, story of, 33 Nous, 212 Novel, Greek, 125, 210–11



242 Subject Index attractiveness of, 25; and demons, 156; not connected to the body, 60–61; Original, 74; origins of, 53; Pauline, 54–55; thoughts, 201 Single-mindedness, 27, 41, 129; in the Syriac Church, 147 Slavery, 115 Soul, 7, 33, 37 60, 77, 208, 212; immortality of, 191; Platonic division of, 152; unity of, 147–48 ”Stam Hatalmud,” 200–201 Stoic, 56, 77, 38 Struggle, inner, 6, 63 Subjectivity, 114, 132 Synagogue, 24. See also Prayer Syriac literature: and rabbinic literature, 206; sexual disourse in, 117 Tannaim, two schools, 14, 28. See also Ishmael, school of; Akiva, school of Temple, 79 Temptation narrative, 96 Temptations, 211 Tendencies, bad, 47 Theodicy, 5, 6, 128 Thoughts and beliefs, 101, forbidden, 110 Torah, 20–25, 28, 35, 37, 66, 68, 81, 83, 120; and Askesis, 161; upon the heart, 142; public reading, 144; as talisman, 142; words of, 144 Trees, fruit, 14–15 Two powers in Heaven, 99 Two spirits, doctrine of, 50 Wicked, terms for, 166, 167 Widow, 110 Wife, captive, 210 Wisdom, 76 Women, 122, naked, 110 responsibility of, 110; seclusion with, 199; source of yetzer, 126; tempting, 112–13, 124 World to come, 37 Yehuda, Rav, 94 Yetzer, adjuration of, 18–20, 52, 81, 88, 99– 100, 146, 175, 188; and angels, 187; angering of, 81–82 186; and animals, 188; antinomian, 2, 6, 17–18, 30, 31, 52, 66, 83–84, 88, 96, 98, 104, 108, 118, 145, 149, 214; attacking, 109; battle against, 20–22, 28, 34–35, 39–42, 50, 57, 74, 81, 88, 121, 125–26, 133, 157, 177, 179, 188; capabilities of, 69; causing death, 150, 154; as character trait, 29–30;

collective, 79–80; control of, 187; cooperation with, 88; cosmic, 58, 62, 79–80; crafty, 88–89; creation of, 181; cunning, 157, 181, 185, 207; deceiver, 25, 42; demonic, 145; development, 28; different types of, 198; discursive component of resisting, 89; discursive threat, 97; divinity of, 185; dual, 56– 57, 61–64, 72–78, 128, 146, 206, 213; dualistic/dialectic, 73; dynamic, 108; enemy of humanity, 106–7; enticer, 46; erroneous uses of, 199; and evil heart, 80; as a fly, 181; forcing, 109, 123; gender of, 123; of gentiles (see gentiles); and God, 130; good, 131, 179, 175, 146 (see also dual, one or two); guises of, 117; as hair, 151; of harlotry, 207; and heart, 25, 33, 47, 49, 81, 139, 145, 209; as hunger, 30; as idolatry (see Idolatry); incognito, 99; injuring, 166, internalization of, 59–60, 127; as intruder, 64, 71; invader, 2, 19, 31, 37; kinetic, 76; in legal discussions in the Bavli, 200; melting or exploding, 142; mythological, 185; national enemy, 78–80, 139; natural predisposition, 16; not identical to body, 2, 19, 31–32, 34, 37; not Passion, 25; not sex, 103; obstacle for service of God, 27; one or two, 3, 21, 26, 29; ontology, 171; as organ, 75, 76; and Pauline sin, 54; personal or collective, 183; and philonic Falsehood, 54; plots of, 50; protection from, 141; psychology of (see Psychology); Rabbi Ishmael’s, 61–62; reification of, 34; and religious elites, 42; rest from, 148; as robber, 39, 70; and sages, 112–13; as Satan, 79; separation from, 33; sexual, 108, 111, 118; and Soul, 173–74 (see also Soul); source of sin, 127; source of violence, 71; speaking to, 151; as tendency, 48; terminology, 18, 22, 27, 28, 42, 135–36, 138, 141, 145, 146; as Torah scholar, 19–20, 132; very good, 72; violent 179; of the wicked, 46, 49–50 Yosse b. Yosse, 83 Zoroastrianism, 12, 118. See also Sassanian, Persian ‫אדם‬, 120 ‫גער‬, 47 ‫להשיב‬, 101 ‫לעסוק בדברי תורה‬, 22 ‫נפש‬, rabbinic, 137–38 ‫עבירה‬, 207 ‫פטפט ביצרו‬, 209

Source Index

Bible Genesis 

1:26–27 180 1:27 135 1:31  72–73, 103 2:7  57, 61, 73, 135, 171, 180, 188 2:19 73 3 145 3:16  103, 125 4:6 54 4:7  21–22, 65–68, 75, 104, 141 6:5  3, 135, 140, 182 6:6  151, 185 8:12 46 8:21  3, 21, 93, 135, 140–41, 182, 184 12:21 95 14:22 20 22 195 22:2 95  22:8 96 24:49 182 29:2–3 143 39:9 199

Exodus

1:8–2:9 115 12:14 213 14:28  141, 142 20:4 17 23:5 139 32:8 144 34:24 15

Leviticus 9 147 9:6 27

18:3 17 18:4 89 18:16 190 19:25  14, 15 25:21 206

Numbers

6:2 32 16:32–33 93

Deuteronomy

4:6 140 5:5 61 6:3 158 6:4 170 6:4–5 147 6:5 (LXX)  27, 170 10:16 45 10:16–17 27 11:13–21 24 11:16  25, 45 11:18  20–23, 52, 65 142 22:1 16 23:25 149 25:2 190 31:21 3, 135  32:4 131 32:17 (LXX)  154

Judges

13:24 114–15 16:16 114 16:21 114

2 Samuel

2:12 107  12:4 67

244 Source Index 2 Kings

5:16 20

Isaiah

5:14 93 5:18 67 14:16 186 23:11 186 23:13 107 26:3  3, 67 29:17 135 33:7 194 52:5 108 57:2 173 57:14 184

Jeremiah

3:1 93 3:17 184 7:27 184 11:8 184 16:12 184 18:12 184

Ezekiel

36:26 184 37:9 192

Hosea

4:12 107 5:4 107

Joel

2:19–20 184 2:20  78–79, 105 

Amos

9:3 193

Jonah

4:11 182

Micah

4:6  108, 200 7:5 93 

Habbakuk

2:18  3, 135

Zachariah 3:2 47 5:8 119

Psalms

1:1 208 4:5  78, 82, 186 6:6 193 26:11  67, 96 27:3 157 27:10 90 29:21 67 35:10  66, 157 36:2 75 37:32 131 41:2  179, 213 50:4 192 51:12–13 165 56:3 145 57:7–9 72 65:10 104 81:10 31 84:35 95 88:6 171 89:24 67 91:10–12 195 91:10 143 103:14  3, 135 109:22  75, 185 109:31  75, 181–82 112:1 121 118:7 157 119:61 72 119:106 141 119:113 48 119:117 24 139:5 75 139:7–8 193

Proverbs

2:12 (LXX)  174 3:26 145 5:8 98 6:22 141 7:26 98 9:17 25 16:7  65, 123, 179 16:32 29 25:12 66 25:20 184 25:21 21 25:21–22 65 26:8 32 26:12  104, 150 26:23 184



Source Index 245 29:21 107 30:16 92

Job

1 161 3:19  57, 171 4 195 4:2–7 96 4:12 96 7:9 192–93 8:14 195 9:6 186 12:6 107 14:13 193 31:24 195

Song of Songs 2:15 100 7:11 104  

Ruth 

3:6–15 18 3:13  20, 199

Ecclesiastes

4:4 103 7:29 131 9:10 193 9:14 157 9:14–16  1, 77  10:1–2 75 10:2 182

1 Chronicles

2:55 144 4:10  24, 143–44 21:1 161 28:9 135 29:18 135

1 Samuel 

2:6 192 25:29  173, 179 26:10  20, 199 26:19 144 28:15 186

Apocrypha  4 Ezra

3:21  180, 184

3:22 184 3:26 180 4:4 184 4:28–32 184 4:30 180 4:41–42 93 7:18 180 7:29 184 7:32 193 8:6 184 8:53 184 9:31 184

Jubilees

1:20 165 10:18 168 11:5 168 35: 9  46

Pseudo Philo 9:2–9 204 33:3 145

Sirach

17:6 163 17:31 149 19:2 150 22:27–23:2 171 23:2 163 23:6 179 37:3 165

Pseudepigrapha 1 Enoch

10:15 168

Testaments of the Twelve Tribes Asher 1:1  174 Asher 1:3–9  170 Asher 6:2  168 Issachar 4:4  168 Judah 14:7  168 Judah 19:3  168 Judah 20:1  168, 174 Simon 2:7  168 Simon 6:6  168 Zebulun 9:7  168

2 Baruch

21:23–24 193 23:4–5 193 30:1–2 193

246 Source Index Martyrdom of Isaiah

4Q184

Qumranic Literature

4Q186 167

1Q18

4Q213a

1QHa

4Q280

2:2–5 170

3–4 46

VI 17–25  166 XIII 2 I 17–18  166 XIII 6  50 XIII 31–32  163 XIV 32  49 XV 3–4  53 XV 13  49 XVII 16  165 XVIII 23  165 XIX 20  49 XXI bottom 14  165 XXI frg. 3 9–10  50 XXI top 16  165 XXIV 5  165

1QM

XIII 11  168 XIV 10  47

1QS

I 5–6  166 I 6  163 I 17–18  168 III 13 – IV 26  50–51 III 18–19  174 III 18–22  170 III 23–24  166 III 25–26  166 V 5  45, 163, 166 V 8  141 XIII 32  166 XV 3  166

4Q165

6:5 166

4Q174

1i 21, 2 7–9  168

4Q177

I 6  166 II 4–7  168 IV 12  168

1 17  164

1 I 17  48 6 166

4Q286

7 II 1  166 7 ii 7  165

4Q370

I 3  47

4Q417

2 II 12 

4Q434

1 4  163

4Q436

1 I 10  47, 163, 175

4QMMT

end 165 II 16  49, 163 IV 15  168 XIV 4–5  168

11Q5 

XIX 15–16  47

Philo, the Special Laws I 89  53 I 119  201

Josephus Jewish Antiquities 5:285–317 204 13:297 193 14:171–73 194 18:17 193

War of the Jews 2:162–63 214 2:165 193



Rabbinic Literature Mishna Avot 1:13 150 2:8–13 148 2:9  29, 184 2:10 208 2:11  29, 149 2:16 134 3:1 191 3:6  141, 144 3:7 23 3:16 192 3–4 153 4:1  29, 31, 121, 132, 199, 206 4:21 29 4:22  91, 148, 153, 212 Bava Kama 8 30 8:6  30, 149 Berachot 9:5  27, 56, 61–62, 75, 146, 149, 170, 179 Gittin 9:9 140 Hagigah 2:1  108, 179 Ketubot 5:7 123 Makkot 3:15  109, 208 Moed Katan 3:2 207 Oholot 1:9 182 Pesachim 6:2 198 Sanhedrin 7:6  149, 150 Shevuot 3:6 141

Source Index 247 Sotah 1:3 145 1:6 194 3:2 208 Yadayim 4:3 198 Yevamot 6  116, 191 Yoma 8:8 194 8:9 94 Mekhilta according to Rabbi Ishmael Beshalach 2  162 Beshalach 6  141, 142 Amalek 2  24 Bahodesh 6  17, 33, 88 Pascha 16  148 Pascha 17  142 Vayasa 1  141, 144 Kaspa 20  139 Mekhilta according to Rabbi Shimon B. Yohai 6:20 204 16:1  173, 192 18:38 143 33:4 139–40 34:24 14 Sifra Aharei Mot 9:13  89 Aharei Mot 13  17, 88, 100 Emor 12:2  194 Kedoshim 3:9  14 Sifra Shemini 1  27, 41, 45, 56, 86, 134, 153, 162, 208, 212 Sifre Numbers 22  33, 150 40 145 88  18, 23, 87, 90, 102, 146, 175 115  151, 203 131  145, 149 Sifre Zuta Numbers 6:44 150 27:12 179



248 Source Index Sifre Deuteronomy 31 47 32  146–47, 158, 170, 199, 209 33  20, 23, 52, 87, 102, 146, 153, 172, 175, 209, 212 34  141, 153 41 144 43  45, 88, 176 44 142 45  24, 37, 65, 68, 121, 145, 153, 169, 181, 209 88 145 222  16, 139–40 254 201 306 192–93 307 131 323 145 357 179 434 23 Sifre Zuta Deuteronomy 22:1 139

Tosefta Avoda Zara 1–6 32 4:5 144 6:17  32, 176 Bava Kama 9 30 9:31  30, 88, 176, 199 Berachot 6:7 146 6:18 138 Horayot 1:5  30, 148 Hullin 2:24 98 10:16 193 Kippurim 4:6–8 194 Mikvaot 7:11 198 Nezirut 4:7 32

Oholot 2:7–8 198 Sanhedrin 7:6 101 13:1 192 Sotah 1:2 145

Palestinian Talmud Avoda Zara 2:1 199 Berachot 1:1 72 4:2  73–74, 81, 83, 130, 147, 153, 179 7:3 185 9:5  76, 174, 179, 181, 185–86 Hagigah 2:1 203 Ketubot 5:7 204 12:3 171 Kiddushin 1:10 181 3:12 208 4:12 199 Kilayim 9:4 171 Maasrot 2:4 149 Nedarim 9:1  31, 37, 54, 146, 160, 176, 199, 208 Rosh Hashana 1:3 94 Sanhedrin 1:6 179 2:2  151, 186, 199 10:1 186 10:11 150 Shabbat 14:3 70



Source Index 249

Sotah 1:8 204 3:1 199 18:8 115 Sukka 5:2  105, 199 Taanit 2:4  95, 162 3:4 181 Yoma 6:5  54, 146, 149, 176, 208

Genesis Rabba

1–11 180 1:4 174 2:7 103 8:1 181 8:3 151 9:4 181 9:5 148 9:7  72, 103, 176, 179, 208 14:1 173 14:4  73, 173, 179, 181, 183, 187–88, 208 14:7–9 138 20:7 176 22:6  39, 41, 71, 78, 80, 121, 150, 160, 176, 183, 199–200 26:2 104 27:4  178, 181, 208 32:10 208 34:10  71, 122, 173, 179, 181, 187, 208 46:2 199 47:4 185 48:11 174 53:6 162 54:1  66, 157, 179, 209 56:4  96, 162, 190 56:5 194 56:10 194 59:7 187 59:8 178 67:8  150, 185 70:8  141, 143, 178 84:7 104 85:8 162 87:3 104 87:7 204 89:1  79, 183 98:4 199 99:4 76

Leviticus Rabba 4:5  173, 192 14 191 14:5 90 23:11 199 29:9 194 34:1  179, 213

Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 2:4 81 4:6 190 7:4 72 11:15–25 113 23:3–4 194 23:4 160 23:9 194 24:17 78

Esther Rabba 3:13 162

Ruth Rabba

3:1  57, 148

Ecclesiastes Rabba 1:8 98 9:17 204

Lamentations Rabba 1:16 211

Song of Songs Rabba 4:4 76 7:8  198, 207

Avot Derabbi Natan, Version A 3 30 14 148 16  149, 177, 209

Babylonian Talmud Arachin  32b 207 Avoda Zara  5a 185 5b  150, 187 17a  111, 203, 207 17b 98 18a 203 18a–b 209–10



250 Source Index 19a 121 22b 203 23a  201, 209 44a 203 65a 203 69b–70a  198, 203 72a 186 Bava Batra  7b 141 10a 194 15b–16a 161 17a 187 58a  111, 202–3 109b 209 Bava Mezia  32b 187 83b–85a 113 84a 203 85a 203 Bechorot  46a 201 Berachot  5a  78, 160, 186, 208 8a 118 10b 190 15b 92 16b  180, 83 17a  81, 213 20a 111 22a  204, 207 23a 203 60b 81 61a  57, 74, 83, 130, 174, 178, 185, 187, 208 62b 161 Eruvin 8a 130 18a  57, 181 Gittin  52a 161 55b–58a 124 57a  111, 123–24, 202 58a  209, 211 Hagiga  11b  109, 201 14b 203

15a 203 16a  93, 162 Kareitot 7a 194 23a 203 Ketubot 22a 140 48a 118 51b  109–10, 201 53a 201 54a   201 64b  200, 209 66a 209 Kiddushin  12b  141, 191 21b 200 29b  199, 201 30b  21, 53, 121, 143, 208 39b 201 40a  185, 200 63b  109, 201 66a 148 70a 150 80b 208 80b–82a  117, 124 81a–b  161, 206, 209 81a 111–12  81b  111, 201, 202 (MSS), 209, Megillah 11a–14b 204 12b 204 13a 118 15a  187, 203, 211 22a 207 Nazir 4b 150 9b  199, 150 20a 203 32a 186 32b  157, 160 40a 145 Niddah 13b  30, 109, 201 20a 211 31a  138, 199, 203 61b 171

Pesachim 113a  199, 203  Sanhedrin 22a 203 26b 145 38b 203 43b 186 45a 201 55a 204 64a 119 75a 145 81b  173, 178 89b  96, 161–62, 190 90a–92b 92 91b  122, 187, 208 92a 92 92b   211 93a 195 103a 143 107a  161, 200, 209 Shabbat 30a 171 63b 183 91a–b 192 89a 199 95b 199 105b  30–32, 37, 160, 200 149a 203 151b 171 152b 173 156b 201 159b 203 Shevuot 13a 194 18a 204 Sotah 8a 201 9b–14a 114 11a–13a 115 10a 203 11b 207 26b 204 36b 204 43a 209 47a  209, 179, 186 Sukka  50b–52a  78, 80

Source Index 251 51a–52b 105–7 52a  21, 43, 55, 111, 179, 208 52a–b 153 52b  131, 143, 154, 181, 208 Yevamot 52a  141, 191 54a 116 55b 116 59b 204 62b 211 63a–b 199 65a 116 65b 121 Yoma 35b  150, 199 67b  162 (MSS), 190 69b  119, 148, 185 69b–70a 202

Piyut T-S H 18.42  174 Kalir, for Tisha B’Av  T-S H 14.25  177 Yose b. Yose, ed. Mirsky  221  187 Shirat Bene Maarava  106–7  23

New Testament Matthew

4:1–10 96 4:15 144 5:48 147 6:24 57

Mark

1:13 161

Luke

4 154 4:1–12 96 4:13 154 4:41 97 16:13 57 22:3  154, 161

John

13:2 154 13:27 154



252 Source Index Acts of the Apostles 23:8 193

1 Corinthians 5:6–8 213 7:5 161 10:20 154

2 Corinthians 6:14 170 6:14–15 57

Romans

6:14 22 7 54 7:11 54 7:20 54 7:8 54 7:7 169

26 97 29 69 35 142 36 70 37 154 51–53 172

Augustine, Confessions 2.3.8 26 2.4.9 25 2.6.12 26 2.6.14 26 2.8.16–9.17 26

Clement Protrepticus  3.2 154 115.2 142

James

Recognitions IV:15–19 153 

Early Christian Writers Antony

Stromateis II 20  168 II 20, 110, 1–3  38 II 113, 2, 5  156 II 117, 1  155

Aphrahat

Evagrius Ponticus

3:14–17 169

Letters 200–201 156 Letters VI 171 Demonstrations III:1  206 Demonstrations VI  117 Demonstrations VI:1  206 Demonstrations VI:2  205–6 Demonstrations VI:4  206 Demonstrations VI:6  205 Demonstrations IX:3  206Demonstrations XIV:19  206 Demonstrations XX:1  206 Homilies I 44:157  149

Athanaisus, Vita Antonii 5 172 6  157, 260, 172, 178 7 66 8 172 9  162, 172 11 142 13 142 22 187 23  43, 58–59

Praktikos  47 70 Peri Logismon 4 159 5 160 7 197 8 197 9  160, 196 9:9 43 11 160 13 160 16  160, 186 17 160 19 197 27 172 32  160, 177 33 197 35 197 37 70 112–13 197



Source Index 253

Foundations 4 160 9 186 Letters  16  160, 177  Praktikos 5 159 24 186 28 208 36 160 38 160 48 182 50 196

Origen

Mand. 12 I 1–2  56 Mand. 12 I 2  169 Mand. 12 II 1  208 Mand. 12 II 4–5  56 Mand. 12 II 5  170 Mand. 12 II 7  170

Pseudo-Clementine Homiiles 9:11–12 36–37 9:15–17 37 9:19 37

Pseudo-Barnabas 18:1 170

Simeon Barsabbae 46 149

On First Principles I 6–8  156 III  156, 168 III 3  100 III 2.5  162 III 2.1  38–40 III 3.2  182

Greek Literature

Commentary on Song of Songs 225 197

Galen, De Placitis

Contra Celsum  1:31 158 4.92 158 5.5 158 6.11 158 7:67 154 8.31 158 8.43 158

Plato

The Shepherd of Hermas Mand. 6 II 1–4  169 Mand. 6 II 3, 6  170 Mand. 6 II 4–5  55 Mand. 6 II 7  208 Mand. 9 1–2  170 Mand. 11 5  170

Epiphanius, Panairon 16.2.1 214

Euripides, Medea 1078–79 6 4.2.12 182

Phaedo 107c 192 Republic 4 431a 34 439b 34 440a 34 441c 34 Timaeus 69d–70a 152 69e–70b 76 91b–c 209

Acknowledgments

Since I tend to discuss freely my thoughts and ideas (in other words, I am a chatterer), and the book was written over a long period and in various places, many good and kind people were involved in its formation, whether in reading drafts, discussing related issues, or simply sharing their wisdom with me. I would like to thank the following teachers, colleagues, and friends: Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Gideon Bohak, Menachem Fisch, Steven Fraade, Moshe Halbertal, Galit Hasan-Rokem, Menachem Hirshman, Menachem Kahana, Menachem Kister, Israel Knohl, Joshua Levinson, Menachem Lorberbaum, Yair Lorberbaum, Michael Mach, Shlomo Naeh, Hindy Najman, Vered Noam, Adi Ophir, Jeffrey Rubenstein, Assaf Rosen-Zvi, Adiel Schremer, Aharon Shemesh, David Shulman, Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Dina Stein, Peter Tomson, Azzan Yadin, Dror Yinon, and Noam Zion. My academic home is the department for Hebrew Culture Studies of Tel Aviv University. I am thankful to my colleagues there for their comradeship, which goes far beyond formal academic collegiality. Indeed, my work attempts to reflect the concept of Jewish studies envisioned in this department. This book was conceived during my fellowship at the Scholion Center for Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University. I am grateful to my fellows there and particularly to the center’s director, Israel Yuval, for his wonderful hospitality and kindness, both in worldly and in scholarly matters. For the most part, the book was written at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Shalom Hartman Institute, where I have had the good fortune of being a fellow for many years. I wish to express my deepest appreciation and gratitude to both its heads, David Hartman and Donniel Hartman, for creating and maintaining this paradise of intellectual stimulation. This project could never have reached fruition without the wonderful chavura assembled at this institute.



256 Acknowledgments

Daniel Boyarin, my mentor and friend, read an entire draft of this book, and his sharp comments made me think and rethink the major theses. The anonymous reader’s gentle yet unequivocal demand for weightier engagement with early Christianity forced me back to the writing table, thus altering the book dramatically (for the better, I believe). Amit Gvaryahu shaped the book’s style and prepared its index. Being the bright young Talmud scholar he is, his assistance extended way beyond technicalities. My three children, Racheli, Tal, and Modi, are my yetzer hatov. My gratitude to them is beyond what can be expressed in this medium. The book is dedicated to my late father, Ariel Dov Rosen-Zvi, ‫בגעגועים‬. Earlier versions of some chapters have appeared elsewhere. Two (very different) versions of Chapter 1 were published as “Two Rabbinic Inclinations? Rethinking a Scholarly Dogma,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 39 (2008): 51339, and as “‘Torah Spoke Regarding the Yetzer’: The School of R. Ishmael and the Sources of Yetzer Hara,” Tarbiz 76 (2007): 41-79 (Hebrew). Chapter 4 appeared as “Yetzer Hara in Amoraic Literature: A Reevaluation,” Tarbiz 77 (2008): 1-38 (Hebrew). Chapter 5 appeared as “Refuting the Yetzer: The Evil Inclination and the Limits of Rabbinic Discourse,” Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy 17 (2009): 117-42. Chapter 6 appeared as “Sexualizing the Evil Inclination: Rabbinic Yetzer and Modern Scholarship,” Journal of Jewish Studies 60 (2009): 264-81. A large expansion of part of Chapter 6 is to be published as “Hyper-Sexualization in the Bavli: An Initial Survey,” in Midrash and the Exegetical Mind (ed. L. Teugels and R. Ulmer; Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, forthcoming). Chapter 7 appeared as “Do Women Have a Yetzer? Anthropology, Ethics, and Gender in Rabbinic Literature,” in Struggle for Cultural Power in Jewish Thought (ed. B. Huss; Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2010), 21-34 (Hebrew).