Thursday, June 04, 2015

More on Dr. Ruth and the Talmud

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG: Actually, Dr. Ruth, the Talmud Does Not OK Rape (The Forward). Rabbi Ruttenberg is one of the rabbis cited by Julie Wiener in an article noted yesterday, but in this piece Rabbi Ruttenberg brings more Talmudic material into the discussion. She argues that Dr. Ruth's "Talmudic" reference is actually a Yiddish saying and that the Talmud itself presents a rather different view about consent than Dr. Ruth's.

UPDATE: In his book Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture, Daniel Boyarin discusses sexual consent in the Talmud and brings in some addition texts. See chapter 4. The Talmud even discusses the question of sexual coercion of a man by a woman, albeit in very specific circumstances. See this post on one of Adam Kirsch's Daf Yomi columns in Tablet Magazine.