TRAVEL, THE INN, AND IDENTITY IN RABBINIC STORYTELLING* John Mandsager Department of Religious Studies Stanford University [email protected]

Introduction

In its most basic form, a journey found in two short rabbinic narratives, involves a traveller leaving home, which take place in the fraught space of the progressing to a destination, and returning inn. In each of these stories, a male home. Alternate routes, unexpected protagonist enters an inn and is served adventures, and myriad stops may interrupt refreshments by an innkeeper or barmaid. It the journey, but we may assume that the is clear to the reader that these female traveller expects to return home.1 In innkeepers have malicious intentions and classical rabbinic literature,2 as will be hold access to supernatural powers. In one discussed below, such travel can reveal the case, the protagonist is physically harmed by instability of rabbinic identity and of the a supernatural attack, while in the other case spaces rabbinic characters inhabit. This the protagonist is able to turn the tables on study will explore a variety of instabilities as his assailant, such that she bears the brunt of the attack. In between home and its * I wish to thank Professors Charlotte E. Fonrobert, dialectical opposite, not-home, we find Naomi Seidman and Rebecca Lyman for their rabbinic characters entering a contested criticisms and insights to earlier versions of this space, the inn, which has characteristics of study. This study is adapted from my Master‟s thesis: “Do Not Disturb: Identity, Autonomy and home (one settles in the inn for the night) the Inn in Rabbinic Storytelling” (MA thesis, The and characteristics of not-home (it is Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, 2005). populated by danger, strangers, and 1 For a selection of the substantial body of theorists unknown women). It is the central claim of who consider the metaphors of travel and home, see this study that the space of the inn, as an Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics (vol. 16, issue 1,1986), 22-27; Edward Said, interstitial, liminal place between home and “Traveling Theory,” The World, the Text, and the the traveller‟s destination, is portrayed as a Critic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, dangerous space, and this danger, this 1983), 226-47; James Clifford, “Notes on Travel liminality,3 reveals the danger and instability and Theory,” Inscriptions (vol. 5, 1989), 177-88; of the traveller‟s home and his own identity. Adrienne Rich, “Notes Towards a Politics of Location,” Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1985 (New York: W. W. Norton & 3 I consider the inn a “liminal” space not strictly in the Company, 1986), 210-31; and for a masterful Turnerian sense of a place for transformative rituals account of the fraught meetings that happen “on the (rites de passage) but in the sense of a space which road,” see M. M. Baxtin, “The Forms of Time and has the opportunity for transformation, and moreover, the Chronotopos: From the Greek Novel to Modern the danger of threatening the stability of one‟s Fiction,” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics identity. Victor Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The and Theory of Literature (vol. 3, 1978), 493-528. Liminal Period in Rites of Passage,” Betwixt and 2 Examples will be taken from the Babylonian Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Talmud (redacted ca. 500-600 C.E.). All Initiation, eds. Louise Carus Mahdi, Steven Foster translations of rabbinic texts are my own. and Meredith Little (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court,

Symposia, 3, 1 (2011), pp. 70-88. © The Author 2009. Published by University of Toronto. All rights reserved. 71 | Mandsager

The home of any traveller is not as encounter a peculiar and singular secure as he or she might imagine, and the image…namely, the woman-as- home of the rabbinic male traveller is all the house.5 more so susceptible to the revelation of such instability, since the destruction of the The rhetorically constructed space of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE and subsequent home is gendered in rabbinic literature: the loss of the homeland of Palestine, the original dwelling is equated with the body and person of the woman who “makes the diasporic rabbinic Jew might be seen as one 6 without a stable home to begin with. For home.” Thus, in rabbinic literature, the instance, two of the terms used in rabbinic “home” at times means one‟s wife. This literature to refer to the home (mikdash and domestication of both women and space is bayit) are resonant with their association as critical to the travels of the men in the also terms for the now-lost temple in stories discussed below: while they are out Jerusalem4 and thereby signal some of the exploring the world, women (their wives) instability of the diasporic condition. The up embody the singular place these men have rootedness of the diasporic condition does left behind, the bayit. permeate rabbinic narratives about home The two rabbinic narratives under and travel, but at the same time certain consideration in this study will be idealized, stable notions of home are to be considered from three directions to reveal found in these texts. And notably for this the varieties of danger and instability study, these idealized visions of home are engendered by travel to the inn: first, often gendered. Cynthia Baker demonstrates Heidegger and Freud‟s presentation of the that the term bayit (home/house) is unheimlich feeling, the uncanny, as an rhetorically linked to women: ontological category will help reveal the instability inherent even in the purportedly If we wish to undertake an inquiry into defined and normative notions of masculine rabbinic traditions linking gender Jewish identity and the home itself. From practices and housing and dwelling the discussion of the uncanny, as I analyze practices, we would be well served by these two rabbinic anecdotes, I will consider going straight to the semiotic core of them within the complex web of rhetoric, such rabbinic discourse, where we

5 Cynthia M. Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel: 1987), 4. Kessler describes the spaces in which the Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity biblical characters of Zipporah and Mordechai are (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 47. This found in rabbinic literature as liminal in the sense I linguistic conflation (woman=house/household) am presenting here; spaces which reveal the reaches a critical moment when the female genitalia instability of the identity of these two characters. is referred to as “the house” (see, for example, m. Gwynn Kessler, “Let‟s Cross that Body When We Niddah 2:1 and m. Mikvaot 8:4) (Ibid., 51-3). See Get to It: Gender and Ethnicity in Rabbinic also Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Literature,” Journal of the American Academy of Rabbinic and Christian Conceptions of Biblical Religion (vol. 73, issue 2, 2005), 329-359. Gender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 4 Kunin notes that, “The rabbis call the house a 48-60. mikdash maat, a „small sanctuary,‟ using the same 6 Baker‟s analysis on this point is revealing: “The word, mikdash, which is used in the biblical text to taking of a wife is the building of a house. The refer to the Temple and the Tabernacle.” Seth D. domicile or residence itself – although prepared first Kunin, “Judaism,” Sacred Place, ed. Jean Holm – is nothing more than that: preparation. A man (London: Printer‟s Publishers, 1994), 132. prepares, a man builds, and then a man takes and Additionally, the more common term for enters. The result of his acts is the transformation of house/home, bayit, is likewise a synonym for the raw materials – woman and edifice – into his temple (the House) in rabbinic literature. „house‟” (Ibid., 59).

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gender and magic in Late Antiquity to show see here two models: the home and its the explicit presentation of the danger that counterpart, the not-home; the known and its the inn (and its female innkeeper) pose to counterpart, the not-known. The inn may the male rabbinic traveler. My discussion of well fit between these two extremes. On the these two rabbinic examples in particular one hand, the inn is construed as an will then allow me to consider the approximation of home; while on the other, intertextuality of one of the themes of these it fits equally into the category of the narratives to further contextualize the unknowable. This dialectical opposition rhetorical space of the inn in rabbinic does not hold, however, since the home literature within Late Antique literatures itself is a fraught space: it is idealized as more broadly. It is my intention to show that safe, secure, and identity-confirming, but travel narratives provided rabbinic authors may be susceptible to the same instabilities in Late Antiquity an opportunity to present found in the unknown. the perception of danger inherent in women Martin Heidegger tackles the fear within the liminal space of the inn, but that inherent in the instability of idealized these travels also reveal a multiplicity of notions of “home” and considers it to be an additional instabilities for the male traveller essential part of existence.8 Heidegger‟s himself, including the instability of self, philosophy hinges upon the notion of Da- body, and home. sein, his unique answer to the age-old philosophical inquiry into the foundation of The Inn and the Unheimlich Feeling “Being,” while avoiding the connotations of earlier terms (such as “humanity,” “soul,” As a starting point for this study, the “spirit,” and the like).9 Heidegger‟s assertion idea of travel presents us with an idealized dialectical opposition: the home and the 8 destination. How does the space of the inn The use of Heidegger here is presented advisedly, since many scholars have taken Heidegger to task for fit into this opposition? This question is his seemingly unremorseful National Socialism. The important for the purposes of this study, for work of a Nazi sympathizer, whose philosophy, it the inn can be seen as a destination in and of might be argued, supports fascism, is not itself, as a waypoint on the journey, and unproblematic. While not ignoring or subduing perhaps as a temporary form of “home.” In Heidegger‟s National Socialism, Josef Chytry is one example of a scholar who seeks the redeeming the terms of the dialectic between home and moments in Heidegger‟s philosophy. For example, not-home, the home is idealized as that Chytry claims Heideggerian analysis to further his which is known and secure,7 while the very political goal: the valorization of poetic thought. nature of travel is the drive for the unknown: “Heidegger‟s contribution to the thought of the polis a journey into an indescribable space that is resides, then, in this subtle attunement to advent, presencing, manifesting. For the political sphere, neither known nor secure. Regardless, we advent entails beginnings: the possible foundings, sitings, and creations of polis as the true concretion 7 It might be argued that knowledge and security are of poetic thinking.” Josef Chytry, “The Timeliness of but two sides of the same coin: those with access to Martin Heidegger‟s National Socialism,” New knowledge are certainly safe in their position of German Critique (vol. 58, Winter 1993), 95. The use power regarding the exercise of that knowledge. But of Heidegger in this study will likewise recognize the that is another argument altogether. Contra my harm inherent in his thought, but also attempt to position here, Baker might contend that the house in show it to be not bounded by his unfortunate and rabbinic texts cannot be fully “known,” and that in devastatingly harmful political leanings. fact, these homes are notable for their ability to 9 “Being-there.” “Heidegger would address the produce “invisibility,” that is, the ability to hide its question of what…being, seiend, on, ens, existens, occupants from each other and the prying world means by turning to human being or human (Ibid., 45). existence, namely, Dasein or being „there,‟ as an

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of the ontic-ontological priority of Da-sein at the same time not-being-at-home means that the question of “Being” is [Nichtzuhause-sein].11 grounded in “Da-sein”: being-there.10 Thus, Heidegger begins by situating Da-sein as Rejecting abstracted notions of being-in, as “everydayness.” This is not the consciousness or the self, Heidegger argues entire story, however, and the next step of that being is not some abstract or existential Heidegger‟s analysis is of utmost concept, but rather is situated – situated in importance for this study. What happens to space and in the interactions with others Da-sein when that “everydayness” is which occur in space. After contending that disrupted? For Heidegger, it is the concept being is linked to space, Heidegger can then of Angst which accomplishes this make the philosophical argument that the “disruption”: notion of Angst (anxiety or fear, often found when the everyday is not as it seems) [Angst] brings Da-sein in an extreme produces an unheimlich feeling, a feeling sense precisely before its world as that de-centers Da-sein, and repositions it as world, and thus itself before itself as “not-being-at-home” (which is again not an being-in-the-world. existential concept, but is still situated in Again, everyday discourse and the “being-in-the-world”), whereas before Da- everyday interpretation of Da-sein sein was characterized by “being-at-home,” furnish the most unbiased evidence everydayness. While avoiding contradiction, that Angst [anxiety, fear] as a basic Heidegger contends that Da-sein is attunement is disclosive in this way. fundamentally constituted by “being-at- We said earlier that attunement reveals home” and “not-being-at-home,” not one „how one is.‟ In Angst one has an before the other, but rather as showing „uncanny [unheimlich]‟ feeling. Here different facets of these states at different the peculiar indefiniteness of that times. which Da-sein finds itself involved in We have moved quite a distance from with Angst initially finds expression: the dialectic of home versus destination the nothing and the nowhere. But proposed above. Since, following uncanniness [Unheimlichkeit] means Heidegger, home itself can produce this unheimlich feeling, the home may not be as

instance and exemplification of being in time.” dialectically opposed to that which is not- Christopher P. Smith, The Hermeneutics of Original home. Sigmund Freud, in his psychoanalytic Argument: Demonstration, Dialectic, Rhetoric, reading of the uncanny (unheimlich), notes (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), that in German the distance between 341 n. 4. Heidegger states that “Da-sein accordingly “heimlich” (which notably means both takes priority in several ways over all other beings. “homelike” and “secretive”) and The first priority is an ontic one: this being is defined 12 in its being by existence. The second priority is an “unheimlich” is a matter of degrees. Thus, ontological one: on the basis of its determination as existence Da-sein is in itself „ontological.‟” Martin Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein 11 Martin Heidegger, Heidegger: A Critical Reader, ed. und Zeit, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, NY: State Hubert Dreyfus and Harrison Hall (Oxford: Basil University of New York Press, 1996), 11. Blackwell Ltd., 1992), 176. 10 “According to Heidegger, being-in-the-world is the 12 Sigmund Freud, “The „Uncanny,‟” The Standard basic structure, make-up, or constitution of Dasein; it Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of is what Dasein basically amounts to.” John Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey, vol. Haugeland, “Dasein‟s Disclosedness,” Heidegger: A XVII (1917-1919) (London: The Hogarth Press, Critical Reader, ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Harrison 1955), 226. “Heimlich is a word the meaning of Hall (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1992), 34. which develops in the direction of ambivalence, until

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following Freud, in order to reach that which inn thus becomes a remarkable site for the is “not-home,” one must travel through redactors of these tales to confront this gradually more ambiguous forms of “home” Unheimlichkeit, since the inn can be figured and vice versa. In contrast to Freud‟s as a temporary form of “home” and as that notation of the similarity between home and which is distinctively “not-home.” The not-home, the home in rabbinic literature power of the dialectical opposition of home (that is, the home in its rhetorically versus not-home (and the ambiguous space constructed form, without a trace of the between these two poles, the inn) comes of unheimlich feeling) is an ideal space, a space course from the very tension and instability for creating idealized “Jews,” and that this inherent within the categories themselves. space needs its dialectical opposite for the idealization to work. The inn operates as a “He was seen riding on a woman in the problematic space in the midst of this market” dialectical opposition: it is portrayed as inherently unsafe and unheimlich, and at the We find two stories in which a female same time is treated as containing some of innkeeper performs a powerful, supernatural the characteristics of safety and home.13 The act, in tractate Sanhedrin of the Babylonian Talmud.14 As the narratives describe these women, their unsanctioned actions heighten

it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich. the danger of the inn, the potentially illicit Unheimlich is in some way or other a sub-species of power of women, and threaten the stability heimlich” (Ibid.). Freud does not explicitly link the of male rabbinic dominance and identity.15 Unheimlichkeit to the physical space of the home; rather, he considers the feeling to have its origins in many places, including “the castration complex,” and shoe, Ms. Parma] and his bag and the book even in neurotic men‟s imagination of that original of Torah that was in his hand. home, the vagina (Ibid., 233, 245). Here, the rabbinic character is left to recuperate in the 13 See Tziona Grossmark, “The Inn as a Place of presumed safety of the inn but instead dies. See Violence and Danger in Rabbinic Literature,” below for discussion of the danger and Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and untrustworthiness of the female innkeeper in rabbinic Practices, ed. H. A. Drake (Aldershot, England: literature. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006), 57-84. For an 14 For short discussion of these two stories, see example in rabbinic narrative of the uneasy distance Grossmark, “Danger,” 66-7. For a detailed discussion between a heimlich feeling and an unheimlich one in of the first story, see Joshua Levinson, “Enchanting the space of the inn, where assumptions of safety are Rabbis: Contest Narratives between Rabbis and met with conditions of danger, see a story preserved Magicians in Late Antiquity,” Jewish Quarterly in Mishnah Yevamot 16:7: Review (vol. 100, issue 1, 2010): 54-94, pp. 82-7. (An There once was a relevant case in which the earlier version of this article may be found in Joshua sons of Levi who went to Tsoar, the city of Levinson, “Enchanting Rabbis: Contest Narratives Palms, and one of them became ill along the between Rabbis and Magicians in Rabbinic Literature way, and they left him to rest in an inn. And of Late Antiquity” [Heb.], Tarbits: A Quarterly for when they returned, they said to the inn- Jewish Studies (vol. 75, issue 3-4, 2006), 295-328. maid: “Where is our friend?” She told them: Levinson‟s insightful conclusions about rhetorical “He died and I buried him.” And they transformation of the (magical) powers of the permitted the dead man‟s wife to remarry “Other” into the rabbinic system of knowledge do not [on the basis of the inn-maid‟s testimony]. detract from my argument here about the importance They said to him [Rabbi Aqiba]: And shall not of these spaces for rabbinic self-fashioning. a woman of priestly lineage be believed as 15 As we shall see, these illicit actions might be read as much as an inn-maid?! “magical” and the innkeepers as “magicians.” I use He said to them: When she will be the inn- these terms with some trepidation, since Sir James maid, she will be believed; the inn-maid Frazer‟s argument that throughout human history, brought forth for them his staff [and his culture has followed an “evolutionary” progression

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Their actions might well be described as the stories come in the context of sugyot18 “unsanctioned religious activities,” which consider various powerful actions: following Phillips‟ formulation,16 and have some of these are permitted and some are the rhetorical force of denoting the prohibited. The first story is part of a sugya distinction between the dangerous woman concerning a mishnah which makes a legal and her body and the intellect of the rabbinic distinction between “real” sorcerers and man,17 as we shall see below. In both cases, charlatans.

Mishnah from magic to religion to science has been held in contention. Modern anthropologists and students of The madiaḥ19 is he who says, “Let us go religion have attempted to clarify the distinctions and let us do idol worship.” The sorcerer is between “magic” and “religion” without the negative the one who does an act and thus is liable, connotations of Frazer‟s presentation. An example of Frazer‟s hypothesis: “Thus the keener minds, still but the captor of the eyes is not liable. Rabbi pressing forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries Akiva says in the name of R. Joshua, “Two of the universe, come to reject the religious theory of gather cucumbers: one gathers and thus is nature as inadequate, and to revert in a measure to the exempt, and the other gathers and thus is older standpoint of magic by postulating explicitly, liable; the captor of the eyes is the one who what in magic had only been implicitly assumed, to wit, an inflexible regularity in the order of natural is exempt” (B. Talmud Sanhedrin 67a). In events, which, if carefully observed, enables us to this mishnah, two very distinct groups are foresee their course with certainty and to act represented: those who actually do an illicit accordingly. In short, religion, regarded as an act (by using magic to draw together all of explanation of nature, is displaced by science.” Sir the cucumbers), and those who merely James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion, ed. 3, “Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and the Doctrine of the Presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion of his External Soul,” vol. II (London: Macmillan & Co. 65th Birthday, ed. R. Van den Broek and M. J. Ltd., 1911-15, 1963), 305. Vermaseren (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), 367. Also see, 16 “Moderns have abstracted magic to cover all ancient Naomi Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World: religious phenomena that do not conform to their Pagans, Jews and Christians (London: Routledge, notions of “true” religion and science, regardless of 2001). how the ancients viewed those phenomena. Thus the 18 “Sugya [pl. sugyot] (from Aramaic segi, „to go,‟ term unsanctioned religious activities appears here hence „course‟ (cf. halakhah), the course of a advisedly, to avoid the value-laden modern overtones discussion, the decision in a controversy) designates in magic.” C. R. Phillips III, “Nullem Crimen sine a self-contained basic unit of Talmudic Lege: Socioreligious Sanctions on Magic,” Magika discussion…and may discuss a M[ishnah] or be Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed. independent from M[ishnah].” Strack and Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (Oxford: Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, Oxford University Press, 1991), 262, emphasis in trans. and ed. Markus Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: original. Fortress Press, 1992), 203. Also see Judith 17 This rhetorical distinction is often emphasized in the Hauptman, Development of the Talmudic Sugya: diverse matrix of Late Antiquity, as individual Relationship between Tannaitic and Amoraic Sources authors and groups used the terms “magic,” (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988); “magician,” and “magical” as negative epithets to and Aryeh Cohen, Rereading Talmud: Gender, Law, describe individuals deemed outside their idealized and the Poetics of Sugyot (Atlanta: Scholars Press, notions of acceptable behavior. Alan F. Segal 1998). contends that in Hellenistic societies “the charge of 19 In the Babylonian Talmud‟s comments on this „magic‟ helps distinguish between various groups of Mishnah, we find an explanation that the “madiaḥ” is people from the perspective of the speaker but does the seducer of the seduced city (which, of course, is not necessarily imply any essential difference in the not a very explicit definition, but connotes an actions of the participants.” Alan F. Segal, individual who has morally degraded his “Hellenistic Magic: Some Questions of Definition,” compatriots). Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions:

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“capture the eyes,” that is, produce an magicians, the sorcerers whom Moses and illusion. In this formulation, one may only Aaron best by the power of God‟s staff, as be labeled a “sorcerer,” and thereby be liable described in Exodus chapter seven. The to punishment20 if he produced a verifiable sugya closes with several anecdotes where magical action and not if the act was only an magical acts occur, including the story of illusion. Speaking specifically of this Jannai entering an inn. mishnah, Yassif contends that “one reasonable explanation for the dual approach B. Talmud Sanhedrin 67b

to magic [“actual” magic is banned, while Jannai23 happened to come to a certain He said to them, “Give me .[אושפיזא] illusions” are not] is that the sages, like inn“ others of their time, believed in the water to drink.” She [the innkeeper] offered possibility of sorcery, yet feared lest society him shattitha.24 He recognized that she was confuse it with the central orientation of the 21 moving her lips. He sprinkled a little from it: Jewish faith.” To begin this sugya, we it was scorpions. He said to her, “I have have a mishnaic ruling which narrowly drunk from that of your hand, now likewise defines sorcery as an unsanctioned act which you drink from that of my hand.” He offered can be verified as actually occurring and it to her to drink. She became an ass: he rode must be placed outside of the purview of her away to the market. Her friend released “correct” Jewish behavior. her: he was seen riding on a woman in the The sugya continues with a discussion market. of which actions might constitute “sorcery,” In this story, Jannai goes to an inn for as well as exegesis of the verse from Exodus refreshment, unaware that the inn may just quoted, which condemns a “female present danger. He is apparently prepared sorcerer” to death. It is of note for the for the possibility of witchcraft, however, purposes of this study that this sugya and correctly interprets the woman‟s lips contains this exchange: “Our Rabbis taught, 22 moving as a sign that the shattitha was unfit „female sorcerer‟ [from Ex. 22:17] is both for him to drink. He then proves this the man and the woman. If so, why does interpretation by producing scorpions when Scripture teach „female sorcerer‟? Because he spills some of the drink. Jannai takes that the majority are women.” As will be control of the situation by convincing the discussed below, this stereotype of women innkeeper to drink out of his own, enchanted as practitioners of magic was not uncommon glass. We see that the antagonistic innkeeper in Late Antiquity and manifests itself both in gets her just desserts, as it were, since Jannai the story contained in the present sugya as tricks the woman into drinking her own well as the other story analyzed below. After spell. Jannai not only takes control of the this exegesis, the sugya turns to questioning magical circumstances of the encounter, but the definition of a “sorcerer” in greater he physically takes control of the witch, depth, including a discussion of Pharaoh‟s

23 Rashi (a 11th century exegete of the Bible and the 20 The punishment for such sorcery is death, following Babylonian Talmud) contends that the “Jannai” the Biblical commandment in Exodus 22:17, “You found in this story is not referred to as “Rabbi shall not let a female sorcerer live.” Jannai” because no sage would be party to any form 21 Eli Yassif, Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, of witchcraft, even inadvertently, and thus Rashi does Meaning (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, not want us to confuse the “Jannai” of this story with 1999), 162. the “Rabbi Jannai” found elsewhere in rabbinic .the noun as found in the Biblical text has the literature – מכשפה 22 is “flour )שתיתא) ”feminine Hebrew suffix, unlike the case of this 24 Rashi informs us that “shattitha mishnah, where the noun is masculine. mixed in water.”

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using her as transport into the marketplace. with the innkeeper is revealed. The As he leaves the problematic space of the differences and instabilities between male inn and enters the more public area of the and female knowledge, public and not-quite- market, the story takes a comedic and public spaces, and between male and female sexually charged tone.25 When he and his bodies are all made manifest in this story. witch-mount pass by a friend of the innkeeper, the second witch understands the “The Blast of Ḥamath” innkeeper‟s predicament and reverses the spell. After the counter-spell is performed, Later in tractate Sanhedrin, we find Jannai finds himself in a compromising another example of the perceived dangers situation: “he was seen riding on a woman in inherent in the travel to an inn. A short the market.” Here, in public, his dominance anecdote where R. Isaac b. Samuel b. Marta over the woman is no longer “appropriate,” goes to an inn follows an extremely lengthy as he can be seen in a sexual position atop a discussion of the following mishnah: strange woman from the inn. Of course, the All Israel has a share of the world to question remains, which character is more come, as it is said [in Scripture], “And humiliated in this story – the man or the all your people who are righteous, woman? they will inherit the land forever: a It is perhaps difficult to know the branch of My planting, a work of My “moral” of this story, but it is clear that there hand, to glorify” [Isaiah 60:21]. And are several elements of “warning” to be these do not have a portion of the found within it. First, the story reminds us, world to come: the one who says, vividly, of the perceived dangers of entering “The dead will not live” from the Torah,27 and [that] the Torah28 is not unknown places and interacting with 29 unknown women. Second, the story from heaven, and the Epicurean. explicitly describes the hazards of facing a magical attack and by describing the witch 27 In Boyarin‟s analysis of this passage, he notes that moving her lips suggests how one might while the printed editions of the Babylonian Talmud recognize such an attack. And third, the contain the phrase “from the Torah” in reference to the denial of the resurrection of the dead, most of the story describes in a humorous fashion the manuscripts do not (Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: perils of meddling with magic in public, as The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, [Philadelphia: Jannai‟s (sexual) conquest of the witch University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004], 249 n. 114). becomes evident to the public at large. 28 It is Boyarin‟s interpretation that the “Torah” Beyond these warnings, we find that at least referred to in this passage is the “Oral Torah” (Border Lines 58, 249 n. 115). See also Lawrence H. in the inn, Jannai‟s knowledge and cunning 26 Schiffman, Who Was a Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic overcomes that of his female opponent. Perspectives on the Jewish Christian Schism Faced with the potential loss of his (male) (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1985), 46. The literature on this mishnah, and in – אפיקורוס self and control of his (male) body, Jannai 29 avoids being transformed into an ass and particular on the “Epicurean,” is substantial. For a recent treatment, see Boyarin and his sources (Border instead rides the woman. The role of the Lines 58-9, 249-51 n. 114-22). In Boyarin‟s words, innkeeper‟s friend to undo the magic, “This passage, which has been nominated the however, reasserts the unheimlich feeling „Pharisaic Credo‟ by Louis Finkelstein, seems to be permeating the story: Jannai‟s power over promulgating, perhaps for the first time in Judaism, a the woman is unmasked and his dalliance rule of faith to adjudicate who is orthodox and who not, one that would exclude from salvation many Jews who considered themselves both faithful and 25 Cf. Levinson, “Enchanting,” 2010, 87. traditional” (Border Lines 58). See Louis Finkelstein, 26 Ibid., 93. Introduction to Tractates Fathers and the Fathers of

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Rabbi Akiva says, “Even the one who the misuse of the true name of God (such as reads in the separate books, and the this mishnah) and ritual texts (such as the one who whispers over the wound and Greek Magical Papyri31) that utilize the says, „All the disease that I brought in letters of the name as a source of power. Egypt I will not bring on you because Thus, the sugya where we find the next story I am the Lord who heals you‟ [Exodus of an innkeeper using supernatural powers 15:26].” Abba Saul says, “Even the comes during the discussion of a mishnah one who pronounces the Name as it is which prohibits one form of such powers. spelled” (B. Talmud Sanhedrin 90a). After we find a contrast between examples of illicit “whispering” with In the Gemara, many pages of discussion different verses of the Bible used as follow this mishnah, mostly regarding “magical” formulae and the licit use of oil as questions of which groups of people are medicine, several anecdotes are presented in entitled to enter the world to come. Then, the sugya regarding the use of oil for its the Gemara probes each of the groups curative powers. And finally, we read a denied a share of the world to come in this story where oil is used in a non-sanctioned mishnah. The story under consideration here manner, in the space of the inn. is found in a sugya, which follows this fragment of the mishnah: “and the one who Rav Isaac bar Samuel bar Marta whispers over the wound, etc.” In this happened to come to a certain inn They gave to him oil in a .[אושפיזא] mishnaic statement, we find here a reference to a specific magical formula: “whispering,” vessel. He rubbed himself: growths or “chanting,” a verse of the Torah over a came out to him on his face. He went wound in order to heal it. Of critical out to the market. A certain woman importance to this prohibition is the verse saw him; she said, “I observe the blast here.” She made for [חמת] being used for the magical ritual: the verse of Ḥamath contains not only a reference to the healing him a blood-letting and he was cured power of God; it also contains the (B. Sanhedrin 101a). unpronounceable Tetragrammaton, the perfect name of God. Naomi Janowitz states, There are several key elements to this story. “The iconic status of the divine name is First, it is important that the action takes established and embellished in numerous place in the spaces of the inn and the exegetical texts that recount its unique marketplace. Second, we will need to function and inherent power.”30 Many consider whether or not the action taken by examples could be multiplied to show the the innkeepers constitutes malicious widespread belief in the power of this divine “magic,” and if so, we will need to further name, both in texts that do not approve of consider whether or not the text rates the actions of the innkeepers and the woman R. Isaac meets in the market along the lines Rabbi Nathan, Hebrew (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), 206. While 31 To quote just one of many examples, a spell from Boyarin and the scholarship he remarks on are keenly one of these papyri includes this phrase at the interested in the exclusion of the “Epicurean,” I am beginning of the incantation: “Greatest god who more interested in the exclusion of the individuals exceeds / all power, I call on you, IAŌ SABAŌTH who heal wounds by the pronouncement of verses of ADŌNAI EILŌEIN…” “IAŌ” seems here to be a the Torah. Greek transliteration of the Tetragrammaton. The 30 Naomi Janowitz, Icons of Power: Ritual Practices in Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Late Antiquity (University Park, PA: The Demotic Spells, ed. Hans Dieter Betz (Chicago: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 27. University of Chicago Press, 1986, 1992), 164.

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discussed above; the former being story does reveal the power some women proscribed, while the latter being condoned. are perceived to hold over the supernatural, And third, the construction of gender we may be safe to assume that the stereotypes is again at play here. innkeepers that R. Isaac encounters might be In this story, we again see the women as well. protagonist entering an inn for refreshment, In a parallel manner as was described in unsuspecting of any potential foul play. This Jannai‟s story, R. Isaac leaves the inn and time, however, R. Isaac b. Samuel b. Martha enters the marketplace. It is in the market is not personally equipped to fight the that he encounters a woman skilled in magical attack. Instead, he is hit by the full unconventional wisdom, just as Jannai did. thrust of the attack, receiving blisters on his In contrast to Jannai, however, the woman face. We do not learn that the innkeeper R. Isaac meets could be seen as a “good performed a spell, as in the first story, but witch,” a woman who can recognize magic, the oil does appear to be magical, since it but uses her knowledge to help others. She produces such damage to his face. At first identifies the source of R. Isaac‟s glance, it is quite difficult to know what predicament (“I observe the blast of Ḥamath exactly this attack is. The statement of the here”) and is able to cure him. The woman woman R. Isaac meets in the marketplace R. Isaac meets in the marketplace fills an does little to help us understand what has ambiguous middle ground between the happened, as she states, “I observe the blast categories described above; on the one hand, of Ḥamath here.” What is this “blast of she seems well versed in what Phillips Ḥamath”? One of the commentaries on the termed “unsanctioned religious activities,” Babylonian Talmud (Tosofos) from the since she can identify the demonic mark, but Middle Ages helpfully concludes that R. on the other, she is equally well versed in an Isaac was attacked by the breath of a demon apparently more acceptable activity, the named Ḥamath.32 What is still unclear is healing of the blisters by means of a medical how this “blast of Ḥamath” is transferred to technique: blood-letting. the oil R. Isaac uses, causing the damage to This woman‟s ability to cure R. Isaac is his face. What is implied here is that the worth a deeper look. Why does this text innkeepers somehow have control over this present this woman as skilled in the medical demon and was thus able to harm R. Isaac. arts? The records of “medical science” are We are not explicitly informed of the few and far between in rabbinic texts;33 genders of those who attack R. Isaac in the usually they appear in the midst of other inn (“They gave him oil in a vessel.”), but stories or discussions, as in the present case. following the parallelism of this story with Charlotte Fonrobert has considered the ways Jannai‟s encounter, as well as the coda to the in which women in rabbinic literature are portrayed as knowledgeable in matters of women‟s health. She suggests that this 32 is equivalent representation stems from a conflicted ”(זיקא) Tosofos contends that “the blast ,meanings of this word can be multiplied) רוח to a including “wind,” “spirit,” or “breath”) and that the rabbinic attitude towards women‟s bodies that is named (שד) source of this ru’aḥ is a “demon Ḥamath.” Jastrow, most likely following Tosofos here, also defines Ḥamath as the name of a demon, 33 Julius Preuss notes: “There is…no „medicine of the but the only example he gives is from the story under Talmud‟ … There is no Jewish medicine in the sense analysis here. See: Marcus Jastrow, Dictionary of the that we speak of an Egyptian or a Greek medical Targumim, the Talmud Bavli and the Yerushalmi, and science.” Julius Preuss, Biblical and Talmudic the Midrashic Literature (London: Luzac, 1903), Medicine, trans. F. Rosner (Northvale, NJ: J. 480. Aronson, 1993), 4.

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and results in moments where women are Paralleling this anxiety, we can see anxiety given limited autonomy over healthcare.34 in the two stories analyzed here concerning Of course, in this anecdote, the woman is a space linked to the shuk, the inn. In not concerned with another female body, but Jannai‟s story, after he leaves the inn, he rather the body of a man. But, this story may meets a “woman in the shuk” who is just as be yet another example of what Fonrobert problematic as the woman he met in the inn: suggests: in rabbinic literature women were she is another witch. In this case, both the at times considered masters of medicine,35 a space of the inn and the shuk are spaces representation that is troubled by the where encounters with women are stereotype of women as masters of the dangerous and sexualized. In almost direct magical arts, as we have seen in these two contrast to the story of Jannai and the stories stories. Baker analyzes, the story of R. Isaac After reading these two somewhat presents R. Isaac‟s encounter with a woman humorous, and somewhat cautionary, tales, in the shuk in a much more positive light it may be useful to return to Cynthia Baker‟s than his encounter with unknown forces analysis of the built environment found inside the inn. In R. Isaac‟s case, he meets a within rabbinic texts, since the journey in woman in the ambiguous space of the shuk each story takes the protagonist into the inn, who, while she has knowledge of dangerous but then he travels to the shuk, or forces, does not harm him and instead heals marketplace. Much of Baker‟s analysis of him. In both stories, the male rabbinic the shuk is a close investigation of the character interacts with dangerous women gendering of women‟s bodies that occurs in within the closed space of the inn and then the shuk in rabbinic texts. Baker finds that moves into the more open (yet equally laden “„woman‟ and „ha-shuk‟ appear linked again with sexuality and danger) space of the and again in discussions that interweave market. In the market, the man meets conceptions of sexual purity, propriety, and another woman, a woman who is skilled in property.”36 In her estimation, the “„woman the magical or medical arts who allows the in the shuk‟” is a figure of anxiety and danger presented by these innkeepers to be ambiguity in the rabbinic sources.37 revealed in the full view of the public. The market becomes the space where the interiority of the inn is exposed to the light 34 Fonrobert, 159. of day, via the ministrations of powerful 35 Fonrobert considers several stories that include (and potentially dangerous) women. Abaye‟s mother in B. Talmud Kiddushin: “At the same time Abaye‟s mother may be just one among many women who were considered health-care Intertextuality and the Folk Tale

experts, especially of infants” (Ibid.). 36 Baker, Rebuilding the House, 99. These two stories emphasize the 37 Ibid., 108. Sarah Buie has painted the space of the dangers perceived by their authors to be market as fundamentally dynamic, filled with inherent in travel, the inn, and female opportunity for exchange, meeting, Eros, color and innkeepers. It is of note that the particular vitality. “As in the mandala, the dualities and dramas literary representations of these perceived of life, gaining and losing, meeting and parting, virtue and vice, the sacred and the mundane exist in a dangers are not unique to rabbinic literature. dynamic interaction within the market container, and If we return to the tale of Jannai and the a heightened sense of liveliness and possibility woman who turns into an ass, we find that results.” Sarah Buie, “Market as Mandala: The Erotic this narrative bears remarkable similarity to Space of Commerce,” The City Cultures Reader, ed. other narratives in circulation during Late Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall and Iain Borden (New York: Routledge, 2000), 27. Antiquity, notably moments in Apuleius‟

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Metamorphoses.38 The story follows several became fast bound in solitary hoofs, readily accepted folklore motifs which are and a long tail began to grow from the also present in the Apuleius story, including extremity of my spine. My face grew the motif of transforming a man into an huge, my mouth widened, my nostrils ass.39 In Apuleius‟ Metamorphoses, the began to gape and my lips to droop; protagonist sets out on a voyage of my ears also extended to an discovery of the supernatural, spurred by immoderate length and were crowned youth and wealth. Lucius (Apuleius‟ main with bristles. Lost and desperate, I character) travels to Thessaly in order to surveyed my body over and perceived acquire knowledge of the unknown, and he that I was not a bird but an ass.… specifically seeks knowledge of magic and When she saw what I was, she smote witchcraft (of the sort described above, her face fiercely with her hands and powerful yet illicit). Upon arrival at a friend- cried: “Ah! I am lost! I am lost! In my of-a-friend‟s house, with the aid of his terror and hurry I took the wrong box, young lover, a witch‟s slave, he is able to deceived by its likeness to the other.… spy upon the witch, and sees her transform You have only to nibble some roses into a bird. Lucius, enflamed with curiosity, and you shall step forth from the ass‟s likewise wishes to fly above the trees, and skin and be my own sweet Lucius asks his lover for access to the secret again” (III. 24-5). 40 formula for transformation. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned. For the rest of the novel, the comic timing is such that Lucius is foiled at every chance he She [Fotis, Lucius‟ lover] repeated this gets to eat roses and return to human form. [the recipe for the magic potion] He is finally rescued by the “queen of several times, … But no feathers or heaven” at the very end of the tale, after wings appeared anywhere, but my hair traversing books three to eleven in the grew coarse and bristly, my soft skin wretched form of a donkey, being hardened into hide, at my hands‟ tips maltreated by several different owners were fingers five no more but all (some more degraded and degrading than others) along the way.41 In this story, the reader is granted access to the full range of 38 Apuleius wrote the Metamorphoses as what may be properly termed a novel, in Latin, using source Lucius‟ human emotions, even as he is material from a developing Greek tale (the two trapped in the body of a subservient beast. known traditions of which have been lost), in the Conversely, in the story we saw in latter half of the second century C.E. Alex Scobie, Sanhedrin, the witch is not granted those Apuleius and Folklore: Toward a History of ML3045, faculties of reason; all eyes are trained on AaTh567, 449A (London: The Folklore Society, 1983), 155-6. 39 At least four indexed folklore motifs exist in this 40 The Metamorphoses or Golden Ass of Apuleius of tale: “Ass with human intelligence” (B22.2), Madaura, trans. H. E. Butler (Oxford: The Clarendon “Transformation: man to ass” (D132.1), Press, 1910), 96-7. “Transformation by a witch” (D683.2), and “Magic 41 The character of Lucius as an enslaved beast who knowledge of witches” (D1810.0.5). These strives for freedom may reflect Apuleius‟ own classifications follow Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of biography, insofar as Apuleius was a freed-man. Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Keith Bradley suggests that in the Apuleian case, Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, “The ass, therefore, was the ideal servant, adaptable, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest- hard working, and compliant – a model in fact of books, and Local Legends, rev. and enl. ed., vol. 1-6 what the slave should be.” Keith Bradley, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955-58); “Animalizing the Slave: The Truth of Fiction,” and Scobie, Apuleius and Folklore, 307-28. Journal of Roman Studies (vol. 90, 2000), 118.

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Jannai, her master, and his quick-wittedness turned into pack-animals on the spot which allowed him to escape the fate of and were used to carry commodities of Lucius. There, the emphasis is on her all kinds. Afterwards, when they enslavement, as it provides the tale with its finished their jobs, they were restored crude humor: without her subservience, to their original selves. And yet their could we fully laugh at the sight of Jannai minds did not become animal, but “seen riding on a woman in the market”?42 were kept rational and human. This is Apuleius‟ novel was certainly widely what Apuleius, in the work bearing the distributed throughout the Roman world title The Golden Ass, describes as his after its publication. Augustine, in The City experience, that after taking a magic of God, specifically refers to Apuleius and potion he became an ass, while his novel.43 The reference in Augustine‟s retaining his human mind. But this writing is of particular note, because it refers may be fact or fiction. to the transformation of a man into an ass Stories of this kind are either untrue or twice: as described by Apuleius and in an at least so extraordinary that we are additional anecdote where the motif is justified in withholding credence.44 repeated. And for the purposes of this study, it is worth reviewing the Augustinian text in Here, it may be hard to separate Augustine‟s full, as it falls during his discussion of report about the “landladies” in Italy who supernatural transformations (which, would transform people into pack-animals incidentally, he cannot fully disprove, just with “drugs in cheese” from his knowledge disavow) and involves a transformation at of Apuleius‟ novel. Is he recounting the hands of a female innkeeper. multiple sources of this legend, multiple repetitions of the Apuleian narrative, or In fact, when I was in Italy, I myself another source completely? It is perhaps used to hear of such happenings from impossible to say. But, it is clear that at least one district in that country. It was said Augustine is aware of these traditions, and that landladies conversant with these feels justified in repeating them, if only to evil arts were in the habit of giving knock them down as mere illusions drugs in cheese to travelers, when they compared to the omnipotence of God. so wished and the opportunity offered, Even if Augustine does not wish his and by this means their guests were readers to believe fantastic tales of innkeepers turning their patrons into donkeys, he does appear to be well aware of 42 Of course, one of the more disturbing, and perhaps the folklore motif of the man-to-ass darkly humorous, parts of the Apuleian tale occurs transformation. Additionally, his anecdote towards the end of book ten, when a wealthy woman pays to have sex with Lucius‟ asinine form. Lucius‟ about the innkeepers who transform patrons final rebellion occurs when he becomes aware that with drugged cheese closely parallels some his owner wishes to put this bestial sexual act on of the thematic elements present in the display for a paying audience. version we find in the Babylonian Talmud 43 Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the tractate Sanhedrin. First, we see that unlike Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson (Middlesex, EN: Penguin Books, 1972), 18. Augustine wrote this Apuleius‟ rendering, but comparable to the mammoth work after his retirement from the post of version in the Talmud, the innkeeper bishop of the North African town of Hippo between attempts to cause the transformation by the years 413 and 425, at least two hundred years giving the visiting traveler some form of after Apuleius wrote his tale. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, 2000), 280, 380. 44 Augustine, City of God, 782.

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tainted sustenance. In Jannai‟s case, he was gender power hierarchy.48 The final aspect offered “shattitha” over which the innkeeper of the Augustinian report which is repeated performed an incantation, while in throughout these tales, including the Augustine‟s recollection the landladies Talmudic one, is the reversibility of the would drug cheeses and then offer them to transformation. The ignominy of being the unsuspecting wayfarer. Additionally, the transformed into an ass cannot be fully genders of the participants in these tales grasped if the person who is transformed seem crucial to all of these different does not return to his former body. Without replications of the motif.45 The antagonist is such a return, the spell may as well be invariably portrayed as a woman, while the termed a form of death: the human no longer luckless individual who is transformed (or exists. But if the person is transformed back almost transformed) is a man. The gender into his former shape, then he is forced to stereotype of women as powerful witches is live the rest of his life with the recollection both unsurprising (since the authors of all of of his existence as a degraded animal. And these texts are almost certainly male) and finally, both Augustine and Apuleius take pervasive from Antiquity down to the pains to inform their readers that the present. individuals who are transformed maintain Speaking of “Greco-Roman culture” their human faculties of reason, even as they broadly, Janowitz states, “While [male] exist in all other respects as donkeys. Given magi were thought to have access to ancient the prevalence of stories which include the wisdom and a certain prestige, women are transformation of man-into-ass, it may be presented as isolated figures who threaten appropriate, barring further evidence, to both family members (and potential mates) consider the prevalence of this folklore and the general social fabric.”46 The full motif not in terms of influence49 but rather comedic thrust of the end of Jannai‟s story of shared interest in a highly humorous (“he was seen riding on a woman in the narrative: for the purposes of this study, it is market”) hinges upon this stereotype: here, a important to recall that both the Augustinian woman may be a dangerous witch, and once and the rabbinic versions are located in inns, she turns an individual into a pack-animal, and that the danger and liminality of such she may ride him as much as she desires. spaces is foregrounded. This exercise of power by the female witch over a male body is of course quite Conclusion shocking, given the standard societal norms of women as more passive to the power Throughout this study, we have seen exercised by male bodies.47 In Jannai‟s how de-centering and de-humanizing the inn story, as we have seen, the tables are turned, and its keeper can be. The actions of these and he rides the witch, thereby restoring the unscrupulous barmaids have brought the uncanny feeling of the inn strikingly to the foreground, and those same actions have 45 For further explorations of this motif in Late Antiquity, see Levinson, “Enchanting,” 84-6. 46 Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World, 88. 48 Levinson claims that this is indicative of the trend in 47 DuBois suggests that in Greek Antique literature rabbinic literature to subsume “magic” into the (and perhaps in actuality) women were viewed as not panoply of rabbinic knowledge (“Enchanting,” 2010, only different than but also more degraded than free 93). men. “Women, like slaves and dogs, stand both 49 See Scobie, Apuleius and Folklore, for an attempt to inside and outside of human space, human account for the influence of this motif, even to a ninth community.” Page duBois, Slaves and Other Objects century C.E. Chinese version (he does not mention (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 147. the rabbinic version).

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seriously imperiled the rabbinic male Heidegger‟s insight here seems particularly identity, in terms of his gender, autonomy apt in the context of these stories. Is not the and authority. And, we have seen that in reaction of the protagonists of both stories both stories, the male protagonist has fled discussed above to fly “into the being-at- the inn for the more public space of the home of publicness”? There is a market. Heidegger, in his argument about contradiction inherent in Heidegger‟s the effect of Angst to de-center Being from argument here which reflects the home, remarks that a typical response to the contradictory impulse in both these stories: condition of experiencing the the men in these stories flee the private, Unheimlichkeit at home is to flee from that enclosed, yet-still-unheimlich space of the site. He claims: inn for the public, somehow more heimlich space of the market, where they are rescued Entangled flight into the being-at- by strange women, in ways that are not home of publicness is flight from non- necessarily home-like. being-at-home, that is, from the Additionally, one underlying concern uncanniness which lies in Da-sein as exhibited in these stories is a concern about thrown, as being-in-the world maintaining identity, of maintaining being (a entrusted to itself in its being. This concern that Heidegger seems well uncanniness constantly pursues Da- acquainted with). The two powerful women sein and threatens its everyday that Jannai and R. Isaac b. Samuel b. Marta lostness in the they, although not 50 meet in the marketplace, while providing a explicitly. return to a sense of normalcy or something

The inn is certainly not the home Heidegger more like “being-at-home,” at the same time is thinking of here, but there is certainly a represent a considerable threat to their male sense of overlap between the dwelling one identities. R. Isaac is particularly vulnerable does at home and the (albeit temporary) to losing his identity as a man and as a dwelling one does in the space of the inn.51 rabbinic authority, since throughout the story he is at the mercy of more powerful women: both the (probable) barmaids and 52 50 Heidegger, Being and Time, 177, emphasis in the woman who heals him in the market. original. 51 When Heidegger is thinking of “home,” it is a home Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture (vol. 12, that is very different than either the Late Antique issue 3, 1977), 122-5. dwelling patterns: he did considerable thinking and 52 For an intriguing argument that rabbinic men writing in a cabin in the Black Forest of Germany, sometimes construct themselves as “women,” see and his writings reflect his apparent anti-urbanism. Daniel Boyarin, “Masada or Yavneh? Gender and the Home, for Heidegger, was extremely private and Arts of Jewish Resistance,” Jews and Other secluded. “A well-known place of retreat for Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies, ed. Heidegger was his small rustic cabin in Todtnauberg Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin (Minneapolis: in the Black Forest, and he is often belittled as some University of Minnesota Press, 1997). Speaking of a clichéd backwoods hermit. In the face of an rabbinic impulse towards survival rather than alienating modern technology, he seems to retreat righteously fighting to the death, Boyarin concludes, to…his provincial sanctuary.” Dieter Thomä, “I suggest that in such situations, colonized people “Making off with an Exile: Heidegger and the Jews,” may sometimes come to identify themselves with or trans. Stephen Cho and the author, New German even as women” (Ibid., 325, emphasis in original). Critique (vol. 58, Winter 1993), 82. See also, Martin See also Daniel Boyarin‟s expanded discussion of Heidegger, “Art and Space,” trans. C. H. Seibert, these themes in Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Man and World: An International Philosophical Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man Review (vol. 6, issue 1, 1973), 3-8; and “Why do I (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Stay in the Provinces?” trans. Thomas J. Sheehan, Press, 1997).

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The men who enter the inn in these stories The travel narratives considered in this are fundamentally threatened. Their health, study, and the larger literary worlds of Late safety, and freedom all come under attack by Antiquity they may be found within, threats that are indicative of a more emphasize how travel and the liminal space thoroughgoing danger: the diminishment or of the inn are perceived as dangerous spaces, erasure of personal (male) identity at the while at the same time reveal how the hands of more powerful women. In these women found in the space of the inn or the stories, the space of the inn is intimately tied marketplace are perceived all the more so as to the space of the market: a space Baker dangerous to gender norms and the idealized figures as sexualized and ambiguous in boundaries between genders, bodies, and rabbinic storytelling and Buie romanticizes spaces. And, while the narrative focus on the as dynamic and erotic in pre-modern inn, the market, and women reveals the societies.53 The erotic is central to both Unheimlichkeit inherent in these sites, such stories, as the rabbinic men are exposed to focus also reveals how the counterpoints to extremely intimate interactions with strange these sites (home and men) are themselves women in both the inn and the marketplace. not so canny. The home and the rabbinic The image of Jannai “riding on a woman in male identity are threatened by the the market” is hilarious: his public, sexual thoroughgoing unheimlich feeling revealed conquest of the witch produces a ridiculous by travel: if instability and danger is met out scene. But underlying that hilarity is a there, on the road, how can it not be found in definite existential fear: the fear of the categories formerly assumed to be stable weakening of spatial, gender and sexual when the journey is over? And, the rabbinic boundaries, which may in fact weaken Jew‟s travels are furthermore de-centered by Jannai’s identity as a rabbinic man.54 the state of diaspora from the Jewish homeland. While the narrative trope of the 53 Baker provides a nuanced argument about gender, “wandering Jew” will become ever more space, sex, and bodies (as described above), prominent in Christian negative portrayals particularly in the “market” and “home.” A relevant of Jews in the late Middle Ages and example: “Just as the sexualized „woman in the shuk‟ beyond,55 the tensions of life in the Diaspora signals the danger of the undomesticated female – specifically, the threat of sexual compromise – she as not-quite-rooted may be already detected might, at the same time, embody a perceived threat in these rabbinic travel narratives. Each of posed to the domestic cultures of the Galilee by the these stories have shown that when a larger Roman imperial culture: the threat that not only economic, but also ethnic, religious, and other cultural categories would be compromised; that the asceticism, submissiveness, retiring to private spaces, rabbinically imagined boundaries between a „well- and interpretation of circumcision in a particular way ordered‟ Jewish „house‟ and household and a non- – were adopted variously by Christians or Jews as just-Jewish marketplace would become permanently acts of resistance against the Roman culture of blurred” (Baker, Rebuilding the House,109). An masculinist power wielding” (Ibid., 6). Does Jannai example of Buie‟s romanticized view: “Traditional riding an ass-woman in the marketplace constitute markets vividly express our genuine erotic such “feminization”? I would suggest that this story interdependence” (Buie, “Market as Mandala,” 28). is more concerned with maintaining “maleness” in 54 Boyarin would suggest that while rabbinic literature the face of potential emasculation than the strategic does envision a certain type of “masculine” man, the embrace of “femaleness” presented by Boyarin. creation of this man is tempered by another creation, 55 For a collection of essays that consider the vast the “femminized [sic]” man, which attempts to literature featuring the character of “the Wandering subvert the Roman paradigms of masculinity. Jew,” see The Wandering Jew: Essays in the Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct, 10. “Various symbolic Interpretation of a Christian Legend, eds. Galit enactments of „femaleness,‟ as constructed within a Hasan-Rokem and Alan Dundes (Bloomington, IN: particular system of genders – among them Indiana University Press, 1986).

Mandsager | 86 rabbinic man attempts to find a safe, Unheimlichkeit inherent in each of the identity-confirming space of his own, he is places he visits, and by the unheimlich continually confounded by the nature of his own diasporic being.

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