The Marriage Issue
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Association for Jewish Studies SPRING 2013 Center for Jewish History The Marriage Issue 15 West 16th Street The Latest: New York, NY 10011 William Kentridge: An Implicated Subject Cynthia Ozick’s Fiction Smolders, but not with Romance The Questionnaire: If you were to organize a graduate seminar around a single text, what would it be? Perspectives THE MAGAZINE OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES Table of Contents From the Editors 3 From the President 3 From the Executive Director 4 The Marriage Issue Jewish Marriage 6 Bluma Goldstein Between the Living and the Dead: Making Levirate Marriage Work 10 Dvora Weisberg Married Men 14 Judith Baskin ‘According to the Law of Moses and Israel’: Marriage from Social Institution to Legal Fact 16 Michael Satlow Reading Jewish Philosophy: What’s Marriage Got to Do with It? 18 Susan Shapiro One Jewish Woman, Two Husbands, Three Laws: The Making of Civil Marriage and Divorce in a Revolutionary Age 24 Lois Dubin Jewish Courtship and Marriage in 1920s Vienna 26 Marsha Rozenblit Marriage Equality: An American Jewish View 32 Joyce Antler The Playwright, the Starlight, and the Rabbi: A Love Triangle 35 Lila Corwin Berman The Hand that Rocks the Cradle: How the Gender of the Jewish Parent Influences Intermarriage 42 Keren McGinity Critiquing and Rethinking Kiddushin 44 Rachel Adler Kiddushin, Marriage, and Egalitarian Relationships: Making New Legal Meanings 46 Gail Labovitz Beyond the Sanctification of Subordination: Reclaiming Tradition and Equality in Jewish Marriage 50 Melanie Landau The Multifarious Models for Jewish Marriage 52 Ira Bedzow and Michael Broyde What’s Different (or not) about Same-Sex Marriage 54 Jay Michaelson The Latest William Kentridge: An Implicated Subject 56 Michael Rothberg Cynthia Ozick’s Fiction Smolders, but not with Romance 58 Dean Franco The Questionnaire If you were to organize a graduate seminar around a single text, what would it be? 60 AJS Perspectives: The Magazine of the President Please direct correspondence to: Association for Jewish Studies Jeffrey Shandler Association for Jewish Studies From the Editors Rutgers University Center for Jewish History Editors 15 West 16th Street Dear Colleagues, Matti Bunzl Vice President/Publications New York, NY 10011 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Leslie Morris Marriage is always in the news, from the latest tabloid spread to knew what was actually uttered in Aramaic at their weddings, they Rachel Havrelock University of Minnesota Voice: (917) 606-8249 the urgent debate on gay marriage. (Too) much of the policy debate would never consent. Others provide ways of transforming marriage Fax: (917) 606-8222 University of Illinois at Chicago centers around the nature and fate of the seemingly self-evident and weddings into events that are more inclusive, egalitarian, and true Vice President/Program E-Mail: [email protected] Reuven Firestone Web Site: www.ajsnet.org “Judeo-Christian tradition.” As Jewish Studies scholars, we tend to be to contemporary values. There are several suggestions about how to Editorial Board skeptical when politicians invoke the tradition we study for a living. contract a halakically legitimate bond while dispensing with some of Allan Arkush HUC-JIR, Los Angeles Binghamton University University of Southern California AJS Perspectives is published bi-annually High time, then, to collect a representative sample of the latest its objectionable premises. Some articles show that marriage is a con- by the Association for Jewish Studies. research on marriage. tingent affair in which no single bond ever demonstrates the model. Carol Bakhos Vice President/Membership The defense of marriage as a biblical institution brings with it Even as scholars agonize over what to do about matrimony in University of California, Los Angeles and Outreach The Association for Jewish Studies is an no small amount of irony. The Hebrew Bible speaks of men “taking” the age of women rabbis and state laws protecting gay marriage, Orit Bashkin Anita Norich affiliate of the Center for Jewish History. women; it outlaws marriages with groups deemed too far from Israel wedding planners and officiants look to Jewish tradition for the tell- University of Chicago University of Michigan © Copyright 2013 Association for and with relatives considered too close; and it stipulates procedures for tale huppahs, ketubahs, and smashing of glass. For many couples, the Sarah Benor divorce, remarriage, and verifying adultery. But there are no descrip- wedding functions as a key moment of connecting to a Jewish past HUC-JIR, Los Angeles Secretary/Treasurer Jewish Studies ISSN 1529-6423 Jonathan Sarna tions of marriage as a convention or representations of wedding rituals. through these signifiers. Should tradition be put aside in the name Michael Brenner Brandeis University The famous verse in which a man leaves his father and mother of progressive values? Without dictating any answers to our current University of Munich in order to cling to a woman might well refer to coitus more than predicament, we recall Naomi Seidman’s article from The Secular Nathaniel Deutsch AJS Staff matrimony. The Tanakh describes parties where men drink together Issue that demonstrated how ideas of romantic love entered Jewish University of California, Santa Cruz Rona Sheramy AJS Perspectives reserves the right prior to whatever transaction affects marriage, yet these feasts lead thought as a bourgeois nineteenth-century import. Seidman refers to Todd Hasak-Lowy Executive Director to reject advertisements or other items not consonant with the goals to confusion and violence. Jacob’s revels end with his marriage Foucault when she writes of how “the traditional world multiplied School of the Art Institute of Chicago Karen Terry and purposes of the organization. to the wrong woman and Samson’s more philosophical sympo- rather than constraining sexual relations, embedding its marriages Program and Membership Ari Kelman Copy may be condensed or rejected sium leads only to the consummation of war between Judah and within a dense web of religious, social, and kinship networks.” The Coordinator Stanford University because of length or style. AJS the Philistines. For outpourings of love, we must turn to Ruth the bourgeois model, in contrast, separated the couple from these net- Heidi Lerner Natasha Perlis Perspectives disclaims responsibility Moabite who pledges to her mother-in-law Naomi that “only death works eventually turning them into a market that could be expanded Conference and Distinguished Stanford University for statements made by advertisers will separate me and you” (Ruth 1:17) or to David, who mourns through divorce: the greater the number of separate households, the Lectureship Program Manager and contributors. Laura Levitt Jonathan in verse, “You were most dear to me. Your love was won- greater consumption of goods and services. If the market replaces Temple University Ethan Zadoff derful to me, more than the love of women” (2 Samuel 26). God as the driving force of a marriage, then is agency increased? How Grants and Communications Meira Polliack The New Testament offers an even bleaker view. Jesus explicitly can one mediate the role of the state when thinking about marriage? Coordinator Tel Aviv University brings God into the equation and prevents the termination of marriage: How does the case of Israel, where the Rabbinate presides over all Riv-Ellen Prell “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” Remarriage consti- state marriages, complicate the issue? Does the institution of mar- University of Minnesota tutes “adultery” and the most elevated state is that of the “eunuchs for riage afford autonomy? Should it? Can it be transformed and why, to Jonathan Schorsch the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:6–12). Paul’s famous come back to our original question, are we so married to the issue? Columbia University resolution was “better to marry then to burn” (1 Corinthians 7:9), thus David Shneer imagining union as a joint policing of desire. Marriage, as articulated Matti Bunzl University of Colorado here, goes beyond controlling women to assume a mode of Foucaul- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign dian self-surveillance in which the individual modulates his desires Dina Stein Rachel Havrelock University of Haifa as part of a larger program of social discipline. Such a program is like- University of Illinois Chicago Nadia Valman wise evident when marriage becomes a metaphor for the relationship Queen Mary University of London between a community and God. Here the actual business of satiation, Yael Zerubavel cohabitation, and reproduction becomes displaced and concealed by Rutgers University yearning, ritual, and expansion of the group of devoted believers. The Bible has much more to say about the marriage between Managing Editor the faithful and God in which the human spouse figures as femi- Karin Kugel nine. Jeremiah speaks of Israel’s tender pursuit of God’s love during the wandering in the wilderness (2:2). But the difficulties inherent Graphic Designer in the marriage between God and Israel appear in the book of Eze- Ellen Nygaard kiel where God charges His wife with “harlotry,” a “weak heart,” and “filthiness.” After such berating, one almost wishes that God would issue a get rather than “an everlasting covenant” (16). There is debate—much within this issue—over whether the rab- binic marriage contract provides safeguards for women’s basic rights or commodifies brides as objects of transaction. It is certain that rab- binic law