Something Was Missing BY DAVID C. JACOBSON called Alma, in Tel Aviv in 1996, before eventually preciate rabbinic stories. Tey emerge as part of the A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales becoming a candidate for Knesset for Yair Lapid’s associative fow of talmudic discussions of law and by Ruth Calderon Yesh Atid party. legend, and only a person trained in the reading of translated by Ilana Kurshan rabbinic texts would even be able to locate them. Jewish Publication Society, 184 pp., $21.95 “When I frst encountered (Tey are not, needless to say, titled.) Many of them are written in Aramaic, a language not comprehen- the Talmud,” Calderon said, sible to most Israelis. Furthermore, they are written in a minimalist style, focusing on actions tersely fer she was elected to Knesset last year, “I found the love of my life.” described and brief dialogues, with little attention Ruth Calderon was invited to deliver to the outward appearances or inner thoughts and her inaugural speech from the dais. Te abbinic legends have been of central interest feelings of the characters. Calderon overcomes the invitation was a matter of Israeli par- Rto the returners to the Jewish bookcase, and difculties this all presents for her readers by ex- Aliamentary custom, but the speech was something collections of such legends that attempt to make tracting each legend from its original context, when else. Calderon read a talmudic legend about a cer- them accessible to the general reader have been necessary translating it into Hebrew (now rendered tain Rabbi Rehumi and his wife in the original Ara- composed in Israel in recent years by such writ- in English), giving it a title, and explaining cultural maic (“for the music,” she said), following it with a ers as Ari Elon, Admiel Kosman, and Ruhama references. In her retellings, Calderon provides the Hebrew translation and discussion. Weiss (all of them following in the giant footsteps details contemporary readers might expect, espe- Calderon’s Knesset Talmud lesson was a very of Bialik and Ravnitzky’s Sefer Ha-aggada). Ruth cially those that provide greater insights into the public demonstration—it has over 250,000 hits Calderon’s contribution to this growing genre inner lives of the characters. on YouTube—of the signifcance of the secular Is- In an efort to appreci- raeli “return to the Jewish bookcase” (ha-hazara ate these stories, readers la-aron ha-sefarim ha-yehudi), which began in the must also come to terms 1960s and picked up momentum over the last two with the enormous gap decades. In her Knesset speech, Calderon told the between the values, life- story of how she and many of her contemporaries style, and world view of came to the study of rabbinic texts. As a pupil in the the authors of these leg- secular Jewish Israeli school system she had felt that ends and themselves. As “something was missing.” Te schools she attended Calderon puts it in the had aimed to liberate their students from dias- Introduction: pora values by de-emphasizing Jewish history and literature from the period of the destruction of the Te [legendary] landscape Second Temple until the rise of Zionism and the es- at frst seems very diferent tablishment of the State of Israel (“from the Tanakh from the world we know. to the Palmach”). She acknowledged that her teach- It is wide and topsy-turvy, ers largely succeeded in inspiring their pupils frightening and funny. It to adopt this identity of “the new Hebrew . [who] is a world in which the realized their dream and became a courageous, impossible happens: God practical, and suntanned soldier,” but it was not asks to be blessed by a enough: human being; the head of a Yesh Atid parliament member Ruth Calderon at a conference on Jewish and talmudic academy marries [F]or me, this contained—I contained—a void. Arab women in Israel, December 18, 2013. (Photo by Miriam Alster/FLASH90.) a woman for one night in a I did not know how to fll that void, but when strange city; a mortal steals I frst encountered the Talmud and became the knife of the Angel of completely enamored with it, its language, its was titled in Hebrew Hashuq. Habayit. Halev: Death; the wife of a Torah scholar dresses up as humor, its profound thinking, its modes of Aggadot Talmudiyyot (Te Market. Te Home. the most famous prostitute in Babylonia; and a discussion, and the practicality, humanity, and Te Heart: Talmudic Legends). It was published kindergarten teacher causes rain to fall. maturity that emerge from its lines, I sensed in 2001, and the Jewish Publication Society has that I had found the love of my life, what I had now brought out an English edition of this im- Not only do they strain credulity, these ancient been lacking. portant book under a diferent title, A Bride for tales can also be morally problematic. “Some- One Night: Talmud Tales (well translated into times,” Calderon freely admits, “I come across Following high school and her army service, English by Ilana Kurshan). talmudic stories that irritate or provoke me. Te Calderon began to immerse herself in Jewish Calderon selected 18—one of which is not in- cultural milieu in which the rabbis lived and wrote studies at Ha-midrasha at Oranim, the pioneer- cluded in the English edition—brief rabbinic leg- relates to women, non-Jews, children, and slaves ing kibbutz-sponsored institution for the return ends from talmudic and midrashic sources. In in a way that I consider immoral.” Calderon com- to the Jewish bookcase, and later received a mas- addition to her refections on the contemporary pensates by recasting these legends in ways that are ter’s degree and a doctorate in Talmud at Te He- signifcance of each story, Calderon presents what more in keeping with contemporary values, but brew University. While in graduate school, she also she refers to in the Introduction as “a midrash, she also shows that sometimes a careful reading of studied at the Shalom Hartman Institute. She went or creative retelling that springs from my own the story reveals that the author is as disturbed by on to found an infuential pluralistic study house imagination.” how characters relate to each other as the contem- called Elul in Jerusalem in 1989 and another, It isn’t easy for the contemporary reader to ap- porary reader. Summer 2014 t JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 25 n the original version of the legend she calls (English) title, it is told that when two important Calderon provides explanations, but in so doing I“Yishmael, My Son, Bless Me” when the High rabbinic sages would travel to a city far from where she deprives readers of the pleasure of seeking their Priest Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha enters the Holy they lived with their wives, they would each marry own reasons. of Holies in the Temple on Yom Kippur, God asks a woman for one day and then divorce her, a prac- To return to our three examples, I can see much him to bless Him, and Rabbi Yishmael prays to tice that fies in the face of all that the contempo- justifcation and value in Calderon’s reading of God that He be able to relate to humanity with rary reader would expect from an authoritative “Yishmael, My Son, Bless Me” as a radical subver- mercy. In her retelling of the story, Calderon draws Jewish text. Indeed, even traditional interpreters sion of conventional theology and “Libertina” as the reader into an account of the inner feelings of have had to struggle to make moral sense of the a penetrating critique of rabbinic asceticism and, Rabbi Yishmael, who is plagued with self-doubt as story. Calderon transforms it into the frst-person more generally, situations in which men domi- he undertakes his ritual responsibilities. In her re- account of a widow who agrees to be “a bride for nate women. However, her retelling of “A Bride fections, she rereads the story as a divine sanction a night.” In Calderon’s telling, the woman makes for One Night” strikes me as a forced attempt to for the need to transcend ritual for a more spiritual her motivation clear: She is told that when the transform what seems to be an ancient exploitative approach to religion, a message that is likely to res- rabbi divorces her afer their legally sanctioned practice into a romantic story with a happy ending. onate with most contemporary readers. “A request one-night stand, she will receive the money that Even when told from the perspective of the wid- [by God] for assistance from a human being,” she all married women are due from their husbands ow, her initial agreement to sleep with a man for writes, “allows for a religious encounter that is an- when they divorce, and she looks forward to this monetary gain looks uncomfortably like a legally archic in the sense that it requires no hierarchy of sexual encounter as a respite, albeit brief, from her sanctioned form of prostitution, and her desire to intermediaries. Te language of the divine-human loneliness. In Calderon’s version the respite turns escape from loneliness in a brief encounter comes conversation is not one of ritual symbols. Te fre out to be more than temporary when the rabbi across as emotionally misguided. Moreover, even pan of incense is rendered superfuous when true invites the woman to come home with him and in Calderon’s alternative ending, it would appear revelation takes place.” continue to be his wife. that the woman ends up living in a polygamous Te legend titled “Libertina” in the English Tere is no question that Calderon’s interpre- marriage with at least one other wife (a permissible translation is the story of a woman who disguises tations creatively mediate between the cultural practice at the time).