"Woman's Humor in the Bible?" Humanist Judaism, XXXIV Number II Spring 2006, 14-16 (Reprinted with slight changes from 1991 and 1998)

Woman's Humor in the Bible?

by Adrien Janis Bledstein

Before the Rabbinic Locker Room, Jewish Humor Began with J in the Kitchen

Have you heard this one? God was about to create woman. "I will not make her from the head of man, lest she be wanton-eyed; not from the ear, lest she be an eavesdropper; not from the neck, lest she be insolent; not from the mouth, lest she be a tattler; not from the heart, lest she be inclined to envy; not from the hand. lest she be a meddler; not from the foot, lest she be a gadabout. I will form her from a chaste portion of the body." So he took a rib from Adam, and as he formed each limb and organ, He said, "Be chaste! Be chaste!" Nevertheless, in spite of His great caution, women have all the faults God tried to avoid.1

Rabbinic locker room jock-ularity is how I characterize this midrashic misogyny, which has been circulated for two thousand years. However, I suggest that a millennium before, it was woman's wit — kitchen humor poking at puffed-up chaps who dominate women and others — that forged what at that time was a peculiarly Hebrew view of the universe.

Jewish humor (the humor of an oppressed people) begins with J, the earliest narrator in Torah. As Harold Bloom has argued, I believe J may have been a woman,2 who wrote stories subversive of preconceptions in her day. Bloom, in The Book of J, got it right about J's gender and her "affectionate irony." What he missed was the butt of her irony, which was aimed primarily at mighty men who confuse themselves with gods. To the royal courts of David and Solomon, she presented a world of ordinary mortals — Abraham and Sarah, Rebekah and Isaac — trying to survive the whims of kings and princes, just as their neighbors felt subject to the antics of gods and goddesses.

A Ribbing Companion

Humor depends on familiarity with the context. To appreciate J's humor, we need to know something of its cultural framework: stories circulating in the region prior to 1000 B.C.E. The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh has many similarities with Genesis. In one Gilgamesh episode, for example, the mother goddess takes a clod of soil to form a lone man who romps with animals on the steppe (edinu in the original Akkadian language, from the Sumerian eden). A temple prostitute's seduction of this Tarzan results in the animals rejecting him. After she teaches the savage to bathe, dress, and drink beer, he abandons her and becomes the sidekick of the super hero Gilgamesh, son of a goddess and a king.

J knew the story and turned it upside down. As she tells it, Yahweh (the Hebrew deity) molds the first human from a clod of soil and places him in a garden called Eden. Perceiving his loneliness, Yahweh first creates animals, but the human rejects them, he wants an "equal."3 Accustomed to hearing of heroic couples like Gilgamesh and Enkidu, David and Jonathan, the ancients would have expected a man.4 According to J, Yahweh lulls Adam to sleep, takes the man's rib (side), and fashions a woman. In joyful recognition of his "sidekick," the man utters an expression normally addressed to men; she is "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." J ribs the men.

As Gods

J's fundamental theme is introduced by the serpent's forked tongue: "You shall be as gods, knowers of good and evil." What would the couple expect upon hearing those words? What did it mean to be "as gods" in those days?

In Egyptian mythology, Seth and Horus wrestle over who will rule the gods. When Seth attempts to rape Horus in his sleep, Horus receives the semen in his hands and carries it to his mother, Isis, who shrieks, cuts off his hands, and gives him new ones. Then his mother manipulates her son to produce semen, which she sprinkles on the salad for Seth, who becomes pregnant! In Mesopotamia, Marduk inflates the enraged mother goddess with winds, then shoots his arrow through her wide-open mouth and pierces her heart. Who needs Freud?

From an ancient Hebrew perspective, these stories would appear fair game for satire. The innocent couple in Eden realize too late what the narrator and audience already know: that knowledge of good and evil does not mean they gain wisdom, but that they become as gods and goddesses: competitive, hostile, violent, and sexually abusive. No wonder they cover their differences!

After Eden, J introduces the first murderer, Cain. Ascending violence ensues until Yahweh decides to flush the earth and start anew with Noah and family. Did you ever wonder who were those "sons of the gods" who took any woman they chose from among the "daughters of man" before the flood? They were the demigods, the Gilgameshes who demand jus primae noctis (first night with the bride); the arrogant men who relish their physical power and do as they please (like Lamech, who boasts to his wives about killing a lad who merely bruised him). J satirizes men who behave as if they are sons of gods.

The Genesis of Humans

Instead of venerating dauntless heroes to inspire warriors, J draws upon family stories of the Hebrew foreparents. She projects a view of vulnerable humans — men and women — energetically dedicated to survival in a dangerous world, one in which a monarch may take a beautiful wife and kill her husband (as David did with Bathsheba and Uriah).

Look at Abraham and Sarah. As they are about to enter Egypt (Genesis 12:10-20), Abraham, wary for his life, pleads with the gorgeous Sarah to present herself as his sister. Her husband's life in her hands, Sarah misleads Pharaoh and is taken into the royal harem. Abraham gets a terrific bride price for her. But Pharaoh and his household are plagued on account of Sarah. Fearful of the power of the couple's deity, the Egyptian monarch sends the tricksters away with all they have acquired.5

Abraham and Sarah are not the only tricksters in J's stories. Later, Isaac and Rebekah delude a king with similar consequences. When Jacob decides to bless Esau, Rebekah instructs Jacob to disguise himself as his older brother so their father will bless him.6 Laban and Leah hoodwink Jacob on his wedding night. To become a mother, Tamar, veiled as a whore, beguiles her father-in-law, Judah. And so on. These are the ancestors of David.

Concerned with survival, the patriarchs and matriarchs in Genesis break almost every law in the code later spelled out at Sinai, yet they are blessed by Yahweh. Does J think Yahweh likes cheaters? Or does she portray the deity of Israel with a sense of humor about how difficult human survival may be in a potentially violent, patriarchal culture? I prefer the latter assumption.

The people blessed by Yahweh employ outrageous tricks because, unlike other peoples' heroes, they have no magical or superior powers. And that is J's point. Humans are not supernatural. Men are not gods or demigods; women are not goddesses. Those who play god make life difficult for others, who then are driven to survive by their wits. In Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, J's stories satirize rulers and hunters and depict a she-ass as wiser than a corrupt prophet. The style is humorous, the message serious.

A Woman Writer?'

Could a man have written these stories? Compared with priestly writings and the diatribes of male prophets, J's view of women is distinctly different. In contrast with many myths and legends of other ancient peoples and some rabbinic revisions of Torah, J's stories are not misogynist, nor do they project fear of the feminine.7 The patriarchs are cautious, smart, and respect their women. J's mothers — Sarah, Rebekah, Leah — are presented with high regard for their energy, courage, and humor.

J's sallies, aimed at pompous men, are constructive revelations about family relationships. They evoke chortles of recognition and relief, typical of woman's wit.8 Their sense of the absurd (like Jewish humor to this day) is a sane perspective founded in anguish.

Who, in particular, among the known women in David's and Solomon's time, might have felt prompted to expose the frailty along with the spiritual strength of the forebears in a national saga? The most likely candidate is Tamar, the daughter of David (and a descendant of the earlier Tamar), who appears in 2 Samuel 13.

Tamar is a threefold casualty of male arrogance. First, her half-brother Amnon rapes her and then refuses to marry her. Second, by failing to punish the rapist, her father, David, betrays her. Third, her full brother Absalom shushes her ("Hold your peace, my sister: he is your brother; don't take this to heart") and then, after two years, takes the law into his own hands by killing Amnon, and later is killed by Joab. Such a traumatic series of events would indeed open the eyes of a Jewish princess.

The story of Joseph, full of ironies, may be read as a story within Tamar's story, a disguised recreation of her trauma to make it come out better. Like Joseph, Tamar wears a coat of many colors, is sent by her father to her brother (in her case, to cook for and serve him, or minister a healing ritual 9), and is then abused. Like Joseph, her world is shattered. But Joseph's victimization is only temporary and his vindication sweet. The coincidence is so strong as to suggest that the Joseph narrator (J) may have been Tamar.10

The first written Jewish humor, then, may have arisen from this woman's way of knowing, her synthesis of personal, familial, and folk history. This feminine perspective would account in part for the uniqueness of J's vision in her time. Whether Tamar or another woman, J, wishing to change a world dominated by kings, princes, and warriors, wrote about the serious issues women in the kitchen chat and chuckle about for relief when men aren't listening.

Adrien Janis Bledstein is a writer and educator who leads Torah study with adults at K.A.M.-Isaiah Israel Congregation, Chicago. She is a frequent contributor to Jewish and academic publications and is preparing two book length manuscripts, "What was David Thinking? His Prayers in Narrative Context" and "The Voice of Tamar, the Bible’s ‘Master’ Storyteller." She is also founder and president of I Can Breathe! Inc., online at www.icanbreathe.com. This article is reprinted with slight changes from the Summer 1991 issue of Humanistic Judaism.

NOTES

1. As told in Ginzberg, Louis, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1909) p. 66.

2. See Bledstein, A. J., "So J Was a Woman?" Sh'ma, vol. 47, no. 407 (February 8, 1991), pp. 49-51, and "Dear Harold Bloom," Lilith, vol. 16, no. 3 (Summer 1991), p. 28.

3. Freedman, R. David, "Woman, a Power Equal to Man," Biblical Archeological Review, January-February 1983.

4. See Bledstein, A. J., "The Genesis of Humans: The Garden of Eden Revisited," Judaism, vol. 26, no. 2 (Spring 1977), pp. 187-200.

5. See Bledstein, A. J., "The Trials of Sarah," Judaism, vol. 30, no. 4 (Fall 1981), pp. 411-417. A similar episode occurs in Genesis 20 but is not attributed to J.

6. See Bledstein, A. J., "Binder, Trickster, Heel and Hairy-Man: Re-reading Genesis 27 as a Trickster Tale Told by a Woman." Tn A. Bremner (Ed.), A Feminist Companion to Genesis, vol. 2 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), pp. 282-295.

7. See Bledstein, A. J., "Was Eve Cursed? (Or Did a Woman Write Genesis?)" Bible Review, vol. 9, no. 1 (February 1993), pp. 42-45. Online at http://www.icanbreathe.com/newpage15.htm.

8. See, for example, Regina Barreca in They Used to Call Me Snow White ... but I Drifted: Women's Strategic Use of Humor (New York: Viking, 1991).

9. See Bledstein, A. J., "Was Habbirya a Healing Ritual Performed by a Woman in King David's House?" Biblical Research, vol. 37 (1992), pp. 15-31.

10. See Bledstein, A. J., "Tamar and the Coat of Many Colors," in A. Brenner (Ed.), A Feminist Companion to Samuel and Kings, 2nd ed. (Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 2/7:65-83.