November 26th: Vayeshev
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
This is one of the Bible lessons they don’t teach you in Sunday School. In Genesis 38, we read a very disturbing story about Judah, son of Jacob and namesake of all us Jews. He marries a woman named Shua, and they have three children: Er, Onan, and Shelah. When Er grows up, he marries a woman named Tamar, but, before they can have any children, Er dies. The Torah does not explain what happens; it just says, “But Er, Judah’s first-born was displeasing to the Lord, and the Lord took his life.” (Genesis 38.7) This explanation may be a matter of post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning—seeing a result and assuming the reason for it. Why else would a young man die? God must have had a good reason. This is disturbing theology even before we get to the rest of the story.
Er’s widow, Tamar, is then plunged into a very awkward ancient custom. When a married man dies without children, his brother is supposed to father a child with the widow—and the child is considered the dead brother’s progeny. This is called levirate marriage or the levirate obligation. When it comes time for Onan to do his brotherly duty, things get complicated. “Judah said to Onan, ‘Join with your brother’s wife and do your duty by her as a brother-in-law, and provide offspring for your brother.’ But Onan, knowing that the seed would not count as his, let it go to waste (spilt it on the ground) whenever he joined with his brother’s wife, so as not to provide offspring for his brother. What he did was displeasing to the Lord, and God took his life also.” (Genesis 38.8-10)
At this point, Shelah is too young for the levirate obligation, so Tamar returns to her family, thinking that she will wait for him to grow up. Judah, however, determines that Tamar is a danger to his family, and he seeks to disassociate from her—sort of “forgetting” about her and Shelah’s obligation to her (and to Er).
Time passes, and even though Shelah grows up, Tamar is never contacted. She then takes matters into her own hands. Hearing that Judah is traveling near her family’s home, she disguises herself as a sacred prostitute (associated with a pagan shrine) and entices Judah to lie with her. When she gets pregnant and Judah hears about it, he suddenly feels a proprietary interest in her and wants her executed for adultery. Fortunately for her, she has Judah’s seal and cord in her possession, and before her execution, she proclaims that she is with child by the owner of these tokens. Judah realizes his sin and says, “She is more in the right than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Shelah.” (Genesis 38.26) She is brought back into the family, bears twins Perez and Zerah, but she and Judah are not intimate again.
What a mess!
There are several ways of understanding the levirate marriage. Some think it is designed to give the widow a place of respect in the family. In a society where a woman’s only significance is as a wife or a mother, having a child garners this settled position and prevents her from being cast out. Others think the custom may be related to Biblical thinking about the afterlife. Though Sheol, the Bible’s explanation of where dead people “live,” is not a place of reward or punishment, there is a notion that the dead are aware of their descendants and can root for them. Providing the widow with a child provides the dead brother with someone to watch and support from Sheol. This explains Judah’s phrasing of the instruction to Onan (and perhaps Tamar): “Join with your brother’s wife and do your duty by her as a brother-in-law, and provide offspring for your brother.” Another possible reason for the levirate obligation is to dissuade brothers from fratricide—killing a brother to inherit his share of the estate. As hideous as this seems, there have been cultures in which brothers killed brothers for tribal/imperial leadership and possessions. If, however, the dead brother’s share would pass to “his son,” then such a terrible option would be less of a temptation.
We then get to the question of Onan’s sin. What exactly does he do wrong? There are several possibilities—and perhaps this multiplicity of sins is what makes the punishment so severe. First, he refuses to provide his brother with offspring. Second, he refuses to help his sister-in-law gain the status necessary for a respectable life. Third is Onan’s callous disregard for Tamar’s intimate sensibility—making her suffer the humiliation of sex with a man she does not love and then preventing her from using the encounter for pregnancy. Notice the habitual nature of his disrespect. He spills his seed upon the ground “whenever he joined with his brother’s wife.” It is not a single incident, but a regular practice.
It says in the Talmud that “God counts the tears of women.” Despite the power that men have in Biblical and Talmudic Law, this teaching reminds men that women’s feelings matter—and that part of the religious life is being considerate and respectful to women.
Despite these other offenses, the focus of traditional commentaries has been on the physical “spilling of his seed”—the deposit of semen in any place other than a woman’s reproductive system. Thus traditional religions have used Onan’s terrible punishment to prohibit male masturbation and—in more modern times—barrier method contraception. The Roman Catholic Church has even carried this grave concern to the opposite of contraception and sees in Onan’s sin reason to prohibit in vitro fertilization—or even testing of semen for potency. The problem, as the Church sees it, is in any production of or collection of semen other than its “natural” context.
In Judaism, there is a different judgment. The mitzvah of procreation is deemed more important than the prohibition of “spilling seed,” and thus collection of semen for testing or fertility techniques is allowed. And, the two mitzvot of pikuach nefesh (saving a life) and of sexual gratification (for both wives and husbands) are deemed more important than the prohibition of “spilling seed, and thus Halachah allows barrier contraception when a pregnancy would be deleterious to the wife’s health.
As with all Biblical stories, there are multiple interpretive possibilities, and it is always interesting how different readers in different contexts draw their conclusions.