Rabbinic Conceptualization of the Male Body as Reflected in the Halakhic System of Male Genital Emissions

This project seeks to understand how the rabbinic impurity legislation of the male genital emissions of shikhvat zera (mildly-defiling, potentially-procreative emission) and zivah (strongly defiling non-procreative emission) contribute to the construction of gender. The work begins by delineating how Leviticus 15 describes these two male genital emissions in terms of their definition and defilement properties: they seem to be categorized by two different taxonomies. One of these taxonomies focuses upon the manner in which each emission is exuded and its concomitant impurity level. The other taxonomy involves the ability (or lack of ability) of each emission to facilitate procreation. While both shikhvat zera and zivah were ritual impurities, zivah, the stronger defiler, shared a particular characteristic with moral impurities---the ability to defile the Temple from afar. The study next examines whether rabbinic legislation maintained or departed from biblical legislation. It concludes that although the rabbinic impurity laws use the same taxonomies as the biblical ones, they redefine the emissions and the ways in which the emissions are understood to defile. On the one hand, in rabbinic legislation the distinctly separate characters of shikhvat zera and zivah show signs of blurring; on the other hand, each category itself is more thoroughly elaborated. The importance of shikhvat zera---the mildly-defiling, potentially-procreative emission---increases as its relationship to sexuality is increasingly emphasized. As part of this process the emission acquires a new type of impurity that is moral. These developments are evident in the representation of semen in metaphors that illuminate or complement legal discussions. In a parallel development, zivah---the strongly-defiling, non-procreative emission---is understood as not precipitated by stimuli that usually impact the body, such as food or drink, physical exertion or sexual thoughts or visual experiences. Zivah will be used as a least common denominator of maleness: even a questionably male person is marked by his ability to be subject to zivah. A complementary part of the project demonstrates that female emissions and their power of defilement were not necessarily sites of more rabbinic legal innovation than male emissions and their power of defilement. It acknowledges that distinct hierarchies of male and female prerogative and privilege undoubtedly existed in terms of the practical implications of the purity laws, hierarchies that advantaged men and excluded women. However, contrary to previous scholarship---which asserts that rabbinic use of metaphors to describe female impurity and rabbinic law concerning female impurity were motivated by a desire to objectify and exclude women---this study proposes that metaphorization, objectification, and the introduction of some external supervision served to further nuance the laws and thus consolidate the power of the rabbis. The study reveals that male emissions were also metaphorized, and that the male body was also objectified as a consequence. Rabbinic treatment of emissions reveals a gender bias only in that men were less subject to supervision than were women. This lesser degree of supervision elicited some resistance from men, here interpreted with reference to Foucault's idea of subject constitution via subjugation by power and the responses to that conceptualization by Butler and Mahmood.