Nothing Donald J. Trump has said in public is one-tenth as shocking as statements you will find in the Torah tradition.
Media commentators have said that the Republican race hit bottom when Trump defended the size of his penis. Well, penis size among the great rabbis was discussed in Talmud.
I am not offended by anything in Torah and I am not offended by anything in Trump. In fact, I have never been offended in my life.
I never liked gemara much, but its possible that I wasn’t learning the right gemara. For instance I never learned about the naked guy on the roof who falls into the naked girl and they wonder whether or not she is still a virgin – interesting but not nearly as interesting as the following gemara in Bava Metzia:
There is a gemara in Bava Metzia that a fan sent over that is about the great sages discussing each others penis sizes, sounds like a locker room to me. I just cant imagine a bunch of white bearded talmudic scholars telling each other how big they are.
Apparently Rav Pappa had a huge shlong, which is explains why we mention him so many damned times durring siyums.
Here’s an except –
Rebbi Yochanan stated that the “Ever” (lit. “limb”) of Rebbi Yishmael bar’Rebbi Yosi was like a flask the size of nine Kavim. Rav Papa stated that the “Ever” of Rebbi Yochanan was like a flask the size of five Kavim (or, according to others, three Kavim). The Gemara continues and says that the “Ever” of Rav Papa himself was like a Harpanian basket.
Here is a Jewish website interested in truth — daat emet:
DE has been operating since 1998 as a public organization, whose main goal is the study of classical Jewish culture and the dissemination of its scientific, humanistic interpretation. In order to achieve this goal, DE has carried out a series of educational and cultural projects aimed at developing a dependable, historically grounded interpretation of the Jewish religion legacy, and its promulgation in the Israeli society.
DE has reached the conclusion that the amazingly rich classical Jewish legacy, which makes up the main body of Jewish culture, has been deliberately misinterpreted for a long period of time; as a result, it has become a political tool in the hands of self-interested fundamentalists who lay claim to having exclusive ownership of this legacy. Over the last several decades, the state of Jewish culture has been steadily deteriorating. Today, in fact, there is a mere handful of academic researchers resisting the onslaught of those who openly exploit the Jewish legacy for their own political and social agenda. Not only is the voice of these scholars virtually unheard; the fundamentalist interpretations have started to permeate academia itself.
There is another, still more crucial factor: before DE appeared on the scene, it had not occurred to anyone to engage in a public dialogue with the adherents of Jewish fundamentalism, to address them in their own language, or to take part in the cultural process taking part in their own midst. This process, however, is becoming fatally important for the Jewish people and the state of Israel.
The corpus of Jewish culture contains masterpieces of world importance created in different times, under different circumstances, and for different purposes. Unfortunately, in the last millennium the traditional Jewish thought has practically frozen in its treatment of classical texts, having provided them with an extra-contextual, fundamentalist, essentially political interpretation. Naturally, the role of classical texts in the Jewish mentality has been drained of substance. Were it not for the external, non-Jewish humanistic interpretations, we would treat the inspired predictions of Jewish prophets as trivial halachic reminiscences; more likely yet, they would have been totally forgotten. The humanistic interpretation of biblical prophecies, the greatest edifice of Jewish culture, has been preserved for us by people belonging to a different spiritual domain — a stern reminder that retains its relevance to this day.
The Jewish culture has a sad history of internal Jewish censorship and misinterpretation. The body of biblical scripture reached us in a reduced form, having been subjected to repeated revisions motivated by ideology; most importantly, any alternative versions have been irretrievably lost to orthodox censorship. Not a single “secular” historical chronicle or “technical” account from the periods of Jewish monarchy has managed to survive this censorship. The reactionary rabbinical circles created an emasculated interpretation of biblical texts, which became the sole approved version for centuries to come; they set the biblical canon, destroying practically everything else, whether alternative versions of the biblical texts or books declared “apocryphal”. The major part of Jewish literature from the Hellenistic period was thrown overboard altogether. Without the Christian scribes and interpreters, we would not have the Books of the Maccabees, of Judith, of Enoch, of Ben Sirrah — not to mention Aristeus, Tuviah, and so on. As a result of Jewish intolerance, many of these works, originally written in ancient Hebrew or Aramaic, have been preserved in their Greek translation only. The archaeological findings at Qumran “introduced” us to the real catalogue of two-thousand-year-old Jewish literature — finally bringing home the immensity of our cultural loss, as well as the paucity of the known Jewish culture filtered through the rabbinical canon.
Yet this is not all. One direct consequence of the rabbinical propensity for ideology and censorship was the remarkable loss of interest in their own literature. As a result, we have managed to lose virtually the entire body of rabbinical exegesis from the second half of the first millennium CE, the time of the geonim, and later a large portion of the Jerusalem Talmud, which found itself in actual opposition to the dominant Babylonian one.
Having set up their totalitarian approach to Jewish culture, the rabbinical reaction wiped out every competing ideological alternative. Were it not for the “external” reminders, we would not even know about the existence of the Essenic movement — the canonic literature does not contain a single mention of it. Rabbinical Judaism “revised” Jewish history, rewrote biblical texts, and created its own all-embracing version of contemporary reality. From the outset, its declared goal was to supersede all theoretical and practical Jewish ideologies. Using the cessation of religious worship in the Jerusalem Temple after the city’s destruction by the Romans, it declared this cessation to be eternal and theologically inevitable — up until the messianic times. This venture ended in brilliant success: all the other currents in Jewish culture were effectively eliminated.
What is most astounding is that the triumph of rabbinical dictatorship continues to plague us to this day. The entire traditional sector of the Jewish collective body still lives in full conformity with the cultural rabbinical dogma; what is more, the Jewish liberals, having rejected the rabbinical interpretation, failed to create a new one. Essentially, the ancient monopoly continues to dominate Jewish culture.
The site discusses rabbinic sex fantasy:
“Rabbi Samuel the son of Nachmani said: It is written, ‘A loving doe, a graceful mountain goat. [Let her breasts satisfy you at all times, be infatuated with love of her always’ (Proverbs 5:19)]. Why were the words of the Torah likened to a doe? To tell you that as the womb [vagina] of the doe is tight, and her mate enjoys it each time as though it were the first [for the sexual act is more enjoyable when the vagina remains tight], so are the words of the Torah always enjoyable to their students as though it were the first time” (Eiruvin 54b).
Chazal said (Minor Tractates, Tractate Derech Eretz, chapter arayot, halacha 13): “Do not speak excessively with women, for all women’s conversations are lewdness. R’ Achi the son of R’ Josiah said all who look at women will in the end come to sin.”
But we will show you who seeks truth that a great deal of the sages’ conversations are naught but lewdness, and about them we can say (Kiddushin 70a): “One who seeks to disqualify another projects his own defects upon him.”
One of the puzzling things about our rabbis is their world of sexual fantasy. To make the Torah enjoyable to its students they chose to use expressions from animal sexuality… even though they were no experts on the animal world: they never did, after all, ask the ram if he enjoys his mating with a doe more than other animals enjo their own matings – they just made it all up.
For example, see what else our rabbis have said about this doe: “‘Can you mark the time when the does calve?’ (Job 39:1)–the doe has a narrow womb. When she is about to birth I send her a dragon [snake–Rashi] to bite her and her womb expands. If it were a moment sooner or a moment later she would immediately die” (Bava Batra 16a).
With your own eyes you see how our rabbis make up “natural phenomena” which never actually happened, like G-d sending a snake to the doe, to bite her at just the right time so her womb will expand and she can give birth.
Do not think that these things are mere Aggadah, for the Gemara makes Halachic rulings based on this picture of things (Bechorot 7b): “Cheli d’yachmorta–the Sages tended to say that they are eggs and [therefore] forbidden. Rav Safra said, [however]: They are the sperm of a ram, who wanted to mate with a doe–but since her womb is tight, he could not; so he went to a she-roebuck, and these were left [in her vagina after their mating].” This is the explanation of it, according to the commentaries of Rashi and Rabbeynu Gershom: Cheli d’yachmorta are things resembling testicles dropping from a female roebuck’s vagina. The Sages tended to forbid eating them as limbs of a living being, thinking that these are indeed a male roebuck’s testicles, which he had dropped while fertilizing the female. Rav Safra, however, came along and permitted them–for in his view, they were not testicles but the sperm of a ram, which coagulated after he mated with a she-roebuck (!) because he could not mate with a doe of his own species, whose vagina is tight and she didn’t consent. So he went to a she-roebuck (an animal which looks similar to a doe), and mated. Now, since he had waited for a long time before this mating he emitted a lot of sperm, which coagulated in the roebuck’s womb until it looked like testicles.
This picture of animal world lays at the foundation of a Halachic ruling formulated by the Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah section 71, paragraph 3: “The eggs which a she-roebuck drops from her womb are permitted.” The Taz [Turei Zahav] explained in paragraph 6: “What has coagulated from the ram’s sperm and looks like eggs is only secretions [and is not forbidden as the limbs of a living being, so it is permitted for eating].”
All who hear this will laugh and wonder at this nonsense, which has not a single correct fact about it. Our rabbis come along and make up a whole story about rams, does, roebucks and the sexual relations they are involved in–until they even permitted eating the “eggs” which a she-roebuck drops because they are coagulated ram sperm, nothing more and nothing less. (We will say, as an aside, that we have often heard from our rabbis that eating forbidden foods influences one’s soul. What would these rabbis say about one who is scrupulous to eat permitted foods and eats coagulated ram sperm? What will his soul resemble?!)
Not only has the doe merited miracles when she births. The mountain goat has, too. (Bava Batra 16a): “‘Do you know the season when the mountain goats give birth? Can you mark the time when the does calve?’ (Job 39:1). The mountain goat is cruel to her children. When it comes time for her to give birth she goes up to the top of the mountain so the babies will fall and die. [But] I send an eagle to her to take them in his wings and place them before her.” Did the Sages never see a mountain goat give birth? What is all this nonsense?
If so, it is no wonder that Rabbi Joseph Elbo wrote, in Sefer HaIkarim (fourth essay, chapter 11): “So we have found that G-d watches wondrously over each animal, to give each one a purpose he can fulfill…the animals and birds of prey get no food from plant growth, so nature gave them tools through which they could live off prey, including claws with poison to use while killing, to cook the food and make it better, for the power of the poison and its heat serves them instead of cooking the meat… [See what we wrote in pamphlet 2, that all this is nonsense, for they have no poison in their claws at all.]
And the mountain goat is watched to guard them during their birth, to the extent that none are hidden from this supervision when it is born, as our rabbis OBM said: ‘Since her womb is tight [Rabbi Joseph Elbo gets confused here between the mountain goat, ya’elah, and the doe, ayalah], the holy One, blessed be He, sends her a snake to bite her, and for each and every species in its own way.”
So there, student who seeks knowledge, you have it: a peep into the virtual reality of our rabbis. They make up “natural phenomena” and from that draw conclusions about His supervision…
Since we have been dealing with does whose vaginas are tight, we will cite what is written (Yoma 29a): “Rav Zeira said: Why was Esther compared to a doe? To tell you that just as the doe, whose vagina is tight, is always delightful to her mate as the first time, so was Esther always delightful to Achashverosh as the first time.”
This is an example of Chazal’s strange aggadot about the Jewish prophetesses. It is not at all clear why they chose to attribute all kinds of sex, unmentioned by the Scriptures, to our prophetesses. (Megillah 14a: “There were seven prophetesses. Who were they? Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Hulda, and Esther.”) What is this mania they have about sex?
See what our rabbis wrote of the sexual relations between Esther and Achashverosh (Megillah 13a): “‘And the king loved Esther more than all the women and favored her above all the virgins’ (Esther 2:17). Rav said: When he wanted to be with a virgin, she was like a virgin, and when he wanted to be with an experienced woman, she was so [therefore it says ‘more than all the women and…all the virgins–Rashi].”
Now see what Chazal wrote about Yael, the wife of Chever the Keini (Yevamot 103a): “Rabbi Jochanan said: [Sisra] had sex seven times with Yael, as is said [in the song of Deborah, Judges 5:27], ‘Between her legs he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, there he fell down dead’ (there are seven instances of bowing, falling, or laying down in the verse)]… Radak (on Judges 5:27), who kept to the plain meaning of the text, contradicts this odd agaddah: “Between her legs he bowed, he fell–this is a literary custom, to repeat words in order to emphasize them. ‘He lay down’–a laying down from which there is no return, and this is why it says ‘there he fell down dead.’ There is a midrashic explication of this [verse], but it is far out. Since there are seven iterations of bowing, falling, and laying down, they said that the evil one had sex with Yael seven times that day, but what we wrote above, on the word ‘coverlet’ [in his commentary on Judges 4:18], refutes it.”
We will also ask: The Scriptures describe in detail how Yael killed Sisra (Judges 4:20-21): “Again [Sisra] said to [Yael], ‘Stand at the door of the tent, and it shall be when any man comes and inquires of you, saying: Is there any man here? that you will say No.’ Then Yael, Chever’s wife, took a nail of the tent and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.” According to Chazal he fell down dead after having sex multiple times, so why did the Scriptures testify “[she] went softly to him”?
Now come see what our rabbis said about Abigail (Megillah 14b): “…this teaches us that [Abigail] revealed her thigh [and David desired her and demanded, but she did not listen to him–Rashi] and he followed its light for three parsaot. He said to her: Heed me! [he demanded sex]. She said to him: (I Samuel 25:31) ‘This shall not be an obstacle to you,’ implying David would stumble elsewhere–where? The incident with Bathsheba.”
What do Chazal attribute to the prophetess Abigail? That she raised her dress and showed her thigh to tempt David. The Tosafot, Megillah 14b, s.v. shegiltah, wondered how it is possible that a righteous woman like Abigail would act so loose: “It is puzzling how that righteous woman [Abigail] showed her thigh to David; and it seems to be an exaggeration to say that he followed its light for three parsaot [12 km]. But it should be said…that David desired her and followed that heat for three parsaot.” That is, David did not actually follow Abigail’s uncovered thigh, he followed his own desire. We do not understand how the Tosafot settle their question about Abigail, who uncovered her thigh. Again we see that our rabbis confuse their commentators and they can’t tell what is parable, what is exaggeration, and what is reality [see our essay: Scriptures and Talmud: What is Reality and What is Parable?].
See, for example, how the Maharsha explains the words of the Talmud in his Aggadah commentary: “[Abigail uncovered her thigh;] she was 3 parsaot from him and did not know of him nor he of her. She uncovered her thigh and it lit his way in the night for three parsaot until she came to him…” How miraculous. According to the Maharsha the righteous Abigail uncovered her thigh when she was far from King David and the light of her desirable thigh lit David’s night for 12 kilometers! How far did our rabbis the commentators’ imaginations go?
We will add that for some reason the Tosafot did not wonder how King David, “G-d’s anointed one,” desired a married woman and did not control his desires. This question was asked in the Responsa of the Ridbaz, part seven, paragraph 29: “I have been asked about the matter of Abigail and David, as related in chapter one of Megillah and in the Jerusalem Talmud in Sanhedrin, that David desired her and she produced a stain and said that she was a niddah…How can we imagine that David, chosen by G-d, wanted to sleep with a married woman…and if about Bathsheba they said that all who state David sinned are mistaken, how can they say he desired a married woman and so sinned?
The answer: …it can be said that David supposed that since Nabal had been deserving capital punishment–for he rebelled against the king–his wife had rightly belonged to the king (see Bereshit Rabbah, chapter 35 [correctly, chapter 32, Vilna edition–DE]), as did all his other property; and just as all other property is passed over while the guilty man is alive, he thought the wife is as well. But in this [David] erred, for though all other property is forfeit [even before the criminal is executed], the prohibition against sleeping with a married woman lapses only when she is divorced or widowed….I have written all this to show that we must turn to all possible sides and sides of sides to vindicate G-d’s anointed one, as our rabbis OBM did on the issue of Bathsheba.”
We learn two things from the Ridbaz’s words. One is that David, “G-d’s anointed one,” treated Abigail (the wife of Nabal) as another item of Nabal’s property (and only erred in calculating that this “property” would pass to him before Nabal’s death) and the other is that the Radbaz freely admits his interpretation to be a product of his own mind, motivated by the desire to interpret the Scripture apologetically in order to to look for the good in the Scriptural “saints.”
Now we will return to the sexual fantasies of our rabbis: “Our rabbis taught: Rahab’s lewdness was through her name; Yael’s–through her voice; Abigail’s–through thinking of her; and Michal’s–through seeing her. Rabbi Isaac said: One who [merely] says ‘Rahab, Rahab’ has [a seminal emission] immediately [because of excessive desire]. Rabbi Nachman said: I keep saying ‘Rahab, Rahab’ and nothing happens to me. To which Rabbi Isaac replied: What I said concerns only [a woman] with whom one is well acquanited” (Megillah 15a).
Based on this gemara Rabbi Obadiah Yossef permitted hearing a woman sing when the listener does not know the woman. In responsa Yabiah Omer, part one, Orach Chayim, paragraph six: “It seems that ‘a woman’s voice is lewdness’ only applies when one sees her face or is acquainted with her, as it says in Megillah (15a), ‘Rahab’s lewdness was through her name, Yael’s–through her voice… [and that] concerns only [a woman] with whom one is well acquainted’.” Woe to the generation which rules halacha based on the imaginations of our rabbis and forbids hearing the voice of any familiar woman lest he inappropriately desire her. How do the contemporary rabbis seal their hearts and not realize that the sages of the Talmud showed unmitigated contempt for women, contempt that should not be given a toehold in our days?
Go see how our rabbis showed contempt for even the Scriptural prophetesses (Megillah 14b): “Rav Nachman said: Eminence does not become a woman. There were two eminent women and both their names are loathsome. One was a bee [Deborah] and the other was a rat [Chuldah].” But “Shafan [Rabbit] the scribe” and “Achbor [Mouse] the son of Mikiah” (II Kings 22) were not ridiculed for their names.
It should be said that our rabbis in the Talmud, in all honesty, did admit that the desire for women was an inseparable part of their lives and they needed the fear of flesh and blood to help control their desires (Kiddushin 81a): “[An incident when] captive women were brought to Nahrdea and brought to the house of Rav Amram the Pious. They put them in the attic and took away the ladder which led to the attic. When one of the captives was walking in the attic, light fell across the opening, and since Rav Amram’s desires overwhelmed him, he raised the ladder, which ten men together could not raise, and began climbing the ladder towards the captives. When he got halfway up the ladder, he spread his legs [to hold on tight so that he could control his desire] and screamed, ‘Fire in Rav Amram’s house!’ [so that people would respond to his call and rush in, and of shame before them he would leave off his desire]. The sages [who thought there was a fire indeed] came [and saw there was none]. They said to him: ‘You shamed us.’ Rav Amram answered them: ‘Better to be shamed in this world than to be shamed in the next’.”
Also (Sukkah 52a): “Abaye heard a man saying to a woman, ‘Come, let us go on our way together.” Abaye said: let me follow them to keep them from sin. They went some three parsaot until they came to a marsh [where their ways should have parted]. He heard them say: ‘A journey is long and the company was nice [meaning that they had to part].’ Abayeh said: ‘Were I in his place I would not have conquered my desires.’ In his sorrow he leaned on the door latch until the old man came to him and said, ‘Any who is greater than his fellows has greater desires’.”
Come see how far the lewd talk of our rabbis, the authors of the Talmud, goes. The Scriptures say: “He [Asa] also deposed his mother Maacah from the rank of queen mother because she had made an abominable thing [mifletzet] for Asherah. Asa cut down her abominable thing and burnt it in the Wadi Kidron” (I Kings 15:13, II Chronicles 15:16). What is this abomination that Maacah had made? Radak gave a reasonable explanation (I Kings 15:13): “The abomination is idolatry. It is called mifletzet–something, which makes one fear and tremble, as in ‘I shudder in panic [pelatzot]’ (Isaiah 21:4)–because of the panic it casts on its worshippers.” But this did not occur to our rabbis the Amoraim, who instead interpreted the verse the following way (Avodah Zarah 44a): “What is mifletzet? Rav Judah said: a super-mockery [maflei leitzanuta], as Rav Joseph taught: she made a male figure and impaled herself on it each day.” That is, Maacah’s “abomindation” was nothing more than a dildo she used each day!
If so, it is no wonder that when the Sages of the Talmud came to describe the evil Pharaoh they gave his measurements thus (Moed Katan 18a): “Abitul the scribe said in the name of Rav (Pappa): ‘The Pharaoh who reigned in Moses’ days was one cubit tall [about half a meter!], his beard was a cubit long, and his sexual organ was a cubit and a finger-length, to fulfill what is written (Daniel 4:14) ‘And set up over it the basest of men’.”
You learn that according to our rabbis in the Talmud, by whose light we live, the evil Pharaoh king of Egypt was half a meter tall, his beard was half a meter long, and his penis was slightly more than half a meter long…
To this we have nothing to add, and there is nothing more to be said!
Many critics of Jews have used the sexual openness of Torah texts as evidence that Jews are particularly debauched. Lasha Darkmoon writes:
No class of men appears to be quite as sex-obsessed as the Orthodox Jews and the rabbinate. If you compare the religious texts of the various world religions, you will find that all of them — with the single exception of Judaism — maintain a high moral tone throughout. They don’t keep harping on about breasts and penises, prostitutes and semen. Judaism does.
Consider this inflammatory passage from the Hebrew English Bible, enough to bring a blush to any maidenly cheek:
“There she lusted after her lovers whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.” (Ezekiel 23: 20-21).
The number of Victorian damsels who must have swooned away over that passage is probably beyond computation.
Turn to the Babylonian Talmud and you will find yourself suddenly transported into a hothouse world of indelicate anecdotes dealing specifically with prostitutes and their rabbinical (or yeshiva student) clients. There are so many of these stories in the Talmud that a special name had to be invented for them: aggadah. Though these instructive anecdotes touch on all conceivable topics, usually with a rabbi as the central figure, sex often looms large. It can certainly be argued that Judaism is more obsessed with sex than any other world religion. (Scroll down to “Contents”, here.)
One such story starts like this: “They said of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordia that he did not leave one prostitute in the world that he did not come to. One time he heard that there was a certain prostitute in a town by the sea who took a purse of dinars for her price. He took a purse of dinars and went and crossed seven rivers to reach her…” (Tractate Avodah Zara 17a). Another story begins: “There was once a man who heard that there was a prostitute in a town by the sea who took four hundred gold coins as her price. He sent to her four hundred gold coins and set a time to come to her. When his time came, he went. She said ‘Let him come in’. When he entered, she sat naked on the top bed…etc. etc. ” (Tractate Menachot, 44a)
The Talmud is full of such stories about rabbis and their students paying visits to prostitutes. Since the word “pornography” literally means “writing about prostitutes,” the Talmud is perhaps the only religious classic that could be described — in a literal sense — as pornographic.
We read in the Talmud of Rahab the harlot, for example, first mentioned in the book of Joshua. One of the most bewitching femmes fatales of antiquity, on a par with Helen of Troy and the fabulous Corinthian courtesan Lais mentioned by Demosthenes, the beautiful Rahab first began to sell her body at the age of ten. “There was no prince or ruler who had not slept with Rahab the prostitute,” the Talmud informs us breathlessly. (Tractate Zavachim 116b).
Scholar Daniel Boyarin writes:
In order to demonstrate the principle that a man’s virility is in proportion to the size of his belly, the Talmud o¤ers the following information on a group of notoriously fat Rabbis:
“Said Rabbi Yoh˙anan, ‘Rabbi Ishmael the son of Yose’s member was
like a wineskin of nine kav; Rabbi Elazar the son of Rabbi Shimon’s
member was like a wineskin of seven kav.’ Rav Papa said, ‘Rabbi
Yoh˙anan’s member was like a wineskin of three kav.’ And there are
those who say: like a wineskin of five kav. Rav Papa himself had a
member which was like the baskets of Hipparenum. [84a]”Note that we have a kind of ladder form here. In each case, the Rabbi who reports on the penis size of his colleagues has his own exposed by the next speaker, and the Stamma concludes it all with the extravagance of Rav Papa’s own equipment. Every single one of these Rabbis function within halakhic dialectic as the most serious and dedicated of seekers after truth. My argument is, therefore, that the aggada, not only but especially the aggada of the grotesque, when read together with the halakhic dialectic, constitutes the Talmud as a virtual Menippean satire, precisely
the kind of mixed bag that we find in such as Lucian and Petronius or in the novel.Bakhtin (1984: 134) coined the term ‘clamping principle’, a force that binds all of the heterogeneous elements ‘into the organic whole of a genre’. If the Talmud is an ‘organic whole’, it will look, I think, like a very rotund Rabbi, with various and very large organs sticking out crudely—almost obscenely—sometimes, as organic perhaps as a fishhorse or a goat-stag, to quote Lucian on his own works. I am attempting, in part, to theorize and historicize a persistent intuition I have had in my forty years of reading Talmud, an intuition that it somehow best fits, in world literature, with precisely the satirical dialogues of Lucian, The
Satyricon, with Gargantua and Pantagruel, Tristram Shandy, and Moby
Dick.
