(I’m sending this out motzash because I gave a version of this as a drasha in my shul this morning and I didn’t want spoilers for my shul friends!)
Raised as a girl in a Modern Orthodox community, I had to fight for access to Talmud, but I was the beneficiary of a strong education in Tanach. Much of my schooling focused on the Written Torah, and so when I entered adulthood, I was surprised that there were stories that I had fully never encountered as a child or adolescent. The story of Yehuda and Tamar is one of them.
In reflecting on this, it’s surprising to me that this story is the one that was omitted. From a young age, I was exposed to some horrific parts of the Torah, albeit sometimes a sanitized version. I learned about the rape of Dinah in second grade, though I was told that Dinah was “kidnapped.” I heard the story of how, in the aftermath of the world-destroying flood, Noah’s son Cham “saw his father’s nakedness.” And I even learned about Lot’s daughters’ incestuous rape of their father when they thought the world had been destroyed. So with all these narratives about sex and violence, what kept my teachers from sharing some version of Tamar’s story?
Perhaps what was so off-putting about this story, which falls in the middle of our parsha as an detour from Yosef’s adventures, is that it is a story in which sex is good. It might even be a story about sex being joyful and pleasurable.
In our story, in the 38th perek of Beresh*t, we meet Yehuda and his three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er marries Tamar, bringing her into this family.
Who is this “Er” who marries our protagonist?
The Ramban tells us that:
ויקרא את שמו ער יהודה קרא לבנו ער מלשון "עוררה את גבורתך"
“And [Yehudah] called his son’s name Er,” from the language of “rouse your might.”
The Ramban references Tehillim in this citation, attributing the root of “awakening” to a call to awaken Divine power. But “er” also carries with it a sexual connotation; think of Shir Hashirim 5:2:
אֲנִי יְשֵׁנָה וְלִבִּי עֵר קוֹל דּוֹדִי דוֹפֵק פִּתְחִי־לִי אֲחֹתִי רַעְיָתִי יוֹנָתִי תַמָּתִי שֶׁרֹּאשִׁי נִמְלָא־טָל קְוֻצּוֹתַי רְסִיסֵי לָיְלָה׃
I was asleep, But my heart was wakeful. Hark, my beloved knocks! “Let me in, my own, My darling, my faultless dove! For my head is drenched with dew, My locks with the damp of night.”
Tamar’s first husband, Er, is an invitation – Tamar might have found herself in a relationship full of the energy of Shir HaShirim, two young people enjoying each other’s sexuality. But when Er dies, having been found to be “רַע בְּעֵינֵי ה,” “displeasing in the eyes of God,” (Vayeshev 38:7), Tamar is married to his brother, Onan.
Onan is known for his refusal to ejacul*te inside Tamar. The pasuk tells us:
וַיֵּדַע אוֹנָן כִּי לֹּא לוֹ יִהְיֶה הַזָּרַע וְהָיָה אִם־בָּא אֶל־אֵשֶׁת אָחִיו וְשִׁחֵת אַרְצָה לְבִלְתִּי נְתׇן־זֶרַע לְאָחִיו׃
"And Onan knew that the seed would not [be considered] his, and when he came upon the wife of his brother, he would spill it on the ground, so as not to give his seed to his brother[‘s legacy].”
Onan is unwilling to simply be the replacement for his brother, to have children who will be viewed not as his own descendants but as a fulfillment of his dead brother’s marriage. I would like to suggest as a read of this story that it is one where Onan refuses to have reproductive sex to meet others’ expectations; he instead has sex that has no goal of children, sex whose only goal could be pleasure. (Of course, this read still must seek out Tamar’s silent voice – it seems that her own desires here are unarticulated, or at least unrecorded or unimagined.) Onan, though, is punished by God with death for this action, and Tamar is widowed a second time. I’d like to imagine that this is at least in part (in the pshat if not in its reception) because of his failure to consult with Tamar about what she wants from their relationship, and not out of a Divine disdain for nonreproductive sex.
By custom, Yehuda is obligated to marry his third son, Shelah, to Tamar so that they can attempt to have children. But he fears that this third son will die, and he delays the marriage long enough that Tamar realizes this is not simply a delay, but a refusal. And we find that Tamar then takes matters into her own hands:
וַתָּסַר בִּגְדֵי אַלְמְנוּתָהּ מֵעָלֶיהָ וַתְּכַס בַּצָּעִיף וַתִּתְעַלָּף וַתֵּשֶׁב בְּפֶתַח עֵינַיִם אֲשֶׁר עַל־דֶּרֶךְ תִּמְנָתָה כִּי רָאֲתָה כִּי־גָדַל שֵׁלָה וְהִוא לֹא־נִתְּנָה לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה׃
So she took off her widow’s garb, covered her face with a veil, and, wrapping herself up, sat down at the entrance to Enaim” which is on the road to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown up, yet she had not been given to him as wife.
וַיִּרְאֶהָ יְהוּדָה וַיַּחְשְׁבֶהָ לְזוֹנָה כִּי כִסְּתָה פָּנֶיהָ׃
When Judah saw her, he took her for a harlot; for she had covered her face.
וַיֵּט אֵלֶיהָ אֶל־הַדֶּרֶךְ וַיֹּאמֶר הָבָה־נָּא אָבוֹא אֵלַיִךְ כִּי לֹא יָדַע כִּי כַלָּתוֹ הִוא וַתֹּאמֶר מַה־תִּתֶּן־לִי כִּי תָבוֹא אֵלָי׃
So he turned aside to her by the road and said, “Here, let me sleep with you”—for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. “What,” she asked, “will you pay for sleeping with me?”
(Vayeshev 38:14-16).
Tamar seduces Yehuda himself into sleeping with her in the hopes that she will bear a child. After these events, when Yehuda has given her his staff, cord, and seal as collateral for the payment she is owed for her sex work, this sex worker at Einayim is found the have disappeared when Yehuda sends a friend with her payment. Then, Tamar is found to be pregnant, and will be brought out to be burned as punishment for her extramarital sex. But she produces Yehuda’s items as evidence that it was he who impregnated her, and Yehuda declares “צָדְקָה מִמֶּנִּי,” “she is more in the right than I.” Tamar’s choices are validated, and indeed, she then gives birth to twins.
Yehuda meets Tamar, dressed in clothing that identifies her as a sex worker, at “Einayim.” The word Einayim, in Hebrew, can mean “eyes.” And eyes are often identified with desire, in a negative sense. In the Shema, about tzitzit, we say “ וְלֹא־תָתוּרוּ אַחֲרֵי לְבַבְכֶם וְאַחֲרֵי עֵינֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר־אַתֶּם זֹנִים אַחֲרֵיהֶם׃” “so that you do not follow your heart and eyes in your lustful urge.” But here, Einayim is a place of desire, of lust, and that is a good and needed urge.
In an amazing midrash in Beresh*t Rabbah (85:8), Rabbi Yochanan imagines that Yehuda initially tried to pass by Tamar in the guise of a sex worker:
אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן בִּקֵּשׁ לַעֲבֹר וְזִמֵּן לוֹ הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַלְאָךְ שֶׁהוּא מְמֻנֶּה עַל הַתַּאֲוָה, אָמַר לוֹ, יְהוּדָה, הֵיכָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ מֵהֵיכָן מְלָכִים עוֹמְדִים, מֵהֵיכָן גְּדוֹלִים עוֹמְדִים. (בראשית לח, טז): וַיֵּט אֵלֶיהָ אֶל הַדֶּרֶךְ, בְּעַל כָּרְחוֹ שֶׁלֹא בְטוֹבָתוֹ.
Rabbi Yochanan says: He wanted to pass by, and the Holy Blessed One sent him the angel who controls desire, and [the angel] said to him: “Yehuda, where are you going, from here kings will stand, from here great ones will stand. “And he turned toward her on the road” – this was against his will because it wasn’t in his best interests.
Yehuda, this midrash imagines, wants to walk by Tamar. And God sends the angel in charge of desire – what a marvelous job to have – to convince him that no, this lust is worthwhile, even if it doesn’t suit his persona as a pious person. And from here will come Mashiach – one of the twins Tamar gives birth to is Peretz, the ancestor of King David, the ancestor of Mashiach who is coming any minute now.
Audre Lorde, in her landmark essay “Uses of the Erotic,” writes that
…Once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.
The first person to be bravely erotic in our parsha is Tamar. She identifies within herself what it is she deeply wants, and pursues it directly. She steps into the trope of a sexualized figure, the sex worker at the side of the road, and is unabashed in sharing in that identity. Tamar’s identification of herself with a sex worker and her willingness to pursue her want for a child are not separate – she does not shy away from desire or desiring, even as a “pious” member of Israel’s family who might be expected to find dressing as a sex worker taboo.
Yehuda, perhaps nudged by an angel to feel lust – what an image, an angel in charge of making people desire – then too, becomes a person who speaks truth from deep within. First when he responds to Tamar with “tzadka mimeni,” but then later when he offers himself up to replace his brother Binyamin in Egyptian jail when he is falsely accused of theft. Yehuda becomes a person who knows who he is, who does not settle for the safe.
The example of Tamar, and then Yehuda, in our parsha challenging for a Jewish community that sees desire and the erotic as frightening. Perhaps this is why my day school teachers elided it entirely. But this fear continues – If I had a dollar for the number of conversations I’ve had with other young rabbinical students, especially other single ones, about how to relate to our sexuality as we step into leadership roles in the Jewish community, I could probably retire.
There is no clear path, and there is such fear, on our own part and on the part of the community we hope to serve. But I am reflecting on the truths of this week’s parsha, and drawing them into myself – I want us to build a world inspired by Tamar, of less fear and more truth.
