Esther: when midrashic methodology leads to halachic leniency

This past weekend saw an overlap between the Daf Yomi calendar and our preparations for Purim, as the subject turned – albeit briefly – to analysing Esther’s conduct. While the discussion lasted only a couple of lines, its implications are enormous and form a central case study in a couple of chapters of Talmud Reclaimed.

The Talmudic passage in question is examining the sins for which a person is required to give up their life rather than commit. These consist of the three “cardinal” sins: murder, idolatry and adultery, as well as any sin which a person is being forced by a non-Jew to commit in public or at a time of religious oppression. The Talmud then questions this conclusion, basing its challenge on the narrative of Esther, who willingly married Achashverosh – a non-Jewish king – rather than surrendering her life, despite her participation in this marriage being a public sin. It proceeds to offer various solutions. What concerns us here, however, is the nature of the Talmud’s question, which is based on the premise that Esther was single at the time of her marriage to Achashverosh. According to this premise, she could not have been committing the sin of adultery, but rather the non-cardinal sin of intermarriage, with the aggravating factor that her marriage was very much a matter of public knowledge.

Tosafot examine the Talmud’s question in view of a Talmudic teaching from the first chapter of tractate Megillah (13a), which treats Esther as having been married to Mordechai before she wedded Achashverosh. Based on this teaching, they ask why the Talmud did not pose a greater question: surely Esther was not only marrying a non-Jew, but was also committing adultery – one of the three cardinal sins – for which the Talmud would expect her to have given up her life? Based upon his synthesis of these Talmudic passages, Rabbeinu Tam, often seen as the most creative of the Tosafists, proposes an original and far-reaching principle. He concludes that, since the Talmud's challenge in the primary passage was not concerned with the question of Esther committing adultery with Achashverosh, even though Esther was already married to Mordechai, we can deduce that a sexual relationship with a non-Jewish man does not constitute full adultery.

Citing as support his own innovative expansion of a separate Talmudic teaching, he proceeds to issue a practical legal ruling to the following effect: a married Jewish woman who has a sexual relationship with a non-Jewish man who later converts to Judaism, is permitted to marry him. While a married Jewish woman’s sexual relationship with a Jewish man would have prohibited the two from subsequently marrying, Rabbeinu Tam permitted marriage in the case of a non-Jewish convert on the basis of his deduction that adultery with a non-Jewish man does not constitute full adultery.

The significance here is twofold. First, the source teaching that Esther and Mordechai were married is an aggadic inference which many of the peshat commentators to the Megillat Esther do not understand to be literal. As the Rashba comments on this passage: “We do not pose questions from aggadic sources”. Secondly, even setting aside the fact that Esther’s marriage is an aggadic addition, it is still far from simple that it should be taken into account when interpreting the sugya in Sanhedrin.

This Talmudic interpretation of Rabbeinu Tam, and the legal ruling that it produces, is a classic example of the creative Tosafist methodology which presumes that disparate Talmudic passages should be read in tandem and then introduces interpretative and legal innovations in order to reconcile them. The Maimonidean-Geonic approach to this matter, by contrast, having identified the primary Talmudic passage which deals with this area of law, does not presume that the authors of these passages were necessarily in agreement with the authors of the separate aggadic teaching that Esther and Mordechai were married. The Kessef Mishneh commentary of Rav Yosef Karo on Rambam’s ruling wholly dismisses the possibility that he took the aggadic passage into account.

In terms of the question of which sins require people give up their lives rather than transgress, the primary passage in tractate Sanhedrin does not distinguish between a woman committing adultery with a Jewish or non-Jewish man. Similarly, in terms of whether participation in an adulterous relationship prohibits any future marriage between its two parties, the primary Talmudic sources do not disclose any distinction based upon the man’s religious status. If anything, they appear specifically to include all sorts of men in this law. These laws as codified by Rambam therefore make no distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish men.

This also has potential implications for the analysis of Reb Chaim Brisk (opening pages of his famous Chiddushim al HaRambam) which takes on the assumption that Rambam did indeed combine these passages – just as Tosafot did – and proposes some wonderfully intricate solutions to explain how he nevertheless reached different legal conclusions. But that is the subject of another chapter altogether.

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Reclaimed reviewed

 I'm very grateful to Yosef Lindell for his recent incisive review of Talmud Reclaimed in the Jewish Press. The review focuses primarily on the opening third of the book.

Link to Yosef's review is here.

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