Good one Rav Yehudah!
Turns out "your mamma" jokes have been around forever, and by forever I mean since the days of Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Yitzchak.
The great thing is that R' Yehudah is R' Yitzchak's father, meaning he is telling his own son jokes about his wife...
Since baseball wasn't invented yet, Yehudah had to think of more creative ways to fit in quality father-son bonding time... so he decided to teach his son about Rav's idea that matches between a man and woman are destined in heaven 40 days before the formation of an embryo [22a5]. He tells Yitzchak that it is for this reason that a man is most content with his first wife.
This is where it gets good. Yitzchak, aware of the seemingly shaky relationship between his parents, asks his dad if this is really true. Yehudah, at a loss for words, throws it back with the first recorded "your mamma" joke in history.
The Gemara has to clarify what just happened... telling us that Yehudah's wife is strong natured but also forgiving.... it then goes on to talk about a virgin woman being an unfinished vessel. Maharsha, in one of his not so feminist moments, clarifies:
"the term vessel is applied to anything that can perform a specific function. In a sense, then a woman becomes a vessel after she first has intimate relations, for at this point, she has become capable of fulfilling a given function: she can now bear children." (22b1 footnote 3)
You see, from all of this, that it must be a joke. There is just no other way to explain it. Everyone loves a good "your mamma" joke. It lightens the mood, allowing us to look past the misogyny. Or maybe not.
Are you sure there wasn't a "your mummy" joke in ancient Egypt?
ReplyDeleteYo mummy is so fat she went swimming and parted the Red Sea.
ReplyDeleteI'm here all week.
Try the veal.
It's interesting that the tradition about making the wife into a vessel (=keli) is transmitted by R. Samuel b. Unya in the name of Rav. R. Samuel b. Unya was a 5th-generation Amora from the land of Israel, and Rav--although also a 1st-gen. Babylonian Amora--had a career in Eretz Israel and has a high profile in the Yerushalmi. I bring all this up because of I Thessalonians 4:4, in which Paul talks about everyone possessing his "vessel" ("skeuos" in Greek) in holiness and honor. This follows on verse 3's direction to abstain from fornication. In the NT verse, the "vessel" may well be the man's body; it doesn't necessarily mean woman. It's interesting that an Amora of the land of Israel uses "vessel," which we find in a Christian source. It's also interesting that while Paul leaves ambiguous what the "vessel" is, the Amora is clear that it's a woman. We know that the Amoraim of Eretz Israel were acquainted with Christians and Christianity. Whether or not this "vessel" case is simply an interesting coincidence requires more probing. By the way, this is not to say that Paul was a great feminist--hardly.
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