Thursday, January 27, 2022

Zvi Malachi and "A Prostitute’s Fee and Public Toilets"

I know, interesting title, but no, nothing to do with the activities of a certain podcaster on their "off time." Instead, it is an interesting wordplay one finds within Rabbinic literature:  


A Prostitute’s Fee and Public Toilets

 

Similarly, Deut 23:19 states: “You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the pay of a dog into the House of the Lord.” The Talmud (Abodah Zarah 17a) introduces the question of a Christian philosopher. What about using a prostitute’s fee to make a toilet for the High Priest in the Temple? Would it be permitted to bring a prostitute’s fee into the Lord’s House for such a purpose?

 

The question is strange. Why suggest a connection between a prostitute’s fee and a toilet?

 

The answer may be found in Mic 1:7 “All her idols I will lay waste; for her harlots’ fees she gathered them, and to the harlots’ fees they shall return (yāšûbû).” They were gathered together from the place of filth, and will go back to the place of filth. Or put differently, they came from excrement and will go back to excrement.

 

The word yāšûbû, “will return,” is interpreted here also in another linguistic form: yēšbû, “they will sit,” namely, the allusion here is to a seat upon which many will sit (Qoh Rabba 1:3): They will become/make a seat for the public. What is a seat for the public? A toilet. Furthermore, since the prostitute’s fee was collected from public monies, it will return (yāšûbû) to the public seat, to the public toilets. (Zvi Malachi, “’Creative Philology’ As a System of Biblical and Talmudic Exegesis: Creating Midrashic Interpretations form Multi-Meaning Words in the Midrash and the Zohar,” in Puns and Pundits: Word Play in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Literature, ed. Scott B. Noegel [Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 2000], 277-78)