Well, those are exactly their names. The Hebrew is ‘Er, Onan and Shelah, respectively. But that’s what they mean. And the first-born, Er, gets a double portion of meaning, for his name spelled backwards, is Ra – Evil. If you think I’m playing a little fast and loose by attributing meaning to that reversal, then take a look at the Torah’s reversal of Yehuda’s fortunes, beginning with 38:7: Right after Yehudah takes for Er a wife, named Tamar, we read: And Er’, Yehuda’s first-born was Evil in Hashem’s eyes, and Hashem killed him.
It just gets worse for Yehudah from their. As ‘Er has died childless, Onan, the next brother, is obligated by levirate tradition to marry Tamar such that their first child will bear ‘Er’s name and paternity. He doesn’t want that, so he engages in coitus interruptus and spills/kills his seed. Hashem kills him, too, for this selfish, almost murderous, and ritually horrific act, and now Yehudah faces the prospect of giving Hers, er, Shelah to Tamar and try the levirate game once again.
Yehuda has no intention of doing this, as he considers Tamar to be one of those classic mankillers. So he sends her back to her father’s house, ostensibly to await Shelah’s achievement of maturity.
But many years pass and Yehudah doesn’t make good. Then he hits bottom: Bat-Shua, his wife, dies. He’s got no one left – two sons gone, the third overprotected to the point of offering no future for his father’s lineage, his wife is dead…
Yehudah seeks consolation and the celebratory ritual sheep shearing time provides the occasion. The Midrash tells us that the shearing always leaves an impression, keying a cascade of unanticipated but profoundly significant events. So he goes up to She Counts – oops, there I go again – Timnah, a place, just a place, but can it be accidental that it’s name is the same word use to indicated the period of time a woman must count before she rejoins her husband after a period of distancing due to impurity?
Tamar gets wind, removes her widow clothes, swathes herself in scarves, sits on the highroad, and Yehudah takes her for a prostitute, “since she covered her face”.
What? I thought this was behavior more characteristic of the most pious women? In fact, the Midrash explains that “she covered her face” while in her father-in-laws house, so he didn’t recognize the brazen faced hussy. But the commentators don’t consider this pshat. Rather, she was-half-covered, half-revealed – covered (most of) her face, but revealed her neck and throat (Ramban), as is the way of prostitutes, in a combination of seduction and shame that works so powerfully on the male libido (“stolen waters are sweetest”).
Oh, but there’s a small matter of the fee. Yehudah left his sheep with the shearers, so he can’t be fleeced, but promises payment; Tamar insists on tokens of indentification: his signet ring, his leader’s belt (see Seforno) – kind of like the way martial arts use different colored belts – and his leader’s staff.
When word gets out that Tamar is pregnant, Yehudah commands she be taken out and burned to death for her adultery (remember, she is bound to the house of Yehudah by levirate practice), but Tamar says, “the owner of these items got me pregnant – care to examine them?”, Yehudah does and rises to the moment: She is more righteous than I; I didn’t give her to Hers/Shelah, my son. And twins are born, one of whom is Peretz, great-great-etc-grandfather of David and, ultimately, the Mashiach.
What I find striking is the positioning of this story between two other stories of sexual encounter. In the previous parashah, Shechem the Canaanite rapes Dinah, Ya’acov’s daughter, and though he tries to make it good by whispering sweet nothings and offering to Ya’acov to name his price for the brideprice, he brings down disaster upon his entire clan and, by Ya’acov’s lights, for that vulnerable, sojourning family as well. In the subsequent parashah, Potiphar’s wife tries every which way to seduce Yosef and, when Yosef resists the temptation (the midrash tells us it was indeed a difficult trial), well, hell hath no fury, and Yosef is consigned to such a hell in the ground, instead of killed outright, only because of the inexplicable charm (read: Hashem’s hidden Presence) he has found in Potiphar’s eyes.
In both stories, the Jew is powerless before the non-Jew, whether man or woman. Shechem, the male, is chesed gone wrong, and Potiphar’s wife is din out of control (midrash – she KNOWS that Yosef’s seed and hers are destined to join and she’s right; but she thinks its through her and not her daughter). In both stories the mode of encounter is violent by definition – one-sided.
In the case of Tamar and Yehudah, there is negotiation and agreement. In fact, some over the ages have demurred on the characterization of prostitution in moral categories, claiming that it should be seen merely as a business deal.
This is far from the truth, but there is one feature of the encounter which makes it completely different from the surrounding stories of sexual encounter: There is a mutuality of investment. Since both Tamar and Yehudah are invested via negotiation and agreement, then when the transgressions come to light, they can be rectified.
And indeed, Tamar, righteous like a palm, does NOT publicly out Yehudah, but rather, is willing to be consigned to the flames if Yehudah doesn’t come forth, so concerned is she not to clamber out of her situation on the corpse of the reputation, in fact, the very person, of the father of her child. Yehudah, for his part, recognizes and announces that this whole matter is his doing – Tamar’s actions are an outgrowth of his own refusal to give her what was hers all along. Yehudah, having before him the option of engaging in a cover-up that would save his hide, chooses, instead, to cover up his transgression permanently by revealing it and, thereby, reclaim his destiny: A signet of authority and responsibility, a loin-girding belt of self mastery, and a staff pointing the way ever upward.
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