Coming of age, the free market, and Sabbath: What I learned about gender while excavating at Tell Qarqur (Part Three)

Gender construction is a phrase that sounds obtuse to many ears. Isn’t gender something you’re born with? That’s largely true, but then there is something we call culture/religion, which channels biology and hormones, sets up boundaries, and shapes expectations.

During excavations of the acropolis of Tell Qarqur in Syria, among my helpers from the nearby village, it was the youngest, 12 or 13 years of age, that I cottoned to the most. She was an imp, and, being an imp myself, we enjoyed teasing each other. You don’t even need to have a common language to tease if that is who you are.

That all changed one day.

Overnight, my 12 or 13 year old became a woman. She had her first period, put on a headscarf, and would no longer tease me, or be teased in return. Talk about gender construction. She knew what was expected of her. There was mostly sadness in her eyes, but also a hint of pride and a sense of worth.

Traditional cultures embroider natural rhythms and imbue them with significance. Cultures like ours are instead in synch with the rhythms of the market and of the workplace. The market and the workplace are gender-blind, which is just another way of saying that they squeeze out and penalize people who focus on the three K’s (Kinder, Kuche, und Kirche: children, the kitchen, and church). According to a reasonable hermeneutics of suspicion, it might be estimated that 90% of what passes for feminism in our world is ideological cover for market forces, or little more than impotent and reactionary resistance thereto.

Almost no one notices. People argue about the degree to which the principles of Adam Smith and those of Karl Marx are compatible, but with few exceptions, compromises are worked out. It is not hard to do, since Smith and Marx agree on the essentials: economics rule.

Put in a way someone who knows the Bible will understand, both Smith and Marx were Sabbath-haters:[1]

בַּיָּמִים הָהֵמָּה רָאִיתִי בִיהוּדָה דֹּרְכִים־גִּתּוֹת בַּשַּׁבָּת

וּמְבִיאִים הָעֲרֵמוֹת וְעֹמְסִים עַל־הַחֲמֹרִים

וְאַף־יַיִן עֲנָבִים וּתְאֵנִים וְכָל־מַשָּׂא

וּמְבִיאִים יְרוּשָׁלִַם בְּיוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת

וָאָעִיד בְּיוֹם מִכְרָם צָיִד

 

וְהַצֹּרִים יָשְׁבוּ בָהּ מְבִיאִים דָּאג וְכָל־מֶכֶר

וּמֹכְרִים בַּשַּׁבָּת לִבְנֵי יְהוּדָה וּבִירוּשָׁלִָם

 

וָאָרִיבָה אֵת חֹרֵי יְהוּדָה וָאֹמְרָה לָהֶם

מָה־הַדָּבָר הָרָע הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר אַתֶּם עֹשִׂים

וּמְחַלְּלִים אֶת־יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת

הֲלוֹא כֹה עָשׂוּ אֲבֹתֵיכֶם

וַיָּבֵא אֱלֹהֵינוּ עָלֵינוּ אֵת כָּל־הָרָעָה הַזֹּאת וְעַל הָעִיר הַזֹּאת

וְאַתֶּם מוֹסִיפִים חָרוֹן עַל־יִשְׂרָאֵל לְחַלֵּל אֶת־הַשַּׁבָּת

In those days I saw men in Judah treading wine presses on the sabbath,

and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on asses,

as well as wine, grapes, figs, and every other kind of burden,

bringing them to Jerusalem on the sabbath day.

I warned them against the selling of food on that day.

Furthermore, Tyrians living in the city were bringing in fish and all kinds of wares

and were selling them on the sabbath to the people of Judah, and in Jerusalem.

I reprimanded the nobles of Judah and said to them,

"What evil you do by profaning the sabbath day!

Did not your fathers do likewise,

and did not our God bring evil on us, and on this city, evil we continue to endure?

You bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath."

(Nehemiah 13:15-18)

 Nehemiah censured and contended with free marketeers who did not respect the Sabbath. Both modern-day capitalism and socialism balk at the notion of a weekly pause from economic activity. According to both, life is about buying and selling and prices. If you really must have a house of prayer where people come together on a daily or weekly basis, make it be, none the less, a market place. Against this, to this day, kesef ‘money’ and the Sabbath are not to mix; see also Zechariah 14:20-21. But the rule has been forgotten except by orthodox Jews and traditional Christians.

In today’s world, you sell yourself and your time to others, and you do it 24/7, 7 days a week. With your earnings, you buy the attention of others. You buy their time, maybe you try to buy their love, and you buy stuff, gaudy stuff, lots of it, and you do it 24/7, 7 days a week.

Traditional gender construction and traditional culture generally involve creating difference by the establishment of symbolically charged dichotomies, and by creating Sabbath, that is, ceasing from buying and selling and other aspects of the daily grind. The traditional project is now snubbed based on the observation that difference is created by way of separate and unequal role distribution among genders. Well, we fixed that, didn’t we? Now everyone gets to win bread unceasingly, and shop until you drop, with no difference at all.

Insofar as gender construction in the traditional sense creates a privileged space for, in the case of a matron, the three K’s, and, in the case of a patron, that aspect of life the Romans called pietas (devotion to the gods, the family, and the state), it carves out a space in which homo economicus does not rule the roost. Homo reciprocans, in the sense of reciprocal gift-giving, was and is the chief positive result of traditional gender construction. In biblical times, reciprocal gift-giving, a Shabbat from the usual, was so treasured that it was embodied by giving done to a transcendent being, as well as to one’s extended family, the priest, the Levite, and the resident alien.

I am in favor of gender construction in the sense of creating difference insofar as difference carves out a space for reciprocal gift-giving. I am in favor of the project, though not the details, of Luce Irigaray’s feminist philosophy. Her aim: to create two equally positive and autonomous terms, and to acknowledge two sexes, not one. She constructs an ethics of difference. To be sure, the “autonomous” business is nonsense if taken too far, but still, it’s important to construct a gendered society in which co-dependent relationships are seen for what they are, and autonomy and solidarity are allowed to take their place, and reinforce each other.

What might a positively gendered Jewish culture look like? What might a positively gendered Christian culture look like? I think I know, actually. I know of a number of Jewish and Christian families in which the three K’s and pietas are central to a common life. Families characterized by all manner of strains and stresses, but also, by mutuality in the giving and receiving of honor and respect.

Ladies and gentlemen, what you long for is near unto you. Ask and you shall receive.

---

[1] In truth, Adam Smith himself, unlike his latter-day disciples falsely so-called, defended the strict style of Sabbath observance of the Scotland of his day over the objections of innovators. The contempt in which Karl Marx held “Sabbath Judaism,” on the other hand, is well-known.

Comments

[J. K. Gayle]

Wow!

[Jenelle]

Whoa! Gender construction, Sabbath, Market-forces. You are all over the map!

Whenever the evils of the market are drawn up, I don't know what to do. I participate in it. It isn't "me" versus "them," unless I am out in the wilderness eating locusts and honey.

[JohnFH]

Thanks for stopping in, Jenelle.

I am trying to do draw connections over a large territory. I think the three examples you mention: gender construction, Sabbath, and market forces are correlated.

Everyone agrees, or I would agree, that we can't do without gender construction and the market. My contention: we can't do without Sabbath and an ethics of difference as a foundation of gender construction and a context or curb on the market, either.

Was that clear in the post? If not, I probably need to revise it.

[Jenelle]

I think you're getting there. Don't revise it. It's good to see your thoughts down. I need to go back and read the whole series you've done...

[Leora Wenger]

Enjoyed your post. My mother-in-law, who has written about how society needs a break and we have one called Shabbat, would probably enjoy it, too. Though I do have an awful lot of work to do on Fridays to get ready...

[JohnFH]

Thanks, Leora. You have a really nice blog. I plan to link to it in the future.