Jesus in the Talmud

The Son/Disciple Who Turned out Badly 27literary meaning of the phrase is “to cause burning to a dish,” that is, tomake a dish inedible by oversalting 6 or overspicing it. 7 This literal meaningcan hardly be the misdeed of which the son/disciple is accused.Rather, the symmetrical structure of Rav Hisda’s exegesis actually requiresthat “burning the dish” has something to do with the son’s/disciple’s sexualrelationship to his wife, in other words that some kind of sexual misconductis at stake here:a. evil: evil (sexual) inclination/plague: doubtful menstrual status ofthe wifeb. evil: bad (sexual) dreams and thoughts/plague: he does something tohis wife(?)In order to elucidate the meaning of our strange phrase further, let us lookat some parallels. A similar phrase is used in a discussion between thehouses of Hillel and Shammai regarding the question of the proper reasonfor a man to divorce his wife: according to the house of Shammai aman should divorce his wife only when he has found her guilty of someunseemly conduct, whereas according to the house of Hillel a man mayhave sufficient grounds for divorce “if she has spoilt his food” (hiqdihatavshilo: m Git 9:10). It does not seem very likely that the wife’s spoiling herhusband’s food simply refers to preparing some oversalted or overspiceddishes. The controversy between Hillel and Shammai rests on a differentunderstanding of the biblical proof text for their legal reasoning: “If a mantakes a wife and has intercourse with her, and it happens that she fails toplease him because he finds some unseemly thing in her—he writes her abill of divorcement, hands it to her and sends her away from his house”(Deut. 24:1). What is translated here as “some unseemly thing” is in Hebrew