Sunday, February 28, 2016

Extempore Effusions on the Completion of Gittin chapter 7

(67b)
If a man seized by fury should shout
“Write a Get for me” – don’t hear him out
But if he says “write a Get”
And just then starts to fret
Then his words are not something to flout.

(68a)
Solomon said to the sages, “But how
Can I chisel the Temple rocks now?"
They said, “Find the Shamir,
It’s a worm, that we fear,
You must wrest from a demon, somehow.”

(69a)
For a nosebleed, sit under a drain,
For a toothache, take garlic for pain
If your heart’s in decline
Eat some wheat bread and wine
And cook willows for aches in the brain.

(70a)
If you’re back from the loo, wait a while—
Don’t have sex ‘til you’ve walked half a mile
There are demons from hell
In the bathrooms they dwell
And the seed you emit, they’ll defile.

(71a)
A deaf man can’t hear – that’s all right
He can scribble on paper, “Please write
A Get for my wife
Get her out of my life!”
They’re divorced. And they need no more fight.

(72a)
Don’t say, “This is your Get if I die,”
That’s no way to say, “Honey, goodbye.”
Since you can’t get divorced
Once you’re dead, we are forced
To declare it invalid. Nice try.

(73b)
Once divorced, she was seen in his bed
Under cover of night. Then she fled.
The sages were vexed:
Does this mean they had sex?
What did she and her ex do instead?

(74a)
“I’ll divorce you, but first you must hand
My tallit to me. So I demand.”
What if it then gets lost?
Then the wife pays the cost
Henceforth she is divorced from her man.

(75b)
“I’ll divorce you under this condition—
You must breastfeed our son. That’s your mission.”
For how long must she nurse?
Here the sages were terse:
For two years she supplies his nutrition.  

(76b)
“I’ll stay out of your face 30 days
If I do you’re divorced” – so he says.
Does that mean he can’t see
Her, or that she can’t be
The woman in whose bed he lays?


1 Comments:

Blogger Maggie Anton said...

I'm delighted to see a new set of Talmud limericks on your blog; I've missed them and hope to see more in the future.
What a coincidence that the one from Gittin 70a about not having sex after using the privy because the demons follow you home is one of the dafs I include in my new book Fifty Shades of Talmud: What the First Rabbis Had to Say About You-Know-What. It's in section 30 [out of 50 sugiyot in the short book], and it even has its own cartoon/illustration of a man walking away from an outhouse with a trail of little demons flying after him.

If you want to read it, I can email you an e-galley. Again, mazel tov on your daughter's birth. As a bubbi to 4, with another one coming in May, I help out with them a lot. That's what bubbis and saftas are for.

2:20 AM  

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