So, having read the first volume of Rashi’s Daughters: Jocheved , Your Humble Blogger considered himself to be finished with the series. Yes, it was fine. No, I didn’t really want to read two more of them. So then why, when I saw Rashi's Daughters, Book II: Miriam on the library shelf, did I check it out, take it home, and then read it? Because I am weak. So weak.
And this one was fine, too. It was more aggravating than Jocheved, largely because Miriam winds up marrying a gay man (more or less, that is, a man more attracted to men than to women, both more strongly and more frequently), and much of the book is taken up with Judah’s situation. Now, one way to deal with this is to take a modern approach, where homosexuality is recognized as a condition, a predisposition, what have you, as well as a sort of membership in a community of homosexuals. Maggie Anton more or less avoids this. But then she is more or less forced to deal with the fact that as a religious man in the late twelfth century, Judah is not going to come to any sort of positive and empowered self-realization about his sexuality. He’s not going to interpret the Law to allow the love that dare not speak its name, and in fact doesn’t actually have a name. And, really, he’s just not going to have gay sex. And he’s certainly not going to have gay sex within a loving and committed relationship.
And, in the end, he doesn’t. Miriam, who has a low libido by authorial coincidence, discovers Judah’s susceptibility and rather than being outraged, she settles into a happy, celibate relationship with him, helping to chaperone him and keep him from close relationships with attractive students. This is the happy ending. And, frankly, it’s just about the happiest ending I could swallow, given the setting. But it’s not really very satisfying, is it?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.