Shortly into today's daf, the rabbis speak about the importance of distancing ourselves from Gentiles in our midst. We should not praise them. We should not compliment the beauty of one of their women. On this particular topic, the rabbis speak of the relationships between men and women - when those women are Gentiles and also when those women are Jews. A man should not speak with a woman unless the conversation is purely utilitarian. A man should not look at a woman even if she is unmarried, unless it is just for a moment so that he can decide whether or not he will marry her. He cannot look at a beautiful woman and he cannot look at an ugly woman. Simply put, men are to distance themselves from women at every opportunity.
Certainly not all men agreed with this way of living. Of course many men must have spoken freely with members of their families who were women. And friendly men must have made eye contact, even occasionally, with women they knew through business or family. But to create an ideal that distances men from woman was to ensure that women did not understand a 'male' world. And, of course, men did not understand the world of women. Such extreme separation allowed men to create law relatively unfettered by the lived wisdom of women. We learn rarely about women whose voices influenced the men who contributed to the Talmud. However, when many rabbis idealized the almost complete separation of women and men, those voices could not temper the 'masculine' nature of the halachot that affect all of us to this day.
Taking this concept further, the rabbis argue that men should not look at the coloured clothing of women.* How could a launderer not look at women's clothing? He is different, the rabbis argue, because his thoughts are consumed by his work, like one who inserts an animal's member into another animal to mate the two. That person would not have lewd thoughts, for he is focused on his work.
In addition, a man should not look at a male and female donkey or a pig and sow or fowls while they are mating. This is even if they are "full of eyes", like the Angel of Death. We then learn that the Angel of Death is said to stand over a person before s/he dies holding a sword with a drop of poison on its edge. When a person is about to die, s/he opens his/her mouth with a start at the sudden vision of the Angel of Death. The drop then falls into his/her mouth, causing both death and the green pallor of a person after death.**
Further discussion introduces the notion that Shmuel's father spoke with the Angel of Death, who described fascination with the incision which caused a human to be slaughtered.*** A dead person should be turned onto his/her face, we are told, so that the poisonous drop will not fully putrefy him/her.
This is a wonderful example of our rabbis use of logic and deduction to explain natural phenomena. While they present their findings as somewhat evidence-based and scientific, certainly they were missing critical pieces of information. And, of course, the evidence that they found was always consistent with their previously held understandings of Torah and G-d.
Rabbi Pinechas ben Ya'ir teaches that Torah study leads to care with mitzvot which leads to diligence in observance which leads to cleanliness of the soul which leads to abstention from evil which leads to purity and elimination of base desires which leads to piety which leads to humility which leads to fear of sin which leads to holiness which leads to the Divine Spirit which leads to the resurrection of the dead. And piety is greater than all of them, for Psalms (89:20) states "Then You did speak in a vision to Your pious ones". Other rabbis argue about different traits being the most valuable.
While we are not permitted to sell to Gentile anything attached to the ground, we are permitted to sell grains, trees, etc., once they have been cut down. The rabbis disagree about whether one must sell an animal to a Gentile after or before it has been slaughtered.
*Steinsaltz's notes teach that men's garments were one colour, that of the fibres (brown or black) and women's were also one colour but were decorated brightly, especially for festivals, and meant to attract attention. In antiquity, women were allowed to put a stumbling block before the blind? I would love to learn more about these records.
** The drop of poison might have severed the trachea and esophagus so that humans were ritually slaughtered in the same way that we slaughter animals
***The Angel of Death's concern for human dignity stopped him from uncovering that incision.
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