Avodah Zarah 22

While I was tempted to discuss the prosaic conclusion of Tractate Avodah Zarah’s first chapter found on today’s daf, it ultimately felt like a cop out to avoid the stark, disturbing content with which the second chapter of Avodah Zarah opens. The first mishnah reads:

One may not keep an animal in the inns of gentiles because they are suspected of bestiality. And a woman may not seclude herself with gentiles because they are suspected of engaging in forbidden sexual relations. And any person may not seclude himself with gentiles because they are suspected of bloodshed.

This mishnah presents an unambiguously, profoundly negative view of non-Jews as routinely engaging in bestiality, forbidden sexual relations with other humans, and murder. The mishnah also presents the proposed victims of non-Jews in ascending order of importance, according to the rabbis — first animals, then Jewish women, then Jewish men. In Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals, Mira Beth Wasserman proposes that this mishnah, and the Gemara that follows, represents a rabbinic attempt to define boundaries — between humans and animals, Jews and non-Jews, Jewish women and Jewish men. It also blurs those boundaries. We see that on the one hand, beginning with this mishnah, gentiles are presented as somewhat bestial themselves, with unrestrained appetites for sex and violence. On the other hand, Jewish men and women are conflated with the vulnerable animals that cannot be left in the gentiles’ care.

The Gemara begins by immediately referencing a conflicting source:

The Gemara raises a contradiction from a beraita: One may purchase an animal from gentiles for use as an offering, and there is no concern that it might be unfit due to it being an animal that copulated with a person, or due to it being an animal that was the object of bestiality, or due to it having been set aside for idol worship, or due to the animal itself having been worshipped.

Whereas the mishnah implies that one must always suspect non-Jews of engaging in sex with animals under their care, the beraita contends that Jews can purchase animals from non-Jews without fear that the animals have been defiled, sexually or ritually.

As Wasserman points out in her analysis of this sugya, the Gemara could have gone in two directions from here: marginalizing the beraita, and treating the mishnah’s assumptions about non-Jewish behavior as primary, or marginalizing the mishnah, treating its assumptions as aberrant or limited and the beraita as our default. The Gemara chooses the former, harmonizing the sources by arguing that we don’t suspect non-Jews of having sex with their own animals, as it could cause damage to the animal. However, the concern remains when a Jew stables their animals with a non-Jew.

In the course of this discussion, the Gemara suggests that if this assumption about gentiles is so dominant, we should be wary of buying animals from a non-Jewish woman, as they could have sex with the animal without “damaging” it. The Gemara’s response, rather than contesting the assumption that non-Jewish women are inclined toward such behavior, asserts that they avoid sex with animals so the animals will not subsequently follow them around, making their actions apparent to a wider public.

The Gemara challenges this with a statement from Rav Yosef:

But consider that which Rav Yosef teaches: A widow may not raise a dog, and she may not allow a student of Torah to dwell as a lodger in her home. Granted, it makes sense that it is prohibited for her to have a student of Torah lodging in her home, as he is regarded as discreet in her eyes, so she will not be deterred from sinning with him. But with regard to a dog, since it would follow her around after she mates with it, she is afraid.

The Gemara answers: Since it will also follow her around in a case when she throws it a piece of meat, people will say: The fact that it is following her is due to the meat she threw at it.

The statement of Rav Yosef implies that we do suspect a woman of having sex with an animal, seemingly regardless of the possibility that she might be discovered; the answer is that a dog is different, as other explanations could be given for its close proximity in a way that would not apply to livestock.

Wasserman astutely points out that while Rav Yosef’s statement about the woman suspected of inappropriate sex with those under her roof (dogs or students of Torah) is brought here to contest a claim about non-Jewish women’s behavior, in context the source seems to be about Jewish women. So while the mishnah presented a stark binary between the assumed depravity of non-Jews and the governed morality of Jews, Rav Yosef’s statement complicates this binary, rendering it more of a spectrum — one in which Jewish men occupy the moral high ground, the pinnacle of restrained humanity, and Jewish women find themselves closer to the more “animalistic” non-Jews, and of course animals themselves.

All of this content reads as both grotesque and disturbing to most modern readers. While there are no neat resolutions to the stark xenophobia and misogyny evident in these texts, the sugya’s continuation does suggest some rabbinic pushback. We’ll explore that tomorrow.

Read all of Avodah Zarah 22 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on July 10, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.