"To Be Fertile and Increase": The Stakes of Reproduction in Rabbinic Thought

Abstract: In Mishnah Yevamot 6:6 and in the Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 65b–66a, we find the rabbis wrestling with who is commanded to have children and what this commandment entails. The dominant rabbinic position, embraced by the Bavli and later halakhists, is that only men are commanded to reproduce, an exclusion that raises important questions: Why construct a law that commands only men? What does this say about how the rabbis understood commandedness and the relationship between law, blessing and gender? This article explores the tensions that arise within the Bavli's male-centered legal discourse when women are excluded from a commandment that cannot be fulfilled without them. Several case studies found in the talmudic material reveal that exclusions offer a productive opening for investigating the ways that reproduction was (and continues to be) a legally fraught issue.