THE SLOW ROAD TO MONOGAMY

M

Walter Jacob

onogamy is considered the only acceptable form of marriage in Western civilization; it treats men and women equally and provides the fullest opportunity for mutual development. Thousands of years ago the prophets of Israel used poetic imagery of God and Israel in a mono­gamous relationship and expressed this as their ideal; yet the path of Judaism in that direction has not been easy. Few of our thinkers through the ages have dealt with this issue; none has made it a matter of primary concern. The halakhah has moved in the direc­tion of monogamy but, as we shall see, only slowly.

garSexual boundaries are one thing; monogamy quite another. Every religion has set boundaries for the sexual expressions of its adherents, as this has always been an area of human conflict.¹ The Bible did so initially through the family tales of Genesis and, subse­quently, through legislation. These stories also represented the be­ginnings of the slow road to monogamy, an elusive ideal since its first presentation in the tale of the Garden of Eden.

tubo The Genesis stories built families on the basis of polygamy, concubinage, and slave wives. They incidentally dealt with forbid­den incestuous relationships. The family was oriented toward its masculine head, as the long genealogical lists make especially clear. Women played crucial but subsidiary roles, at least on the official

level.

The legal literature of the Torah presented clearer definitions of marriage and placed major restrictions on sexual unions. The subsequent Jewish legal literature clarified those limits but only incidentally moved toward monogamy; it was a form of marriage favored, so some steps were taken in that direction. This

that

many