DEVELOPING HALAKHIC-ATTITUDES TO SEX PRESELECTION

the halakhah clearly follows the outlook of Beit Hillel that one has only fulfilled the commandment"to be fruitful and multiply" after one has had both a boy and a girl, still the Talmud declares that"[t]he world cannot exist without males and without females- happy is he whose children are males, and woe to him whose children are females." While this view is wholly consistent with the patriarchal environment in which the rabbis lived, the economic considerations of an agricultural society, combined with the expectation of the need to amass dowries for daughters, must have provided cogent incentives for employing all possible means to have male children.

Although the Talmudic wisdom for attaining such male descendants is not quite as exotic as that recommended in the aforementioned instances, it certainly contains some original propositions. Rabbi Yitzhak in Berakhot 5b- grounding his advice in a word-play that arises in Psalm 17- suggests that appropriate orientation of one's bed in a north-south direction will produce the desired outcome of a male child:"ko/ hanotein mitato bein tzafon ledarom, havyan leih banim zekharim."® Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua in Baba Batra 10b take a more social approach to the question of"what is a man to do in order that he may have male offspring?" Rabbi Eliezer opines that giving tzedagah to the poor is the best route, while Rabbi Yehoshua espouses that a man make his wife happily disposed toward the performance of the mitzvah of cohabitation: "Rabbi Eliezer omer,"vefazer meiotav la-aniyim." Rabbi Yehoshua omer, 'vismakh ishto lidvar mitzvah." The counsel of Tractate Kallah goes even a step further than Rabbi Eliezer in declaring,"one who wishes his children to be male and masters of the Torah should examine his actions and woo his wife at the time of intercourse."

Rabbi Yohanan in Shevuot 18b offers both a biological and a symbolic solution to the quest for a boy, based on textual contiguities within the Torah itself. He first posits that abstention from intercourse immediately prior to menstruation will result in a male:"kol haporeish me­ishto samukh levistah, havyan lo banim zekharim." Rabbi Yohanan

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