{"id":39542,"date":"2018-09-06T08:25:55","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T05:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=39542"},"modified":"2018-09-06T08:25:55","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T05:25:55","slug":"tamars-plan-b-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/tamars-plan-b-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamar\u2019s Plan B"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Many wish to read Tamar as the master manipulator of this story: She guides Judah into both impregnating her and admitting it later, and her brashness makes her the mother of a line of bold leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what, exactly, was Tamar\u2019s plan? Trick Judah into sleeping with her and then – what? \u00a0What if Judah had had payment with him, making collateral unnecessary? What would she have shown him when he later ordered her burned? Tamar the master planner seems to have left a lot to chance. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The medieval Italian commentator R. Ovadiah Seforno offers a surprising take: \u201cShe thought that when Judah saw her without widow\u2019s garments he would ask her why she had shed those garments. She would answer him that the time had come for Shelah to marry her.\u201d \u00a0Tamar never planned to lure Judah into a sexual encounter – she just wanted a conversation! <\/span><\/p>\n

Judah, however, failed to recognize her (more on that in a minute), so when he propositioned her she started asking questions. \u00a0When it became clear that he would give her identifying objects, she leaned in to plan B: establishing the name of her dead husbands not through their brother, but through their father.<\/span><\/p>\n

How could Judah not recognize his own daughter-in-law? \u00a0Her face was covered, but what of her voice? Here, R. Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (\u201cNetziv\u201d) offers a fascinating insight: \u00a0Once Judah had decided from afar that the veiled women at the intersection was a sex worker, he was predisposed not to recognize her. Since it did not occur to him that his daughter-in-law would engage in such work, her voice did not register. <\/span><\/p>\n

Where Tamar had hoped to have a reasonable conversation between adults, she encounters a man who cannot see her as a conversation partner once he has classified her as a sexual partner. Judah therefore traps her into a plan B that is much messier than what she had intended.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tamar-the-master-manipulator is often held out as a powerful female role model. \u00a0What can we do with Tamar-the-still-powerless, who sleeps with her father-in-law only because he is incapable of registering her as a person worthy of talking things over with? In the end, she gets what she came for: a child form Judah\u2019s line–and also an admission from Judah. <\/span><\/p>\n

After that, \u201che was not intimate with her again.\u201d The sexual relationship that had been founded on ignoring Tamar\u2019s voice could not survive the recognition that \u201cShe is more right than I.\u201d \u00a0But the fruits of the encounter continue to grow, however, until the end of history.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":false,"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"Tamar\u2019s Plan B","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"In the end, she gets what she came for, and the fruits of the encounter continue to grow","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":false,"preview_video":"","external_link":"","link_for_pay":false,"tile_gallery_items":false,"credits":""},"alternate_tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","hide_media":false},"tile_group":{"preview_image_url":false,"main_caption":"","sub_caption":"","":null,"popup_package_extra_content":"","read_time":""},"home_color":"","home_gallery_top":"","home_gallery_middle":"","home_gallery_book":"","home_gallery_bottom":"","seo":{"seo_title":"","seo_description":"","seo_default_title":"","seo_default_description":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39543,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39542\/revisions\/39543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}