This view would of course canonize Rabbi Yehoshua's misogynistic reading. The Talmud, however, immediately rejects such an interpretationbecause it does not square with the other commandments mentioned, namely the dough-offering and the lighting of Sabbath candlesand offers another reading. Indeed, this hegemonic commentary deflects the issue from one of gender entirely:
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 | | As a certain Galilean interpreted: I have put into you a portion of blood; therefore I have given you a commandment having to do with blood. I called you the "firstling"; therefore I have given you a commandment having to do with the first [dough]. The soul which I have given you is called a candle; therefore I have given you a commandment having to do with candles. If you keep them well and good, but if not I will take away your soul.
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| | (Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 31b32a)
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These commandments, according to the Babylonian Talmud, like any others belong in principle to the whole people, male and female alike. But these are particularly given to women because they belong particularly to women's sphere as understood by the rabbinic culture, to her body, cooking, and the comfort of the house, just as other commandments, which belong to the "male" spheres of public life and worship, are restricted to men.
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The Talmud then asks, "Why then at the time of giving birth?" to which the answer is that the time of danger is when a person is tested for righteousness. The text next asks when men are tested, and the answer is given that they are tested when passing over bridges and in similar moments of danger.
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For the next two pages, the Talmud
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| | 25. Compare the reading of this text in Wegner (1988, 15556). I can see no reason whatsoever for her determination that "the three cultic duties listed here, like other biblical precepts, are primarily incumbent on
men
" (155). These are precisely examples of cultic duties that in mishnaic law are incumbent on women just as on men. So violation of the laws of menstrual sexual separation is just as much a violation for the female as for the male partner, as is the eating of untithed food or a possible violation of the Sabbath. These are not, even technically, in the category of timecontingent positive precepts incumbent only on men.
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| | 26. Wegner's statement, then, that "women's performance is encouraged by threatening them with death in childbirth for failure to carry out the rites in question" (155), while accurate for the Mishna, certainly is not an appropriate description of the rabbinic practice in general. It is the case that women have a "double dose" of testing, since they presumably cross bridges equally as frequently as men, but this does not materially affect the argument that the danger is de-essentialized from something particularly female here.
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