The Mishnah tractate before us exhibits the traits of the division of women as a whole: engaging, substantively interesting, rich in formal exercises of surpassing aesthetic appeal, and full of conceptions of singular importance for the unfolding of the system of Judaism shaped and expressed by Mishnah. While the themes of Purities and Holy Things from our viewpoint are remote and arcane, those of Women are not. Quite to the contrary, they touch upon matters of immediate interest even to our own day. Not only so, but we can readily imagine some of the social and cultural effects of the law, and, in due course, shall find it easy to enter into the imaginative world revealed by this splendid document.
But Mishnah is always Mishnah: acute and subtle, demanding close attention to its problems, phrased in its way, for its purposes. Hence the aesthetic, intellectual, and redactional power of the document holds sway and exacts its due. The expression of intellectual and philosophical problems will always carry forward Mishnahs larger systemic character and purposes. Stated very simply, Mishnah will tell us what Mishnah wants to tell us about topics and themes of common interest.
The systemically distinctive modes of expression and thought are systematic and constant, whether we speak of Purities, Holy Things, or Women. In the first four parts of this study, we deal with the specificities of expression, formulation, and substantive content: what Mishnah in particular wants to tell us about those problems of ordinary and commonplace interest. In the final part, we consider what Mishnah wants to tell us as Mishnah: a self-contained, complete, and whole system of holiness, part of a larger frame, the Torah revealed by God to Moses.
The subsystem of woman opens with consideration of a topic of considerable potential complexity, which is explored to the fullest: marriage between a deceased childless mans widow and a surviving brother. But, as usual with Mishnah, a mere statement of the topic gives little basis on which to predict how Mishnah will treat the topic. One of Mishnahs minor concerns is what Scripture would have led us to suppose would be a principal consideration: the character of the ceremony, the nature of the relationship. When, as we shall see, Mishnah approaches Scriptures specifications, it has few new ideas and nothing of importance to say. Here our tractate is embarrassing for its aridity and routineness. Mishnah is impressive when it goes its own way and builds its own definitions for the construction of problems and their solutions.
