When a courtyard is owned by two or more people, each of the owners can restrict the sorts of activity that can be performed within. That is, with one notable exception:
Rabbi Yohanan says in the name of Rabbi Bena’a: Partners may prevent each other (from using their courtyard) for any purpose except for laundry.
If a person does not want sunflowers to be planted in their courtyard or a swingset to be built, it makes a certain amount of sense that they can insist their co-owners avoid those activities. They are a partial owner of the space after all. But what’s so different about laundry that a part-owner is unable to put this on the list? Rabbi Yohanan explains:
Because it is not the way of Jewish women to be degraded over laundry.
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In rabbinic times, doing laundry involved taking soiled clothing to a water source and scrubbing the dirt out. Like in many societies, this was women’s work. Rabbi Yohanan suggests that being forced to do laundry in public is degrading and declares that Jewish women should not be subjected to it. And so, he prevents a part-owner of a courtyard from banning the washing of clothes within it. Doing so ensures that women who have access to the courtyard will be able to avoid public humiliation by completing their laundering duties in a more private space.
And what is the nature of the degradation that women who do their laundry in public suffer? To answer that question, the Gemara cites a verse from Isaiah (33:15). In its original context, the verse is describing a righteous person who could survive a punishment that God inflicts on those who have strayed from the proper path: “One that walks righteously, and speaks uprightly; one that despises the gain of oppressions, that shakes their hands from holding of bribes, that stops their ears from hearing of blood, and shuts their eyes from looking upon evil.”
Commenting on that last phrase, Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba says:
This is referring to one who does not gaze at women while they are standing over the laundry.
Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba is not suggesting that women who are doing laundry are evil. Rather, it is those who gaze upon them when they do so who are. How so? Given the nature of the work, women doing laundry may find themselves in immodest positions and a not-so-righteous person might be tempted to leer. Doing so would be wrong, says Rabbi Hiyya.
The Gemara goes on to suggest that a person who goes out of their way to walk past laundering women is indeed a wicked person as they had an opportunity to shut their eyes (by taking a different route) but failed to do so. And what if there was no way around? If one is forced to pass by women to get where they need to go, should we consider them a victim of circumstance and not hold them accountable if they were unable to avert their eyes?
Where there is no other way — even so, he is required to compel himself.
We’ve seen plenty of examples of the rabbinic legal system treating women as less than their male counterparts. Although the rabbis here fail to challenge the gender roles inherent in such a system, they were willing to act to improve the conditions under which women had to live. On today’s daf, they do so by limiting the property rights of courtyard owners to create a safer space for women to complete their chores and by equating righteousness with actions that protect women from public degradation.
Read all of Bava Batra 57 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 21, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
