ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a comparison of psychoanalytic theory as it is expressed in the Talmudic texts concerning the unique and problematic issue of man's relation to the female voice and speech. Rabbi Shlomo Rashi explains Samuel Beckett's statement thus: from the fact that the Bible is praising the beauty of woman in that way, can deduce that this beauty is passion. Rabbi Abraham Ben David probably interpreted the prohibition regarding the hearing of a woman's voice as not related specifically to the recital of Shema, but as a general prohibition regarding women's modesty. A blur prevents men from appreciating the spiritual vitality of a feminine voice. The Jewish sources, in referring directly and clearly to the woman's voice as carrying a seductive sexual quality, help theoreticians understand the psychoanalytic assertion on the sexual quality of the search for objet a—in this case, the voice.
