The Phantom Veil: The Hymen and Radical Indeterminacy in B. Niddah 64b

Virginity in Judaism is a matter of both legal and community concern. But the determination of virginity and the conclusive understanding of its signs is often elusive. This is in part because female subjectivity and testimony are discounted as methods of determining women’s sexual history. This article examines a passage in the Babylonian Talmud (B. Niddah 64b–65b) in which the difficulties surrounding defining virginity come to the forefront. It considers the epistemological and legal implications of a system which depends upon the ability to determine female virginity, but is confronted with the difficulty, and sometimes impossibility, of doing so with certainty.