Study Yevamot folio 85A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
והרי טומאה, דלאו שאין שוה בכל, וטעמא דכתב רחמנא ״בני אהרן״ ולא בנות אהרן, הא לאו הכי, הוה אמינא נשים חייבות, מאי טעמא? לאו משום דרב יהודה אמר רב?
The Talmud asks: But there is the prohibition for priests to contract ritual impurity from a corpse, which is a prohibition that is not equally applicable to all, as only priests are bound by this prohibition, and the reason that this command applies only to male priests is that God writes: “Speak to the priests the sons of Aaron, and say to them: None should defile himself” (Leviticus 21:1), from which it is inferred: The sons of Aaron and not the daughters of Aaron. Therefore, were it not for this specific derivation, I would say that women from priestly families are also obligated to avoid becoming ritually impure. What is the reason for this? Is it not due to the principle that Rav Yehuda said that Rav said, that women are equated to men with regard to all punishments in the Torah, including those that are not equally applicable to all?
לא, דגמרינן מ״לא יקחו״.
The Talmud rejects this proof: No, that initial assumption, that the daughters of priests might be obligated to avoid ritual impurity, is not due to the halakha that Rav Yehuda said that Rav said, but rather it is something that we learn through tradition from the words “they may not take.” This phrase teaches that women are included in the marital prohibitions of the priesthood, and we might therefore have thought that they are included in all halakhot pertaining to priests.
There are those who say a different version of this answer: With regard to that verse about taking, it was necessary for him to mention this explicitly, for it might enter your mind to say: We should learn this halakha from the prohibition of impurity and conclude that just as only male descendants of Aaron are prohibited from contracting ritual impurity, the restrictions of marriage also apply only to men. The verse therefore teaches us, with the words “they may not take,” that this is not the case.