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[xiphias]

Since other people seem to be posting their dreams to their livejournals:
I dreamed that it was raining all night, and that was a good thing, because a lot of the resevoirs were low, and were were in borderline drought conditions.

I woke up, and it had been raining all night, which is good, because a lot of the resevoirs are low, and we're in borderline drought conditions.

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[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that 'tanakah' is another term for ark?

Actually, I spoonerized. Stupid brain! It's "takanah" -- tet kuf nun hay. It's the Hebrew word which is translated as "ark"; it appears in only two places in the Bible: the thing that Noach built, and the thing that Yochevet put Moshe in. Etymologically, it's not related to the word for "boat", but rather, to a word for "box", and, in English, we use Ark not only for Noah's and Moses's, but also for the box in which Tablets of the Law was carried (think "Raiders of the Lost. . . ")

Do you suppose monogamy started with the ark?

Not according to the legends. Before Noach, only Lamech (his father) is listed as having multiple wives.

Afterwords, we come down a bunch of generations to Avraham, who married both Sarah and Hagar. (And, after Sarah's death, married Keturah.) Yitzhak, of course, only married one woman, Rivkah. Yaakov, though, married Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah.

Polygyny was known, although not common, among all Jews until the early 11th century, when R. Gershom prohibited it in all countries subject to his ban. He also formulated the wording of the marriage contract, the Ketubah.

However, he only prohibited polygyny it for a thousand years, meaning that it, I believe, just expired. (Well, according to another interpretation, it expired in 1260.)

On the other hand, in 1950, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel expanded the ban for all time. Then again, there are juristictional questions about that.