Content provided in partnership with
Can the demand for change in the status of women be halakhically legitimated
Judaism, Fall, 1993 by Tamar Ross
If women cannot now assume the active role of a Sh'liah Zibbur in public prayer,(27) they still have the choice of forming their own Tefillah groups,(28) as has been the practice for decades in many Orthodox girls' schools. If the testimony of women cannot be accepted as such in the rabbinical courts, such testimony can be defined by another name, and accepted as non-testimony which must nonetheless be considered, as is the practice in the urgent cases of Agunot.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
If women are not allowed to issue a writ of divorce, they may initiate prenuptial agreements which will invalidate the marriage or pre-arrange an acceptance of divorce given under mutually agreed upon conditions.(29) If Rabbi Eliezer in Talmudic times established that "he who teaches his daughter Torah teaches her frivolity,"(30) the Hafez Hayyim more recently added(31) that "better this frivolity than that of another sort," thus opening up the floodgates for maximal exploitation of this observation, to include the study of Oral Law at its most rigorous, and the creation of women's yeshivot now mushrooming in Israel and elsewhere. If the authorized version of the morning prayers require women to bless God merely for the fact that He created her "as He wished," as opposed to the men who bless Him for specifically creating them as males, nothing prevents women from accompanying this blessing with the thought: "O.K. God. The men made up this one because they thought that they were so important, and that surely is the historical reason for this blessing's existence. But You and I know better, and that the real meaning is that You had to create them as men, with all the weaknesses that accompany maleness (needing a constant false assurance of superiority, etc.), but You created me just as you wished -- a perfectly secure and self-sufficient human being." If serving as a judge or public leader violates "the dignity of the community" (i.e., casts aspersions on the competence of its males, who are reduced to placing a female at their head), the Rishonim already provided an escape route in one of their rationales for Deborah the prophetess serving as judge -- i.e., that if the community voluntarily accepted her leadership, this is sufficient indication that it does not regard the fact that she is a woman as a negative reflection upon itself.(32) This argument was indeed one of those used by Chief Rabbi Uziel (in opposition to Harav Kook's stance) when relating to the issue as it arose in the context of women's voting in the general elections of the new Jewish Yishuv in 1918.(33) And if it can still be regarded as true that "all the glory of the woman is contained within," this must not, for practical reasons, prevent the woman who has chosen to support a husband, dedicated to the study of Torah, from ensuring the glory of her household within by every possible sort of employment outside the home, including such public functions as teaching, banking, law, and the like. Even the action of a Canadian group of women(34) who, incensed at the attempt on the part of one man in their community to extort blackmail money from his wife in return for granting her a divorce, declared en masse that they would refuse to go to the mikvah until the husband came forth with the get, is not devoid of food for thought. As a general solution, the need to resort to such manipulative tactics in order to redress injustice is obviously unsatisfactory. But it is an example of the type of short-term solution that can be initiated by women in order to gain a grass-roots momentum with long-term effects.
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Autos
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »