Crossposted to Crystal Decadenz
Here’s something you ought to know about me. I like Orthodoxy in theory. I do. But I also really, really think that women ought to be obligated in all mitzvot, and I really, really think there is a halachic precedent for it.
Now. Knowing that, I recently realized that even though Aish.com is good, more Aish.com isn’t necessarily better. They have a website called JewishPathways.com where you can sign up and “take online courses”, which basically means that you can read a bunch of Aish.com articles in one tidy place and take tests after each “course”. It went well for a while; the articles were sated with footnotes so it wasn’t like I was taking everything solely on their word.
But then of course I got to Chapter 2 and the good feeling quickly soured. Why? Because Chapter 2 was called “Women and Mitzvot“. You know what’s coming.
I know, reading the title, that usually what happens is that there is a big apologetic speech about how women are so much more spiritual and have special mitzvot, and men and women complement each other spiritually. Fine. I wonder what a “Men and Mitzvot” article would look like given that women are so great and everything, but fine.
But this went even further. “Women may NOT wear tefillin,” the author explained, quoting Orach Chayim 38:3 (he had to quote that because Rema’s gloss was the first time women were canonically forbidden from tefillin—why yes, that was written in the 1570’s). “Similarly, it is forbidden to wear a tallit, since it is a man’s garment.” Forbidden—not just “exempt” (which is nearly as bad anyway).
Hey, and guess what else? JewishPathways.com has something to tell you:
The commentators explain that as tefillin is one way to connect with the Creator, women establish this link in a much more meaningful way than donning tefillin. When a man wears tefillin, he manifests that which a woman can accomplish naturally by carrying a child within her. Kabbalistically, the tefillin’s hollow chamber corresponds to the womb, and the straps correspond to the umbilical cord. Interestingly, the tefillin box is called the bayit (home). Thus, one can say that the home a woman develops is her private tefillin.
Wow, all I have to do is have a baby in my nest every morning and I can have the same effect!
I don’t really know how to take this, because the article seemed permissive regarding other things:
This guy just really doesn’t want me wearing tefillin, and he’ll pull out all the stops to make it happen.
Oh, why can’t I just be the type of lady who can just accept my lot? Why can’t I be like the lady in the Jewish Pathways video, who allegedly went to a six-week challah class and now finds mystical meaning in every ingredient, and is “glad” that she doesn’t have to do “men’s mitzvot”? How much easier my life would be!
But a whole mitzvah—no, two—”forbidden”!
What about Michal bat Shaul, who wore tefillin, “and the sages didn’t protest” (Eruvin 96b)? What about tzitzit itself not actually being a garment? What about the commandment being to attach, not wear, tzitzit, and therefore can’t actually be time-based? What about women originally being obligated (Menachot 643a), and its being a “time-based exemption” is only due to one guy originally, Rav Shimon—do we really want to go from that to “FORBIDDEN”? I can’t get over this.
I come from a land where you can’t get away with not explaining why women shouldn’t be allowed another way to fulfill a perfectly important mitzvah, despite the relatively small objection of this “men’s garment” prohibition nonsense. You can really spot an ideological ultra-Orthodox tirade simply by scanning the author’s views on women, you know.
Ah, this is why you’re not supposed to study alone.
Needless to say, I failed the test on that chapter. On purpose.
