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Types of Thought: Gender Differences
 
Posted: 17 Jun 2008 04:31 PM CDT
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Aspaqlaria/~3/314099072/types-of-thought-gender-differences.shtml


In a post on parashas Chayei Sarah, I included R Aharon Soloveitchikztls take on gender differences as reflected in halakhah. Men have an overly strong sense of qibbush, to conqure and subsue, women have a better balance with chazaqah, making and developing.

In this post, I would like to add Rav Hirschs (RSRH) take, which I believe dovetails quite well with Rav Aharons.

First, his translation of Tehillim 45:14 is But the kings daughter is all glorious within, more than the golden borders of her raiment. As Michael Poppers pointed out, this better fits the hyphenation of kol-kevudah as well as the use of kevudah not kevudas. The commentary reads:

But, the singer adds with infinite tact and delicacy, though the princess may appear glorious and splendid in public, she reveals her true glory in quiet, more private circles, and the splendid qualities she shows there are much greater than the exquisite beauty of the gold borders which shine at the hem of her garment. Penimah within, is always used to designate an inner recess as opposed to the outer chambers.

What may better capture RSRHs position is his comments on peru urvu umilu es haaretz vikvishuhah  be fruitful and multiply and fill the world and subdue it in Judaism Eternal, ch 11 (The Jewish Woman).

Vikvshuha is read malei [full, ie with the vav], but written chaseir [deficient]. In other words, while it is read as though both should participate in conquering the world, its written vikivshah, that only one of them should.

 [T]he command to subdue, and with it to procure the means necessary for marriage and for founding a household, is addressed only to the male sex, to whose function it belongs to compel the earth through labour to serve the needs of man. Hence the command to marry and found a household has absolute force only for the male sex. Since, however, these commands are after all addressed to both sexes, it is obvious that for the performance of mans task of building up the world the Law-giver reckoned on the harmonious and equal co-operation of both sexes. Further, by excusing the famale sex from the hard labour of subduing and mastering the earth,  [H]e left it free to be devoted to the higher and more humanistic task of employing the products of mans labour for the ethical purposes of building up a house and family, that is to say, in the service of his true vocation and his welfare as a human being.

Rav Hirsch peaks in terms of inside vs. outside, community in service of its members, vs the expansion of the communitys domain, reach, and standard of living. The similarity to Rav Aharons dichotomy of qibbush extending our reach vs. chazaqah developing what we have is quite strong, although not identical.

For this reason, Rav Hirsch writes, male is called zachar, memory, standard-bearer of history, while female is called nekeivah, that which receives  in this case, a vocation. Yirmiyahu writes, Ki vara H chadashah baaretz, nekeivah tisoveiv gever  for Hashem created something new in the world, female surrounds man (31:21). Ther prophet doesnt contrast neqeivah with zakhar, female with male, but with gever. Gever is a term for man which focuses on the male tendency for qibush. As the mishnah says, Who is a hero [gibor]? One who conqures [hakoveish] his inclination.

It is in this sense of negeivah, along with gever as a figure of qibbush that RSRH uses to explain Yirmiyahu. Man does nothing but provide a foundation, the means; womans job is to provide the ends. And there is a danger that he may completely lost himself in this struggle, that in striving to acquire his means he will lose sight of his real vocation This is an error which can almost be regarded as the key to all the mistakes made in history. It is then the woman who leads him back to what is truly human in him.
Binah and Daas

The gemara makes two statements about cognitive differences between men and women.נ

נשים דעתן קלות - Women, their daas are light

בינה יתרה נתנה להן - Extra binah was given to them.

The fact that women are described as being more focused on binah than on daas in comparison to men ties this post to the previous one. In the following, I take the Tanyas position on defining daas, but I use Rav Hirsch to explain binah, since it resembles the Tanyas but provides more detail.

We described daas as knowledge. But not simply the memory of ideas, the knowledge that changes how we think. It is thus both daas, the synthesis of chokhmah and binah, as well as keser, their source.

Binah is deductive and inductive reasoning. According to Rav Hirsch, the word is related to livnos, to build, and bein, between, making distinctions. I would suggest from this that each connotation is based on a different kind of reason:

Deductive reasoning builds conclusions from existing ideas.  If all people are mortal, and John is a person, John is mortal.

Inductive reasoning divides cases into categories about which we can form rules. If we see one duck and it flies, and another duck and it flies, and another, we eventually concludes that ducks in general fly. (Of course, someone could similarly conclude that all birds fly, until his case collection includes an encounter with an ostrich or penguin.)

In what way is there a conflict between daas and binah? Daas limits our modes of thought. In thinking the way one is supposed to for a discipline, one may be more accurately working within the discipline, but one will be blind to an answer if it happens to fall outside the discipline.

Only men can serve on a court, both for deciding cases, and in the legislative and interpretive capacity of courts of men with Moses-derived ordination. And from there, we have rules about only men giving horaah and only men testifying to those judges in questions of guilt. (Anyone can testify about the permissibility of an object, which is why I can rely on my wife in the kitchen.)

Making halakhah is a discipline, following the laws of how to make laws. Thus, its relegated to men. The greater creativity and deductive ability of a womans binah doesnt produce a more right answer. However, when it came to aggadic issues, where the criterion is truth, not legal process, it was the women who historically saved the Jewish People from major errors  from their unwillingness to follow the men in building the golden calf until neqeivah tesoveiv gever.

So far, Ive made a hash of things. I took ideas from people who contradict on how they define different terms, and blended their ideas together on the terms in which they agree. In the next entry, beH, I will try to provide a more dictionary-like collection of the words for various types of thought.

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