[Avodah] Minhag Yisroel

[Jonathan Baker]

From: "Chana Luntz" <chana at kolsassoon.org.uk>
> And in Areivim in responding to another poster who wrote:
 
> >:  Girls' Torah education was a pretty
> >: major break, and IIRC, had to rely on 'eys laasos'....
 
> RMB responded
 
> >It did not. First, there is no issur -- the word used is "tiflus". 
 
> Um, I am not sure where you are getting this from.
 
> The precise language of the Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh Deah siman 246, si'if
> 6) which is word to word with the Rambam in Hilchos Talmud Torah perek 1
> halacha 13:
> 
> V'afal pi sheyesh la schar tzivu Chazal shelo yilmod adam es biso Torah
> mipnei she rov nashim ain da'asan micavenes l'hislamed u'motzios divrei
> Torah l'divrei havai lfi anist da'asan. Amru hachamim kol hamelamed es
> biso torah kielu melamda tiflus (Rema [dvar averah]) b'ma devarim omrim
> b'torah sheba'al peh aval torah shebichsav lo yilmod osah l'chatchila,
> v'im melameda ano k'lamda tiflus."
 
> Now, I struggle to see "tzivu Chazal" as anything but an issur.  The is
> modified (at least for Ashkenazim) by the Rema adding that in any case a
> woman is obligated (chayaves) to learn dinim shayachim l'isha. 

Sorry, I don't agree.  The issur is quite clearly, from the exact language
in the mishnah, on the FATHER to teach HIS DAUGHTER.  The rabbis have made
such diyukim before, e.g. in prozbul - individuals must forgive debts, but 
not batei din (and other corporate bodies?); in maakeh - individuals have 
to erect a fence, corporate owners don't (this was the reason given to one
future rav who complained that there wasn't a railing on the roof of his
yeshiva).

Now, the fact that throughout history, most people were taught by their
parents, rather than by an organized school system, would mitigate against
this distinction helping women.  But once people went to organized schools,
by the 19th century say, the "issur" wouldn't hold.

Note the exact language: "the Sages commanded that a man not teach his 
daughter Torah"  (the rationale is chopped out of another gemara and tacked
onto the mishnah).  It is separated from the statement about tiflus, but
the language of "not teach his daughter" is that of the mishnah about tiflus.

And you leave out the beginning of the paragraph: 

"A woman who learns Torah has a reward, albeit not the reward of a man who
studies Torah".

So a distinction is already clearly drawn between a woman who acquires Torah
on her own, or from her father.

There are lots of places where the actual halacha says X, but common 
practice is not-X, or pseudo-not-X.  This appears to be one of them.
Historic circumstance changed, people had to send their children to 
school, rather than teaching at home, so instead of absorbing the Torah
culture in the liebfraumilch, the schools need to inculcate a Torah 
personality.
 
> >Second, the CC argued that since girls were always taught enough to
> become observant 
> >women, today's world mandates broader education. The opening of
> universal secular education changed the metzius of pre-existing pesaq to
> include more.
> 
> Yes, you can try and argue that the Rema's dinim shayachim l'sha has
> been broadened by the reality of the modern world - but is is a stretch,
> a big stretch.  Especially when you are talking about learning Rashi,
> which of course is chock full of Torah shebaal peh that is hard to argue
> really falls within the category of shaychim l'isha.  And you can try
> arguing that schools aren't fathers and therefore aren't included in the
> issur (especially when it is done by other women! - just don't learn
> Rashi with your daughters round the shabbas table!).  But both of these
> are radical breaks with the way the issur was traditionally understood,
> and I don't think, in the interests of emes and honesty, one should
> pretend otherwise.  

as noted above, the radical break was universal institutional schooling.
changed circumstances require changed responses, as long as they are within
halacha.
 
> > He held that universal secular education for girls 
> > was a change in realia which changed the definition of 
> > "teaching them enough to keep them shomeros Torah umitzvos". 
> > Teaching halakhah is no longer enough; they now must also see 
> > that Torah has greater beauty than the other systems of 
> > thought to which they are exposed. As it is, the CC justified 
> > a change in minhag Yisrael, which is KEdin and thus follows 
> > the same rules -- but what was changed wasn't actually din itself.
 
> I confess I don't think I have ever seen anything in writing from the
> CC, so I don't know how he justified it, but I would be surprised, given
> the explicit wording of the Shulchan Aruch, if he said anything of the
> kind.  Eis la'asos sounds a fair bit more likely  - although eis la'asos

Oh, so now we fall into he said she said.  Micha & I think it's reasonable
to assume a diyuk in "lelamed bito", supported by the rest of the paragraph,
you think there's a real issur that required an eis laasos effort.

I can't find the teshuvot of the Chofetz Chaim on Bar-Ilan.  RMF in YD 2:113
suggests that the mishnah is limited to teaching the daughter mitzvos, but
that there is an overriding obligation to teach her belief in Hashem, which
can also be farmed out to schools.

In fact, that seems to be pragmatically what was going on.  The Mechaber's
distinction between TSBK and TSBP doesn't work - one does have to teach
one's chiildren belief in Hashem, which is based in Oral Torah as much as
Written Torah.  One has to teach brachot, etc., which are Oral Torah.  One
has to teach prayers, which are nothing if not Oral Torah.  Women were 
learning Tzene-rene, which is full of midrashic understandings of the
parshiyot.  

And I don't even see how that works either - not teaching the mitzves.
Not teach them mitzves?  How will they know how to live?  So the Rema
makes the logical interpretation - you have to teach them how to live 
a Jewish life.  But what do Sefardim do?  I don't mean how do their rabbis
read this, but how do they teach their daughters how to live, if they can't
teach Torah?

Or is it that the MOTHERS teach the daughters Torah, in which case they
too are making the diyuk that Micha and I see in the text - it's not the
FATHERS, it's the MOTHERS.

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com