[Avodah] Minhag Yisroel

[Chana Luntz]

I wrote:

> > 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.

And RJB writes:
 
> 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).

Yes, but these kinds of diyukim are generally learned out of psukim -
for example, in the case of maakeh, the specific exclusion of betei
knessios and betei midrashos is darshened from the pasuk in Chullin
136a.  Ie you have a d'orisa obligation that may or may not be a
chiddush, and a diyuk in the pasuk, which is brought by Chazal and hence
codified as halacha.  While here we are, as is clear form the language,
dealing with a gezera of Chazal, not a pasuk, and a diyuk that you are
drawing out of the words of Chazal/the Shulchan Aruch, not one that
Chazal is drawing out of the Torah.  Something of a difference.
Importantly therefore, you need to look at the surrounding discussions
to understand the nature of the gezera.  In this case, we have in the
mishna a machlokus - Ben Azai says that a father is chayav to teach his
daughter torah shebaal peh, and Rabbi Eliezer says that it is assur for
a father to teach his daughter torah shebaal peh.  Now the meforshim ask
the reasonable question (see eg the Birkei Yosef there in Yoreh Deah),
in a machlokus that involves Rabbi Eliezer, we generally do not posken
like Rabbi Eliezer- he Shamuti hu [he is a follower of Beis Shammai} -
so why does the Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch posken like Rabbi Eliezer
in this case?  And the answer given to this question is that this is
because Rabbi Yehoshua at the end of that Mishna can be taken (and
appears to be deemed to be taken by the rishonim) to agree with Rabbi
Eliezer {Rabbi Yehoshua ends that Mishna with a criptic statement which
says that women generally prefer one kav with tiflus rather than nine
kavs with prishus - eg Rashi there on Sotah 21b concludes his
explanation that this is about a women preferring less mezonos and more
tashmish over more mezonos and less tashmish by saying l'fikach ain tov
shetilmod torah).

> Now, the fact that throughout history, most people were 
> taught by their parents, rather than by an organized school 
> system,

No.  The fact is that throughout history most *women* were taught by
their parents, rather than by an organised school system.  However,
since the days of Yehoshua ben Gamla most boys and men were taught by an
organised school system not by their parents (in fact earlier than that,
as the gemora records in Baba Basra 21a - there was some degree of
organised school system, albeit one not accessed by orphans). 

 would mitigate against this distinction helping 
> women.  But once people went to organized schools, by the 
> 19th century say, the "issur" wouldn't hold.

Besides the need to disregard the contextual discussion of the meforshim
on the gemora in Sotah and on the Rambam/Shulchan Aruch, the other
problem with this interpretation is that, with regard to boys, it has
generally been understood that a father fulfils his obligation of talmud
torah vis a vis his sons by sending them to school.  But what you are
saying here is that an organised school cannot be considered to be in
loco parentis and the agent of the father.  But how then do you explain
why what is is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander?  

> 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.

Agreed.  Nobody, as far as I am aware, is or has been making any comment
about a women (or miriads of women) who acquire Torah on her or their
own.  And one can without too much difficulty (even though it is clearly
a break from minhag yisroel) apply this to adult independent women who
go off to seminary under their own steam even though it involves
learning from others.  But we are not discussing that here.  We are
discussing the Beis Ya'akov system, which, at least the vast bulk of it,
involves sending either minors, or teenagers who are still completely
dependent on their parents, whether they want to or not (- or do you ask
your minor daughter every morning - do you feel like going to school
today?) to be compulsorarily educated in torah, at an educational system
almost invariably selected by their parents and paid for by their
parents.


> 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.

I am not disagreeing with this.  But there is a major difference between
saying that the actual halacha says X and common practice is Y and
saying, as RMB appeared to be saying, and you appear to be saying that
halacha actually agrees and always has agreed with today's common
practice.  
  
> 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.

The traditional understanding of this (whether Ashkenazi or Sephardi)
was not that they were not taught how to do mitzvos that were relevant
to them.  For example, every girl was taught how to kasher a chicken,
that is a mitzvah.  How to light shabbas candles, how to keep a kosher
household.  But she never saw anything in writing.  And that included
Torah shebichtav - ie women were often not taught to read, and certainly
if they needed to know how to read the vernacular, they did not need to
know how to read Hebrew.  For an idea as to how this can be interpreted
and operated even in this modern day and age, you only need look at
certain parts of the Satmarer girls school system.  They have girls
schools (have to, by law to keep them out of the public schools).  I
believe that at least certain of them have breached the fence a little
bit by having the girls learn Torah shebichtav - ie to read the text of
the Torah.  But they certainly do not and will not show them Rashi -
although that does not exclude little ma'aselach told externally which
are supposed to incalcate a Torah personality and belief in HaShem.  You
can of course go further and not teach Hebrew reading at all, or at
least the text of the Torah and still bring wonderful ma'aselach based
on sound Torah principles.  And with all the time freed up from the
textual learning, you can involved the girls in some terrific chessed
programs - where they learn by example what wonderful kindness people
can do.  All quite possible even in this day and age of compulsory
schooling.  The difficulty is not the pragmatics of this, it is the
imbalance that is created once you have girls with a sophisticated
intellectual, textual, secular education and yet nothing equivalent
Jewishly.  The way these girls schools have tried to deal with this
issue is by a) shutting out the outside world as much as possible, and
b) by limiting the sophistication of the secular education to the
minimum that can be got away with by law.  I am not sure it does not
work, at least up to a point.  And it is certainly possible to remain
loyal to Torah and mitzvos with extremely limited Jewish educations -
there are thousands of people, men and women, who had no Jewish
education to speak of (eg there were no Jewish day schools in their day)
who remained loyal, albeit often ignorant.  However, it does certainly
entail rather large risks when there is a beckoning secular world out
there, and it was to this challenge that the Choftez Chaim was
responding.  

> 
> --
>         name: jon baker              web: 


Regards

Chana