[Avodah] [Areivim] Play 'Women's Minyan' addresses blind devotion to dogma

[Celejar]

[Redirected here as per moderator request.]

On Wed, 7 Jan 2009 20:43:49 -0500, someone (on Areivim) cited this:

"In the Haredi way, the wife is supposed to bear a baby a year and make
a living for the family so the husband can study the Torah," Hefferon
said. "A woman is like a fruitful vine. It's her duty to bear children
and obey her husband at all times."

http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/01/play_womens_minyan_addresses_b.html
http://tinyurl.com/9gqv6o

and objected to the assertion of the Haredi insistence on both duties
mentioned in the last sentence.

I responded:

Are you denying that it's a wife's duty to obey her husband, or that
there's an ethical imperative to have as many children as possible?  We
obviously don't live up to *any* of our ideals in all cases, but are you
denying that these *are* ideals?

[I know that a woman isn't commanded in Piryah Ve'Rivyah, and that it's
the man's obligation.]

After all, Rambam *does* write (Ishus 15:20):

"And so have our Sages commanded that a woman honor her husband
extraordinarily, and his fear should be upon her, and she should
perform all her actions according to his will ("al piv"), and he should
be in her eyes like a noble or king, she goes according to the desire
of his heart and distances all that he dislikes (or "hates")."

See my discussion of related matters here:

http://bdl.freehostia.com/2008/05/21/my-lord-and-master/

I am not claiming that this is necessarily exactly what we should be
advocating as the contemporary norm; I am merely pointing out that
there *are* such notions in the sources.

Of course, you can always argue for Islamic influence on Rambam's
thought, a la Shaul Maggid, for example:

"I, too, have sensed the Islamic influence on Maimonides, especially
when reading his works with Muslim colleagues. Once, when discussing
passages from The Guide for the Perplexed and Mishneh Torah, a Muslim
scholar insisted that Maimonides' positions were "pure Islam" and that
"Ibn Maimun" -- as he is known in Arabic -- "is a small 'm' Muslim,"
citing chapter and verse of thinkers Maimonides never mentions.

The fact that Maimonides cites some Islamic sources, especially the
philosopher Abu Nasar al-Farabi (c. 870-950), is well known. More
subtle is the way even his ostensibly Jewish positions, and the methods
he uses to reach them, appear to be taken, sometimes verbatim, from the
Muslim tradition. One of Maimonides' great theological innovations, for
example, was his Thirteen Principles of Faith, a list of Judaism's
central beliefs. As Judaism is a religion founded on law and not on
belief per se, no such creed had been attempted before. But the notion
of principles, or pillars, of faith had existed for some time in Islam,
and Kraemer contends that several of Maimonides's specific articles of
faith -- including the first (God's existence), second (divine unity)
and particularly the third (God is not a corporeal being) -- reflect
the influence of such Islamic thinkers as al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and Ibn
Tumart, founder of the Almohad movement."

From
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/30/AR2008123002789.html
[Hat tip:
http://menachemmendel.net/blog/2009/01/04/maimonides-as-innovator-or-imitator/]

This is a rather provocative thesis, though.  I have proposed something
similar with regard to Abravanel, but merely in one particular area:

http://bdl.freehostia.com/2008/09/07/abravanel-and-dumas-on-honor/

Yitzhak
--
Bein Din Ledin - http://bdl.freehostia.com
A discussion of Hoshen Mishpat, Even Ha'Ezer and other matters