[Avodah] The importance of a woman's name (Yitzhak Grossman)

[Shoshana L. Boublil]

>The larger point here is the
> remarkable malleability that the Bible has demonstrated, often
> functioning as a mirror of the views of its exegetes.  RnSB is
> something of a feminist; she looks at the text and derives from it
> feminist, woman-friendly messages. Ralbag is emphatically *not* a
> feminist; he looks at the text and sees, well, something rather
> different ...
>
> Yitzhak

We have a saying here in Israel that sometimes judges mark the target - then 
write the judgement.

R' Yitzchak claims that my goal is a woman-friendly message. Of course he 
read my mind - not. BTW, this kind of response is totally inappropriate b/c 
it dismisses the content without ever having to actually bother to 
understand it.

With all due respect to Ralbag, how smart a woman can be is irrelevant to 
the message I was trying to teach.  Perhaps, instead of assuming that my 
goal was a feminist one, it would have been helpful to re-read the post with 
the understanding that the goal was a Torah thought, an understanding of 
Hashem's subliminal messages, so to speak. Just b/c it's given by a woman 
doesn't mean it's feminist.

My post was not an issue of malleability, but of 70 panim LaTorah.  One can 
focus narrowly on a pasuk or topic, or one can try to see the broad brush 
strokes that created the Jewish history.

I took the evidence, who Hashem considers worthy of leadership and sought 
the common factor. That is not being "feminist", that is seeking Emet and 
understanding of what Hashem wants from us. How to improve our Avodat 
Hashem.

Shoshana L. Boublil