[Avodah] The importance of a woman's name

[Yitzhak Grossman]

On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:28:29 +0200
"Shoshana L. Boublil" <toramada at bezeqint.net> wrote:

> Twice in the course of Bereishit, Hashem seems to make a fuss about a woman's name.
> 
> The first time is Chava.  For she is Eim Kol Chai. She is not a cipher. She is the mother of all who live. For a  book known for its brevity, this is a long sentence.

Oh, this sort of thing always goes both ways; Ralbag's first
interpretation of the verse (he subsequently proposes a rather less
exceptionable one) is basically that women are subhuman:

"And Adam named his wife Havah, when he realized the weakness of her
intellect, i.e., that the degree of her intellect is not much superior
to that of other living creatures, although she does have an
intellect.  For most of her function is indeed prepared for her in
bodily things, due to the weakness of her intellect, and for her
function of serving the man, and it is therefore unlikely that she will
achieve completeness of the intellect, but she is still more honored
than [the other living creatures], and they are all for her service."

Commentary to the Torah, Bereishis 3:20

[The exegetical problem that Ralbag is addressing here is one which
concerned many of the Rishonim, that 'Aim kol hai' does not
semantically seem limited to humans.]

Note that as the Briskers say: "ich zog nor vos shtait"; I am merely
stating Ralbag's view, not endorsing it. 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
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