[Avodah] Tzeni'us and gender roles

[Chana Luntz]

I wrote:

> : See I am sure that R' Avi Weiss would answer you and say - it is the
> : public's.  He would tell you that looking around at the 
> community he serves,
> : he sees too many girls and women who are alienated from  
> Yiddishkeit, and
> : reluctant to engage or ask shialas, and that by having a 
> Maharat holding a
> : public position in the community, it is possible to 
> re-engage with those
> : women.
> 
> But these are other women for whom we should be asking the very same
> question. Are we supposed to be reengaging them on these terms, or are
> they compromised terms? To assume the former is to presuppose the
> conclusion.

Yes.  So I will ask you the question - Does/should aseh l'cha rav apply to a
woman?  

I think it important to say that I don't think it ever has, historically.
Before puberty, girls were under the jurisdiction of their fathers, who may
have had their own rav, but the girl had no particular relationship with
him. Around puberty she married, and generally had relatively limited
contact with her husband's rav, to whom the family shialas would be asked,
via her husband. There may have been some role modelling, via her mother, or
possibly via other women of the community, but a woman would almost never
have a direct relationship with a rav, in the aseh l'cha rav sense, unless
her father or her husband (or both) happened to be a rav.  In fact, having
anything approaching a real relationship with a rav, in the aseh l'cha rav
sense, outside of these two situations, would probably have been regarded as
being a  breach of tznius (in the opposite of pritzus sense).

We now have a situation where many women, probably most women in the Modern
Orthodox community, grow up and leave home - often around seventeen
eighteen, and then don't get married until - well often late twenties to
thirties.  Even before they leave home, they are not necessarily comfortable
with channelling any shialas they have through their fathers.

So you are having a situation where such women are often having a decade or
two in which either they build their own direct relationship, or they go to
no one at all.

Which, to your mind, is the preferable avenue to take?

Full disclosure - after I moved away from my home - and I guess grew out of
the crush I had on our communal rav (and I did, like I think so many many
teenage girls do - all perfectly innocent, and absolutely no improper
reflection on him at all, I think it is the nature of the beast, to be
honest, I know somebody whose husband is a rav who teaches in various
seminaries, and she is perfectly aware that most of the girls are
desperately in love with him, in the way teenage girls do) - I never found
anybody who could fulfil that role.  And it used to bother me quite a lot,
that I was so completely out there on my own, me and the sources, and no rav
or even teacher within sight.  Now that I am married it doesn't matter any
more (mostly) because while I still don't have that kind of relationship
with anybody, my husband does, and so our family shailas are channelled
through my husband to his rav.  Yes, the taharas mishpacha ones are the ones
that work least well for that, - but generally, mostly, it works.

And in retrospect, looking back, I think a lot of the reason I was unable to
find a rav whom I could really deem "my rav", was because of the tznius (as
opposed to pritzus) aspects.  A real rav muvhak ends up knowing you very
well, very intimately one might say - in a way that I am not sure is
actually very appropriate or easy to negotiate when the sexes differ.  On
the other hand, I am aware of women who seem to manage to find male mentors,
so clearly some people do manage to negotiate the perils that might be found
in such a relationship.

So, given your mussar stance, what do you advise a woman to do?

- not engage with a rav (and perhaps put on a shelf one's yiddishkeit until
mr right comes along and makes it all right again)?
- try and engage with a rav who is liable to come with problematic emotional
baggage because of the natural dynamic between men and women?
- try and find a female role model?

As you say:

> Which path costs us more? Do we lose more by not even trying 
> to preserve the value of tzni'us, particularly among women who are not
given as
> many reasons to violate it? Or do we lose more because there is simply
> no way to produce a society of female professionals (or women who have
> such among their friends and role models) who can be kol 
> qevudah at home?

But it is not just the society of female professionals.  I knew many many
secretaries and primary/nursery school and similar teachers who found
themselves in precisely this bind because they had not yet managed to find
Mr Right.  And they were dating throughout their twenties and thirties and
going nowhere in terms of yiddishkeit (IMHO)

Now, I agree, if your parents arrange shidduchim for you during your year
post high school, then chances are you go straight from your seminary crush
to your husband and his rav.  

> That could very well be. Part of my lack of MO-ness is that I 
> feel such a community needs correcting, not accomodating. My whole
take-off on
> RHS's theme is to justify that conclusion.

And how do you think best fix this one?  Are you going to push for women to
get married earlier?  Are you comfortable with the shidduch scene as it
presents itself in the non MO world?  I confess to my mind it strikes me as
one of the strongest reasons to be MO - it sounds absolutely and
unbelievably horrible from beginning to end, and I am so glad that my
encounters with it were brief and not fundamental to my existence.  And I
would have thought it was the sort of thing that would have somebody with
musar bent of mind absolutely fulminating - because there is a level of
personal degradation that goes on in that process that would seem to run
completely counter to everything the mussar movement stood and stands for.
Are you for correcting or accomodating?  

But on the other hand, it does a much better job at getting far more women
(and men) married off at a much earlier age than the MO method - so if that
is your goal, then presumably it works (despite the casualties).

> Actually, that's not 100% correct, but I couldn't figure out 
> how to make
> the next point without that stawman.
> 
> My objection is that the community isn't thinking in these terms.
> Modernity is such a given, the idea of questioning a new value doesn't
> come up. What I think requires a real cheshbon hanefesh (in the mussar
> sense) to know if such a societal change is mutar (in the halachic
> sense), is simply being skipped.

OK - so lets go from the general to the specific.  I agree that this reality
of women spending decades on their own is, in MO circles, taken as a given.
And indeed, it is unquestionably a product of modernity - absolutely never
happened before the modern era, except for the very few.

If you do the cheshbon nefesh, what is your view on whether this particular
societal change is mutar (in the halachic sense)?  The halachic sources only
deal with men, mostly - we get shmone esre l'chuppa and all that kind of
thing, but it was just pretty much assumed that women would go earlier than
that, and that their shidduchim would be arranged by their fathers.  Tosphos
even speaks out on the gemora which wants that we should wait until a woman
at least hits puberty and is able to say "I want him", saying that in their
circles they could not wait that long.

I know dina d'malchusa dina does somewhat interfere.  One of the
consequences of modernity is that the kind of marriages proposed by Tosphos
are illegal, as are even the kind of marriages proposed by the gemora.  But
the charedi world has managed to work around that, even if some only push
the general marriage age up just high enough for dina d'malchusa dina.
Around here, I believe you can get married at 16, with parental consent,
which is usually a year or two off finishing high school.  And I believe in
some communities that is the norm.  Others tend to wait till the first year
of sem.

So what is your view - is this aspect of modernity something that needs
correcting (perhaps towards these communities who tend to marry at 16) or
something that needs accommodating?


> : But why, according to you?  Let us analyse what are the 
> possibilities.  What
> : are her functions: - teaching Torah and poskening shialas, 
> presumably...
> 
> And counseling, and communal leadership. Running a shul. There is a
> reason why neither Rn Jungreis, nor a yoetzet nor lbch"l Rn Prof
> Nechamah Lebowitz is a Maharat.
> 
> You're casting her role into the halachic categories, which skips over
> those elements of her role which wouldn't fit those categories. Your
> reductionism fails to identify the full set of elements to 
> reduce things
> to.

No problem with adding in these.  I thought they were less controversial
than the ones I mentioned above.  After all, counselling is unquestionably
done by a Rn Jungreis, and many others (the agony aunt is not exclusive to
the non Jewish world) and most people know shuls that are run by women
-actually more of the shuls I know are actually run by women than the
reverse - and everybody in the community knows it.  You can argue that my
husband's shul is amongst them - although she does it perhaps a more
traditional way, (as in the way to a man's heart is via his stomach).  She
is a caterer.  She donates the kiddushes (and staff) that are provided every
shabbas and yom tov, as well as probably a fair bit of the other money to
keep the place going (the gabbai, for example, is one of her staff members).
The shul is known as a place in London to get a meal for shabbas lunch if
you have nowhere else to go.  We have long ago given up having shabbas lunch
at home - my husband and son kept arriving home without the slightest
interest in eating, and bread is provided there, so the whole family tends
to meet there after shul and have lunch.  You think she doesn't really run
the shul?  You think it a problem that her first name, which is the brand
name of her catering company, is all over the catering van parked outside?
It is a part of her advertising which brings her her parnassa (which she
only went into when her husband lost his in a property crash).  Yes sure,
when we needed to cater a function, we felt, given the association, and the
benefit we had had from the shul, that we couldn't (well shouldn't) really
go anywhere else.  She has a very very public role - is this not tznius?
Let's face it, if she wanted to fire the rabbi, you don't think she could do
it (I am not saying she would) just pointing out the level of power?
 
> : if the community learns some Torah from her that they would 
> otherwise not be
> : learnt, then is that a positive or a negative for the 
> rabbim?  And who is
> : going to be asking her shialas?  Is it going to be somebody 
> who has a good
> : relationship with their existing Rav? ...
> 
> What existing rav?

The model that has been offered to the world, at least at the present time,
is of Rav Weiss as the senior rav, and of Sarah Hurwitz as functioning under
him - or at most along side him.   That seems to be OK to R' Weiss, and it
seems to be OK to the kehilla.  Would the kehilla be keen to employ her as
the sole leader of the community?  I don't know.  I'm far more interested, I
guess, in R' Weiss and in the kehilla than in what she herself thinks (or,
for that matter, what funeral directors' think)- because I struggle to see a
kehilla employing somebody without seeing some need for them.  What is far
more interesting than the title, is that the kehilla is prepared to pay hard
earned cash for this role to be filled in this way.  Once you have that, you
have identified a public need.  It might be a good need or a bad need, but
it is a public need, not a private need - and it is the public that needs
analysing.  And your focus on the tznius of the individual fails to deal
with that.

> You said nothing that requires going beyond the models that already
> exist.

Now this is in itself interesting.  You seem quite open to the reality that
shialas are being asked and answered by women.  RTK admitted that she does
it all the time.  She is not the only one who gets put in this position.
The difference between me, and I think, a lot of other women, is that I tend
to feel I am woefully inadequate to answer a lot of these shialas (I would
never put my head above a parapet about whether an individual should
postpone surgery or not, for example) - especially since (here we go back to
the beginning) -  I don't have a good relationship with a rav directly, and
the one set of questions I *really* can't ask my husband's rav via my
husband, relate to shialas that women try and ask me, especially when they
ask me because they do not want to go to a rav, for one reason or another.  

But basically it seems to be that we are comfortable with the current
arrangement, where women tend not to have relationships with rabbaim
directly, where they tend to ask other women, but the women they ask tend
not to have anything like the training one would give as part of a basic
smicha programme, - well just in terms of the complexity of it all.  And we
mix up people like Nechama Leibovitz - who were wonderful tanach teachers,
but were not known for knowing an awful lot about halacha, and Rn Jungreis,
- a great mussarist etc, but ditto - none of whom have cut their teeth on
yoreh deah and orech chaim - and we think this lack of quality control is
just fine and dandy (or we keep telling the askers to go off and ask a rav,
which they won't- but maybe we should have some thundering from the pulpit
on this - except that they don't come to shul in time to hear the thundering
from the pulpit, not being very engaged by shul in the first place).  And
the people asking the questions don't have the knowledge to know the
difference (believe me, they don't).  And you end up being faced with either
letting them muddle through on their level of knowledge of, eg hilchos
shabbas (which can be woeful), or your knowledge of hilchos shabbas (neither
of which is anything like near the level one ought to have to posken but in
the land of the blind etc etc).

No idea whether maharats will help deal with this mess - and whether they
should (maybe we should just have some more thundering - but you still
haven't addressed the question as to how a single woman is supposed to
develop a relationship with a Rav, contrary to the traditional model - but
then again maybe she shouldn't and mutav shoggagin - which seems to have
been at least one way the question has been answered in the halachic
literature - think women's jewelry), but once you frame the issue as about
public need as you do, then it is not very hard to see the public need that
is arguably being addressed.
 
> -Micha

Regards

Chana