[Avodah] Tzeni'us and gender roles (Micha Berger)

[Chana Luntz]

RMB writes:

> I think that you're working from an outsider's view of chareidi life.

I am indeed, deliberately so.

> It's like all the talk about subjugating onself to daas Torah 
> as seen from the media vs what you hear from yeshivish people 
> on Avodah about how their decision-making really works. 
> (Thanks RJJB who recently brought up that example in an IM 
> discussion.) The child has to make a conscious decision to 
> allow their parents into that role.

Yes, agreed, although they have been educated towards doing so.  But there
is always the option of not doing so and if they don't they will refuse
everything proposed to them.  The key factor though, that a lot of the key
decisions regarding who to marry are left, with the conscious agreement of
the child, to the parents, and marriage is concluded earlier than it
otherwise would because the child is not, at the age that marriage is
concluded, capable of making such decisions by themselves.  The charedi
system leads to earlier marriage, and the modern orthodox system leads to
later marriage, and both are hashkafic choices.  Which have consequences.  

> Is that the question of Maharat? Or is it something else 
> grouped together?

I am not at all sure that Maharat as currently designed specifically is a
good solution.  But what I was trying to get you to examine are some of the
issues which perhaps need addressing, which might lead many people to
believe that, when proferred a solution in the form of the Maharat, that
this is a solution.  You keep responding with yoezet and toenet and Nechama
Leibowitz, whereas to my mind, these deal with completely different
problems, problems that you acknowledge are problems, and hence it is very
easy for you to acknowledge them as good solutions.  On the other hand, you
keep saying that you can't see the problems that Maharat may be seen by
others to address.   
 
> If we have a need for women in such a role, and I could see 
> many communities that would need a paid position for an adult 
> educator of this sort, then create such a position and a new 
> title. I must be missing something, because that seems trivial.

Not at all trivial. What title do you suggest?
 
> Learning YD wouldn't be a part of it.

Well it might be, if somebody preferred to ask their kashrus and shabbas
questions to somebody whom they felt they could be on the same wavelength
with.  I am not convinced that is so pashut. Given the number of shialas
that come my way, I don't think it is pashut at all.  Being not equipped and
not interested in answering shialas doesn't mean that one doesn't get asked.

 Nor would her being the 
> one officiating (being mesaderet) at lifecycle events, the 
> leader of the shul, etc...

Well batmitzvah perhaps, (pregnancy, zeved habat, miscarriage at a stretch,
mourning perhaps if the general minhag is not for women to be involved in
the general mourning rituals, which is probably not the case in an MO
environment) but generally I would have thought not.  But that is the point.
If you acknowledge there are real needs to be met, then one could think
about tailoring something to meet those needs.  If you dismiss the existence
of any such needs, then obviously you will be against change.  If however
there are real needs, and you are failing to acknowledge them, then you are
leaving the running to those people who have an agenda to provide more than
the needs warrant.

> Remind me again, why do they need the derashah to come from a woman?

Because many single women are failing to relate to a Rav and as they are not
(or no longer) in seminary they are receiving no role modelling and often no
yiddishkeit imput at all and are drifting in yahadus terms while waiting to
find a husband (they may be storming ahead with their career, or their
university education, but that is a different matter).  You could indeed
schedule such a talk for a Tuesday evening. But the reason the drasha arose
on Shabbas is because for (childless) working people, that is the time when
they are most likely to be available, and most likely to be receptive.  Once
upon a time there was no drasha at all, certainly mid service, it is a
relatively modern innovation, done because that is best time to reach
people.  If you scheduled the Rav's drasha on a Tuesday evening too you
would get far far fewer people who could gain any inspiration from it. 

As I have said, a number of times, to my mind, one solution to this problem
is early marriage, that is why I keep going on about it.  It is the
traditional way of ensuring there is not a problem.  Another is to take the
view that a few years or a decade of down time yahadus wise doesn't matter.
But if you think that growing in yahadus is important, and early marriage is
not a solution, then it seems to me you need to look at other solutions to
increase the ability for women to find role models and people who fit the
aseh l'cha rav model, even if it is "rav" with a small "r" rather than "Rav"
with a capital "R".  And if you don't then logically people are going to
step in with a solution that turns a rav with a small "r" into Rav with a
capital "R".   
 
> : Not quite sure what you are getting at here - because I 
> don't see any
> : discussion about turning to a rav for hora'ah - which is 
> very personal and
> : hopefully taylored with abusive men...
> 
> Except that you spoke against men lecturing women. If this is 
> an issue for a woman, how can she be ready to accept hora'ah 
> when she has to ask a man?

I'm sorry that you cannot see the difference between a public lecture on the
importance of an identified midah and ho'rah.  I don't quite know how to
further explain that to you, but I think there are many people who have
negative reactions to a certain type of lecturing, because it feels like it
is all about yenem (ie them, not the lecturer) (even if the one giving the
lecture doesn't think that is the message they are conveying), and horah. It
is not necessarily a gender thing, by any means, just a situation where
whoever is giving the lecture is, due to whatever circumstance, less tempted
or less tested or whatever.  For example, does the fact that somebody who
has been put through some severe life tests may have a negative knee jerk
reaction to somebody who has been less tested telling them that "HaShem
doesn't give tests to people He doesn't know can manage them" mean that they
cannot accept horah?   Or just that they might prefer to look to a Rav who
is able to be a bit more empathic.

But a deeper problem, in my view is that there are lot of women out there
who do not feel able to ask a man horah (lectures or no lectures), so they
don't.  They don't ask anyone and just muddle through or they ask their
women friends or some woman whom they think might know something - if the
rebetzin is good at her job they will ask her (that is another traditional
way of dealing with the problem, make the rabbinate a him and her job, and
interview her just as much as you interview him - but it does mean that a
man who wants to be a community Rav, and who may have skills to be a
community Rav, needs to interview prospective spouses and make sure they are
up to sharing his job with him).  I know this is an attitude you want think
should be changed, but how are you going to go about doing it?

> The practices are NOT din. 

Minhag k'din hu.

Lehalakhah, I did a full neigl 
> vasr if I pour water over my weaker hand and then my stronger 
> one (sorry, as a lefty that's the only way I coudl phrase it) 
> and then put the cup away. Since I'm not Teimani, I violated 
> minhag, not din. I never saw a teshuvah arguing that we 
> should break the mimetics of neigl vasr because it is a 
> danger for those of us with OCD.

I agree.  Nobody I know is going to undermine a bone fide documented minhag
on that basis either, any more than they are going to say that all
Ashkenazim can eat kitniyos because you may find some who are so alergic to
various items they need greater nutrition than a non kitniyos diet allows.

 And I see that as something 
> of a parallel to your raising the issue of kol kevudah and 
> abusive men.

Only if you argue that we have a a bone fide documented minhag towards kol
kevudah in the manner in which you describe it.  But as you keep agreeing,
we do not have a minhag.  The  best you can come up with is the halacha to
refuse aliyos, which, you agree, is constantly violated in practice.  Nor
are there any other minhagim of the community that in fact accord with this
concept.  According to you, the community is doing the wrong thing by not
having such a minhag, and you are strongly advocating creating such a
minhag.  If there was a particular practice that nobody in the community
did, but a person was arguing that it would be good to do, then if indeed
this practice would be a significant danger to those with OCD, it would seem
to me that it would indeed be appropriate to take that fact to take into
account when examining whether to recommend the practice.

Regards

Chana