[Avodah] Tzeni'us and gender roles

[Meir Shinnar]

> RRW
> My opinion: women should not "ape" men but come up with feminine
> alternatives for WTG's instead. This is not just about not being
> egalitarian, it's about being an alternative and not an echo!
> (Remember Barry Goldwater? :-)
>
> Illustration:
> Friday evening:
> Have women sitting in a circle and alternating reciting p'suqqim in  
> Shir
> Hashirim - perhaps w/o a leader.
>
> Then maybe Eishes Hayyil...
>
> Morning do same for pesuqqei d'zimra.
>
> Maybe skip Torah reading and go straight to haftara
> - unless torah reading has a "shira" in it.
>
> My 2 cents
>

Nothing intrinsically wrong, and this tries to address the problem -  
the issue that the solution sounds ersatz and artificial, rather than  
reflecting what we have learned public tefilla is...

>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="cp1255"
>
> Joseph C. Kaplan:
>> But that's just the point -- men do NOT violate tzni'ut as LITTLE
>> as possible; they violate it as MUCH as possible if you accept RHS  
>> and
>> RMB's definition of tzni'ut for men.
> RRW
> WADR this is a straw man
>
> RHS, RMB gave an ideal view - not necessarily THE pragmatic one
>
> I backed them up with a svara from a different context
>
> J Kaplan's upshlug has naught to deal with the ideal but with the
> realia...
>
> -------------------------
>
> Once a rav in Hartford gave a speech opposing giving $$ for kibbudim.
> And he even gave a disclaimer - this will kill the whole business!
> :-). IOW he realized he was reading from a sefer and that this ideal
> would conflict with the shul's ability to find its budget. So he gave
> a wink and nod but explained the mussar of not chasing kavod.
>
> He certainly had little or no expectation of being mevatel the shul's
> own successful auctions for kibbudim!
The problem is that there is no evidence that this was ever an ideal.   
Your rav in Hartford was addressing a classical issue in the problems  
with kibbudim - the basis by which kibbudim are distributed - should  
it be on the basis of money, communal power, or some other measure of  
merit - and there is an extensive literature that views distributing  
kibbudim by merit as the ideal, and using money as the basis as  
problematic. This is  an ideal which, on a practical level, is  
difficult to implement - although attempts at at least partial  
implementation do exist, and your rav did not function in a vacuum  
(one can think, for example, on the literature about giving rishon to  
a kohen am haaretz over a talmid chacham...)

With this claimed ideal, prior to RHS's speech, we have not been given  
any source that would suggest that this was ever an ideal (the  
citation from RYBS actually suggests otherwise) - and no attempt ever  
to implement this presumed ideal even on a partial basis.  A partial  
implementation of this presumed ideal wojuld clearly have been  
feasible in many situations - but we don't have any evidence that it  
actually ever was even attempted - even as  quixotic effort (a la the  
Rav in Hartford).  Ideals which claim to be halachic should have some  
measure of halachic literature and practice to support that they are  
an actual ideal....(and indeed, the only proposed application of this  
ideal is for women's communal roles )


Meir Shinnar
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