[Avodah] Tzeni'us and gender roles

[Chana Luntz]

I wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 11:50:03AM +0100, Chana Luntz wrote:
> : Let us just think for a moment about what it means to be 
> either a litigant
> : or a witness in any court system...
> : The whole exercise is, has to be, one of public humilation...
> : And take what perhaps seems like a more innocuous form of 
> witnessing - eg
> : being the eidim at a wedding.  Well that is all fine and 
> good if everything
> : goes well.  But if there is a serious problem with the 
> marriage, then there
> : could well be, many years down the track, a serious push to 
> pasul you the
> : eid....

And RMB replied:

> If you make the argument that we must be holding by a 
> different definition of tzeni'us because our behavior doesn't 
> fit the literal translation, then why not here too?

That is RMS not me (although I think his point is right, if we have two
different understandings that fit halacha, and one of them we appear to be
following in practice, and one we do not, then we have to say that the olam
has poskened like the first understanding).  But my objection to your theory
goes a lot deeper than RMS's - ie that your theory as applied to general
public roles is a fundamental violation of basic principles of yiddishkeit.
Ie if we have two different understandings, and one of them will lead to
fundamental violations of halacha and haskafa, that one needs to be
rejected, whether or not they are being put into practice by the olam.  If
the olam was really putting it into practice, we might have to ask searching
questions as to whether is there a way of reconciling what the olam is doing
with halacha and haskafa, but that is already a different metzius from the
one we have here.

> It is considered a kibud to be an eid at a wedding. I assume 
> because it implies that the person is clearly one "everybody" 
> would accept eidus from. But also because we realize that few 
> people are really embarassed by being singled out for 
> positive attention.

No, I assume it is because most people do not think about what being an eid
at a wedding really means, or about the link between eidus and beis din.

But that gets into the RMS type argument.  The point I was making is that
your (or RHS's) thesis about the undesirability of public roles does indeed
work vis a vis eidus - because eidus is (with the possible exception of
eidus on the chodesh) undesirable.  In an ideal world in which humans
behaved like angels, and the world was perfect, there would never be a
reason for eidus in beis din (except perhaps, as I have said eidus on the
chodesh).  The same is not true, at least according to Yahadus, for other
public roles (some other religions indeed differ and genuinely dislike
public roles for the very reasons you have articulated). The world we look
forward and pray to be implimented has a multiplicity of public roles, but
it will, we hope, have very very little eidus in beis din.

> The seifa you are willing to use as a raayah that tzeni'us is 
> misunderstood. (Although I don't see how your later 
> definition (b) ended up differing from my take on RHS.) So 
> why not use the reisha to prove that women also shouldn't be 
> concerned about the long-shot of humiliation at a messy get case?

I am not sure what is the reisha and the seifa - but neither you nor RAF
seem to be understanding what I am saying.  What I was trying to say was
that RHS's and your thesis does make sense vis a vis eidus, and eidus *only*
(so yes, it is an argument to exclude women from being eidim, including at a
wedding).  I am not saying that is the only way to understand the gemora in
Shavuos, but it is not a difficult reading of that gemora, so long as you
substitute for the word "tznius" "kol kavuda".  The link between kol kavuda
and tzanua laleches is, to my mind, forced, but RHS is not the only one to
try and make it, as mentioned so does Getzel Ellinson.  The real link, I
suspect, is that kol kavuda is about women, and tznius is, in the popular
mind, all about women, and hence all this women's stuff tends to merge (it
is RRW's free association). 

That is, first you have to agree that the role in question is genuinely
necessary but undesirable and should be minimised wherever possible.  I
believe that we can make that argument for eidus and for being a litigant
(we don't have to, in which case your thesis falls over vis a vis these
too), but that we *can*.  I do not believe we can make that argument for
general public roles such as those taken in shul or in terms of leadership
or in the beis hamikdash or just about anywhere else.

Then, *if* we agree that the role is undesirable and should be minimised
where possible -  you need some evidence that the halachic view is to
mandate men where it is not possible to minimise the role and to protect
women from it (or allow them to protect themselves from it).  That is why
the gemora in Shavuos is important - because that is precisely what it
discusses, at least vis a vis litigants, and possibly, at least by
implication, vis a vis eidus.  If however the gemora in Shavuos had said
that the reason women don't come to beis din is because of the kavod of beis
din, or some such, then you are effectively coming out against the gemora by
providing an alternative reasoning, and that is a very problematic thing to
do - you really need alternative sources, and authoratitive ones, that
indicate they disagree with the reason given in the gemora and allow for
other reasons to be substituted.  RAF is, by his use of the Sifri,
attempting to provide alternative reasoning - ie he appears to be seeking to
demonstrate that women are not permitted to speak at all in front of beis
din (although the language of the Sifri could be taken to say that women
aren't permitted to speak at all ever in front of men - even their husbands,
ie a very extreme reading of kol isha, or in front of their husband's in
public or that a twelve year old girl who has been slandered is not
permitted to speak or a whole host of other readings).

And only then, to my mind, you look at what the am are doing, and see
whether what they are doing fits in with all of this - and if it does not,
look at whether we can provide a limud tzchus that fits in with the whole
theory, whether the limud is strong enough to allow us to say that what the
am are doing is wrong, or whether we need to go back to alternative
explanations that do fit in with the practice.  

To my mind your general thesis fails all over the place.  Vis a vis eidus
and litigation, however, it at most fails at the last hurdle, and even
there, it it is not so clear (nobody multiplies the number of eidim at a
wedding to increase the number of kibudum, a common practice by aliyos, for
example).

> :-)BBii!
> -Micha

Regards

Chana