[Avodah] Tyni'us and gender roles

[Meir Shinnar]

On Jul 23, 2009, at 6:33 AM, Arie Folger wrote:

> RMB asked:
>> Is the benefit a Maharat over a Yoetzet bring to the table the  
>> public's
>> or in her opportunity to serve G-d in the way the contemporary world
>> told her was more valuable? Or the benefit of being at the amud for
>> Pesuqei Dezimara rather than behind the mechitzah that of the
>> community?
>
> Again, I am not desirous of engaging in this debate, seeing as you
> guys are doing a fantastic job of analyzing all the most relevant
> angles. However, thanks to RMMakovi, I came accross the following
> translated quote from Rav Kook, that matches remarkably what RMB
> writes, whithout the tzniut lomdut. One could say that it anticipates
> one possible resolution of your debate.
>
>> The great religious Zionist rabbi, A.I. Kook, was certainly no
>> egalitarian towards women, but at least he remained cognizant
>> of the ethical costs and dangers entailed by traditional inter-
>> gender relations:
>>
>>> The virtue of modesty effects many benefits in the world, and
>>> therefore it is deemed important enough to negate other virtues,
>>> desirable in themselves, but which, because of man’s passions
>>> and weakness of character, might result in a breach of modesty
>>> on which the spiritual and material worlds depend. The virtues
>>> of love and friendship, in all their expressions, should have been
>>> the same for both sexes, but because of the high value of modesty
>>> is the virtue of good manners superseded so that the sages once
>>> advised a man not to extend a greeting to a married woman
>>> (Kiddushin 70b).
>>> The modest person recognizes that this is not because of hostility
>>> to the feminine sex that he keeps his distance and establishes
>>> restraints, but because of a general rule that is sound.
>
> (from: http://tinyurl.com/10curses )
>
> While the above does not deal with tzniut-as-privacy, not even with
> tzniut-insofar-as-it-is-gender-neutral, it does state that there are
> conflicting values, and that sometimes we sacrifice valid personal
> values for the sake of valid public values. Applied here it would
> validate the intent and the values behind the intent of, say, a
> Maharat, while giving overarching conflicting values to block that
> particular avenue.
>
> IOW, Rav Kook tends to deal with the latest twist in your respective
> analyses, namely, the possible tension between personal development
> and societal contribution. Quietism vs. activism. Some flavors of
> Mussar vs. public service.
In this case,Rav Kook's issue of tzniut is one that follows RCL's  
category of pritzut - the issue of modesty being because of man's  
passions and weakness of character, rather than the public/private  
nature that RMB is advocating.

In my discussion with RMB, the issue has not been whether one could  
formulate a theoretical basis of opposition between tzniut and being a  
public servant - clearly one can - nor whether there is a literature  
on the dangers of public service.  The issue of conflicting values of  
the individual needs and communal needs can be easilty stated.  The  
question is whether that theoretical basis of opposition has actually  
been expressed into the form that RMB and RHS have expressed - and I  
(and others) have argued that it hasn't, and that RMB and RHS's  
formulation is an innovation with dangerous consequences, and against  
the traditional literature.

One could formulate an opposition to public roles for women on the  
basis of tzniut as representing the pritzut category - which would be  
more of what RAY Kook is doing - but then the issue becomes the  
general social role of the woman in the MO community.

Meir Shinnar