[Avodah] Tzeni'us and gender roles

[Chana Luntz]

RMB writes:

> Yes, this determination has to be made. (You invoked my children, but
> that just demonstrates that you don't have children of that 
> age yourself, yet. My daughter came back from sem, and all I can do is
give 
> points of information, not make decisions.)

I don't have children of that age myself yet, but I am certainly expecting
it to be exactly the same for my children.  But that is because of a
conscious choice on my and my husband's part, to raise them within a modern
orthodox community and not a charedi one.  I am also fully expecting that if
and when shidduchim questions come up, *they* will the be the primary point
of call for such discussions, and I will indeed give no more than points of
information, if that.

But those I know who have chosen to raise their children within a more
charedi framework are dealing with the matter very differently.  The primary
contact point with the shadchan is them, the parents.  They are the ones who
talk primarily to the shadchan, they are the ones who seem to be given the
lists of names first, they are the ones who do the investigations (via
phoning up Roshei Yeshivos and other contacts).  Now the people I know do
seem to have reasonably good communication with their offspring, and they
take what it is that their offspring say they want very seriously (looking
eg for somebody who is "lively" or "wants to live in Israel" or "has the
right connections with the kollel in which he wants to learn" or whatever it
is that their offspring regard as very important).  But, the description of
only giving "points of information", not making decisions is a vast
underdescription of their role.  The reality is that the shidduch candidate
may never even know about a potential other candidate if the parents decide
not to pursue that person.  

Now the people I know find themselves in this role because they made a
positive and active choice to site themselves within the charedi community,
not within the modern orthodox one - it is a direct outcome of some definite
choices that they made, including the choice of elementry school for their
children (eg Beis Ya'akov).  

That is not to say that one's offspring may not have similar choices.  A
person, certainly from the modern orthodox community, can look for and find
as a shidduch somebody who wants to move rightward, they can make equivalent
choices for their children, including of schools, and they seem to then find
themselves pretty much in the charedi system.  Although as the schools gets
more and more oversubcribed, I think it is becoming harder, and part of the
hysteria about getting one's child into the right school has a lot to do
with the questions that are then asked by parents on the other side of the
shidduch system many years later.  After all, when presented with lists of
eligibles, the initial winnowing is most easily done by institution.

If however, the system fails initially, ie months and years pass without a
shidduch being successfully concluded, my impression is (and remember I am
describing this from the outside) that there is then a move to deal more
directly with the young person in question (by then they are older, after
all), along with offering them people who are considered more "flawed" by
the system.  This might possibly be able to be used a way of moving out of
the system.  If the person turns down all the offers of shidduchim that come
their way, until they are old enough that people stop really going to the
parents and they move into a different system, where they are the primary
contact, they may also be able to find someone who is on the fringes or
thinking along a different derech. 

But within this system, clearly there is an understanding that this is the
ideal, ie this is the right way for shidduchim to be made.  And people very
clearly buy into the school system because they buy into the shidduch system
(and hence they buy into the demands of the school system, which may
included things like, for example, getting rid of their television set or
internet connection, if they had one in the first place, or changing their
dressing style, in order to get into the school system, in order to get a
higher ranking within the shidduch system).  While those of us who are
choosing more modern orthodox schools for our children are, inter alia,
doing this because we do not buy into this system, and expect and hope that
our children will develop more autonomy.  Now, to the extent you switch your
children from a more right wing school to a more modern orthodox school, you
are highly likely to change the way that marriages are concluded for your
children, ie you may end up effectively opting out of the pure shidduch
system.  And if done for the happiness of the child, you are putting a
premium on personal autonomy and happiness (perhaps even over that of other
children) that other parents would not (and it is very doubtful that
historically such a choice would have been made, absent modernity).  And it
needs to be acknowledged that one of the consequences of that choice, is in
the vast majority of cases, later marriages for one's children.

> I find this and your post in general off-topic, since there 
> are different pros and cons with each change. Saying that we need more 
> yoatzot doesn't mean we need Maharatot, and saying that girls need more
role models of
> their own geneder doesn't imply we need more of either.
> 
> The Maharat is a unique invention in that it intentionally shadows
> the rav in both education and future job. It is on those criteria in
> particular that I question its net positive value. If the 
> woman would be a yoetzet, or give classes to the women in shul with no
more 
> a title than Nechamah Leibowitz's, would anything be lost? Would she be
any less of
> a crush-proof (for the girls and single women in her class) 
> role model, any less of a contributor?
> 
> But in general, each such decision is unique. You're grouping them all
> together as though the pros of education for college-bound 
> women are the same as the pros of some of those Jewishly educated women 
> becoming toanot leBD legeirushin. If I were to address the other questions

> you raise, my original point would be lost in the volume of the numerous 
> issues in each.

I don't think I was grouping them together.  I certainly barely touched on
yoetzet (which is, after all, a role that only comes into play after
marriage).  Nor did I mentione toanot at all.  What I specifically focussed
on, throughout my postings, was the fact that, as a consequence of
modernity, women are getting married later, ie you have single women around
at ages and in numbers you never had before.

Now some of those women are in seminary and some of those women are not.
And I have tried to discuss both groups, but primarily the latter.
 
> BY had a simple pro-vs-con -- either educate the girls who 
> were getting a secular education, or lose them to yahadus. Very 
> straightforward. The CC, BTW, phrased his endorsement in pesaq terms --
that learning what
> was necessary to be a shomeres Torah umitzvos is defined in part by
> this reality, and thus the original pesaq is now broader than just
> learning pragmatic halakhah due to this change in metzi'us.

Well yes and no.  You are right about the original Beis Ya'akov.  But the
*seminaries* ie the *post high school educational system* is not what the CC
was describing.  He was describing providing girls with an elementary or at
most an early high school education.  What we have today is unquestionably
an extension, in fact quite a major extension, on what the CC was dealing
with.  And it is certainly not clear that if you abolished all post high
school seminaries, you would lose girls to yahadus.  Do you *really* believe
that?  Especially if you beefed up the shidduch system I was describing
above, so as to enable the majority of girls to marry during their last few
years of high school.  So what I was trying to describe was the way that the
seminary system has morphed from that envisioned by the CC.  

But while this was a tangental part of my posting, I was primarily
discussing the situation of those not in seminary and not in marriage.
These are mostly college bound women, women in the workplace, women home
from seminary etc.  A yoetzet, as it is currently produced, has nothing to
say to these women - the subject on which they are trained and knowledgable
is completely inapplicable to them.  Your Nechama Leibotwitz's do not, in
general, give classes to women in shul - except as a guest lecturer.  There
are no funds to support such a person.  Mostly those sort of people are
increasingly to be found operating out of women's seminaries -which is where
they primarily teach (and where they feel more comfortable, they are
fundamentally scholars, and this is a better environment for a scholar).

But your very suggestion is interesting.  Are you advocating creating a paid
position in which a woman without a title will give lectures to women in
shul?  It will need to be supported by the community of course, out of
community funds, the same way that a rabbi is.  But if you didn't happen to
know a local candidate for such a position, how would you advertise it?
"Wanted, woman to give classes to women at shul X - salary $$$".  Does this
deal with your concerns - ie if we advertised for a woman to fulfil this
role without a title?  RKB tried to suggest that such women should be called
yoetzot - ie to extend that role.  But that seems to fundamentally change
(and undermine) what a yoetzet actually is.  A yoetzet is somebody a woman
can go to with intimate nidah questions, knowing that that person has had
training in both medical and halachic aspects of hilchos nida - it seems to
me to be fundamentally confusing and problematic to make it a more general
term.


And let's focus for a moment on what a Rav of a community generally does.
Many in fact have been predicting the demise of the community Rav ,due to
everybody going off to yeshiva and sem, and hence having more of a
connection with their rosh yeshiva than with their local Rav or an
environment where people prefer to run off to a known gadol.  However, they
don't actually seem to be dying, and if you look at what they actually do,
one can see why. While a Rav may sometimes sit on a beis din, that is not
his fundamental role, nor is it generally required.   The Rabbi's job is,
more than anything else, to be the primary contact for and to inject a bit
of yiddishkeit into the lives of baalabatim who may have nowhere else to go.
So, he gives a sermon on shabbas (and at barmitvahs and weddings and
funerals) which hopefully makes his listeners think.  He gives shiurim at
times when the community can find a few minutes to learn or to be inspired.
He provides guidance from a yahadus point of view on everything from grief
to joy to marital problems.  He is available when his community rings up in
a panic because the milky spoon has gone into the meaty pot or because the
are bothered by a haskafic problem or because something in their life has
gone badly wrong.  Ideally he also gives mussar and helps in midos growth
and provide a moral example. So long as you have baalabatim, you need a Rav.

And what I was trying to focus on was, what about the needs of single women
in such a community.   Is this woman that you have proposed will give
classes at the shul without a title also going to fulfil any or all of these
roles to the women?  For example, if the women are busy working all week,
and only make it to shul on shabbas, are you proposing that we should split
the shul, and while the Rav gives his drasha to the men, this woman should
talk to the women (or is she only going to give the occasional class at
inconvenient times or is she going to alternate with the Rav)?  Should this
woman's phone number be freely available, the way a Rav's traditionally is?
Or is it more important that these single women use the Rav for the phone
call type connections?  Does it matter if they feel unable to do so?  What
level of qualifications do you want to have on a woman applying for the job
?  Does it matter?  If the term Maharat meant doing all these things, with
an indication of basic halachic knowledge, would that satisify your concerns
(it would seem to satisfy RKB's, ie assuming the intention was meant clearly
not to be about gender equality, but to cater for the needs of women that
are identified as being currently being indequately met)?  Or is it too
dangerous to let the gender equality genie out of the bag?   Do you are
agree there are needs there that are not being met?  If so, how do we deal
with them?  And that goes back to my basic question, have you (and I)
according to you, made a mistake by putting our children into a modern
orthodox educational system that means they will not accept the shidduch
system as designed by the charedi world with the consequence of relatively
late marriage?

RMB writes:

> As above, I think the advantage of RHS's formulation that 
> it's not about "man lecturing woman". It has as much to say to someone
like 
> myself, who manages to work bragging about my teaching gigs into more 
> conversations than necessary -- as you yourself pointed out earlier in
this thread.

I fully understand that that is how it speaks to *you*.  What I was trying
to get you to see, however, is that is not how it speaks to everyone.  There
are other messages that can be derived from this.

> Second, I am nervous when I hear someone turning this into a 
> gender-war thing, that turning to a rav for hora'ah is somehow related to
abusive
> men who use gender norms to self-justify their controlling natures.

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.  I did discuss problematic dynamics
between single women and a rav, but I was at no time suggesting that the rav
was, or was likely to be, abusive.  The issue I did raise was about the
public stressing of the fundamental importance of the mida of tznius over
and above other midos to a general audience and whether this has dangers
(cons, as you would call it) as well as pros, that need to be thought about,
given the reality of the community we are dealing with.  

> : And I agree with RMB's example about OCD and the fact that 
> Torah observance
> : itself is open to abuse.
> 
> My example was actually about extra-halachic customs in hand 
> washing. I thought that some Qabbalah-based practice is closer to our case
than
> asking about din. After all, we can't ask questions about the 
> viability of following a halakhah.

But handwashing is indeed din - d'rabbanan perhaps, but din unquestionably.
The quabbalistic practices only add weight to the din.  But on the subject
of washing, lets take what always strikes me as even more difficult from an
OCD perspective than handwashing - how about checking for chatzizos before
immersion in a mikvah?  I do not have OCD tendencies, but that is the one
scenario that always strikes me as liable to bring out any such tendencies
anybody might have.  After all (especially if you are talking about tevilas
nida) we are talking about an issur kares if the dip is not done correctly,
and while (if you know something) you might be able to fall back on OK
b'dived on d'orisa principles, that is not exactly the l'chatchila approach
- and not the approach anybody with even the mildest form of OCD is going to
be able to take.

So I confess that if I was a kala teacher, or teaching hilchos nida (which I
*don't* let me stress), I would be very wary of laying it on too thick about
checking for chatzizos and stray hairs, and bits of skin (dandruff?) and
lumpy bits, etc etc. Because I could so easily see women getting so uptight
about it that they might struggle to get into the mikvah at all.  I am not
saying that one should not teach this, clearly one has to teach it, it is
indeed din after all, and yet I worry about dangers of emphasis  -especially
the kind of emphasis that one might get from a public lecture on taharas
mishpacha - and even though anybody stressing the point is not thinking
about OCD at all, but about those who are perhaps too sloppy in their
checking.  But maybe you disagree, and we should not be concerned with the
miut.  But if you are concerned with the miut, and not encouraging it, it is
probably worth exploring what it is that the miut uses to boost their
pathologies, and what sorts of things play into that.  On domestic violence,
for example, there is a wealth of literature about what are considered to be
risk factors (despite the common trop that domestic violence occurs amongst
all facets of society) and hence if one was seriously concerned about
reducing it, one might want to think about what might operate to reduce
those risk factors.  Not that these are exactly that easy, one of the ones
that pops up repeatedly is poverty, and we know exactly how easy it is to
eliminate that.  Which is why the debate is way more complicated than it has
appeared on Arevim (ie it can't be just Torah versus general society, one
has to look at whether the typical Torah lifestyle contains additional risk
factors (such as poverty) which perhaps adherence to Torah operates to
mininimise, which is a far more complicated equation).

This is only a sideline, as I have tried to indicate, in the same way that I
have generally tried to look at the pros and cons of early marriage, with
out reference to the fact that it too sometimes pops up as a risk factor for
domestic violence.

> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha

Regards

Chana