[Avodah] R' Marc Angel on the Obligation of Women to Learn Torah

[Michael Makovi]

Rambam, Hilkhot Talmud Torah 1:13 rules that teaching women Oral Law
is to teach tiflut, while bedieved they may be taught Written Law. His
reason is that "since the intelligence of the majority of women is not
geared to be instructed; rather, they reduce the words of Torah to
matters of foolishness according to the poverty of their
understanding."

(As an aside, I might personally note that Rambam speaks only of
FATHERS teaching their DAUGHTERS Torah; nothing is said of teaching
women in general. Perhaps there is a fear that the father - but not a
schoolteacher - will dote on his daughter and not see that she is
perverting the Torah into tiflut?)

First, we might note that Rambam is pasqening by Rabbi Eliezer, but of
course, Ben Azzai disagrees. So it's not as if we can say that
Rambam's ruling is unequivocally the opinion of "the Sages" (even
though Rambam says his is).

Now then, Rabbi Marc Angel (Maimonides, Spinoza, and Us: Towards an
Intellectually Vibrant Judaism) notes (p. 173) following Professor
Warren Zev Harvey ("The Obligation of Talmud on Women According to
Maimonides, Tradition 19:2) that "Moreover, Rambam rules that all Jews
- men and women - must fulfill the commandments of knowing, loving,
and fearing God. Furthermore, in his view, these commandments
presuppose a prior knowledge of physics and metaphysics." As Harvey
shows based on Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah, Rambam did explicitly
consider women to be obligated in Pardes, and according to Rambam, one
may not speculate in Pardes until one has "filled his belly with bread
and meat", i.e. Written and Oral Law. So how can Rambam exempt (or
forbid!) women from learning Torah, if they are obligated in Pardes,
which has learning Torah as its prerequisite?

(Harvey for his own part has his own solution to this problem,
utilizing Rabbi Soloveitchik's distinction between mussar avikha and
torat imekha, between legal tradition and experiential religion;
Harvey suggests women are obligated to learn Torah insofar as they
must learn the experiential component and pass it on to their
children, but that women are exempt from learning Torah insofar as
transmitting the legal tradition is concerned. Rabbi Angel does not
cite this solution of Harvey, rather being more concerned with the
question Harvey raises.)

Furthermore, as we saw, Rambam explained the prohibition of women to
learn Torah to be "since the intelligence of the majority of women is
not geared to be instructed; rather, they reduce the words of Torah to
matters of foolishness according to the poverty of their
understanding." Based on this, (quoting Rabbi Angel) "Rabbi Haim David
Halevy [Mayyim Hayyim 2:45] suggested that in earlier times, girls
received no formal education at all; thus, to teach them Talmud would
have been beyond their ken They lacked the rudimentary intellectual
training required for proper analysis of Talmud. Since in our times
women do receive formal education, Talmud may be taught to girls and
women who have demonstrated their ability to grasp the material."

Additionally, following Abraham Melamed ("Maimonides on Women:
Formless Matter or Potential Prophet?" in Perspectives on Jewish
Thought and Mysticism, ed. A. Ivry, E. Wolfson, and A. Arkush, Newark:
Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998, pp. 99-134), Rabbi Angel says, "It
has been argued that that in spite of Rambam's words relating to
women's intellectual abilities and education, he actually had a far
higher opinion of women's intellects. His statement in the Mishneh
Torah reflected his understanding of how things were, but now how they
could or should be. Throughout his writings, Rambam describes women as
being akin to children, in the sense that they had potential to learn
but had not yet fulfilled that potential. Indeed, some women did
achieve prophecy, which for Rambam was predicated on attaining
philosophical truth through intellectual exertion."

According to Rabbi Angel, then, Rambam would apparently ideally like
men and women to learn Torah equally, since (based on Harvey) both are
equally obligated in the mitzvot and Pardes. However, because (based
on Halevi) women of his time did not learn anything in general, they
were incapable of learning Torah, and so their untrained minds were
liable to pervert the Torah into tiflut, thus giving rise to the
prohibition. But Rambam would have preferred that this not be the
case, and indeed, in our days, it is no longer so.

Michael Makovi