[Avodah] Women and Matzah

[Micha Berger]

We were discussing on Areivim a minhag (observed by the Liska Rebbe)
to only eat matzah on Pesach as needed for the mitzvos of the first
nights. Someone asked about motzi la'az al harishonim, and I suggested:

>>                  my bet is that those who have this minhag would say
>> that it's nisqatnu hadoros that cost us the art of making baked goods
>> that one can rely on even without the 1st night's chiyuv outweighing
>> the minimal cheshash we have today.

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 09:57:50AM +0300, Ben Waxman replied:
> If they really believed that then they wouldn't allow women to eat matza.

Pesachim 43b: "Lo sokhal alav chameitz" includes anyone who is obligated
in the issur of chameitz. And so, women are mechuyavos in Pesach, matzah
and marror.

This distinction, as well as the numerous other exceptions to the rule
of mitzvos asei shehazman gerama, led RSRH to suggest that there is
a second, unstated, criterion -- that the mitzvah must also relate to
man's calling to "mil'u es ha'aretz vikivshuha".

RSRH notes the difference between q'ri and kesiv in the last word. While
the nikud for "vikishuha" is in the plural, the qubutz/shuruk is written
chaseir, as though the word is in the singular. As in the rest of the
pasuk, "peru urvu", the obligation rests on the man, but it takes both
genders in order to acheive this goal. As he puts it, "by excusing the
female sex from the hard labor of subduing and mastering the earth,
He left it free to be devoted to the higher and more humanistic task
of employing the products of the man's labor for the ethical purposes
of building up a house and a family, that is to say, in the service of
his true vocation..."

IOW, it's Jewish man's duty to extend the influence of kelal Yisrael,
it's the woman's duty to insure that we, internal to beis Yisrael,
stay on course.

I called this in the past "inside" and "outside", as it relates also
to Hirsch's translation of the verse "kol kivudah bas melech penimah --
the daughter of the King is all-glorious inside". Man focuses on goal,
on moving outward, kibbush; woman refocuses on the process, on the
internals of how that goal is reached. (Be it on the level of the home
or of the community.)

The seder is internal, in the sense that it's "vehigadta levincha machar".
Succah, however, deals with the relationship between "inside" and
"outside", which is why we leave the home. Therefore, RSRH explains,
women are mechuyavos in seder and its mitzvos but not in succah.

According to RSRH, if we take the two criteria together, all the
exceptions to the rule of MASG evaporate. However, one could argue that
this mapping from mitzvah to ta'am, and therefore to whether or not
it relates to vikivshuha, is somewhat subjective. With a different
understanding of the purpose of Succah, perhaps one could argue
otherwise. For example, Succah could also be seen as teaches us the nature
of home, and the difference between the Jewish home and the house of
hishtadlus that it dwells in. In which case, why aren't women mechuyavos?

Perhaps RSRH would say that this is why the 2nd criterion isn't included
in Chazal's rule-of-thumb. It's too hard to pin down to be a useful
guideline. It's (also? or is this just a rephrase of the previous
sentence?) not the way halakhah and aggadah work -- you don't derive
halakhah from aggadah (until all else fails at providing a preference)
you learn lessons of aggadah from the halakhah. We can't use the
"kivshuha-ness" of the mitzvah to determine whether or not women are
mechuyavos. Rather, RSRH utilizes the presence or absence of chiyuv to
understand the message of the mitzvah.

(Most of this post was cut-n-pasted from what I posted in Jun 2000 at
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol05/v05n071.shtml#02>.)

:-)||ii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 2nd day
micha at aishdas.org        in/toward the omer.
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