[Avodah] Women and Tallis

[Chana Luntz]

I wrote:
> : Of course it follows the forms established by the halacha.
> :
> : The minhag is for (a man) to perform the mitzvah of davenning in an
> : enwrapping (probably white with black stripes) thing with four
> corners on it
> : (which for halachic reasons therefore needs tzitzis)...

And RMB replied

> I would have said the minhag is for a man to make a point of performing
> the mitzvah qiyumis with a tallis of that description. If you reduce
> the minhag to the tallis, not the tallis as a way to wear tzitzis, then
the
> minhag for men wouldn't fit the action of a mitzvah either.

But it is more than that.  It is not just that the minhag is for a man to
make a point of performing the mitzvah qiyumis with a tallis of that
description at random points in the day, unconnected to anything else, it is
that it is the minhag for a man to make a point of performing the mitzvah
quyumis with a tallis of that description *while davening*.  If you see a
man (not some extra pious talmud chacham, but a stam yid) wearing a tallis
gadol - you are going to conclude either that he (a) is davening, (b) is
just about to daven or has just finished davening or (c) perhaps (and
usually at most only on shabbas where there is no eruv) he is going to and
from davening and is wearing his tallis gadol as a way of getting it there
and back so he can daven in it. Now this doesn't have to be the case.  When
I see a man with the tzitzis of his tallis katan hanging out, I do not think
of any association with davening, because there isn't one.  But I do
associate a tallis gadol with davening, and I can't believe that anybody
else out there does not have the same association.  The reason for that
association is minhag.  If the minhag had grown up that a man fulfilled the
mitvah qiyumis with a black and white striped tallis *while eating* or
*benching* then I and you and everybody would have a completely different
association every time we saw a tallis gadol.  But that is not what history
decided, the minhag arose that linked the tallis gadol to davening.  And
that is why the woman in the RYBS story wanted to daven with a tallis gadol
(with or without tzitzis) and not bench in it.

> There is no mitzvah to wear a tallis -- only the tzitzis on it.

Agreed.  And there is no mitzvah to float ones hands over a korban, only to
do proper smicha.  But I do not believe that the nachas ruach that the
Chachimim understood they were giving women by allowing the floating the
hands over a korban could have been achieved by telling them to go and float
their hands over a stam cow, or a chicken or even a dedicated animal that
was yet to be brought to the beis hamikdash. The point was the context.
There is a mitzvah of korban (which women in general are obligated in,
although perhaps, as per the Ra'avid, these particular women weren't in
these particular korbanos) and associated with that is a mitzvah of smicha,
performed as part and parcel of the process of korbanos.  And what the
Chachamim allowed was (certain) women to do what looked like (but wasn't)
the mitzvah of smicha as part and parcel of the process of bringing korbanos
(which may have been the women's own korbanos, or may have been korbanos
that were not halachically theirs, but with which they were associated, eg
via their husbands).  Similarly what happened here was that the woman
performed the mitzvah of davening, which has associated with it (by minhag)
the mitzvah of tzitzis, and what the initial permission from RYBS allowed
was for her to do what looked like (but wasn't) the mitzvah of tzitzis as
part and parcel of the process of davenning.  And from that she got nachas
ruach.  It seems to me that it is hard to find a closer parallel to the case
of the gemora.

> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha

Moed Tov

Chana