[Avodah] Women and tefillin

[Meir Shinnar]

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> "> RZS: Are you suggesting that the mere presence of tzitzis on a garment, no
>> matter how feminine, is enough to render it "kli gever"?
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> RMB: Why not? If my plucking gray hairs could be beged ishah..."
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>
> Me: IOW, if a woman was wearing a cape that was clearly made for, and worn by, women only such that it would be an issur for men to wear it, if it was altered to have four corners it would still be a women's garment unless she put tzitzit on it which would then transform it into a beged ish which neither she nor a man could wear? Sounds strange to me.
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> Joseph Kaplan
>
Several issues with RMB's point:
1) First, my understanding is that kli gever and kli isha only applies
to what is visible - eg, does not apply to undergarments, etc - the
essence of kli gever and kli isha is the public appearance as the
other sex.
Therefore, a talit katan with the tzitzit tucked in should not have
any issue of kli gever - which then  implies that the it is not the
tzitzit itself that is the problem.

2) RJK's example relates to a different example - in the discussion of
pants,some of the poskim who were mattir wearing pants - if the only
issue was kli gever, held that wearing specifically women's pants
removed the issue of kli gever.  The question is, for most things, not
the general category of garment - but the specific garment.

3)The issue of plucking grey hairs is an interesting example - and the
other one would be weapons, according to some.  The issue there,
however, isn't epidemiology - that they are used primarily by one sex
- but that intrinsic value of them is thought gender specific.  The
fact that the rambam discusses women wearing tzitzit shows that this
is not the case- and we are left only with epidemiology - and that has
very different rules.

Meir Shinnar