[Avodah] Minhagei Nashim

[Akiva Miller via Avodah]

In a thread about Ner Shabbos, R' Zev Sero wrote:

> Thus it seems to me that this falls into the category of minhagei
> nashim which differ from how men would pasken were they asked,
> but the women have their own traditions and are not asking. But I
> don't see a basis for men, who don't have those traditions, to
> follow them. Yes, we are required to follow "toras imecha", but
> it seems to me that this means those things that women have
> traditionally taught their sons, not those that they have
> traditionally only taught their daughters.

That's an interesting way to classify things. I suppose it makes sense in
the context of Ner Shabbos, which a mother would certainly teach to her
daughters, but probably not to her sons. In this system, I suppose she
would also teach Kitchen Kashrus only to her daughters, but Brachos to all
her kids equally.

Please consider the following scenario. I suppose it could happen even
today, but it might be easier to imagine if you place it during the many
centuries when there was no schooling for girls...

A wife is preparing some food for dinner. She notices something unusual.
Maybe it has something to do with meat and dairy, or maybe it has something
to do with the just-shechted chicken she's kashering. Anyway, she concludes
- based on what her mother (and both grandmothers and all her aunts) taught
her - it's not a problem. Her husband happens to walk in, sees the same
thing, and points out that it is a very clear black-and-white halacha that
this food is assur.

One could say that this sort of thing happens very rarely, because the men
tend to stay out of the kitchen. But if you ask me, that only proves that
the couple is unaware of the problem. It probably happened quite often, but
no one noticed because the husband wasn't around.

How could this *not* be a frequent occurrence? The men are busy learning,
and the information never reaches the women. I concede that if a woman is
unsure, she will ask, and some halachos will filter over to her side. But
if she is *not* unsure, she could be blissfully unaware that her imahos
have had a tradition for many generations, and it differs from the
tradition that her husband got from generations of avos and teachers.

And if this sort of thing can happen in Hilchos Kashrus, how much more
often might it occur in Hilchos Nida?

You may notice that I am taking pains to tell this story without prejudice
as to which side is the truer halacha. Just because the women weren't in
yeshiva, that does not prove them to be in error. All it proves is that
there's been no opportunity for shakla v'tarya. Neither side can be
discredited until they've carefully debated the issues. So who is right?

As I wrote, these questions have been bothering me for years. But someone
said that "Emunah is not when you have the answers; it's being able to live
with the questions. " I got that chizuk from R' Haym Soloveitchik in his
now-classic "Rupture and Reconstruction", which is all about these opposing
chains of tradition, the mimetic and the textual. (The full text is on-line
at www.lookstein.org. Just google the title.)

He writes in footnote 18 there:

> The traditional kitchen provides the best example of the
> neutralizing effect of tradition, especially since the mimetic
> tradition continued there long after it was lost in most other
> areas of Jewish life. Were the average housewife (bale-boste)
> informed that her manner of running the kitchen was contrary to
> the Shulhan Arukh, her reaction would have been a dismissive
> "Nonsense!" She would have been confronted with the alternative,
> either that she, her mother and grandmother had, for decades,
> been feeding their families non-kosher food [treifes] or that the
> Code was wrong or, put more delicately, someone's understanding
> of that text was wrong. As the former was inconceivable, the
> latter was clearly the case. This, of course, might pose problems
> for scholars, however, that was their problem not hers. Neither
> could she be prevailed on to alter her ways, nor would an
> experienced rabbi even try. There is an old saying among scholars
> "A yidishe bale-boste takes instruction from her mother only".

Somehow, these chains do find a way to work together. But I must be clear:
I am NOT talking about a machlokes haposkim, where the wife was taught one
thing and the husband was taught something else. In that case, there is
much common ground, and they (or their rav) can go to the sources to figure
out what the couple should do. I'm talking about a much more fundamental
problem, where generations have passed on different traditions, without
anyone ever realizing that there was a mismatch.

(I'd like to close by pointing out that I am neither asking anything new in
this post, nor am I trying to answer anything. But RZS mentioned a
"category of minhagei nashim which differ from how men would pasken were
they asked", and I simply wanted to expound on that category.)

Akiva Miller
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