[Avodah] [Areivim] L'sheim shmayim

[Lisa Liel via Avodah]

On 5/26/2017 5:53 PM, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 05:03:41AM +0200, Ben Waxman via Avodah wrote:
> : If it helps, those who oppose hiring a maharat are also quickly
> : accused of being agenda driven.
> :
> : Unity: we all assume that's the person we see in the mirror is OK.
>
> I think it's more accurate to say those in favor of hiring a maharat
> believe that a certain trend is unchangable and positive, but their
> halachic response to that metzi'us is a pure halachic response.
>
> Unfortunately too many who are opposed think that there is an agenda
> to make halakhah more feminist. Rather, I see it as trying to have
> a halachic response to a progressively more feminist reality.

People keep using that word, "feminist".  I don't think that's what 
feminism means.  This is egalitarianism, which may overlap with feminism 
in some areas, but is a different ideology.

And I disagree with you about it being a halakhic response to reality.  
That would imply that halakha comes first and responds to reality.  I 
think that in the vast majority of cases, and if you want, I'll give you 
ample examples from the writings of JOFA/YCT people, it is a sense that 
egalitarianism is a moral imperative. That the egalitarian worldview is 
quite simply the *only* moral worldview, and that to the extent that 
halakha comforms to that worldview, it is a moral system, and to the 
extent that it does not, it is not.

> Whereas those who are pro think that talk of "mesorah" is just a means
> of cloaking agenda into jargon, so that the antis are following a
> non-halachic agenda by making it look holy.

It may be attractive to present a way of seeing the two sides as being 
mirror images of one another, but the mesorah is a reality that predates 
this entire debate.  When the egalitarians want to try and read their 
ideology back into Jewish history, they often do so with things like 
Rashi's daughters laying tefillin, a fiction which is accepted as fact 
by Conservative and Reform Jews, but has absolutely no historical basis.

There is a legitimate argument to be made that those on the side of 
tradition are afraid of change.  But not that they are *only* afraid of 
change.  Casual change of halakhic norms has caused enormous damage in 
recent history, and wariness or even fear of such things is both 
rational and reasonable.

Again, there may even be something admirable about trying to equalize 
the two sides the way you're doing here, but it doesn't match the 
reality.  One has only to listen to the types of arguments that are used 
by the two sides to see that they are operating on the basis of vastly 
different paradigms, where one *starts* with the Torah and one *starts* 
with egalitarianism.

> (My own reason for being anti is in line with my general monomania about
> fighting this identification of Torah with halakhah; halakhah is "only"
> a subset. And without aggadita and a study of values, there are halkhos
> that cannot be followed -- qedushim tihyu, ve'asisem hayashar vehatov,
> etc... So, I feel it critical to ask: Are we supposed to respond or
> resist certain kinds of feminism? What does the flow of tradition and
> general feel that emerges from halakhah say?)

It is extremely dangerous to attempt to use non-halakhic elements of 
Torah in a way that gives them primacy over the halakha.  The words of 
the Ramchal and Rabbenu Bachya are not as rigorously chosen as those in 
the halakhic areas of the Torah, and are far more easily "adapted" to 
foreign ideologies.  I don't say that they are unimportant, but let's 
not let the tail wag the dog here.

Lisa

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