[Avodah] Deputy Ministers

[Jay F. Shachter]

In our sister mailing list Areivim someone wrote:

>
> It seems to me that RJR is accepting the premise that there is, in
> fact, a prohibition against serving as a minister.  Perhaps there is
> neither workaround nor loophole here at all, and simply a rejection
> of the original premise.
>

The context in which the above remark (which would otherwise be
unintelligible to Avodah readers who are entering into this discussion
for the first time) was made, is that there are, apparently, people in
Israel who are serving as "deputy ministers" in government departments
where there is no "minister", a legal fiction which circumvents the
prohibition against serving as a "minister".  The above poster
questions whether such a prohibition exists.

I do not know anything about the context of this phenomenon, beyond
what was given above, and I do not want to, because it will only
depress me.  I do not know who these people are.  I can tell you,
however, that if these people are women, then there is, indeed,
contrary to what the above poster suggests, a prohibition against
putting women in positions of authority in Israel.  This is not even a
crazy minority opinion; it is, in fact, the normative halakha.  I
swear I am not making this up.  See the Mishneh Torah, Sefer Shoftim,
Hilkhoth Mlakhim Umilxamotheyhem 1:5.

Moreover, since, in a democracy, supreme executive power derives from
a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony, it
follows that in Israel, Jewish women may not vote.  I swear I am not
making this up either.  This was the psaq of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook,
pursuant to which Nechama Leibowitz never voted in her life.


               Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
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               When Martin Buber was a schoolboy, it must have been
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