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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial>From: Daas Books <info@daasbooks.com><BR><BR>Maybe a different
way of asking your question is: what's the Torah hashkafa<BR>behind the
permission of polygamy on the one hand and the prohibition<BR>against polyandry
on the other?<BR><BR>....R' Tarfon married 300 wives (Yerushalmi Yevamos 4).
There was a famine and<BR>as a Cohen he had plenty of food.<BR><BR>But the
question remains -- why this heter exclusively for
men?<BR><BR><BR></FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV>>>>>></DIV>
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<DIV>The main reason is that men and women are different, and a woman feels a
loyalty and an attachment to her husband -- as well as an emotional, social and
financial dependence on him -- that simply could not work with two or more
husbands. The Torah is an Owners Manual written by our Manufacturer and
accords with human nature. </DIV>
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<DIV>Closely related to what I have said about the inbuilt nature of a woman is
the simple fact that if a woman had more than one husband, paternity would be
difficult if not impossible to establish. Men would shirk their duties to
their offspring, and to the women who must necessarily go through months of
pregnancy and many more months of nursing and caring for those offspring, if
they did not know that the little tykes were in fact their own.</DIV>
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<DIV>You have to forget that women nowadays can easily avoid pregnancy, that
they compete with men in the workplace, that they can buy formula in the
supermarket and don't have to nurse, that they have baby warehouses aka
daycare centers to store inconvenient babies while Mommy works, that most
jobs aren't physically strenuous anymore, that DNA can prove paternity.
You have to forget the developments of the last fifty years and think of the
last five thousand or so years of human biology and human nature.</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><B><BR>--Toby Katz<BR>=============</FONT><FONT lang=0 color=#000000
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