Many of my male friends feel lost - they still feel the pressure to do these strong, stereotypically masculine things - to be the primary bread-winner, to be good at sports, to be debonaire around women -but they feel very disempowered to perform the tasks society asks of them as men. This frustration results in anti-feminist sentiment, and sometimes even in mysogyny - or at the very least, to refusal to listen to feminist enlightenment about the latent sexism that is inherent in most of society and in the lives of many individuals.
All of this makes me wonder if Orthodox Judaism has something right when it comes to having male-only participation in public prayer ritual: Given that men are in a society where they expect themselves to act powerful, they are more likely to participate in a ritual that makes them feel empowered - an egalitarian setting where being male does not confer special privileges does not appeal to them, because in the rest of their lives being a male does entail such privileges, and thus, the egalitarian setting seems disempowering by contrast.
Studies repeatedly show*** that women tend to be more religious than men. This could mean that men need that extra incentive to show up - and empowerment, the feeling of comeradery with fellow men in a way that is both exclusive and competetive - can give them that, similar to the way that sports inculcates a feeling of comradery through competition and exclusiveness (since sports have traditionally been all-male, and even today, there are usually all-male sports settings). Praying publicly is not exactly a competetive sport, but it is certainly a type of performance that can allow one to "prove oneself", and public prayer space can be an important stage on which men can perform their masculinity.
Traditionally, women have also had exclusively female domains in which to perform their female identity, but such spheres have been in private, and usually the tasks through which one proved herself were domestic tasks, such as weaving - as illustrated by the tale of Arachnid.
This is not to say that men's greater role in public prayer is necessarily the ideal situation; rather it is a realistic reaction to the current flaws of society. As society becomes more egalitarian, the needs for inequality in public prayer may decrease or disappear. Perhaps this is what is meant by kavod hatzibur: In a congregation where men feel the need for their exclusive role in public ritual in order to maintain their dignity as men, then women may not violate that need. In congregations where men feel no such need however, women may participate and read from the Torah.****
The idea of Judaism realistically responding to a flawed society is not new: Chazal say that the concept of "eshet yefat toar" the set of halachot allowing the taking of a war captive as a wife, while severely limiting the circumstances and ways in which one may do so (essentially setting up safeguards to protect the captured woman) was a way to regulate an inevitable - yet undesirable - occurrance. In "The Guide to The Perplexed", Rambam says that the instiution of sacrifices was a response to a context in which the Jews were surrounded by idolatry and had a need for physical, tangible worship of an un-corporeal, intangible God.
Of course, there is a danger in that argument: One can see all of halacha as responding to flawed society, as being a legal system meant to improve the world and engage in tikun olam. One can then argue that since A has been fixed today, halachas about A no longer apply (example: pork, trichonosis). As a matter of fact, this is the general danger in looking for "taamey hamitzvot", logical reasons behind the mitzvot. Chazal however, while claiming that eshet yefat toar was not ideal, despite their writing when Israel was no longer waging wars, did not uproot those laws. Rambam, while writing of sacrifices as un-ideal, still wrote and codified the laws of sacrifices in his halachik legal work, "Yad Hachazaka". Thus, suspecting a reason behind a certain set of laws does not allow one to change the law itself in response to that suspicion. The law remains untouched and unmutable, and is, if nothing else, a tradition that reminds us of the types of society faced by our ancestors, in its response to the needs of those societies.
The law must remain relevant to our society today, as well - and it does so. For while the law can not be changed based on outside logic, it may be changed using its own internal logic - that is, using a list of arguments that have previously been used in halachik discourse, as well as texts from the halachik cannon, one may come up with new rulings - just as, in American legal law, using previous case rulings, as well as logic used in various legal cases and rulings, and texts in the legal cannon, one may come up with new rulings. These rulings however, must be made from within the legal system, and not because of the imposition of an outside value. Thus, feminism can not be a reason for changing a halacha. However, if there is a halachik value (ie kavod habriot - human dignity) that has previously been used to overturn rabbinic law (and there is, in the Talmud) then one may -with caution - use that value to overturn a rabbinic law today - if there is no such precedent, one can not. Thus, women may read from the Torah because the prohibition against their doing so is a rabbinic law, and violates their kavod habriot, which trumps the prohibition. This is also a slippery slope however, because what if I decide that waiting between meat and milk violates my kavod habriot? That is why there must be an objective legal body making these decisions as opposed to individuals merely throwing away whatever they feel violates their dignity.
Nevertheless, the same book by Dr. Sperber that allows women to read from the Torah because of kavod habriot, does not enable them to be counted as part of a minyan, even though that is only a rabbinic halacha and should technically be trumped by kavod habriot as well. I don't know why this is, but would like to posit a theory: Dr. Sperber is careful to combine the kavod habriot argument with other halachik arguments, because -especially today, when a changing world makes changing law so tempting, and when our generation does not have the same authority as previous generations - changing halacha must be done with caution. Therefore, sometimes, especially when it comes to changing something so foundational to the daily life of the observant Jew, it is not enough to have one halachik argument in favor of the change, but one must have two arguments, or one extremely, extremely, strong argument - just as, in order for a law to be overturned by the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court will generally have a very, very good reason - or a combination of smaller reasons - in order to do so. The default position should be one of stasis: A law is innocent until proven otherwise. In the case of public Torah reading, the Talmud says that essentially women may read, however they should not, because of kavod hatzbiur (according to Dr. Sperber's interpretation). In the case of minyan, there is no precedent for women counting for minyan - there is no argument about it, because there isn't even one dissenting opinion that says they may count.*****
The fact that for centuries rabbis did not go around merely saying "kavod habriot trumps this halacha" every time a halacha caused discomfort for their community is an implicit argument against using kavod habriot as the only grounds for uprooting a halacha, though this implicit tradition is counter-balanced by the tradition of saying "The halacha does X, but our community does Y and that's ok", or "The halacha is X, but that would be too hard for our community, so I will rule Y, even though it's not ideal"- which goes back to halacha's realistic response to an imperfect world. Today, rabbis do not engage in this tradition, perhaps because in a globalized world, rabbis are often ruling not for a smaller community of which they have in intimate knowledge, but for a wider community and individuals across the globe.
*** At least in the US - I have not read about other countries, specifically.
**** Dr. Daniel Sperber, in his book "Darcha shel Halakha", said congregations, while having the right to kavod hatzibur, may give up on that right, the same way that a parent may give up on their right to certain aspects of kibud av vaem and allow their child to do things that technically violated the parent's right to kibud.
***** There is however, a passage in the Talmud stating that if there are only nine men for minyan, a woman may be the tenth man, as may a male minor holding a Torah scroll.
For the part where you say: "Perhaps this is what is meant by kavod hatzibur: In a congregation where men feel the need for their exclusive role in public ritual in order to maintain their dignity as men, then women may not violate that need. In congregations where men feel no such need however, women may participate and read from the Torah."
ReplyDeleteMy only hesitation is to what extent we actually like this logic - in other words, would we use this logic a priori? Can this be anything other than a post facto apologetic?
The test might be to see: would we use this logic in any other realm? Instead of "public ritual," if we said "the field of medicine" or "public office," would we still find this to strike our minds similarly? If not, it doesn't mean we change our conclusions, but it might mean we don't think of this as a reasonable point to bring up. There are certainly academic areas that have become dominated by women since that became accepted (in the sciences, the life sciences tend to be an example).
Really, the most basic question is: If this is the primary reason, then why does the dignity of men outweigh the dignity of women?
(I am told that one of the more striking experiences as a Jewish observant woman, one where you really *feel* the exclusion and almost a lack of respect, is walking into a daily Shacharit minyan fairly early on, when there are 8-9 men there. The experience of opening the door, seeing the men's faces light up for a second as they look toward the door, then fall in disappointment as they realize it's just a woman, is apparently a pretty strong one.)