Gender roles continue to challenge the Orthodox world of Haredi Judaism in Israel–and elsewhere in the world today even now as women continue to be arrested for wearing a tallit at the Western Wall.
A Primer on the History of Torah Reading
The idea of women’s aliyot (being called to say a blessing over the Torah) continues to pit the world of the past with the world of the present. I guess we could call it , “The Halachic War of the Worlds.” That being said, one ought to ask, “Have rabbis always been so rigid?” The answer might surprise you—no! One Talmudic discussion reads, “Our rabbis taught: all are qualified to be among the seven (who read the Torah)–even a minor and a woman, but the Sages said that a woman should not read because of the esteem of the congregation (kevod ha-zibbur).” [1]
How are we to understand the concept of “communal respect”? We will examine a couple of other interpretive possibilities.
(1) In ancient times each person called up to the Torah, had to also read the section of the Torah relevant to his her aliya. This of course differs from what we see in most synagogues today. Nowadays, it is usually customary for one individual to read the Torah for the entire congregation. Usually, it is the rabbi or the cantor that has this duty since it requires considerable skill.
Now in ancient days, most communities were illiterate. If a woman came from a wealthy home and was privileged to have an education, she could read the Torah for herself. However, since many males were incapable of reading, the woman’s skill made the men feel inferior. The issue became all the more acute if the men who protested happened to be the individuals who took the greatest amount of economic responsibility in running the synagogue. Simply put, money talks. Once these wealthy men made a ruckus in the synagogue, the Sages decided not to call women up to the Torah anymore in the interest of peace. It had nothing to do with whether a woman was “ritually impure,” for even men were never required to maintain ritual purity. Some Hassidic savants argued that the words of Torah are beyond impurity and can never become ritually impure through human touch.
(2) On the other hand, it is possible that the Sages feared the possibility of sexual distraction. Maybe a lovely woman with a beautiful voice might have distracted the men to the point where they were no longer focusing on the Torah reading, but instead chose to focus on the woman reading from the Torah! This problem may have influenced the Sages to equate a woman’s voice with “nakedness,” thus becoming a sexual transgression (Ber. 24a).Those old rabbis always seemed to think a lot about sex. Once the women were forced to stay behind the partition, the role of female participation became a non-issue and has remained so for many centuries. Continue reading “Modern Orthodoxy at the Crossroads . . .”