It feels particularly appropriate to be continuing the discussion of women and mitzvot that I began in the last three columns when the Torah portion is about the daughters of Zelafhad, since they approached Moses to seek the word of God on the matter of inheriting their father’s property, an unthinkable proposition up until that moment.
Previously, I had taken an in-depth look at the question of women’s obligation in mitzvot. The Mishna in Kiddushin states that women are exempt from positive time-bound mitzvot and obligated in all others. In the Talmudic discussion many exceptions to the rule emerged that both exempted them from some positive non-time-bound mitzvot, like learning Torah, and obligated them in a significant number of positive time bound mitzvot, including kiddush and eating matza.
While this exemption from time-bound mitzvot does not functionally create an absolute gender binary (of men obligated in time-bound mitzvot and women exempt) since practically, women are obligated in many such mitzvot and can voluntarily take on others. Conceptually, however, it remains at the heart of gender differentiation, serving as the foundation for the separate but equal philosophy. This distinction has turned into a platform highlighting the differences in character between men and women in traditional Orthodoxy, which in turn transmits the sentiment that if men and women have such vastly different religious dispositions, especially if this can be attributed to God’s will, then it cannot be offensive for women to be limited in religious participation.
The two explanations most frequently given nowadays as to why women are exempted from specific mitzvot are because of heightened spirituality and time restraints while taking care of children. The earliest recorded elucidations, however, to give reasons for these exemptions focus on a wife’s subordination to her husband and the spiritual inferiority of women. The discrepancy between past and present justifications along with absolute silence from the Mishna, which gives no reason for the principle “women are exempted from time-bound mitzvot,” reinforces the sense that the explanations given are generally as a result of a fluid social reality.
Both Malmad HaTalmidim in the 13th century southern France and the Abudraham in the 14th century in Spain attribute women’s exemption from time-bound mitzvot to the tension it would cause in the household, pitting a woman between God and her husband. Both of these authorities suggest that without a clear exemption, women would be caught between Creator and husband. Each would be vying for her absolute fidelity and neither God nor husband would understand her forsaking one for the other. In order to have harmony in the home, God exempted her from these obligations.
A different approach emerges in Rabbi Yehoshua Ibn Shuaiv, from the 14th century in Spain, who suggested that a man should bless God every day that “He has not made him a woman” since women’s souls are lesser. Just as the souls of Israelite men are holier than those of non-Jews and Canaanite slaves, so too they are holier than women’s souls, even though women are included in the covenant of Torah and obligated in many mitzvot.
This is radically different from the more widely known approach in modernity that already appeared in the 16th century, in the commentary of Judah Loew ben Bezalel, known as the Maharal of Prague, in which women are presented as spiritually superior and thus, less in need of mitzvot. The Maharal built his view on a famous midrash that expressed an important sentiment that was prevalent in rabbinic literature: wives and mothers have a tremendous influence on the home and thus, their inclusion at Sinai, while not explicitly stated, was a given. Without their active acceptance of Torah, the men would never have been able to commit.
Since traditionally the main duty of women was to enable the Jewish observance of men, this became a space in which a more positive commentary on the imbalance in mitzva observance emerged. Similarly, Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch explains that the Torah exempted women because women do not need these mitzvot, writing that “the trials men undergo in their professional activities jeopardize their fidelity to Torah and therefore they require from time to time reminders and warnings in the form of time-related precepts. Women, whose lifestyle does not subject them to comparable trials and hazards, have no need for such periodic reminders.”
Upon reading Rabbi Hirsch, one cannot help but ponder this last sentence. Women were not in the past subject to comparable trials and hazards as men at the time but what would he say about the contemporary situation in which men and women interact regularly in the same challenging external environments? Given that he greatly contextualizes his explanation to a reality that no longer exists, would he argue that now women should be equally obligated? The Maharal and Rabbi Hirsch (as well as Rabbis Aharon and Joseph B Soloveitchik, Rabbi Norman Lamm and Rabbi Emmanuel Rackman) essentially reframed some of the earlier speculation on women’s character (inferior to men) and women’s role (subservient to husband), into a more positive outlook in which women are spiritually superior and thus, in need of less mitzvot. The second “modern” explanation, that women are focused on raising children for many years and thus, not available to perform time-bound mitzvot emerges naturally from the lived reality of families in the
20th century. While I could not find clear source material pointing to children (rather than husband) as the explanation for the exemption, it simply appears in religious discourse almost organically.
In short, the two meta-halachic explanations that became dominant in the 20th century were women’s innate spirituality leading to less existential necessity for mitzvot and the reinforcement of the woman’s central role as wife and mother (rather than submission to husband). In the next and final column on this topic, I will bring voices of women that have entered the discourse over the last 30 years as well as my own final thoughts on the subject.