Lirfuas Shraga Feivel ben Chaya Bina bi-soch shear cholei yisrael.
Lizchus Rochel bas Geulah.
Every morning men bless Hashem - בא"י, אמ"ה, שלא עשני אשה. Thank you for not making me a woman. We already discussed this but there is so much more to say.... Another short thought.
In Kabbalah, man is called צורה while woman is called חומר. This means that man's job is to be active, creative, to lead, to conquer. צורה means "form" and the job of every male is to give a shape and form to whatever it is that he is involved.
A woman is called חומר - unshaped mass. This is not an insult. It means that her job is to receive the form that her husband gives her [see Sanhedrin 22a ....אין האשה כורתת ברית]. A woman's soul is not designed to shape the form of the world. OF COURSE, she is obligated to contribute to the betterment of society in every possible way she can, but she is not meant to be the leader. It is significant that there is a mitzva to appoint a KING but not a queen. A woman is not obligated to learn Torah and according to most poskm is even forbidden from learning Torah She-bial Peh. There is no way to lead and shape without a vast knowledge of Shas and Poskim which is clearly not the job of the Jewish woman to possess. The halacha is that a girl who gets married adopts the customs of her husband and not vice versa. Again, this indicates that the shaper and guide should be the husband.
Even the secular world recognizes this and until this day, in most marriages the wife takes on the name of her husband. In a smaller percentage of cases she will keep her name and hyphenate with her husband's name. In another small percentage of cases she will keep her name and not adopt her husband's name at all. But I am not aware of ONE INSTANCE where the husband changed his name to his wife's name. No man wants to be the חומר to the wife's צורה. It is an ontological realty.
A woman has other important tasks that can never be filled by a man and clearly is indispensable to the perpetuation of our tradition but at the same time lacks this trait of being the צורה.
For this we men bless Hashem that we were given the noble [but highly demanding] job of being male.
In the words of Maran HaRav ztz"l:
הנשמות בגורל חייהן, מחולקות הן לפועלות ולנפעלות, לרושמות את החיים ואת הויתם בכל מכמניהם, ולנרשמות מהם. וזהו ההבדל העצמי, שיש בין נפש האיש, הפועל, החוקק, הכובש והמדביר, ובין נפש האשה, הנרשמת, הנפעלת, הנחקקת והנכבשת והמתדברת, בהנהגתו של האיש. וכמה מדות עליונות וטובות, וכמה אושר ומרחב יש בחלק הטוב הזה, של היות הנשמה נשמת איש פועל, יוצר, מחדש ומרחיב פעלים והגיונים, שאיפות ומעשים, ע"פ עצמיותו הפנימית במערכי קדושתו, הנעלה מנפש האשה, הנחשבת כחומר לגבי צורה, לעומת נשמת האיש הצורתית, ורבה היא ההודאה המחויבת ליוצר הנשמה, מכל איש ואיש, שלא עשני אשה.
