The following essay circulating around the Internet is pathetic. Well written but pathetic. It is the cry of victimization, written by an intelligent young woman whose bio says that she went to Princeton [pssshhhhh!:-)] and is now studying Judaism and Christianity in the Graeco[?]-Roman world at Oxford [meaning that soon she will be saying words like "whilst" and "trousers" and having tea and biscuits every day at 4pm sharp]. Impressive - if a person is impressed by academic achievement [I am far more impressed by kindness and sensitivity]. I am sure that she is a GREAT girl, with many, many wonderful qualities. Better than myself in perhaps every way. But her essay is disturbing to me and that is the topic - the ideas and not G-d forbid the person who is a holy Jewish soul that certainly means well.
She laments the fact that women are not given the chance to study like men. The programs and rabbeim of the men are just not available to women. True. Why?
BECAUSE WOMEN AREN'T INTERESTED IN STUDYING LIKE MEN. Women don't want to sit in a Beis Medrash for 12 hours trying to figure out whether chametz is an issur cheftza or issur gavra and what the nafka minos are [עי' שו"ת זכר יצחק סי' ז] or whether chekas shalosh shanim is a simman or sibah. Find me three such women on the planet. Try it on your wife or on a date: Take a line of Tosfos and explain how the Mahrasha understands, the Maharam understands, and how the Pnei Yehoshua understands. Then ask her is this is more interesting for her than something like the Nesivos Shalom or Rav Pincus. If there was a demand then woman would study just like men. There is plenty of money flying around from people whose agenda is to give women equal opportunity and they would happily spend it on a program whose curriculum is the same as the men's. But women aren't interested.
If this young lady REALLY wants to study like the men - then who is stopping her?? Let her get up in the morning and open a gemara and start learning - like I have been doing for decades. I have no programs and I have never received money or grants to learn. And I am a MAN!!:-). She can begin with the Artscroll and go through Shas and review 101 times. She can listen to Rav Asher Arieli on line!! Wow!!! The GREATEST maggid shiur on the planet. She can participate in a daily shiur from the MIR!! LIKE THE MEN!!! What is stopping her? That is what I did when I was younger. I listened to Rav Asher Arieli tapes [when tapes were popular - aleihem ha-shalom]. If that is too much then she can listen to Rav Schachter on Yutorah. Thousands of hours of Rav Schachter!! Or Rav Rosensweig!!! She can be like - this is so exciting I am drooling .. a Gush guy!!:-). Hear the Gaon HaRav Rosensweig Shlita speak for two dazzling brilliant hours about the exact nature of tzroros. Why moan and complain?? Do!! All of the opportunities are out there for you! Go for it! There are COUNTLESS sefarim today on every topic. Clear sefarim that explain the material well. In both English and Hebrew. Learn them. YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM!! Take your fate into your own hands and work to realize your aspirations.
You need a "havruta"?? Find a woman who shares you aspirations and study with her. You can't find?? Go to Malke Bina or Chana Henkin. They will help you find - or maybe be your "havruta' themselves.
But no - she is instead in a non-Jewish University studying Judaism from a heretical point of view from Goyim and Avoda Zara [i.e. Christianity] as well. Is that permitted according to halacha?? Did she ask a rabbi?? [If she would have asked me I wouldn't have hesitated to tell her that it is forbidden on numerous accounts] Instead of pursuing her dream of becoming a Torah scholar like a man, she writes an essay demeaning the Torah world that she claims to so much want to be part of.
She needs her own room to study?? There are PLENTY of rooms. She can sit in her room at home and study. [That is what I do]. She can study in a Starbucks:-). Or anywhere else. She can go to a seminary and even though the other girls aren't interested in studying 12 hours a day - she can sit in the "Beit Medrash" and study to her hearts content. The school won't mind. They will actually be proud of her.
And maybe - just maybe - girls don't learn like boys because the very tradition she is so enamored by is opposed to such a notion. Maybe Jewish sources want women to learn OTHER TOPICS besides gemara bi-iyun?? Not maybe - definitely. See Rambam Hilchos Talmud Torah 1/13. Some people read the Rambam there to be saying that one should not TEACH HIS DAUGHTER Torah shebi-al peh, but if she is motivated to do so on her own then she may. So - GO FOR IT.
But I have a question. Why like the men?? We are different creatures. We have our own set of challenges. I have been a male my whole life and don't find it particularly easy. It is actually VERY HARD. The halacha has non-stop demands on us. We must learn every available second. We have a yetzer hara that nags at us constantly. We are told to be monogamous when our nature is polygamous. We have to support our families. We have wives with closets FILLED with clothing yet they never have ANYTHING to wear. And we have to pay for it. Every since Chava realized that she was wearing nothing men have been paying the price. We have to daven 3 times a day with a minyan. SO MANY RESPONSIBILITIES:-):-). Don't strive to be a man. Be a woman!! ברוך אתה ה' שעשני כרצונו!!! You are a walking Ratzon Hashem. COOOOOLLLLL!!! Learn things like Tanach - the HOLY SCRIPTURE!! Is there anything holier?? A Tanach goes on top of a Rav Chaim Ha-levi Al Harambam. Where have you gone Nechama Leibowitz?? We need more like you!! Learn Moreh Nevuchim, Kuzari, Maharal, Ramchal etc. etc. Learn halacha. So many halachos that apply to women. Shabbos, tefilla. lashon hara, onaas devarim, taharas hamishpocho etc. etc. Why be like so many men who can tell you about abstractions like whether a chazaka and is a beirur or a hanhaga but can't tell you what constitutes לישה or בישול on Shabbos or what to do if you miss yaaleh vi-yavo on Rosh Chodesh. Be an ovedes Hashem [or if you prefer "ovedet Hashem"]. Learn how He wants you to live. That is TOPS!!!
And maybe - just maybe, Hashem isn't interested in women being scholars at all? For thousands of years many Jewish women couldn't even read. Maybe he is happy with women who serve Him bi-simcha, love and respect their husbands and raise holy children filled with sweetness???
Maybe it is not about ME?? MY aspirations. MY desires. Maybe it is more about fulfilling the task Hashem set out for me??
I have so much more to say but we will leave it here in the meantime.
Here is the essay:
There was no Talmud class beyond the beginner’s level in my high school.
Actually, there was one.
It was not for girls.
I learned with a havruta in the high school hallway. One day, my havruta was wrong. She did not know that she was wrong. I told her. She objected. I explained. She restated her view. I said, look at Rashi. She said, look at the Mishnah. I insisted. She persisted. It occurred to me that I might be wrong. I did not like this. I raised my voice. She got excited. I rephrased my point and it did not make sense anymore, something clicked, we were so close, understanding glimmered, and then a Rebbe walked out of the nearest classroom.
“Will you girls please keep it down? We’re learning in here.”
We looked up, confused, frustrated.
“We wouldn’t disturb you,” I said to him, “if we had a room of our own.”
A science teacher hurtled out of the laboratory next door, brimming with indignation and the fragrance of formaldehyde-soaked frogs. He announced that he had never heard such contempt in his life, that he never wanted to hear me disrespect a Rebbe like that again, that he was disappointed in me. The Rebbe retreated, closing the classroom door on his rows of gleeful boyish faces, and I did not get the chance to tell anyone that I did not want to be disrespectful.
I just wanted somewhere to learn.
I told my Stern College interviewers that my favorite historical figure was Marshal Joseph Joffre (I liked the moustache), my role model was my big sister no maybe my math teacher no wait my pet beta fish (who just died) (but it wasn’t my fault) (mostly), my learning moment was that time I handed my hanikhim an entire jar of marshmallow fluff, probably should have thought that one through a bit more … I told them that I wanted to devote my life to hinukh. I wanted to teach Torah.
One interviewer leaned across the table and informed me that Yeshiva University is the Harvard of Torah study. I did not know what that meant but I nodded. One is supposed to nod at one’s interviewers. One is not supposed to mention that hour in my principal’s office when I asked the Yeshiva University Dean of Admissions the same question in every possible way: will you teach me like you teach your men? He had every possible evasion, every possible way of not saying the answer that we both already knew before we walked into the room.
If there is a Harvard of Torah study, it is the college that offers hours upon hours of beit midrash study and a dazzling array of Talmud shiurim, a college in which the present and future Rabbanim and Poskim of American Modern Orthodoxy question and argue and learn together, a college to which women need not apply.
My shanah aleph havruta graduated from Stern and then there was nothing for her. Once we dreamt up an imaginary school together. A school for driven women, women who would be in the beit midrash when the world goes to sleep and when the world wakes up and when the world ends. We would have one of those Ramim, the kind our friends have in the Gush, the kind who show up at the women’s schools for an hour or two of community service teaching each week before scurrying back to their boys, the kind whose words waft across Shabbat tables and through classrooms back home in America.
We would learn Torah. The intricate, complicated, mind-bending, challenging kind. The kind that our ancestors studied. The kind that God gave us. We smiled at each other, laughing because who would pay for this knight in shining armor and because which great mind would leave rows of brilliant talmidim to spend years teaching a handful of women and because how many women could devote so many years to such intense study in exchange for a lifetime of patronization and tokenism and because we did not, after all, want to build a yeshivah. We did not want to be revolutionaries and we did not want to be Rabbis and we did not want to be feminists. We wanted to learn Torah.
Our fantasy collapsed, leaving that handful of women huddled on rooftops, waiting for the son of Azariah to open the advanced yeshivot to those whose insides do not resemble their outsides, to those born with the passion of Ben Azzai in the body of a woman.
“But whatever the reason, despite forty years of women’s Talmud study in the Modern Orthodox community, top-tier Torah mastery has yet to find its way into the circle of women’s learning.” I once walked into a beit midrash. I loved it there. I loved the intricacy and the incision, the arguments and the ambiguities, the edifices of interpretive possibilities. I loved them so much that it took me a long time to notice.
The walls of the beit midrash were closing in.
“Today, I do not advise young women to follow my path. It’s too hard. It’s too risky. Even now.” Ignore the carob tree, the river, the girl. The walls are closing in. The daughter of a voice protests. No one listens. Someone slinks away from the table because no one taught her how to ask. “When I opened up a gemara after all those years of learning from source sheets,” my mother told me, “it was like seeing television in color after a lifetime of black-and-white.” My sons have defeated me. My sons have defeated me. The Torah is not in Heaven. The Torah was given to men, and they do not share.
This is not my beit midrash. I left high school early so I could study in a seminary that emptied out early most nights of the week. I tried a different seminary and still found myself in gemara seder for barely half as long as my male peers. I applied for a fellowship to study Torah over winter break from an organization that claims to support Migdal Oz and Gush alumni. They would give me the funding despite my gender, they said, but they would not include me in their published list of fellowship recipients. I shrugged and thanked them, grateful that they would invest in me even if they could not be proud of me.
My friend applied the next year. She is brilliant. The response: “Thank you for your application (sic) Whilst we would love to be able to offer scholarships to Migdal Oz alumnae, our current budget will not allow us to do so.”
They told us we could fly and handed us wings made out of source sheets.
I once walked into a beit midrash. “Sufferings are good for the Jews like a scarlet strap on a white horse,” said the gemara. Something glimmered. Something I once heard in a desert far from the beit midrash, where a professor who did not know Hebrew taught me things that were not Torah. Ancient Greek authors were very interested in white skin on red blood, she had said. That was a different canon.
But what if it doesn’t matter. What if Torah can be given in a desert. What if there are sacrifices that one can offer outside of Jerusalem. What if, far out in the wilderness, goats leap from a cliff in the name of a strange demon and turn the threads of the sanctuary from scarlet to white. What if I need to leave the beit midrash to learn Torah.
The walls fell.
Sometimes I want them back. Sometimes I miss the kind of Torah that I lost. But it was never mine anyway.
When tomorrow your daughter asks you what happened to the talmidot hakhamim, tell her that they were here. Tell her how they patched together absurdly complicated learning programs on career routes to nowhere, how they watched less qualified peers plunge into the best yeshivot where they could never dream of learning, how they fled to medicine and law and basic education and academia and anywhere that would believe in them. Tell her that they were here and we failed them.
Tell her that, had she been there, she would not have been taught.
