Daf Yomi For Ladies - SFR - Civil Discourse - Jim Bibby's Daughters

When one googles "daf yomi" he [or she] gets on the first page a site for daf yomi "by women for women". 

I am not going to get into the question "Talmud Study For Women - Will Of G-d Or Of The Satan?". That has been discussed on these pages and many many many many other places. It is well known that the Satmar Rebbe and Belzer Rebbe [his yahrtzeit is next week] were HUUUGE fans. [In Toldos Aharon the ladies learn the daf WITH TOSFOS!!! Recently I saw one lady on social media talking about how she is about to finish "Tractate Shabbat". I was wondering what the odds that someone who calls it "Tractate Shabbat", learns with all the "Tosafot"??]  

The point I want to make is that a person wrote an article [printed in the Jewish Press] questioning why women learning daf yomi has become MAINSTREAM. Since the closing of the Talmud 1,500 years ago, the study of Talmud has been an exclusively male pursuit. In the last 40 years or so more more women are learning [thanks in no small part to that EPIC Gemara shiur Rav YBS gave in Stern in '77 I believe]. Maybe that is good. Maybe not. A fun argument. But *daf yomi* for women was an anomaly until a few years ago but now it is first page of your internet search, unquestioned and very much encouraged by the SFR movement [Scholarly Feminist Rebbetzins]. He asserted that Torah sources do not condone a women's daf yomi movement. Not a radical claim. The entire Charedi world believes that. Some [probably most] of the non-charedi religious world believes that also. [Non Jews don't believe in daf yomi for women at all and there are over SEVEN BILLION of them]. Far less than one percent of women actually learn the daf. A teensy-weensy fraction of one percent. For every thousand men who learns the daf there is a quarter of a woman [I don't know statistics. Just a ballpark-figure guess. What does a quarter of a woman look like anyway??]. So it would seem axiomatic that the mainstream view is that daf yomi is a "men's club" activity. If a woman wants to learn anyway - OK, a discussion. But not mainstream.  

This person received a FLOOD of responses cursing, maledicting, insulting and attacking him. So for presenting the mainstream, consensus opinion, he is slaughtered alive.  

That is where we are in our culture. If one presents a view - even a relatively benign one -  with which others disagree, he is viciously attacked. Even if this opinion was the dominant one just a handful of years ago and is amply supported either empirically, with sources or by logic. [I am not talking about immoral opinions such as racism which was quite mainstream until the end of the 1960's which must be attacked.] These attacks are perpetrated by both people on the right and on the left [Jewish and secular]. Neither side has a monopoly on graciousness and refinement. There are even calls for censorship. You don't like what he says? Make sure he doesn't get to say it!!

So my plea: CIVIL DISCOURSE and a willingness to hear other opinions and examine them with a cool head.

If someone denigrates Hashem, His Torah, His people or expresses otherwise toxic, harmful opinions then he should be denounced in no uncertain terms [of course w/o foul language or verbal violence]. But when people are attacked for expressing an opinion that has ample sources and logic - that is where we must draw the line.         

There is more to say but I must return to my studies of "Tractate Baba Metzia". No relation to the Baba Sali or the late pitcher Jim "Bibby". He was a Gentile black man but had two daughters (who wore "bibbys" when they were babies) with oddly Jewish names "Tamara" and "Tanya". So maybe he IS related to Baba Metzia... Reminds me of the very goyish Nikki Haley (but pro-Jewish! Thanks Nik!!) who named her daughter "Rena"! בערב ילין בכי ולבוקר רינה!!:-)].