Reply To: Are Women Really Jewish?

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charliehall
Participant

“Women do not wear tzitzis, do not wear tefilin, do not wear yarlmukes, do not learn, daven, eat in the sukkah, or really do any of the mitzvos.”

Women can wear tzitzit. Women are required to learn all the mitzvot for which they are chayev, and are permitted to learn almost everything else. (Rov Soloveitchik z’tz’l said that we are REQUIRED to teach gemara to women.) Women are required to pray the Shemoneh Esrei by Rambam, the Shulchan Aruch, the Mishnah Berurah, the Aruch HaShulchan, in fact by every halachic code except the Magen Avraham. Women eat in the sukkah in most communities and an Ashkenazic woman recites the brachah before doing so. To say that women “don’t do any of the mitzvot” is a massive distortion of halachah!

“They don’t count for a minyan, they can’t be motzi Jews in mitzvos, they can’t read from the torah, they can’t be a witness, can’t be a judge, etc.”

Minyan is not from the Torah, it is a d’rabbanan, and according to Ran and HaMeiri a woman counts for a minyan in anything for which she is actually obligated such as reading the Megillah. A woman can motzi any other Jew in any mitzvah who has an equal level of obligation; for example, a woman can recite the Friday night kiddush for her husband according to all opinions (and my wife often does this for me). A woman can read from the Torah in a group of women. A woman is a kosher witness for many things including kashrut and taharat hamishpacha. (Good thing — if not, you’d never be able to have marital relations or eat from your own family kitchen!) According to Rav Uziel z’tz’l, a woman can be a Dayan as long as the parties to the case accept her and that particular tshuvah was universally accepted by all Orthodox communities; in fact there are no women today who have as of yet earned the Yadin Yadin semichah necessary to judge property cases but that does not change the basic halachah.