Reply To: Women's Bina Yeseira

In the word איש and אשה. [man and a female man – Editor, Isaac Levy] lay the guarantee for the equality in rank and mutually complementing calling of Man and Woman. As long as man and woman were איש and אשה. there was no need for man to be emancipated from woman nor woman from man, neither could make the other into a slave nor yet into a god or goddess. The first who altered this designation – as indeed our sages remark, in no other language are man and woman designated by words coming from the same root and so regarded from the same trend of thought – brought it about that one man would yoke his woman to the plough while the other would throw himself at her feet.

R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch
Genesis 11 :58

“The change from singular to plural, which we have tried to reproduce in our translation of this first mention of man and woman in the story of the creation, already indicates the full equality of status, nay, the inner unity between man and woman in the conception and the destiny of “man formed in the image of God.” This term embraces both sexes. Only man and woman together make up the idea of “man”, and God created both of them alike without intermediary, and with the same conscious effort of will power.”

R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch
Judaism Eternal II, p. 51