Reply To: Who is the new leader of Klal Yisrael?

Eli,
1. When Rav Kook wrote that women were not generally allowed to vote. He said that this step could only be taken by representatives of the people as a whole. Thus if he were alive today he would not oppose it.
2. I do not know of anyone who says that women are not part of the public. They are certainly kahal Hashem (except for giorot and mamzerot – like their male counterparts). The Torah (Devarim 31:11) say this explicitly.The Gemara (Horiot 3a) does say that the Jews in Chutz laAretz don’t count but that includes men.
3. John Selden and Hugo Grotius learned from Rabbi Menashe ben Yisrael. Grotius said aboutthe sheva mitzvot “How well goes the law of Moses with the House of Orange”. In general the Anglo-American philosophers of the 17th-19th centuries were lovers of Tanach (in America it was required in all colleges along with Biblical Hebrew and until 1817 Harvard commencement addresses could be given in it as well as English, Latin and Ancient Greek). The argument over slavery was, in fact, an argument over the Tanach’s attitude towards slavery in general and black slavery in particular (because of Ham’s curse). Both Dr. Yoram Hazony and Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik have written and lectured extensively on this.