Reply To: Why Would a Girl Even Want to Learn Talmud?

thank you all for your replies.

Computer777, it is halachically permissible for a woman to learn gemara. I’ve been through this myself with the sources, with my father who is a rav, and with my husband. What is forbidden is for a father to teach his own daughter gemara and the reason (given by one of my husband’s rebeeim – that actually makes sense) is because he will likely be too soft on her because it’s his daughter – and gemara requires a certain rigor.

How can it be assur for a woman to learn gemara if the ramabam clearly says that a woman is exempt from learning torah but if she does she gets schar? (And he is not talking about learning halachos that are pertinent to her, or chumash…) You cannot get schar for doing something assur.

“If you were truly sincere, maybe you’d find the roads less blocked. Reading through your post though, you seem to have already given up on learning for the sake of learning, and now wish to prove your worth as a woman.”

Sigh. I am so tired of this argument. I have taught limudei kodesh – virtually every subject- on a a high school level for close to a decade. You think another ten years of hashkafa and chumash and meforshim are going to do it? I know – it’s my yetzer horah trying to get me off the right track.

With time, there were many things I could not teach anymore beacuse either I stopped believing it, or I had too many questions about it. And I’m not preaching to a class of impressionable adolescents ANYTHING I do not absolutely know to be true or right. I have no desire to perpetuate the insincerity I’ve encountered in some of my education.

Yes, I have given up on learning another hashkafa sefer. I’ve had my fill of breadth. I am looking for depth and reasoning. I’m not looking for more information. I’ve reached my fill. More facts will do nothing for me. It’s actually reaching the point of diminishing returns. The more hashkafa I read, the more stupid everything seems. I’d rather not do anymore damage.

This past shabboss I picked up a book at my parents house written by a well-known Rav. The book was hashakfa about a woman’s role etc… there were so many logical contradictions… it makes the whole hashkafa edifice seems downright stupid.

The reason I think that gemara will help is the following: I was once a guest by someone on shabboss and a discussion about gemara came up. The host explained to me how gemara works and then proceeded to give me an example that we worked through together. And I was pretty impressed. Apparently, he’s way more skilled than your avergage yeshiva bachur, and thus was able to break it down sufficiently for a novice to understnad.

But a little light went off in my head: “Hey,this stuff is not so stupid after all…”

Of course I will always have questions and one’s quest for truth is never fully reached… that’s ok.

And I’m angry that so much of my time in high school and beyond was wasted on more memorization and more hashkafa when I could have been given the skills to learn gemara. And I could gave been doing it myself now.

They should have an optional track for girls to learn gemara. Of course if you hire incompetent teachers, you’re not accomplishing much. But it’s like that in every area.

Trust me, you will not have the entire high school signing up. You’ll have 5-10%… maybe.

“If your are BY literate, you can comb through the Medrashim, ALL the Neviim, the great works of Haskafa of the Rishonim, and, as we are now textual based, there is no limit of study aids and secondary adjuncts to Talmud study.”

twisted: I appreciate the suggestions, but again, I’ve combed enough through them to know that it will do nothing for me to keep combing through them.

We don’t expect men to go through all of chumash, navi, medrash, halacha, kesuvim, works of rishonim (list goes on and on) before they learn gemara. Why the double standard?

Avi K: “However, as a rule women think more emotionally and men think more logically”

A nice stereotype. I think it applies more in the context of relationships and interaction with people. Not when in comes to thinks that, by definition, are logical. A man does not think more logically about a scientific experiment than a woman. I would think the same about gemara, because it is inherently a logical activity.