How are girls learning Gemorah

@AAQ

You wrote: “Anyone who resolves in his heart to engage in Torah and not to do work and to be supported by charity, this person profanes the Name and disgraces the Torah, for it is forbidden to benefit from the words of Torah. Any Torah that is not accompanied by work leads to sin and in the end he will steal from people”

I see you are a fan of the Rambam. Couple of things to be aware of:

1) The Rambam himself was supported by his brother until he died at sea. He clearly didn’t equate receiving support from willful patrons of Torah scholarship with “being supported by charity”.
2) The Rambam writes that not only the tribe of Levi but anyone who commits sincerely to Limid HaTorah will have their parnassa provided for by Hashem.
3) Rav Moshe wrote that once the Kollel system was established, joining a Kollel is a form of gainful employment (albeit not one suited for the persute of material wealth).

Yeshivos and Kollelim are essential to ANY community (Litvish, D”L, Chasidish, Ashkenazi, Sefardi) that wishes to thrive Judaically.

NP: You’re splitting hairs when it is directly and implicitly the same thing. Chazal’s criticism of Bruria for her mocking of the truth about Nashim Da’atan Kalos is well understood by the meforshim to be a result of her learnt Torah not intended for women and as a result her thinking herself more knowledgeable and understanding than reality, directly a result of her “over learning”.

Ujm- I didn’t ignore that at all. That’s the very contradiction. On the one hand the SA and Rambam say Chazal commanded not to teach your daughter Torah because it leads to tiflus. On the other hand, a woman receives reward for learning that Torah. If the understanding is as you are presenting it, then Rambam and SA never should have added that they receive reward doing so… What’s the point? I don’t believe that’s even part of that Gemara in Sota… They added it for a practical reason. Otherwise, it’s very misleading… It’s like they are trying to entice women to do something forbidden by telling them that they nevertheless receive reward for violating that halacha?

And I can’t argue with your observations, but mine are not the same.

simcha> it’s not so clear that the halachos in SA and Rambam are clearly prohibiting teaching women parts of Torah. The Rambam and SA open up the halachos by saying that women receive sechar for learning Torah but not as much as man because she’s eino metzuveh v’ose

First, note that this argument takes the low road when your opponent quotes part of Rambam and not the other. So, you read the whole thing and can answer. Imagine you would not – and would be misled by your opponent in your Torah learning. You just saved him from gehinom. Thank you!

> What’s not allowed is imposing on them to learn the Torah that they are exempt in, like having a required class in Gemara or Torah Shebe’al Peh

Unfortunately, modern education favors standards. So, it is either schools that pretend they do not teach gemorah (the better ones, of course, teach girls understanding of the halochos which _is_ Gemora al pi Rambam, but they can not say so) or schools that insist on all girls to learn it – and to learn it the way boys do. I personally think that both (many) boys and (almost all) girls would benefit from learning Gemora the way Rambam intended to: by analyzing reasons for mitzvos based on material that is relevant to them, not necessarily going blatt after blatt decoding tosfos.

An elitist attitude can lead to several negative byproducts, including social division, condescension, and the marginalization of others. Elitists often believe that they are superior to others due to their perceived qualities such as intellect, wealth, or expertise, which can result in a dismissive or arrogant behavior toward those they consider less accomplished.
This attitude can foster a sense of entitlement and a lack of empathy, as elitists may disregard the opinions or contributions of others, leading to strained relationships and a lack of cooperation.
Furthermore, elitism can contribute to a culture of exclusion, where individuals are judged based on their status rather than their merits, thereby reinforcing social hierarchies and limiting opportunities for those outside the elite group.
The byproducts of an elitist attitude can also include a reluctance to acknowledge one’s own flaws or the value of diverse perspectives, which can hinder personal growth and societal progress.

Let’s say I thought I was better then everyone cuz I had more money you think I won’t start treating “others” differently. Elitist attitude doesn’t lead to good behavior doesn’t matter what the excuse for it is.

hk

“who told you you….” ah you ate from the tree of _knowledge_ aka delusion

DaMoshe:
His article is indeed well-written.
But, by “great”, you presumably mean for today’s maskilim who disregard mesorah in favor of anything from the talmud professor of YU (who also disregarded mesorah, especially his family’s mesorah by his adopting the idolatry and heresy of Zionism) that they call “the Rav”.

Rav Moshe Feinstein was the Posek HaDor.
As the article points out, he ruled that women may not study even mishnayos – never mind gemara – other than pirkei avos.

Rabbi Dr. Soloveichik was “responsible for all the tuma in America” according to Rav Aharon Kotler, and he also was the head of “Mizrachi”, meaning “Religious Zionist” idolatry and heresy, in America, so his opinion is anyways irrelevant to Orthodox Judaism. The talmud lecture he gave to the Stern College women was also obviously not permitted.

Rabbi Twersky’s attempt to justify his grandfather’s non-halachic pirtza mentioned above simply doesn’t work, and it is also absurd to compare that to the Chofetz Chaim’s heter of teaching chumash and mussar, as he did.

Rabbi Twersky writes, “If ever circumstances dictate that study of the Oral Law is necessary to provide a firm foundation for faith, such study becomes obligatory and obviously lies beyond the pale of any prohibition.” Even if that “heter” were theoretically true – still, none of the Orthodox (i.e., non-MO) schools ever dreamed that “circumstances dictate that study of the Oral Law is necessary to provide a firm foundation for faith”. So, no, of course his pirtza and disregarding of mesorah by permitting that which had always been forbidden were not needed and, yes, it obviously was “an instance of modernism”, and not “Torah intuition” unlike Rabbi Twersky’s attempt to claim otherwise.

As Rabbi Jachter quoted from the Satmar Rav, “the Chafetz Chaim limited his permission to the study of Tanach and Mussar.” As mentioned earlier in the article, the CC did so because the women otherwise would “deviate entirely from the way of Hashem and the Torah”. To extend that to, not only permitting but actively encouraging, talmud is simply absurd.

In fact, the MO’s claim to “need” this for their women – when no Orthodox women needed this, not then and not now – means that there is something very rotten with MO education and “culture” – and they should fix that (i.e., become Orthodox, of course) and then their imagined problem of this “need” of talmud for women would also be solved. Kind of interesting that none of them seem to notice that. But that’s anyways all nonsense; it’s not needed, and all the Orthodox women who don’t need it are the biggest proof that this imagined need of MO is nonsense.

Rabbi Aharon Soloveitchik was, like his father-in-law, a “Religious Zionist”, which means that his opinions are also irrelevant to Orthodox Judaism. Regardless, even if it were true, as he claims, that “Chazal only prohibited coercing women to study Torah. If, however, they choose to learn Torah, then they deserve full support of the community”, that would not at all justify setting up “Beit midrash programs”, or talmud lectures in Stern College, that encourage women to do so. This is both disingenuous and silly.

As Rav Aharon Kotler wrote, Rabbi Dr. Soloveichik was responsible for all the tuma in America. Just become Orthodox already and drop the idol and all the silliness.

It’s funny how non disrespectfully of course, someone can ban others from reading a text…sorry you can’t control people lol.

none2 > someone can ban others from reading a text

a good point. All those halachik sources, as far as I know, talk about desirability of _teaching_ girls, not about them learning themselves. Of course, it was the time of Torah shebealpe. Still, Beruriah went to hundreds of teachers – on her own – and seemingly none of them stopped her from attending the class.

Note that Rabban Gamliel used to stop undeserving students from entering his yeshiva, so the concept of closing the doors was there.

Focus on teaching may be the source for the opinion (that sounds reasonable to me) that learning should be only for those who want to.

Note that the same is desirable for men also. Avoda Zara somewhere 16 mentions a student who wanted to do Mishlei but the teacher started Tehilim. When he interpreted a verse in Tehilim that the student should learn what he enjoys, the student said – you just gave us permission to go to Mishlei!

AAQ: Don’t bother engaging with Hakatan. It’s pointless. He is filled with hatred, and it blinds him from actually listening to opposing viewpoints.
He belongs to the group that the Netziv said was responsible for the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. Just have pity for him.

> I did not argue that women cannot be doctors or the like. Regardless, as mentioned, it is still an MO delusion/modernity to decide that girls “need to learn gemara” regardless of, liHavdil, how much secular knowledge they do or don’t have. One has nothing to do with the other.

It does. And the parallel to BY is here. Arguably, there was no urgency in women’s Jewish literacy pre-modern era – they learnt halochos from their mothers and did not have other options. And they obviously learnt – as their heilike learnt husbands and sons were eating food from the kitchens. During 1900s, those women went from families to cities, got exposed both to education and other things and they were quickly losing their connection to Yiddishkeit.

Jump to now. You may not know many Jewish ladies who became doctors or lawyers or, lo aleinu, professors. We don’t even need to argue whether this is a good thing or not. It is what it is. So, these ladies can discuss philosophy at the level of R Soloveitchik or more. They might know psychology, literature, and math. They are not satisfied when they are given a quick review of kitchen halochos. They might be mostly ordering food or letting their heimishe husbands cook anyway.

Now, you might be confused what “gemora” they should be learning. I wrote before but nobody is reacting, maybe I am belaboring am obvious point. Gemora dies not have to be daf yomi or tosfos. Gemorah (al pi Rambam) means understanding of reasons behind halochos and ability to derive decisions. So, these women who have capacity to make medical diagnosis should be able to understand what happens when her coffee spills into her cholnt.

We have an example of this: Drisha quotes his mother on saying brocha before lighting yom tov candles. A poshute woman might get confused by the difference from shabbos, but this learned lady had no problem understanding interplay between several halochos here. That’s “gemora”.

DaMoshe:
Pathetic non-answer.

The idolaters have no answer because, as mentioned, since no group of Orthodox Jewish women from then until now ever felt the need to learn Talmud, that obviously means that the problem (of “needing” to do so) is MO, not Judaism, of course.

Return to full Torah allegiance rather than a maskilic dilution of the same.

But, since you mentioned hate, the only ones to whom that applies are:
“Halo misanecha Hashem esna…”
So, are you implying that you Zionist idolaters fall into that category? I would hope not.

Hakatan- I don’t think it has anything to do with need. It’s clear from the sources that they are allowed to learn Gemara, that’s why both the Rambam and S”A say they get sechar. But they still aren’t commanded to do it. So with no motivation to learn, they aren’t going to bend over backwards to engage in Avodas Hashem that they aren’t commanded to do and only receive sechar as eino metzuveh veoseh. You need to be internally motivated to engage in an aspect of Avodas Hashem that you aren’t commanded in.

For most of Jewish history, women were not educated, or minimally educated, in both Torah and secular knowledge, so additional Torah knowledge wasn’t appealing to them. Which is fine. They have no command do so. But as women become more educated, they have a desire to expand their Torah knowledge beyond what they are commanded to learn… and that is also fine. Because Torah is for everyone, men and women, that’s why they both receive sechar for learning it. Men have a bigger responsibility and therefore a bigger reward, but nothing is closed to women. If it were, if it were actually prohibited, they wouldn’t receive sechar for doing it.

@anisraeliyid-
That’s interesting. I taught high school math and science for many years. And there were many times my father would pull out the Artscroll Gemarah, and I would do it with him.
It was a lot of years ago, so I don’t remember much, but we definitely did some masechtos in Succah, and the masechtos that have to do with the moon’s cycle (he used my diagrams and sheets for his shuir). There were more.
Learning Gemarah taught me valuable skills.

Joe: yes, I am. I haven’t yet heard a definitive argument that would convince me, but I am open to hearing it. Even those I disagree with, I can at least respect their opinion, and accept that it’s different than mine.
I heard from R’ Bender about a time that the Satmar Rebbe wrote out a large check to support an Israeli organization, while telling the person from the organization that it was wrong to have these organizations at all. He recognized hat while he thought it was wrong, there is still good there, and was willing to give his own money towards it. HaKatan would just say it’s supporting idolatry and kick the person out.

HaKatan > None of your arguments about how they need to better understand hilchos basar viChalav are in any way relevant to all of that. Let them understand basar biChalav as well as they can. But they do not need to learn gemara just like the men do.
amom> my father would pull out the Artscroll Gemarah, and I would do it with him… masechtos in Succah, and the masechtos that have to do with the moon’s cycle

HaKatan, maybe I was not clear. This educated women need to have access to Judaism at comparable level they have to other areas of knowledge. In amom’s case – she is teaching math, so her father wisely showed her where Judaism uses math. It helped her integrate her knowledge of math with Judaism. And maybe answer silly students who would say – Rabban Gamliel did not know math, why should I … (the answer to the silly question: R Gamliel had 1000 students in his household learning Torah and 1000 learning Greek, whatever that was. Note that numbers are symbolically the same).

So, ladies who learned philosophy, economics, educational theories (hope these mean something to you) would surely benefit from knowing Jewish sources on these subjects, whether they are super-frum or whether they are marginally affiliated. I once attended a lecture by a super-frum psychologist. She made a great effort integrating Jewish traditional views on child education with her practice and tracing it through century. I was so impressed by her effort that when she made a mistake in her math that undermined her core argument, I did not raise the question 🙂

ujm >Are you open to hearing and potentially accepting the view that Zionism is diametrically opposed to Judaism

I think we all here spent some time patiently listening to these positions. If some, sometimes, inappropriately responded in less than polite way, that was after that position was repeated 100th times same way ignoring all the opposing arguments. And, in truth, this is not what arguments here were about. Nobody here would argue that anti-religious Zionism is against Torah, as any anti-religious movement is, by definition. The question is about how to relate to such Jews and how to cooperate or not with them in politics, and how to relate to other religious Jews who find zechut in non-religious Zionists.

Banning a book that can easily be read goes against basic common sense

HaKatan > You seem to be proposing that because women know secular subjects on advanced levels that, therefore, they must also learn gemara (on high levels, lectures, BM, et al.) I don’t see any logic connecting those two.

Right. I am not sure why you can’t connect, maybe we have different understanding of what Torah or what secular subjects are. You can, just guessing, define them on a simple level – Torah is learning details of mitzvos and science is learning physics and math, and there is no connection between them. Or, you can say – Torah is Hashem’s lesson to us on what the world is, and Science is a humble human effort of trying to understand that same world.
on a very simple level – if you look at Gemora (say Avodah Zora 27) or at Rambam, you’ll see a lot of “secular” knowledge about medicine and science discussed by Rabbonim. So, clearly there is an intersections between the two.

> Judge Ruchie Freier, for example, is a chassidic woman.
This is only half of the story. Let’s look at two possibilities: (1) chassidic woman who went into professions as you mentioned. (2) people who are already exposed to secular subjects – this one you ignore

So, your chassidic secular judge is involved in a mitzva of helping non-Jews to achieve justice. Do you think she would benefit from looking at Jewish concepts of justice, for example justice v. rahmanus debate in Sanhedrin? in studying halochos on mitzvos bnei Noach? In studying how rabbonim issued takonos to protect society from going into a wrong direction? She might also need to encounter practical situations where she is invited to a lunch with non-Jewish dignitaries – how does she navigate her concerns with tznius and kashrus v. respect to authority? These are not simple issues, and she is not always able to call a Rabbi with a shailah.

Now, to the Jewish woman who is not very observant and has knowledge of secular subjects. She learned in her high-school a little of Judaism that consists of some boring rules that she needs to follow. She is not excited about them; she did not get good explanations from her teachers. What if she encounters fascinating books or lecture by R hirsh or by R Sacks – that is able to explain Jewish knowledge in the context of human civilization as a whole? She’ll surely change her attitude, and she’ll run to the closest kollel clamoring for a boy she wants to support on her professor’s salary. Win-win?

AAQ – To be honest, what started as my father asking me for help with math formulas (related to squares, triangles, and circles) ended with us both gaining.
I didn’t do it to learn Torah, but it was definitely a learning experience.

First of all if your going to “ban” woman from learning gemarah it’s prob cuz your hiding something and maybe all the contradictions. Including marrying your uncle to your niece creating genes mutations that goes against the very pasuk that says very clearly and coherently “don’t marry close kin” yes prob if a woman read gemarah she will see with her binah all the incongruousies and be outraged. No offense

Ujm- my understanding is that women are chayav in Torah shebichsav. This is based on the idea that women are chayav in Torah that is practical for them. That includes halachos that are relevant for them, musar, and presumably Tanach also… Based on the Gemara on Megila that explains that even though there were over a million neviim in our history, the only nevuos that were recorded were the ones that had messages for all generations… Presumably including men and women.

Therefore, the prohibition to teach Torah is on the rest of the Torah Shebeal Peh… The areas of Torah that women aren’t obligated in. And it’s this very area, the area where they have no obligation to learns, they also receive sechar for learning it… Meaning it can’t be an absolute prohibition for them to learn.

none2.0: Did you get that “vort” from your Rabbi Susan McArthy at your Temple Emanu-El service at her last Shabbat “drosha”?