Last year a photo of this snippet was making the rounds on WhatsApp. It suggests, "al pi halatzah", that women and Amalek share the characteristics of starting fights and scapegoating others, and that's why Yisro brought Moshe's wife after he'd proven adept at fending off Amalek. 
People wondered if this was a quote from a real sefer, as the content was shocking and RaMBAD sounds unfamiliar and frankly made up.
Well, it's very real.
It's from Derushei V'chiddushei Ha'rambad by R. Moshe (ben R. Aharon) Deutsch (1844-1931), rabbi of Salgótarján, Hungary.
Well, it's very real.
It's from Derushei V'chiddushei Ha'rambad by R. Moshe (ben R. Aharon) Deutsch (1844-1931), rabbi of Salgótarján, Hungary.
It also turns out that this is hardly a one-off "halatzah" that can be chalked off as a moment of levity in a serious sefer. From other segments in this work, it seems that R. Deutsch only meant that the connection to Vayikach Yisro was in jest, but otherwise he's deadly serious.
This piece appears later on in the same parshah, in which he turns the command to avoid marital contact prior to the giving of the Torah for three days into a homily about how the Torah helps men overcome their wives' excessive nagging for their three Torah-mandated needs.
Here, the classic idea that matzah represents humility is gratuitously contrasted with women, who are said to epitomize haughtiness. Remarkably, women being haughty is a theme that repeats itself throughout.
And here are additional pieces where he injects the possibility of women being bothersome or having a harmful influence into his interpretations of the pesukim in completely novel ways.
And this one is a doozy, where he combines all of these themes together to posit that the laws of nidah were expressly designed to oppress women and enable their husbands to control them and thereby keep their vanity and harmful, controlling tendencies at bay.
All of this goes a lot further than what's already 'baked in' to traditional Judaism. Was this a fluke in his personality? Did he have a bad experience with women? It's interesting to examine his grandson's description of his marriage in the introduction in light of all this.
To be fair, there are passages that are positively disposed towards women and marriage. There are also parts with patriarchal attitudes towards women that don't feel unique to this work. All in all this is a fascinating but uncomfortable chapter in rabbinical attitudes to women.
