Thread by @wordpaley

Gonna live tweet this episode of the popular podcast Headlines because I’m cooking and cleaning for Shabbos anyway and because I love pain

https://twitter.com/mandalorthodox/status/1405935694585999365

Wow. This guy is just doing his intro dvar Torah on the parsha and he’s already assuming women rabbis are a product of a philosophy foreign to Torah. Then lists feminism alongside socialism, communism, liberalism, progressivism as manifestations of Satan. What a great start!

First up is R’ Yitzchak Breitowitz of Yeshivas Ohr Somayach. He starts with a disclaimer that he in no way wants to impugn the intentions of the people involved in the ordination of women and that they are sincere servants of God. I wish that was obvious, but I’m glad he said it.

R’ Breitowitz: Original semicha, which women were barred from because they were barred from serving as judges (although that’s also subject to dispute), no longer exists. Modern semicha simply means having the knowledge to pasken, which women are capable of and are allowed to do.

RYB: Long history of women issuing halakhic rulings for other women, including the mother of R. Yehoshua Falk, 16th cent. author of the Prisha commentary on the halakhic compendium the Tur. Says “in theory there would be no issur in giving [this type of semicha] to women.”

RYB: “maybe (?) mitzad pure halacha there would be no issur...there are some reasons why it would be improper.”

1. Still connected somehow to OG semicha. Says that R. Shaul Lieberman opposed women’s semicha for this reason. Curious that he doesn’t comment on its logical merit 🤔

2. Even if women can get semicha and make halakhic rulings, they might not be able to serve as rabbis.

3. “May be the most important reason of all: this has not been the Mesorah (tradition) in Am Yisrael”. No explanation of what that Mesorah is.

Host: “This is who we are.”

😶

“Mesorah is an argument that does not resonate with a lot of people, but all I can say is, it is tremendously important to Am Yisrael.”

No Orthodox Jew disagrees that Mesorah is important. They disagree with this unsophisticated, unequivocal definition of Mesorah. Straw man #1

RYB: “Women are perfectly able, halakhically, intellectually, and emotionally, to do many of the things rabbis do—in fact maybe a majority of it...So in truth, a lot of this is about titles, because in substance women do, even in the yeshivish world, a lot of these things.”

RYB: “To put a woman in the ultimate spiritual authority of a beit knesset does raise a number of problems, and a lot of these problems involve the slippery slope.”

Oh boy. Here we go. At least he’s honest about it though.

RYB: if you let women be rabbis, eventually they and congregants will see how “ridiculous” it is that the rabbi can’t lead services or count for a minyan so “inevitably” those lines will be crossed.

He seems like a nice man, but I don’t think he’s ever met a real woman rabbi.

The women who learn at Maharat and Ohr Torah Stone learn the halachos about edus, minyan, aliyos. They understand the differences in the strengths of the halakhic arguments. It’s an insult to their intelligence and their commitment to Torah to claim that they’ll “fall” into this.

Alright, I’m back. RYB mentions R. Kook’s idea that women will have a larger public-facing role in the pre-Messianic age. Host pushes back: “but isn’t that just external influence”? RYB tacitly agrees, mentions “feminist agenda”.

It’s sad that we can’t just talk to each other.

re: Halacha, RYB mentions Rambam’s position that women can’t serve in public leadership roles because of a Midrash that says “king, not queen.” Says that this is Rambam’s chiddush. Also says that commentators struggled to find the source, though they eventually found it in Sifre.

What he doesn’t say is that almost no other Rishonim agree, and that we often don’t hold by Rambam’s singular positions (see also: eruv). Also does not explain why other positions (e.g. girls’ school principal) would be OK under Rambam’s ambiguous definition (משימה-assignment).

Back to slippery slope: Host asks what got us here. RYB says Bais Yaakov movement (girls schools), then women’s Talmud learning, which were good things. Heavy implication that only men get to decide what’s good and necessary for women’s spirituality, and women can’t be trusted.

RYB mentions the well-known question of Tosfos on how Devorah was able to be a judge. Raises the possibility that women rabbis would be similar because all of the community accepted her leadership.

Then he questions that b/c every last person accepted Devorah’s judgeship, whereas rabbis are usually chosen by committee, so congregants might object. I don’t know how he knows how judges were selected and why he thinks it was at all democratic. At least a committee is elected.

Host counters: wasn’t Devorah “just” a court judge adjudicating private disputes? Bro, you ever learned Shoftim? She gives actual military orders and implies spiritual leadership in her song.

Makes you wonder how much of this rhetoric would continue if ppl actually knew Tanach.

I’m not going to address Tosfos’ second answer—that Devorah was just an adviser to male leaders—which should not be given serious halakhic consideration. Just a transparently revisionist take that contradicts the very basic meaning of the text.

RYB moves on to “intangible factors” which “may not resonate with people but are nonetheless very real”. Such as tzniut (modesty). Claims there is an (admittedly non-halakhic) basis for prohibiting women from public speaking in front of men. I’ll get to this in a minute.

Then says if women were allowed to do pastoral counseling for men, men’s vulnerability would lead to lines being crossed with regard to sexual propriety. He grants that it could be a problem with men, too, but says “instinctively” the danger is greater when the man is vulnerable.

It’s just amazing to me how someone with the mind of RYB could say things like this unaware of their own obvious assumptions and implications. What he’s implying about men’s self-control is damning, and about women’s ability to assert themselves over men downright patronizing.

It all makes sense. Vulnerable men overpower women regardless of whether the women are spiritual leaders of a community, and yet when a woman is vulnerable with a male rabbi he can control himself. It’s a mindset that is unable to think outside of a male-dominant gender dynamic.

He can’t fathom a woman saying no to a man or setting boundaries because that simply doesn’t happen in a meaningful way in his world. But for some reason he also can’t imagine that women and gender dynamics are different outside that world. Makes his opinion kinda irrelevant.

Side note: I noticed how RYB said he didn’t want to come off as patronizing. He did, in fact. But it’s not his fault. The beliefs he espoused about women are inherently patronizing. And if he did not espouse them, he might not be considered part of his community. Kinda catch-22

It’s also internally self-contradictory. RYB admits even the yeshivish world is subject to external influence. And yet the rabbinic culture that produced bans on women’s public speaking was not? If you’re willing to contextualize the present, you should do the same for the past.

Ay, there’s the rub. The perpetuation of yeshivish/Charedi life as it exists currently is dependent on an idealized, decontextualized, inscrutable version of history that puts Mishnah-era men in shtreimels and women in tichels. Which explains the frequent self-censorship.

Doesn’t mean they aren’t my sisters and brothers and that I don’t respect their way of life. I just don’t think they have standing to weigh in on an issue which their belief system is fundamentally unequipped (by no fault of their own) to address with total intellectual honesty.

Host continues w/ ridiculous comparison of a rabbi breaking ranks with rabbinical associations to a zaken mamrei (judge on a rabbinic court who contradicts a majority of his peers). I’m glad RYB put him in his place. But good ex. of fanciful comparison of modern to ancient life.

But then RYB doubles back and says “bucking very eminent authority” assumes “arrogance, not knowing your level” and could cause “members to lose respect for the halakhic process.” I just don’t know how you can say stuff like this and still say halakhic innovation is/was possible.

Host is v excited about this quote: “you don’t know how slippery the slope is until you’re at the bottom.” The lack of self-awareness is exquisite. He basically admitted the fatal flaw of the SS argument. People who employ it claim to KNOW the end result. Classic hindsight bias.

Which is also what ails the response of RYB, who claims the women rabbis issue is of a kind w/ “same-sex attraction” and transgender issues. They’re all “egalitarian” issues, he says.

Here’s the problem with that: MO people who are grappling with these issues meaningfully don’t see them all as egalitarian issues. They’re ואהבת לרעך כמוך issues. They’re לב יודע מרת נפשו issues. They’re about believing people when they tell you what they’re feeling.

I would say “humanitarian”, but it’s deeper than that. Point is: he’s calling them egalitarian issues because that’s the one thing he knows is incompatible with his version of Judaism. Which is just a transparently one-sided perspective. There’s no semblance of objectivity here.

W/o comparing the issues, the fact that yeshivish/Charedi theology has no viable way to deal with the fundamentally interpersonal matter of same-sex relationships is more concerning to me, but then again I won’t take their views seriously until rabbis listen to real queer people.

Overall, I think RYB’s presentation was as good as you can ask for from someone from his world. He seems like a kind person who means well. But the fact that this best possible presentation still involves significant bias and logical fallacies tells you all you need to know.

RYB ends with the classic apologetic—“it’s the ultimate insult to women that women achieve fulfillment only by assuming roles that were traditionally male.”

Hmm, did you ever think about WHO decided those roles were traditionally male? WHY they decided that?

No, women pursue ordination not (just) because they want to feel fulfilled, but because they want to know Torah. Teach Torah. Lead a community. As a person. As a Jew. As a servant of God.

Just happens to be that men decided that only men can be rabbis. Men made this a man thing.