Starting at age four, our children study Torah with their mother before bedtime on most evenings. Several months ago, as they learned the Mishnah of Tractate Shabbat, I overheard our twins reading a mishnah with their mother which was confusing, frightening, and even a bit offensive.
:עַל שָׁלשׁ עֲבֵרוֹת נָשִׁים מֵתוֹת בִּשְׁעַת לֵדָתָן, עַל שֶׁאֵינָן זְהִירוֹת בַּנִּדָּה וּבַחַלָּה וּבְהַדְלָקַת הַנֵּר
There are three sins for which women die during childbirth: because they are not meticulously observant of [the laws of] niddah, hallah, and the kindling of the [Shabbat] lights.
This is a confusing mishnah: what is so severe about these three mitzvot and what do they have in common? What do any of them have in common with childbirth? Why are women singled out? How is the mishnah confident that these sins punished so publicly when Divine justice is usually not meted out with such certainty? Failure to observe Hallah and Niddah involve violating prohibitions, but what prohibition is caused by neglecting Shabbat lights?
Years ago I heard Rabbanit Gila Rosen, a veteran Jerusalem-based educator, explain that שֶׁאֵינָן זְהִירוֹת in the context of candle lighting could only mean that they light Shabbat candles after sunset. They do not neglect to light candles, which would be only a minor violation of Jewish practice, but rather they kindle lights after Shabbat has begun which is a far more severe violation. So that is at least one answer to one question raised by this mishnah.
The Talmud itself, when investigating this mishnah questions the connection between these transgressions and childbirth. Childbirth, the Talmud tells us, by way of explanation, is the most dangerous thing that occurs in the lives of many women. Whenever we are in danger, according to this Talmudic tradition, we are confronted by our sins and God must choose, as it were, whether or not to save us from that dangerous situation. What dangerous thing, according to the Talmud, do men do that is comparable to childbirth? Men cross bridges.
This mishnah is frightening. Even though we are blessed to live in a time when maternal death during childbirth is quite rare, the subjective vulnerability that many women feel during labor and delivery is quite real and the objective risk, however much it has gotten smaller, remains as well. When I heard my children learning this mishnah with their mother, I worried that it might frighten them and cause them to worry on behalf of all the pregnant women they know.
This mishnah can be offensive. Even though there are six hundred thirteen mitzvot in the Torah and women and men stand equally obligated in the vast majority of those mitzvot, just three ritual practices – not one of which is actually a distinctly female mitzvah in the Torah – are used to sum up the spiritual status of women in labor and determine their worthiness to receive Divine favor. This mishnah, taught and studied almost exclusively by male Torah students for centuries, also suggests a dynamic in which women cannot be trusted to observe mitzvot carefully שֶׁאֵינָן זְהִירוֹת – they are reckless – and in turn suffer painful and terrifying deaths which reveals their flawed characters to their entire community.
Our Torah portion also discusses a dynamic in which women are not trusted; the sotah. A married woman who secluded herself under suspicious circumstances with another man, thereby arousing the jealousy of her husband, could have her virtue inspected through a public ritual that took place in the Temple. As described in the Torah, curses were written on parchment, dissolved in water, and then given to this suspected woman to drink. If she was innocent, the waters would cause no harm. If, in fact, her husband’s suspicions were warranted, the waters would cause a gruesome death.
Tractate Sotah in the Mishnah and Talmud are devoted to exploring and understanding this ritual and an important detail, not mentioned in the Torah is introduced. Apparently, the personal merits and Torah scholarship of an adulterous woman would protect her against the effects of the sotah waters. This prompted Ben Azzai, as quoted in the Mishnah, to encourage parents to teach Torah to their daughters to protect them from the sotah waters no matter what mistakes and missteps might occur in their future.
מכאן אומר בן עזאי חייב אדם ללמד את בתו תורה שאם תשתה תדע שהזכות תולה לה
Rabbi Eliezer reacted that this would create a sort of moral hazard and that teaching Torah to one’s daughter to protect her from the possibility of trial by the sotah waters would encourage licentious behavior (if you’ve followed the contemporary debates about the HPV vaccine, this will sound familiar).
ר”א אומר כל המלמד בתו תורה (כאילו) לומדה תפלות
Ben Azzai’s call for universal education for girls was not endorsed by other influential rabbis and teachers until modern times, perhaps because he so explicitly connected his educational platform to providing immunity to drinking the sotah waters. Rabbi Eliezer’s discouragement of educating girls, was echoed by later generations of poskim, despite the fairly narrow original context of Rabbi Eliezer’s fear of moral hazard.
Nonetheless, starting in the 19th century in Germany, spreading to Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, and then coming to the United States, formal Jewish education for girls has become universal. And, in the last forty years, an increasing number of women have attained more advanced Torah educations and entered the beit midrash as scholars and teachers.
What difference does that make?
What difference does it make to confront a confusing mishnah, but to have it explained by a female Torah scholar like Rabbanit Gilah Rosen? What difference does it make that my children encountered a frightening mishnah in the comforting presence of their mother, who is also their primary Torah teacher? What difference does it make that a generation of students, boys and girls, men and women, can confront a challenging or even offensive mishnah, and then process their reactions and make sense of that mishnah in a beit midrash that is open to the insights and guidance of female Torah scholars?
It can make all the difference. I’ve described myself more than once as a “democratic elitist.” I am an elitist in my sense that authentic Jewish leadership requires a high degree of Torah scholarship. I am an elitist because I believe that empowered Jewish living requires the textual literacy to encounter the primary texts of Judaism on their own terms, and the fluency to evaluate them and figure out what the covenant of Sinai asks us to do. I am a “democratic elitist” because I believe that every Jew should be given the tools to develop that literacy and fluency and to then be empowered to make responsible and authentic Jewish choices.
We did encounter one woman this morning who, in some ways, becomes a model for empowered Jewish leadership. We do not discover her name, but she was assigned a distinct leadership role by God and the patriarchal assumptions of her family did not prevent her from fulfilling the task assigned to her.
The Haftarah that was read this morning discusses the angelic portent of the birth of Shimshon. The haftarah opens by telling us about a family, comprised of a husband named Mano’ah, and a wife, who is known only as “the wife of Mano’ah.” They have no children; she is barren. An angel appears to her and tells her that she will have a child, but that this child will be a perpetual nazir, and so she should drink no wine while pregnant and she should raise her son to be a nazir as well; his hair should not be cut and he should stay away from wine.
The angel’s instructions were quite clear. But the angel gave those instructions to the wife of Mano’ach and so Mano’ach thought that he deserved to be a mediator between God and his wife. He prays, the haftarah continues, for God to once again send instructions:
וַיֶּעְתַּ֥ר מָנ֛וֹחַ אֶל־ה׳ וַיֹּאמַ֑ר בִּ֣י אֲד-י אִ֣ישׁ הָאֱ-לֹהִ֞ים אֲשֶׁ֣ר שָׁלַ֗חְתָּ יָבוֹא־נָ֥א עוֹד֙ אֵלֵ֔ינוּ וְיוֹרֵ֕נוּ מַֽה־נַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה לַנַּ֥עַר הַיּוּלָּֽד׃
Manoah pleaded with the LORD. “Oh, my Lord!” he said, “please let the man of God that You sent come to us again, and let him instruct us how to act with the child that is to be born.”
Why is Manoach unsure what to do? His wife received perfectly clear instructions. Manoach was distressed and turned to God in prayer not because he lacked information, but because he assumed that the information had to flow through him rather than his wife.
God spoke to them again. Again, God’s angelic messenger appeared to the wife of Manoach when she was alone. She ran to her husband and, this time, he returns in time to confront the angel:
Manoah promptly followed his wife. He came to the man and asked him: “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” “Yes,” he answered.Then Manoah said, “May your words soon come true! What rules shall be observed for the boy?”
The angel responds by highlighting the fact that Manoach’s wife had already been told everything the family would need to know in order to be good parents of Shimshon:
“The angel of the LORD said to Manoah, “The woman must abstain from all the things against which I warned her.”
The angel refuses to repeat himself; he had already told Manoach’s wife all that she needed to know.
But even now, Manoach is obtuse. He thinks the angel would appreciate being invited for dinner. Angels don’t eat and this one explains that to Manoach:
“If you detain me, I shall not eat your food; and if you present a burnt offering, offer it to LORD.”—For Manoah did not know that he was an angel of the LORD.”
Eventually, even thick-headed Manoach realizes the angelic nature of his visitor when the angel disappears in a flash of fire. But now, finally understanding that the visitor was no ordinary person, Manoach assumes the angel had been assigned to kill him and his wife must talk sense into her husband:
“But his wife said to him, “Had the LORD meant to take our lives, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and meal offering from us, nor let us see all these things; and He would not have made such an announcement to us.” The woman bore a son, and she named him Samson. The boy grew up, and the LORD blessed him.”
My teacher, Rabbi Klapper, has characterized Sefer Shoftim, the Book of Judges, as a sort of feminist satire. Again and again and again in the book, male characters act in stereotypically pig-headed and obtuse ways and, when they are lucky, heroic women are left to pick up the pieces and save the day.
Sefer Shoftim is a satire because the mockery directed at its pig-headed and obtuse men, the contrast with the unexpected female heroines, and its poignant portrayals of female victims of anarchy and violence, are all to prepare us to embrace the monarchy introduced in Sefer Shmuel, the book of Samuel. But for us, a generation after women have begun to enter the beit midrash, the wife of Mano’ach can be an affirmative model of a woman who received a message from God, overcame the doubts of her family, and provided life saving religious guidance to her child.
She’s the interpreter of God’s message and she’s the teacher. Her presence as the intermediary between God and the Jewish people, and as the one who provides instruction and guidance to her family changed the course of history. Jewish men and women can both look to Manoach’s wife and see how salvation can come to the Jewish people when each one of us takes responsibility for interpreting and transmitting God’s word.
Jewish tradition can be described as a centuries long conversation as each generation struggles to respond to the covenant of Sinai and to faithfully transmit that heritage to the next generation. The Torah was given to all of us. When all of us claim that Torah and assert our ownership over it, then each of us can participate in that conversation, and the Torah that we in turn pass on to the generations that follow will be all the richer and deeper and fuller.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 