Why do women want to put on Tefilin?

ora_43

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 2:59 am

chani8 wrote:

It always comes down to suggesting that women aren't doing all that they are obligated in.

Because it's very different to do something extra to "feel close to Hashem" on top of all of the actual mitzvot, and doing something to "feel close" without doing mitzvot.

The second approach is very philosophically different from the first. It treats Judaism as a matter of personal feelings instead of the fulfillment of a divine contract. It suggests that *feeling* like I'm doing something holy is more important than whatever the Torah says about holiness.

The first approach, OTOH, integrates personal feelings and obligation.

You make it sound like people attack women who wear tefillin even though most are doing their best to keep mitzvot. I think maybe you don't realize how common it is in non-orthodox movements for women to wear tefillin even if they do not keep shabbat or kashrut. When people use the caveat "if they are doing what they are obligated in" it's not necessarily code for "if they are PERFECT."

chani8

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 3:41 am

Dolly Welsh wrote:

Did I say no woman loves her husband?

As for the rest, well, we disagree.

Let me point out which "streams" are losing members and having too few children. Results matter.

What you are praising does not work long term. No matter how good it feels and how reasonable it sounds.

When men and women don't have defined jobs, the women are thrilled, and the men leave. We can't have the men leave.

There are much deeper things to say than that about women and men but I am too shy to spout chassidus in this learned company.

And you are too nice to argue with.

But that liberal stuff just isn't panning out. In, like, the real world.

It MATTERS they have a sixty percent out-marriage rate. It MATTERS they have few and no children.

I hear seventy-five percent of the Jewish children in New York City are Orthodox.

Gender defining roles seems to have some kind of life in it, and fluidity seems to kill something. Maybe there's something THERE.

I'm not arguing with you. I thought we were just discussing. Disagreeing is fine.

The rabbonim said women don't have put on tefillin. I totally respect that. But nowadays it's being translated into, 'women are not allowed to put on tefillin', which is just not true.

What you are suggesting is totally hashkafically based, not halacha, that men would be threatened/undermined/insulted by women wearing tefillin, that they'd just leave. That they would be displaced. I ask, does that happen in the big world? That when women join in, or even rise to the top, that men throw up their hands and walk away? In politics? In universities? Reform shuls even? I don't know. I don't get it.

Men's egos are so fragile? Not my men. The are all three alpha types who are also feminists. It sounds like you are suggestion that women should hold back and remain limited just so we don't hurt men's feelings. Only frum women, or all women?

HindaRochel

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 4:53 am

Dolly Welsh wrote:

This may sound very odd, but they need us to protect them. They need us to protect and give permission for their differentness from us.

If men need to feel "different" from us to obey a commandment then I question the motivation of that man, or as you seem to feel @Dolly, most men, to obey the commandments.

Rather than ask about the motivation of women one should ask the motivation of men.

To follow a commandment because it is commanded by Hashem, beautiful. To feel a connection to Hashem, beautiful.

Because otherwise they won't feel the difference? What is that suppose to mean? Special? Better? More beloved? More honored? Just different?

Then that is sad.

etky

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 5:08 am

I see both aspects of this debate. I get Dolly's point about gender distinctions. I think that psychologically it is healthy when there are certain roles that are gender based. This applies to the religious realm as well. The question is how much leeway is there. Is everything written in stone or is there flexibility on certain matters that are more socially constructed than divinely mandated? And if there is flexibility, should it be exercised? What are the costs and what are the benefits- on both the personal and societal level? These are the salient questions to which there is no one correct answer. People and communities have to find a modus vivendi that works for them.
No one, however, has the right to question or discount another individual's spiritual needs as inauthentic based on their own appraisal of what he/she "should be doing first" - especially in regard to orthodox women whose very identification as such should be enough to demonstrate that they are committed to halacha and not just "picking and choosing" only what is meaningful to them. No interrogration of their motivation should be required or encouraged. If there is halachic leeway to permit a practice that will provide a particular type of spiritual satisfaction to a woman whose orthodoxy proclaims that she is following at least a baseline of halachic observance, why must she be challenged to first check off all other items on a list of her other obligations?

tigerwife

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 8:14 am

Question to those who looked into this- could a woman get the same Schar for donning tefillin as a man?

I'm thinking about this because similarly, a man can go to the Mikva every day but he will never get the same Schar as a women who fulfills the mitzva of Mikva.

And yes, I know we don't do mitzvos just for the Schar. I'm trying to understand the gender-based distinction.

samantha87

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 8:35 am

tigerwife wrote:

Gadol metzuvah v'oseh mimi she-aino metzuvah v'oseh. So a man wearing tefillin and shaking lulav gets more schar. Men going to the mikvah isn't a good example, because they have their own (different) reason for going.

etky

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 8:35 am

tigerwife wrote:

Well I never looked into it but it would seem to me that the issue is tied to the overall one of women saying a bracha on a mitzvat aseh shehazman greman - iin other words, mitzvot from which they are exempt but choose to perform anyway (like lulav for example). The question of whether they say a bracha or not (because they are exempted) was a well known machloket rishonim. Rambam (and Shulchan Aruch later on) say they do not and that is the prevalent Sephardi ruling until today (bolstered by R; Ovadiah Yosef in recent years) while Ashkenazi women do say brachot on these mitzvot.
I would imagine that if you say the bracha it implies that it is a mitzva for you and thus you would get schar. Mikva for men is not a mitzva in any form or fashion and it's not like they were exempted from the women's mikva mitzva - it just doesn't relate to them in any way .

etky

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 8:37 am

samantha87 wrote:

According to some rishonim the woman is metzuvah and that's why she is allowed to say וציוונו in the bracha.

tigerwife

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 8:37 am

Thanks, Etky and Samantha.

samantha87

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 8:38 am

ora_43 wrote:

Really? How many non Orthodox women regularly put on tefillin? The few who do are probably shomer Shabbat and kashrut.

Dolly Welsh

Fri, Jun 26 2015, 12:38 pm

HindaRochel wrote:

You are right and I quote your post in its entirety because it excellently summarizes reality.

Men are made of clay and are not as pure as we are. You exhibit classical female incomprehension of that fact because you are made so differently from them. YES it's sad. Sort of. Maybe. It's also the way it is. That's the dynamic Hashem set up: they need their own clubhouse, and you don't know why. Both of those things are permanent.

Can we have the grandeur to accept that something is so, even though we can't understand why it is so?

Probably not.

Our ancestress Chava had the same attitude and we are all just like her.

The prohibition she broke just didn't make sense to her. Maybe it didn't make sense at all. Anyway, she didn't do "do first, understand second" which the Jews took at Sinai. "We will do and we will hear."

And her husband, Adam, showed his decidedly clay aspect, by finger pointing, in the next minute. Charming. We are idiots and they are base. Welcome to human history. But it's not quite that bad, but one does need Torah.

Our grandeur is we don't eat that perfectly good apple every day. (I know it wasn't quite an apple and may have been a pomegranate or who knows so don't tell me.) Why? Because, though thinkers, we are women of faith.

I am a woman too and I have developed a patience around these things. But I have had a very extra-rational life. A great deal in my life has had to be taken on "because Mommy says so," and I have come out ok anyway. So I am all right with what does not make sense.

That accepting quality has led to me being frum in late life. There is no rational way to get from a secular background to BT.

"What is that supposed to mean?" you wail in your post. An honest wail.

"Just different" is the closest you came to the right answer. You have a lot of question marks there. Right. These questions have no answer. It's pure "because Mommy says so," although it's Hashem not Mommy.

That there are a few highly stalwart men, whose wives adore them, who in the safety of their compound, consider themselves "feminists," does not change the larger picture one bit.

G-d is being very nice. No Mabuls. The liberal Jews are being allowed to live nice lives, and the falsity of their ideas is only played out, gradually, as they comfortably and sweetly recline into nothing, having no grandchildren.

What is bad for you does not always hurt. For two or three generations!

Then silence.

Kids. Don't take down the mechitza.

Anyway, you need it too. It is impossible to pray well with a guy staring at you, and stare they will.

HindaRochel

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 4:15 pm

Dolly Welsh wrote:

It was "Male and female created He them". There are different understandings of creation and the one you are speaking of. If an androgynous being than woman was separated from man. The other idea is she was built from him.

Dolly Welsh wrote:

Can we have the grandeur to accept that something is so, even though we can't understand why it is so?

Probably not.

Of course. What a ludicrous statement. There are many things I don't understand and accept as true; there are science concepts and mathematical concepts that are beyond me.

Dolly Welsh wrote:

Our ancestress Chava had the same attitude and we are all just like her.

This is so amusingly untrue I wouldn't even no where to begin. For one thing we don't know what Chava's attitude was. According to some midrashim that she was convinced by the nachash because Adam had failed to instruct her properly, treating her as an inferior and adding in the concept of touching being as wrong as eating.

Dolly Welsh wrote:

The prohibition she broke just didn't make sense to her. Maybe it didn't make sense at all. Anyway, she didn't do "do first, understand second" which the Jews took at Sinai. "We will do and we will hear."

No indication of that. We don't know what convinced her. Perhaps she just was testing her boundaries. Midrash seems to indicate that she touched the tree, didn't die and thus concluded the whole thing was wrong. Again, back to Adams improper instruction. Or it could be she was human and just gave in. There is every indication that Adam was there as well, because it states that "Adam who was with her..."

Dolly Welsh wrote:

And her husband, Adam, showed his decidedly clay aspect, by finger pointing, in the next minute. Charming. We are idiots and they are base. Welcome to human history. But it's not quite that bad, but one does need Torah.

Men point fingers but women don't? This is news to me. Unless you meant just that he was human and yes. We are human. It is human nature to test boundaries, it is human nature to try to blame others for shortcomings. Real world.

Dolly Welsh wrote:

Our grandeur is we don't eat that perfectly good apple every day. (I know it wasn't quite an apple and may have been a pomegranate or who knows so don't tell me.) Why? Because, though thinkers, we are women of faith.

Being people of faith doesn't mean we don't question or ask. It means that we accept certain principles as true even when we question, until we have answers.

Dolly Welsh wrote:

I am a woman too and I have developed a patience around these things. But I have had a very extra-rational life. A great deal in my life has had to be taken on "because Mommy says so," and I have come out ok anyway. So I am all right with what does not make sense.

I don't remember questioning if you were a woman or not but it is a rather interesting statement to make here.
Being okay with what doesn't make sense doesn't mean one doesn't ask questions.

Dolly Welsh wrote:

That accepting quality has led to me being frum in late life. There is no rational way to get from a secular background to BT.

It was rationality that made me frum, not the reverse.

Dolly Welsh wrote:

"What is that supposed to mean?" you wail in your post. An honest wail.

Not wailing, asking you to explain yourself.

Dolly Welsh wrote:

"Just different" is the closest you came to the right answer. You have a lot of question marks there. Right. These questions have no answer. It's pure "because Mommy says so," although it's Hashem not Mommy.

We have different roles in terms of Hashem's laws. That has nothing to do with emotions, thinking, or anything else. Nor does it have to do with putting on Tefillin.

Dolly Welsh wrote:

That there are a few highly stalwart men, whose wives adore them, who in the safety of their compound, consider themselves "feminists," does not change the larger picture one bit.

There are many men I know who consider themselves quite publicly to be feminist. Not sure what your point here is at all.

Dolly Welsh wrote:

G-d is being very nice. No Mabuls. The liberal Jews are being allowed to live nice lives, and the falsity of their ideas is only played out, gradually, as they comfortably and sweetly recline into nothing, having no grandchildren.

G-d is so grateful to you for endorsing His decisions.

We aren't talking about the reform. There are more and more Orthodox women who are donning tefillin, and they do so because it brings them closer to Hashem.

My question to you was that people question the motivation of women who do so and point out that they may not be perfect in all other practices in terms of Orthodoxy. You made the statement that men won't do it if women do it too, that they have to have something special just for them or they can't do the mitzvah. That is a very low view of men.

I don't wear tefillin. I just asked my husband if he would stop should all Orthodox women suddenly begin to don tefillin. "Whhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?" was his answer. I won't add the rest of his answer , but neither he nor my daughter who as also sitting here seemed to understand what difference women donning tefillin would have to do with real men. My husband is committed to Hashem. He doesn't need women t refrain from donning tefillin to keep his committment to Hashem

Dolly Welsh wrote:

What is bad for you does not always hurt. For two or three generations!

Then silence.

Kids. Don't take down the mechitza.

Anyway, you need it too. It is impossible to pray well with a guy staring at you, and stare they will.

We weren't talking about a mehitza, however,my family davened in an Orthodox shul iwth a low mehitza and managed not to stare. I'm not sure who the men are in your life who have such little will power but please stop using them as an example of how real men are.

Sadie

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 4:36 pm

samantha87 wrote:

Really? How many non Orthodox women regularly put on tefillin? The few who do are probably shomer Shabbat and kashrut.

Yeah, all the women I know who put on tefillin are religious. Mostly egalitarian which many would argue is incompatible with orthodoxy, but they are shomer shabbat and kashrut.

ora_43

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 5:09 pm

chani8 wrote:

I ask, does that happen in the big world? That when women join in, or even rise to the top, that men throw up their hands and walk away? In politics? In universities? Reform shuls even? I don't know. I don't get it.

Men's egos are so fragile?

To some extent, yes, it does happen. But I don't think it's so simple as "fragile egos."

I'm not sure I'm coherent enough to give a guess of why it happens, but I'll try anyway: different groups have different definitions of "normal," these definitions can be subconsciously gendered, and when spaces become female-dominated the definition of "normal" can become (unintentionally) feminine and men can be (or feel) judged or excluded.

eta - of course, it's also possible that men participating less in non-orthodox shuls has nothing to do with female participation, and is just a question of not seeing participation as an obligation. I was thinking more of the issue in general - why some fields go from male-dominated to female-dominated, or vice versa (or mixed to male dominated... etc).

Last edited by ora_43 on Sat, Jun 27 2015, 5:16 pm; edited 1 time in total

HindaRochel

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 5:15 pm

ora_43 wrote:

Part of the reason it happens is because female spaces are considered lesser. That is problem number one.
Many once male spaces became female spaces.

It is misogyny, and that is a separate issue which needs to be addressed. Once "male" is no longer seen as better than the shame of being in a female space, or, in the case of Tefillin, reading from the Torah, and learning, not being exclusively male, and thus shared, the sense of umbrage will go away as well.

What needs to be defeated, warred against or however you wish to term it, is the underlying attitude that male is better than female.

ora_43

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 5:19 pm

HindaRochel wrote:

I don't agree. There are plenty of cases of women being uncomfortable in male dominated spaces, and I don't think that's because male spaces are considered lesser.

HindaRochel

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 5:27 pm

ora_43 wrote:

I don't agree. There are plenty of cases of women being uncomfortable in male dominated spaces, and I don't think that's because male spaces are considered lesser.

True, but the cause is the same, that women are made to feel they don't belong and that they most prove themselves as being able to hold the position more than a man would have to prove himself. Take this whole thread on tefillin.

When women have made it into specialized fields that are or have, been male dominated, there is a tendency to feel special. Sometimes their womanhood or sxuality is called into question, but "You aren't like other girls" is often considered a compliment, especially if the woman is attractive.

The reverse is also true. When a field that was before female dominated becomes male dominated it moves up in esteem. Computer programming was at first considered a women's field.

Obviously, this is a generalization.

Women are also made uncomfortable because of physical threat, which is a different issue.

Of course you and I may be speaking of different sorts of spaces, and if so please specify. We might then be using different terms and actually in agreement.

etky

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 5:34 pm

ora_43 wrote:

I don't agree. There are plenty of cases of women being uncomfortable in male dominated spaces, and I don't think that's because male spaces are considered lesser.

Women are uncomfortable b/c they often pick up on the vibe that they are interlopers in the "mens club" or not really wanted or not considered equal to the task at hand b/c of their gender.
OTOH , when a previously male only preserve is opened up to women it often makes that space appear less prestigious and thus less desirable to men who often depart on droves. This has happened in the more liberal denominations of Judaism and is also well-documented in some Protestant denominations like the Church of England that have opened up the ministry to women.

Liebs

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 5:39 pm

shevi82 wrote:

I never get it. Is it perhaps that they are very spiritual people? Personally, I don't feel like I would want another thing to do. But maybe someone who does can explain.

Why do men have mitzvos that women don't?
Women are connected innerly. We are jewish and part of am from birth. Men need to get a bris to be part of the am. Women naturally internal people and don't need externals to connect. We are more emotional.
Men need more external to connect. They connect more through physical. See how men need physical to feel love...so I think the mitzvos are to connect the men to their creator.
They need to do physical acts. Daven. Tefillin. Yarmulka.
I remember learning something to this affect...

Dolly Welsh

Sat, Jun 27 2015, 10:55 pm

I said "I am a woman too" because some people might find my views odd for a woman, and context was I was leading into describing my background, which has contributed to my way of thinking.

Yes. I am a woman. Too.