Introduction

How do we transmit Jewish tradition? Should we emphasize intellect or experience?

A verse at the beginning of Mishlei points to parents as a child’s primary teachers.

What are the parents’ lessons that the verse instructs the child to follow? Mishlei is a book of parables. Midrash Mishlei takes this verse very broadly: father’s instruction is a parable for Written Torah, and mother’s teaching refers to the oral teachings from Sinai.

The parents’ teachings stand in for the whole of Torah. Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik explains that this verse is not just a parable referring to the giving of Torah from Sinai, but a fine-tuned presentation of two complementary tracks for transmitting that Torah, the written and the unwritten.¹ In his eulogy for Rebbitzen Rivka Twersky, known as the Talner Rebbetzin, Rav Soloveitchik explains this distinction in real-life terms.

He writes that a father traditionally brings his family the intellectual-moral discipline of Torah through mussar avicha, and that a mother brings the experience of God and Torah to life, through torat imecha. Exposure to both aspects of Torah begins with the parents, in the home.

Both men and women can aspire to transmit a love for Judaism as richly lived, in and out of the home, whether or not they are parents. And all can aspire to transmit the intellectual aspects of Judaism.

Even so, women’s connections to mitzvot have historically run through the home and the living Torah within it.³ Women have wielded great religious influence, often through torat imecha.

What are the sources of traditional halachic authority?

In the traditional societies of the past, communities existed in place continuously for centuries, developing strongly rooted practices and ways of life.

In a landmark essay,⁴ Rav Soloveitchik’s son, Dr. Haym Soloveitchik, elaborates on the distinctions his father drew⁵ to identify two sources of halachic authority within these communities: a textual tradition transmitted through study, and a mimetic tradition, learned through imitation. He describes how in Ashkenaz, custom was part and parcel of Halacha, its dictates taken as seriously as those of texts.

Halacha is a way of life and that way of life is not all about text. In a conflict between text and mimetic tradition, text does not always win. How we practice Halacha can be as powerful a force in determining Halachic rulings as what the texts say.

The complementary textual and mimetic traditions for determining Halacha parallel mussar avicha and torat imecha: the first is more formal and the second more experiential; both bear influence and authority.

Where have women traditionally fit into these frameworks for transmitting Halacha and tradition?

In an era in which few women merited formal education, imitation and informal instruction were the most common ways for women to learn how to keep mitzvot and to transmit knowledge of mitzvot. Through mimesis, women built real halachic expertise.

Medieval halachic luminary Maharil attests to this in a responsum:

Using a classic halachic metaphor, Maharil likens women’s knowledge of halachic practice to prophecy.

Performing mitzvot and domestic tasks in conformity with Halacha demands halachic competence and confidence. As day-to-day decision makers in the home on any number of matters bearing practical halachic weight, women exercise a type of halachic authority. Historically, that decision-making was authoritative. It drew its authority from what had been received mimetically from previous generations.⁶

How did this work? The kitchen is a good example. For most of history, the woman at home was very much in charge of her kitchen. It was she who carried a proud legacy from the women who came before her of how to observe kashrut and other related laws. When questions arose, it was she who decided them or chose to consult scholars expert in texts.⁷

Men respected women’s mimetic halachic knowledge. In the Talmud, in addition to accounts of women seeking guidance from sages, we occasionally see the sages themselves learning from women about Halacha in practice. For example, Ravina cites his mother in a dispute between Rav and Rav Chiyya regarding the timing of cutting bread and birkat ha-motzi:

Ravina’s mother knew well what her husband did. She understood its halachic implications, too. She taught both to her son, who recognizes the authority of her teaching.

Did women’s halachic authority receive wider recognition? Yes. Rav Yitzchak of Dampierre, one of the most prominent tosafists, formalizes women’s role in transmitting Halacha.⁸

This statement goes beyond Maharil’s. Rav Yitchak recognizes custom maintained by women as absolutely reliable in evaluating halachic practice. For this reason, we should rely on women’s mimetic transmission of Halacha.

Women and men, practitioners of both types of tradition, engaged in dialogue with each other regarding halachic practice.

The textual and mimetic traditions can be mutually reinforcing in a community or family. Can an individual integrate them?

In early seventeenth-century Poland, we find an example of a single individual integrating textual and experiential knowledge, mussar avicha and torat imecha: Rebbitzen Bayla Falk. Her son, Rav Yosef Falk, wrote a posthumous introduction to a work of scholarship by his father (her husband). In the middle of the introduction, Rav Yosef devotes several paragraphs to a vivid description of his mother and her piety.

Rebbitzen Bayla expresses her piety through Torah, avoda (prayer), and gemilut chassadim (loving-kindness). She opens up the synagogue to pray, and learns Torah for its own sake. Students gather at the Shabbat table of their distinguished rabbi, passionately debating Torah with him, and Rebbitzen Bayla participates in the discussion. She shares ideas of the highest quality. They are so fine that her son has to evoke male imagery to do them justice. As he writes, when it comes to Torah, this “dignified, noble, and modest” woman “girds her loins like a man.”

Rebbitzen Bayla’s Torah learning extends to real halachic mastery of laws pertaining directly to women’s lives. Later in the introduction, Rav Falk explains two original halachic positions of his mother’s regarding candle-lighting. He then publicly issues a halachic ruling following his mother’s halachic innovation!⁹

Rebbitzen Bayla both lives and thinks Torah. She prepares both Torah and food for her Shabbat table. She learns halachot related to the mitzvot she observes and puts her halachic insights into practice. Her intellectual knowledge of Torah enhances her transmission of Torah as a way of life.

Rebbitzen Bayla provides a model for developing textual knowledge while transmitting torat imecha.

A person’s knowledge of mitzvot can enhance their “flavor, scent, and warmth.” Jewish women and men can learn to transmit the life of Judaism along with Torah. A learned Jewish woman’s knowledge and practice can be mutually reinforcing. Textual knowledge can lead a woman closer to the Torah ideals of text and mimetic tradition.

Are these distinctions still relevant today?

Classically, women have been expert in the mimetic tradition, passing on to children the knowledge of how to perform essential mitzvot.

But the transience and fast-paced changes of modern life have weakened the authority of communal practice and the home. In our times, custom has lost much of its potency. Parents have ceded authority to schools.

Religious authority now rests chiefly with text and its masters. In Halacha and in other areas, we lend our highest trust to books and experts. We often attempt to resolve problems by researching them, not by seeking out our parents’ wisdom. The textual tradition is ascendant at the mimetic tradition’s expense. Recently, even the authority of the textual tradition has also been called into question.

The decline of mimetic authority has had an especially profound effect on women, who have historically wielded it so effectively. Women now are also less bound to the home, the center of mimetic learning, than in the past. As the power of the mimetic tradition wanes in many of our communities, so does the authority of a woman’s role in Halacha.¹⁰

Where do we go from here? What happens now?

Much of the current tug of war over a woman’s role in Judaism starts here. In many of our communities, a traditional role has lost its authority and much of its footing. Textual knowledge can play a part in reconstructing them.

Now more than ever, textual knowledge can better enable women to observe, preserve and transmit Halacha, in and out of the home. Mishna Berura explains the importance of understanding Halacha in general:

Mishna Berura doubts a person can make sense of Halacha without learning its deeper rationale. It doesn’t ‘sit well.’ Now that we give less weight to the informal methods through which women typically learn Halacha, this argument takes on more urgency. Can we expect a well educated woman to find that Halacha ‘sits well’ without giving her the tools to understand it?

Deracheha contributing editor Shayna Goldberg explains how important textual learning of Halacha can be:¹¹

In striving to live lives in service of God and to find a place within Halacha, women should directly encounter more texts, and work collaboratively to understand halachic issues through the standpoints of both text and mimetic tradition

That is the goal of Deracheha.

Read more about Deracheha’s approach to Halacha study here.