Learning Torah III: Openings

We concluded our previous piece by discussing Rabbi Eliezer’s objection to women’s Torah study, and explored several approaches to understanding his position.

Does Rabbi Eliezer’s viewpoint leave any room for women’s talmud Torah?

A careful look at Rambam shows that he thinks it does.

At first glance, Rambam seems simply to codify Rabbi Eliezer’s statement and restrict women’s access to Torah study. That’s a plausible— and common— reading of Rambam. However, if we look more closely at this halacha, we find some surprises.

For starters, the presentation seems belabored and repetitive. Rambam tells us the female student receives a reward, then adds that it’s not like a man’s, and then tells us again that she receives a reward. Next he explains the idea that a father should not teach his daughter Torah, twice!

Rambam’s halachic formulations are usually precise and concise. The awkward wording here suggests that this halacha is particularly complex— and that we should read it with care.¹

Close Reading of Rambam

Let’s go through the halacha, section by section:

I. Encouraging Start Take another look at the opening statement, “A woman who learned Torah receives a reward.” That means it has halachic value.

We know that Rambam is about to adopt Rabbi Eliezer’s objection to women’s learning, but he deliberately chooses to begin with a very different, positive message.

There’s something else interesting here. Rambam usually presents studying and teaching Torah as two components of a single mitzva. However, in this halacha, he treats them differently. A woman’s study deserves praise; the problem is specifically with teaching her.

From the start, Rambam seems to make a special effort to limit the impact of Rabbi Eliezer’s statement.

II. Tzivu Chachamim Moving forward, note that Rambam introduces Rabbi Eliezer’s position with the term “tzivu chachamim,” “sages commanded.” Rambam typically uses this phrase to introduce ethical counsel or a preferred practice.²
“Tzivu chachamim” is not the language of prohibition.

Authorities such as Chafetz Chayim (see below) still refer to Rabbi Eliezer’s statement as a prohibition, but Rambam might mean otherwise.

There’s a big difference between prohibiting a practice and discouraging it. Rambam may choose this language in order to moderate the halachic force of Rabbi Eliezer’s statement.

III. Reasons why Rambam next tackles the big question: Why would women’s study lead to tiflut? He tells us that “most women’s minds are not oriented to study.” Most women are not all women. Rambam implies that a minority of women do have minds oriented to study. Women may lack interest in study, not intellectual capacity for it.

Why does this matter to Rambam? He writes elsewhere that fundamental commandments, such as belief in God and love and awe of God, apply to women. How does someone learn to fulfill them? Through study:

Note the last line here. Rambam believes that anyone can develop into someone fit to walk in the pardes of these fundamental mitzvot. And we all have to keep these mitzvot. If the precursor is filling up with “bread and meat,” learning Halacha, then it is important for Rambam to acknowledge that women have the ability to learn.³
He does that indirectly in the halacha about talmud Torah.

IV. Surprise Ending Rambam saves his biggest innovation for last. After quoting Rabbi Eliezer, Rambam writes: “To what does this refer? To Oral Torah.”

In his general discussion of the mitzva of talmud Torah, Rambam distinguishes between Written Torah and Oral Torah. Now, he applies that distinction to Rabbi Eliezer’s statement in order to redefine its scope–something we have not seen among earlier authorities.

According to Rambam, when Rabbi Eliezer voices his concerns about a father teaching his daughter ‘Torah,’ he means Oral Torah. Rabbi Eliezer’s objection to women’s learning and concerns about tiflut do not apply to learning Written Torah!⁴

This leaves us with a puzzle. Why does Rambam conclude the halacha by writing that a father “should not set out to teach” his daughter Written Torah? What reservation could Rambam have about Written Torah if Rabbi Eliezer’s statement doesn’t apply to it?

This aspect of Rambam’s ruling may have nothing to do with Rabbi Eliezer. Instead, it may be an interpretation of Rabbi Elazar Ben Azarya. Rabbi Elazar teaches that women should “hear” or “understand” Written Torah at hakhel, but not study it.⁵

Perhaps Rabbi Elazar discourages enabling a woman to ‘study’ Written Torah. Rav David Ha-levi Segal (author of Turei Zahav, known as Taz) makes a suggestion along these lines:

Taz thinks that Rabbi Elazar Ben Azarya permits women to study Written Torah on a surface level, but opposes women learning Written Torah in depth.

If Rambam follows Rabbi Elazar Ben Azarya when he discourages a father from teaching his daughter Written Torah, then his objection might only be to teaching in depth, as Taz explains. In this case, a father could teach his daughter the simple meaning of Scripture. In fact, in a responsum, Rambam writes that a woman could even teach Torah, as long as she doesn’t have a husband who objects.⁶

Redefining Rabbi Eliezer

Let’s put the pieces together. Though Rambam follows Rabbi Eliezer, he interprets his position narrowly. A father can teach his daughter written Torah (at least superficially). Teaching her other Torah is discouraged, but possibly not prohibited. Women have the capacity to learn Torah, and a woman may learn Torah on her own. Perhaps she must, in order to walk in the pardes of faith. Torah is more open to women than we might have thought.

Shulchan Aruch’s ruling on women learning Torah follows Rambam, quoting him almost word for word.⁷

How should we understand the Rambam’s perspective on women studying independently?

Does Rambam really allow for a woman to learn Torah on her own? Maharil, writing about Rambam’s position, says as follows:

Maharil writes that Rambam has no reservations about a woman’s independent learning. Why not? Because we assume that a woman who undertakes Torah study on her own has positive intentions.

Maharil uses this halachic approach to explain how Beruria could enter into halachic discussions with the sages as an equal.⁸ She presumably learned on her own. (In an era in which most study was oral, this would have meant listening in on others’ study.)

Rav Eliezer Waldenberg, a major twentieth-century halachic decisor, writes that the simple reading of Rambam (and Shulchan Aruch) is that women receive reward for independent study even of Oral Torah.⁹

A caveat: Not everyone agrees with this reading of Rambam. In theory, rewarding a woman’s independent study might not be the same as encouraging it.¹⁰

Is independent study unique?

if we assume good intentions on the part of a woman who studies on her own, why don’t we also assume that a woman learning with her father has positive intentions? Rav Yehoshua Falk, a sixteenth-century Polish rabbi known as Perisha (the name of his commentary on the Tur), explains why father-daughter learning might be different from independent study:

Perisha connects Rambam’s claim that “most women’s minds aren’t oriented to study” with discouraging a father from teaching his daughter Torah. A woman who learns independently proves herself to be an exception to the tiflut-prone majority. We can’t say the same about a daughter learning from her father.

A father might initiate study with his daughter, assuming that she is up to it. However, “he does not know what is in her heart.” Parents sometimes have trouble seeing their children for what they truly are.

What about teachers in school? Rabbi Eliezer and Rambam probably use the word “father” because a father has the obligation to teach his sons Torah. Their statements may apply equally to teachers teaching women or girls.¹¹

However, Perisha explicitly bases his argument on the father-daughter relationship. That allows for a different teacher to teach a woman Torah, especially if she initiates the study like an independent learner.

Historically, most Jewish (and non-Jewish) women lacked access to formal education, and many were illiterate. Women who could read had access to popular didactic works, such as the sixteenth-century Tzena Ur’ena, in Yiddish.

Here and there, girls were tutored by their fathers or had opportunities to join their brothers in formal schooling. There were notably learned Jewish women. But these women were exceptions to the rule.

How and why did formal Jewish education become open to females?

First Steps: Women’s Needs In the nineteenth century, Germany’s neo-Orthodox community pioneers Jewish girls’ education as a community standard. Why? Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, leading Rabbi of that community, explains:

Rav Hirsch sees himself as continuing a tradition of women’s study begun by the popular works in Yiddish! He does not advocate women’s talmud Torah as a conceptual field of study. But he does support women’s learning to ensure “knowledge of the mitzvot” and to foster Jewish literacy. The school he founds provides a Jewish education to girls and boys.

Next Step: A Hungry Soul A woman initiates the next stride in opening up talmud Torah to women.

A woman initiates the next step in opening up Torah study to women. Enter Sarah Schenirer, a seamstress and budding educator with a keen sensitivity to Jewish women’s needs. Toward the end of World War I, she grows troubled by the extent of young women’s engagement in secular studies. She argues that pursuing secular studies with no religious counterpart leads to disaffection with religious life. As she writes:¹²

Jewish women have souls and those souls cry out for Torah.

In 1917, inspired by the neo-Orthodox approach to girls’ education, Schenirer founds a mass movement and school system in Poland, the forerunner of today’s Bais Yaakov network of girls’ schools.

Like any devoted Chassid, Schenirer seeks her Rebbe’s blessing before beginning a major endeavor. The Belzer Rebbe agrees, and she charges forward.

Her initial success attracts the attention of Agudas Yisrael. Eventually, Agudas Yisrael adopts Bais Yaakov, and helps enlist rabbinic support for its work, most notably from Rav Yisrael Meir Kagan, known as Chafetz Chayim.

What support does Bais Yaakov receive and why?

Even before Bais Yaakov’s founding, Chafetz Chayim articulates an argument for women’s study:

Chafetz Chayim admits that these times are not like “earlier times.” Communities are transient, and the “ancestral tradition has become very, very weakened.” What’s more, women have access to secular education. Mimesis alone can no longer meet our educational goals. Maharil has lost his debate with Rav Yitzchak of Corbeil. Women now must turn to Jewish texts, or “they are liable to deviate completely from the path of God.”

While Rav Hirsch emphasizes precedents for educating girls, Chafetz Chayim calls our attention to the break from the past.

This is a matter of spiritual life and death that Rabbi Eliezer never had to face. We are no longer “able to say that a daughter should not learn Torah” without losing women to lives that transgress it.

In his 1933 letter in support of Bais Yaakov, Chafetz Chayim takes action.

Chafetz Chayim tells parents it is a mitzva to send daughters to Bais Yaakov. Rabbi Eliezer’s concerns no longer apply.

After Chafetz Chayim

Torah giants such as twentieth-century halachic authority Rav Zalman Sorotzkin, a close associate of Chazon Ish and vice chair of Agudas Yisrael, voiced support for Torah education for girls in terms similar to those of Chafetz Chayim.¹³

Some leaders, most notably the Satmar Rebbe, remained opposed to girls’ study of texts.¹⁴

Nevertheless, in the wake of Chafetz Chayim, the halachic discussion moves from whether women can learn texts formally to what texts women should learn.

What should women study? We discuss this question in Learning Torah IV: What to Study.