By Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin
PIKESVILLE, Maryland — There are different opinions regarding how the Torah treats women. Some believe that the Torah needed to accommodate the primitive ideas of the Israelites and allow such things as slavery, sacrifices, the harsh punishment of an eye for an eye, and even permitted Israelite soldiers to mistreat female enemy captives somewhat.
This was done because the people at the time the Torah was given would not have accepted the Torah if it had taught more rational behavior explicitly instead of only hinting at it. Therefore, since, at that time and even centuries later, women were foolishly considered far inferior to men, they had to be shown in the Torah as second-class citizens even though the Torah inserts many hints that this view is terrible.
This is one of the many ingenious teachings and ideas in the Torah. By its laws, it somewhat modified the primitive views of the ancients, which the Israelites accepted, bringing them closer to rational behavior, and by many hints, such as limiting the years of slavery, insisting that they be given payments at the end of their tenure, freeing them if they were mistreated, and other rules the Torah taught the people that slavery was wrong.
Years later, the Greek pagan Plato (c.427-c.348 BCE) called such ideas “noble lies” because they gave the people rules they could accept but taught them better behavior. Still, later, the Muslim polymath philosopher ibn Tofayl (c.1109-c.1185) told a tale expressing this idea in his highly praised book Hayy ibn Yaqzan, which some philosophy professors said influenced Maimonides (1138-1204), who called them “Essential Truths.”
Maimonides, for example, told an essential truth to the Jews of Yemen who were suffering under the cruel Yemeni government that the messiah would soon miraculously appear to save them, even though he believed the messianic age would be a natural event whose coming he could not predict.
According to this view, the biblical commands were given to men. Women were given no biblical commands. This seems to be indicated in Exodus 19:15, which states that only men are required to prepare for the delivery of the Decalogue. Women were expected to obey their fathers while they lived in his house or their husbands when they married, as indicated in Numbers 30:2-17.
Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865), known as Shadal, disagreed. He was a brilliant Orthodox Jewish scholar, the great-grandnephew of the equally famous Moses Hayyim Luzzatto (1707-1747), and the author of Mesilla Yesharim. He was a devout believer that God delivered the Torah to Israel.
Shadal rejected the idea that the Torah demeaned women. He saw no distinction in the Torah on how women were treated, and he felt that women and men were obliged in the Torah equally to observe the Torah’s commands.
This raises the question. According to both positions, how is it that the rabbis in post-biblical times decreed that women are not obligated to observe Torah positive commands that are time-bound, such as dwelling in a sukkah, using the four species on the holiday of Sukkot, and wearing Tefillin since the observances are positive commands?
They ruled that women are exempt from positive biblical commands that occur at a specific time. For example, the rabbis decreed that wearing Tefillin was not required at night or on Shabbat, so women were exempt from wearing them.
The rabbis made one exception. Women must observe positive commands that occur at a specific time with negative commands connected with them, such as the Shabbat, which is required in the Decalogue, but there are things that one may not do on the Shabbat.
Shadal explained his view that the rabbis allowed women not to have to observe specific biblical laws because he supposed that when the Torah was revealed, women were treated fairly and equally to men. However, during the rabbinical period, the rabbis noted that women were no longer treated as they should and were obliged to do much more work in their homes for their families. So, Shadal claims that the rabbis, having compassion upon women, lessened their religious burden by allowing them to ignore many positive biblical commands.
I have difficulty accepting Shadal’s reasoning. Given Shadal’s firmly held conviction that the Torah and its commands are from God, how could he have believed that the rabbis could annul what he, Shadal, felt God desired men and women to do?
I do not think he could argue that the rabbis were able to annul sacrifices, slavery, and similar laws, so they could also annul laws such as tefillin and Sukkot. There is a profound difference between slavery and sacrifices on the one hand and tefillin and Sukkot on the other. God hinted that he did not want sacrifices, slavery, and similar laws. Shadal himself said that God wanted women to observe the positive laws.
Therefore, I think the Torah did not obligate women to observe the laws because they were, by necessity, because of primitive notions, treated as non-entities in the past. Later, when they were treated better, the rabbis understood that they were equal to men and, therefore, also obligated women to observe the biblical commands, but they allowed them the dispensation.
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Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin is a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps and the author of more than 50 books.
Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin is a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps and the author of more than 50 books.