Shalom Aleichem, mori verabotai. As Rabbi Puzansky indicated, the centrality of the topic, its far-reaching applications, is such that it could really engage us for a series of shiurim, not just one single shiur. So for this evening, we're going to try to focus on one aspect of that broader topic, and asking your indulgence, begin with a rather elementary, even simplistic characterization. Torah is extremely rich and multidimensional. On the one hand, it consists of a code of behavior: the dos and don'ts of the Shulchan Aruch, the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, the Mishnah Berurah, etc. And they guide and instruct us at every stage and every step of life. But on the other hand, Torah is also clearly a very developed, encompassing system of thought: beliefs, values, religious, theological, moral Weltanschauung, or for those who prefer mame-loshn, hashkafas olam. These two parts of Torah don't simply coexist separately and independently. Halachos are only intelligible and can only be appreciated within the context of the Torah's system of thought. Or in other words, Torah can only be understood on its own terms, in light of its own Torah values, axioms, and categories. If one uproots individual halachos and seeks to combine the halachos with an alien value system, with its alien axioms and assumptions, halacha is inevitably distorted and even caricatured. So let's try, be-ezrat Hashem, bli neder, to both illustrate and concretize what we're talking about here. As you're all familiar, the Rambam writes in Perek Alef of Hilchos Melachim—the first half of his statement explicit in the Sifri, and then the Rambam extrapolates therefrom—that אין מעמידין אשה במלכות שנאמר עליך שום תשים עליך מלך ולא מלכה.
And then the Rambam adds a sweeping halachic statement: וכן כל משימות שבישראל אין ממנים בהם אלא איש. Positions of serarah, positions of authority—the halacha, the Rambam paskens, only allows men to be appointed to such positions, not women. Similarly, the Rishonim infer from the Mishnah in Masechet Niddah—the Mishnah in Masechet Niddah says that כל הכשר לדון כשר להעיד. That anyone who's qualified, technically qualified to serve as a dayan, so that is a reflection of the fact that that same individual must also be kosher l'ha-id. So the logical implication of that correspondence which the Mishnah presents is that one who is technically posul l'ha-id, one who is technically disqualified from giving edus, is also technically disqualified from serving as a dayan. So hence the overwhelming majority of Rishonim comment based upon that Mishnah that women are disqualified from serving as dayanim, as judges in Beis Din. In a different but related vein, the Baraita tells us in Masechet Berachos that b'emes amru ben mevareich l'aviv. Skipping a few words, v'isha mevaresches l'ba'alah, אבל אמרו חכמים תבוא מאירה לאדם שאשתו ובניו מברכין לו,
or in other words, that even in situations where men and women enjoy a uniform level of obligation, which is sometimes, not always, which is sometimes the case with regard to Birkas HaMazon, so on one level that would position a woman through the principle of shomeia k'oneh to recite the Birkas HaMazon or plug in any other mitzvah such as Kiddush and the like, so on one level that would position a woman to be motzi a man with shomeia k'oneh, but Chazal very very sharply censure an individual who proceeds that way, Tavo me'eira, me'eira is a curse, rachmana litzlan, תבוא מאירה לאדם שאשתו ובניו מברכין לו. Is there any inference to be drawn here? Do these mekoros, again all drawn from our sacred masorah, all normative normative statements, is there any inference to be drawn as to the status of women? So we're told wherever you turn that rachmana litzlan, and I repeat it sort of with the same sense that eidim in Beis Din who are being me'id on in certain contexts in Beis Din have to repeat unseemly things, we're told rachmana litzlan that Yiddishkeit is patriarchal and even misogynist, that that's the upshot, that's the thrust of such mekoros. And at first glance, rachmana litzlan, that condemnatory inference seems to be pretty compelling. After all, the power is concentrated in the hands of men. They occupy all the positions of serarah, of authority. But let's try to follow the mandate that we established at the beginning to understand Torah on its own terms, not to plug in uprooted halachos, transplant them into some foreign soil, but to understand Torah in its own terms and then see what inference, what implications are present in these sources. Let's perhaps begin with din, the Torah's conception of din, and then proceed from there to the Torah's conception of melucha, of kingship. Torah writes in Parshas Devarim, לא תכירו פנים במשפט, and the Torah ends that pasuk, כי המשפט לאלקים הוא, that judging is in truth exclusively a divine prerogative. And thus we know from the shir shel yom, אלקים נצב בעדת אל, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is present when Beis Din, Beis Din convenes and Beis Din rules. That's why the witnesses, me'ikar hadin, are really supposed to stand when they give their testimony in Beis Din and the litigants are supposed to stand when Beis Din renders the psak. The kavod that's being given is not kavod for the dayanim but is kavod for the Shechinah because אלקים נצב בעדת אל. ועמדו שני האנשים אשר להם הריב לפני ה',
the Torah says. Chazal tell us in terms of the sense of grave and awesome responsibility that a dayan who sits on a Beis Din is supposed to feel. that לעולם יראה דיין עצמו כאילו חרב מונחת לו בין ירכותיו וגיהנום פתוחה לו מתחתיו.
He should feel the point of a sword and he should feel that he's standing at a precipice with Gehennom open in front of him. רב כי הוה אתי לבי דינא, when Rav would be walking to the Besdin to serve as a Dayan in Besdin, amar hachi: ברעות נפשיה לקטלא נפיק. He spoke of himself, as it were, with self-deprecation in the third person. He's willingly ברעות נפשיה לקטלא נפיק, he's willingly going to be killed. וצבי ביתיה לא עביד, he's not really attending to the needs of his household. V'reikan leveisei ayeil, and he'll return empty-handed, empty-handed when he goes home. ולואי שתהא ביאה כיציאה, and halavai that he emerges unscathed from din. Halavai that when he returns home, he will not have been sullied by failing to faithfully discharge the responsibility of a Dayan. And one last mareh makom, reading from the Rambam's summation of ma'amarei Chazal, אסור לדיין לנהוג בשררה על הציבור ובגסות רוח. It is absolutely forbidden for a Dayan, for a judge, to impose himself, to be heavy-handed in his dealing with the tzibur, ella ba'anava veyira. He has to conduct himself with a sense of humility and a sense of trepidation. How does the Torah view melucha? How does the Torah view a melech? Rav Pinkus in his Kuntras Shabbos Malkas in a very, very different context has occasion to quote the first two sources that we're going to mention here. The Gemara in Nedarim says: לאו מלכא אנא דמהנינא לך ואת לא מהנית לי. I'm not a king that I should be working for you and that there should be nothing reciprocal and that you shouldn't be doing anything for me. Again, that's so jarring, maybe just to repeat it so we can process it. Lav malka ana, I'm not a king that it should be the case that I, that unilaterally I work for you and there's no reciprocal relationship and you don't do anything for me. Posuk in Melachim when the zekeinim speak to Rechavam ben Shlomo about assuming the throne: אם היום תהיה עבד לעם. The Rambam writes in Hilchos Melachim: כדרך שחלק לו הכתוב הכבוד הגדול וחיב הכל בכבודו. Just as the Torah accords great honor and respect to the king and obligates everyone to show that respect to the king, כך צוה להיות לבו בקרבו שפל וחלל. So too the Torah commands that the king inwardly is supposed to feel humble and lowly, shene'emar: Velibi chalal bekirbo. לעולם יתנהג בענוה יתירה. The king has to conduct himself with an excess of humility. אין לנו גדול ממשה רבינו. No one who approaches the greatness of Moshe Rabbeinu ve-harei hu omer and what was Moshe Rabbeinu's self-image? Venachnu mah? Referring to himself and to Aharon, what are we? We're nothing. If one's view of the world, if there's a Ribbono shel Olam on top, there's no such thing as a person having power, as a person, as the person himself being in control. First of all, first of all, there's an awareness that ein od milvado. There's an awareness that everyone, everything just exists off of, through Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Everything ontologically, we're all ontological parasites. We all, we all live off of, feed off of, live through Hakadosh Baruch Hu. וכל מעשיך בספר נכתבים. So what kind of power trip is that? Anything, anything the melech does, anything a dayan does, anything any communal leader does, as is true for everything else we do, we're עתיד ליתן את הדין. There's a din vecheshbon for anything and everything we do. The dayan doesn't feel how powerful he is. It's not a category of thought or emotional experience for the believer. What a dayan, what a melech, what any person who occupies a position of serarah feels is an awesome responsibility. What the dayan feels is not, "Oh, I have so much power, I can, I can block the president's order, I can make or break the the presidential order." The dayan feels an awesome responsibility כי המשפט לאלוקים הוא. And if he doesn't faithfully carry out that shlichus of representing Hakadosh Baruch Hu and rendering judgment, he's עתיד ליתן את הדין. The world is not experienced for a ma'amin, the world is not experienced in categories of power and control and authority. The world is experienced in terms of responsibility. משל למה הדבר דומה, משל למה הדבר דומה rabosai. What would our reaction be to a parent who, who experienced a high over the control and power that he wields over his young, small, dependent children? Feels power. Feels control. We'd say he's a megalomaniac and report him to social services and get the kids away from him. A parent doesn't, a parent doesn't experience, is it true on a certain level that yeah, the parent establishes boundaries for the children? And yes, and the children are dependent upon the parents? Yeah, some of those words are, are, do, do resonate. But if the parent experiences that as power, as control? It's impossible to imagine anyone who's more unfit for, for, for the blessing of parenthood. A parent experiences parenthood in terms of responsibility. Yes, the child is dependent upon me and that doesn't give me a sense of power, it gives me a sense of awesome responsibility, that it's my responsibility to nurture this neshamah. There's no, there's no feeling of power associated with parenthood, we all know that. So the same way, there's no feeling of power associated with, with any position of serarah. There's a sense of responsibility, the religious emotional experiential categories in which a Torah Jew... experience the world, there's no power, that's not the experiential category, and there's no control, there's responsibility. The Western world, for whatever profession and affirmation of faith there is, but at best leads a very bifurcated existence. The only way one experiences emotionally a position of Serarah as, oh, I have the power, or if I'm looking from the outside, he has the power, she has the power, the only way a person experiences the world that way is if people are on top. If at the top of the pyramid there are people. If at the top of the pyramid is the Ribbono shel Olam, so what does the Halacha imply? The Halacha implies that men are more than women? So you know what the Halacha implies? The Halacha implies that women are nothing and men are nothing. We're all nothing. We're all just here with a sense of responsibility of responding to Devar Hashem and Retzon Hashem as He revealed it and communicated it to us. And the world is experienced in those terms, in those categories of responsibility. It's only when the Ribbono shel Olam is absent from that experiential world that one experiences it in terms of the power, the powerful, the disenfranchised. Only when the Ribbono shel Olam is removed from the picture can one process it that way. So in truth then, what do these Halachos, the Rambam in Hilchos Melachim, the inference from the Mishnah in Niddah, so what do they imply? They imply, we had occasion to talk about this in a previous Torah Web evening, that there are different aspects the Rav explains, there are different aspects of Tzelem Elokim. We perceive Hakadosh Baruch Hu in terms of His interaction with the world. We perceive Him variably as all-powerful, but at other times we perceive Him as quiet, as self-effacing. And men and women represent differing aspects of Tzelem Elokim. That's what the, within the Torah's terms, what these Halachos suggest and what they imply. There are different aspects to Tzelem Elokim, there are more public aspects to Tzelem Elokim, there are more private aspects to Tzelem Elokim. Generally, the Tzelem Elokim of a man includes the more public aspects as well, and generally the Tzelem Elokim of a woman doesn't. Let's perhaps take another example. As social religious issues arise and as the need demands, so Rabbonim Bifrakim, at times even Gedolim, will render a Psak Halacha. In some segments of the Jewish community, invariably I'm told, people take to the blogs to react. and the reaction in the blogs from from what I'm told this is not because of kovesh es hayetzer I just am computer illiterate so the yetzer hara and I has no entree here I I don't know how to do these things the reaction mirrors or or perhaps more precisely mimics how we together with other Americans discuss politics well what do you think about the president's policy on on North Korea so every everyone has an opinion and everyone feels entitled to an opinion and no one has any reservations about expressing that opinion nor does anyone have any reservations about adding ad hominems along the way as they they express their their opinion and all this is the the healthy workings of of a democracy and in terms of American democracy eina hachi nami so so be it now what you do with the ad hominems but in terms of everyone having an opinion everyone's entitled to an opinion everyone has a vote everyone's entitled to an opinion in that sense so even though the issue is one which is a charged social issue but for us it's a halachic issue and as such what an adam gadol says is not his personal opinion that that I and other little people like me are equally entitled to an opinion and are equally entitled to share with our 50,000 closest friends what we think about this person and and his opinions no that religious social issue whatever whatever it may be is is a question in halacha it's a question in halacha it requires a psak halacha and if an adam gadol gives his opinion he's not giving a personal opinion he's telling you based on on a lifetime immersion in Torah based on a knowledge of kol hatorah kullah this is what he thinks the din is it's it's not it's not a topic of conversation for the water cooler the way the the president's policy on North Korea is or I forgive forgive the New York example I'm from the from the other side of the bridge or the way Mayor de Blasio's policy about building homelessness shelters is ain hachi nami that that's to be debated and discussed and everyone's entitled to an opinion at the at the water cooler about is it a good plan for homeless shelters is it not a good plan is the approach to North Korea is it the correct approach or or is it is it not the correct approach but when something albeit so important socially when something is governed is caught falls within the jurisdiction of halacha as all these issues do what we're being told is not a personal political opinion what we're being told is is a psak halacha by someone who through a lifetime of work and through refinement of character is higia lahora'ah A we're entitled to try to understand but that's a very different mindset than the mindset of that with which we approach politics and which and with which we debate very vehemently the the policies of politics and which and which we comment ad hominem on on politicians psak halacha isn't isn't democratic if if the shul decides to get a new alarm system. And the question is in terms of Hilchos Shabbos, are there any de'oraisadika problems with the alarm system, are there any derabonandika problems? No, maybe, maybe everything is glatt. So Rav Pruzansky is not going to send out a form to the membership saying, "Here, would you like to vote? I vote that the alarm system is assur min HaTorah and I vote no it's patur aval assur or no I vote that it's heter gamur." The question will be submitted to a bona fide posek and that posek will give you his honest Torah ruling. And then it's part of Talmud Torah that we should try to understand what is the problem here or why isn't there a problem here in terms of this new alarm system. But to feel entitled to an opinion, and you'll forgive the candor, but and to launch ad hominem criticisms, what Chazal say about one who is mevazeh a talmid chacham, I don't want to repeat. It's terrifying what Chazal say happens when a person is mevazeh a talmid chacham or talmidei chachamim. When a talmid chacham, when an adam gadol gives his Torah opinion about a shaila, so it's our job to have derech eretz and keep quiet and try to learn from that psak halacha. If we intuited that psak halacha, so it's going to be easy, it's just going to confirm what we thought. And if it goes against what we thought the halacha is, so then we should try to understand what the basis is. We should try to learn, we should try to be enlightened. But psak halacha is not subject to debate and criticism amongst the broader community the way politics are. Other chachamim who have equal credentials or hagiyah le'horo'ah, if they disagree, so they're certainly entitled to their opinion and they're certainly entitled to register their disagreement. But the rest of us, the democratic mindset is totally out of place. That's not a Torah value, it's not a Torah perspective on halachic social issues and how the halacha addresses social realities. Perhaps one last example as to how Torah has to be understood, interpreted, experienced on its own terms. There's no question that the Torah, that Yahadus taught the world about morality. It taught the world about rachmanus, about chanina, about mercifulness, compassion. And yet in some let's call it incongruous way we're told that some halachos are insensitive, show a lack of compassion rachmana litzlan. When the Torah unequivocally tells us that if a person feels that he or she has a homosexual orientation and experiences same-gender attraction, when the Torah tells us that that person is not allowed to indulge that, is not allowed to accommodate that, so how does that square with the Torah value of sensitivity? trumpeting Torah values, values that the Torah taught the world, says that it doesn't live up to standards of sensitivity. Within the Torah's Hashkafas Olam, all middos, rachmanus, chanina, compassion, sensitivity, kindness, all middos are determined by emes and sheker, are determined by what's right and wrong. משל למה הדבר דומה. If you have someone who's a recovering alcoholic and he asks you, "Do me a favor. My wife is watching me like a hawk. Do me a favor, go to the corner store, pick me up a six-pack of beer, and we'll find a way for you to give it to me." So a friend asks you, "Do me a favor," asks you to run an errand to pick up something in the supermarket, so clearly we say no. Whether something is an act of kindness has to be judged contextually whether it's right or wrong, whether it's helpful or whether it's harmful. You can't deify kindness, you can't deify compassion, you can't deify sensitivity, that everything, everything else is determined, right and wrong is determined in light by the god of sensitivity, by the god of kindness, by the god of, lowercase g, by the god of compassion. That's the way the society views it. The way we view, to reflect upon the halacha of ואת זכר לא תשכב משכבי אשה, to reflect upon the halacha of כמעשה ארץ מצרים אשר ישבתם בה לא תעשו. So one has to understand it on the Torah's terms, within the Torah's system of thought. And within the Torah's system of thought, what's kindness and what's cruelty, what's sensitivity and what's insensitivity, is a function of what's right and what's wrong. And if a person, rachmana litzlan, who asks you for something which is not in his best interest, so we all intuitively understand that maybe the person is blinded to the fact that it's not in his self-interest, but we all intuitively understand that's not kindness, it's not compassion, it's not sensitivity. Because kindness, compassion, and sensitivity have to be defined in terms of emes v'sheker, in terms of mutar and in terms of mutar v'asur. Those are the categories that first have to be established, and then what constitutes rachmanus, what constitutes chanina, what constitutes sensitivity can be understood in light of that. When we relate to individual halachos in the Torah and look at them and look at them through a lens which is alien to the Torah or experience them in emotional categories, emotional experiential categories which are alien to the Torah, so what results is a moral dissonance. There's a lack of agreement between the halachos, the practical mandate, the practical imperative and one's values and one's beliefs. The antidote for such moral dissonance is that, rooted firmly in emunah, משה אמת ותורתו אמת, committed unconditionally to shmiras hamitzvos, we need to learn. We need to learn more. We need to know what the hashkafas hatorah is. We need to be able to accurately understand and properly and appropriately appreciate the mishpetei vechukei hatorah. The Or Hachaim Hakodesh in Parshas Yisro comments on, he darshens the pesukim of vayavo'u merefidim that the Torah's hinting at three primary ways that we're supposed to prepare ourselves for Kabbalas HaTorah. And interestingly, he says that one of those three ways is hisatsmus with an ayin, hisatsmus batorah. That the best preparation for Kabbalas HaTorah is that a person should exert himself tremendously in Talmud Torah to appreciate, to appreciate, to be able to accurately understand and reflect on the Torah. So we need that hisatsmus, hisatsmus batorah.