RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:jewish spirituality:WOMEN'S RIGHTS:TALLIT:TZITZIT:KOTEL:wall

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:jewish spirituality:WOMEN'S RIGHTS:TALLIT:TZITZIT:KOTEL:wall

 

 For ERUV: The Journal January 2010

 

 

 

The Wall Is Wailing : G!d is Wailing

 

Rabbi Arthur Segal, Hilton Head Island, SC,  a well known author, teacher and lecturer, and can be reached at RabbiSegal@JewishSpiritualRenewal.net  and his web site is www.JewishSpiritualRenewal.org

 

 

 

I was asked to write about the recent incident of the arrest of a Jewish woman at the Kotel, the remaining wall of the Jerusalem Temple, for wearing a tallit, with four tzitzit, fringes. I invite you to read on.

 

A bit more than 8 years ago, some of my Talmudim asked me: "Rabbi, where was Ha Shem on 9/11?'' My answer was simple. "He was there, crying along with us."

 

How do we know G!d cries or suffers? Because humankind, who was made in His image, cries and suffers.   Why does hunmankind suffer? Is it divine payback for our sins as  Hebraism teaches?   The Kabbalah of Judaism gives a much different answer. Humans suffer because God suffers. It is not humankind that suffers but G!d. The suffering we feel is not our suffering but God's suffering experienced through us as if it were our own. Therefore, the Kabbalah teaches, before we can liberate ourselves from suffering, we most first liberate God from His suffering.

 

The Zohar teaches that we know G!d suffers because humankind suffers. Genesis 1:27 says that "G!d created man in the image of Himself, in the image of G!d He created him." Therefore, as the Ba'al Shem Tov , the then-leftist reform founder of the now-rightist orthodox Chassidic movement said, "Man is a part of G!d, and the want that is in the part is in the whole, and the whole suffers the same want as the part." We can infer that G!d suffers because we know that mankind suffers.

 

Some time ago, Ex President Jimmy Carter got a Judiac lashing for stating that the State of Israel lives in a form of apartheid vis a vis its Jewish citizens and its Muslim citizens and neighbors. He recently made teshuvah for these comments. But how are we as Jews able point a finger at someone labeling our actions as racist, when we ourselves continue to allow extreme sexism to prevail? Do we as Jews believe in a G!d that condones untoward behavior towards women, but gives His mighty ''kol tov'' to mistreatment of non-Jews?

 

Of course not. Jews who understand true Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism are to live by Rabbi Hillel's,  circa 100 BCE , Talmudic maxim of ''what is hateful unto you, do not do to your fellow. '' He did not define ''fellow'' as ''one's fellow Jew,'' nor as one's ''fellow Jewish male.'' If we remember, he made the statement to a Roman soldier, who was already brushed aside by Rabbi Shammai. (Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 31a)

 

The Talmud Bavli Tractate Menacoth 43a teaches us that "Everyone is obligated in tzitzit–Priests, Levites and Israelites, converts, women and minors."  Maimonides tells us that if women want to wrap themselves in tzitzit, we do not protest. The R' Caro's Shulchan Aruch  says that women and slaves are exempt from tzitzit, but the commentator R' Moses Isserles says that, nevertheless, if they wish to wrap themselves and say the blessing, it is permissible as with all positive time-bound commandments. And even the 20th century orthodox halakah maven, R' M. Feinstein  posited  that "women are permitted to perform even mitzvot from which they are exempt by the Torah, and they get a mitzvah and a reward upon performing them…. and if so, also regarding tzitzit it is appropriate for a woman who wants to wear a garment that is different from a man's clothing but has four corners, that she put on tzitzit and fulfill this mitzvah."

 

And Rav Yehuda is portrayed as himself tying on tzitzit to the garments of the women in his household.  In Talmud Bavli Tractate Menacoth  43a: "Rav Yehudah attached tzitzit to the aprons of women in his household, and would make the blessing every morning." In Talmud Bavli Tractate Gittin 45b women are not only permitted to wear tzitzit but to actually tie them and manufacture them. This ancient ruling was reaffirmed unanimously  by a beth din of 21 in a Responsa written by R' Gelfand.

 

The Talmud Bavli Tractate Eruvin 95 cites the view of two Tanna'im – Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehuda – that women are, in fact, included under the obligation of Tephillin. What is more, the Gemarra records a tradition that Michal, the daughter of King Shaul, wore Tephillin and that the Rabbis  did not object to this practice . R' Shlomo ben Aderet of medieval Barcelona and a student of Nachmonides in his Teshuvah 123 states: "I agree with those who say that if they desire they can do all such mitzvoth and recite the blessings, on the basis of Michal bat Shaul who used to wear tephillin and they did not protest; indeed she did so with the approval of the sages, and by the nature of the matter since she puts on tephillin she blesses". Certainly, if a woman can don Tephillin without our Chazal's protest, a woman can wear tzitzit.

 

And we have many stories in the Talmud of non-Jewish slaves, male and female, doing mitzvoth.The Talmud relates in many Tractates of Rabban Gamaliel and his favorite servant, Tavi. Tavi did many mitzvoth, and he was not Jewish. Gamaliel called him a "Talmid Chocham.'' [Talmud Bavli Tractate Sukkah 2:1]. But stories of non Jews doing mitzvoth were not just limited to men. R' Gamaliel's female non-Jewish servant, Tavita, is spoken of highly.

 

Now Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Niddah 2:1 tells us of Gamaliel's maid servant, Tavita (Tabita, also Aramaic for ''good''). Supposedly she was special as was Tavi. ''It happened that Tavita, Rabban Gamliel's serving girl, was carrying wine for drinks.  She inspected herself to see if her period had begun before lifting  up each jug of wine. When her period started, she said to Rabban Gamliel:  My lord, I have seen a blood stain on my garment. Rabban Gamliel was upset at the possibility that the wine had been rendered ritually unclean. She said to him:  Do not be concerned. I was inspecting myself before lifting each jug.  ''

In Leviticus Rabbah , 19:4, Rabban Gamaliel becomes so joyful he yells:'' May your life be given to you, even as you have restored mine to me!'' Remember that Rabban Gamaliel II was Nasi of the Talmudic academy in Yavnah, and could not be known for serving tainted wine. Tavita, a non-Jew, does not have to watch for laws of family purity for herself. She does so out of respect for her master. But in Tavita's case the lines between a giver of sustenance and life  by her master, and her granting him life, become blurred. This blurring is just as we see in the Talmud when Tavi actually teaches Jewish rabbis.

 

But are tzitzit really the issue? Is it about fringes? Unfortunately no. The tzitzit are just a fringe issue. The issue is women's rights, and a divide between those who view Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism as a way of life trying to emulate a G!d of love, kindness, mercy, forgiveness, and grace, or of those who view the Hebraic cult G!d of giving a list of does and don'ts to a male oligarchy who took the ethical and spiritual lessons of the sages, and condensed them into their interpretation of a list of rules, most of which put women into subservience.

 

The sages of the Talmud, in general  but not completely, rejected the subservient position of women in the Hebraic Chumash.  A male could not longer just toss a Get, a Hebrew divorce, at his wife, without a darn good reason, and even then, the rabbis cautioned against divorce. The Ketubah, the marriage contract was initiated to grant a women financial rights in case of a divorce. The sages were even concerned about a women's sexual rights and her sexual gratification. While they still had some strange beliefs of how a woman's voice, or a flash of flesh, could led them to sin, they made it clear that it was the male yetzer ha ra, that needed protection against sinning. Some laws were instituted because our sages had impulse control issues, and avoided the proverbial cold shower. In fact the mitzvoth of wearing tzitzit, if one looks at the Hebrew and not the English, it is to protect us when our ''eyes go a whoring.'' (Num. 15:39: And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them ; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring.(zohnim)    אֲשֶׁר־אַתֶּם זֹנִים אַחֲרֵיהֶֽם׃ )

 

Indeed this feeling of being overwhelmed by one's yetzer ha ra, now has Charedi men forcing women to sit in the back of the bus. And they are doing so with abuse. Even the Orthodox Halachic expert, R' Moshe Feinstein in his Igrot Moshe pg 328 states that on a public bus, men and women can sit together, and if a male's yetzer ha ra is sexually aroused by this, then he has the issue, no pun intended.

 

So much of the Shulchan Aruk's halacha regarding women comes from a total misunderstanding of Parasha Metzorah, Leviticus 14:01- 15:33.  This Torah portion was not read in early Reform services.  These chapters however were studied vigorously not only by our sages but also by the Church fathers. The impact these chapters have had on Western society's view of sex, women's roles, women's rights and bodily fluids has been astounding.

 

Genesis says that God created men and women in His image. We were commanded to multiply, the first of the Torah's 613 Mitzvoth. We were created, as you know from your biology classes, with our females having the ova (eggs) that would, when fertilized by the male seed (sperm) grow into a child in the woman's uterine wall. If the egg does not embed in the wall, it is sloughed off monthly in what is called menses. It is a wonderful system made, as we are traditionally taught, in God's image by God. God would not make us full of dirty and contaminated fluids, would He?

 

"A man from whom there is a discharge of semen shall immerse his entire flesh in the water and remain contaminated until evening." (Lev. 15:16)

 

"Any bedding upon which the person with the discharge will recline shall be contaminated, and any vessel upon which he will sit shall become contaminate." (Lev. 15:04)

 

"Anyone who touches the flesh of this man...remains contaminated." (Lev. 15:07)

 

"If the contaminated person spits on someone, that person becomes contaminated (Lev. 15:08), as does any riding equipment on which he sits." (Lev. 15:09)

 

"A woman having had sex is contaminated until the evening ''(Lev. 15:18)

 

"When a woman has a discharge, her discharge being menstrual blood, she shall be in a state of separation for seven days and anyone touching her shall remain contaminated until the evening." (Lev. 15:19)

 

"Her bedding and clothes become contaminated and anyone having sex with her is contaminated for seven days." (Lev. 15:20-24)

 

The Talmud teaches that semen (zav-emission) is contaminated. It causes contamination to the emitter and anyone who touches it or him. The Talmud called a man who has had a seminal emission a baal keri. If one has a second and then a third emission, his level of contamination, and what he needs to do to purify himself increases. If one sits on a blanket that a baal keri had sat upon, he becomes contaminated. If he sits upon ten blankets, with the bottom most one being the only one that the baal keri sat on, he still becomes contaminated (Rashi). The Talmud extracts its laws of family purity, taharat ha mishpocha, from verses 15:19-28. The basis for the laws of a menstruant (niddah) and the period of time each month a man is forbidden to his wife (niddut) are found in these verses according to the sages. The rabbis posited that since husband and wife are sanctified to one another, these laws of family purity are the basis for the religious survival of the family unit.

 

But note how in Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism, discharge of men and women are treated equally.

 

Talmud Niddah 66A states that since it is difficult for a woman to know exactly when she has stopped menstruating, whether her discharge is menstrual blood, clotted blood, or another type of discharge (zavah), she needs to bring a "bedeka" cloth to her rabbi for him to look at it and make the determination if she is allowed to again cohabit with her husband. Since it is difficult to determine if the stains on this cloth are fresh blood, dried blood, or a zavah secretion, the Talmud says the women of Israel took it upon themselves to assume they are in a state of zavah contamination when they have any discharge. This then adds an additional period of time a woman's normal monthly flow when sex with her husband is prohibited. This practice is still done today in traditional communities.

 

"Mundus Vult Decipi" means the world wants to be deceived. Our people did not invent family purity laws, nor did we take them to their furthermost degree. Other cultures that preceded us in the Middle East had similar prohibitions, and the Koran, which was written a short time after our Talmud, has multiple pages describing every imaginable color pattern of a woman's discharge.

 

If there is any area where Judaism, which lost its ethical and spiritual Talmudic compass circa 500 years ago, bringing back in elements of Hebraism,  goes to an absolute extreme, it is in the separation of the sexes, according to Rabbi David Rosenfeld. Traditionally, boys and girls were sent to separate schools on the pretext of sexual separation. However the effect was to keep girls unschooled and untaught in Torah and Talmudic laws that controlled their lives and keep them well versed in childcare, cooking, and other household duties. In a traditional synagogue men and women are separated with a mechitza partition. Mixed social gathering and dating were almost nonexistent. Match making with arranged shidduchs (engagements) was the norm.

 

The Talmud says a man and woman who are not married to each other cannot be alone in a place where it is unlikely for someone to intrude. How old can this woman be in order not to be alone with a man? Three years old is the answer. Why three? Because a three-year-old is capable of having sex. Someone younger than three can have sex, but her hymen will regrow, the rabbis teach, so she is still technically a virgin, and her father can still marry her off as unspoiled. While I posit that the Talmud of Rabbinic Judaism does more to help women than Hebraism,  we can see that many times, the 'men' of the Talmud are as clueless about women, as my darling Rebetizin, occasionally accuses me of being.

 

The Mishna states in Tractate Bavli Chagiga 1:08, that many of our precepts are as "mountains hanging on hairs." This means that mountains of technical details and laws are based on passing scriptural references. I can understand, but not agree, how society then needed to function with women subservient to men. I can understand, and also not agree,  also the use of slaves in this historical context. But I cannot condone nor can I tolerate seeing Jewish women – or any women – being dragged along, unwillingly, by their Hebraic hair. Granted, our Talmud is said to protect women with a ketubah (marriage contract), but if one reads the tractate in the Talmud called Ketuvoth, one will find that the vast majority of the text is to protect the man's investment in his wife (or wives).

 

Dafs (folios) 6A and B discuss whether having sex with a virgin on Shabbat is allowed. Rabbi Simi says that one may not stuff a piece of cloth to seal a barrel. But Rabbi Shmuel says on Shabbat one may enter a narrow opening even though he may make pebbles fall. Rav Ami says it is wrong to lance a boil on Shabbat because pus in a boil is stored outside the flesh, but that virginal blood is stored inside the flesh. The pages go on like this discussing how one gives back a bride who is not a virgin, and how one can decide his wife's virginity. There is very little concern for the welfare of the bride, especially when she must be forced to testify that she was a virgin and to show proof of this with a bloodied rag. Remember also, in any traditional ketubah, it is the husband who can release his wife from marriage and pay her off.

 

 If a husband does not give his wife a Get (Jewish divorce), he is free to remarry as he may have many wives. The abandoned wife cannot remarry as she is still legally married. She is called an  Agunah, one who is chained. The liberal Jewish movement has made monumental inroads into this problem by making part of the marriage ketubah a promise of the husband to grant his wife a Get, in case of a civil divorce. But our Talmud did not want to see a woman become an Agunah. "Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: 'Everyone who went to war on behalf of David, left a provisional get for his wife'" (Talmud Bavli  Tractate Shabbat 56a). And this continued even into WW Two. Who stopped it? The chief Rabbi of Israel stopped it for 'morale reasons,' as he didn't want the IDF male soldiers thinking they may die and have a widow at home.

 

There are Talmudic reasons for a ketubah to be voided so a divorced woman is given nothing. This is not just for adultery. A woman's ketubah rights are voided if she serves him food that has not been tithed, has sex with him when menstruating, does not separate the challah, breaks a promise, goes to the market with her head uncovered, speaks to another man, or spins (sits with her legs spread) in public. Whose purity are we protecting with these taharat ha mishpocha? Whose family are we protecting? Or do these laws just protect the man's investment in his wife under the guise of family purity?

 

Judaism has never subscribed to the notion of men living together to gain spirituality through celibacy like monks and priests. But the church fathers got their interpretation of women as distractions to spirituality from our teachings. The Talmud when written was sex-segregated and patriarchal. Yes, we can quote passages about how God told Abraham to listen to Sarah as examples of how women have respect in traditional Judaism. But what did Sarah tell Abraham to do? She told him to kick Hagar and Ishmael out of the camp. A different reading might say that the entire Arab-Jewish conflict was based on a barren woman's jealousy. The rabbis of the Talmud, as I will give you examples, were easily aroused by women.

 

The only time they spent with women was as small children with their mothers, or in bed for a few moments with their wives. Because of their beliefs it was necessary for them to live their lives, not with women, but parallel to them. Some acted like monks during the day but had marital relations at night.

 

But on the other hand we have many Rabbinic wives coming into the academy and speaking on matters being discussed most notably Beruriah. She was the daughter  of the martyr R. Hananiah ben Teradion, and wife of R. Meïr, The Talmud Bavli Pesachim 62b said she studied 300 Talmudic ruling daily. And she debated rabbis and won the discourses.

 

While there are Talmudic passages in which men recognized their own weak sexual nature and made many laws to keep women separate from men, some say that the Torah shows women as "anomalous, dangerous, dirty, and polluting" writes Jacob Neusner. Some write that the sages ascribe moral laxity to women incapable of sexual restraint. Leonie Archer claims that the rabbis consider women to be the sexual aggressors.

 

In Talmud Kiddushin, Mishna Chapter 4, Law 12 disallows a man from being alone with two women, as the rabbis posit sex could occur with one while the other watched, or with both. The same Mishna allows a woman to be alone with two men, as men are ''so Torah conscious'' they would protect each other from her advances. The Talmud teaches that if your business is with women; do not be alone with them. A man should not teach his son a trade that will let him be among women. (Can a traditional Jew be a gynecologist?) A woman can be alone with two men, but not if one is a child, because "she is not embarrassed to engage in sexual relations in the presence of a minor."

 

Rabbi Judah said that bachelors may not pasture small cattle – sheep and goats – because they would commit acts of bestiality, but the Talmud allows this because "Jewish men are not suspected of this." Did the rabbis miss the passages in the Torah about how if a man has sex with an animal both he and the animal are killed? Has anyone seen "Broke Back Mountain?." {By the way, Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal  had his bar mitzvah dinner at a homeless shelter, feeding the needy.} 

The Talmudic law says that one man cannot accompany two women and one of their dead children to the cemetery for burial for fear that they will seduce him. The Talmud also teaches that men should not hear a woman's voice, as they will find it seductive. This of course lends another validation for a mechitza during worship. Should the women in our society be subjected to humiliation because men cannot control themselves? Are the wearing of wigs, frum clothes, and hiding behind a mechitza needed because men have a problem with their yetzer ha ra.

 

According to Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, past Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City where modern Conservative rabbis are trained, Judaism "avows the goodness of the human body. It is no less a mirror of God's grandeur than the soul. Judaism does not dichotomize human nature into body and soul, polar opposites locked in never-ending conflict. The flesh is not the devil's domain or the seat of our passions, to be expiated by the spirit."

 

Professor Jacob Milgrom in the new Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus explains that to the desert Israelites, "blood was the arch symbol of life. Its oozing from the body was not the world view of the sign of demons, but was certainly a sign of death." If the intention of the author of the Torah laws was to have us appreciate life in all people, segregating women for a third of each month may have protected men from "a walking death," but certainly painted women as carriers of death. As we can see from any reading of history, scapegoating some group as bearers of evil, poisoners of wells, carriers of plagues, destroyers of economies, bloodsuckers of a nation's life force, can lead to pogroms, massacres, and shoahs.

 

Women are traditionally kept off the bimah as they could sexually snare men with their looks and voices and because they may be contaminated if they are in menses or recently gave birth. The Talmud says that women are released from commandments that are time bound (praying three times a day at specific times, for example) as raising children controls their time, and that mitzvoth comes first.

 

But the Talmud does not say a woman cannot do these mitzvoth if she takes the obligation upon herself. The Torah teaches that men are just as contaminated as menstruating women if they had an ejaculation of semen. Since the Talmud also teaches that it is a mitzvah to have marital relations on Shabbat evening, who is checking to make sure the men on the bimah at Saturday morning's services – who are touching the Holy scroll of our Torah – have purified themselves with a mickvah dip on the way to shul?

 

What would be the logical reason for not allowing women who have reached menopause, or who have raised their children, from appearing on the bimah? The rules of keeping women relegated to a position behind the mechitza barrier, not only in synagogues, but outside as well, do not hold up to logical inspection.

 

The Torah passages outlined in  parasha Metzorah  that have been brought into Western civilization's canon, civil, and common law have served to keep 50 percent of the human race enslaved spiritually, financially and emotionally. For example, it was only relatively recently that women were given the right to vote in the United States.

 

There are those who believe that God wants women to submit willfully to their husbands. Our Hebraic teachings say that women's menstrual blood, men's sperm, and the sex act cause contamination and all need a dip in the mickvah, as well as a sacrifice to reclaim purity. Some rabbis have caused generations of suffering. These beliefs have caused an accepted misogynistic culture that still exists and is approved of in many quarters. If the pope can apologize to us for 1700 years of mistreatment based on the Church's teachings, is it not high time for those who say their semicha (ordination) comes from traditional oral transmission to make amends for 2,500 years of women's suffering?

 

Parasha Metzorah usually falls before, during or  a bit after Passover holiday. Thank G!d that  liberal movements set aside halakah like these laws early in our existence. Thank G!d that we understood that these taboos were from a primitive new nation inculcated with beliefs from the Pharaohs who enslaved them and the tribes that lived around them. When we talk about liberation from bondage at our Pesach seders, let us try to think of other customs, laws, notions, and ideas, that we still cling to that may keep others and ourselves still enslaved.

 

So I posit that the arresting of a woman wearing tzitzit is not just a feminine issue but indeed a deep rooted Judaic one. Do we want to be Jews who love our fellows and try to emulate a G!d that is caring, forgiving, full of ahavath chesed, and love, or do we want to be Hebrews, guarding every bit of territory, ritual or land, not caring who we harm as we think our cult G!d wants this?

 

So we end where we began  today. "From what does God suffer?" the rabbis ask. God  suffers from His exile from Himself. He suffers the separation in His Name--the "YH" divided from the "VH"-- that took place when He created the world. He suffers to return to the Unity--the wholeness in Himself-- that was shattered when He created the world. Therefore God suffers and man is commissioned to redeem Him from His suffering by returning Him to His former state of unity. This is what the Kabbalists say we mean when we say in the Aleinu adoration prayer "On that day God shall be One and His name One"(Psalm 22:29).

 

The rabbis then ask "How can we liberate God  from His suffering? How can we return Him to Himself?" The answer is that we must be watchful and alert all the time for God. As King David wrote "at dawn I hold myself in readiness for You" (Psalm 5:3). We need to listen for God's voice "I am listening. What is God saying?"(Psalm 85:8). Then we must speak the words that we hear God  tell us and follow them.  If our meditations of Guidance are not of Love, Purity, Honest and Altruism, we are listening to our egos. No Judaic G!d makes any human second best.

 

To quote the Ba'al Shem Tov again "When I fix my thoughts on the creator, I let my mouth speak what
it will, for the words are bound by higher roots. The Holy sparks that fell from Himself when God built and destroyed worlds, man shall raise and purify back to their source: All things of this world desire with all their might to draw near man in order that the sparks of Holiness that are in them should be raised by Him back to their source. And who with good strength of his spirit is able to raise the Holy spark from stone to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to speaking being? Man leads it to freedom, and no setting free of captives is greater than this. It is as when a king's son is rescued from captivity and brought to his father. Then you will release God  from His suffering and He , in turn, will 'fill your mouths with laughter and your lips with song'(Psalm 126:2)."   This is the Kabbalistic concept of Tikun Olam, repair of the world, which is a credo of the modern Jewish movements.

"Nowhere is this enantiodromia--this conflagration between good and evil-- more clearly seen than in the constant interplay of the two opposing Sephirot (ten manifestations of God), Chesed (good) and Gevurah (evil)--which individually constitute the Right and the Left sides--light and darkness, the yin and yang--of the Tree of the Ten Sephirot," writes Rabbi Yakov Ha Kohain. It is out of this balancing act that this Tree is born.

The idea of a suffering God is not only part of Christian theology. It is part and parcel of Judaism as well. Jewish philosophy believes that God, the our Divine Father, suffers  in Heaven.   He suffers not because we sin, but because of His separation from Himself. His former Unity has been shattered. His Holy Queen, the Shechinah, has fallen and She yearns to be lifted up and returned to Her King. This is why in Pirkei Avot one reads so many references to the ways one can bring back the Shechinah, i.e. studying Torah with another, discussing Torah while three or more eat together, etc. By treating our human feminine half of our species with the same love and kindness and kavod (honor), that Jewish men want for themselves, we do Tikun as well.

For Tikun Olam to be done, for God  to "know" and repair Himself, He first must be known by man. But for man to know himself, he first must know God as well. The Torah shows us how God perfects man in increments. God perfects man in order that man may perfect Him, in Zohar terms. This is what Dr. Karl Jung meant when he wrote,"God must become man precisely because He has done man a wrong through Job. He, the guardian of justice, knows that every wrong must be expiated and Wisdom knows that moral law is above even God. Because His creature has surpassed Him, God must regenerate Himself."

According to the Kabbalah, God  went from being whole to fragmentary during the act of creation. His "face" was shattered. He needs man as His partner to end His suffering and do the Tikun (repair). Judaism  has placed responsibility on us, as people, to fix our globe, and not think that doing ritual or not doing ritual determines if good or evil things to occur.

Of course this leads to the question "Is God good?" The sages answer "yes" and quote Exodus 34:6 "God,God,  a God of tenderness and compassion." But they further ask, "Why does He permit evil?" They answer that "evil is the throne of good", and that good comes from evil. "The indwelling Glory of God embraces all worlds, good and evil...How can he then bear in Himself the opposites good and evil? But in truth there is no opposite, for evil is the throne of good."   So if good comes from God, where does evil come from? Evil also comes from God. "Now the spirit of God left Saul and an evil spirit from God filled him" (1 Samuel 16:14).

 

The perfection of God lies not in being merely one thing or another, but all things at all times. God is darkness and light and goodness and evil. He is One. Satan, again a part of traditional Jewish belief, is not an opposite of God, but part of God. He is the left-hand side of the Mind of God. He is the left side of the Tree of the Ten Sephirot. Satan is not a "he," but an adversarial thought in God's mind. Satan is God's yetzer ha ra, His evil inclination.

In the month of Av we are taught that great evil befell us on the 9th day (destructions of the Temples) but that great good came to us on the 15th day (no more people died in the wilderness of Sinai, peace came to the tribe of Benjamin, the northern tribes were allowed to travel to the south to Jerusalem again, and the martyrs of Behar (122 CE) were allowed to be buried). The Kabbalah says that good things are born from evil. Let us use this evil and abuse that we have been perpetrating upon Jewish women as a time for teshuvah and change. Let it cease.

The sages forecast that the Messiah will be born on the 9th of Av. Holiness must be found in impurity, just as we as Jews have made the mundane into the sacred. There is no Torah law commanding us to say a prayer before we eat. This mitzvah is a rabbinic Talmudic law from Tractate Berachot 35A. The rabbis posit that one who eats before he says a prayer of thanks to God is like one who steals from God There is the mitzvah of saying grace after meals (Deut. 8:10). There is no mitzvah for treating women in a degrading fashion.

God loves us, but we are taught in Hebraism that He can also hate us. God even tried to kill Moses! "When Moses had halted for the night, God came to meet him and tried to kill him"(Exodus 4:24). But in a few chapters later, we are commanded to love God, and then are commanded to "fear God" (Deut. 10:12) as well as love Him.    King David in Psalm 111:10 writes "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and they that have sound sense practice it." Or as Jung says "Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries , who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms  of the earth and as vast as the sky."   Until God is repaired and no longer suffers, until we live a life of Tikun Olam, repairing relationships, treating all as equally beloved brothers and sisters, all with equal access to Mitzvoth and sacred places, humans will continue to cry and suffer at the hand of one another, and God will cry and suffer with us.  

 

 

Rabbi Arthur Segal, Hilton Head Island, SC, is a well known author, teacher and lecturer, can be reached at RabbiSegal@JewishSpiritualRenewal.net  and his web site is www.JewishSpiritualRenewal.org

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:ECO-JUDAISM:WOMEN'S RIGHTS:TALLIT:TZITZIT:KOTEL:JERUSALEM

 

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:ECO-JUDAISM:WOMEN'S RIGHTS:TALLIT:TZITZIT:KOTEL:JERUSALEM

 

 For ERUV: The Journal January 2010

 

 

 

The Wall Is Wailing : G!d is Wailing

 

Rabbi Arthur Segal, Hilton Head Island, SC,  a well known author, teacher and lecturer, and can be reached at RabbiSegal@JewishSpiritualRenewal.net  and his web site is www.JewishSpiritualRenewal.org

 

 

 

I was asked to write about the recent incident of the arrest of a Jewish woman at the Kotel, the remaining wall of the Jerusalem Temple, for wearing a tallit, with four tzitzit, fringes. I invite you to read on.

 

A bit more than 8 years ago, some of my Talmudim asked me: "Rabbi, where was Ha Shem on 9/11?'' My answer was simple. "He was there, crying along with us."

 

How do we know G!d cries or suffers? Because humankind, who was made in His image, cries and suffers.   Why does hunmankind suffer? Is it divine payback for our sins as  Hebraism teaches?   The Kabbalah of Judaism gives a much different answer. Humans suffer because God suffers. It is not humankind that suffers but G!d. The suffering we feel is not our suffering but God's suffering experienced through us as if it were our own. Therefore, the Kabbalah teaches, before we can liberate ourselves from suffering, we most first liberate God from His suffering.

 

The Zohar teaches that we know G!d suffers because humankind suffers. Genesis 1:27 says that "G!d created man in the image of Himself, in the image of G!d He created him." Therefore, as the Ba'al Shem Tov , the then-leftist reform founder of the now-rightist orthodox Chassidic movement said, "Man is a part of G!d, and the want that is in the part is in the whole, and the whole suffers the same want as the part." We can infer that G!d suffers because we know that mankind suffers.

 

Some time ago, Ex President Jimmy Carter got a Judiac lashing for stating that the State of Israel lives in a form of apartheid vis a vis its Jewish citizens and its Muslim citizens and neighbors. He recently made teshuvah for these comments. But how are we as Jews able point a finger at someone labeling our actions as racist, when we ourselves continue to allow extreme sexism to prevail? Do we as Jews believe in a G!d that condones untoward behavior towards women, but gives His mighty ''kol tov'' to mistreatment of non-Jews?

 

Of course not. Jews who understand true Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism are to live by Rabbi Hillel's,  circa 100 BCE , Talmudic maxim of ''what is hateful unto you, do not do to your fellow. '' He did not define ''fellow'' as ''one's fellow Jew,'' nor as one's ''fellow Jewish male.'' If we remember, he made the statement to a Roman soldier, who was already brushed aside by Rabbi Shammai. (Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 31a)

 

The Talmud Bavli Tractate Menacoth 43a teaches us that "Everyone is obligated in tzitzit–Priests, Levites and Israelites, converts, women and minors."  Maimonides tells us that if women want to wrap themselves in tzitzit, we do not protest. The R' Caro's Shulchan Aruch  says that women and slaves are exempt from tzitzit, but the commentator R' Moses Isserles says that, nevertheless, if they wish to wrap themselves and say the blessing, it is permissible as with all positive time-bound commandments. And even the 20th century orthodox halakah maven, R' M. Feinstein  posited  that "women are permitted to perform even mitzvot from which they are exempt by the Torah, and they get a mitzvah and a reward upon performing them…. and if so, also regarding tzitzit it is appropriate for a woman who wants to wear a garment that is different from a man's clothing but has four corners, that she put on tzitzit and fulfill this mitzvah."

 

And Rav Yehuda is portrayed as himself tying on tzitzit to the garments of the women in his household.  In Talmud Bavli Tractate Menacoth  43a: "Rav Yehudah attached tzitzit to the aprons of women in his household, and would make the blessing every morning." In Talmud Bavli Tractate Gittin 45b women are not only permitted to wear tzitzit but to actually tie them and manufacture them. This ancient ruling was reaffirmed unanimously  by a beth din of 21 in a Responsa written by R' Gelfand.

 

The Talmud Bavli Tractate Eruvin 95 cites the view of two Tanna'im – Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehuda – that women are, in fact, included under the obligation of Tephillin. What is more, the Gemarra records a tradition that Michal, the daughter of King Shaul, wore Tephillin and that the Rabbis  did not object to this practice . R' Shlomo ben Aderet of medieval Barcelona and a student of Nachmonides in his Teshuvah 123 states: "I agree with those who say that if they desire they can do all such mitzvoth and recite the blessings, on the basis of Michal bat Shaul who used to wear tephillin and they did not protest; indeed she did so with the approval of the sages, and by the nature of the matter since she puts on tephillin she blesses". Certainly, if a woman can don Tephillin without our Chazal's protest, a woman can wear tzitzit.

 

And we have many stories in the Talmud of non-Jewish slaves, male and female, doing mitzvoth.The Talmud relates in many Tractates of Rabban Gamaliel and his favorite servant, Tavi. Tavi did many mitzvoth, and he was not Jewish. Gamaliel called him a "Talmid Chocham.'' [Talmud Bavli Tractate Sukkah 2:1]. But stories of non Jews doing mitzvoth were not just limited to men. R' Gamaliel's female non-Jewish servant, Tavita, is spoken of highly.

 

Now Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Niddah 2:1 tells us of Gamaliel's maid servant, Tavita (Tabita, also Aramaic for ''good''). Supposedly she was special as was Tavi. ''It happened that Tavita, Rabban Gamliel's serving girl, was carrying wine for drinks.  She inspected herself to see if her period had begun before lifting  up each jug of wine. When her period started, she said to Rabban Gamliel:  My lord, I have seen a blood stain on my garment. Rabban Gamliel was upset at the possibility that the wine had been rendered ritually unclean. She said to him:  Do not be concerned. I was inspecting myself before lifting each jug.  ''

In Leviticus Rabbah , 19:4, Rabban Gamaliel becomes so joyful he yells:'' May your life be given to you, even as you have restored mine to me!'' Remember that Rabban Gamaliel II was Nasi of the Talmudic academy in Yavnah, and could not be known for serving tainted wine. Tavita, a non-Jew, does not have to watch for laws of family purity for herself. She does so out of respect for her master. But in Tavita's case the lines between a giver of sustenance and life  by her master, and her granting him life, become blurred. This blurring is just as we see in the Talmud when Tavi actually teaches Jewish rabbis.

 

But are tzitzit really the issue? Is it about fringes? Unfortunately no. The tzitzit are just a fringe issue. The issue is women's rights, and a divide between those who view Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism as a way of life trying to emulate a G!d of love, kindness, mercy, forgiveness, and grace, or of those who view the Hebraic cult G!d of giving a list of does and don'ts to a male oligarchy who took the ethical and spiritual lessons of the sages, and condensed them into their interpretation of a list of rules, most of which put women into subservience.

 

The sages of the Talmud, in general  but not completely, rejected the subservient position of women in the Hebraic Chumash.  A male could not longer just toss a Get, a Hebrew divorce, at his wife, without a darn good reason, and even then, the rabbis cautioned against divorce. The Ketubah, the marriage contract was initiated to grant a women financial rights in case of a divorce. The sages were even concerned about a women's sexual rights and her sexual gratification. While they still had some strange beliefs of how a woman's voice, or a flash of flesh, could led them to sin, they made it clear that it was the male yetzer ha ra, that needed protection against sinning. Some laws were instituted because our sages had impulse control issues, and avoided the proverbial cold shower. In fact the mitzvoth of wearing tzitzit, if one looks at the Hebrew and not the English, it is to protect us when our ''eyes go a whoring.'' (Num. 15:39: And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them ; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring.(zohnim)    אֲשֶׁר־אַתֶּם זֹנִים אַחֲרֵיהֶֽם׃ )

 

Indeed this feeling of being overwhelmed by one's yetzer ha ra, now has Charedi men forcing women to sit in the back of the bus. And they are doing so with abuse. Even the Orthodox Halachic expert, R' Moshe Feinstein in his Igrot Moshe pg 328 states that on a public bus, men and women can sit together, and if a male's yetzer ha ra is sexually aroused by this, then he has the issue, no pun intended.

 

So much of the Shulchan Aruk's halacha regarding women comes from a total misunderstanding of Parasha Metzorah, Leviticus 14:01- 15:33.  This Torah portion was not read in early Reform services.  These chapters however were studied vigorously not only by our sages but also by the Church fathers. The impact these chapters have had on Western society's view of sex, women's roles, women's rights and bodily fluids has been astounding.

 

Genesis says that God created men and women in His image. We were commanded to multiply, the first of the Torah's 613 Mitzvoth. We were created, as you know from your biology classes, with our females having the ova (eggs) that would, when fertilized by the male seed (sperm) grow into a child in the woman's uterine wall. If the egg does not embed in the wall, it is sloughed off monthly in what is called menses. It is a wonderful system made, as we are traditionally taught, in God's image by God. God would not make us full of dirty and contaminated fluids, would He?

 

"A man from whom there is a discharge of semen shall immerse his entire flesh in the water and remain contaminated until evening." (Lev. 15:16)

 

"Any bedding upon which the person with the discharge will recline shall be contaminated, and any vessel upon which he will sit shall become contaminate." (Lev. 15:04)

 

"Anyone who touches the flesh of this man...remains contaminated." (Lev. 15:07)

 

"If the contaminated person spits on someone, that person becomes contaminated (Lev. 15:08), as does any riding equipment on which he sits." (Lev. 15:09)

 

"A woman having had sex is contaminated until the evening ''(Lev. 15:18)

 

"When a woman has a discharge, her discharge being menstrual blood, she shall be in a state of separation for seven days and anyone touching her shall remain contaminated until the evening." (Lev. 15:19)

 

"Her bedding and clothes become contaminated and anyone having sex with her is contaminated for seven days." (Lev. 15:20-24)

 

The Talmud teaches that semen (zav-emission) is contaminated. It causes contamination to the emitter and anyone who touches it or him. The Talmud called a man who has had a seminal emission a baal keri. If one has a second and then a third emission, his level of contamination, and what he needs to do to purify himself increases. If one sits on a blanket that a baal keri had sat upon, he becomes contaminated. If he sits upon ten blankets, with the bottom most one being the only one that the baal keri sat on, he still becomes contaminated (Rashi). The Talmud extracts its laws of family purity, taharat ha mishpocha, from verses 15:19-28. The basis for the laws of a menstruant (niddah) and the period of time each month a man is forbidden to his wife (niddut) are found in these verses according to the sages. The rabbis posited that since husband and wife are sanctified to one another, these laws of family purity are the basis for the religious survival of the family unit.

 

But note how in Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism, discharge of men and women are treated equally.

 

Talmud Niddah 66A states that since it is difficult for a woman to know exactly when she has stopped menstruating, whether her discharge is menstrual blood, clotted blood, or another type of discharge (zavah), she needs to bring a "bedeka" cloth to her rabbi for him to look at it and make the determination if she is allowed to again cohabit with her husband. Since it is difficult to determine if the stains on this cloth are fresh blood, dried blood, or a zavah secretion, the Talmud says the women of Israel took it upon themselves to assume they are in a state of zavah contamination when they have any discharge. This then adds an additional period of time a woman's normal monthly flow when sex with her husband is prohibited. This practice is still done today in traditional communities.

 

"Mundus Vult Decipi" means the world wants to be deceived. Our people did not invent family purity laws, nor did we take them to their furthermost degree. Other cultures that preceded us in the Middle East had similar prohibitions, and the Koran, which was written a short time after our Talmud, has multiple pages describing every imaginable color pattern of a woman's discharge.

 

If there is any area where Judaism, which lost its ethical and spiritual Talmudic compass circa 500 years ago, bringing back in elements of Hebraism,  goes to an absolute extreme, it is in the separation of the sexes, according to Rabbi David Rosenfeld. Traditionally, boys and girls were sent to separate schools on the pretext of sexual separation. However the effect was to keep girls unschooled and untaught in Torah and Talmudic laws that controlled their lives and keep them well versed in childcare, cooking, and other household duties. In a traditional synagogue men and women are separated with a mechitza partition. Mixed social gathering and dating were almost nonexistent. Match making with arranged shidduchs (engagements) was the norm.

 

The Talmud says a man and woman who are not married to each other cannot be alone in a place where it is unlikely for someone to intrude. How old can this woman be in order not to be alone with a man? Three years old is the answer. Why three? Because a three-year-old is capable of having sex. Someone younger than three can have sex, but her hymen will regrow, the rabbis teach, so she is still technically a virgin, and her father can still marry her off as unspoiled. While I posit that the Talmud of Rabbinic Judaism does more to help women than Hebraism,  we can see that many times, the 'men' of the Talmud are as clueless about women, as my darling Rebetizin, occasionally accuses me of being.

 

The Mishna states in Tractate Bavli Chagiga 1:08, that many of our precepts are as "mountains hanging on hairs." This means that mountains of technical details and laws are based on passing scriptural references. I can understand, but not agree, how society then needed to function with women subservient to men. I can understand, and also not agree,  also the use of slaves in this historical context. But I cannot condone nor can I tolerate seeing Jewish women – or any women – being dragged along, unwillingly, by their Hebraic hair. Granted, our Talmud is said to protect women with a ketubah (marriage contract), but if one reads the tractate in the Talmud called Ketuvoth, one will find that the vast majority of the text is to protect the man's investment in his wife (or wives).

 

Dafs (folios) 6A and B discuss whether having sex with a virgin on Shabbat is allowed. Rabbi Simi says that one may not stuff a piece of cloth to seal a barrel. But Rabbi Shmuel says on Shabbat one may enter a narrow opening even though he may make pebbles fall. Rav Ami says it is wrong to lance a boil on Shabbat because pus in a boil is stored outside the flesh, but that virginal blood is stored inside the flesh. The pages go on like this discussing how one gives back a bride who is not a virgin, and how one can decide his wife's virginity. There is very little concern for the welfare of the bride, especially when she must be forced to testify that she was a virgin and to show proof of this with a bloodied rag. Remember also, in any traditional ketubah, it is the husband who can release his wife from marriage and pay her off.

 

 If a husband does not give his wife a Get (Jewish divorce), he is free to remarry as he may have many wives. The abandoned wife cannot remarry as she is still legally married. She is called an  Agunah, one who is chained. The liberal Jewish movement has made monumental inroads into this problem by making part of the marriage ketubah a promise of the husband to grant his wife a Get, in case of a civil divorce. But our Talmud did not want to see a woman become an Agunah. "Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: 'Everyone who went to war on behalf of David, left a provisional get for his wife'" (Talmud Bavli  Tractate Shabbat 56a). And this continued even into WW Two. Who stopped it? The chief Rabbi of Israel stopped it for 'morale reasons,' as he didn't want the IDF male soldiers thinking they may die and have a widow at home.

 

There are Talmudic reasons for a ketubah to be voided so a divorced woman is given nothing. This is not just for adultery. A woman's ketubah rights are voided if she serves him food that has not been tithed, has sex with him when menstruating, does not separate the challah, breaks a promise, goes to the market with her head uncovered, speaks to another man, or spins (sits with her legs spread) in public. Whose purity are we protecting with these taharat ha mishpocha? Whose family are we protecting? Or do these laws just protect the man's investment in his wife under the guise of family purity?

 

Judaism has never subscribed to the notion of men living together to gain spirituality through celibacy like monks and priests. But the church fathers got their interpretation of women as distractions to spirituality from our teachings. The Talmud when written was sex-segregated and patriarchal. Yes, we can quote passages about how God told Abraham to listen to Sarah as examples of how women have respect in traditional Judaism. But what did Sarah tell Abraham to do? She told him to kick Hagar and Ishmael out of the camp. A different reading might say that the entire Arab-Jewish conflict was based on a barren woman's jealousy. The rabbis of the Talmud, as I will give you examples, were easily aroused by women.

 

The only time they spent with women was as small children with their mothers, or in bed for a few moments with their wives. Because of their beliefs it was necessary for them to live their lives, not with women, but parallel to them. Some acted like monks during the day but had marital relations at night.

 

But on the other hand we have many Rabbinic wives coming into the academy and speaking on matters being discussed most notably Beruriah. She was the daughter  of the martyr R. Hananiah ben Teradion, and wife of R. Meïr, The Talmud Bavli Pesachim 62b said she studied 300 Talmudic ruling daily. And she debated rabbis and won the discourses.

 

While there are Talmudic passages in which men recognized their own weak sexual nature and made many laws to keep women separate from men, some say that the Torah shows women as "anomalous, dangerous, dirty, and polluting" writes Jacob Neusner. Some write that the sages ascribe moral laxity to women incapable of sexual restraint. Leonie Archer claims that the rabbis consider women to be the sexual aggressors.

 

In Talmud Kiddushin, Mishna Chapter 4, Law 12 disallows a man from being alone with two women, as the rabbis posit sex could occur with one while the other watched, or with both. The same Mishna allows a woman to be alone with two men, as men are ''so Torah conscious'' they would protect each other from her advances. The Talmud teaches that if your business is with women; do not be alone with them. A man should not teach his son a trade that will let him be among women. (Can a traditional Jew be a gynecologist?) A woman can be alone with two men, but not if one is a child, because "she is not embarrassed to engage in sexual relations in the presence of a minor."

 

Rabbi Judah said that bachelors may not pasture small cattle – sheep and goats – because they would commit acts of bestiality, but the Talmud allows this because "Jewish men are not suspected of this." Did the rabbis miss the passages in the Torah about how if a man has sex with an animal both he and the animal are killed? Has anyone seen "Broke Back Mountain?." {By the way, Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal  had his bar mitzvah dinner at a homeless shelter, feeding the needy.} 

The Talmudic law says that one man cannot accompany two women and one of their dead children to the cemetery for burial for fear that they will seduce him. The Talmud also teaches that men should not hear a woman's voice, as they will find it seductive. This of course lends another validation for a mechitza during worship. Should the women in our society be subjected to humiliation because men cannot control themselves? Are the wearing of wigs, frum clothes, and hiding behind a mechitza needed because men have a problem with their yetzer ha ra.

 

According to Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, past Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City where modern Conservative rabbis are trained, Judaism "avows the goodness of the human body. It is no less a mirror of God's grandeur than the soul. Judaism does not dichotomize human nature into body and soul, polar opposites locked in never-ending conflict. The flesh is not the devil's domain or the seat of our passions, to be expiated by the spirit."

 

Professor Jacob Milgrom in the new Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus explains that to the desert Israelites, "blood was the arch symbol of life. Its oozing from the body was not the world view of the sign of demons, but was certainly a sign of death." If the intention of the author of the Torah laws was to have us appreciate life in all people, segregating women for a third of each month may have protected men from "a walking death," but certainly painted women as carriers of death. As we can see from any reading of history, scapegoating some group as bearers of evil, poisoners of wells, carriers of plagues, destroyers of economies, bloodsuckers of a nation's life force, can lead to pogroms, massacres, and shoahs.

 

Women are traditionally kept off the bimah as they could sexually snare men with their looks and voices and because they may be contaminated if they are in menses or recently gave birth. The Talmud says that women are released from commandments that are time bound (praying three times a day at specific times, for example) as raising children controls their time, and that mitzvoth comes first.

 

But the Talmud does not say a woman cannot do these mitzvoth if she takes the obligation upon herself. The Torah teaches that men are just as contaminated as menstruating women if they had an ejaculation of semen. Since the Talmud also teaches that it is a mitzvah to have marital relations on Shabbat evening, who is checking to make sure the men on the bimah at Saturday morning's services – who are touching the Holy scroll of our Torah – have purified themselves with a mickvah dip on the way to shul?

 

What would be the logical reason for not allowing women who have reached menopause, or who have raised their children, from appearing on the bimah? The rules of keeping women relegated to a position behind the mechitza barrier, not only in synagogues, but outside as well, do not hold up to logical inspection.

 

The Torah passages outlined in  parasha Metzorah  that have been brought into Western civilization's canon, civil, and common law have served to keep 50 percent of the human race enslaved spiritually, financially and emotionally. For example, it was only relatively recently that women were given the right to vote in the United States.

 

There are those who believe that God wants women to submit willfully to their husbands. Our Hebraic teachings say that women's menstrual blood, men's sperm, and the sex act cause contamination and all need a dip in the mickvah, as well as a sacrifice to reclaim purity. Some rabbis have caused generations of suffering. These beliefs have caused an accepted misogynistic culture that still exists and is approved of in many quarters. If the pope can apologize to us for 1700 years of mistreatment based on the Church's teachings, is it not high time for those who say their semicha (ordination) comes from traditional oral transmission to make amends for 2,500 years of women's suffering?

 

Parasha Metzorah usually falls before, during or  a bit after Passover holiday. Thank G!d that  liberal movements set aside halakah like these laws early in our existence. Thank G!d that we understood that these taboos were from a primitive new nation inculcated with beliefs from the Pharaohs who enslaved them and the tribes that lived around them. When we talk about liberation from bondage at our Pesach seders, let us try to think of other customs, laws, notions, and ideas, that we still cling to that may keep others and ourselves still enslaved.

 

So I posit that the arresting of a woman wearing tzitzit is not just a feminine issue but indeed a deep rooted Judaic one. Do we want to be Jews who love our fellows and try to emulate a G!d that is caring, forgiving, full of ahavath chesed, and love, or do we want to be Hebrews, guarding every bit of territory, ritual or land, not caring who we harm as we think our cult G!d wants this?

 

So we end where we began  today. "From what does God suffer?" the rabbis ask. God  suffers from His exile from Himself. He suffers the separation in His Name--the "YH" divided from the "VH"-- that took place when He created the world. He suffers to return to the Unity--the wholeness in Himself-- that was shattered when He created the world. Therefore God suffers and man is commissioned to redeem Him from His suffering by returning Him to His former state of unity. This is what the Kabbalists say we mean when we say in the Aleinu adoration prayer "On that day God shall be One and His name One"(Psalm 22:29).

 

The rabbis then ask "How can we liberate God  from His suffering? How can we return Him to Himself?" The answer is that we must be watchful and alert all the time for God. As King David wrote "at dawn I hold myself in readiness for You" (Psalm 5:3). We need to listen for God's voice "I am listening. What is God saying?"(Psalm 85:8). Then we must speak the words that we hear God  tell us and follow them.  If our meditations of Guidance are not of Love, Purity, Honest and Altruism, we are listening to our egos. No Judaic G!d makes any human second best.

 

To quote the Ba'al Shem Tov again "When I fix my thoughts on the creator, I let my mouth speak what
it will, for the words are bound by higher roots. The Holy sparks that fell from Himself when God built and destroyed worlds, man shall raise and purify back to their source: All things of this world desire with all their might to draw near man in order that the sparks of Holiness that are in them should be raised by Him back to their source. And who with good strength of his spirit is able to raise the Holy spark from stone to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to speaking being? Man leads it to freedom, and no setting free of captives is greater than this. It is as when a king's son is rescued from captivity and brought to his father. Then you will release God  from His suffering and He , in turn, will 'fill your mouths with laughter and your lips with song'(Psalm 126:2)."   This is the Kabbalistic concept of Tikun Olam, repair of the world, which is a credo of the modern Jewish movements.

"Nowhere is this enantiodromia--this conflagration between good and evil-- more clearly seen than in the constant interplay of the two opposing Sephirot (ten manifestations of God), Chesed (good) and Gevurah (evil)--which individually constitute the Right and the Left sides--light and darkness, the yin and yang--of the Tree of the Ten Sephirot," writes Rabbi Yakov Ha Kohain. It is out of this balancing act that this Tree is born.

The idea of a suffering God is not only part of Christian theology. It is part and parcel of Judaism as well. Jewish philosophy believes that God, the our Divine Father, suffers  in Heaven.   He suffers not because we sin, but because of His separation from Himself. His former Unity has been shattered. His Holy Queen, the Shechinah, has fallen and She yearns to be lifted up and returned to Her King. This is why in Pirkei Avot one reads so many references to the ways one can bring back the Shechinah, i.e. studying Torah with another, discussing Torah while three or more eat together, etc. By treating our human feminine half of our species with the same love and kindness and kavod (honor), that Jewish men want for themselves, we do Tikun as well.

For Tikun Olam to be done, for God  to "know" and repair Himself, He first must be known by man. But for man to know himself, he first must know God as well. The Torah shows us how God perfects man in increments. God perfects man in order that man may perfect Him, in Zohar terms. This is what Dr. Karl Jung meant when he wrote,"God must become man precisely because He has done man a wrong through Job. He, the guardian of justice, knows that every wrong must be expiated and Wisdom knows that moral law is above even God. Because His creature has surpassed Him, God must regenerate Himself."

According to the Kabbalah, God  went from being whole to fragmentary during the act of creation. His "face" was shattered. He needs man as His partner to end His suffering and do the Tikun (repair). Judaism  has placed responsibility on us, as people, to fix our globe, and not think that doing ritual or not doing ritual determines if good or evil things to occur.

Of course this leads to the question "Is God good?" The sages answer "yes" and quote Exodus 34:6 "God,God,  a God of tenderness and compassion." But they further ask, "Why does He permit evil?" They answer that "evil is the throne of good", and that good comes from evil. "The indwelling Glory of God embraces all worlds, good and evil...How can he then bear in Himself the opposites good and evil? But in truth there is no opposite, for evil is the throne of good."   So if good comes from God, where does evil come from? Evil also comes from God. "Now the spirit of God left Saul and an evil spirit from God filled him" (1 Samuel 16:14).

 

The perfection of God lies not in being merely one thing or another, but all things at all times. God is darkness and light and goodness and evil. He is One. Satan, again a part of traditional Jewish belief, is not an opposite of God, but part of God. He is the left-hand side of the Mind of God. He is the left side of the Tree of the Ten Sephirot. Satan is not a "he," but an adversarial thought in God's mind. Satan is God's yetzer ha ra, His evil inclination.

In the month of Av we are taught that great evil befell us on the 9th day (destructions of the Temples) but that great good came to us on the 15th day (no more people died in the wilderness of Sinai, peace came to the tribe of Benjamin, the northern tribes were allowed to travel to the south to Jerusalem again, and the martyrs of Behar (122 CE) were allowed to be buried). The Kabbalah says that good things are born from evil. Let us use this evil and abuse that we have been perpetrating upon Jewish women as a time for teshuvah and change. Let it cease.

The sages forecast that the Messiah will be born on the 9th of Av. Holiness must be found in impurity, just as we as Jews have made the mundane into the sacred. There is no Torah law commanding us to say a prayer before we eat. This mitzvah is a rabbinic Talmudic law from Tractate Berachot 35A. The rabbis posit that one who eats before he says a prayer of thanks to God is like one who steals from God There is the mitzvah of saying grace after meals (Deut. 8:10). There is no mitzvah for treating women in a degrading fashion.

God loves us, but we are taught in Hebraism that He can also hate us. God even tried to kill Moses! "When Moses had halted for the night, God came to meet him and tried to kill him"(Exodus 4:24). But in a few chapters later, we are commanded to love God, and then are commanded to "fear God" (Deut. 10:12) as well as love Him.    King David in Psalm 111:10 writes "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and they that have sound sense practice it." Or as Jung says "Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries , who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms  of the earth and as vast as the sky."   Until God is repaired and no longer suffers, until we live a life of Tikun Olam, repairing relationships, treating all as equally beloved brothers and sisters, all with equal access to Mitzvoth and sacred places, humans will continue to cry and suffer at the hand of one another, and God will cry and suffer with us.  

 

 

Rabbi Arthur Segal, Hilton Head Island, SC, is a well known author, teacher and lecturer, can be reached at RabbiSegal@JewishSpiritualRenewal.net  and his web site is www.JewishSpiritualRenewal.org

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH RENEWAL:WOMEN'S RIGHTS:TALLIT:TZITZIT:KOTEL:JERUSALAM

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH RENEWAL:WOMEN'S RIGHTS:TALLIT:TZITZIT:KOTEL:JERUSALAM

 

 For ERUV: The Journal January 2010

 

 

 

The Wall Is Wailing : G!d is Wailing

 

Rabbi Arthur Segal, Hilton Head Island, SC,  a well known author, teacher and lecturer, and can be reached at RabbiSegal@JewishSpiritualRenewal.net  and his web site is www.JewishSpiritualRenewal.org

 

 

 

I was asked to write about the recent incident of the arrest of a Jewish woman at the Kotel, the remaining wall of the Jerusalem Temple, for wearing a tallit, with four tzitzit, fringes. I invite you to read on.

 

A bit more than 8 years ago, some of my Talmudim asked me: "Rabbi, where was Ha Shem on 9/11?'' My answer was simple. "He was there, crying along with us."

 

How do we know G!d cries or suffers? Because humankind, who was made in His image, cries and suffers.   Why does hunmankind suffer? Is it divine payback for our sins as  Hebraism teaches?   The Kabbalah of Judaism gives a much different answer. Humans suffer because God suffers. It is not humankind that suffers but G!d. The suffering we feel is not our suffering but God's suffering experienced through us as if it were our own. Therefore, the Kabbalah teaches, before we can liberate ourselves from suffering, we most first liberate God from His suffering.

 

The Zohar teaches that we know G!d suffers because humankind suffers. Genesis 1:27 says that "G!d created man in the image of Himself, in the image of G!d He created him." Therefore, as the Ba'al Shem Tov , the then-leftist reform founder of the now-rightist orthodox Chassidic movement said, "Man is a part of G!d, and the want that is in the part is in the whole, and the whole suffers the same want as the part." We can infer that G!d suffers because we know that mankind suffers.

 

Some time ago, Ex President Jimmy Carter got a Judiac lashing for stating that the State of Israel lives in a form of apartheid vis a vis its Jewish citizens and its Muslim citizens and neighbors. He recently made teshuvah for these comments. But how are we as Jews able point a finger at someone labeling our actions as racist, when we ourselves continue to allow extreme sexism to prevail? Do we as Jews believe in a G!d that condones untoward behavior towards women, but gives His mighty ''kol tov'' to mistreatment of non-Jews?

 

Of course not. Jews who understand true Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism are to live by Rabbi Hillel's,  circa 100 BCE , Talmudic maxim of ''what is hateful unto you, do not do to your fellow. '' He did not define ''fellow'' as ''one's fellow Jew,'' nor as one's ''fellow Jewish male.'' If we remember, he made the statement to a Roman soldier, who was already brushed aside by Rabbi Shammai. (Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 31a)

 

The Talmud Bavli Tractate Menacoth 43a teaches us that "Everyone is obligated in tzitzit–Priests, Levites and Israelites, converts, women and minors."  Maimonides tells us that if women want to wrap themselves in tzitzit, we do not protest. The R' Caro's Shulchan Aruch  says that women and slaves are exempt from tzitzit, but the commentator R' Moses Isserles says that, nevertheless, if they wish to wrap themselves and say the blessing, it is permissible as with all positive time-bound commandments. And even the 20th century orthodox halakah maven, R' M. Feinstein  posited  that "women are permitted to perform even mitzvot from which they are exempt by the Torah, and they get a mitzvah and a reward upon performing them…. and if so, also regarding tzitzit it is appropriate for a woman who wants to wear a garment that is different from a man's clothing but has four corners, that she put on tzitzit and fulfill this mitzvah."

 

And Rav Yehuda is portrayed as himself tying on tzitzit to the garments of the women in his household.  In Talmud Bavli Tractate Menacoth  43a: "Rav Yehudah attached tzitzit to the aprons of women in his household, and would make the blessing every morning." In Talmud Bavli Tractate Gittin 45b women are not only permitted to wear tzitzit but to actually tie them and manufacture them. This ancient ruling was reaffirmed unanimously  by a beth din of 21 in a Responsa written by R' Gelfand.

 

The Talmud Bavli Tractate Eruvin 95 cites the view of two Tanna'im – Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehuda – that women are, in fact, included under the obligation of Tephillin. What is more, the Gemarra records a tradition that Michal, the daughter of King Shaul, wore Tephillin and that the Rabbis  did not object to this practice . R' Shlomo ben Aderet of medieval Barcelona and a student of Nachmonides in his Teshuvah 123 states: "I agree with those who say that if they desire they can do all such mitzvoth and recite the blessings, on the basis of Michal bat Shaul who used to wear tephillin and they did not protest; indeed she did so with the approval of the sages, and by the nature of the matter since she puts on tephillin she blesses". Certainly, if a woman can don Tephillin without our Chazal's protest, a woman can wear tzitzit.

 

And we have many stories in the Talmud of non-Jewish slaves, male and female, doing mitzvoth.The Talmud relates in many Tractates of Rabban Gamaliel and his favorite servant, Tavi. Tavi did many mitzvoth, and he was not Jewish. Gamaliel called him a "Talmid Chocham.'' [Talmud Bavli Tractate Sukkah 2:1]. But stories of non Jews doing mitzvoth were not just limited to men. R' Gamaliel's female non-Jewish servant, Tavita, is spoken of highly.

 

Now Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Niddah 2:1 tells us of Gamaliel's maid servant, Tavita (Tabita, also Aramaic for ''good''). Supposedly she was special as was Tavi. ''It happened that Tavita, Rabban Gamliel's serving girl, was carrying wine for drinks.  She inspected herself to see if her period had begun before lifting  up each jug of wine. When her period started, she said to Rabban Gamliel:  My lord, I have seen a blood stain on my garment. Rabban Gamliel was upset at the possibility that the wine had been rendered ritually unclean. She said to him:  Do not be concerned. I was inspecting myself before lifting each jug.  ''

In Leviticus Rabbah , 19:4, Rabban Gamaliel becomes so joyful he yells:'' May your life be given to you, even as you have restored mine to me!'' Remember that Rabban Gamaliel II was Nasi of the Talmudic academy in Yavnah, and could not be known for serving tainted wine. Tavita, a non-Jew, does not have to watch for laws of family purity for herself. She does so out of respect for her master. But in Tavita's case the lines between a giver of sustenance and life  by her master, and her granting him life, become blurred. This blurring is just as we see in the Talmud when Tavi actually teaches Jewish rabbis.

 

But are tzitzit really the issue? Is it about fringes? Unfortunately no. The tzitzit are just a fringe issue. The issue is women's rights, and a divide between those who view Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism as a way of life trying to emulate a G!d of love, kindness, mercy, forgiveness, and grace, or of those who view the Hebraic cult G!d of giving a list of does and don'ts to a male oligarchy who took the ethical and spiritual lessons of the sages, and condensed them into their interpretation of a list of rules, most of which put women into subservience.

 

The sages of the Talmud, in general  but not completely, rejected the subservient position of women in the Hebraic Chumash.  A male could not longer just toss a Get, a Hebrew divorce, at his wife, without a darn good reason, and even then, the rabbis cautioned against divorce. The Ketubah, the marriage contract was initiated to grant a women financial rights in case of a divorce. The sages were even concerned about a women's sexual rights and her sexual gratification. While they still had some strange beliefs of how a woman's voice, or a flash of flesh, could led them to sin, they made it clear that it was the male yetzer ha ra, that needed protection against sinning. Some laws were instituted because our sages had impulse control issues, and avoided the proverbial cold shower. In fact the mitzvoth of wearing tzitzit, if one looks at the Hebrew and not the English, it is to protect us when our ''eyes go a whoring.'' (Num. 15:39: And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them ; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring.(zohnim)    אֲשֶׁר־אַתֶּם זֹנִים אַחֲרֵיהֶֽם׃ )

 

Indeed this feeling of being overwhelmed by one's yetzer ha ra, now has Charedi men forcing women to sit in the back of the bus. And they are doing so with abuse. Even the Orthodox Halachic expert, R' Moshe Feinstein in his Igrot Moshe pg 328 states that on a public bus, men and women can sit together, and if a male's yetzer ha ra is sexually aroused by this, then he has the issue, no pun intended.

 

So much of the Shulchan Aruk's halacha regarding women comes from a total misunderstanding of Parasha Metzorah, Leviticus 14:01- 15:33.  This Torah portion was not read in early Reform services.  These chapters however were studied vigorously not only by our sages but also by the Church fathers. The impact these chapters have had on Western society's view of sex, women's roles, women's rights and bodily fluids has been astounding.

 

Genesis says that God created men and women in His image. We were commanded to multiply, the first of the Torah's 613 Mitzvoth. We were created, as you know from your biology classes, with our females having the ova (eggs) that would, when fertilized by the male seed (sperm) grow into a child in the woman's uterine wall. If the egg does not embed in the wall, it is sloughed off monthly in what is called menses. It is a wonderful system made, as we are traditionally taught, in God's image by God. God would not make us full of dirty and contaminated fluids, would He?

 

"A man from whom there is a discharge of semen shall immerse his entire flesh in the water and remain contaminated until evening." (Lev. 15:16)

 

"Any bedding upon which the person with the discharge will recline shall be contaminated, and any vessel upon which he will sit shall become contaminate." (Lev. 15:04)

 

"Anyone who touches the flesh of this man...remains contaminated." (Lev. 15:07)

 

"If the contaminated person spits on someone, that person becomes contaminated (Lev. 15:08), as does any riding equipment on which he sits." (Lev. 15:09)

 

"A woman having had sex is contaminated until the evening ''(Lev. 15:18)

 

"When a woman has a discharge, her discharge being menstrual blood, she shall be in a state of separation for seven days and anyone touching her shall remain contaminated until the evening." (Lev. 15:19)

 

"Her bedding and clothes become contaminated and anyone having sex with her is contaminated for seven days." (Lev. 15:20-24)

 

The Talmud teaches that semen (zav-emission) is contaminated. It causes contamination to the emitter and anyone who touches it or him. The Talmud called a man who has had a seminal emission a baal keri. If one has a second and then a third emission, his level of contamination, and what he needs to do to purify himself increases. If one sits on a blanket that a baal keri had sat upon, he becomes contaminated. If he sits upon ten blankets, with the bottom most one being the only one that the baal keri sat on, he still becomes contaminated (Rashi). The Talmud extracts its laws of family purity, taharat ha mishpocha, from verses 15:19-28. The basis for the laws of a menstruant (niddah) and the period of time each month a man is forbidden to his wife (niddut) are found in these verses according to the sages. The rabbis posited that since husband and wife are sanctified to one another, these laws of family purity are the basis for the religious survival of the family unit.

 

But note how in Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism, discharge of men and women are treated equally.

 

Talmud Niddah 66A states that since it is difficult for a woman to know exactly when she has stopped menstruating, whether her discharge is menstrual blood, clotted blood, or another type of discharge (zavah), she needs to bring a "bedeka" cloth to her rabbi for him to look at it and make the determination if she is allowed to again cohabit with her husband. Since it is difficult to determine if the stains on this cloth are fresh blood, dried blood, or a zavah secretion, the Talmud says the women of Israel took it upon themselves to assume they are in a state of zavah contamination when they have any discharge. This then adds an additional period of time a woman's normal monthly flow when sex with her husband is prohibited. This practice is still done today in traditional communities.

 

"Mundus Vult Decipi" means the world wants to be deceived. Our people did not invent family purity laws, nor did we take them to their furthermost degree. Other cultures that preceded us in the Middle East had similar prohibitions, and the Koran, which was written a short time after our Talmud, has multiple pages describing every imaginable color pattern of a woman's discharge.

 

If there is any area where Judaism, which lost its ethical and spiritual Talmudic compass circa 500 years ago, bringing back in elements of Hebraism,  goes to an absolute extreme, it is in the separation of the sexes, according to Rabbi David Rosenfeld. Traditionally, boys and girls were sent to separate schools on the pretext of sexual separation. However the effect was to keep girls unschooled and untaught in Torah and Talmudic laws that controlled their lives and keep them well versed in childcare, cooking, and other household duties. In a traditional synagogue men and women are separated with a mechitza partition. Mixed social gathering and dating were almost nonexistent. Match making with arranged shidduchs (engagements) was the norm.

 

The Talmud says a man and woman who are not married to each other cannot be alone in a place where it is unlikely for someone to intrude. How old can this woman be in order not to be alone with a man? Three years old is the answer. Why three? Because a three-year-old is capable of having sex. Someone younger than three can have sex, but her hymen will regrow, the rabbis teach, so she is still technically a virgin, and her father can still marry her off as unspoiled. While I posit that the Talmud of Rabbinic Judaism does more to help women than Hebraism,  we can see that many times, the 'men' of the Talmud are as clueless about women, as my darling Rebetizin, occasionally accuses me of being.

 

The Mishna states in Tractate Bavli Chagiga 1:08, that many of our precepts are as "mountains hanging on hairs." This means that mountains of technical details and laws are based on passing scriptural references. I can understand, but not agree, how society then needed to function with women subservient to men. I can understand, and also not agree,  also the use of slaves in this historical context. But I cannot condone nor can I tolerate seeing Jewish women – or any women – being dragged along, unwillingly, by their Hebraic hair. Granted, our Talmud is said to protect women with a ketubah (marriage contract), but if one reads the tractate in the Talmud called Ketuvoth, one will find that the vast majority of the text is to protect the man's investment in his wife (or wives).

 

Dafs (folios) 6A and B discuss whether having sex with a virgin on Shabbat is allowed. Rabbi Simi says that one may not stuff a piece of cloth to seal a barrel. But Rabbi Shmuel says on Shabbat one may enter a narrow opening even though he may make pebbles fall. Rav Ami says it is wrong to lance a boil on Shabbat because pus in a boil is stored outside the flesh, but that virginal blood is stored inside the flesh. The pages go on like this discussing how one gives back a bride who is not a virgin, and how one can decide his wife's virginity. There is very little concern for the welfare of the bride, especially when she must be forced to testify that she was a virgin and to show proof of this with a bloodied rag. Remember also, in any traditional ketubah, it is the husband who can release his wife from marriage and pay her off.

 

 If a husband does not give his wife a Get (Jewish divorce), he is free to remarry as he may have many wives. The abandoned wife cannot remarry as she is still legally married. She is called an  Agunah, one who is chained. The liberal Jewish movement has made monumental inroads into this problem by making part of the marriage ketubah a promise of the husband to grant his wife a Get, in case of a civil divorce. But our Talmud did not want to see a woman become an Agunah. "Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: 'Everyone who went to war on behalf of David, left a provisional get for his wife'" (Talmud Bavli  Tractate Shabbat 56a). And this continued even into WW Two. Who stopped it? The chief Rabbi of Israel stopped it for 'morale reasons,' as he didn't want the IDF male soldiers thinking they may die and have a widow at home.

 

There are Talmudic reasons for a ketubah to be voided so a divorced woman is given nothing. This is not just for adultery. A woman's ketubah rights are voided if she serves him food that has not been tithed, has sex with him when menstruating, does not separate the challah, breaks a promise, goes to the market with her head uncovered, speaks to another man, or spins (sits with her legs spread) in public. Whose purity are we protecting with these taharat ha mishpocha? Whose family are we protecting? Or do these laws just protect the man's investment in his wife under the guise of family purity?

 

Judaism has never subscribed to the notion of men living together to gain spirituality through celibacy like monks and priests. But the church fathers got their interpretation of women as distractions to spirituality from our teachings. The Talmud when written was sex-segregated and patriarchal. Yes, we can quote passages about how God told Abraham to listen to Sarah as examples of how women have respect in traditional Judaism. But what did Sarah tell Abraham to do? She told him to kick Hagar and Ishmael out of the camp. A different reading might say that the entire Arab-Jewish conflict was based on a barren woman's jealousy. The rabbis of the Talmud, as I will give you examples, were easily aroused by women.

 

The only time they spent with women was as small children with their mothers, or in bed for a few moments with their wives. Because of their beliefs it was necessary for them to live their lives, not with women, but parallel to them. Some acted like monks during the day but had marital relations at night.

 

But on the other hand we have many Rabbinic wives coming into the academy and speaking on matters being discussed most notably Beruriah. She was the daughter  of the martyr R. Hananiah ben Teradion, and wife of R. Meïr, The Talmud Bavli Pesachim 62b said she studied 300 Talmudic ruling daily. And she debated rabbis and won the discourses.

 

While there are Talmudic passages in which men recognized their own weak sexual nature and made many laws to keep women separate from men, some say that the Torah shows women as "anomalous, dangerous, dirty, and polluting" writes Jacob Neusner. Some write that the sages ascribe moral laxity to women incapable of sexual restraint. Leonie Archer claims that the rabbis consider women to be the sexual aggressors.

 

In Talmud Kiddushin, Mishna Chapter 4, Law 12 disallows a man from being alone with two women, as the rabbis posit sex could occur with one while the other watched, or with both. The same Mishna allows a woman to be alone with two men, as men are ''so Torah conscious'' they would protect each other from her advances. The Talmud teaches that if your business is with women; do not be alone with them. A man should not teach his son a trade that will let him be among women. (Can a traditional Jew be a gynecologist?) A woman can be alone with two men, but not if one is a child, because "she is not embarrassed to engage in sexual relations in the presence of a minor."

 

Rabbi Judah said that bachelors may not pasture small cattle – sheep and goats – because they would commit acts of bestiality, but the Talmud allows this because "Jewish men are not suspected of this." Did the rabbis miss the passages in the Torah about how if a man has sex with an animal both he and the animal are killed? Has anyone seen "Broke Back Mountain?." {By the way, Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal  had his bar mitzvah dinner at a homeless shelter, feeding the needy.} 

The Talmudic law says that one man cannot accompany two women and one of their dead children to the cemetery for burial for fear that they will seduce him. The Talmud also teaches that men should not hear a woman's voice, as they will find it seductive. This of course lends another validation for a mechitza during worship. Should the women in our society be subjected to humiliation because men cannot control themselves? Are the wearing of wigs, frum clothes, and hiding behind a mechitza needed because men have a problem with their yetzer ha ra.

 

According to Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, past Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City where modern Conservative rabbis are trained, Judaism "avows the goodness of the human body. It is no less a mirror of God's grandeur than the soul. Judaism does not dichotomize human nature into body and soul, polar opposites locked in never-ending conflict. The flesh is not the devil's domain or the seat of our passions, to be expiated by the spirit."

 

Professor Jacob Milgrom in the new Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus explains that to the desert Israelites, "blood was the arch symbol of life. Its oozing from the body was not the world view of the sign of demons, but was certainly a sign of death." If the intention of the author of the Torah laws was to have us appreciate life in all people, segregating women for a third of each month may have protected men from "a walking death," but certainly painted women as carriers of death. As we can see from any reading of history, scapegoating some group as bearers of evil, poisoners of wells, carriers of plagues, destroyers of economies, bloodsuckers of a nation's life force, can lead to pogroms, massacres, and shoahs.

 

Women are traditionally kept off the bimah as they could sexually snare men with their looks and voices and because they may be contaminated if they are in menses or recently gave birth. The Talmud says that women are released from commandments that are time bound (praying three times a day at specific times, for example) as raising children controls their time, and that mitzvoth comes first.

 

But the Talmud does not say a woman cannot do these mitzvoth if she takes the obligation upon herself. The Torah teaches that men are just as contaminated as menstruating women if they had an ejaculation of semen. Since the Talmud also teaches that it is a mitzvah to have marital relations on Shabbat evening, who is checking to make sure the men on the bimah at Saturday morning's services – who are touching the Holy scroll of our Torah – have purified themselves with a mickvah dip on the way to shul?

 

What would be the logical reason for not allowing women who have reached menopause, or who have raised their children, from appearing on the bimah? The rules of keeping women relegated to a position behind the mechitza barrier, not only in synagogues, but outside as well, do not hold up to logical inspection.

 

The Torah passages outlined in  parasha Metzorah  that have been brought into Western civilization's canon, civil, and common law have served to keep 50 percent of the human race enslaved spiritually, financially and emotionally. For example, it was only relatively recently that women were given the right to vote in the United States.

 

There are those who believe that God wants women to submit willfully to their husbands. Our Hebraic teachings say that women's menstrual blood, men's sperm, and the sex act cause contamination and all need a dip in the mickvah, as well as a sacrifice to reclaim purity. Some rabbis have caused generations of suffering. These beliefs have caused an accepted misogynistic culture that still exists and is approved of in many quarters. If the pope can apologize to us for 1700 years of mistreatment based on the Church's teachings, is it not high time for those who say their semicha (ordination) comes from traditional oral transmission to make amends for 2,500 years of women's suffering?

 

Parasha Metzorah usually falls before, during or  a bit after Passover holiday. Thank G!d that  liberal movements set aside halakah like these laws early in our existence. Thank G!d that we understood that these taboos were from a primitive new nation inculcated with beliefs from the Pharaohs who enslaved them and the tribes that lived around them. When we talk about liberation from bondage at our Pesach seders, let us try to think of other customs, laws, notions, and ideas, that we still cling to that may keep others and ourselves still enslaved.

 

So I posit that the arresting of a woman wearing tzitzit is not just a feminine issue but indeed a deep rooted Judaic one. Do we want to be Jews who love our fellows and try to emulate a G!d that is caring, forgiving, full of ahavath chesed, and love, or do we want to be Hebrews, guarding every bit of territory, ritual or land, not caring who we harm as we think our cult G!d wants this?

 

So we end where we began  today. "From what does God suffer?" the rabbis ask. God  suffers from His exile from Himself. He suffers the separation in His Name--the "YH" divided from the "VH"-- that took place when He created the world. He suffers to return to the Unity--the wholeness in Himself-- that was shattered when He created the world. Therefore God suffers and man is commissioned to redeem Him from His suffering by returning Him to His former state of unity. This is what the Kabbalists say we mean when we say in the Aleinu adoration prayer "On that day God shall be One and His name One"(Psalm 22:29).

 

The rabbis then ask "How can we liberate God  from His suffering? How can we return Him to Himself?" The answer is that we must be watchful and alert all the time for God. As King David wrote "at dawn I hold myself in readiness for You" (Psalm 5:3). We need to listen for God's voice "I am listening. What is God saying?"(Psalm 85:8). Then we must speak the words that we hear God  tell us and follow them.  If our meditations of Guidance are not of Love, Purity, Honest and Altruism, we are listening to our egos. No Judaic G!d makes any human second best.

 

To quote the Ba'al Shem Tov again "When I fix my thoughts on the creator, I let my mouth speak what
it will, for the words are bound by higher roots. The Holy sparks that fell from Himself when God built and destroyed worlds, man shall raise and purify back to their source: All things of this world desire with all their might to draw near man in order that the sparks of Holiness that are in them should be raised by Him back to their source. And who with good strength of his spirit is able to raise the Holy spark from stone to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to speaking being? Man leads it to freedom, and no setting free of captives is greater than this. It is as when a king's son is rescued from captivity and brought to his father. Then you will release God  from His suffering and He , in turn, will 'fill your mouths with laughter and your lips with song'(Psalm 126:2)."   This is the Kabbalistic concept of Tikun Olam, repair of the world, which is a credo of the modern Jewish movements.

"Nowhere is this enantiodromia--this conflagration between good and evil-- more clearly seen than in the constant interplay of the two opposing Sephirot (ten manifestations of God), Chesed (good) and Gevurah (evil)--which individually constitute the Right and the Left sides--light and darkness, the yin and yang--of the Tree of the Ten Sephirot," writes Rabbi Yakov Ha Kohain. It is out of this balancing act that this Tree is born.

The idea of a suffering God is not only part of Christian theology. It is part and parcel of Judaism as well. Jewish philosophy believes that God, the our Divine Father, suffers  in Heaven.   He suffers not because we sin, but because of His separation from Himself. His former Unity has been shattered. His Holy Queen, the Shechinah, has fallen and She yearns to be lifted up and returned to Her King. This is why in Pirkei Avot one reads so many references to the ways one can bring back the Shechinah, i.e. studying Torah with another, discussing Torah while three or more eat together, etc. By treating our human feminine half of our species with the same love and kindness and kavod (honor), that Jewish men want for themselves, we do Tikun as well.

For Tikun Olam to be done, for God  to "know" and repair Himself, He first must be known by man. But for man to know himself, he first must know God as well. The Torah shows us how God perfects man in increments. God perfects man in order that man may perfect Him, in Zohar terms. This is what Dr. Karl Jung meant when he wrote,"God must become man precisely because He has done man a wrong through Job. He, the guardian of justice, knows that every wrong must be expiated and Wisdom knows that moral law is above even God. Because His creature has surpassed Him, God must regenerate Himself."

According to the Kabbalah, God  went from being whole to fragmentary during the act of creation. His "face" was shattered. He needs man as His partner to end His suffering and do the Tikun (repair). Judaism  has placed responsibility on us, as people, to fix our globe, and not think that doing ritual or not doing ritual determines if good or evil things to occur.

Of course this leads to the question "Is God good?" The sages answer "yes" and quote Exodus 34:6 "God,God,  a God of tenderness and compassion." But they further ask, "Why does He permit evil?" They answer that "evil is the throne of good", and that good comes from evil. "The indwelling Glory of God embraces all worlds, good and evil...How can he then bear in Himself the opposites good and evil? But in truth there is no opposite, for evil is the throne of good."   So if good comes from God, where does evil come from? Evil also comes from God. "Now the spirit of God left Saul and an evil spirit from God filled him" (1 Samuel 16:14).

 

The perfection of God lies not in being merely one thing or another, but all things at all times. God is darkness and light and goodness and evil. He is One. Satan, again a part of traditional Jewish belief, is not an opposite of God, but part of God. He is the left-hand side of the Mind of God. He is the left side of the Tree of the Ten Sephirot. Satan is not a "he," but an adversarial thought in God's mind. Satan is God's yetzer ha ra, His evil inclination.

In the month of Av we are taught that great evil befell us on the 9th day (destructions of the Temples) but that great good came to us on the 15th day (no more people died in the wilderness of Sinai, peace came to the tribe of Benjamin, the northern tribes were allowed to travel to the south to Jerusalem again, and the martyrs of Behar (122 CE) were allowed to be buried). The Kabbalah says that good things are born from evil. Let us use this evil and abuse that we have been perpetrating upon Jewish women as a time for teshuvah and change. Let it cease.

The sages forecast that the Messiah will be born on the 9th of Av. Holiness must be found in impurity, just as we as Jews have made the mundane into the sacred. There is no Torah law commanding us to say a prayer before we eat. This mitzvah is a rabbinic Talmudic law from Tractate Berachot 35A. The rabbis posit that one who eats before he says a prayer of thanks to God is like one who steals from God There is the mitzvah of saying grace after meals (Deut. 8:10). There is no mitzvah for treating women in a degrading fashion.

God loves us, but we are taught in Hebraism that He can also hate us. God even tried to kill Moses! "When Moses had halted for the night, God came to meet him and tried to kill him"(Exodus 4:24). But in a few chapters later, we are commanded to love God, and then are commanded to "fear God" (Deut. 10:12) as well as love Him.    King David in Psalm 111:10 writes "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and they that have sound sense practice it." Or as Jung says "Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries , who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms  of the earth and as vast as the sky."   Until God is repaired and no longer suffers, until we live a life of Tikun Olam, repairing relationships, treating all as equally beloved brothers and sisters, all with equal access to Mitzvoth and sacred places, humans will continue to cry and suffer at the hand of one another, and God will cry and suffer with us.  

 

 

Rabbi Arthur Segal, Hilton Head Island, SC, is a well known author, teacher and lecturer, can be reached at RabbiSegal@JewishSpiritualRenewal.net  and his web site is www.JewishSpiritualRenewal.org