On Rulings for Women and the Laws of Stains (Rorschach) (Column 446)

With God’s help

Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I was sent an amusing clip of an American comedienne who apparently participates daily in a Daf Yomi lesson and afterward posts remarks about the daf on TikTok. Despite the coarse and rough language, I thought there were a few points here that are definitely worth pondering.

The course of the sugya

The Gemara in Mo’ed Katan 9b brings a dispute among the Amoraim regarding women’s cosmetics on Chol HaMo’ed:

“And a woman may make her adornments.” The Sages taught: These are women’s adornments—she applies kohl (to her eyes), arranges/parts her hair, and passes rouge over her face; and some say: she passes rouge over the lower part of her face.

The wife of Rav Ḥisda was adorning herself before her daughter-in-law. Rav Huna bar Ḥinena was sitting before Rav Ḥisda and said: They taught this only with regard to a young woman, but not an old woman. He said to him: By God, even your mother, and even your grandmother, and even if she is standing on her grave—for people say: A woman of sixty is like a girl of six; at the sound of the tambourine she runs.”

Rav Ḥisda’s wife was already older (she had a daughter-in-law married to his son), and the Amoraim disagree whether the permission to wear makeup was said only regarding young women and not for someone like her (Rav Huna bar Ḥinena), or whether it was also permitted for older women (Rav Ḥisda). The halacha follows Rav Ḥisda, that the permission applies also to older women. His rationale is that makeup matters to sixty-year-olds just as to six-year-olds; the parable is that sixty-year-old girls run to a banquet and rejoice at the sound of the tambourine just like six-year-old girls. Incidentally, the Pri Megadim writes that the permission applies even to an elderly single woman (who need not beautify herself before a husband) and even if she has no intention of remarrying. He takes this leniency all the way.

Now I suggest you listen to the fascinating description of the sugya by that same Miriam, in her colorful (and coarse) language. She naturally scolds Rav Huna bar Ḥinena for trying to tell her and her friends whether to wear makeup and whether makeup matters to them or not. In short, she is in Rav Ḥisda’s camp (and even proud of him and his positions).

The critique of male rulings

Here we have an example of a very common critique in recent years: that halacha was formulated and fixed by men, including the laws that pertain to women. The claim is that men do not understand the female mind—what matters to a woman and what doesn’t—and therefore cannot rule on such matters.

As a rule, I oppose such statements. I indeed object to excluding women from halachic decision-making altogether (see the end of the previous column), but I don’t see any special problem with male rulings in these areas. Of course one can raise arguments and discuss each ruling and each decisor, but as a sweeping claim that excludes men from these domains—this I do not accept (as distinct from the claim against them for having excluded women, which is of course entirely true). But these things apply to most halachic rulings regarding women, since such rulings and the debates around them do not depend on “female feelings” or on understanding “female nature.” Sometimes something is forbidden to women because it is forbidden, and even if their feelings about it are difficult, there is still a prohibition. In such a case, the above critique has no place, and there is no principled problem with the fact that the decision was made by men.

Back to the sugya in Mo’ed Katan

But the case in this sugya is different. Here the discussion revolves precisely around the question of what women prefer. The prohibition or permission to do this on Chol HaMo’ed depends on how important it is to a woman. Rav Huna bar Ḥinena, who determines that for older women this is not important, forbids it to them. Rav Ḥisda swears that it matters to all of them and therefore permits it (Miriam describes this as a scolding of Rav Huna; I’m not sure about that). As we saw, the Pri Megadim takes this all the way, apparently assuming that this could be important for any woman in any situation.

One must understand that with this kind of question, it is not enough for some woman to give the decisor a verbal description. Even if she explains that this is very important to her and to women in general, he may think that perhaps it matters only to her, or that what she regards as important is not truly so important (she just feels like it—so let her cope). He does not know the feeling that a woman has about such things, and a verbal description of the feelings does not necessarily reflect them accurately; therefore it is very hard to rule on the basis of a verbal description without experiencing the underlying experience.

I have often brought the example of Mary’s Room. Mary is a genius physicist specializing in optics. She knows the theory and applications forwards and backwards and has nothing more to learn in the field. The equations are as clear to her as the paths of Nehardea, and the behavior of all wavelengths in every situation is as plain as a garment. Yet all her life Mary has lived and worked in a black-and-white room. The books she read, the experiments she conducted, and her entire research and activity were in a black-and-white world. Imagine the moment she steps out of the room and meets a poppy flower. She is told that its color is red (she has never seen red). Did she learn something new? Clearly yes. Red was known to her as an electromagnetic wave of a certain wavelength, and she knew everything about its behavior in the world. But she had never seen the color red, and had no idea what it is, what it looks like, or how it affects the psyche. While still in the room, one could perhaps try to describe it to her and the feelings it arouses (though that is of course very difficult), yet none of that would bring her to understand what red is. This is an excellent parable for the difference between experiencing women’s feelings about something and hearing verbal descriptions of those feelings.

Now I will argue that if Mary had to decide the halachic question of whether a woman may wear clothing that is red (see here), she would have no tools to discuss it. The unmediated experience is a necessary basis for such decisions. This is also a good example of the distinction I made above between two kinds of rulings. If the prohibition of red stems from “the ways of the gentiles,” then direct familiarity with the color itself, with its effect on the wearer and her surroundings, with the feelings of women if they are permitted or forbidden to wear red—all of these are unimportant. So long as it is “the ways of the gentiles,” it is forbidden (today this is no longer unique to gentiles, and therefore according to some decisors it is permitted. But that too has nothing to do with direct familiarity with the experiences I described). However, if red is forbidden because it is immodest or because of the feelings it arouses in men or in women, then it is very important that the decisor have direct familiarity with those feelings, and verbal descriptions will not necessarily suffice. One who has never seen red cannot truly rule on this question.

In my article on halachic rulings during the Holocaust, I addressed this claim more broadly. I spoke there about a decisor who rules on questions connected to an environment unfamiliar to him, where the prevailing atmosphere is critical to the halachic decision. An example is monetary law in the ghetto; to determine its parameters (and whether it applies at all there), there is a huge advantage to someone who directly experienced the ghetto reality. I said that in such circumstances the distant decisor must not step in and decide. At most he can advise and guide, but the decision must be made by a rabbi who is directly immersed in the relevant reality.

This touches some of the questions that arise regarding women’s prayer quorums and egalitarian minyanim, for example. Elder Haredi decisors who do not understand the mindset of a young liberal community cannot rule on such questions. The reality in question is unfamiliar to them, and they have no idea what any ruling means. Again, I am not speaking of black-and-white questions (there are very few of those in the context of a synagogue), but of questions for which familiarity and experience are very important. Another example I gave is a ruling about listening to a woman singing at a performance. A Haredi or Hardal decisor who has never heard a woman sing and does not know the contemporary attitude toward music, performances, and singers (including men) cannot determine that the matter is forbidden. Such a decisor is unaware that people go to a concert by a female singer because they enjoy her singing, not with the goal of arousing improper thoughts and stimuli. He simply does not know that experience, and in my view, in many cases even if you tell him that this is the feeling he will scoff and explain that these are the wiles of the yetzer, while the deep motivation is the sexual impulse. All this simply because a verbal explanation cannot convey the feeling and the experience itself. Of course, here too, if a decisor believes that the prohibition of listening to a woman’s singing is essential and fixed—i.e., not subject to change and not dependent on questions of thoughts or the listeners’ aims—then he can of course forbid even without understanding.

And we have not even entered the rulings about mobile phones and computers and the internet, which are in many cases issued by decisors who have no clue what these things are and what they mean. At best they feed on verbal descriptions, but those cannot convey the reality itself. In the past I wrote here about a minyan on Zoom, and said that for one who has experienced the virtual reality, it is very easy to accept my sevara (see in column 350 and the references there), according to which a minyan can be held on Zoom, even if some of the people are in Australia and others in South America, or in Israel. The synagogue and the shared space in which all are gathered is the “site” on the internet (the Zoom room or page). One can of course argue with my reasoning, but try explaining this claim to a decisor who has never participated in a Zoom meeting and does not know or understand what the internet is. You can indeed transmit to him verbal descriptions of the experience and the reality, but those cannot bring him to a full understanding of them. Therefore he is not qualified to accept this reasoning or to refute it. He is not the person to ask such a question (though one can certainly consult and receive guidance).

Back to the dispute between Miriam and Rav Huna bar Ḥinena

Returning to halachic rulings for women, my contention is that specifically regarding this sugya, Miriam is right in her critique of Rav Huna bar Ḥinena. Since the matter depends on women’s feelings about makeup and its meaning for them, a man has no tools to understand it directly. I know of myself that this whole business looks bizarre to me. Smearing oneself with various colors on various parts of the body—for me that perhaps suits Native Americans heading to battle or avant-garde artists. Walking on stiletto heels as thin as a pin and as tall as the Eiffel Tower is a kind of extreme sport, and it is really unclear to me why anyone would do such unhelpful exercise for hours in places utterly unsuited for it. I once thought all this was done to impress men (not that I understood whom that impresses and why), but then it was explained to me that in many cases it has nothing to do with men at all but with a woman’s inner feelings about herself. If I tell you that this put my mind at ease, I would be lying. In short, to me a woman is a riddle. But precisely for that reason I do not see how I, dwelling safely on Mars, can rule on makeup and heels for the strange creatures inhabiting Venus.

So much for the critique by our Miriam, which may sound coarse and rough, yet has a considerable measure of justice—but that does not exempt us from thinking about it and discovering that perhaps there is something to it. In closing I cannot avoid pointing out another point that emerges from this sugya.

How do our sages relate to a woman?

The Talmud’s and halacha’s treatment of women is a hackneyed topic laden with emotion—and again, to a considerable extent justifiably so. A group of men fashions halacha by themselves, excludes women, and then presents them as inferior and peculiar human beings whose weight should not be given much consideration. In this context I always recall Maimonides at the beginning of Chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance. When he speaks about the importance of serving God for its own sake, he first describes service for the sake of reward, and says:

“A person should not say: I will perform the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom so that I will receive all the blessings written therein, or so that I will merit the life of the World to Come; and I will separate from the transgressions that the Torah warned against so that I will be saved from the curses written in the Torah, or so that I will not be cut off from the life of the World to Come. It is not fitting to serve God in this manner; one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. They do not serve God in this way, but only the common folk, women, and minors, whom one trains to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.”

Every time I learned this Rambam with women it was a rather awkward experience. The common folk, women, and minors are mentioned in one breath, and he writes that all these underdeveloped creatures must be educated until their knowledge increases (how exactly will women’s knowledge increase if they are forbidden to study and add knowledge?! Let the Rambam answer. And perhaps “one trains them” refers only to the minors mentioned at the end of the list…).

I am sure we will now hear about the “extra understanding” given to women, and “honor her more than himself,” and the like. Please spare me all that. What I do accept is that once, women were indeed underdeveloped beings (everyone’s fault), and thank God this has changed in our day. “The decline of the generations,” did we say already?…

A Rorschach blot

Even in the sugya in Mo’ed Katan cited above, women are portrayed as creatures who dash off to any joy and feast at the sound of the tambourine and cannot be stopped. Sixty-year-olds like six-year-olds (is it any wonder? From age six they’re supposedly not meant to study anything anymore). Ḥayuta Deutsch wrote to me that she chooses to read this Gemara as praise of women—that they are possessed of vitality and joy of life and do not lose it with age (and she drew my attention in this context to the song by the late Yoram Taharlev, “Women Dancing”). Well, happy is the believer. To me it looks more like treating women as overgrown children who act by conditioned reflexes. Indeed, the Baal HaTurim (Numbers 30:14) wrote that this proves that if a woman vowed not to listen to instrumental music, such a vow is considered a matter of “self-affliction,” and her husband can annul her vow. So too ruled the Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 234:62 (and in the Beit Yosef ad loc. he brings a source for this from our sugya). Simply put, this does not derive from her “joy of life,” but from a perspective that the woman is like a child not trained in postponing gratification and therefore cannot restrain herself from going to feasts and celebrations. Better to permit her, so she not stumble in the prohibitions of vows.

In any case, this is another example of what I have argued many times regarding aggadah and Scripture: they can be interpreted any way one wishes, and the cravings of the heart play a large role in interpreting the aggadot, and in the end one does not truly learn anything from them. Everyone uses them to buttress what he thinks anyway, and therefore I see no point in studying them. In the second book of my trilogy I dealt with this and also explained the differences from interpreting halacha (where, of course, inclinations of the heart also have weight and there are many interpretive possibilities). I described those genres as a Rorschach blot that everyone interprets according to his heart’s desires and inclinations. A few weeks ago I saw in Rabbi Elai Ofan’s book, Torah of the Soul (definitely recommended), which deals entirely with psychological interpretation of the Torah, that at the end he devotes a chapter to the Torah as a Rorschach blot. In my view, that chapter is a shot the author fires into his book’s foot, for once one understands that this is indeed the Torah’s nature, what is the point of studying it? Go through the entire book and you will see that you will learn nothing from the Torah. At most you will see in it the ideas and occurrences that psychology describes. It always fits, of course, since we look at the Torah through those lenses. As stated, in my view, aggadah too is a Rorschach blot.