A Letter to the Despairing “Fedlaho'shit” (Column 390)

Operation Guardian of the Walls almost made me forget that about two weeks ago there was a post by someone named Devorah (apparently a nickname?) who founded the Facebook page of the “Fedlaho'shiyot” (an acronym for “Religious Feminists Without a Sense of Humor”), announcing the page’s imminent closure. For many members of the group (this is the last time I will double-gender my language—chauvinist that I am—just so you’ll understand that there are also some male members), this is a very significant event. I gather that this page influenced and was formative for many women who belong to that reference group. It gave them a platform and a sense of belonging and sharing, a place to vent tensions, lay out reflections, and share insights, while neutralizing male hegemony and dominance. Apparently the page has changed the religious outlook—and the outlook in general—of quite a few of its participants (men too), by their own testimony.

Here I wish to relate mainly to the above post, not to the group as a whole (which I don’t know. I’m off Facebook and don’t understand it much). Nor do I intend to address one of the main issues in the debate that arose after the post was published, namely the moral right of the founder of such a page to close it (especially when it already has about 17,000 members—about half a Knesset seat!!!). That is certainly an interesting question, but it is not our topic. For me, this post expressed difficult feelings, justified at least in part, and as I understand it they are shared by quite a few men and women, especially those among us who are straight-shooters. Therefore it certainly deserves serious and substantive attention, and that is what I’ll try to do here. Lastly, I’ll note that there were also various, less categorical statements following the publication of this post. Some other admins did not want the closure, and there were those who wanted it for other reasons. There were also critiques and rebukes about the post’s fanaticism and its unwillingness to compromise with “lite” feminism. In my view it’s an honest post that bravely and candidly expresses the writer’s personal feelings, and she has every right to express that sharply as she understands it. Anyone who feels differently—that is also their right, and so I disagree with those critiques. But I won’t address any of that here.

A bit about the group

Still, we can’t proceed without at least a little background on the group. The group was established inspired by a previous page of feminists not necessarily religious, and the names of these pages are based on (echo?) the stereotype that many have about feminists—that they are serious and heavy and lack a sense of humor (whiny?).

At the top of the page appears the “About,” which teaches a bit about its background, and here it is:

About Okay, this is the place to vent everything 🙂 because who better than we religious feminists to know what it is to lack a sense of humor! Founded in the spirit of Tal Gutman, founder of the group: [http://www.facebook.com/groups/440928549253281/](http://www.facebook.com/groups/440928549253281/) This is a place for women to share and relate events from their lives within the religious framework. A place where they can laugh about everything, without apologizing, without excuses, without being accused of immodesty, and without having to explain why they have no sense of humor. ***Important note: This is not a discussion group about feminism. Any kind of mansplaining will be deleted immediately (for those unfamiliar with the term—Google). Mansplainers, troublemakers, chauvinism, verbal violence or offensive wording toward group members, as well as defenses of male privilege—will be deleted immediately *** We’re here to laugh and share and to find strength together in a pleasant space. This is our home, the place where we want to feel safe, to seek advice, to get angry, to laugh. In our home we do not intend to be on the defensive—neither about our religiosity nor about our feminism. We do not need educational or halakhic advice about how to live the already-complex life of a religious feminist. We are not seeking halakhic approvals from anyone, and in this group no one will tell anyone what is modest and what is not, how to pray, how to keep mitzvot, what is within the halakhic framework and what is outside it. Not everyone here prays with Women of the Wall, but in this group Women of the Wall do not need to apologize; not everyone here feels that the LGBTQ struggle is relevant to them, but in this group the LGBTQ community—and especially the religious one—will be protected from attacks; not everyone here is engaged in Mizrahi feminism, but denial of Mizrahi oppression will not be accepted; there is apparently an Orthodox majority here, but this is not an Orthodox group. It is a *religious* group, and all forms of religiosity are welcome—Reform, Conservative, and the entire religious spectrum—embraced with love. Conversely—slandering religion and undermining or general derision of Jewish faith and basic principles of Judaism—these too damage the safe space this group seeks to be, and have no place here. This is also the home of survivors of sexual assault of any kind. Here we believe survivors and complainants. There is no place here for victim-blaming and no place for doubting complainants. Responses that do not create a safe space of trust in survivors will be deleted. Those who wish to read more are invited to this thread – [https://m.facebook.com/groups/352850698102983?view=permalink&id=921134094607971](https://m.facebook.com/groups/352850698102983?view=permalink&id=921134094607971) This is not a group for discussions of all the ills of the religious society in Israel or political and social debates. It is a group for general feminist discussions that do not pertain to religion. Posts that are off topic may be deleted. For new members—before you open posts and comment, it is recommended to read a few threads and discussions to get a sense of the style and vibe and to get to know the virtual community. Feminist men—you are certainly welcome here, but on one condition: do not dominate the discourse. You have enough places to express yourselves. The goal of the group is to amplify women’s voices that are being silenced in various ways. When a member opens a discussion and it turns into a discussion among men in which it’s impossible to get a word in—that is neither feminist nor appropriate, especially when you divert a feminist discussion in another direction. Same goes for opening multiple posts. Please exercise restraint. Anyone who wants to ponder the nature of feminism and is not sure they understand the group rules is invited here: [https://www.facebook.com/groups/299815500102856/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/299815500102856/) For discussions about feminism and halakhic Judaism only: [https://www.facebook.com/groups/111728475664913/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/111728475664913/) The group admins Deborah Aroshas Avital Lifschitz Rachel Lion Ayala Falk Na'ama Tal Cohen-Landau

You can gather that there is a rather strict guiding hand here, and I’m not sure this page deserves a tolerance-and-openness award. But naturally, as a resident of Mars I have not experienced the point of view of those living on Venus, and in particular not of feminist Venusians. After hearing these points more than once from various opinionated women, I tend to believe that indeed male discourse is too domineering for them and does not allow them to express themselves,[1] and therefore this policy is apparently necessary so that they can converse there freely (I have remarked more than once on the number of women who participate in discussions on my Martian website).

The post in question

Here is the body of her words (without the thanks at the end) in full:

Dear Fedlaho'shiyot, After a long period of thought, and close to a decade of activity, I have decided to close the Fedlaho'shiya. The group will be archived on 30.5.2021. I will detail here the reason for the closure. These words come from the heart and reflect my personal experience, which I find important to share since I was the founder and standard-bearer of this space for many years. It is important to stress that these are my words and do not reflect the opinions of my fellow group admins. It is not easy for me to write this, but these words have been crying out within me for far too long. So I take a deep breath and dive in. — This group was born of my great pain, and at the time it provided immense comfort—misery loves company. I was 24 when I opened the group, a student, full of faith and zeal to create social change in an outdated system. I thought: here we are—an era in which women receive a voice and power democratically thanks to social media; now all that remains is to point en masse to the facts, and the religious establishment will understand and internalize that the time has come to stop treating us as inferior beings who need permission to breathe, to speak, to sing, to exist in public space. For years I believed that it was possible to change “from within” (though by definition we are all “outside” anyway). That it was possible to hold the rope at both ends. That “they” take ownership of Judaism, but it is not *really* theirs, and at bottom there is room in religion for everyone. In the early years of this community’s existence, it felt like the right thing: look! Women joined together, broke the silence, stood up for their rights. Every time a woman said that this group gave her strength, and backing, to demand something, to change something in her life, I was filled with joy and faith in the future. And it is important for me to say that we experienced here moments of grace, sharing, and inspiration that were significant for me, too, in my personal journey. And yet, today I understand that I was mistaken. True, we identified the smoke screen—the religion’s basic gaslighting of women (“It’s not really ‘Blessed…who did not make me a woman’! It’s because you are more exalted”). We learned to identify and delve into places that were created not for us but against us. Agunot. Ownership. Sexual assault, rape, the exploitation of women by religious authority. Exclusion of women from decision-making centers, stripping women of power and control over their bodies, silencing women’s voices, mansplaining, the phenomenon of men who discuss women’s sexuality endlessly, with a hair-splitting meticulousness that induces revulsion. We told ourselves that once we identified and pointed to it—we had succeeded in defeating the system. But we missed the point: The very existence of this space here is itself yet another smoke screen layered over reality: a reality of inherent, fundamental, essential inequality between man and woman in the Jewish religion. This group is like a temporary sedative, a numbing blur, a veil. The thought that we can be ourselves within an explicitly misogynistic system, that we can preserve our self-respect—is an illusion at best, self-deception at worst, and collusion in deceiving others at worst of all. It cannot be denied: there is a thread connecting the Fedlaho'shit from the Beqaa, the seventeen-year-old girl whose head is shaved before being handed over to her husband, and the secular woman who looks on all this in enchantment and says that she may not be there, but it is important to respect tradition. The existence of the group under the title “I am a religious feminist” serves in the long term not the women within religion—but the continued existence of the smoke screens. With our own hands we took some of the greatest expressions of misogyny, laundered them with effort in the great river, and spread them wide, declaring: “Ko-sher!” But it is enough to dare to look directly at this laundry to see how dirty and tattered it is. As Mary Daly said, “If God is male, then the male is God.” In the end, when you bow your head to a system built by men-only for the interests of men-only, you necessarily bow to male superiority. By accepting that this is the foundational system that deserves unqualified respect, and that any challenge to it must be undertaken in awe—you are honoring the system’s very foundation, preserving yourself the bricks of this heavy wall, holding them in your hands lest they collapse into what you imagine would be your end. I look back and understand the profound sadness in this posture of waiting for the crumbs that the rabbis will deign to give us, to “allow women” X, to “permit women” Y. I thought we were innovating, challenging, but again and again we continued to define ourselves in light of their definitions. As much as we tried, we did not succeed in preventing the destructive phenomenon of women apologizing, wasting their time and efforts on explanations, and hoping for male approval for their very existence. — I was full of objections when women from outside religion tried “to show me the light.” Their being outside, as I then saw it, prevented them from understanding that “it’s complicated.” That it’s merely a minor historical mistake, that it’s all symbolic, not real, remnants of a different historical period, and anyway now we are in an age of change, and any minute now everything will completely change. (Look, women are writing halakhic books!) They seemed to me condescending, blind. They quoted things that sounded simplistic, embarrassing, ignorant, getting confused about sources, “mistaken” in their assertions (what is a “mistake,” I asked one of you here recently, in the context of the religion’s view of you as a woman?) But the truth is that it is not complicated at all: If you want to be a woman who is equal, free, with sovereignty and agency over her body, her womb, her sexuality, her health, her love, her joy—then a religious framework is not the place for that. The oppression of women in Judaism is not a minor element that can be removed cosmetically or ignored as if it were never there. It is at the base. Without it, everything falls. Imagine with me for a moment. What happens if tomorrow morning a critical mass of women say: no more. What then? True, there is a price to pay. No doubt there is much to lose. But the price of collaboration, under the guise of a “struggle” (a struggle that swears allegiance in advance, defining itself as part of the oppressive system itself), the price of giving up basic dignity as an equal human being, the price of passing that value on to our daughters and sons—is even greater. A question: A relationship that constructs you as secondary, in constant alienation from your being in the space, plants in you perpetual doubt whether you are “allowed” to be, to be heard, and along the way also controls your intimate space, your sexuality, your body. A relationship that drills into you insults (and forces you also to drill them) about your being feeble-minded, equal only to a small child or a fool. A relationship that strips from you the capacity to judge and decide matters concerning your fate. That same relationship also constructs itself as “divine truth”; between the epithets it is careful once a week to wax poetic about your virtues, and teaches you to justify all its doings, to explain to yourself and to others with a smile that you choose all of this wholeheartedly and lovingly, that it is actually for your good, on the contrary! It empowers you! And that anyone who dares reflect back to you the situation is by definition an ignoramus. What would we call such a relationship? ————— I believe there is another way. I believe that generation after generation, from mother to daughter, we will learn to stop asking permission to exist in the space. We will live out of self-worth. We will stop apologizing for our very being, stop looking away, stop settling for crumbs, stop denying, stop compromising. We will stop being afraid. I believe we are learning how to organize together out of strength, in order to help, to stand together, to embrace, to listen, to believe, to support one another. To strengthen. To progress. To build. To create here a better world for our daughters and our sons. I feel this is the revolution of our time. This is worth writing about; this is worth aspiring to; around this it is worth establishing communities! — Looking back, the points that gave me the greatest grace in this process of sobering up were women “from within” who whispered to me in secret about their small rebellions (“niddah chuppah,” seven clean days, and more, and more), strengthening me in choosing against what I felt was impossible for me to contain. That it could not be that these are the living words of God. Some of them don’t even know how much freedom and joy they brought into my life. I want us to stop whispering. You do not need permission. You know. You are equal, as you are. All of you. Your body is wonderful, your sexuality is good, your menstrual cycle is a model of divine nature. Your voice is blessed. Your presence is important. Your testimony is reliable. You are intelligent and wise, and your opinion is precious. You do not need to swallow the insult for any value in the world. You do not need to be silent. You do not need to enter through the side door, or sit behind a curtain. You do not need to push all this aside as if it does not matter, and you do not need to invent far-fetched justifications for it. You do not need to wait for the rabbi to approve. You do not have to honor one who scorns your dignity. The process of correcting an historical injustice is not supposed to “take time” and “not alarm.” You are not hurting anyone when you demand your freedom: take it; it is yours by right.

Initial reflections

These are, to my mind, very powerful words, clearly coming from a pained heart and said with great candor. I must say that my own heart ached quite a bit as I read them, and it was clear to me they required thought and response. Despite my being a Martian, I can fully understand these words. If I belonged to a group that has been discriminated against and excluded for many generations and is led exclusively by the discriminating group, I would probably feel similar feelings. Even if the Sages are ministering angels, still the feeling of a group that ends up disadvantaged when all the rules are set by the other group is likely to be harsh.

I have said more than once to my students at the Graduate Beit Midrash for Doctoral Students at Bar-Ilan, where I teach, that if I were a woman (to the extent such a description has meaning—if I were a woman I would not be me), I very much doubt that I would be faithful to halakha today, unless they also managed to suppress my critical sense. If I had grown up in a society that did not allow me to learn and understand for myself what I do and what I am required to do, and I had no possibility to influence and to make decisions, I probably would not do it. I am a great believer in a person’s right and duty to decide their fate and set their path and worldview. Especially in our time, when women earn doctorates, lecture and conduct research at universities, serve in government and on supreme courts, and yet are asked to accept statements from men—who are not all very sharp pencils—without reasoning and without having any possibility to critique and examine matters and form an opinion on their own, a case of “we shall do” without “we shall hear.” This is absurd regardless of the trust I have in the sages who set these rules. Even if they are outstandingly wise and moral men of the highest order, they are setting rules for a huge population (50% of the public) that has nothing to say on the matter and whose mindset they do not truly understand. And they do so in ways far from objective, unequivocal, and self-evident, leaving even more room for the halakhic decisor’s personal influence on the halakhic outcome. How can an autonomous, intelligent woman have confidence in such a decision-making process?! I, as a man, am not prepared to accept the sages’ decisions without criticism, and they are supposed to understand me quite well (after all, they too are from Mars).

However, the description I offered in the last paragraph concerns women’s learning, and that hurdle we have more or less crossed today (not entirely, of course). Devorah, by contrast, speaks about the outcomes of learning, namely religious life. There the solution is much harder. Seemingly, it’s a road with no exit. One who is faithful to the halakhic tradition and is not Reform or heretical cannot rebel against it and cannot change it. Either way: either you are faithful to the system as it is, and then you doom yourself to remain excluded and on the margins (sorry: better than all the men, and therefore “all your glory is inward”), or you want to change and then you are Reform. You understand that the inevitable conclusion is that being a religious feminist is an oxymoron. Devorah expresses this in very strong and painful words:

If you want to be a woman who is equal, free, with sovereignty and agency over her body, her womb, her sexuality, her health, her love, her joy—then a religious framework is not the place for that. The oppression of women in Judaism is not a minor element that can be removed cosmetically or ignored as if it never was. It is at the base. Without it, everything falls.

I must say that these feelings have also stirred in me as a man (not necessarily about women’s status, but about other parts of the tradition that seemed to me utterly illogical), except that I, as a man, had the privilege to learn and to be a partner in shaping my own religiosity. I received (or took) tools that allow me to do that. A woman, by contrast, does not even have the legitimacy to acquire the tools, let alone to use them. She is forbidden to learn Torah (as if teaching her is teaching frivolity), certainly not to serve as a judge or a rabbi, not even to render halakhic rulings, or to deliver words of Torah. And after pushing her to the margins—and even if she buys into the nonsense that is sold to her (“all the honor of the king’s daughter is inward,” etc., etc.)—she remains discriminated against in the rabbinical courts regarding personal status and in religious life in general. She is supposed to obey men who decide for her without her understanding what it is based on, and in many cases her feeling is that they do not truly understand what they are talking about. They run conferences (cf. the “Puah Institute”) at which male speakers full of knowledge and importance exchange impressions about the nature of woman, her feelings, the halakhot that pertain to her—often without asking or hearing her. But who is she to rebel against the commands of the Creator of Heaven and Earth?!

I ask myself what feelings this creates in a woman (that Venusian, the one I do not understand)? I can somewhat imagine it, but not truly feel it myself. It is no accident that this situation infuriates me, and among other things that is what led me to write my trilogy in which I examine many of the assumptions that create it. But, as noted, I have the tools, and even so a man needs no small measure of courage and boldness to say things and express atypical views, or to challenge accepted foundations, openly. I ask myself what a God-fearing woman is supposed to do who feels such distress, but has no tools to examine the situation and certainly not to propose changes. Her husband, the community rabbi, and all the Torah scholars she knows and esteems explain to her that I am a heretic who understands nothing and that she must swallow her distress and be silent. They explain to her that one who says or writes things like mine is Reform, and whoever goes down these roads arrives directly at boiling excrement in Gehenna under the management of Amnon Yitzhak. She needs to cook for her husband and care for her children and be a righteous woman, and only thanks to righteous women like her were Israel redeemed from Egypt and did (the men) receive the Torah and (the men) inherit the land.

Would you not expect that many women would reach Devorah’s conclusions? And I speak specifically about those for whom these matters are important. There are many for whom this exclusion is not a big problem, because after all they are silenced while they sit and chat behind the partition and words of Torah are being said in the synagogue (“Silence in the women’s section!!!”), but what do they care?! They are only occasionally in synagogue for the folklore. They find content for life at university, at work, or in reading literature and consuming culture. So let the fools in the synagogue keep running their shtiebel. Who cares?!

But a Haredi woman does not have that outlet, and a modern religious feminist woman also does not have such an option. If religious life is indeed important to her, she is not willing to give up involvement in it. So what do you expect her to do? I must say that the small amount of abandonment by women is a wonder to me. Either religious life is not important to them, or they have lost their human image and a proper measure of critical sense, or they nevertheless find content and meaning elsewhere (as above) and shuffle along the edges of the shtiebel to preserve folklore that may even be dear to their heart to some degree. And after all this, they tell me that critical feminists do not have fear of Heaven like those righteous women who accept authority and remain silent. Wonders!

All the description presented thus far is, of course, extreme. Women in modern religious society are no longer in the situation I described. But still the exclusion and discrimination and lack of status and tools exist—certainly when viewed against their status in general society today. Anyone who deludes themselves that the matter no longer exists is mistaken and misleading. But these things are true not only with respect to women’s status; substantial components of halakha as a whole are largely anachronistic, and my trilogy seeks to take a step toward change.

I will divide my response into two parts: the first pertains to principles and the second to drawing conclusions and practical conduct.

A. A few fundamental remarks on the matter

Here I can only touch briefly and sketch the general directions, but almost all of this has already been detailed elsewhere. The most basic distinction to make here is between halakha as it is now and halakha as it ought to be. The writer deals with Judaism as it is at present, that is, the religious (Orthodox) society within which we live—Judaism as fact. About that she writes that the attitude toward women is not a marginal issue amenable to change within this framework. Yet there is still room to claim that this is not the Judaism/halakha as it ought to be. Yael Fish noted this nicely in her words about the post. Devorah describes an existing situation but does not relate to sources and what emerges from them, nor does she examine whether what happens in practice fits or is mandated by the sources. She certainly does not address the status of the sources and our ability to change from what is written in them. I suppose this stems, among other things, from the fact that she has no real access to halakhic sources and to an understanding of the methodology and ways of interpretation and decision, and of the proper relation to the different sources—exactly as I described above regarding women in general.

Alongside this distinction, it is important to make another one, almost the opposite, which I briefly noted in the previous column. As in any normative and religious system, so too in halakha there are differences between what emerges from the sources of halakha and halakhic praxis. Even if the sources of halakha indicate some (descriptively) chauvinistic directive, in many cases reality is stronger than they are. It is certainly possible that in a society operating within different cultural and value norms, halakhic behavior in practice will be different. There are countless examples of this in the history of halakha and of course also in our day.[2]

A third distinction we must make, which I have discussed in the past, is between halakha in its purely religious sense and social and cultural norms that have been embedded within it. I gave the example of “honor killings” in the Muslim world. As far as I have understood from Muslim religious scholars, there is no basis for this in the sources of Islamic law. It is an Arab custom (from the deserts of Arabia) that has been culturally embedded within Arab society and, at least in some places, has become part of their Islam. In Jewish halakha, too, some attitude toward women is embedded that is not all, if at all, founded on halakhic sources. Some of these are cultural practices, and some entered the Talmud and post-Talmudic sources, and therefore are perceived by many as part of Sinai-given halakha. Not so. They certainly have no sanctity. Take for example Maimonides’ well-known statement that a woman’s going out to work is grounds for divorce, or various laws concerning relations between husband and wife and between father and daughter. I argue that even things that the Sages saw as halakha are not necessarily such. It is easier to think about this in a hypothetical experiment: if there were today a Sanhedrin that could interpret the Torah and change existing halakhot, is there any necessity that all these halakhot would remain as they are? I have no doubt that not. As the Sages did in their time, so too the Sanhedrin would be supposed to do in ours. True, we do not have a Sanhedrin today, but in the third book of my trilogy (the sixth part deals with the theory of halakhic change) I discussed structured methodological possibilities for substantial changes in halakha even without a Sanhedrin (such as the “freezing mechanism,” etc.).

In general, it is important to understand that what we call today “halakha” is not the word of God from Sinai in its purity. It is an entire corpus, the vast majority of which is interpretation given to those halakhot (or verses) given to us at Sinai, and I assume that a significant part of it is not very connected to what the Holy One intended at the outset. This does not mean there is no obligation to keep it (I have written more than once that the obligation to halakha does not depend on its authenticity), but the sanctity and the impossibility of touching and changing is nevertheless different between the word of God and the determinations of the Sages, even if they have formal authority. The interpretations of scholars over the generations are certainly not free of cultural influences of the environment in which they operated, just as we can see in our own generation (compare the status of women in a Lithuanian Haredi society, Hasidic, Religious-Zionist, Conservative, and even by countries of origin: Caucasian, American, Moroccan, Hungarian, etc.). The sense that such statements are “Reform” stems from imprecision in defining the concepts. Here I only point to the directions, and whoever wishes to delve deeper is invited to read the sixth part of the third book in the trilogy, where I defined the concepts and explained this well.

B. Practical conduct, or: how to solve problems

Now I wish to comment on drawing conclusions and practical conduct. In the previous section I noted the possibilities to effect change and to act and change. The conclusion is that the current situation is not a decree of fate, and it is not true that whoever deviates from it is not Orthodox (more precisely: is not committed to halakha. The word “Orthodox” belongs to the world of sociology. There is no sanctity in it). In general, I think my trilogy—and especially the third book, which deals with halakha—is not a bad platform for carrying out significant changes within full commitment to halakha.

But to bring about this change, the women who want it must invest the necessary effort, enter the halakhic world, learn and deepen, and then propose well-founded and reasoned suggestions for change. It is not enough to complain about the situation and express distress without offering concrete solutions. The way of the world is that when a person or group is in distress and wants and needs help, they must invest effort themselves and only then can they expect assistance. The Palestinians, Mizrahim, black people in the US, and other groups in problematic situations (weak or weakened) cannot make do with complaints about the situation. They need to invest effort and work and lead the effort to improve it. Only when they initiate and lead will there be a chance that others will join them.

A woman who does not want her husband or rabbi to tell her unreasoned things to which she will have to answer “amen” and obey cannot simply refuse to obey or make do with complaints that the situation is unbearable. She must get into the thick of it, examine the situation, see whether there are avenues of solution, then propose something reasoned and only thereafter expect support. As long as you expect others to do the work for you, it will not happen, and to some degree justly so. Those who suffer have the greatest motivation to seek and propose solutions. Others will not do the work for them, especially when the core feminist complaints are about dependence on men.

In this sense, abandonment and despair are the easy solutions. If indeed it is a believing woman, and if she truly thinks that Torah was given at Sinai and that there is an obligation to keep it and obey God, then abandonment is not an option for her. If you do nothing, will that be in accordance with God’s will? She can argue that it is implausible to her that the existing conceptions are an expression of His will, but a serious approach obligates her to seek an alternative. She must think how she can and should fulfill His will. Abandonment points to a lack of commitment and suggests that even the observance up to now stemmed from it seeming to suit her needs rather than from substantive commitment to God’s will. If in your view certain people do not do God’s will, that does not exempt you from doing so. On the contrary—if they do not keep it, arise and you keep it.

True, this is a difficult project, and not every woman can meet it. Especially since even today the tools and knowledge are not given to her as they are to men. But I expect that among a group of intelligent women at least a small part will nonetheless advance toward solutions and strive to carry out this project. For now, the number of learned women at a good level is tiny, and even among them I usually have not heard overly revolutionary proposals. They operate entirely within the existing framework (within which there is certainly much to do), but I am not familiar with foundational work, like in the trilogy, that is done by women. It is very likely that this stems from lack of proficiency and from a desire to gain legitimacy in the (male) halakhic world, and that is natural. But that path cannot truly lead to change.

In the meantime I have not heard of women who have gone through the trilogy; at least I have not received comments or questions about it. As I showed there, our tradition requires a thorough house-cleaning and there are ways to do this. Distress is an excellent motivation to move in such a direction. Many speak of a “women’s Torah” that differs in its character from the Torah developed by men. I do not know if there is such a thing, but in any event the burden of proof is on the women. By all means—pick up the gauntlet and create it. Truth has power, and when such proposals exist there will be those who take them up. And if there will be a core of those who excommunicate—no one needs to be alarmed. There are always fanatical sects and there are always opponents of any innovation (cf. Maimonides, Shulchan Aruch, and more). The dogs bark and the caravan moves on.

The sincere distress so beautifully expressed in Devorah’s post sometimes serves as a basis for despair and giving up, or abandonment, but it can and should be a lever for renewal and revitalization that we all need like air to breathe.

[1] Many have claimed to me that this is also the reason it is very hard to elicit a Torah article, let alone a scholarly one, from a woman. They explained to me that a woman is usually shy and uncomfortable speaking in public, certainly on a Torah platform that is by its nature male in character. I always thought that in academic venues this problem does not exist, certainly not to the same extent; but again, I am a Martian and do not understand.

[2] There is the well-known joke that no religious person is a thief, since one who steals is not religious. But we all know there are certainly religious thieves, because practice sometimes trumps halakha. Admittedly here it is a negative trumping, but there are also positive ones (which I noted in the previous column).