How much is a woman's Torah worth

Yeah, if I couldn’t read hebrew, I don’t think I’d quite understand what the rambam says from your little synopsis.

Logician,

“L’hislabesh” – to get dressed

“L’hisrachetz” – to wash oneself

Reflexive verbs.

“L’hislamed” – probably best translated as: to allow oneself to be taught, to educate oneself.

You can probably understand what is meant by finding a thread where an OP who is female ignores all enlightening, true responses to a misguided query, and insists on following her own faulty logic.

I agree with golfer (but I was waiting for a female to post that, lest I be called a chauvenist for pointing out how this Ramba”m is a good source for where the OP over there went wrong).

Logician, you read the Ramba”m (which, incidentally is actually in 1:13) incorrectly.

The word is ??????, not ???????? and it’s an adjective for ????, not a verb of the subject ?????.

See SHU”T Beis HaLeivi Siman 6, if I recall correctly.

I think it’s funny that we are graded on our Torah learning for 12 years (or more depending whether we go to seminary or Jewish college), but then we are called feminists if we are jealous we cannot learn Gemara.

My opinion is that is doesn’t make sense for us to be graded on Torah subjects, because it totally misses the point of what Torah learning is…..However, I think everyone can understand that it makes it confusing when we are FORCED to learn Torah for all those years in Bais Yaakov but if we try to learn what we are taught is ‘the most important thing to learn’, suddenly we are kofrim and misguided. It comes across as hypocritical, controlling and insulting.

“How much is a woman’s Torah worth”

That is up to Hashem.

Whatever the value of my own torah learning, half its schar belongs to my wife.

BTW

I don’t know about now-a-days but in Even Shleima the Vilna Gaon writes very strongly about the need for girls to learn and be familiar with Mussar Seforim to be Yirei Shomayim.

You are correct, but your reading is still untenable. “Their minds are not lend themselves to education” is how I’m understanding you’re reading. Firstly, that is a funny way of expressing the idea that they are not logical in thought, in my opinion. Secondly, I see the outcome of such a problem in that they will err in their understanding of Torah/Halacha. I would not say that that would lead them to turn divrei Torah into “divrei havai”. And I persoanally think its absurd to say that women can’t think logically. If you want to say women are more ’emotionally-driven’, that would make sense only as to the weight they will give to the emotional aspect of a situation, not to the inability to process the different aspects logically.

According to your understanding, how do the poskim say that the minority of women can learn themselves – the ones who’ve decided that they are logical ?!

Interjection – I don’t think that’s not an honest portrayal of the situation. Number one, you are taught certain subjects. Those are not the ones which lead to the name calling you refer to, if one wishes to continue to pursue them. Secondly, the fact that its considered important today for women to have a certain grounding in Torah does make it an ideal for them to continue to pursue it. After all, no one taught you that its the “most important thing for YOU, did they ?

I do think its absurd to encourage women to develop intellectually for 18 years, and then to think they’ll be ok to just shut off and be satisfied with diaper-changing.

That last comment makes you sound very bitter about SOMETHING. Why exactly should an enabler of Torah get all/most of the reward over the ones who learns ?

“We have opportunities to learn all the time every hour of the day there are shiurim, learning groups, every shul has a ladies Shabbos shiur. So no one can say we can’t learn or we should turn our brains off.”

“Yiddishe taam”

Many of these shiurim, at least in my opinion, don’t count for much learning. They are inspirational talks meant to give you an emotional boost about torah or review of halachah that you can pick up on your own by reading a artscroll book. I’m glad you find them intellectually stimulating, but not everyone does.

“What was conflicting in the other thread was simple priorities were distorted (a women’s priority is her home) and that’s problematic and no Rav would endorse it.”

I did say that family and career, in my opinion, are equally important, not that one is more important than the other. Just wanted to clarify.

Furthermore, you do not know what every rav would say about people’s personal situations.

And by the way, you don’t need to be scared to refer to me. I am not insulted in the slightest.

You are correct, but your reading is still untenable.

So what you are saying is that you don’t understand the Ramba”m.

“Their minds are not lend themselves to education” is how I’m understanding you’re reading.

If you want to be very m’dayek, he doesn’t say “education”, he says “to be educated”. Your entire kasha then falls off.

If you don’t want to be so m’dayek, you can say that the Ramba”m is referring to a certain skill set required for Gemara, not necessarily specifically what we refer to as logical thought.

BYM, I agree to disagree, that being said you are right each women will find different shiurim more stimulating than others (it’s a matter of personal preference and interest in the subject matter) I believe if you look you will find one that will suit you.

I completely disagree with you that you equate career and family, but that’s your personal choice I respect that, I do think it’s rare to successfully balance both and usually one overtakes the other at different points of your family’s life experiences. I follow the Torah’s stance that my husband and children are B”H the focal point of my life.

DY – that’s right, I don’t.

I might agree with your assumption. In which case we should not be saying, as someone earlier did (and you agreed) that their thought process inherently lacks logic.

I have seen R’ Wolbe z”l understand it in an entirely different light. I wouldn’t want to limit his words to my take on them – Alei Shur Chelek Beis page 192. I can understand why someone wouldn’t agree to read that into this halacha, but at least it’s a perspective on women that I can understand (though I’m sure many would be insulted).

BYM – I agree entirely with DY’s response to you. Though I would add that this new reality does requires a proper, realistic response – as I indicated in my last post.

In which case we should not be saying, as someone earlier did (and you agreed) that their thought process inherently lacks logic.

That’s not what I thought the statement (to which I agreed) was asserting.

There are many things which can cause faulty logic besides from “a thought process [that] inherently lacks logic”.

Glad to oblige, DY, by saying what you felt you couldn’t say as a guy.

Regarding women’s da’as not being “mechuvenes l’hislamed”, I understood that to mean that their minds are not inclined (or directed) to a position where they let themselves be taught. Not saying women are necessarily lacking intelligence, but lacking the frame of mind or mindset to absorb the knowledge in a disciplined manner. This may be what results in “divrei havai” instead of Emmes.

(As a woman I may have had more occasion than some male posters to hear learned women expound on their Torah studies. I have noticed a tendency to try to create a nice picture of a piece of mussar they wish to impart by fabricating a conclusion based mostly on their own creative imagination of p’sukim, and less on solid sources. Men will argue a point based more on recorded precedent in a search for Emmes, not for a happy ending and justification of their own theorems.)

There is no way I can disagree with the Rambam’s assessment of most women’s minds, but if someone wants to tell me I’m not reading the Rambam correctly, I’m open to that.

As for the “metzuveh” aspect of learning Torah, I did mention that on another thread, but I’m no way learned enough to have quoted this Rambam off the top of my keyboard.

The first part yes, the second part, no.

I don’t think women seeking intellectual advancement is inherently a bad thing, quite the contrary. There is most definitely historical precedent for ???? ???????.

The Ramba”m clearly says the problem is with ??? ????, clearly implying not all. (It’s quite possible that the filter for deciding which women are in the minority and which are in the majority is whether or not they are self motivated.)

Yes, there is a horoas sha’ah that we need to teach girls more than in previous generations. One of the negative consequences is that women who are in the Ramba”m’s majority (whatever he may mean) are overreaching their capabilities with the results as described by the Ramba”m.

DY – true. Perhaps I was just taking those comments in the way I’ve heard many say before. If you are just saying that there be other factors in play which impair a proper logical conclusion, that’s something else.

BYM

I”m kinda curious what is the value of a “career”?

All these threads turn into the same thing. They start off innocently until a gang of men come along saying, ‘we are smarter bec we are men and you are dumber because you are women’ and then a woman comes along speaking for the rest of us saying, ‘it’s true. We are dumber because we are women’.

“I have noticed a tendency to try to create a nice picture of a piece of mussar they wish to impart by fabricating a conclusion based mostly on their own creative imagination of p’sukim, and less on solid sources. Men will argue a point based more on recorded precedent in a search for Emmes, not for a happy ending and justification of their own theorems.”

—This has a lot more to do with conditioning than with intelligence. I argued before that I believe that Bais Yaakovs should not have grades for Jewish subjects, and this is part of the reason. For 12+ years we are graded on, not on how well we learned the Torah but rather on how well we understand our teacher’s interpretation of the Torah. We are conditioned to learn Torah in the way that you explained with fluffy mussar lessons, while the boys are taught more to focus on what the Torah said, rather than on what they wished the Torah said. So it’s no wonder that our learning patterns later on in life reflect how we were taught to learn.

Golfer, most studies agree that women are generally better at verbal skills and reading comprehension than men. It would therefore seem that women would be better than men at Torah learning. There is no physical, psychological or emotional reason that women could not do as well as men in learning, sefarah and drush. The issue isn’t whether they can, the issue is whether they may.