kaveh

You can hear the answer by listening to a shiur Rabbi Frand gave on Parshas Shoftim 7/7/10, available on yadyechiel.org. Spoiler alert: it comes out less ‘meikal’ than you might think.

Haha Moderator, good job.

It seems that the issue is not women’s capacity for gemara learning but its effect on them. For men Torah sheba’al peh is a yoke that captures their minds and dampens their ta’avos to do things they shouldn’t. For women apparently it not only fails to capture their minds but somehow inspires a spirit of rebellion against a Torah hashkafa and creates a dangerous egotism and overconfidence that leads to transgression. This is from the sodos shel olam — the basic differences in the briah of men and women that no amount of intellectual discourse will shed any light on. Those who make a feminist or male chauvinist agenda out of this by making it strictly an issue of women’s intelligence vis-a-vis men are being intellectually dishonest.

TO BPT:

The call in radio caller actually paraphrased a Maharal, who says that beis din shel mata cannot take into account any teshuvah or improvements made by the perpetrator. They punish based on the evidence and they are not in the business of rewarding good behavior. Only beis din shel maala accepts teshuva and tikkun haneshama. So there is no inconsistency with demanding the highest punishment and yet giving him a chance to do teshuva in beis din shel maala.

The Rambam says some aveiros aren’t forgiven with teshuva alone but require other tikunim, such as yesurim or even death. Again, we can hold out hope that he does do teshuvah but that does not mitigate whatever else may be necessary for his neshama.

On the level of pshat, it’s probably true that the mishna means that the mitzvos above can be pushed aside by talmud Torah. But there’s always more than one way to read a mishna, as they were encoded by Tannaim to include as much as possible in the shortest space. Although there is no “drush” in mishna, I would agree that the tanna could be hinting to the idea that Torah should be k’neged the other mitzvos, and that one should perform them specifically according to the rules of the Torah and not be negligent in them. We see this use of k’neged in many places to mean “adjacent to” rather than “opposite” and it could be that the Tanna wanted to be marbeh this possible interpretation.

Also, Torah should be k’neged the other mitzvos in that gradeh if one is learning he doesn’t need to worry about how many mitzvos he’s passing up at that moment; but one shouldn’t make an “escape” out of learning that he runs to his private corner whenever an opportunity to perform a mitzva comes up. He should put his Torah kneged the mitzva: run to the mitzva, and then to the sforim.

Nice pshat!