Joseph

You most assuredly do not speak for the normative or average Lakewood wife. Your views are very far from theirs. You’ve made quite a number of assumptions in your earlier dissertation, with none of them being on target.

Unlike yourself, I didn’t have a lmaissa pikuach nefesh scenario. I’ve asked and the answer was always as per the psak in Shulchan Aruch. And the Rama, Shach, Taz and Rav Moshe. You weren’t quite clear what your Rov said about gender-based after explaining the Kohen vs. Yisroel shtickel to you. But the S”A and Mishna are clear as are the others I just mentioned. I’m not sure why you are still doubtful or ambiguous considering this has is the halacha cited in the Mishna, S”A and contemporary poskim.

I don’t quite understand the Tzitz Eliezer (18:1). He writes the din isn’t cited as halacha in the S”A, but in fact it is at YD 252:8. I also don’t see anyone else who understands it as he. The Bais Yosef, Rama, Shach, Taz and the Igros Moshe all understand and pasken it simply as it says.

Rav Avigdor Miller: Is there a difference between the Neshama of a man vs. a woman?

“In neshamos there is no difference. Hashem gives people different ways different opportunities to perfect their neshama. When a woman is married and she dedicates her life to others, she’s doing something that transforms her nature. It’s impossible for her to function successfully and to remain selfish.

Her main achievement is transforming her neshama by doing chesed (kindness) to Hashem’s people for the sake of Heaven.

She has all the functions of other people upon her. She has to carry children with in her, and then she has to nurse the child. She has to worry about children at night; sometimes they’re not well. She has to think about preparing food for everybody. Everything is for others.

She does it selflessly like a busy Jewish mother usually does. It’s an extremely important achievement for her neshama, and she gains perfection in that way. We don’t expect her to devote hours to Torah learning. Her main achievement is transforming her neshama by doing chesed (kindness) to Hashem’s people for the sake of Heaven. (If it’s done properly, it’s not merely done like gentiles do, but it’s done with the intention of serving Hashem.)

A man has other opportunities. A man is not limited; he doesn’t carry a child within himself. He doesn’t have to nurse babies. Nevertheless he has to do many things. He has to go out to the marketplace, make a living. And there are many nisyonos (tests) in making a living. All the laws of choshen mishpat (business dealings) apply when you have to compete with other people for parnassa (livelihood).

Therefore a man gains his perfection other ways, and is expected also to give part of his efforts to learning Torah and doing more mitzvos than a woman is able to do because she is busy. Each one gains perfection in a different way. (#791, 10 Aspects of Shabbos)”

Females certainly are not inferior. The point is they aren’t superior. (Which is an often claimed* apologetic when some folks are trying to explain away various mitzvos and/or halachas that feminists deem sexist.) *i.e. the notion that women have a higher level of spirituality.

Maharal Deroshos Al Hatorah 27:
“However, from this aspect the men need to toil and struggle in Torah without rest night and day. This is why the verse says “tell the sons of Israel,” a phrasing harsh like sinews (the root of the word sinew is related to the word to tell) that invokes the great toil (of Torah study). However, the women are spoken to in a gentle language because they don’t need this so much. Nevertheless, they (the women) are better fit for the divine reward due to their tranquility.”

R’ Avigdor Miller, Q&A 2 (Columbus Publications, 2013) p. 265:
“You have made me according to Your Will. That means I have a great function in life. Someday I’ll be a mother, I’ll raise up Jewish children, I’ll be a creator of human lives to serve Hashem.”

R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch, Judaism Eternal, vol. II, p 58:
“This will-subordination of the wife to the husband is a necessary condition of the unity which man and wife should form together. The subordination cannot be the other way about, since the man as zachar has to carry forward the divine and human messages which through every marriage are to be a living force in the household, and to which the husband and wife are in union to devote their forces. Just as the first command of God though addressed to the man was given through him for the woman as well, just as in consequence Adam should not have thrown over the command of God for the sake of Eve but Eve ought to have subjected her desire to the will of God as expressed to her though Adam, so thenceforward the husband was to be responsible for the task imposed upon man by God and to carry it out in his marriage and household.”

R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed, p. 72:
“Man and woman are both worthy of communing with God, the highest form of human perfection and self-fulfillment. However, the Halakhah has discriminated between axiological equality pertaining to their Divine essence and metaphysical uniformity at the level of the existential personal experience. Man and woman are different personae, endowed with singular qualities and assigned distinct missions in life.”

No, HaLeiVi, I simply quoted the Maharal. My point was in response to a frequently heard misconception (for which there is no actual Torah source – and the above sources contradict) that females are more spiritual than males. What they are trying to do is use it to say that women are more spiritual in general when binah is but one form of spirituality. Men excel in others. Rav Nachman Bullman said the practice of telling women they are more spiritual than men is actually subtly condescending.

And whether or not being spiritual should mean anything to anybody, it is taken to do what TV commercials do, show the man as the fool and the woman as the capable and mature party. This has an effect on marriages, shiduchim, and even mitzvos. When the woman (or man) thinks, there goes the man, off to put on that tefillin that he needs because he is so low – this has a terrible effect on people. Our grandmothers had enormous respect for their fathers and husbands. Not so the women of this generation or even the last generation. If someone doesn’t think that feeds into divorce and confusion among the youth, then they aren’t thinking.

The world today, lead by America, values money and career success – male domains historically. It does not value family, love, community – all the stuff women are good at. It glamorizes career, when most people hate their jobs. The college professors have interesting and easy jobs and they brainwash the youth about the glory of career. So then of course women will want to have one. Talk to the women of the 60s and 70s, how career turned out to be a bust. Many that gave up child bearing years for career and they hate their careers and wish they had more children. The contemporary woman (speaking of general society, not necessarily frum society) is a train wreck. She has lost her binah and her modesty and her warmth and everything that is so special about women.

A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

You think rebbeim are salaried about the same much on their 10th year with the yeshiva as they were on their first year?