Thursday, November 30, 2006

Women and Talmud Torah X

(Material taught by Rabbi Kenneth Auman, presented by Chana. Mistakes are my fault.)

Please click this link in order to see this Tosefta on Bava Metziah.

Please look at the highlighted orange section.

Klustera- this is some kind of bolt for a door, since they used to have doorchains from the inside. So the question is, is this considered a kind of vessel or instrument that accepts tumah or not? So one Rav said that it is tahor, another said it is tamei, and Beruriah said that on Shabbos you're allowed to move it from one door to the other (meaning that it is not muktzeh.) R' Yehoshua, when he heard this, said "Yafeh amar Beruriah" meaning, "Well has Beruriah spoken."

So here we see that Beruriah is a) part of a halakhic discussion and b) is praised for her comment in this scenario. Not only is she learned, but she participates and her input is valued!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I believe everyone agrees that women may and must learn Halacha, at least practical Halacha. In another post you proved from the Mishna that women may learn Chumash. This is widely accepted too. The real pressing issue is whether women may learn Gemara and other Torah She'baal peh. (I personally think there is no problem.) One could argue that it is learning Halacha, but it isn't practical Halacha and the Gemara rarely even tells you straight out which opinion we follow. I think the reason certain people don't think women should learn Chumash is that when you learn with meforshim, say Rashi, you are basically learning selected portions of Gemara and Berashis Rabbah.

Chana said...

Anonymous,

You're quite right. However, Rabbi Auman has been teaching us all the different angles to this topic, which means that before we get to the Written Law vs. Oral Law controversy, we're first covering the simple bases (ascertaining whether women can learn the written law.)

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the clarification.

I have to correct a mistake I made, when I said Berashis Rabbah, I meant all of Midrash Rabbah I was thinking of this week's Parsha, Sorry :)

Anonymous said...

Has Rabbi Auman mentioned Yasna? (The woman who came up with the thing about how everything we are forbidden to do has some positive aspect, such as not being able to marry a non-jew but being allowed to marry an eishes y'fas toar)