"But Women Can Become Brain Surgeons!"

A clamer and fuller demolition of feminist Modern Orthodoxy

Before we start, update on the discussion with Natan. Bottom line, Natan is hopelessly confused, flailing around in 15,000 directions, can’t even remember what he said a week ago. We should all pray for his full recovery.

About 12 years ago, my dear friend and colleague, whose fear of heaven supersedes his wisdom,¹ Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of Congregation Bnai David LA, published a statement on the blog Morethodoxy, entitled 'Adieu to “for Thou hast not made me a woman”' He has since deleted it, but it can be accessed here:

I copy it in full, just so you can see how the liberal Modern Orthodox rabbis treat our Holy Torah. 

I’ve stopped blessing God every morning for “not having made me a woman”.

Women have come a long way in Orthodox Judaism over the past few decades, in particular in the realm of study and scholarship. But grevious inequalities and instances of maltreatment persist, because we have not yet spoken candidly about the dignity of women in our tradition. Worse, each morning we actually reinforce the inherited prejudice that holds that women possess less innate dignity than men.

Women are still extorted routinely during divorce proceedings, as rabbinical courts urge them to forfeit various rights in exchange for her husband’s deigning to give the “get” that she needs. Simply for lack of male reproductive organs, otherwise qualified women are still barred from the rabbinate, and from many positions of communal leadership. She can be a judge, but not a dayan. A brain surgeon, but not a posek. And often she must content herself with davening in a cage in shul, from where her desire to say kaddish for a parent may or may not be tolerated. This is no way to run a religion that claims wisdom as its inheritance. But every morning in the daily blessings, we unthinkingly mouth the philosophical justification for these demeaning, arbitrary, discriminatory practices.

As Rabbi David Avudraham explained the blessing in the 14th century, “and we say this blessing because women are not commanded to perform time-bound mitzvot. A man is likened to a worker who enters the field and plants there with permission. A woman is likened to one who enters the field without permission.”

Or as Rabbi Yehoshua Schwab put it in the 16th century, “we say this blessing daily because the [male] Israelite soul is holier … than that of a woman’s. Although a woman is connected to mitzvot, and is of Israelite seed, her soul is not similar to the soul of a man.

Or as Rav Kook put it in the 20th century, “and [there is] an innate difference between the soul of man, who acts, and legislates, and conquers and proclaims, and the soul of woman, who is acted upon, is legislated for, is vanquished, and proclaimed about through the actions of men. And great is the obligation of thanksgiving upon each and every man that he was not made a woman.”

I cannot take God’s name in the context of this blessing anymore. I suspect, at this point in history, that it constitutes a Desecration of the Name, God forbid. In time-honored rabbinic tradition, “better to sit and not do”.

 We have, without doubt, come a long way toward overcoming the prejudice against and the shameful treatment of women. But most of the work is yet to be done.

I deeply apologize to all our faithful readers for subjecting you to this load of bovine excrement, but it was necessary for you to appreciate the full extent of their worldview. As Hashem told Yechezkel (8:6), וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֵלַ֔י בֶּן־אָדָ֕ם הֲרֹאֶ֥ה אַתָּ֖ה מהם עֹשִׂ֑ים תּוֹעֵב֨וֹת גְּדֹל֜וֹת אֲשֶׁ֥ר בֵּֽית־יִשְׂרָאֵ֣ל ׀ עֹשִׂ֣ים פֹּ֗ה לְרָֽחֳקָה֙ מֵעַ֣ל מִקְדָּשִׁ֔י וְעוֹד֙ תָּשׁ֣וּב תִּרְאֶ֔ה תּוֹעֵב֖וֹת גְּדֹלֽוֹת׃

After realizing that he went just a tad too far, Rabbi Kanefsky deleted that post (hareidi censorship!) and published (sic) "A Clamer and Fuller Articulation" where he apologized for being too strident in his tone, but repeated the same thing, with the usual liberal Modern Orthodox distortions we are all so used to

What my dear friend and colleague, whose fear of heaven supersedes his wisdom, was really expressing was not novel, but one of the most common complaints we hear from feminist Modern Orthodoxy: "Women can be lawyers, doctors, scientists, and CEOs, so why can't they learn Talmud and be Rabbis and read from the Torah? Why are they excluded from the most important parts of religious Jewish life?"

Frequently, this is stated along with the rationale that in the past, people thought women were stupid, so they were excluded from Torah learning the same way they were excluded from secular education, but nowadays, with all these brilliant female ambulance-chasing lawyers, we know that this was all a big mistake.

Oops. Sorry, great-grandma. 

Here is the puzzling thing. In chareidi society, this is not true. There aren't very many female chareidi brain surgeons or PhD physicists at all. Women don't generally go into the so-called "intellectual" professions at the same rate as educated secular women. The chareidi woman sees her primary role in the home, as a wife and a mother, and simply does not have such lofty professional aspirations. Of course, the secularists would claim that is because they are oppressed, but truly, they long to leave their cages and breath the fresh air of intellectual enlightenment. Shortly, I will discuss what this oppression involves and how deeply oppressed all these women feel.

The other puzzling thing is, what happened to society at large? And what do the feminists think happened to society at large? For thousands of years, in practically every single society across the world, women generally did not pursue intellectual domains, and did not hold positions of power. All of the sudden, within the last hundred years, all of that changed.

Are we to believe as some are claiming, that for the past millennia, all the men just ignorantly assumed women were stupid, but now that we have the SAT, the GRE, the LSAT, and the MCAT, we found out we were wrong? This doesn't seem very likely at all. People were ignorant of matters that they couldn't see, that they didn't yet discover. But whether a group of people are intellectually equal to another group doesn't require much discovery. It does not require the invention of the SAT, the GRE, the LSAT, and the MCAT. It is something that one can perceive by just hanging around women, the same way as by hanging around men. 

For example, if I would gather a group of truck drivers, and a group of professors from the Stanford Department of Philosophy, without knowing which is which, would I need to issue them a standardized test to determine the more intellectual group? Of course not. I could just hang around them for a few minutes (probably less than a minute), listen to their discussion, and it would be very easy to tell. So too, the general intellectual equality of women is likewise something the ancients should have easily realized without any advanced methods. 

Therefore, the question needs a better response.

Feminist scholars who have studied the issue conclude that historical gender roles are a result of social conditioning. As pertains to education, this would mean that although women have inherently equal intellectual capabilities to men, they were historically conditioned by society to not take advantage of them, in favor of stereotypical feminine pursuits.

But while that may have an element of truth to it, it completely misses the point. Even if women inherently have the exactly same intellectual capabilities as men, they also clearly have completely different interests and mentality than men. Again, this is something that one can easily perceive simply by knowing men and women, including educated intellectuals of both genders.

Since man and woman are opposites, they do things differently. In fact they do everything differently. They have different approaches. They have different perspectives. They have different feelings. It's not just a few things they will disagree on- rather, they will disagree on most things. They are opposite in nature.

(Rabbi Ben Tzion Shafier: 10 Really Dumb Mistakes that Very Smart Couples Make, page 102)

The state that persisted in every single society for thousands of years is obviously the natural one, just like walking is more natural than driving. And this is backed up by research showing (as if there was any doubt), that men and women have very different interests.² If historical social conditioning happened, it was in the direction of natural feminine tendencies, whereas modern society is engaging in social conditioning in the opposite direction.

How exactly does modern social conditioning work? It consists of two aspects:

1. The extreme push for gender equality- Historically, gender equality simply didn't exist. Indeed, the very concept of "equality" was almost non-existent. In the past century, gender "equality" gradually became a sacred cultural concept, and suddenly, both males and females are driven to act in ways that they wouldn't otherwise, for the sake of this "equality".

2. Social status- Once women are expected to be "equal" to men, this becomes an issue of social status. A girl who doesn't go to the best college, like her male classmates, is looked down upon. A girl who becomes a homemaker with 10 children when she could have become a brain surgeon is looked down upon. And there is nothing females do better than fulfilling social status expectations. If that takes getting a 1600 on the SAT and 4.0 GPA in Stanford, those who are capable will do it.

Does this mean the modern state is an improvement, just like every technological change over the natural state? Not at all, it is almost certainly to women’s detriment. Since complete equality forces women to act in ways contrary to their natural tendencies, it reduces their happiness. It is also no coincidence that marriage rates have plummeted and divorce rates have skyrocketed in modern society, along with an increase in communal perversions, as I discuss below. One more thing worth noting is that even in the societies where the gender equality propaganda is the most extreme, women still tend to gravitate towards fields that align with their natural interests.

In any case, none of these secular societal changes should have any effect on the Torah community. The Torah has a completely different value system. There is simply no such thing as gender equality (in the secular sense) in the Torah. Women are treated completely differently than men. Not better than men, not worse than men, certainly not as second-class citizens (and in that sense, there is indeed gender equality), but as women. And much closer to the traditional, natural state of women over millennia than the modern conditioning of women. 

וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהִ֔ים לֹא־ט֛וֹב הֱי֥וֹת הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְבַדּ֑וֹ אֶֽעֱשֶׂהּ־לּ֥וֹ עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ

(Genesis 2:18)

אֶשְׁתְּךָ֤ ׀ כְּגֶ֥פֶן פֹּרִיָּה֮ בְּיַרְכְּתֵ֪י בֵ֫יתֶ֥ךָ בָּ֭נֶיךָ כִּשְׁתִלֵ֣י זֵיתִ֑ים סָ֝בִ֗יב לְשֻׁלְחָנֶֽךָ׃

(Psalms 128:3)

הנה ראה הבורא יתברך שלא היה טוב לשלמות האדם היותו לבדו לפי שיצטרך מהיותו גשמי לתקן מזנותיו וצרכי ביתו ואם האדם יתעסק בזה יטריד בו זמנו ולא יפנה להשגת שלמות נפשו. לכן היה מהראוי לעשות לו עזר כנגדו והיא הנקבה שתעבדהו ותתקן לו צרכי הבית והמזון ובזה האופן תהיה גם היא הכרחי בענין שלמותו

(Abarbanel, Genesis 2:18)

וְאֵלּוּ מְלָאכוֹת שֶׁהָאִשָּׁה עוֹשָׂה לְבַעְלָהּ: טוֹחֶנֶת, וְאוֹפָה, וּמְכַבֶּסֶת, מְבַשֶּׁלֶת, וּמְנִיקָה אֶת בְּנָהּ, מַצַּעַת לוֹ הַמִּטָּה, וְעוֹשָׂה בַּצֶּמֶר. הִכְנִיסָה לוֹ שִׁפְחָה אַחַת — לֹא טוֹחֶנֶת וְלֹא אוֹפָה וְלֹא מְכַבֶּסֶת. שְׁתַּיִם — אֵין מְבַשֶּׁלֶת, וְאֵין מְנִיקָה אֶת בְּנָהּ. שָׁלֹשׁ — אֵין מַצַּעַת לוֹ הַמִּטָּה, וְאֵין עוֹשָׂה בַּצֶּמֶר. אַרְבַּע — יוֹשֶׁבֶת בְּקָתֶדְרָא.

(Kesubos 59b)

נִמְצְאוּ כָּל הַמְּלָאכוֹת שֶׁכָּל אִשָּׁה עוֹשָׂה אוֹתָן לְבַעְלָהּ חָמֵשׁ מְלָאכוֹת. טוֹוָה וְרוֹחֶצֶת פָּנָיו יָדָיו וְרַגְלָיו וּמוֹזֶגֶת אֶת הַכּוֹס וּמַצַּעַת אֶת הַמִּטָּה וְעוֹמֶדֶת וּמְשַׁמֶּשֶׁת בְּפָנָיו. וְהַמְּלָאכוֹת שֶׁמִּקְצָת הַנָּשִׁים עוֹשׂוֹת אוֹתָן וּמִקְצָתָן אֵינָן עוֹשׂוֹת שֵׁשׁ מְלָאכוֹת. מְטַחֶנֶת וּמְבַשֶּׁלֶת וְאוֹפָה וּמְכַבֶּסֶת וּמֵינִיקָה וְנוֹתֶנֶת תֶּבֶן לִפְנֵי בְּהֶמְתּוֹ:

(Rambam Ishus 21:7)

וְכֵן צִוּוּ חֲכָמִים שֶׁיִּהְיֶה אָדָם מְכַבֵּד אֶת אִשְׁתּוֹ יוֹתֵר מִגּוּפוֹ וְאוֹהֲבָהּ כְּגוּפוֹ. וְאִם יֵשׁ לוֹ מָמוֹן מַרְבֶּה בְּטוֹבָתָהּ כְּפִי מָמוֹנוֹ. וְלֹא יַטִּיל עָלֶיהָ אֵימָה יְתֵרָה. וְיִהְיֶה דִּבּוּרוֹ עִמָּהּ בְּנַחַת. וְלֹא יִהְיֶה עָצֵב וְלֹא רַגְזָן:

וְכֵן צִוּוּ עַל הָאִשָּׁה שֶׁתִּהְיֶה מְכַבֶּדֶת אֶת בַּעְלָהּ בְּיוֹתֵר מִדַּאי וְיִהְיֶה עָלֶיהָ מוֹרָא מִמֶּנּוּ וְתַעֲשֶׂה כָּל מַעֲשֶׂיהָ עַל פִּיו. וְיִהְיֶה בְּעֵינֶיהָ כְּמוֹ שַׂר אוֹ מֶלֶךְ. מְהַלֶּכֶת בְּתַאֲוַת לִבּוֹ וּמַרְחֶקֶת כָּל מַה שֶּׁיִּשְׂנָא. וְזֶה דֶּרֶךְ בְּנוֹת יִשְׂרָאֵל וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל הַקְּדוֹשִׁים וְהַטְּהוֹרִים בְּזִוּוּגָן. וּבִדְרָכִים אֵלּוּ יִהְיֶה יִשּׁוּבָן נָאֶה וּמְשֻׁבָּח:

(Rambam Ishus 15:19-20)

A woman's role in the family is to be the akeres habyis, the "mainstay of the home". Here role is to cultivate, nurture, and support the family; to be a wife and mother. Some people confuse the term akeres habayis with the term "domestic help". Women who perform that function are called housekeepers. That's not what the Torah means by the woman being the main support of the home. A woman is the center of the family, the one who brings them together. She is the "relationship manager". Her role is to be the one who nurtures both her children and her husband. To be suited for that role, Hashem crafted her with a unique nature, different from that of a man. While the home is certainly her domain, and housework is part of that, it is but a small part of her role. 

(Rabbi Ben Tzion Shafier: 10 Really Dumb Mistakes that Very Smart Couples Make, page 156)

The Torah treats a woman as an עזר כנגדו, as a nurturer, as somebody who is expected to help her husband and family, and raise a generation of Jewish children in a Torah home. This status is codified in countless places in the Written Torah, in halacha, and in aggada. And hers is a very exalted position, far greater than a secular brain surgeon or particle physicist. Similar to the Leviim who assist the Cohanim with their priestly duties, she assists her husband in his Avodas Hashem. And greater than the Leviim, she builds up and sustains a whole new generation of Servants of Hashem. She is the one who holds up the entire Torah, and in whose absence, no Torah lifestyle would be possible for either men or women. Only secularists, whose sole values are material wealth and power, see this all-important spiritual role as demeaning or oppressive.

So instead of asking why the female lawyer, doctor, or scientist can't become a rabbi, we should be asking- should we be encouraging our women to become lawyers, doctors, or scientists, in the first place? Should we raise our girls to pursue these intellectual activities (excluding lawyer) at the expense of being good wives and mothers with large families? Is the tradeoff worth it?

And based on the above, the answer is obviously not. Rather, we should encourage our women to fulfill the roles that the Torah expects of them.³ This is how chareidim are mechanech their daughters, and amazingly, these gender roles come so naturally to them that they hardly even need to be taught explicitly, and with almost none of the struggles that accompany other elements of girl's chinuch (such as tznius, materialism, peer pressure, etc, not to mention the greater challenges of boy's chinuch). But truthfully, this tremendous ease and lack of friction should not be surprising, since the Torah way is completely consistent with natural feminine tendencies and strengths. So much for the secularist claim of "oppression".

But there is perhaps a more important factor in this discussion. Feminism and gender equality do not exist in a vacuum. The centering of gender equality, and indeed the entire emphasis on equality, is part and parcel of an entire depraved, corrupt, freak show of secular culture, which feminism cannot be separated from. You cannot extricate feminism and gender equality from gay rights, from transgenderism, from secularism, from atheism. Or perhaps theoretically, you could, but not in reality.

I am truly sorry for hurting your eyes with this

So really, we can ask, would we rather have a society based on modern, secular values that include many female doctors, lawyers, and scientists? Or would we rather have a Torah society where women primarily fulfill the roles that the Torah expects of them (although even a Torah society can have the rare female scientist)? Because THAT is the real, practical choice. Not a fantasy choice where we are upholding the rest of the Torah’s values with minor feminist modifications.

This takes us back to Rabbi Kanefsky's disgusting "Adieu". Is it simply a coincidence that his piece contained so much disparagement of the Torah? Of course not. Somebody who buys into all the feminist assumptions is almost always buying into the rest of the secular worldview as well. And indeed, this is what Liberal Modern Orthodoxy is mostly about, and the purpose of the blog.

One more point needs to be addressed. At the end of the day, whether rightly or wrongly (wrongly), these Modern Orthodox feminists have established schools of Talmud and rabbinical training for women. Are the products of these institutions Talmidei chachamim and rabbis? Can we direct halachic queries to them? Furthermore, should chareidi women who have unusual intellectual aspirations (see footnote 3) attend such institutions?

The answer is no. Torah she'baal Peh, despite having been written down, is still baal Peh. Torah learning passes through a Mesorah and is not simply a matter of analyzing texts. More importantly, Torah is not an academic study. It must be learned with awe, reverence, and kedusha, with the knowledge that it is the fiery words of the Living God, and in the context of people who see its fulfillment as the most important thing in the world. Anything less is not Torah.

This is, of course, the furthest thing from what goes on in these liberal Modern Orthodox institutions. This goes not just for female learning, but for the male learning as well. The liberal Modern Orthodox method of “learning” deliberately defiles the Torah, attempting to fuse it with values that the Torah abhors. The resulting product is an abomination that doesn't even bear a superficial resemblance to real Torah. And it cannot be otherwise. If one takes the sweetest smelling perfume and mixes it with raw sewage and motor oil, will it still be identifiable as perfume?

Therefore, we do not regard the graduates of these institutions, whether male or female, as Talmidei chachamim or rabbis.

In this sense, we definitely support full gender equality!

1. For those of you who don’t get it, this language is ironic, based on too many Torah Musings posts I have seen on this topic

2. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01053/full

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers%3famp

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/

3. It goes without saying that since this is not a set-in-stone halacha, but rather a matter of general hashkafa, we should allow for exceptions. If there is a girl who is unusually drawn to science or medical school, we should not necessarily discourage her from pursuing it.