Judaism 101
- Thread starter Muslimwoman
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Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
I know the sinai quite well but I still don't understand the significance for Jews. Is it religious (ie the place of revelation) or an historical land issue? Or perhaps a bit of both?
Erm similar staus to being divorced? How so? This would certainly suggest to an outsider to be a 'lessening' of status for a female convert.
Hee, hee. Wouldn't the world be boring if we were all the same!
So what is the covenant the Jewish people have with G-d (or is that a rude question?).
Salaam
Har Sinai, mount sinai, is the place where the revelation to the entire Jewish people happened, along with that being the receiving of Torah, making it a religiously significant place. We don't however really know which mountain it's supposed to be attributed to.
It really has more to do with the mitzvot, the commandments. Those are the terms of the contract. And now it is my turn to site jewfaq:
Judaism 101: A List of the 613 Mitzvot (Commandments)
However the way they're understood or treated by different flavors of Judaism varies a bit. It's not so much about being priviledged in any way as it is in having extra responsibilities.
Dauer
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Shalom Dauer
So is it still an issue for Jewish people that Egypt has control over this area and of course turning it into a huge ongoing western orgy?
hee, hee BB will be so pleased you quoted that site. OMG you have 613 commandments, you would have to be a Saint not to break some. Oh have some good questions now: Do the Jewish people have Saints?
What constitutes blasphemy for a Jew?
10. To imitate His good and upright ways. I assume this is talking about G-d's ways? If so are these set out in the Torah?
Not to lay down a stone for worship (Lev. 26:1) (CCN161). Please can you explain this one.
To lend to an alien at interest (Deut. 23:21) According to tradition, this is mandatory (affirmative). Am I reading this correctly, you must charge interest if lending money to gentiles?
That the woman suspected of adultery shall be dealt with as prescribed in the Torah (Num. 5:30) (affirmative). Is this stoning? What of the man suspected of adultery? Are witnesses required?
Re forbidden sexual relationships. Do you ever wonder why there are so many "do not commit sodomy with...", when later it states "do not commit sodomy with any male"?
Gosh the similarities with Islam are striking, yet the few differences are quite apparent. I got to 106, will do 106 - 200 later or you will have sore fingers from typing.
I always understood it as extra responsibilities rather than privilages - how can anyone with 613 commandments be deemed to have extra privilages?
Salaam
MW
I've never heard anyone make a fuss over it.
I quote from it regularly, although primarily just the list of the 613 mitzvot there. I just don't think it makes a good general resource because it's so partisan and biased.
It depends on what you mean by saint. A holy person? A rightous person? An intermediary?
It is not a narrow definition. The 613 mitzvot alone are in many ways like cliff notes to a much larger discussion that continues in nach, the mishna, gemara, and later texts, continuing through today and into the future.
An example of blasphemy would be for example a spiritual practice that attempts to go around G!d's back, claiming that power for yourself.
For example G!d is forgiving. We should be forgiving. G!d clothes the naked. We should clothe the naked.
Not entirely sure about this one but BB will know. I think it has to do with a type of stone monument that it was sometimes the practice to make. One of the interesting things that comes up about that is that Abraham makes these monuments. That particular mitzvah hadn't been given yet. But later on it is forbidden.
I forget the reason behind it. BB can answer that one. I remember reading a discussion about it once.
Some of the Torah is a bit patriarchal. The legal system that develops in the gemara is fairly complex though and tries to curb the more violent leanings of the Torah by making it very difficult to actually get that type of stuff to happen. And right now there is no sanhedrin so these laws concerning types of punishment and Jewish jurispudence are not in effect. What this actually refers to is a very unique procedure, which I'm guessing is the reason it doesn't mention it there. You can read about it here:
sotah, the ordeal of the suspected unfaithful wife
I hadn't thought about it. Mostly I see those passages that deny the holiness of homosexual sexual activity, or any consensual adult sexual activity for that matter, as something that's very much in need of being transcended. But there is an idea that the Torah doesn't repeat itself for emphasis, because it's already emphasized, so if something seems to be repeating something else, it's really saying something new.
I think those who come to that conclusion generally do under false assumptions, like that one must be Jewish to be in good with the Big Guy, or to get to heaven, and that we won't accept converts along with those ideas. Or that being Jewish makes someone better, which the talmud clearly rejects, stating that G!d cares less about what someone was born as than He does about their actions.
Dauer
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Hi Dauer & BB
Please can one of you do me a favour and look at my thread Need a context please in comparative religion. The verse is from the OT so I could do with a Jewish view. Thanks.
Salaam
Please can one of you do me a favour and look at my thread Need a context please in comparative religion. The verse is from the OT so I could do with a Jewish view. Thanks.
Salaam
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
I was thinking of the Catholic Saints, someone particularly pious that has done exceptional good in the name of G-d.
It sure is a man's world. Men don't even have to answer for this and women have to drink mud just because their husband is jealous. Loved the idea that pregnancy is a sure sign of innocence from adultery
. So I wonder why Muslims always say stoning originally comes from the Torah. I must ask about that.
I really loved the prayer quoted at the end, it just shows what misconceptions people have of Judaism.
Salaam
In that sense, yes, there are tzadikim. There is also an idea that there are at any time there are 36 hidden tzadikim on whom the world rests.
My sense is that the people the idea was coming through are smarter than that, and they knew that if the person was suspected, it might be true. Rather than have this end a marriage, they created a system for it to be a strengthening of hte marriage, so that the husband would own the child as his own. And the alternative, what are the odds of that happening? Also I think it would cause a husband to reflect on whether he'd really want to do that to his wife.
Stoning is a jewish form of capital punishment. There are things for which capital punishment is the penalty, but halachah developed in a direction to make it near impossible.
There's a website I know that might interest you, might not. The guy's a liberal Muslim I know from Second Life. This is his non-SL site: Tasneem Project [TPARC]
From your posts it seems like you have some similar ideas, although I think he's probably a bit more progressive in some of his approach.
Dauer
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Shalom Dauer
I just spent an hour reading about the tzadikim, what a fascinating idea - I know I am a big girls blouse sometimes but it really made me want to cry. The idea that G-d, without our knowledge, protects us in such a practical way. I know when I say 'us' it is referring to the Jewish nation but I feel sure He protects all believers. You must take such comort from this, I certainly did and I am not even Jewish. Although being human and nosey I want to rush out and find who they are, which would of course defeat the purpose.
I do hope you are right, perhaps only a count of how many times this happened would say whether you are. Personally there seems so much, in all the Abrahamic faiths, of this "we do these awful things to women to PROTECT them" and as a woman I can assure you we do not feel protected by being stoned, burnt, whipped or made to drink mud just because our hubby's are in a crappy mood.
This is what we are told in Islam, there has to be so many witnesses etc, etc so it is nearly impossible, yet it still regularly happens in some areas of the world because people just twist the laws to suit their own desires.
Thanks for that, I always like new sources of info. A quick look round would suggest he may be a little too liberal for me but I shall have a jolly good read before I make my mind up. One of my difficulties is that he is seeing the Middle East from a very western perspective and this just doesn't work, you really have to be here to 'be in the know', however that shouldn't stop people from caring about these abuses. He does have some great links for sources of info and seems to care deeply about some of the same issues that concern me, so really thank you for the link.
Salaam
MW
I can't imagine it would. I have to imagine though, if reforms to protect women had been much stronger, and not in a patriarchal voice, if they would have been accepted at all. Today that's much less of an issue and feminism has hit religion and theology, but in those days, I don't know. There were certainly some destructive things that seem to be aimed more at the feminine in spirituality like all of the anti-asherah stuff, but it resurfaces in the form of the shechinah, in Shabbos as bride or queen, The Torah in its dress and garter, things like that.
I think he might be. I decided to leave it out, but I was going to suggest a little along the lines of the difference between mine and BB's views. You seem maybe a little to the left of BB, and and on different issues Drown is either to the right or left of me.
Dauer
bananabrain
awkward squadnik
not that i know of. i dare say many are joining in. on the other hand, we do have a number of people that get very upset about people showing anything other than their hands and faces, especially if they're women. but to be honest unless it's happening somewhere they're likely to see it they're liable to let it go.
hah, you're not wrong. i count it a good day when i can get out of bed and make it to the bathroom without being liable for excision by the Heavenly Court. this is why some people wash their strawberries with soap - each ingested insect gets you i think for four violations, each with 40 lashes. you're kind of on a hiding to nothing with some of 'em.
we have tzadiqim, but that's not quite the same thing. it's not a formal process, like it is with the catholics. and you don't call someone "st yankel the pickle merchant of east pupik" or anything. it's more a folk status, i'd say. of course if someone performs miracles we might say he had ruah ha-qodesh.
depends how strictly you define it. i wouldn't take a religious book into a toilet, for example, even in english, even one that was nothing to do with judaism. we're very careful about using Divine Names for no good reason - i.e., not for a blessing, prayer or other sanctificatory procedure.
like dauer says, if G!D Is Merciful, we too should be merciful. that is what that whole "you shall be Holy, for I Am Holy" business is about.
there's a lot more context to this, incidentally, but it is all about the context, about a carved stone or statue being a traditional form of idol.
that's the most basic understanding. i believe the sage understand this to mean that there's such a thing as a fair interest rate, which must be charged to someone jewish. if you left it at that, it would mean you could charge a non-jew unfair interest, BUT, of course that would then fly in the face of *another* law about not mistreating non-jews, or by not having "fair weights and measures" (and you could make a case that an interest rate is such a concept) or desecrating the Divine Name by being seen to be a bad example to others - anything which makes jews look bad is seen as letting the side down, because of the religious doctrine of collective responsibility. there are any number of safeguards to protect the Torah. so either way if the Law was properly implemented nobody would be disadvantaged, but if you read the particular verse without the context you'd come away thinking it was discriminatory.
no, it's the ordeal known as "sotah" or the trial of the "bitter waters", which is basically a method of affirming based on swearing on the Divine Name dissolved in water and then drinking the water - if you were adulterous, you'd die in a rather unpleasant way - no execution required.
witnesses are always required, certainly if there's a capital case or one with lashes. i don't think they're always required for fines. in this case i suspect the penalty would be financial by default (as it would be in effect for the other way round) with the wife entitled to divorce him and hit him for alimony plus multiple damages. i'm not an expert in the halakhah and there are entire tractates of the Talmud devoted to just these questions, their ramifications, exceptions and subcategories, so please understand that these are not categorical answers in any way shape or form - the answer would always be "it depends on the case".
well, the sages are always interested in precisely why the Torah mentions two or more apparently similar or different cases, or why they're grouped together and so on. the Torah is very precise in its use of language and it is the job of the oral tradition to reconcile apparent lacunae and inconsistencies. thus if two cases are mentioned, the sages would want to know why they're both mentioned and would almost certainly suggest that they refer to different cases with different ramifications. then there would be a huge handbag fight over who said what and when and precisely what they meant by it and whether it was in accordance with that sage's other halakhic rulings.
ah yes, but if they accuse their wife falsely the penalties are a lot more serious than mud-drinking, that's for sure. it's all about the checks and balances.
even more so - it allowed hannah (the mother of the prophet samuel) a way to force G!D to allow her to get pregnant, she said to G!D that if she didn't conceive she'd go and sit in a room by herself with another man and force her husband to make her take the sotah test, which she'd then pass because she hadn't done anything and then G!D, by the terms of the Law, would then be obliged to let her get knocked up. how's that for playing the System? this is one of the other lessons of the "oven of achnai" - G!D Loves it when we are clever enough to do this sort of stuff and even beat the Divine Will.
the thing is, if you look at it from the point of view of what remedies and protection the halakhah offers a woman, it does go some way to evening things up. my wife is halakhically entitled to divorce me if i have bad breath, spots, a job she doesn't like, or don't perform adequately on the conjugal front. she's entitled to a hefty alimony payout and to large amounts of damages for other offences. halakhah recognised the issue of rape within marriage 2500 years ago - your husband doesn't have the right to mistreat you or demand sex. all of these things are definitely designed for the protection of women, just as the rulings which ensure that women can inherit property (look up the daughters of zelophechad) and be businesswomen in their own right (see the book of proverbs).
of course, what screws this up is when men run the court procedures and so on and so forth, but if the halakhah is correctly applied than this shouldn't happen. of course that's just as big an "if" in judaism as it is in islam, but without the safeguards there would be no case for arguing that the protection is real, not just a way of actually oppressing women. that, of course, relies on everyone being ethical and moral....
b'shalom
bananabrain
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Hi BB
I bet you are a fab dinner guest, you have a brilliant sense of humour.
I wasn't aware that Jewish women were also meant to 'cover' themselves, just shows the conclusions we jump to. Sorry, I am reading that right....are men also meant to cover other than hands and faces?
I often think it is a good thing G!d is all merciful, all forgiving or we would all be in the brown stuff up to our nostrils. Having discovered your 613 commandments I have begun a little project to find out how many do's and don't the Quran contains, will let you know if I ever work it out.
That is hardly the blonde version is it, I am sure you do this so I have to use my little grey cells and look them up.
Oh the Holy Spirit...so what do you believe the Holy Spirit is?Ok I worry an awful lot about this one because I have an awful habit of saying Oh my G!d when something surprising or bad happens. I never mean it in terms of our actual G!d or as any form of insult to Him but my mouth moves before my brain fires up. What do you think, should I sit on the stove and practice?
I wonder if this misunderstanding is a reason that Jews got the reputation for being 'mean' with money, because without the explanation it does seem a bit anti gentiles.
I have the Quran out looking for loopholes but if I end up in Hell for challenging G!d then I'm nipping to your place in heaven to chuck bricks through your window.
Where do I sign up?
Ah yes the small print - there's always small print. Everyone being ethical and moral - was it Buddy Holly who sang That'll Be The Day? Wouldn't our religions be perfect if mankind wasn't involved. Unfortunately in Islam the 'safeguards' are often talked about but rarely practiced.
Salaam
MW
Muslimwoman
Coexistence insha'Allah
Do you feel this is feminine? Would men not have worn what we would now view as a dress in those days? And did a garter have the same significance then?
Very perceptive Dauer. My most interesting conversation/lesson with a Sheikh was an Islamic scholar when I first converted. Of course I commented on the extreme views in Islam, on both sides of the fence, so who should I believe? He asked me who tells the truth, the man who says he was robbed of 50,000 or the man who says he only took 50. Of course the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. So he said that in every issue that I seek advise on, outside of the Quran, I should look at the extreme fundamental view and the extreme liberal view and then stick as near to the middle as possible. I have lived by this rule as it made such perfect sense to me.
Salaam
MW
There are also laws of tznius for men but they differ a little. In more liberal circles tznius generally just refers to maintaining a sense of modesty in dress.
Ruach hakodesh is more of a state-of-being than a separate entity.
I think it's indirectly related, but not the reason. In the middle ages Jews were forced into positions as moneylenders. Christians couldn't lend to each other on interest and there were very few ways for a Jew to become financially successful. With the state of things then, if a Christian accused a Jew of, say, charging high interest rates or dealing unfairly in business, the safest thing to do would be settle privately instead of taking it to court.
Whether or not it was originally intended is less important than the fact that the divine feminine could not be suppressed. We even have a vague passage in the Talmud about a group of sages who would go out into the fields before Shabbos, dressed in white, to greet the bride. The zohar suggests that asherah-worship was really worship of the shechinah, and the big issue was really in thinking of shechinah as a separate being. It also suggests that asherah is a future name of shechinah. I haven't read those zoharic references myself but came across them a few days ago here:
Learn Kabbalah | Malchut
The word Torah itself is feminine and it is sometimes referred to as "she." I have not read the research, but there is some suggestion that there was a statue of YHWH's consort in Solomon's Temple. If that was the case, torah as embodiment of the divine feminine would seem like a logical progression. Statues of YHWH were already forbidden at that time and the direction Judaism was moving continued to push for less and less concrete representation of the Divine. What was a statue in the image of man then becomes an infinitely deeper and more complex text as stand-in for the Feminine.
As a religion that formed out of a more herding, shepherd-based faith and a more earth-based faith of farmers there is quite a bit of sexual and fertility imagery that comes up. On sukkot, the symbols are the lulav which is a long bundle containing willow, palm and myrtle, and the other symbol is the etrog, the citron, which is round. The lulav is phallic while the etrog is more symbolic of the egg.
That makes a lot of sense to me. My own approach is similar but different, which is to try and take as many perspectives into account as possible: the evolving ways Judaism views itself, the anthropological and sociological take, my own personal take based on the way the text speaks to me, and other detached historical analysis. I try to get beyond the particularly extremist views both on the right and the left and then find a way to be most inclusive of all views. In different parts of my life one view generally trumps another. In a spiritual context the evolving jewish views are always going to be more significant. If I'm trying to understand history, the more detached view is going to get more of a voice. So while I end up settling somewhere on the left I'm pretty critical of what sometimes happens there.
In a sense BB and I are both doing the same thing. His preference is to work within the systems and institutions of Orthodoxy and sees that as the best way to move Judaism forward. My preference is to work within the systems and institutions of liberal Judaism to ensure that while it moves forward it's also rooting itself in a Jewish foundation. BB has places where he would push for more conservatism beyond the minimum one will find within Orthodoxy just as I have places where I push for more liberalism than some other liberal Jews, but even with that we're both feeling around for a healthy middle that's best for Knesset Yisrael.
Dauer
Re: Torah as female. I just came across this recent post on a Jewish blog that is quite a bite more traditional in its general perspective than myself and probably also BB. It talks about things like the woman's place being in the home while at the same time pointing out some of the particularly feminine elements in Jewish theology. He gets much more graphic and explicit about the Torah than I did: Schvach - ×¤× ×™ דל
Dauer
Dauer
Dondi
Well-Known Member
Have to ask you, Muslimwoman. If western culture is so "out of the know", how can it be expected of us to adapt to Islam (that is, those in the West who convert to Islam)? Sure, the religion is spreading, but it isn't the same as living in the culture, is it?
bananabrain
awkward squadnik
well, it depends on your hashkafa (lifestyle) - if you are a male chasid, you'll wear hasidic garb. in fact, the more strictly observant you are, the more regimented your dress code. it's not like you see hasidim in shorts. and, again, depending on your hashkafa, if you're a woman, you'll be more or less strict - someone who lives in the haredi (ultra-orthodox community) will probably wear something very similar to what iranian women wear, albeit not quite as drab, a snood or a wig (don't get me started on wigs) whereas someone who is "modern-orthodox" might wear a hat which allows a few strands of hair to escape, or shows the neck, or just wear a scarf or bandana. similarly, your hashkafa will determine how clinging the fabric/cut can be or where the neckline, cuffs and hemline come to, or even how thick your stockings are, or whether you can wear trousers, or even *gasp* show your ankles. sephardim, in my experience, tend to be a bit less uptight about it than ashkenazim and most of the women will just wear something a bit like an indian dupatta or even a pashmina, or not bother unless they're in synagogue. ditto for cleavages in my experience.muslimwoman said:
i'd be fascinated. surely there must have been mediaeval codifiers though?
what dauer said, closer to being a lower level of prophecy.
oh, i'm just as bad. of course you shouldn't swear or so on, but it helps that the Divine Names that one should avoid are in hebrew and i don't tend to swear in hebrew. most israelis seem to swear in arabic as it is such a good language for swearing in.
don't any of the prophets in the Qur'an ever argue with Allah?
hehe - but if you did, then it would mean separate beds two weeks a month and a lot of other complicated stuff. look up the laws of taharat ha-mishpacha ("family purity")!
i love this! i'm going to use it.
and jews weren't allowed to do any other jobs.dauer said:
the point was not to suppress "her". the point was to avoid the heretical short-circuit of splitting G!D into two and representing the dynamic "relationships" within the Divine as, G!D Forbid, G!D and "mrs G!D", which would, of course, be dualistic - that is why the idea of an asherah would be so problematic - it removes part of G!D.
the question is whether this refers to the embrace of the keruvim on the ark cover, or whether this refers to an actual placing of an asherah or idolatrous image of "mrs G!D" in the holy of holies, G!D Forbid, by a sinful king, of which we had no shortage.
or indeed symbolic of a human, according to the configuration that was the custom of the ariza"l - the lulav being the torso/spine and then you put one myrtle and one willow on each side and then add a third myrtle to represent the genitals, whereas the ethrog would be the "female". the same thing can be done with the Tetragrammaton - the yod being the seed, the first heh being the male storage area, the vav being the connector organ and the final heh being the female receptacle.
call it a rejection of the concept of "Torah judaism" - there is no judaism empty of Torah. i think of judaism as an ecosystem; it requires biodiversity to function healthily. if you allow artscroll/salafi/disney/microsoft judaism to take over then your ecosystem cannot breathe. it is derived from the approach of rav kook, who saw the secular, anti-religious pioneers in israel as being part of the Divine Plan. "for G!D Is the best of Plotters", as it says in the Qur'an.
so in your own way you're a conservative working in a liberal environment, whereas i am a liberal working in a conservative environment, except when we talk to each other i work as a conservative and you work as a liberal, at least if you look at it simplistically. i'm deen, you're rahamim. or you're rubber, i'm glue... tomato, tomahto, potato, potahto.
but based on the fact that minhagh (custom) may have, through sloppy thinking, ignorance and lack of religious biodiversity, replaced engagement with the texts and a Torah solution.
nope. i read this and it's spot-on as far as i think. think about the Torah procession and the peticha (ark-opening) - it's birth. the sefer is a child being born and carried tenderly to where it will grow up and expand into a full adult. and don't get me started on the symbolism of the chupah (wedding canopy). seven circuits? they ought to get the groom to walk up and down the aisle seven times! breaking a glass? *cough*symbolic-hymen*cough*.
b'shalom
bananabrain
Dondi
Well-Known Member
I thought the breaking of the glass was a symbolism of the destruction of the temple, not the de-virgining of the bride.
I disagree. It was a suppression by the ancient gov't in Israel as part of their bid to gain more power by centralizing worship and outlawing all forms of religion that they could either not control or were different from the practices they had allowed.
I don't think there's anything sinful about having an asherah in the beit hamikdash. Insidious maybe, in that it was a way to subvert and gain more power much like the Christian adoptions of foreign religious practices, but as an embodiment of the faith of some of the people I don't think there's anything wrong with it at all. It fits with that era. Our conceptualization of G!d at that point was radically different.
I agree. I like to use an organismic model to say the same thing.
I think I'm more a liberal with some conservative tendencies who's mostly happy with what's going on but sees some of it as getting too far into left field and would like to see more investment in some of the foundation-building issues. I like systems. The new paradigms for hermeneutic, exegesis, and application that are developing now like integral judaism and the psycho-halachic process imo need to be fleshed out more in order to create a solid basis for change. There's a lot of R&D going on but there isn't a lot of detailed literature about how to regulate experiments in the lab yet.
I didn't mean the gendered analogies. I read what he was saying as a defense of the position that the best thing a woman could possibly be is a housewife. I may have misread him too.
Dauer
bananabrain
awkward squadnik
well, you would say that, wouldn't you? hehehe. but even if that were true, i don't see why it would be a bad thing. after all, we're talking about idolatry here - getting rid of idol worship and idolatrous practices would be a good thing. however, the evidence of the Text is that this simply didn't succeed - the rulers were too evil to try or to persevere and the people too sinful and open to local canaanite influences. also, as far as i am aware, the archaeological evidence is that idolatry was widespread, which would back up the complaints of the prophets rather than the theory that the ministry of monotheism was running a police state and enforcing conformity.dauer said:
you are kidding, aren't you? doesn't this miss something totally, totally basic? i mean, you're not an idiot, mate, but think about what you've just said - we are commanded to get rid of the fecking things, not stick them in the qodesh ha-qodeshim, G!D Forbid. i don't care how liberal you are - how can you possibly consider that to be a valid position when it flatly contradicts the explicit Torah commandment to destroy them? i find this argument incomprehensible.
you keep on saying that, but the thing is that the Text - at all points - explicitly identifies that kind of conceptualisation as completely wrong and evil. i do not dispute for a moment that the *reality on the ground* was that many people *did* conceptualise in that way, but that was because they were sinning against G!D, just as it says. they were *wrong* to do so. moreover, the fact that the Text criticises contemporary practices indicates that they were known to be wrong *at that time*, therefore we must have had a *correct* conceptualisation as well as an incorrect one.
i would say that they need to be interpreted in the light of the traditional processes and ways found to see them as contiguous and congruent, rather than superseding or replacing them. you'd have to demonstrate that abraham or moses or whoever could be shown to have operated in that paradigm. that way it could be shown to be internally consistent.
i didn't get that at all. remember, the concept of a "housewife" is a modern european one. the ba'alath ha-bayith is far more - she is the COO of the family organisation - she runs the infrastructure and makes sure the systems stay up and running. i took it as saying that the whole "public performance of religion" was necessary because men require more direction, supervision and regimentation. of course this can be reductively subverted to make the woman a second-class citizen but that, i would argue, flies in the face of the intention of both the Torah and the halakhah.
b'shalom
bananabrain