Thursday 19 July 2012

On Modern Women's Role in Hinuch

Guest Blogger:
Rav Dov Fischer

«Women have critical analytical capabilities, can handle depth, and they also are critical to Klal Yisrael.  Modern women, too, can learn and be challenged.  They, too, can be handed solid Judaic text and be taught directly from primary sources.  In many ways, because they previously have not been as exposed to learning, they are so much more receptive, once exposed, because it is all a wonderment.  They never saw Bar Kamtza and Kamtza in print.  They never saw the account of the enslaved brother and sister, offspring of Kohanim Gedolim, mated by their masters.  Or of that subordinate carpenter and how he stole his master's wife, then manipulated his master to pouring drinks tearfully for him and that woman, thus sealing the Decree.  When they learn Torah, they get excited.  They bring friends the next time, people whop also never before held a page of Rambam in their fingers or saw that a Rema is printed in a font different from that of the Mechaber.  They ask to take home the source sheets.  They go home and tell their husbands what they learned.  Discussions at their Shabbat tables get raised.  They prod their husbands to go out and learn, too.  By teaching them what they do not know, we alert them to what their children do not know.  They better can evaluate whether their $15,000-a-year tuition is producing results.  When they decide to attend a Megillah reading or an Eicha reading, a Simchat Torah hakafot inside the shul (rather than milling outside) or a Seder, they bring their husbands and expect more of them.  Experience teaches that women are more effective in bringing recalcitrant men than are men in bringing uninterested women.  Despite all the modern world's teaching about equal roles, the woman still dominates home culture where the next generation is reared.  Expanded roles for women in this context are worth fighting for, with passion.  We have unique entré to those who will not allow themselves to be approached by others.

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We have a new found resource with the advent of educated women who can bring up the quotient of General Torah Knowledge. This gives the next generation a potential headstart by having highly educated and sophisticated parents of both genders.


Shalom and Regards,
RRW

1 comment:

Avraham said...

I am pro women. but anti feminism. bit at any rate women as a group tend to be very good teachers. It makes sense to involve them in the chinuch process.