30.
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B. Megillah 23a. However see Tosefta Megillah 3:5, which omits the phrase kavod ha-zibur but says,“we do not bring a woman out to read in public.” Weiss offers several explanations. Quoting Ritva to B. Megillah 4a and Rabbi Jacob Emden (Yavez, Haggahot ve-Hiddushim to Megillah 23a) he notes their assumption that a woman would not be asked to perform this act when there were men competent to do so. Hence, although her act is legally efficacious, the public display of female knowledge and competence with the Torah presumes male ignorance and incompetence, and therefore shames the(male) congregation. An alternative explanation is that modesty demands that women not be visible or audible in public. Weiss, Women At Prayer, 68-69.
The first explanation would seem to apply only in contexts where men are expected to be more Jewishly educated than women. If a single standard applied across gender lines, female competence and knowledge would not be experienced as offensive. The second explanation rests on the dual assumptions that men experience women primarily as sexual objects and that men’s religious experience and behavior are of more value and concern than that of women.“Modesty” means women’s acquiescence to their erasure from the“homosocial” public sphere where cultural norms are enacted and recreated and power and privilege are exercised and their relegation to a private sphere in which sexual and enabling functions define and circumscribe women’s roles. See Eve Kosovsky Sedgewick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, New York, Columbia University Press , 1985: 1-27.
Personal communications from Bonna Haberman, Brandeis University , Norma Baumel Joseph , University of Toronto , and Chaia Beckerman, Women of the Wall, Jerusalem .
While it is clear in primary sources that women may assume mitzvot from which they are exempt, some later commentators complicate legal decision making by raising objections that would render women ineligible, and authorities opposed to feminism have assiduously collected such precedents. The major source for the question of whether it is permissible for women to assume commandments from which they are exempt is a discussion in B. Eruvin 96a-b, addressing whether women may optionally don tefilin, lay hands on a sacrifice in order to designate it, or blow the shofar. Regarding tefilin B. Eruvin 96a says that Saul ’s daughter Mikhal put on tefilin and the rabbis did not protest. However Tosafot s.v. Mikhal objects that women do not have the requisite guf naki, clean body, which is forbidden in tefilin. Guf naki is variously understood to mean that women are more flatulent than men or that the uncleanliness referred to is menstruation. See the discussion in Getzel Elinson Ha- Isha ve-ha-Mizvot, Jerusalem , Histadrut Ha-Zionit Ha-Olamit, 1975: 55-56. Moshe Isserles (Rema ) gloss to Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim 38:3 says,“we do protest[women’s wearing tefilin].” See also the makhloket between Maimonides , Mishneh Torah Hilkhot Zizit 3:9 and Rabbenu Tam (B. RH 33a Tosafot s.v. Ha) concerning whether women may make a blessing on mitzvot from which they are exempt. Examples of books designed to nip Orthodox feminist observance in the bud by cataloguing authorities against women taking on practices from which they are