women present themselves differently. Men are serious, somber, they dress in white. Women are frivolous at best, enticing at worst. The Mishnah list some of the things women do to present themselves: plait their hair, paint their eyelids, rouge their faces'® Women are expected to concern themselves with their physical appearance, but men are above such behavior. Women may indulge themselves, behaving in such a way that in a man would be considered vanity. Woman are prized for their beauty. Remember that Hillel in his kindness admonishes us always to praise a bride for her beauty.
In addition all women endanger the world defined by the rabbis by their effect on men. They are a potential source of disorder and pollution. Jacob Neusner tells us that in the thought world of the Mishnah , men are normal. They define and order this world and the next. Women are abnormal; they are a continual threat. This attitude became normative in the halakhic world view. An extreme example will help make the point. Rabbi Isaac Aboab wrote:“Our pious sages saw men according to their nature desiring women and busying themselves with them continually, for the evil inclination incites and tempts to transgress in forbidden things more than permitted ones. Therefore it is necessary to separate man from this temptation and to deliver him from this temptation... as it is said in tractate Shabbat . a ‘A woman is a skin bottle full of filth and her mouth is full of blood and all run after her....""*!
The Talmud in Nazir 58b and 59a, defines much of the future discussion. The issues future commentators will raise, which of the extensions of the biblical rule are Torah law, midoraita, and which are rabbinic enactments. That is not directly relevant to our issue. But the discussion does list all of the forbidden behaviors that are connected to our verse: shaving of the armpit and genital area by men, cross dressing, and mixing with members of
the opposite sex; moreover women should not bear arms, and
men should not use cosmetics as women do.
It is with this reshaped meaning that our verse emerges from tannaitic literature. Let us see what the codes do to its meaning. Maimonides lists the verse in the Sefer Hamitzvot?* as two mitzvot following the Talmud ’s explanation of their meaning. But a change occurs when he puts them in the Mishneh Torah. He clas