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Back to Question of the Week Back to Archives Q: I was wondering the Reform position on beged ish and women wearing men's pants. Ali |
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A:"Beged Ish" literally means "a man's garment." There is a prohibition from the Torah (Deuteronomy 22:5) that states: "A masculine accouterment shall not be upon a woman, nor shall a man wear a woman's garment, for all those who do these thing are an abomination to YHWH, your God." In the verse, the Hebrew for a " masculine accouterment " is "keli gever," but some people refer to the prohibition as "beged ish." (This usage appears to be quite late -- it does not appear in the pre-modern sources.) Ali asks for a Reform position on this issue. There is a Reform responsum on this subject by Rabbi Solomon Freehof, which can be found in the collection "Contemporary Reform Responsa." Rabbi Freehof makes two main halakhic points, having to do with (1) the importance of intention in connection with beged ish, (and 2) the traditional recognition that the definition of beged ish is determined by prevailing social custom. With regard to intention, he points to comments on Deuteronomy 22:5 in Rashi, Sifre and the Talmud (Nazir 59a) that indicate that the prohibition is intended to prevent a woman from hanging out in male society in order to engage in adultery. So this seems to indicate that the law means to prohibit an attempt to actually pass as a man in order to facilitate immoral sexual behaviour. Further proof of the importance of intent in beged ish comes from the allowance of cross-dressing on Purim (Shulkhan Arukh, Orakh Khayim 696.8). Such behaviour is allowed because it is considered safe to assume that it is not for lewd purpose, but only for the joy of Purim. Second, Freehof points to Shuklhan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah 182.6, which prohibits men from plucking beard-hairs or armpit hairs, because these are considered to be equivalent to wearing women's clothing. However, the Shulkhan Arukh gives the caveat that where it is the custom for men to pluck their hairs, they are permitted to do so. In other words, the definition of men's and women's dress is socially determined by local custom. (This citation of Freehof's seems to be incorrect; at least the version of Shulkhan Arukh that I have available doesn't say what Freehof says it does. However, the preceding paragraph, Yoreh De'ah 182.5 does explicitly say that local usage determines the definition of men's clothing.) Freehof argues that in contemporary North America, neither intention nor local custom support a prohibition of women wearing pants. Contemporary women who wear pants normally have no intention of passing as men in order to facilitate immoral sexual behaviour. And the local custom is that pants are women's clothing as well as men's. Therefore, there is no reason to prohibit women from wearing pants. While I certainly agree with Rabbi Freehof's arguments and conclusion, there is one serious problem with his Responsum. It happens that the particular question that had been addressed to him concerned the members of the Jewish community of Curacao, who objected to the visiting North American women coming off of cruise ships wearing pants. It is clear that part of the particular issue was a difference in cultural definitions of women's clothing and Rabbi Freehof never addressed that part of the issue (at least not in the published responsum). Indeed, the questions of how cultural norms are determined and by whom, how one defines the determinative "community," etc, are difficult and important. written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz |
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