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Back to Question of the Week Q: Why can't women make up a minyan? Is there any basis for this within the Torah? --Bryan |
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A: Dear Bryan: Before we look at some of the traditional rabbinic sources pertaining to prayer and minyanim [plural of minyan, prayer quorum of ten], let's first state clearly that "why can't women make up a minyan" is a bit of a loaded question, because many Jewish communities constitute their minyanim with both women and men together equally. In the Reform and Reconstructionist movements, egalitarianism in prayer and ritual is universal; in the Conservative movement, about 80% of the synagogues are egalitarian in one form or another, although this varies by region and specific community custom. So really, a more accurate form of your question might be: "why don't women count in the minyan in traditional synagogues?" Well, basically, the issue of minyan, as it evolved in the formative periods of rabbinic Judaism- say, around 50-550 CE- goes something like this: we learn in a Mishna, the earliest layer of law in the Talmud, (Megillah 23b) that for many kinds of liturgical acts, "ten" are required. Among these acts is reading from the Torah, the communal repetition of the Amidah prayer, reading the Haftarah, and so on. Then the later rabbis ask where the number ten comes from - basically, the later rabbis of the Talmud ask the same question you do: what's the basis for this in the Torah itself? They "solve" this puzzle with a bit of fancy interpretation, comparing the meaning of a word in one context to understand its meaning in another. In Leviticus 22:23, we have a verse which reads: "and I shall be sanctified among the Israelites." Then, in Numbers 16:21, we have a verse which reads: "separate yourselves from among the assembly." [The word we're translating as "assembly " is the Hebrew edah.] OK, follow me here. The rabbis have found the word "among" [toch] in two different verses, which then links the idea of "sanctifying" [God] to the idea of "assembly." At this point, they haven't said anything about an "assembly" being ten, so they bring in another verse, which is from the story of the spies in Numbers. This verse reads: "how long shall this bad assembly persist?"- meaning the spies who brought back the pessimistic report about the Land of Israel. There were ten bad spies, which for the rabbis proves that "assembly" means ten. Talmudic reasoning is sort of like computer hypertext, where things are linked one to the other. Imagine the key words mentioned above were links on the Internet: A) and I shall be sanctified among the Israelites B) separate yourselves from among the assembly C) how long shall this bad assembly persist? (here "assembly" = 10) Because A and B are linked by the words "among," and B and C are linked by the words "assembly," the ancient rabbis of the Talmud understand this to mean that public liturgical acts, which are understood as "sanctifying" God in the Jewish community, are to be done only with an "assembly" of at least ten adult males. OK, that's the "basis" for the exclusion of women from a prayer minyan, as understood by the rabbis of the Talmud. Now, you may have questions about the present day authority of this interpretive process, and you wouldn't be the only one. If you were a Reform or Reconstructionist rabbi, you might say that the rabbis of the Talmud were seeking to provide after-the-fact justification for an already established social custom of counting only men in the minyan, and since in any case we have taken upon ourselves the right to fashion a Judaism consistent with contemporary moral norms, we should make all our minyanim egalitarian, no doubt about it. (In fact, the Reform movement issued an interesting position paper on whether a minyan itself is necessary.) If you were a liberal Conservative rabbi, you might also consider one other issue, the idea of fixed-time obligations. Again, in the days of the Talmud, women were considered exempt from some ritual obligations that happened at a fixed time, like saying the daily prayers in their time-slots. Since women were not obligated to say the daily prayers, as men were understood to be, if they chose to, they didn't have the same "level" of obligation as men, so they couldn't make up a quorum of people who all had the same kind of ritual obligation. (See Mishna Brachot 3:3) So, continuing with the reasoning of a liberal Conservative rabbi, you might say that OK, even if women were exempt in days of yore, presumably because of childcare responsibilities and other constraints on their time, women nowadays are equally educated and emancipated in the use of their time, and can freely choose to obligate themselves for minyan and thus count for it. Or you might even point out that there might be an obligation for prayer, per se, but not to pray in a minyan. You can, in this view, pray the basic prayers at home, or wherever you are. Thus everybody, men and women, are actually at the same level of obligation vis-a-vis communal prayer, so both can count equally in a minyan if they so desire. My point is not to overwhelm you with legal arguments, but rather to point out that even though there is a huge spectrum of opinion in the Jewish world regarding the participation of women in public ritual life, for most Jewish communities the traditional legal reasonings pertaining to women don't hold up anymore. Most Jews who attend services in North America do so in egalitarian settings. However, understanding the background of the arguments can help all Jews understand and talk with each other about contentious issues. NJL |
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