GENDER, MODESTY, AND TALMUD- RABBIS LINZER AND MAGGID DEBATE

Rabbi Shaul Maggid wrote a very important response to Rabbi Dov Linzer’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times. I urge you to read both. Rabbi Linzer suggests that the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox Jews) justify approaches to modesty that are fanatical and unsubstantiated by the Talmud. He writes:

“But the Talmud, the basis for Jewish law, offers a perhaps surprising answer: It places the responsibility for controlling men’s licentious thoughts about women squarely on the men.”  

In other words, Rabbi Linzer argues that the Talmud teaches that inappropriate feelings about a woman’s sexuality are a man’s problem to control through his own inner work, not a woman’s responsibility to control through unfair dress codes and behavior modification. Rabbi Linzer is correct about this. But Rabbi Maggid points out a deeper problem. It is true that the Talmud suggests that men must control their own desires, but at the same time, the Talmud itself weakens this very claim by creating many other systematic ways of putting the onus of sexual appropriateness solely on women. Rabbi Maggid writes:

“While the Talmud, as you correctly assert, puts the responsibility of male desire toward women squarely on the shoulders of the males, it simultaneously constructs a legal and devotional framework that in many ways undermines that very assertion.”

Ultimately, Rabbi Maggid envisions a new Modern Orthodoxy that dismantles “the very legal structures that serve as the foundation of the problem” that Rabbi Linzer seeks to solve. In other words, egalitarianism requires a complex approach to analyzing the ways in which halacha (Jewish Law) systematizes and perpetuates a Judaism that limits full participation of women in Jewish life and perpetuates troubling attitudes about them. It is not clear if Rabbi Maggid is intimating that the entire system of Halacha must be disregarded, or that we can work within the system to uphold the sanctity of Jewish law while shaping it in a way that supports and nurtures the inner religious and spiritual lives of women. I hope that it is the latter.

Take some time to read Rabbi Linzer’s op-ed piece and Rabbi Maggid’s response. You will get a sense of how comfortable the Modern Orthodox world is/will be in pushing boundaries and reimagining gender relationships as well as the limits of Halacha.