Two comments on a brief aside in Esther Lapian's recent post.
First:
"The erudite, complex and emotionally laden discussions of literary
method that have graced this site remind me of a similar discussion
that ensued about 30 years ago concerning Talmud study for women.
There were passionate arguments for and against, but in the end, those
who were opposed to women's learning always ended up asking the
annoying, slippery slope question- "but where will this lead?" Their
real concern was never whether women's learning was right, important
for women, or even, halachically permissible. If it may cause an
upheaval, let's stop now."
Slippery-slope debates are indeed basically irresolvable, regarding their substance if not their legitimacy. (It is difficult to respond substantively to a slippery-slope argument, just as it is difficult to respond substantively to the argument that an argument is "annoying."
I am taken aback, though, by the charge that other arguments made by opponents - their halakhic and otherwise more substantive ones - were not "real concern
." Especially given the fairly obvious halakhic basis for the position, accusing a huge population and a great number of very serious scholars of being megaleh panim ba-Torah she-lo ke-halakhah, not to mention simply lying, is quite a step to take, and I am curious as to what Ms. Lapian's evidence is.
I say this as a strong proponent of advanced women's Talmud study, in fact as one who teaches one of the highest-level shiurim in Gemara/Halakhah for women in the U.S. Taking a forceful position on this matter, though, does not require arguing for the illegitimacy, and certainly not the disingenuousness, of the opposing position.
Second:
"In the end, we have witnessed a revolution in women's learning,
bringing about unimagined creativity as well as many complex
challenges for women and their families."
Complex challenges, certainly. But unimagined creativity - would that it were so! There have been isolated examples of creativity (principally in the practical realm of how best to teach and "pasken" hilkhot Niddah to women), but it seems to me that one of the great lacunae in the realm of high-level women's Talmud study as it has developed over three-plus decades has been the virtual total absence of chiddushei Torah. Has there been a sefer published of serious traditional Gemara scholarship by someone from that world (again, my world)? Perhaps Ms. Lapian is aware of something that I am not - I would celebrate it; or, perhaps I have misunderstood what she meant by creativity. In any case, as far as I can tell the world awaits the first Iyyunim be-Masekhet Bava Kama by a female scholar. What meaning this might have for the larger women's Torah study movement is a topic for another day.
Rabbi Gedalyah Berger
Ra"M, Graduate Program in Advanced Talmudic Studies, Stern College for Women
Sho'el u-Meshiv, RIETS
Fleetwood Synagogue, Mount Vernon, NY
