The Evolving Jew

Quote of the day : (was a comment on this post ) "...if you read Minchat Chinuch without thinking about it, you might imagine that 19th century Galicia was filled with hermaphrodites, people lacking external genitalia and half emancipated slaves." Some really unusual things will come up in jblogging. The comment above, in context, certainly had relevance. Nevertheless, it's amusing to see what comes up sometimes.

Recently the gemara (talmud) class I attending was studying Tractate Megillah, and one topic discussed was whether women can read the megillah for men. It seems very clear from the gemara, (towards the top of page 4a), that women can do so, and that men will fulfill their obligation by hearing a woman read. The gemara says: ואמר רב יהושוע בן לוי נשים חייבות במקרה מגילה שאף הן היו באותו הנס Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Women are obligated in the reading of the megillah, for they too were part of the miracle. Note that it says “bemikrah”, in the reading of the megillah, not “beshmiyah”, in the hearing of the megillah. However, Tosafot, while acknowledging that the plain text would appear to support that view, then jumps through hoops to work out an interpretation that denies women this right. I wonder if this is a case of approaching the topic by the standards of the medieval period in which the Tosafists lived with a preconceived notion and then wringing out their desired

Holy Hyrax wrote a rather bizarre post today about how, although pants aren't really immodest, there's a case to be made for encouraging Jewish girls to wear only skirts. The rationale? That it can be a distinctively "Jewish" look that binds Jews together. My first reaction was "huh??". In my version of "out of town" Modern Orthodoxy, no one cares what someone wears, as long as it doesn't show inappropriate amounts of skin. My second reaction was this comment on his site: -------------------------------------------------------------- First of all, the ship has already sailed. Plenty of Jewish women wear pants including plenty of Orthodox, especially those not living in the more cloistered New York community. So if you're declaring skirts to be a distinctive Orthodox dress, you're effectively declaring that multitudes of women who keep shabbat, kashrut, and mikvah are not really to be considered Orthodox, since they don't wear

Yesterday, Harry Maryles posted a letter from a Modern Orthodox yeshiva high school principal who, while strongly acknowledging the seriousness of past cases of abuse in Orthodox schools and that the protection of children is the first priority, warns against false accusations that could ruin a teacher or rebbi’s life. He relates two cases in his school where the accusations turned out to be false and recommends caution in proceeding in these cases. Harry, in introducing the letter, writes: This is not to say there should be any less vigilance. Certainly if we err - it should be on the side of the child. But great care should be taken before we act in a way that can destroy innocent people. Bearing this in mind it is my view that when there is accusation by a child against a Rebbe the first line of defense should be to protect the child. To that end the accused Rebbe should be quietly told to call in ‘sick’ and not show up in school until the matter is fairly investigated. Private

XGH asks if most Modern Orthodox today would really want the beit hamikdash and its ancient but currently primitive-seeming tradition of animal sacrifice back in our lives. As such, he asks: So, in these 9 days I shan't be mourning the loss of the BM (which has the added bonus of cutting out a lot of tedious kinot). Certainly there's much to mourn, 2,000 tragedy filled years culminating in the Shoah. But the loss of the BM? Probably a good thing, all things considered. Here’s my comment on that post: The destruction of the beit hamikdash forced Judaism to evolve from the vestiges of paganism into a religion that was able to survive for then next 2 millennia. However, the beit hamikdash was also a symbol of the independent sovereignty of Israel (even during the late period when they only had autonomy) and of the right of Jews to live in Eretz Yisrael. The destruction of the beit hamikdash brought that era to an end, destroyed the symbol of their capital and initiated the peri