Showing posts with label zev farber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zev farber. Show all posts

Monday, September 19, 2011

Yet another post on she lo asni isha

By Rabbi Zev Farber
Taken from here, without permission

(Rabbi Zev Farber was ordained (yoreh yoreh and yadin yadin) by YCT Rabbinical School. He is the founder of AITZIM (Atlanta Institute of Torah and Zionism) - an adult education initiative. Rabbi Farber serves on the board of the International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF) and is the coordinator of their Vaad Giyyur. He is also a PhD candidate at Emory University's Graduate Division of Religion.)

Recently, my friend and colleague, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, wrote a blog-post describing how uncomfortable he has become with men reciting the blessing thanking God for not making them women. If I remember the original post correctly (it has since been deleted), R.Kanefsky felt that this blessing reflected an outdated view of women as something less than men. In our society that belief is no longer held and implying it would be discourteous to women.Therefore, he argued, the blessing should not be said nowadays.

The latter point, i.e. that the blessing should be dropped or changed is, of course, debatable, since where and when halakha is supposed to change is a tricky question. I myself have an article in the works on this subject, advocating an adjustment to our nussah, and I am looking forward to a constructive dialogue on this topic in our community.

R. Kanefsky’s first point, that the blessing reflects, or, at least, originally reflected, a viewpoint of women as being somewhat “less” than men is so patently obvious that it is amazing to me that it needs to be defended. And yet, the nature of our Orthodox world has become one where the patently obvious can be denied as if it were itselfabsurd. This can be seen from the numerous blog posts that have been written over the past week attacking Rabbi Kanefsky for not being “really” Orthodox (a favorite form of “j’accuse” amongst Orthodox bloggers nowadays). At best, some have chalked it up to his strong emotional nature clouding his judgment. I will not engage these posts or their authors directly because of their mean-spirited and inappropriate tone, but I do think a number of points need to be made.