Woman and Femininity in Rabbinical Culture
From earliest childhood, the woman was removed from the sources of education and prohibited from religious life. As a child, she did not reap benefit from the education system that helped boys acquire the knowledge they needed to enter society. Her ignorance was later understood as an innate inferiority, so that her abilities could only be expressed in the home, a sphere where religious education was unnecessary.
Girls did not receive guidance from their parents, did not enjoy the lessons conducted in the Beit Midrash and the synagogues, and did not actively participate in the rituals of religious holidays. The only training these girls received involved the profession of housewifery. The girl began implementing the abilities she has learned at age 12 – the age of marriage. If it so happened that she hadn’t found a spouse at this advanced age, her father could barter one of his slaves and put an end to the irksome single status. When she matured, due to the concepts of purity and impurity, the woman was declared unfit for physical contact with males most days of the year.
The unending cycle of blood brought the woman into periods of prohibition and exclusion that made her a walking obstacle to any man located near her. Worse still, woman was thought to be the personification of evil, seduction and morbidity. It is no wonder that the character of the demoness Lilith rises and blossoms in the presence of such a worldview.
Women did not take an active part in the development of rabbinical Judaism, not its tradition nor its religious life. The rabbis’ definition of woman included categories that were acceptable in traditional society in which woman is portrayed as different, inferior, and other – as a creature that is differentiated from the “kosher” male who is alone entitled to serve the Lord. On the pages of rabbinical literature, the Jewish woman is written as a character inferior to the man in every aspect: social, judicial and religious, and as having lesser value in terms of function, spirituality, and class.
Girls did not receive guidance from their parents, did not enjoy the lessons conducted in the Beit Midrash and the synagogues, and did not actively participate in the rituals of religious holidays. The only training these girls received involved the profession of housewifery. The girl began implementing the abilities she has learned at age 12 – the age of marriage. If it so happened that she hadn’t found a spouse at this advanced age, her father could barter one of his slaves and put an end to the irksome single status. When she matured, due to the concepts of purity and impurity, the woman was declared unfit for physical contact with males most days of the year.
The unending cycle of blood brought the woman into periods of prohibition and exclusion that made her a walking obstacle to any man located near her. Worse still, woman was thought to be the personification of evil, seduction and morbidity. It is no wonder that the character of the demoness Lilith rises and blossoms in the presence of such a worldview.
Women did not take an active part in the development of rabbinical Judaism, not its tradition nor its religious life. The rabbis’ definition of woman included categories that were acceptable in traditional society in which woman is portrayed as different, inferior, and other – as a creature that is differentiated from the “kosher” male who is alone entitled to serve the Lord. On the pages of rabbinical literature, the Jewish woman is written as a character inferior to the man in every aspect: social, judicial and religious, and as having lesser value in terms of function, spirituality, and class.
