I always think of my tradition (Southern Sudanese) as a discriminatory tradition because women are prevented to do certain things (because they are not basically as smart as men). Even though I watched the first movie wandering why there were no Jewish women studying the Torah, I did not expect that Jewish women would almost not be allowed to study the laws that played the important roles in the history of their tradition. But today in class I wandered more by seeing women in one of the great tradition (Judaism) challenging the way they were not encouraged to learning the Torah.
It was a fascinating movie because the women tried hard to find their common ground between religious and historical tradition. I thought the women played an important role not only by praying at the Holly Wall in Jerusalem (to show the men they are part of this tradition), but also addressing the issues of their religious civil rights, and the struggle for self-definition in a man dominant tradition and religion. I do not know why Judaism does not allow women to study and learn the Torah, Is it because God created man and woman differently or was this created by men who wrote or interpreted the Torah? Did God prohibit Jewish women from studying the Torah, or did this develop over the years of Jewish traditional change?
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Why can't Jewish women study Torah? In the assigned reading Words on Fire, Vanessa Ochs enumerates and discusses some of the traditional Jewish sources that prohibit Jewish women from studying Torah, but she also presents other traditional Jewish sources, and even some contemporary Orthodox Jewish rabbis, like Chaim Brovender, who permit or even encourage women's study of Torah. Some of the reasons the sources give for prohibiting women's study are like the ones your mention for Southern Sudan - e.g., women's alleged lesser intellectual capacity. More typical is the rabbinic charge that women's Torah study is lewd or presumptuous - i.e., women studying don't know their place. Those who prohibit it usually don't give as a reason that God doesn't want women to study His Torah. It seems that it's Jewish men, not God, who don't want women to study Torah. But there are also Jewish men, as well as the Jewish women we saw in the movie, who do think that women should study Torah. Rabbi Brovender thinks women's involvement would invigorate and revive Torah study with creativity in a time when Torah study could use a new infusion of life and passion. I agree. In any case, it seems that it has been human custom rather than divine mandate that has kept women from studying Torah. and the customs are changing now!
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