I believe that both Jewish men and women have the same relationships to the Torah in a way that they perceive the Torah as the bridge which connects the Jew and God. It is undeniable fact that the Torah has been the core of Judaism; the individual’s attempt to develop and deepen his or her personal relationship with God through studying of Torah, explains why the importance of Torah study has been stressing out among the different Jewish communities around the world.
After watching the video “The Torah and the Scholar Today,” I could completely understand the significant meaning(s) of Torah study within the Jewish society. Through watching the video, I learned that the importance of Torah study comes not only from one’s sincere desire to appreciate (or to learn more about) YHWH, but also from one’s duty, as a Jew, to preserve a special relationship that the one true God of Israel had made with the Jewish people in the ancient past. Therefore, it was not so hard to understand Jewish women’s desperation to study (or even to read) Torah while watching the video, “Half the Kingdom.”
However, while watching several women’s “unbreakable will” against their own ethical traditions, I thought of a small possibility that some of the women could have used the notion of Torah study as a weapon to fulfil one's own desire (to build a strong relationship with God or to justify gender equality to the Jewish men) whether their society or ethical traditions approve it or not.
I strongly believe that those women have every right to claim their rights and duties to worship and learn about God who loves and treats them equally as He does to men; I believe that no man has a right to stop anyone from performing religious acts. However, when I was watching the part where Jewish men were yelling at or disapproving women’s reading the Torah (or performing religious practice) in public, I wondered how God would respond to their behaviors.
Would God say that those men had a right to disapprove women’s mere desire to worship Him in public? Or, would God say that those women had a right to disorganize the society and disobey their husbands in order to worship Him in public?
I do not know what God truly wants His people to do. However, I am sure God would not want His beloved people to either discriminate one another due to gender difference or violate one’s traditional role to fulfill one’s own desire.
1 comment:
Thoughtful response, Alice. In a sense, it seems to me that the women in Half the Kingdom drawn to study Torah and Talmud are hearing God call them through those sacred texts, and are trying to answer, regardless of what other Jewish men and women, or society in general think about it, though they didn't put it that way exactly. On the Other hand, Rabbi Steinsaltz said that if the written Torah is God speaking to man, the Talmud is men speaking back to God. The women studying Talmud seem to be living in the same mythic universe from which R. Steinsaltz speaks, and by engaging in Talmud study, are heeding God's call and trying to keep up their human end of the conversation.
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