Q:
Why cannot unmarried girls study Gemara?
A:
I don’t know why you say unmarried girls. Why shouldn’t women study Gemara?
And the answer is, women, you have to know, are very busy people. And once women get into Gemara, you have to know, then they’re not going to study how to make dresses. They’re not going to study recipes. Their husbands are too busy learning to do such things and they’re going to be the same.
Women have to know they are professors. Like we said before, they are professors of domesticity. To be successful in a home is not easy. חכמת נשים בנתה ביתה. You need a world of wisdom to build your house. And women who don’t build a house and go out to try to build other people’s houses, it’s better than nothing, but that’s a real counterfeit. The true successful woman is busy in her house.
Now, when it comes to Gemara, you have to know, Gemara is a special kind of limud. Gemara is a limud that’s not for practical purposes. Women have to know halachos. Nobody says women shouldn’t learn halachos; they have to know dinim. They don’t have time to learn all the dinim – there are dinim that are not noheg b’zman hazeh, but they have to know dinim.
So women who make a career of making halachos, nobody can say a word of criticism, only commendation. Women want to learn Tanach, Tanach is full of halachos, every word of Tanach is a halachah, it’s all halachah l’maaseh, it’s all Hilchos De’os, how to think and how to believe. So Tanach and halachos and mussar, Chovos Halvovos, Shaarei Teshuvah, Mesilas Yesharim, all the great mussar seforim, why not?
The Gra insisted that his daughters learn mussar seforim and he insisted all day long, they shouldn’t be idle any time. On Shabbos, only mussar seforim, the Gra says. All day long for his daughters. A remarkable thing.
Unless they’re busy taking dishes off the table, domestic science, but otherwise seforim of mussar. There is a lot for women to learn.
But Gemara, you have to know, is a special thing. Gemara is nothing l’maaseh. Of course it helps you understand the halachos, but the purpose of Gemara is דרוש וקבל שכר – study and you get reward for the mitzvah of studying. It’s supposed to be your lifetime occupation.
Now a man takes off a little time from his life to learn Gemara. I say a little time because everybody has to make a living. Not everybody is in a kollel and you can’t be in a kollel all the time. Only a minor part of the Jewish people can be kollel people. And therefore the Jewish nation is busy making a living. If you’re a farmer or an artisan, you’re busy most of the day. Part of your day you try to put in learning.
But a woman’s work never comes to an end. It’s a fact. And there’s no way of remedying that and you don’t want to remedy it. A woman doesn’t even sleep, she’s busy with her children and during the nighttime too. The husband has to get up too and help, but the women’s work is never done and she cannot afford to indulge in learning just for learning’s sake.
There’s another reason and that reason is, Gemara is always to be done with company. Always learn b’chaburah. And woman cannot have chaburos. Women are mostly home. And if women try to associate with a chaburah, they’ll gravitate towards male chaburos too and that’s poison.
Even if a girl and a boy sit down together and study Mesilas Yesharim, it’s playboy now. It’s not Mesilas Yesharim. They’re reading a playboy magazine. Every word they’re saying is playboy. You have to know that. That’s what’s in their minds. They’re thinking something else. They’re fooling the world.
And therefore, Gemara is perilous. Torah sheba’al peh means to come into the yeshiva and it’ll end up by a girl, a woman saying a shiur and here’s a whole chaburah of Modern Orthodox yeshiva boys listening to her and that’s a shechitah for Judaism. Boys are not supposed to look in the face of a girl or a woman and they’re supposed to be two different nations.
It’s only at home that a woman excels and sits with her husband. Or maybe in a girl’s school, that’s second best to a home. But women, once they start Gemara, it’s the open door to a career of mixing with males. And mixing with males is the opposite of success for a Jew, or a Jewish woman.
(March 1983)
