The book of Mishlei (Proverbs) closes with a hymn to the woman of valor, the Eshet Chayil, which our Sages read as an exaltation of the feminine. Yet this exaltation clashes with the legal status that the halakhah (Jewish law) assigns to women, and Rav Raphaël Benizri refuses to present the poem without first laying bare this hidden side. This first session is therefore devoted entirely to the darkened picture: what the texts say about the daughter, the wife, her testimony, her inheritance, her obligations. The question it poses is simple and harsh: where does a woman’s dignity truly lie, if the law guarantees her almost nothing? The lecture is dedicated to the memory of the forty-five victims of the Meron disaster.
The Rav begins by piling up the harshest texts — the saying that likens a daughter to weeds found in the flour, the Tanhuma on the daughter as a poisoned treasure, the list of halakhic incapacities, the priority given to rescuing the man, the closing verdict of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), the morning blessing heard as an act of resignation. He does not try to soften them; he sets them down as a state of affairs that must be accounted for.
Then he turns the picture around. The Torah given at Sinai addressed a particular society and tempered abuses that were common at the time; it is not the Torah that Moshe reaches by ascending. From there the lecture takes up the account of creation — man fashioned outside the garden, woman within it — the nature of the ezer kenegdo (the “helper facing him”), the identity of the serpent, the purpose that the feminine gives to things, kingship as the seventh degree, and the merit of the women in the Exodus from Egypt. Questions from the audience then open onto women in the rabbinate, the exemption from time-bound commandments, and the gap between the law and the lived reality of families.
What this lecture teaches
It is impossible to present Eshet Chayil without first showing the hidden side of the legal status. The Rav states at the outset that he refuses to dress up the situation: he will begin by darkening the picture, and only afterwards present the poem. What must be laid out is a status that may well outrage today’s consciences, and that even now calls for corrections. The gap between the closing hymn of Mishlei and the law is not a misreading: it is the real difficulty of the subject, and one must pass through it.
The daughter is presented as a poisoned treasure for her parents. The Sages took a dim view of the birth of a daughter in the family: they expressed it through the image of weeds found in the flour, of vinegar found in the wine. The Tanhuma spells out the anxiety: one fears for her from her earliest years, one fears bad company; then one must wait for someone to ask for her hand, and nothing guarantees she will find a suitable match; once married, will she have children? As a mother, she remains at the mercy of a fickle husband or of some misfortune that could rob her of her happiness and her rights; and in old age she is suspected of unhealthy beliefs. Hence the conclusion: happy the parents who have only sons, woe to the one who has only daughters. The Rav recalls that when the Ark is opened, people still ask for sons — and he calls this scandalous.
This fear is justified by the fact that the law guarantees her practically nothing. From the halakhic standpoint, she does not inherit; her testimony is not taken seriously; she can neither judge nor rule. The Rav gives a striking example: when a woman converts, the immersion takes place, for reasons of modesty, in the presence of a woman — but the word of the attendant of the ritual bath is not enough. Rabbis must stand on the other side of the partition, be informed that the immersion was complete, and question her about her intentions. It is their declaration that makes the conversion valid.
Marriage is described as an acquisition that gives the man rights. It is the man who consecrates, and he consecrates with money; if she is the one who pronounces the formula, it is as though nothing had been said. The text rests solely on the man who takes. And this acquisition entitles him to her service: she washes his hands, his feet, his face; she works, and the fruit of her work belongs to her husband. Can she even go on honoring her parents as she would wish? No: that remains conditional on the will of the husband, whose authority comes before everything. The family is patriarchal; it bears the father’s name.
The incapacities extend far beyond family law. In the kehunah (priesthood), the privilege belongs to the man and the woman remains incidental. By strict law she could perform ritual slaughter, but the Rema writes that she should not be allowed to do so, and custom has the force of law. She cannot be a mohel (circumciser), although the law would allow it. May she wear the fringes, be called up to the Torah, take part in the zimun (the collective invitation to Grace after Meals)? These are all questions being stirred up today. And the search for leaven before Pesach — who knows the ground better than she does, after doing all the cleaning? Yet it falls to the man, on the pretext that a moment of negligence on her part cannot be ruled out.
In the face of danger, priority goes to the man. If two people are in danger, a man and a woman, the man must be saved first, because he bears an additional spiritual burden in the practice of the commandments. The exception is hostage-taking: if the captors are inclined to abuse the woman, then she takes priority. The Rav connects this with the end of the book of Kohelet, which finds woman more bitter than death, and with the blessing a woman recites in the morning, which sounds less like a blessing than like submission or resignation: she was made this way; she did not choose it.
The Torah given at Sinai first tempered the abuses of its time. It addressed societies in which the feminine was regarded as property, and it sought to give them a moral framework without cutting them off entirely from the surrounding customs. That is why the commandment “you shall not covet” places your neighbor’s wife alongside his ox and his donkey: not because that is what she is, but because that is how she was then perceived — as an object of desire and nothing more. Each party had to be reminded of their rights and obligations, so as to save the marital covenant and not leave it to arbitrary whim — whereas other traditions still allow a bond to be broken overnight.
But the Torah of Sinai is not the Torah of G-d. The first is the one that descends toward man; the second is the one Moshe reaches by climbing the mountain. It is no longer morality lowering itself to the level of human experience; it is man who, in search of G-d, raises himself to another perception — that of Rabbi Akiva, that of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. At that level, things are no longer seen through narrow-mindedness or the pettiness of legalism — which, moreover, is in constant evolution, including before today’s rabbinical courts.
Man is created outside the garden, woman within it: the garden is the feminine. That is where the feminine emerged, and it emerged in such a way that the relationship would no longer be side by side but face to face. Some have read ezer kenegdo as a diminishment: that is a misreading. When we say that G-d is my help, this does not mean He is my assistant; He is the one who builds me, who raises me up, who completes me and helps me fulfill myself. That is exactly what the man recognizes when he says: this one is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. The bone is the essence, what gives a being its stature and sets it upright.
The serpent is not a third party: it is man become serpent. The text says of it that it was the most cunning of all living creatures — more cunning, then, than man created in the image of G-d; the riddle dissolves once we understand that it is man himself. What he wanted was to possess the feminine entirely by subjecting it to the categories of good and evil and to pure logic. It is this tension that excluded him from the garden — that is, from the feminine in which he had been formed. Ever since, all of humanity has been trying to reconquer the feminine; but the woman has nothing to conquer — it is for the man to seek, and to consecrate.
“Behold, she is in the tent” does not mean she is in the kitchen. We tend to read the phrase as a domestic assignment. It says something else: she herself is the tent. She is the one capable of moving things, because she is perpetual creation. Comparing woman to the moon is not a mere figure of speech: she carries within her many generations of descendants, and this is not only renewal but evolution. It is in this light that we must hear the words addressed to Avraham: whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her voice.
Seven prophetesses are enough, because the seventh degree is kingship. There are not many women among the prophets, and there is no need for many: seven suffice, and the seventh degree is malkhut, kingship, which characterizes the feminine at the culmination of its evolution. Above all, feminine prophecy is not of the same nature as masculine prophecy: it is neither rebuke nor a call to order. It belongs to the intuition our Sages called an additional understanding granted to woman — an insight that goes to the heart of things and translates them differently into practice.
The feminine gives things their purpose. The prophet Eliyahu once revealed himself to Rabbi Yossi, who put to him the question that had been troubling him: how can G-d say of His creation that it is not good, when He had accompanied everything else with the verdict “good”? The answer: man reaps the wheat and brings it home — but can he eat it as it is? He plants the cotton, harvests it, brings it in — can he clothe himself with it? It is woman who turns the wheat into bread and the cotton into clothing; it is she who gives a soul to everything. Not that she serves as cook or seamstress: she gives a purpose, being herself the purpose of creation. Along the way, the Rav pauses over the letter that opens the word tov, “good”: its value is nine, just before the ten that completes everything, and our Sages say that once one reaches the ninth degree, no further effort is needed to bring about the tenth, which comes of its own accord.
The couple is monogamous at its origin, and it was by the merit of women that our ancestors left Egypt. To embrace the feminine in its uniqueness excludes sharing, save in exceptional cases — an illness that incapacitates the wife, a situation in which the law opened a possibility rather than having the husband look elsewhere; the ideal couple remains that of Yitzchak and Rivkah, since the line of Avraham passes through Yitzchak. As for the role of women in history, the Rav lists them: Batya, Pharaoh’s daughter, who saved Moshe; Miriam; the midwives. It was the women who refused to hand over their jewelry for the golden calf. It was they who laid claim to the land — the daughters of Tzelofhad fiercely demanded their share, the exact opposite of the spies’ attitude. To these one may add Huldah and Avigail. The place of the feminine in the unfolding of history thus leaves no room for doubt.
On this plane, equality is surpassed. If the law, within its narrow limits, left the feminine in the background, the Torah is what wrenches man free of his heaviness — and the prime mover of that wrenching is woman. She has become man’s inspiration, which is why it is said that one must love one’s wife as oneself but honor her more than oneself. That is the ultimate blessing a man can call down with all his strength, since the woman of valor is her husband’s crown. On this sentence the Rav breaks off the session, announcing that he will present the poem itself next time.
Time-bound commandments do not bind her, because her nature is different. Asked how a woman is to receive a commandment addressed to men, the Rav answers with the saying about the three brazen ones of creation — the rooster among fowl, the dog among animals, Israel among the nations. The Torah, with its six hundred and thirteen commandments, came to discipline this violence, this brazenness, this pride; woman does not need it, because she lacks these defenses, does not seek to push herself forward, and has a restraint and discretion of her own. She can reach her goals without it. Likewise, if education within the home was left to her, it is because that education — an education of the heart, not of the intellect — matters more than what comes from outside. The Rav also recalls that the Torah was offered to the women first, in a winning language, the language of the heart, before being offered to the men in harsher terms.
If the feminine is the language of the heart, why reduce it to the language of reason? This is the Rav’s answer to the question of women in the rabbinate. Love lies beyond justice; the Talmud is pure logic, a space where one scrapes at the letter, the word and the law until concluding that I am right and you are not — and he recalls that Rabbi Akiva’s twenty-four thousand students fell victim to that very spirit, whereas the houses of Shammai and Hillel disputed the law like enemies but did not let it divide them. The Zohar, by contrast, returns to the language of the feminine, which brings love into justice. It is therefore not a question of incapacity — the Rav insists that women are entirely capable: there are women in government and in the judiciary, and an Orthodox woman has sat on the United States Supreme Court. It is a matter of not laying down a general rule that would confine the feminine to logic alone.
The contempt attributed to the religious world cannot be generalized. One listener mentions a damning documentary; another replies that he lives in that world, that the women he knows there are fulfilled, and that one has little to learn from the secular world when it comes to respect — while acknowledging that some women there are mistreated, as elsewhere. The Rav does not settle the sociological debate: he sets aside the very word “religion,” which he says is human, not divine, and urges each person to stop reproducing the images and stereotypes of others and to be themselves. He ends with a comparison: the meeting of two people follows the four levels of reading a text — appearance, the hints given by gestures and speech, what the person says they think, and then what is discovered only by living together.
Full transcript of the lecture
— Rav Benizri, you may begin. — Yes, very good. Dear friends, good evening. Tonight’s lecture is dedicated to the memory of the forty-five victims of the Meron disaster, to the memory of my brother Shalom, of blessed memory, and of all our loved ones. I had promised myself to continue our reflection on Mishlei with you, but as you know, the book of Mishlei ends with a hymn to the woman of valor. And the way our Sages perceive it, it exalts the feminine to such a degree that it clashes with the status of the feminine in the halakhah. So I forbid myself, in a sense, from presenting Eshet Chayil to you as we see it and perceive it without first showing you the hidden side of that legal status — a side that may well outrage present-day, modern consciences, and that even today, despite everything, is undergoing corrections from various quarters.
Let us begin, then, with this statement of our Sages, who took a dim view of the arrival of a daughter in the family. They put it without hesitation: it is as though one had found weeds in one’s flour, vinegar in one’s wine. Such is a daughter among sons. Outrageous, isn’t it? And yet, says the book of Ben Sira, as quoted by the Talmud, […] the three are necessary for the world to endure — so why? The Tanhuma explains: a daughter is truly a poisoned treasure for her parents. For what reasons? One fears she may fall victim to someone from her earliest years; then bad company as she grows up, a lapse, let us say, on the carnal plane.
Then, when she comes of age, one must wait for someone to ask for her hand, and perhaps she will not find a suitable match. She marries — will she have children, or will she not? One is never at peace with her. Even when she has children, she remains at the mercy of a husband who may prove fickle, or of some misfortune that could rob her of her happiness and her rights. And so they concluded: ashrei mi she-banav zekharim — happy are the parents who have only sons, and woe to the one who has only daughters. I forgot one detail: when she grows old, she tends to give herself over to unhealthy beliefs — keshafim, the practices of sorcery; that is a fact.
At the opening of the Hekhal (the Holy Ark) we say ve-tehav li benin dikhrin — we ask G-d to give us sons rather than daughters. It is scandalous! There is a certain fear, justified by what? By the fact that the status of the feminine, from the legal, halakhic standpoint, guarantees her practically nothing in the end. Inheritance: she does not inherit. Her testimony is not taken seriously. Judging and deciding a dispute: she cannot. The text, of course, relies on biblical references to justify this status. And the aberration goes further: even when there is a woman candidate for conversion — and you know that conversion depends on total immersion in water — one would think that, for the sake of modesty, a woman should be the witness of that immersion and declare that everything was done according to halakhah. But no: the presence of the supervisor, if you like, the attendant of the mikveh (ritual bath), is not taken as gospel. Rabbis must stand on the other side of the partition, be informed that she has immersed completely, and question her about her future intentions — and that is what counts. It is on that basis that they declare her conversion valid. And at a wedding:
who is the mekaddesh, the one who consecrates? The man. The man […]. What is going on? Can she, for her part, ask him to marry her and consecrate him? If she says to him, harei ata mekudash li — “you are hereby consecrated to me” — it is as though she had said nothing at all. One relies solely on the text: ki yikah ish, “when a man takes.” It is the ish, the man, who takes. Very well, he takes: it is he who is mekaddesh, he who consecrates her, and he consecrates her with money. Now, why is it truly a kinyan? A purchase — yes, it is an acquisition, and an acquisition that will give him rights. Mark this: the woman places herself entirely at her husband’s service. You are going to laugh.
She washes his hands, she washes his feet, she washes his face; she works, and all the fruit of her labor goes to her husband; she is at his service, in her very person. Can she go on honoring her parents as she would wish? No, that is conditional on her husband’s will, because the husband’s authority comes before everything. It has been said that a woman is exempt from many of the Torah’s laws because she depends on the will of her father. What a scandal! The mother’s family […] — no, the family is patriarchal; it bears the name of the father; that is how it is seen. All of this indeed leads us to ask: where does a woman’s kavod, her dignity, truly lie? Is this kol kevudah bat melekh penimah — “all the glory of the king’s daughter is within” — not simply that of a homemaker who does the housework in place of a cleaning lady?
And I pass over the rest, for there are other restrictions — let us not even speak of the domain of the kehunah, the priesthood. The kohen is the man; he holds the entire privilege of the priesthood, and the woman, his wife, is incidental. Moreover, certain prerogatives, certain laws, have even been taken away from her. According to the law, a woman could slaughter a fowl or an animal, but it is the Rema who says that women should not be allowed to do so — and the minhag, the custom, has the force of law. She cannot be a mohel, although by law she could; but it is done this way because — no, it is not acceptable. We will not let a doctor who is a woman perform the milah, the circumcision.
A woman wants to wear the fringes — why not, if she is physically disposed to do so? Can she go up to the Torah and be called to the reading? These are questions that are being stirred up today. Why? It rather disturbs the male public. Well, I understand that it might disturb them if she is not suitably dressed, and so on. But that is how it is. Can she take part in a zimun at the table? No, that either. Can she perform bedikat hametz, the search for leaven? Here she is, having broken her back doing the Pesach cleaning. Who better than she knows where things are and what she has done? No: it is the man who must perform bedikat hametz. And he, coming home from work, has no idea what has been done. “Ah, but perhaps she had a lazy moment, a moment of negligence” — so we still will not trust her completely. And what may well scandalize: when a man and a woman are taken hostage, one looks at whether these captors are inclined to abuse the woman — if so, the woman must be given priority. Otherwise, no: it is always the man. For if two people are threatened in some accident, a man and a woman, the man must be given priority. The man must be saved first,
because he carries an additional spiritual burden in the practice of the mitzvot. You know what the book of Kohelet ends on: “I find woman more bitter than death” — such a negative judgment. “Whoever follows his wife’s counsel […]” […]. We then understand that the blessing the woman says in the morning — she-asani kirtzono, “who has made me according to His will” — is more a blessing of submission, a blessing of resignation: she was made this way; she did not choose it. Well, let us be serious. You know that the Torah, as it was given when G-d descended upon Mount Sinai toward man, tempered all the abuses that were common currency in the civilizations — the great civilizations — of the time.
The Torah sought to give them a framework that would not cut them off completely from the ways and customs of the surrounding society, and it tried to give them a moral foundation, so that the feminine would not be perceived as it is in the Ten Commandments — lo tahmod: you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife as you covet his ox or his donkey. But she is not that. Then why put her in the category of the ox and the donkey, of possessions? Because that is how she was perceived. When she is an object of desire in society and nothing more, then there it is: lo tahmod — in the eyes of others she stands on the same level.
That, then, is the Torah aimed at the common people, at the base, where one and the other must be reminded of the limits: what rights they may actually claim and what their obligations are, in order to save at all costs the household, the covenant, and not leave it to each person’s whim — as was the case then, and as it is today in certain religions, where one can indeed decide to break a bond overnight, without anyone being the wiser, can one not? There is a minimum that is guaranteed. But let us not forget that there is a difference between the Torah given at Sinai and the Torah of G-d. The Torah of G-d is not the Torah that was given at Sinai.
The Torah of G-d is the Torah that Moshe reaches by making the ascent of Mount Sinai. It is he who goes up to G-d; it is not G-d who comes down to him. It is not morality placing itself at the level of human experience; it is man who, in search of G-d, truly tries to raise himself to a certain perception of things — that of Rabbi Akiva, that of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai — and then things are perceived differently. Not with narrow-mindedness, not in legalism and its pettiness — for that legalism and that pettiness, as we can observe, are in constant evolution, and today this is no longer the case, even before the rabbinical courts — but with a moral reach of a higher elevation — one by which the feminine is perceived […].
Man is created outside the Garden of Eden; woman is created inside the Garden of Eden. That says everything: the Garden of Eden, for man, is the [feminine]. The feminine emerged there, because that is where the feminine emerged, and it emerged in such a way that the relationship would no longer be side by side but face to face — an inwardness, panim el panim, face to face. And at that moment the woman becomes ezer kenegdo. There are those who have seen this ezer as a diminishment. But no, ezer is not a diminishment […]. When you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is my ezer, my help, that does not mean He is my assistant. On the contrary: He is the one who builds me, who raises me up, who realizes me, who completes me entirely, who helps me fulfill myself.
And that is what the man recognizes at the outset: from the moment she was made, fashioned by the hand of G-d, he says, yes, this woman is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones. […] The flesh, yes, but the bone is the essence: it is what gives a being its stature, what sets it upright on its feet. And basar mi-besari, “flesh of my flesh,” is what constitutes, on the outside, all the values I can carry and express. And so, in passing, one comes to realize something about the feminine throughout the Bible: it is not the woman who caused the man’s downfall; it is the man who caused the woman’s downfall. For who is this nahash? Who is this serpent that seduced the woman?
Come now: this serpent, hayah arum mi-kol hayat ha-sadeh, “was more cunning than every beast of the field” — this serpent is truly the most cunning of all, more cunning than man, who was created in the image and likeness of G-d? No: this serpent is none other than man who has become a serpent. It is man who wanted to possess the feminine entirely by subjecting it to the categories of good and evil and of pure logic. And by that very act he found himself in a state of tension that excluded him from the Garden of Eden. Excluded from the Garden of Eden — I said a moment ago that the Garden of Eden was the feminine, because that is where he was realized, where he was formed. Leaving the Garden of Eden, it is this man turned serpent, this serpent-man, who condemned all of humanity to try to reconquer the feminine. But who must do the conquering? The woman has nothing to conquer; it is for the man to conquer.
It is for the man to seek the feminine, for the man to consecrate the feminine — but in another dimension, the dimension in which the feminine becomes his muse, the one who inspires him. Kol asher tomar elekha Sarah, shema be-kolah — “whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her voice.” At this stage — whereas we first tended to understand hinneh va-ohel, “behold, she is in the tent,” as if one were saying “she is in the kitchen” — no: she herself is the ohel, the tent. She is the one who is truly capable of moving things, because she is perpetual creation. Comparing woman to the moon is not simply a figure of speech.
No: […] she is the one who can carry in her womb many generations of descendants, so that there is renewal — and not only renewal, but evolution. That is how she is realized. And indeed, how many do we count? We do not count many prophets among women; we do not need to. For a woman to be a prophetess — seven, seven are enough for us. The seventh degree is malkhut, kingship. And kingship is what characterizes the feminine at its seventh — at the seventh degree of its evolution. I will come back to this in Eshet Chayil. Feminine prophecy, unlike masculine prophecy, is not rebuke, not a call to order. It is the feminine that is endowed with this intuition, as when our Sages said binah yeterah ba-ishah, an additional understanding in woman — an intelligence, let us say, an insight, a gift for going to the heart of things and translating them differently into practice. For when the prophet Eliyahu revealed himself one day to Rabbi Yossi — how long Rabbi Yossi had awaited this visit! — he could find no other question to ask him than the one that constantly troubled him.
Which was it? Lo tov heyot ha-adam levaddo, “it is not good for man to be alone.” How can G-d say of His own creation that it is not good? He is the one who created man; He is the one who gave — and this man was at once man and woman. And then it is He who says this, whereas for all of creation He said that everything was good; He accompanied it with that verdict. “Good” — you know that the letter tet, the letter of tov, is the ninth degree, before the tenth that completes everything. Our Sages say that when one reaches this ninth degree, there is no need to make an effort to attain the tenth: it presents itself; it comes to be added of its own accord. The ten adds itself — which is incidentally why the yod, the tiniest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is this addition: it is the one that presents itself, that reveals itself to man of its own accord once man has followed this evolution of the nine utterances, the nine cycles, the nine months from his conception until he emerges, makes his crossing, and comes into the world.
When I see that He who created man — forgive me — said of His creation lo tov, what does [Eliyahu] tell him? Eliyahu the prophet answers: man goes out and brings everything home — he has reaped, he has brought it all in — but can he eat it as it is? He has also planted the cotton, he has gathered it, he has brought it in — can he clothe himself with it? No. Know that it is woman who turns this wheat into bread, this cotton into clothing; it is she who gives a soul to everything. And as long as the feminine had not been created, that is what was missing. But this does not mean she did the work of a seamstress or a cook in preparing her bread or her cotton. Not at all. It means she gave things their purpose.
To give a purpose — that is the hallmark of the feminine, which is itself the purpose of creation. And that is why the couple is monogamous at its origin. Yes, that is how it must be understood. The first man who took two wives was Lemekh […], and he remained stuck with that label […], because to embrace the feminine in its uniqueness requires [exclusivity], save in exceptional cases of illness, where things evolve differently. So there might be two wives because one of them had in fact been struck by an illness, immobilized, become an invalid, unable to respond to anything. Rather than going to look elsewhere, there was legally a possibility of taking a second wife — but these are very specific cases. The ideal couple we have is a monogamous couple, that of Yitzchak and Rivkah, because for us the reference for zera Avraham, the seed of Avraham, is Yitzchak Avinu — it is Yitzchak, who took Rivkah. And whenever we see how these women intervened, how they made their mark on history, on the unfolding of the history of Israel, we can say that the place of the feminine is indeed decisive in our evolution. That leaves us no doubt at all, since bi-zekhut nashim tzidkaniyot yatzu avoteinu mi-Mitzrayim — it was by the merit of righteous women that our ancestors left Egypt.
It was Batya, the daughter of Pharaoh, who saved Moshe — not to mention Miriam, not to mention the midwives. It was the women who laid claim to the Land of Israel; it was the women who refused to part with their jewelry, their ornaments, for the sin of the golden calf. The daughters of Tzelofhad fiercely demanded their share in the Land of Israel, in contrast to the attitude of the spies. And later we shall learn from other women too, such as Huldah, […] and Avigail — figures of thought I will recall in the study of Eshet Chayil. But this is simply to say that if, on the plane of justice, within its narrow limits of thought, the feminine was left somewhat [in the background], on the contrary the Torah is what wrenches man free of his heaviness.
And its prime mover is woman. We can say that in this domain equality is surpassed — surpassed in fact. She has become man’s inspiration. That is why one must love one’s wife as oneself but honor her more than oneself. That is truly the ultimate blessing a man can merit, that a man can call down with all his strength, because eshet chayil ateret ba’lah — the woman of strength, the woman of valor, is truly her husband’s crown. So I will stop here this evening, because I did not want to dress up the situation for you by presenting Eshet Chayil. I began by darkening the picture for you, and next I will present Eshet Chayil itself.
So if you have questions, I will gladly take them. — Rav Benizri, it is not exactly a question I have, but indeed… — A little louder. — Rav Benizri, it is not exactly a question, […]. I just wanted to say that I am glad there will be another lecture on Eshet Chayil, because personally, having recited it so many times, I have always found that Eshet Chayil — at least what it was meant to say — was out of tune with what I saw around me in the traditional world. — I myself am presenting it to you in that way now. — Yes, that is what I hear, and that is what I think too.
— But listen: if you see it as out of tune, it is simply — forgive me for putting it this way — that you have put yourself in the shoes of that world which, under the guise of having granted the feminine all these rights, goes on trampling it with all due politeness and all the necessary hypocrisy. Yet, after all, Devorah the shofetet was a judge. Beruriah had authority to rule over her husband, [Rabbi] Meir. The daughters of Rashi — you know that Rashi had no sons, only daughters — but his daughters were more than scholars: they are cited as halakhic authorities. Unfortunately, we perceived the feminine as others did, and we left it within that framework, within that small frame of vision, because one could not, overnight, tear the children of Israel away from the pollution of Egyptian culture. That was impossible. Just as an intense light blinds, so too a teaching of great intensity, which the small mind of a child or adolescent cannot receive, makes him impervious to receiving anything at all. That is what happens. Now the Torah, as it was given at Mount Sinai, wanted to place itself at man’s lowest level. Afterwards, man made it his own Torah. And as he learns, it becomes his Torah. Yet his Torah at twenty is not his Torah at thirty, nor at forty — until the moment when his Torah is no longer his Torah but becomes Torat Hashem, the Torah of G-d, capable of such a spiritual flight that even the angels, who are entirely fire, cannot [touch] that fire — the fire man produces on the spiritual plane — without being burned. That is the true Torah: va-ya’al Moshe, “and Moshe went up.” For Moshe, as he ascends, is not content with the Torah revealed by the Holy One, blessed be He, to a people still nailed to the foot of the mountain, a people incapable of climbing it, of going up, because it is afraid of dying.
That is why, even when G-d spoke, we are told that at each word — at each utterance — they lost their souls and only afterwards recovered them; in other words, even at that level they were not able to accept what was being said to them. It was already beyond their understanding. — May I ask a question? — Yes. — Good evening, Rav Benizri. Even so, I wanted to ask this question. The commandment is addressed to the man. — Yes. — The problem is not the feminine as such. The problem is sometimes the feminine in its relationship with the Torah. When I read this commandment, it is not addressed to me — or else, how is it addressed to me? — I did not hear the last sentence.
— The commandment, lo tahmod and so on. The commandments are given to women as well. How should women take this commandment? — Ah, very good. There is a saying of our Sages: there are three brazen ones in creation — among fowl, the rooster; among animals, the dog; among the nations, the people of Israel. That is to say, the Torah was given only to discipline this violence of being, this brazenness, this pride — which is why the Torah, with its 613 mitzvot, concerns only the man. But the woman has no need of the 613 mitzvot. Why? Because her nature is entirely different. She does not have those defenses; she does not go about seeking to push herself to the front. She has a certain restraint, a certain discretion.
And so for her, when it is said mitzvot aseh she-ha-zeman gerama nashim peturot — women are exempt from positive commandments conditioned by time — it is because, from the outset, they are not concerned. They can reach their goals without them. And for that reason all the mitzvot of the Torah relate more to the man. — Kevod ha-Rav, could you… […] — But I am the hazan, the cantor, of the Holy One, blessed be He; I am not His rough draft. I am the expression of His voice. […] And so even this education, which was not [formally] entrusted to her but left to her within the home — that is because this education within the home is far more important than the education the child may bring in from outside the home.
That education is an education of the heart, not an education of the intellect. And that is why — you are right — lo tahmod is addressed more to the man and not to the feminine. Yes, another question. — Kevod ha-Rav, is it true, is it correct, that Moshe Rabbeinu presented the Torah to the women first? — That is right: koh tomar le-veit Yaakov ve-taggid li-venei Yisrael, “thus shall you say to the house of Yaakov and tell the children of Israel.” The Holy One, blessed be He, began with the women: had the women not accepted the Torah, the acceptance of the children of Israel would have had no meaning. For the house of Yaakov He said amirah, tomar — the gentle language, the language of persuasion, the language of the heart. Ve-taggid — devarim ha-kashim ke-gidin, “words as hard as sinews”: for that one must take the whip to educate, the bull’s pizzle. We ourselves were educated with that […] in the heder: the teacher had a bull’s pizzle […]. If our concentration wavered, we saw that bull’s pizzle come down on our shoulders. — A bull’s pizzle, really? — Yes. You realize, that was the era; those were the times.
Which goes to show that there is always an evolution, always a new way of seeing things, and ahead there is this perpetual ascent of the human being. So that man does not need to be locked up in a prison; there is no need to do violence to him, no need to [coerce] him — he is himself capable of understanding and of adhering. And the child in adolescence rebels against everything too. One must not judge them without [taking account of] the opposition they show toward whoever would give them a teaching foreign to their own nature. — Yes, Rav Benizri, good evening. You say that there is indeed an evolution, that we evolve, that the Torah was given at a certain period, and that the roles of men and women were set according to what surrounded us at the time of the Exodus from Egypt, so as not to estrange people too much from the cultures they knew. Nowadays everything has evolved, everything has changed. It is said that behind every successful man there is a woman. So why, since they have this sensitivity, this innate intelligence, and since they also have the ability to learn — why, in Judaism today, do we not find them in the rabbinate, as rabbis as well? Why not allow them to hold these roles today, when they too could have an important influence on each person’s life?
— Well, I will tell you; here the answer is very simple. Love lies beyond justice — we agree on that. If the feminine is the language of the heart, why must it be reduced to the language of reason? It is beyond that language. Justice is justice. The Talmud is the Talmud. The Oral Law — you enter a logic that does not let you go, that does not leave you, in the end, any space in which […]. Well, never mind, I will leave that. No. The Talmud is a study […]. You realize that our Sages say that [the houses of Hillel and Shammai] were like oyvim, like enemies, as they disputed the law — but they ended up as ohavim, as those who love one another.
They ended up that way, so as not to let this law divide them, this justice divide them. The Oral Law is pure logic; it is not […] — the law of the Zohar, that is, the law of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. Indeed, last week I had occasion to say that the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who perished fell victim to this spirit — this spirit of scraping. One scrapes at the letter, one scrapes at the word, one scrapes at the law, and then one decides that I am right and not you; and the other says no, he is the one who is right. Whereas in the Zohar of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai we come back rather to this language of the feminine, which is all love — rahamim ba-din, bringing the notion of love into justice. That, then, is what one does not want […], symbolically. Besides, nowadays there are, in a sense, people — in government and in the judiciary too — it is a fact that there are women, and there could well be many women in […]; no one is stopping them.
You know very well that there is an Orthodox woman on the Supreme Court of the United States, don’t you? And she comes from a Hasidic background, hard-core. So there is no contradiction; it is simply that one does not want to lay down a general rule that would reduce the feminine to this mathematical logic alone. It must be allowed to express itself differently. Now, if you want to do it, you can do it — who is stopping you? There was a time when the Orthodox withdrew because a ministerial post had been entrusted to […] the first woman who rose to become prime minister of Israel. Today no Orthodox party leaves the government, even though perhaps Ayelet Shaked will hold that post tomorrow.
— Yes, but if they are capable in politics, and the Orthodox have no problem with them in politics, then by the same reasoning they may be just as capable — not only with love, but also with the intellect — of judging and of being rabbis. — No, I am not saying they are not capable; you are distorting my thinking. On the contrary, they are very capable. — Then where is the problem? — The problem is that we want them as prophetesses; we do not want them as […]. — Rav Benizri, isn’t it also linked to the fact that they do not master the function? — I cannot hear […]. — Isn’t it also linked to the fact that they do not master the function?
— Ah, no, really! In fact there is a whole series of mitzvot given to men because they master the function. Doesn’t this notion of mastering the function come into play in the reasoning here? — I heard half of it; the other half I did not hear, so I cannot answer. Excuse me — a little louder, a little stronger. — I was saying: the fact that women do not master the function — in general, all these mitzvot given to men also stem from the fact that they master the function, and women do not always master the function. Doesn’t that also come into the reasoning? — Yes, it certainly comes into it, but that is not the essential reason. I say that the essential reason is that the feminine is capable of more — so why keep it solely within this [limited] outlook?
On the contrary, let her have the corners with the fringes — of course she can do it, of course. — May I possibly ask a political question? — A political question. Yes. — Rav Benizri, a few years ago Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz wrote a book about women and the place of women. — Yes, indeed. — And he was, let us say, threatened, and he was politely asked by certain authorities here in Israel to withdraw his book from sale. Do you know what happened with Rabbi Steinsaltz, […]? And what came of that story? He was asked to withdraw the book. I have read that book.
— I already have it — I have it, in fact. — When I wanted to buy it, it was no longer possible, and I was told it had been withdrawn under threat. — I can photocopy it for you. — Why, is he Orthodox? — The reproduction rights are no longer protected on that book if it has been withdrawn from sale! — But why did they threaten him? Do you know why? I don’t know. — I don’t know… because he presented all the women of the Bible in […]. — Oh, you know, that is a problem. Today, either they recognize you or they do not, don’t they? There are currents in Judaism that do not tolerate one another.
It is like so many disciples of rabbis who […]. Yet one must accept the other — in the same way that with your children you make accommodations, because they have a different opinion, a different view of things. You do not impose your way of seeing and doing on them; you accept it and try to understand. Unfortunately, that spirit of openness does not exist, on the pretext that the best way to preserve the law is not to yield an inch of the text — and not only of the text, but even of the dress. If white socks are required, white socks are required. If a frock coat is required, a frock coat is required. Well, we are not going to go on about frock coats. Another question. — Well, thank you, Rav Benizri, for sharing your vision of women. I must say it is a very humanist vision, very enlightened and enlightening, very humanist — but even so, one cannot say that it is, unfortunately, the vision of many religious people, or of many ultra-Orthodox. Just the day before yesterday I saw a documentary on Mea Shearim; the contempt for women was simply frightening. One has to acknowledge it. — Nathaniel, I beg you: in spiritual growth, be yourself — that is enough for me. There was a time when we played with transfer stickers. If we go on playing with transfer stickers as adults, reproducing the images and stereotypes of others, there will be no end to it. Let us drop it. Let us be creative. Isn’t that so, Eric?
— Yes, I agree with you completely. — But even more creative! The Talmud does say, concerning women — the Talmud says […]. It is a construction, an edifice; it is not a mere mathematical intelligence. It is a conception. You know, all the spheres are feminine: the spheres of thought, the sphere of creation, the sphere of nobility — these are feminine. Shabbat is masculine in French; in Hebrew it is feminine. The Torah is feminine. Torah she-be’al peh, the Oral Law, is masculine […]. And that is why the feminine is barred from access, because that is the limit. Nevertheless, there are women who are scholars of a very high level, and no one excludes them. There you are, my dear friends; I will see you next week.
— Could I ask you one more question, Rav Benizri? There is this woman rabbi in France who is very famous, who often appears […]. What do you feel about the fact that this woman is a rabbi, that she is recognized and accepted, and that the media often feature her to show that there is indeed something different — a feminine way of seeing things, but just as serious as if it were a man? Is she accepted by the rabbinate in general, could she be? — She is brilliant, absolutely brilliant. — And who is it — whom are you talking about? — Delphine Horvilleur, is that right, Eric?
— Sorry? — Yes, that’s it, Delphine Horvilleur, yes, exactly. — There we are, Delphine Horvilleur. — I do not know her. The name rings a bell. — But she is a real philosopher, a real… — Yes. Listen, she is the rabbi of which community? — She is a rabbi in France, I don’t know. Nathaniel may know. — She is Liberal. — She is Liberal. Well, then here we fall into […]. Let us put things back where they belong. She could not be a rabbi anywhere other than in those circles. — No, but listen: if we scatter into different currents and different […] — it is true, indeed, that we need a general authority, we need a gathering together. As long as we have not recovered the authority of the Sanhedrin, it is difficult to create…
…and to make changes, to undertake changes that may well hasten the disintegration of the whole unity of the Jewish people, which is not easy. Besides, today, on the political level, we see what that leads to. So what would it be on the [religious] level? — What about the personality of Nechama Leibowitz? — Sorry? — What do you think of the personality of Nechama Leibowitz? — Nechama Leibowitz — listen, Nechama Leibowitz is in the pure tradition. You know, I took my first steps in Jewish thought with Nechama Leibowitz, and I respect her as a master of thought. Her brother, you know, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, is far more audacious than she was. But I confess that she has a refined intelligence that deserves to be studied in depth.
But you know, let us start from the principle that […]. Even when I am given a teaching, I am asked, “Do you accept the copies?” — I don’t want them, but I have to, otherwise I am turned away. Set all that aside a little; that is what matters. — Just one small thing to finish, if I may. It concerns the comment by Yves — Yves de Latour, I don’t know how the name is pronounced. — I don’t understand Yves’s comment. — […] — No, what I wanted to say is that when you were speaking about the status of women among religious people — I know the status of my own wife, but also that of a great many religious friends in Israel.
And I think that when it comes to respect for women, respect for women’s rights and respect for women’s fulfillment, we do not have much to learn from the secular world. I think there is far less disrespect toward women in the religious-Zionist world of the kippot serugot, the knitted kippahs — I speak of the knitted kippahs because that is the world I live in — than in the secular world in general. So when I am told “the status of women among the religious,” it gets my hackles up — because there are religious people of every kind, of every shape. On the other hand, people who talk about the religious generally know nothing at all about the life of religious people, because they have never lived there.
Even when we speak of our religious people — I have seen friends in Bnei Brak, and their wives are fulfilled. So when you talk about “women among the religious,” it seems to me a cliché, and it seems to me really superficial and entirely out of place — even if, obviously, among the religious as in the other group, there are women who are mistreated […]; that is beyond doubt. But when you speak of “religion,” I do not recognize myself in it. — Just a small word from our tradition… — The “religious” — I abhor it. I abhor it. Let us speak of spirituality, let us speak of something else. Religion is human; it is not divine. — I just wanted to add a small word: in our tradition, woman is a pearl. The word peninah — penimah means “within,” peninah means “a pearl.” Yes, in our tradition woman is a pearl. — We will come back to that — but it depends on how much you buy it for, what price you pay for it.
[…] — Yes, penimah and peninah are very close words. — We are a little naive, a little naive. I was telling a group of girls, young women, to whom I give a class on Monday evenings — you know, when you go on a shidduch, right? You meet a young man, or a young man meets a young woman. So, first, the first glance: you have seen how he presents himself. That is the peshat, the plain meaning. You have seen the person: does he make an impression on you or not? Then the person starts to speak, walks in front of you, and you see a little in their movements, in their way of speaking: do they lisp, do they stammer? Then, in the end, you want to go to the heart of things: what does this person think? So that was the remez — the remez was the allusion; the derash was what the person thinks: they tell you what they think — “these are my ideas, these are my aspirations” — and the young man likewise. But now, do you think you know everything? No, because each of you has hidden things and has not revealed them. Consequently, you will discover those things later, when you live with the person. That is the sod, the secret. The sod is discovered — the depth of the text; one pushes the text, and at that point we are putting it to the test, and it too puts us to the test. So we discover each other, in both the literal and the figurative sense.
There you have it: that is the Pardes — peshat, remez, derash, sod — which goes to show that even at the most down-to-earth level it holds true. And good evening. — Thank you very much, Rav Benizri. Good evening. — Thank you, good evening. — Thank you, good evening. Thank you very much. — All the same, I keep coming back to the links I saw.
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