Chapter 1 - Preparing For Children: Life Questions

A: Background

13. Critiquing the Traditional Position

However, the religious critique of this position is, it seems, based less on an argument with G-d and more on what men, as the primary interpreters of G-d's word, have done with the instruction book that they were given, namely the Torah. Critics point out that in the division of roles according to gender, almost all the prestigious ones have been assigned to men. Men are the almost exclusive stars of Jewish history in the public arena; all public functions within Judaism and the Jewish community have traditionally been seen as the exclusive preserve of the male sex. Moreover, the scholarly arena that has been the center of prestige and respect within the Jewish community since at least the destruction of the second Temple, has once again been assigned exclusively to the realm of the man. Men are responsible for the development of the liturgy where, for example, they are required to recite every day the blessing to G-d, "who has not made me a woman." The problem, according to this perspective, is largely sociological rather than theological.

Less traditional critics of the tradition have brought G-d into the argument, seeing the Divine texts as man-made and arguing that the very concept of G-d and G-d's deeds that has developed within Judaism is a result of male dominance and male construction of the sacred texts. As opposed to the account in Bereishit 1, these critics bring the additional, more detailed account of Bereishit 2, that sees Adam, a man, being created first and Eve, a woman, created out of a superfluous part of the man, as an afterthought in order to answer a male problem of cosmic loneliness (vv.7-25). All the inequalities that have developed within the Jewish tradition, according to this approach, must be seen as the responsibilities of the men who both wrote and interpreted the traditional texts.

We will not explore the argument any further here. Suffice it to say that those who see themselves as the official transmitters of the Jewish heritage and therefore responsible for explaining the Jewish texts, resolutely deny that there is a preference between the sexes in Judaism. The aforementioned blessing, thanking G-d for not making a man a woman, is explained as an appreciation of the fact that there are more positive commandments that are incumbent on a man and that therefore he has a greater (if more demanding) opportunity to serve his Creator every day. Officially, there is no admission at all that one sex of child is preferred over the other. Critics will continue to question this.