The Knotty Problem of Obligation
The mitzvah of tzitzit (ritual fringes), discussed in the final passage of this week’s Torah portion, has traditionally been understood as a mitzvah observed by men and not women. The Talmud, however, reports that “Rav Yehudah would tie tzitzit on his wife’s garments” (Menahot 43a). A few lines below, the following dispute is recorded: “All people are obligated to wear tzitzit: Priests, Levites, Israelites, Converts, Women, and Slaves. Rabbi Shimon exempts the women…” The majority position, at least in this place, seems to believe that women as well as men are required to put tzitzit on their four-cornered garments.
The question of tallit, tefillin, and women’s participation in mitzvot has returned to the forefront of Jewish discourse this year, spurred by a series of essays last fall questioning the extent of the Conservative Movement’s commitment – in deed, and not just in word – to egalitarianism; the recent decision of two Modern Orthodox day schools in New York to allow some female students to wear tefillin; and, most recently, by the acceptance in April of Rabbi Pamela Barmash’s teshuvah (ruling on contemporary Jewish practice), which places equal obligation in all mitzvot upon women and men, as an official position of the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards.
There is not room here for a full consideration of Rabbi Barmash’s teshuvah and the many responses it has elicited from her colleagues, but for those who are interested I am preparing a longer treatment that I will post to my Facebook page (www.facebook.com/rabbiabe) shortly. For our purposes here, the key issue at the heart of the latest debate centers on the question of mitzvot and obligation: what do we understand ourselves to be doing when we perform a mitzvah? Is a mitzvah the “King’s decree” that the traditional sources describe? Are all mitzvot voluntary in our generation? Are we stuck choosing between an ever more anachronistic metaphor – most of us have never known a King or his decrees – and a framework of individual discretion that separates us from our ancestors?
I believe there is a third option, a way out. My teacher, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, notes that the Aramaic word for mitzvah – tzavta – also means “connection.” In his recent book God of Becoming and Relationship, Rabbi Artson writes that “While most contemporary Jews don’t believe in a God who verbally issues commands, most do recognize that mitzvot connect them to the divine… What if we said what we truly believe, which actually makes sense of our patterns of practice? We affirm that mitzvot connect us to God; link us to Torah and the best of Jewish values; forge a relationship between our individual lives, families, and those of the Jewish people around the world and across the ages” (p.98).
In other words, what if mitzvot were obligations – just not obligations imposed upon us by an external, dominating authority. What would it mean, instead, to conceive of mitzvot as a set of obligations that we take upon ourselves as part of mutual relationships: between ourselves and the Divine, with other Jews in our community and around the world, and with the generations of Jews who have passed on and the generations yet to come.
For me, these are the most important questions raised by the current debate over the role of women in our communities.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Abe Friedman
