4-10 Mar

Q: Can a man nurse a baby?

ABSTRACT

In the current debate raging in academic literature on the differences between men and women, at one end are 'essentialists' who maintain that destiny is determined completely by biology. At the other end are 'difference deniers' who maintain that though there are a few physical differences between men and women, destiny is determined completely by cultural conditioning, and differences can be leveled out almost completely. Normative Judaism resolves this dialectic by incorporating these seemingly mutually exclusive views. The Torah expounds an axiom of dissimilar equality of the two genders. On the level of Creation, women and men have equal moral potential and responsibility. On the level of halakha (Jewish law), women do not have the same obligations as men do. The moral quality of a person's life is more important than his or her biological functioning.

There must be a Divine hint that gifts and attributes with which the Creator differentially endows the vast majority of men and women should find some expression in their respective life-roles. This is conveyed indirectly in a homiletic passage from the Talmud, in the following somewhat phantasmagoric agada.

Our rabbis related the following incident. A situation arose in which a man's wife died and left a baby to be suckled. He could not afford to pay a wet-nurse, whereupon a miracle was performed for him. He developed two mammary glands like those of a woman and he suckled his son. Rabbi Yosef observed, "Come and see how great was this man, that such a miracle was performed on his account!" But Rabbi Abayye demurred, disagreeing with Rabbi Yosef. "On the contrary: how lowly was this man, that the natural laws of Creation changed on his behalf!" Rabbi Yehuda observed, "Come and see how difficult it is to satisfy men's desires for livelihood that the natural laws of Creation had to be altered for him!"

At first blush it seems that according to this episode men can function in the role of mothers, even in that quintessential womanly endeavor of nurturing the young. However, as we see from the end of the passage, this is not about men stepping into women's shoes, but is about the Divine plan for a natural order of the world versus miracles that abrogate nature. Miracles make the rabbis uncomfortable; the Creator desires that the world, once set in motion, continue according to natural physical and biological laws. Miracles interfering with the Divine laws of nature are viewed negatively. Rabbi Abayye's opprobrium towards the disruption of nature in order to enable the widower to suckle his child reflects a normative Jewish attitude towards appropriate gender roles.

BIO
Shira Leibowitz Schmidt was raised in an assimilated Jewish home in New York, and became observant while studying at Stanford University in California. In June 1967 she told her engineering school professor she would miss the final exam because she was going to Israel to volunteer during the Six Day War. "That's the most original excuse I have ever been offered," he responded. She arrived during the war and stayed, receiving her BSc in absentia. She subsequently met and married the late Elhanan Leibowitz, and they raised their six children in Beersheba. Shira acquired a Masters in Urban & Regional Planning from the Technion, and an MSc in Civil Engineering from University of Waterloo. She remarried Dr. Baruch Schmidt, and they live in Netanya where she currently works as a translator and writer, and does volunteer work for the Shas Ha'maayan Torah day schools.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

B’OR HA’TORAH  is Published by SHAMIR
Professor Herman Branover, Editor-in-Chief