Women and Tefillin
That it is rare to see women or girls wearing tefillin today is a sign of a serious shortcoming in our education efforts over the last 20 years. Failing to encourage women and girls to wear tefillin not only is out of step with a modern engagement with halakhah but actively undermines the messages about equality that we work so hard to teach in our camps, schools, and synagogues.
Tefillin are a powerful symbol, a visceral sign that we bind ourselves to the pursuit of holiness and connection to God. But despite our egalitarian rhetoric, we will move forward only when we actively change the perception that wearing tefillin must be exclusively male, either legally or socially.
The greatest obstacle to women wearing tefillin is the sense – still powerful in our day – that it is just too foreign, too male, too unwomanly. In the words of Sara Horowitz and Gilah Langner, editors of Kerem: Creative Explorations in Judaism.
As women involved in egalitarian havurot [alternative congregations], who partake in synagogue life on equal footing with men, we were drawn toward the power of the daily physicality of wearing tefillin. At the same time, the “maleness” of tefillin put us off. We spoke to women rabbis and rabbinical students who accepted all male ritual obligations, but felt uncomfortable laying [putting on] tefillin. Having for years seen the black boxes perched on only male foreheads, the straps wrapped around only male biceps, the objects seemed foreign and exotic, even (or especially) to those of us who had grown up seeing them in daily use.
A similar sentiment has plagued attempts to promote tefillin use among female Ramah campers. Most summers, five or six 13-yearold girls wear tefillin every morning, yet two summers later, when they are 15, only one or two of them still do so. The others sheepishly explain that wearing tefillin is “not feminine” and has a negative affect on how they are perceived at a time in life when such issues are a burning concern.
Although halakhic questions about women wearing tefillin have been discussed often over the past decade, the issue still evokes a sense that the practice somehow is inappropriate.
The discomfort is clear in the language of two halakhic principles. The first, guf naki (cleanness of body), captures a widespread sense among medieval authorities that the holiness of sacred objects is marred by impurity, specifically from menstruating women. The second, kli gever (male garments), expresses the feeling that tefillin are a very masculine mitzvah.
The Talmud presents guf naki as a prerequisite for wearing tefillin and offers the story of the pious miracle worker Elisha the Master of Wings, whose tefillin were transformed into doves to help him evade Roman soldiers. Unfortunately, the Talmud here neglects to define guf naki. Subsequent tradition offers two explanations. The fact that Elisha the Master of Wings is offered as the paradigm of guf naki leads some to argue that it is a spiritual purity that is very difficult to attain. The Babylonian rabbis Abaye and Rava, however, understand it as a simple physical purity that anyone can attain –you should not sleep or pass gas while wearing tefillin (BT Shabbat 49a).
Rabbinic discussion of women wearing tefillin begins with a passage from the Mekhilta, an early midrash on Exodus: “All are obligated in tefillin except for women and slaves. Michal daughter of Saul wore tefillin, the wife of Yonah went up to Jerusalem for festivals, and Tabi, the slave of R. Gamaliel, wore tefillin.” There is a contradiction: Women and slaves are not obligated to wear tefillin but Michal and Tabi did wear them. We are told neither why nor what we are to learn. Are we to conclude that women and slaves may wear tefillin? Were these two permitted to do something that normally would have been forbidden?
The Palestinian Talmud adds the words “and the sages did not protest,” suggesting that women are indeed permitted to wear tefillin. Then it raises an objection – if the mitzvah does not apply to women then it should be forbidden to them! Rabbi Abahu emends the text to read “and the sages did protest.” The Babylonian Talmud, though, sees no such contradiction. It ends the story of Michal with “the sages did not protest.”
Early medieval commentators follow the Babylonian Talmud’s permissive ruling and reach the broader conclusion that women (and others) may perform all the positive time-bound mitzvot from which they technically are exempted, including sukkah, lulav, tzitzit, and shofar. Indeed, Rabeinu Tam sees tefillin, and in particular the story about Michal, as the proof that women may perform all ritual commandments from which they are exempt. All Ashkenazic scholars through the 13th century follow Rabeinu Tam.
The tosafot in 12th- to 13th-century France embrace this permission but note the Palestinian Talmud’s contrary view. Rashi, a century earlier, links the objection to women wearing tefillin to the principle of bal tosif – you are not allowed to add to a mitzvah by, for example, adding extra blessings to the amidah or shaking the lulav after Sukkot. But the tosafot are so convinced that the exemption does not imply a prohibition against performing a mitzvah from which you are exempt that they reject the possibility that this is a case of bal tosif. They search for an alternate explanation for the position and find it in the notion of guf naki.
The tosafot are the first to make the connection between guf naki and any issues of cleanliness particular to women. Indeed we learn elsewhere that impurity, including that associated with menstruation, is no impediment to handling sacred objects. It is a fair assumption that passing gas and dozing off know no gender boundaries. Guf naki simply is the only requirement mentioned in the Talmud for wearing tefillin, so it is the logical choice to explain the ruling.
It is the Maharam, Rabbi Meir of Rotenberg, a central pillar of German scholarship in the late 13th century, who challenges this consensus, suggesting that the law should follow the stringent approach. Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of the Shulhan Arukh, suggests that the Maharam simply wishes to account for both positions, which can be achieved by following the more stringent of the two. Rabbi Shlomo Luria takes the opposite view, arguing that even the sages in the Babylonian Talmud permitted Michal to wear tefillin only because of her great piety but never meant for the permission to extend to other women. It is not clear whether the Maharam thought of guf naki as a spiritual or a physical shortcoming, but in neither case is it clear why it would apply only to women. Later commentators, troubled by this problem, explain guf naki as a lofty spiritual purity that no one, male or female, can achieve. Even men are permitted to wear tefillin only because they are obligated to do so and only for the minimum time necessary.
Karo, following the view of the majority, omits the Maharam’s suggestion from the Shulhan Arukh. It might have become merely a footnote in halakhic history if it had not been accepted by Rabbi Moshe Isserles, author of the Ashkenazic gloss on the Shulhan Arukh, whose rulings exerted singular influence over the development of halakhah. Based on this endorsement, it was accepted by almost all subsequent Ashkenazic authorities.
The dearth of recent Ashkenazic authorities who challenge Isserles’ ruling leads many modern Orthodox rabbis to cling to the prohibition, but the argument to permit is stronger on both cultural and legal grounds. First, whatever the historical realities, it is certainly not the case in modern times that men are more physically or spiritually pure than women. Second, the Maharam’s view was an attempt to revive a position rejected by almost all medieval authorities. Despite its endorsement by Isserles, it has far less claim to legal authority than the opposing, permissive view. Third, the Babylonian Talmud explicitly dismisses the notion that tefillin require a level of spiritual purity that is beyond reach, an approach seemingly at odds with the very meaning of tefillin as a symbol that binds wayward hearts to God.
In the view of many of those who oppose any evolution in ritual practice, Isserles’ authority is absolute. Yet there are myriad instances where Ashkenazic practice does not follow Isserles or where later authorities explicitly repudiate his conclusions. The legal traditions of Judaism always have been understood as an ongoing conversation between generations. While different sages have enjoyed various levels of prestige, no single sage or text ever has been granted unchallengeable authority, thereby closing the door on future debate. On the contrary, we preserve minority opinions precisely because later scholars may have cause to reclaim them. In our day, certainly, the sea changes in women’s place in society and in our perception of women demand rethinking this issue.
The biggest halakhic obstacle to women wearing tefillin is kli gever. The phrase originates in Deuteronomy 22:5. “Male garments should not be on women, nor should men wear female garments, for those who do this profane God.” Even though early rabbis limit this principle to a disguise worn in order to consort inappropriately with the opposite gender, often it has been seen as restricting the wearing of any typically male or female clothing by the other group. The Targum Yonatan, an early Aramaic translation of the Bible, explicitly identifies the tallit and tefillin as classic “male garments” that women must avoid. This view is based not on any legal sources but on the social reality that women in talmudic times did not wear them.
Today, we reinforce the stereotype in ways both subtle and overt. In Ramah camps and Schechter schools, minyan advisers ask, “Do all boys have their tallit and tefillin?” The message is clear: Egalitarianism has its limits. Rahel Lerner and her mother, Dr. Anne Lapidus Lerner, were included in Frederic Brenner’s photo of women in tefillin. In the fall 2007 issue of the magazine Lilith, Ms. Lerner has a chilling description of her reaction to the picture. She writes, “As I looked at the picture over and over again, I felt used. I didn’t see myself in it, nor my mother, nor the other women I knew. Instead I saw the photographer’s projection of what women in tefillin must be like: angry. He hadn’t let us smile during the shoot – I did remember that – but I hadn’t foreseen the effect of our unsmiling faces. We looked, to me, like a caricature of angry, scowling feminists. I called it the Scary Amazon Women in Tefillin picture.” A woman wearing tefillin signals both super Jew and radical feminist. But our goal should be the opposite – to normalize tefillin so that it no longer feels intimidating, so that girls in tefillin are not making a statement but simply serving God.
Another obstacle for women who consider wearing tallit and tefillin often is they fear that once they start to do so they are obligated for life. This idea comes from a ruling in the Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 214:1, that if a person takes on a religious practice knowing that it is not obligatory and performs it three times, it then does become obligatory, even if he later decides he is uncomfortable with it.
This principle, called a hazakah, describes a situation in which the initial intent is to take on the practice permanently. When someone takes on a practice without a permanent intent, she does not create an obligation. The very fact that someone hesitates to begin wearing tefillin because she does not want it to become obligatory reveals that she does not intend it as a permanent practice. To be safe, it is proper for someone trying out the practice of wearing tefillin simply to state explicitly before beginning that she does not intend to make it obligatory, as suggested by the Shulhan Arukh. If she does that, all authorities would agree that there is no concern that she might obligate herself inadvertently.
Tefillin are not just objects. They are rich in symbolism, an ongoing, tangible sign of God’s covenant. In their physicality they convey powerfully the essence of the religious experience. The Talmud emphasizes tefillin’s unique ability to capture the duality of divine service: In binding God’s words to our bodies, we seek to devote our entire selves, mind, heart, and hand, to pursuing God’s vision for the world. The sense of being bound tightly to the Source of holiness is elusive for any modern Jew. We need the visceral experience of binding our tefillin. Wearing tefillin is not a male ritual. It is a symbol of covenant, an ot, given equally to every Israelite. As long as Judaism is widely symbolized by a ritual in which women do not participate, we confirm their secondary status in Jewish ritual life.
Opening doors for girls to share in boys’ practices will never be enough to achieve any real balance – it will remain a male practice if girls and women who choose it are perceived as masculine. Egalitarian communities must establish a culture where it is both the expectation and the norm that both girls and boys wear tefillin. There are already Schechter middle schools that make this demand; Ramah camps and Schechter high schools must be next. There will be some families that ask for exemptions, but when most parents accept this as policy tefillin quickly will cease being a social stigma. A central pillar of the traditional egalitarian community will be reinforced. Equal opportunity to participate in religious life carries with it equal responsibility to shape the identity and culture of that community.
We teach less by what we say to our children than by what we expect of them. If we ever hope to achieve a real sense of full and equal participation in communal life, we have to invest much more energy in making tefillin-wearing the norm for both men and women, beginning with our teenagers.
Rabbi Joshua Cahan is the director of the beit midrash and a PhD candidate in Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He has directed the Northwoods Kollel and beit midrash program at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin.
