Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, has written a breakthrough study on the issue of women and timebound commandments. An academic study, the book focuses in depth on the Tannaitic and Amoraic sources related to this topic. As such, it is a multilayered, complex work that demands much effort on the part of the reader. Shanks discusses these texts in great detail—and, for those willing to make the effort, a wonderful intellectual treat awaits.
Shanks argues against the common understanding of the rule that women are exempt from timebound mitzvot. Most scholars assume that the rule is prescriptive and meant to determine women’s involvement with ritual. The prescriptive formula, however, is actually the way the rule is understood by later sources. Once this assumption is made, the sources search for rationales for the rule. For example, some traditionalists see the exemption of women from timebound commandments as due to their greater spirituality. To feminists, this smacks of apologetics.
Shanks makes the case that the rule is neither prescriptive nor motivated by a particular social vision of what women’s role should be. Rather, she claims that the rabbis were interested primarily in performing scholastic exercises that affirmed their status as masters of Torah. Technically, the rule was formulated as the exegetical conclusion of three rules about tefillin. This exegesis led to the rule about women being exempt from tefillin. Once this conclusion was reached, followed by similar conclusions regarding sukkah, lulav, and shofar, the rule became a marker. In each of these cases, women are exempted for reasons other than their being timebound.
Shanks further posits that women were exempt from Shema and tefillin because they were exempt from Torah study. For the rabbis, wearing tefillin and reciting Shema were both forms of Torah study. The key point is that Torah study for the rabbis was not just mastery of text. When the rabbis understood Torah study as the mastery of intellectual skills, they did not exempt women. However, they saw the essence of Torah study as the ritual means for a father to replicate his social and cultural identity through his son. Fathers do not teach their daughters because the daughters’ identity was socially determined by the men they married. Daughters would never be the paterfamilias of the next generation.
In a fascinating final chapter, Shanks discusses the implications of her conclusions for modern feminist thought. She states openly that “this book is not the bearer of ‘good news’ for feminists looking to find resources in classical texts for contemporary Jewish women.” The reason is that “undergirding the rule is an assumption that women are not central actors in the creation and perpetuation of the covenantal community.” This presents a problem: what to do when an earlier source does not provide support for Jewish feminist values.
Shanks suggests two solutions: One is based on the work of Tamar Ross, who claims that all Divine revelation is mediated through human lenses. She then argues that just as the initial message was authentically Divine, so can the modern feminist approach be seen as authentic. The interested reader would need to consult Ross’s Expanding the Palace of Torah.
Shanks herself makes another very interesting argument. In a sort of postmodern and ironic vein, Shanks posits that even though the rabbis excluded women from the beit midrash, their intellectual product is available to all in the form of rabbinic literature. When feminists engage with the texts, they are participating in the beit midrash from which they were excluded. They are in essence reproducing the covenantal community. Shanks reaches a wonderful paradoxical conclusion. She states, “When feminists re-animate the exercises that constituted ritual Torah study in the ancient beit midrash, they constitute themselves de facto as the next generation in the covenantal community forged by Torah study.” With this conclusion, Shanks transforms her own academic work from a scholarly treatise into a part of the modern feminist project.