Understand this scrivener stands with Bet Shamai on most issues, see http://yohanon.blogspot.com/2011/09/shamai-that-you-never-knew.html.
If you never learned more about Shamai than the few words in Pirke Avot (פרקי אבות) - in which he is horribly given short shrift in comparison to his peer, Hillel, than "you don't know Shamai."
One of the current "tempests in a teapot" in Israel is "Women of the Wall," or "WoW" for short to appease hed (headline) writers.
As I understand it, these women go, monthly on Rosh Hodesh, to pray at the kotel, the Western Wall where the second Temple once stood - and where the abomination al-Aqsa now stands. Again, it is my understanding that they stand on the women's side of the mehitzah (מחיצה).
So far, no problem.
Trouble is, some of these women insist on a wearing tallit , and others both tallit and tefillin.
This troubles the haredim.
Women are not allowed these accouterments. They are the sole purview of males, and males older than 13 years and a day. The rabbis said so. Tallit and tefillin are "men's wear" and therefore, according to Torah (תורה שבעל-פי), forbidden.
The question, of course, is "when" did tallit and tefillin become strictly "men's ware?"
We are given to understand that (at least) one of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki's 3 daughters wore tallit and tefillin. Rabbi Shlomo is better known as Rashi. (According to a Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashi, "While some women in medieval Ashkenaz did wear tefillin, there is no evidence that Rashi's daughters did so.")
Of course, it must be admitted that Rashi's grandson, Rabbi Yakov ben Meir Tam, contested many of his grandfather's decisions; to this day, Ashkenazim and some Sefardim/Mizrachim attach mezzuzot at a slant ( \ ) to satisfy both Rashi, who stayed with the tradition of his time and fixed the mezzuzot upright ( | ) and Tam who wanted the mezzuzot horizontal ( - ). Many men - both Ashkenazi and Sefardi/Mizrachi - don two sets of tefillin, sometimes at once, to meet both the traditional/Rashi order of klaf and to meet Tam's revised order. (See http://ott.co.il/tefillin/tefillin-of-rashi-and-rabbeinu-tam/ for an explanation of the differences.)
In my mixed congregation - we have people following Egyptian, Moroccan, Syrian, and Turkish traditions (minhagim) - we have several Ashkenazi bachelors. None of there people wear a tallit except when they have a Torah honor. This begs the question: Is the tallit required at all? Among Sefardim and most Mizrachim, boys start donning a full (albeit boy-) size tallit early on; exactly when varies by minhag.
AN ASIDE: My wife - a Moroccan - likes the idea of unmarried men praying sans tallit; she also likes to see unmarried women sans hair covering. To her, this advertises who is "eligible" and who is not. Are all women match-makers at heart?
Shabat Rosh Hodesh Tamuz (Shabat Korah) 5773 saw the WoWs at the wall along with other observant women. There were no reports of conflicts among the women.
The haredi men, on the other hand - and I make a distinction between "haredi" and "observant" Jews - once again came to harass the women . . . women on their OWN SIDE OF THE FENCE. That smacks of hutzpa and it also tells me the men only insist on the mehitzah (מחיצה) when it suits them.
Unfortunately, the haredi men seem to think they ARE Israel and only what they want must be followed; they have become the ayatollahs of Israel. In the process, both at the Wall and elsewhere throughout Israel, these men are alienating "regular" Jews - observant and heloni (non-observant) to the point that the haredim are beginning to be held in contempt, and with them, the institutions they control.
Rather than arrange a marriage via the local rabbinute, Israeli Jews (continue) to marry outside of Israel or marry in a civil ceremony in Israel. It is not a matter of marrying a person with "questionable" Jewish bona fides, it's a matter of how the people applying for the rabbinical "stamp of approval" are received. In short, many are received in a manner foreign to Shamai as he is quoted in Avoth. For the record, I am fully in favor of proving Jewishness of both partners before a wedding. I don't care how each partner became Jewish - "accident of birth" or kosher-by-Rambam conversion - just that both are Jewish.
Personally, I do NOT like to see women in tallit and tefillin. I can't find anything that prohibits a woman wearing these accouterments, but being a "traditionalist" I simply am "uncomfortable" around women thusly appointed.
The reason women are exempt - critical word, "exempt" vs. "forbidden" - from tallit and tefillin is because both are "time sensitive"; that is, the related mitzvah must be performed after and before certain (proportional) hours. The rabbis of old, in their wisdom, believed that a woman with a baby cannot be expected to put down the infant or ignore a child while she is wearing tallit and tefillin, so they exempted women from such "time sensitive" mitzvoth. Makes sense to me.
My suggestion to the haredi - ignore the WoW. They won't "go away," but you won't get an ulcer and you might even find non-haredi start to appreciate you and your convictions. They still might not agree with you, but at least some sinat henam can be avoided.
Comments in English or Hebrew to: Yohanon dot Glenn at gmail dot com
