THE MISHNAH

This Mishnah presents the other half of the first zug, the first pair of Rabbinic leaders. Last Mishnah we saw Yose b. Yo`ezer’s discussion of the importance of having talmidei hakhamim in one’s household. Yose b. Yohanan takes a different perspective of the household. He says "have your house be wide open, let poor people be (or feel) like members of the household, and do not speak excessively with your wife. This was said about one’s wife, all the more so for someone else’s wife. From here, the Sages said: anyone who speaks excessively with a woman damages himself, and will become idle from the study of Torah, and in the end, inherit Gehinnom." Maharal has 2 basic questions in this Mishnah: First, what is the connection among the three main elements—the open house, the poor, and the talk with women? Second, even if we explain the prohibition against talking with women, why should it lead to perdition (Gehinnom)?

FOCUS ON THE HOUSEHOLD

Maharal connects the three by looking back to the previous Mishnah. Yose b. Yoezer had begun the discussion by teaching people how to develop ideal households—having talmidei hakhamim around. Now Yose b. Yohanan continues the lesson in running a household—have it be wide open in general. One of the dividends of an open house will be that the poor will feel comfortable there, and will be willing to take advantage of your hospitality. If you didn’t have an open household, however, then they would know that the meal or food they are being given is alms, and the food would taste of charity, rather than friendship.

Focusing on the household opens the door to Maharal’s discussion of women. Maharal suggests that the Mishnah means to limit talking to one’s wife even about household matters. Since Maharal—as we’ll see in a moment—believes that a man should trust his wife’s opinion in such issues, the point of the Mishnah’s limitation is that even in areas where women are the experts, conversation with them should be limited.

MAHARAL’S VIEW OF SPEAKING WITH WOMEN—INTRODUCTION

Before we study Maharal’s view as to why men should limit their conversation with women, some caveats so as to limit how offensive the next few paragraphs appear to modern readers. First, let us note that Maharal is writing to explain a Mishnah; while there may be options in explaining this Mishnah other than the one Maharal chose, it is still true that he believed he was transmitting the Mishnah’s intent in how we should conduct ourselves. Second, Maharal clearly believed that men and women had different natures, with man’s being more focused on ultimate issues than women’s. The point, though, was for each to live up to their natures as best possible. I would note that Maharal’s ideas were not sexist in the sense of looking to denigrate women, to keep them subjugated or any such notion—he believed (and, presumably, experience had not provided any evidence to counter that belief) in certain innate differences between men and women, and thought each should structure their lives in such a way as to maximize their strengths.

For those who resent the notion of a priori assigned natures, this claim will seem problematic, and I apologize in advance. Nevertheless, it is Maharal’s view and therefore worth pondering, even if some of us decide that we view the world differently. At the very least, it should stimulate some thought about the differences between people of different gender, and how those differences should affect how each interacts with the other.

DIFFERENCES OF FOCUS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

In Maharal’s view, men are less focused on material matters than women. I believe he means that women focus on matters having to do with physical existence more than men—having a nice house, clothes, keeping up with the neighbors, and so on. Men (or at least men who are fulfilling their potential) focus more on spiritual matters—cultivating a relationship with God, understanding the world and His mode of running it, and so on. By associating with women excessively, Maharal says, a man will absorb a woman’s homriut (material focus) distracting him from his more proper focus on spiritual matters.

Maharal does not view women’s focus as negative, for them. Indeed, he notes two opinions in Baba Metsia about where a man should heed his wife’s advice. One opinion says that in matters of the household, the other says in matters of this world (as opposed to spiritual matters). Maharal says that both opinions are defining areas where the material has a greater role than the spiritual, so that a woman’s opinion will more likely accurately understand how to proceed.

In Maharal’s scheme, then, this material world is the setting for spiritual development, but operates on very different rules from the spiritual world. Women, attuned to the material, understand household and worldly matters more perfectly than men, and therefore should have their opinions carry greater weight. Nevertheless, their focus on the material world means that if a man spends excessive time in conversation with them, that focus will rub off on him, when he should be focusing on the spiritual. The flaw is not in the inherent activity, but in a man’s involving himself too much in an activity not appropriate to him.

I am not trying to claim that Maharal sees men and women as separate but equal (my own personal feeling); as we’ll see in a moment, he clearly valued men’s role over women’s. Nevertheless, in his terms, he was not denigrating the act of talking to women (or the women themselves). Rather, he just believed that too much of such talk was inherently bad, since it would take men away from their specific role in life.

THE PARALLEL TO HOW THE SOUL SHOULD ACT TOWARDS THE BODY

How a man should act towards a woman, for Maharal, also informs us as to how a soul should respond to the physical body in which it is placed. While the body provides the environment necessary for the soul’s development (so that the soul should certainly feel grateful and loving to the body), it should nevertheless not become a distraction from the soul’s real purpose, the development of a relationship with God. A soul that gets too caught up with the body will spend its time eating, drinking, and indulging other pleasures of the flesh, losing sight of the ultimate goal.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE ZUGOT—NASI AS AHAVAT HASHEM, AV BEIT DIN AS YIRAT HASHEM

Looking back to Yose b. Yo`ezer, the first of the two, Maharal notes that he had focused on developing ahavat Hashem, love of God, by creating a relationship to talmidei hakhamim. Yose b. Yohanan, on the other hand, focused on avoiding tsarut `ayin, stinginess, and excessive homriut, material focus, which Maharal sees as a function of yir’ah, awe of Heaven. Further, he suggests that Yose b. Yoezer offered methods to develop intellectually (through interactions with talmidei hakhamim) while Yose b. Yohanan offered ways of developing the nefesh, the soul (by avoiding negative character traits).

Maharal then generalizes this claim to their respective positions, saying that the nasi, the head of the Rabbinical court, was above the rest of the Sanhedrin (he generally did not vote in cases, unless there was a tie), so he focused on ahavah, on love of God—a higher level of worship than awe. The av bet din, the second in command who worked on actual cases and real-world necessities, advised on the development of yir’ah, awe of Heaven. The next step, that Maharal briefly takes, is to connect ahavah to mitsvot aseh, commandments, and yir’ah to mitsvot lo ta`aseh, prohibitions, a thought others (such as Rambam) had said before.

Maharal’s scheme from this Mishnah ends up looking like this: the world has a material and a spiritual aspect to it, as do people themselves. While the material is necessary for the spiritual it must be carefully controlled ( a notion we’ve seen before). Women naturally represent the material—which in one sense is good, since it gives them greater insight as to how to run this world, and the household in particular. Men—who are more connected to the Heavenly aspects of human beings—need to limit their involvement with women, so as to limit their involvement with the material. Similarly, internally, people need to limit their soul’s involvement with the material aspects of existence. A model of this was the two leaders of the Sanhedrin, one of whom was aloof to a certain extent—symbolizing the higher elements of that body—while the other was more deeply involved with its daily workings.

Given each’s tendencies, they focused on different aspects of human experience. The nasi, focused in Heaven, gave advice on how to develop ahavah, the spiritual element of worship of God. The av bet din, on the other hand, who spent his life focused on real-world issues, advised on yir’ah, the avoidance of the negative consequences of involvement in this world.

The whole picture supports my presentation of Maharal’s view of women as not being sexist in the pejorative modern sense—women’s status as more homri, more material, than men is in some sense analogous to the av bet din’s greater focus on yir’ah than the nasi. While ahavah is a higher level of worship, yir’ah is still necessary (for everyone, not just as a first stage before you reach ahavah), and ahavah will not stand successfully alone. So, too, the homri, the material, is a necessary element of human existence and not just a preparatory stage for the ruhani, the spiritual. The half of a couple that sees to the homri, then, would not be less deserving of respect than the one who focuses on the ruhani, just like we don’t denigrate the av bet din by noting that he focuses on yir’ah where the nasi focuses on ahavah. (Remember that all of these constructs are Maharal’s—they may have sources in earlier traditions, but I am presenting them as Maharal’s reading of the religion, not as the authoritative truth of Judaism).