Women and prayer: an attempt to dispel some fallacies.

IT IS TIME TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT. Most Jews think that women, unlike men, are not obligated to pray daily, and have responded accordingly. Orthodox women find this perceived exemption a useful rationale for not praying daily. Orthodox men have utilized it to answer feminists who wish to be counted in the quorum of ten and serve as prayer leader: since women are not obligated to pray, they say, women cannot be counted in the quorum and lead the group in prayer. Conservative rabbis employ the perceived exemption as the starting point of a responsum: only women who voluntarily accept upon themselves the obligation to pray can serve as prayer leaders for the group.

But as widespread, well-entrenched, and "convenient" as this notion of women and prayer is, it is wrong. A close reading of rabbinic and post-rabbinic texts yields the following, rather remarkable facts: 1) from the time of the Mishnah and onward, women have been obligated to say the tefillah (set of eighteen blessings) two or three times daily; 2) an obligation to pray does not, in and of itself, entitle a woman--or anyone else--to serve as sheliah zibbur (prayer leader); additional requirements must be met.

1. Women and the Obligation to Pray

The first source to address the topic of women and prayer is Mishnah Berakhot. After setting down the rules for reciting Shema each day, the Mishnah lists those people who are exempt from the recital: pallbearers, who are exempt from both Shema and tefillah, and second-tier mourners (those who only escort the bier to burial), who are obligated to read Shema but are exempt from tefillah.(1) Since both Shema and tefillah require concentration,(2) it would seem that certain mourners are exempt from tefillah but are still obligated to say Shema, because prayer is rabbinically enacted whereas Shema, according to the rabbis, is Torah-mandated. Torah-imposed obligations are lifted only when absolutely necessary, as for pall-bearers.

The Mishnah then says that women are exempt from reciting Shema and from donning tefillin, but are obligated to say teffilah, hang a mezuzah, and recite Grace.(3) Requiring women to say some prayers but not others, in particular obligating them to the rabbinically-ordained tefillah while exempting them from the Biblical confession of faith, is strange.(4) It appears to be a calculated attempt on the part of the rabbis to separate women from the most theologically significant utterances of Judaism.

The Gemara (Berakhot 20b) addresses this anomaly. Although its commentary on this Mishnah is composed of a series of brief segments, one for each obligation or exemption mentioned in the Mishnah, there is a common theme running throughout: an attempt on the part of the anonymous talmudic voice (the stama d'Gemara) to demonstrate that this Mishnah is completely in agreement with the general guidelines for women and mizvot established elsewhere, in Mishnah Qiddushin 1:7.

Commenting on women's exemption from Shema, the Gemara exclaims: But it is obvious that women are exempt, for Shema is a time-bound positive mizvah, and women are exempt from mizvot of this kind! But, the Gemara responds, since Shema embodies a confession of faith -- the acceptance of the Kingship of Heaven -- one might think that women, like men, would be required to read these verses daily. Hence, to counter such erroneous yet logical thinking, the Mishnah needs to state that women are exempt.