the pleasingness of knowing sources

Two friends at Yeshivat Hadar are learning about tzitzit, specifically the extent to which women are permitted* to engage in the mitzvah. One of them comes over to me:

“We’re learning about women and tzitzit, and whether women are allowed to make tzitzit, and there’s a famous Tosafot, maybe in Gittin, that talks about that, do you know where…?”

And I admit to being rather pleased at myself being able to go “Right, Gittin 45b, Rabeinu Tam has a whole thing about it…”

I only wish I knew the entire body of Tosafot so well that I could do that for any subject!

Of course, the reason I know that particular reference is because Gittin 45b is where the Talmud stashes the main bit about why women (and children and non-Jews etc) can’t write Torahs.

Here’s the text:

כל שישנו בקשירה ישנו בכתיבה – מכאן אומר ר”ת דאין אשה אוגדת לולב ועושה ציצית כיון דלא מיפקדה ואין נראה דהא מדפסלינן בריש התכלת (מנחות דף מב.) ציצית בעובד כוכבים דדריש בני ישראל ועשו ולא בעובדי כוכבים מכלל דאשה כשרה ואמרינן נמי סוכת גנב”ך כשרה בפ”ק דסוכה (דף ח:) ודוקא בס”ת ותפילין ומזוזות דכתיב וקשרתם וכתבתם דרשינן הכי.*

And here’s me pontificating:

Rabeinu Tam (Gittin 45b, s.v.”Kol”) applied ruthless logic to the ruling that women may not write tefillin since they are not obligated to lay tefillin, and ruled that since women are not obligated in the mitzvah of tzitzit, they may not tie tzitzit for men; since women are not obligated to take up a lulav, they may not bind together lulavin for men. This was rejected by the anonymous Tosafist, who cited baraitot in Menaḥot 42a and Succah 8b which permit women to tie tzitzit and build succot, despite being exempt from both. The general position is that one who is not obligated in a mitzvah may create the objects associated with the performance of that mitzvah, and Tosafot conclude that the case of tefillin (and its associates sifrei Torah and mezuzot) is anomalous in that those not obligated in this particular mitzvah may not create the objects required for its fulfilment.

So, good news for a piecemeal approach to egalitarianism re tzitzit, not so good re sifrei kodesh; and it’s really really cool to know your stuff well enough that you can point other people to references when they want them. Now if I could only do that for a couple hundred pages of gemara instead of just a couple pages, I’d be doing well.

Back to work.

* Permitted is a term hovering in an egalitarian no-mans’-land. Must get round to talking about that sometime or other. Someone remind me plz.
** fair use copied and pasted from the Bar-Ilan text database at Spertus’ Feinberg E-collection; access to many resources only $35/year, recommended as very much worth it

Mirrored from hasoferet.com.