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The JPost article contains this piece:
The Talmud places women among a list of people - including informers, slaves and star-worshipers - considered unfit to write a Torah scroll.
The reasoning is the halachic principle that one who is not directed to perform a commandment cannot significantly help others perform that commandment. Since women are not obligated to put on tefillin, they are forbidden to write the passages placed inside tefillin, for example.
But Friedman found her own way out of that halachic problem: five years ago, she began to put on tefillin.
This is absolutely not how it works. I didn't start laying tefillin so as to become a soferet, and there's an awful lot more to it than just deciding to put on tefillin. So for all those people who are saying "that's bullshit" - yes, you're right, it's bullshit. I can't help it if the JPost missed the point.
When I was trying to explain the issues, I thought the article would probably get it wrong, because it's a lot more complicated than that. And it did. Oh well.
The Talmud places women among a list of people - including informers, slaves and star-worshipers - considered unfit to write a Torah scroll.
The reasoning is the halachic principle that one who is not directed to perform a commandment cannot significantly help others perform that commandment. Since women are not obligated to put on tefillin, they are forbidden to write the passages placed inside tefillin, for example.
But Friedman found her own way out of that halachic problem: five years ago, she began to put on tefillin.
This is absolutely not how it works. I didn't start laying tefillin so as to become a soferet, and there's an awful lot more to it than just deciding to put on tefillin. So for all those people who are saying "that's bullshit" - yes, you're right, it's bullshit. I can't help it if the JPost missed the point.
When I was trying to explain the issues, I thought the article would probably get it wrong, because it's a lot more complicated than that. And it did. Oh well.