Women's Exemption from Shema and Tefillin and How These Rituals

Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal for the Study of Judaism 42 (2011) 531-579 brill.nl/jsj

Women’s Exemption from Shema and Teﬁllin and How These Rituals Came to be Viewed as Torah Study1

Elizabeth Shanks Alexander University of Virginia, Department of Religious Studies PO Box 400126, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4126, USA [email protected]

Abstract This article argues that the rabbis exempted women from Shema and tefillin because the rabbis understood these rituals to be forms of Torah study, from which women were already known to be exempt. Though the dominant scholarly posi- tion regards the Shema as a liturgical affirmation of key doctrinal commitments, this article demonstrates that performance of these rituals was also a means of internalizing the biblical text. As such, these rituals had much in common with Torah study, which was also a means of internalizing the biblical text. The article makes this argument by examining Second Temple sources which cite, paraphrase, or allude to the Shema verses. Where Second Temple sources engage the verses of ritual instruction, they regard the rituals as a means of internalizing various commitments (justice, the nature of God, divine beneficence). Against this backdrop, it becomes clear that for the rabbis too these rituals were a means of internalizing something: biblical scripture.

Keywords Shema, teﬁllin, women, exemption, Torah study

1) I would like to thank the following people who contributed to my research as presented in this article by studying ancient sources with me and by reading and commenting on various drafts: Rena May, Greg Goering, Yehudah Cohn, Judith Kovacs, Steven Fraade, Jonathan Schofer and Hershel Shanks. I also beneﬁted from presenting this research in three public forums and I thank the participants in each of these venues for valuable feed- back: Seminar in Rabbinics at Yale University, Colloquium in Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity at the University of Virginia and the Workshop in “Religion and Culture in Late Antiquity” at the University of Tennessee. All errors and shortcomings that remain are the responsibility of the author.

Introduction M. Berakhot 3:3 provides a short catalogue of women’s exemptions and obligations vis-à-vis various liturgical and textual practices:

Women, slaves and minors are exempt from the recitation of Shema and from teﬁllin, and obligated with regard to the Prayer, the mezuzah and Grace after Meals.

Here we learn that women are exempt from reciting the Shema and wearing tefillin, but obligated to pray the Amidah, recite the Grace after Meals and post a mezuzah on their doorposts. Unfortunately, in classic fashion the Mishnah states these legal conclusions without providing a rationale for them.2 Women’s exemption from reciting the Shema, in particular, pro- vokes curiosity since the Shema is a liturgical affirmation of the key doctrinal commitments underlying rabbinic Judaism (belief in one God and dedication to God through performance of the commandments). What is it about the recitation of Shema and wearing tefillin that makes it inap- propriate to require women to perform these rituals? What distinguishes Shema and tefillin from the other liturgical and textual practices listed in m. Ber. 3:3? This article seeks to answer this question by highlighting the fact that the rabbis regarded recitation of Shema and the wearing of tefillin as forms of Torah study. Since the rabbis claimed to know from elsewhere that women are exempt from Torah study, they concluded that women are also exempt from these rituals which are the functional equivalent of Torah study. The bulk of this article offers a reception history of the biblical verses that eventually constituted the Shema liturgy in an effort to reveal how the rabbis came to regard Shema and tefillin practices as forms of Torah study. By the time the Mishnah was recorded in 200 C.E., the rabbis took for granted the existence of a liturgical practice which consisted of reciting three biblical passages (Deut 6:4-9; 11:13-21; Num 15:37-41) twice daily, framed on either end with a set of blessings. The fact that such a practice was standardized and considered of ancient origin by tannaitic times, how-

2) According to David Weiss Halivni the Mishnah is exceptional within the Jewish legal corpus in its tendency to state laws apodictically, i.e., without justiﬁcation. See David Weiss Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justiﬁed Law (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 38-65.