Do you think the husband of that woman who was raped in your example would go make the rapist his Rebbe? Even though he may have information to covey, the outrage at his offense would motivate any decent man to stay away.

So too when someone hurts our G-d and our people by distorting the Torah we would be giving Hashem a terrible slap in the face by learnign Torah form such a person.

But here the issue is not that the man is a rapist but that he is a distorter of Torah and you have no idea of knowing what is distorted and what is not.

But you also say that a woman can't learn on her own. If that's true, the p'risha is saying that women who are oyver the halacho are demonstrating that they have exceptional yiras shomayim!

Because of that, there was no Halachah that probihited women to learn on their own, for the Halachah already says that any woman who learns on her own proves herself an exception.

Therefore, if a woman learns on her own she is not violating anything.

A woman does not have to become a Tlamid Chacham to be an "excetion"; she does not have to be successful in her learning; she does not even have to learn for any given amoutn of time. All she has to do in order to prove herself an exception, is learn.

The reaosn for this was because there really is no reason for the average G-d-fearing, Tehillim-saying, Torah-keeping, Tiras-SHamayim possessed woman to want to learn Gemora in the first place. In the days of Chizkiyah, CHazal say, even all the women and girls were all experts in the complex laws of Tumah and Tahara.

Women's lives, including their spiritual and intellectual lives, are fulfilled, fruitful, productive, and just perfect without any Gemora learning. And in those days, there was no social or fad reasons that would motivate girls to learn Gemora. The whole thing was completely unnecessary to them.

Therefore, if a woman decided that she needs to learn Gemora that showed she was an exception to the rule. Because she is takign upon herself a gureling, difficult, unnecessary, task, with nothign to gain in this world and something to lose (learning Gemora is very time and energy consuming, plus it would make her different from all of her peers), we respect her committment and recognize her as someone who stands out among the crowd. An exception to the rule.

But today, clearly, that is not the case. WOmen of all calibers learn Gemora, and there are so many motivations, and in certina communities its so accepted as to be commonplace, the idea that a woman who decides to learn Gemora shows herself to be an exception is clearly just not the case.

The Rambam only says that women get schar for Torah shebiksav, which they were never prohibited to learn in the first place. A woman learnign torha shebiksav is like a women shaking a lulav or sitting in a sukkah - its not necessary, but they do get some reward for it.

But Torah shebal peh is prohibited for them to learn, and the Rambam never said that for that they get schar.

According to you, in generations past, an exceptional woman for whom it was mutar to learn according to the prisha, also didn't receive schar for torah sheba'al peh?

I don't think even you believe this, because I notice that you wrote this:

"Therefore, if a woman decided that she needs to learn Gemora that showed she was an exception to the rule. Because she is takign upon herself a gureling, difficult, unnecessary, task, with nothign to gain in this world and something to lose (learning Gemora is very time and energy consuming, plus it would make her different from all of her peers), we respect her committment and recognize her as someone who stands out among the crowd. An exception to the rule."

Why do you write "nothing to gain *in this world*"? According to you, there is no s'char in the next world also!

I asked: how can a woman get s'char for doign something you seem to be saying is ossur. In your reply you say a) that exceptional women don't exist today (or something close to that, please clarify) and b) according to the rambam, that women *never* received schar for learning even if they were exceptional women for whom learning tsb"p was mutar.

Since girls are allwoed to learn Torah shebiksav, they are also allowed - obligated - to understand the proper pshat, and to the extent that torah shebal peh is needed for that it is implicitly permitted in the permission to learn torah shebiksav. So for instance, if a girl leanrs ayin tachas ayin, she is not allowed to think that it means you poke out the attacker's eye; if she learns v'anisem es nafshesechem she is nto allwoed to think that it means you should stick yourself with needles; if she learns pri etz hadar she is not allowed to think it means nay pretty fruit. Plus, she is allowed to learn about midos and mussar that comes from the chumash, which torah shebal peh can also provide.

The halachah has nothing to do with anyone being stupid. The fact is that men and women have two totally differenty types of brains - some differences:

Men are 10x more likely to be ADD
Men are twice as likely to be mentally retarded
Men are twice as likely to contract Alzheimer's disease
A teenage girl's attenton span is 4 times greater than that of a teenage boy!

Yet -- teenage boys are 30 times more liekely to score in the top 10 percentile on the SAT in math
Men are 100 times more likely to be capable of becoming a chess grandmaster; women are 2.5 times more likely to be successful psychologists.

Women are twice as likely to develop Parkison's Disease.

Women are 3x more likely to rememebr childhood memories.

Thats just the beginning.

Clearly, the minds men and women are radically different. If I were to tell you that the Torah says that the job of being a chess grandmaster was relegated to men and not women, you'd object, saying "But women are smart, too!" And if I were to tell you that the Torah says that men shoudl be the ones to represent humanity on the Math part of the SATs youd object saying "But teenage girls have 4 times the attention span of teenage boys!"

The Torah surely knows what men and women are suited for, a lot better than us. And the Torah, as stated in the halachah, says that women are not given the job of learnign Torah shebal peh; that wa left to men. WOmen have a differnet job in this world.

Your "kal vahcomer" about math and science vs. Torah is fallacious --- what does one have to do with the other? Torah is NOT a science --- its a soul-practice. Torah connects your soul to certain powers up on high, and chidushoe torah come not merely form the mind but from the neshama itself.

The SHem Mishmuel distinguishes Torah learnign form secular knowledge by saying that secular knowledge is "physical", instinctive knowledge --- like a spider's "knowledge" of how to spin a web. Torah knowledge is real, earned, soul-knowledge.

Are you goign to tell me that animals, becaus they are capable of spinnign webs, are "smart" so they would be able to learn Torah too?

But even the scientists and psychologists can see that men and women have differnt mind-strengths, as stated above. If there is a kal vachomer here it is this: If even in secular sciences there are clear distinctions between men's minds and women's minds, all the more so in spiritual "sciences".

But all this is superfluous -- the Torah says that women are not suited to learn Torah shebal peh. What reason do you have to question that? Because they are "smart"? That was never the point.

As far as Hashem "wanting His Torah ot be leanred" and etc, you are mistaken. If Hashem wanted women to leanr Torah she bal peh He would not have prohibited it. Clearly, women "connect" to Hashem NOT through learning but through other means. In fact, the Gemroa says explicitly that women merit the reward of Torah NOT by learning, but by assisting their husbands and children in their learning.

In fact, even the Torah that girls are obligated to learn halchah and mussar - does not merit for them the zechus of Torah; for their "obligation" to learn these thigns is not an obligation ot LEARN - it is merely a necessary part of fulfillign their obligation to DO the MItzvos, for if they do nto know, how can they do?

They have no obligation to learn ANYTHING. It is merely that certin things must be learned in order to fulfill their obligation to practice, not because of any obligation ot learn.

We ought not try to rewrite the Halchah the way we think it should be. If women - or men - have a desire for somethign permitted or obligatory, that's fine, but if they have a desire for something prohibited, then they shoudl resist. Thats what were in this world for - to withstand nisyonos. And that includes women going to Gemora classes.

New information to add to the above:

According to a recent study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the better educated you are, the more likely you are to sleep through the night. However, that only applies to women. The better educated a man is, the less likely he is to get a good night's sleep.

In the letter about his wife (page 12), he specifies that she learned every day, tanach, *zohar*, midrash, kabala, and chassidus, and of the effort she made to stand and listen to his divrei torah. He praises her for this, and in other documents cited in the article, he again praises her for learning torah nearly every day.

See also his discussion of the z'chus of miriam (page 3, 5) on the special tshuka of women who are not metzuve v'ose, to learn and do mitzvos that they aren't metzuve in, and the z'chus this was for bnei yisroel and the tshuka it inspired in them.

In light of the discussion here, which has ranged to even whether women should learn karbonos, I would be grateful if you would post this link. While his wife is not described as learning gemara, there is no question that the ba'al chovos hatalmidim viewed his wife's efforts to learn - including or especially kabala and chassidus - as highly praiseworthy.
To the best of my knowledge, the author of chovos hatalmidim was not "Modern Orthodox."

Sifrei Mussar and Hashkafa including some Chasidus (if that is what your community uses for Hashkafa) is not in the catagory of things that ar eassur, as I explained, and should be learned.

In fact, in all the thigns that his wife learned, Gemora and Mishna is glaringly omitted, and so we see again that even for girls on a very high level of learning, Mishna and Gemora are not c"v on the curriculum.

And it does not say that Rav Klonimu Kalmans wife learned Kabalah. Dont be silly. Even men who do not have a greta hand in shas and poskim are warned by our tzadikim not to leanr kabalah. Much of Zohar is Agadita, not Kabalah (there are hebrew translations of the zohar tha excerpt only those parts), and you cna be sure that it was the Agadic, not Kabalistic, parts of the Zohar, which is halachicly and substantively similar to the Ain Yaakov, that Rebitzen Shapira learned, of course under the guidance of her husband.

The framing of the issue of girls not learning Gemora in terms of whether girls should be intellectually encouraged, or educated in a more advanced way, etc, is a perversion of the issue, even thgouh that is the way it is framed in many circles who would like to justify girls learning Gemora.

Girls who learn gemnora are being no more intellectual or creative than those who follow the Halachah, nor is their educaiton more advanced. As you see fomr women like Rebitzen Shapira, and other more contemorary women (please see the post I wrote upon the peirah of Rebitzen Zahava Braunstein) you can be an advanced Melumedes without violating the halachah. It is inconceivable that what CHazal considered equivalent to teaching tiflus can be thought of as advanced or intellectual or creative. Tiflus is none of those.

And evenif it were, it would still be assur. We - men and women - learn not for the sake of intellectual stimulation but rather because it is a good thing according to hashem. Thus, when learning becomes a bad thing according to the Ratzon Hashem - such as a lomed al menas lekanter for instance, or women;s Gemora classes - we do not learn.

An for the record, theoretically, when we are talking about a unanimous halachah in Shulchan Aruch and Poskim, an apprent opposing act by Rav Klonimus Kalman would not be considered a "source". Rather, we would inquire to know what his source was. In the absence of that, we would not imitate his behavior.