RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: REGEL REDUFIN: TALMUD YERUSHALMI PESACHIM : WOMEN'S RIGHTS

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: REGEL REDUFIN: TALMUD YERUSHALMI PESACHIM : WOMEN'S RIGHTS 

 

Shalom:

 

I hope everyone is preparing for a sweet and wondrous Passover. Many of us are scattered throughout the globe and cannot be with family, so we develop friends as surrogate family. My lovely bride is preparing dinner with another wonderful gal and 20 people are coming for Seder. Yet all are couples and none are with their children nor grandchildren nor their parents, nor siblings, including us.

 

The Torah speaks to us of having every family having a Passover meal, with the Pascal lamb, for one's family together, and inviting another family to join, if the lamb is too much food for one family to consume. The idea of a Seder (which is Talmudic) or a Pesach meal with 10 families as above, or with a synagogue or county club, full of 200 plus people, is foreign to the Talmudic sages or the Torah.

 

The sages of the Talmud were especially sensitive to the needs of  a new bride having her first Pesach away from her family. Remember that even in the best of Hebrew or Jewish homes  a woman was first chattel to her father, and then when a husband was picked for her, chattel to her husband. The Talmud instituted many laws to protect women. The ketubah, a marriage document that protected her through out the marriage and financially in case of a divorce, was an important development. The Talmud even went so far as to establish a women's sexual rights for different professions of husbands, so that she would never be abandoned emotionally. Women still had a long way to go, and in many parts of the globe, still do today.

 

The sages in Talmud Yerushalmi instituted a unique ruling for new brides on her first Pesach. It was called  "Regel Redufin." It literally means ''anxious feet'', but Regelem were festivals that Hebrews and Jews traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate. Hence the meaning of "an anxious festival"

 

The sages wanted to take into consideration a new bride's homesickness or perhaps the husband's needing a break from his new wife. The sages ruled that a new bride could go home to her father's house for Passover and not spend it in her husband's home or his parent's home.

Rabbi Yose Bar Rabbi Bun said a "Regel Redufin is is the first festival after marriage when the husband chases his wife to the house of  her father." Now we can read that this is not purely  a ruling about a wife's homesickness. This is a ruling about a husband being sick of his wife and sending her home for some retraining by her father, so that the husband can have a 'time-out' period.

 

The sages ask : "What if she did not go back to her father's house on the first festival after marriage?  May the second festival be considered a Regel Redufin?"

 

In other words, if the wife was ok on the first seder, but in her second year of marriage, either she or the husband needed a break from each other, was this rule in effect?

And the Rabbis ruled: "In all situations she has a Regel Redufin. (Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Pesachim 8:1). In other words, at any point in the marriage, a wife can go home to her father's house on Passover if she wishes, or if her husband "chases'' her out of their house.

 

Now, how many of us can imagine, some husbands at the minyon, or some women at the souk , talking to their friends, saying "Oy, I cannot wait until Passover, so I can have a breather from my spouse"?

 

One would hope that during this respite from each other, family and friends, would give advice on how to sustain a happy and respectful Jewish marriage, so a 'get' (Jewish divorce) isn't the next thing on the agenda. The reality is, and while this skirts around the 'bride' issue (no double pun intended), this regel redufin is not about the bride's homesickness, but about the husband's being sick of her. If a divorce occurred, her father, according to custom, would have wasted his dowry paid to the groom, and worse, have another daughter again to feed, and this same one to marry off with another dowry. And her not being a virgin, and with a bad reputation as being one kicked out by her husband (with a get), difficult to get rid of. The father's last wish, was to have to take care of a daughter into his old age, and then worry who would take care of her, into her old age. The Venetian edition of Yerusalmi clearly says that if the bride comes running home ''the father then chases her back to her husband.''

 

With Passover being the time when we try to take the Chometz, the puffed- upness and falsehood out of our lives and be humble and sincere like Matzah, I found it interesting and sad to read the following:

 

''Children's spas are catching the eye of mall operators. For instance, the Texas-based Sweet & Sassy chain not only offers kids haircuts but spa treatments such as manicures/pedicures, theme parties and a customized pink "Party Girls on the Go!" limousine.

The company currently operates 26 locations nationwide with another 30 new locations targeted to open in 2008.

Medical spas, or "Medspas", are turning into hotspots at malls, too. These spas offer services that include Botox injections and laser hair removal.The International Medical Spa Association (IMSA) estimates that the number of mall-based medspas have jumped to about 2,500 from just 450 in 2004.

The average cost of a Botox procedure is about $500 at his spas. That certainly isn't cheap at a time when consumers are curtailing their discretionary spending.But Buckingham sees it differently. "This is still so much cheaper than plastic surgery," he said. "When you have an addiction going on, it's not easy to give it up. People will give up their rent, dog food and car payment (rather) than this."

What's more, he said "looking good" becomes even more essential in a weak job environment.
"As people are downsized out of jobs and have to compete with younger, better-looking people, they'll see the need for a touch-up," Buckingham said."

 

I would like to ask the reader to compare the above snap shot of American society, of ''All about Me" on steroids, to this understanding of the true value of women, as taught in our Talmud.

 

In Talmud Bavli Tractate Taanis 31b on the celebration of the 15th of Av, which was an ancient 'singles party,' Jewish maidens all wore borrowed clothes and no make-up, so that rich girls would not have advantage over poor girls, and that their attributes of kindness and intelligence would be paid attention to, and not just their physical beauty or their father's purse.

 

As posited above, while women's rights had many millennia to go since Talmudic days, the Talmud was well ahead of its time and place in their regard for women.

 

Put an orange on your seder plate to remember the achievements of Miriam, Zipporah and other Jewish women.

 

Have a sweet Passover.

 

Rabbi Arthur Segal

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