RESPONSE: Celebrating Bat Mitzva

R. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg זצ”ל

I have very much been enjoying Moshe Kurtz’s series, Unpacking the Iggerot, in which he provides helpful context to R. Moshe Feinstein’s teshuvot by contrasting R. Feinstein with other aharonim and by looking at several of his responsa at once. A recent post about bat mitzva celebrations cites R. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg (1884-1966) and briefly mentions how “R. Weinberg sympathizes with the asymmetry of what women can perform within the realm of religion.” I believe this brief sentence gets lost in the context of a longer post and here offer a translation of the relevant section from R. Weinberg’s writing (originally published in a series in the journal HaPardes, 1962-63, about 6 years after R. Feinstein’s responsum):

It saddens the heart that regarding general knowledge, languages, secular literature, the sciences, and the humanities, girls receive the same education as boys, yet when it comes to religious education, learning Tanakh and Hazal’s ethical literature, training for mitzvot which women are obligated in, we totally abandon them. Happily, the great ones of the previous generation addressed this problem and established Torah institutions and religious strengthening for the daughters of Israel. The founding of a network of Beit Yaakov schools is the most wondrous demonstration of our generation. Straightforward logic and pedagogic principles almost demand that we commemorate a girl becoming bat mitzva. The discrimination between boys and girls regarding celebrating their arriving adulthood seriously injures the human feelings of the maturing girl who has already achieved emancipation, as it were, in other areas (Seridei Eish 3:93, p. 297).

Such a sentiment does not appear in R. Feinstein’s discussion and the difference between these two rabbinic giants is significant.

Yitzchak Blau, Alon Shvut