ומצות עשה שהזמן גרמה היא שחובת עשייתה בזמן מסויים, ושלא באותו הזמן אין חיובה חל כגון הסוכה והלולב והשופר והתפילין והציצית לפי שחובתן ביום ולא בלילה, וכל כיוצא באלו. ומצות עשה שלא הזמן גרמה הן המצות שחובתן חלה בכל הזמנים כגון המזוזה והמעקה והצדקה, וכבר ידעת שכלל הוא אצלינו אין למדים מן הכללות, וùמְרוֹ " , "כל רוצה לומר על הרוב, אבל מצות עשה שהנשים חייבות ומה שאינן חייבות בכל הקפן אין להן כלל אלא נמסרים על פה והם דברים מקובלים, הלא ידעת שאכילת מצה ליל פסח, ושמחה במועדים, והקהל ו, תפלה, ומקרא מגילה, ונר חנוכה, ונר שבת, וקדוש היום, כל אלו מצות עשה שהזמן גרמה וכל אחת מהן חיובה לנשים כחיובה לאנשים
Rambam mishnah (ed. Kapah):
And a positive commandment caused by time is obligatory at a set time; outside of this time, its obligation does not take effect, such as sukkah, lulav, shofar, tefillin and tzitzit, because they are obligatory during the day but not at night, etc. And positive commandments not caused by time are those commandments that are always obligatory, such as mezuzah, building a railing, and tzedakah. You already know that we have a principle that one does not learn from [heuristic] rules16, and when it says “all”, it means “most.” But the positive commandments in which women are obligated or are not fully obligated has no general rule, rather, they are passed on by tradition. Is it not the case that eating matzah on the first night of Pesah, joy on the festivals, the public reading of the Torah every seven years, prayer, reading of the Megillah, Hanukkah candles, Shabbat candles, and reciting Kiddush are all positive commandments caused by time, yet for each of them a woman’s obligation is the same as a man’s obligation.
ולי נראה ללמד זכות על רוב הנשים שאין מתפללות בתמידות דרוב הנשים מוטל עליהן להתעסק בכל צרכי הבית ובטיפול ילדים והכנת צרכיהם, שמטריד הלב ומבלבל הכונה, ובמצב זה אין להתפלל כמו שכתב הרמב"ם "בפ ד מצא דעתו משובשת ולבו טרוד אסור לו להתפלל עד שתתישב דעתו...ואע"ג שעכשיו אין אנו נזהרי' בזה מפני שאין אנו מכונים כ"כ בתפלה, לגבי טרדות הנשי' שאני...אבל אלו הנשי' שנמצאות במצב שיכולות להתפלל ודאי צריכות להתפלל כל הג' תפלות, כי מדינא נשים חייבות בכל התפלה אליבא דכו" .ע
And it seems to me that the way to justify the practice of those women who do not pray with regularity is that most women are encumbered with dealing with the needs of the house and the care of children and preparation of their needs, which distracts the mind and disorients proper focus, and in such a state one should not pray, as the Rambam wrote in Chapter Four: “If one’s mind is disoriented and one’s heart distracted, it is forbidden to pray until the mind gets settled”…And even though nowadays we are not concerned with this, since we are not so focused in our prayer [anyway], regarding the distraction of women [i.e. the raising of children] it is different…But those women who find themselves in a situation where they can pray certainly must pray all three prayers, because on the basis of the law they are obligated in all of the prayers according to all authorities.
הרב יהודה הרצל הנקין "שו ת בני בנים , ב:ב
, עמ "י' ד אמנם, מהו באמת פרוש כבוד הצבור לענין עליות נשים, "לע ד כיון שהריטב א" ...וביותר בירור ברבנו אברהם מן ההר...מבואר שהוא ענין של מאירה פי' שבזיון הוא לצבור שנראה כאילו אין די גברים היודעים לקרוא בתרוה ולכן הביאו נשים וכן פרש בפתח הדביר סימן רפ"ב אות ט', ולא נמצא בראשונים מי שחולק על זה לכן בוודאי הכי נקטינן...
Rav Yehudah Herzl Henkin Res. Benei Banim II:2, p. 14
Indeed, what is truly the meaning of “honor of the community” vis-à-vis aliyot for women? In my humble opinion, since the Ritba…and even more clearly, in Rabbenu Avraham min HaHar…it is explained to be the matter of a curse, i.e., that it is insulting to the community for it to seem as though there are not enough men who know who to read Torah, and that is why they summoned women, and this is also how Petah haDevir (282:9) interpreted it, and there is no Rishon who disputes this, therefore, of course, this is how we hold…
ועיר שכולה כהנים ואין בה [ ] 'אפי ישראל אחד נ"ל דכהן קורא פעמים ושוב יקראו נשים דהכל משלימי' למנין ז' אפי' עבד ושפחה וקטן (מגילה כג.) ופי' רבי' שמחה זצ"ל דלאו דוקא למנין ז' אלא אפי' לשלשה דתנן סתמא בפ"ג דמגילה (כד.) קטן קורא בתורה [ומתרגם] ונהי דמסיק עלה אבל אמרו חכמי' לא תקרא אשה בתורה מפני כבוד הצבור היכא דלא אפשר ידחה כבוד הצבור מפני פגם כהנים הקוראים שלא יאמרו בני גרושות הם.
And in a town whose residents are all kohanim and there is not even one Yisrael, it seems to me that a kohen should read twice and then women should read the rest, for all complete the quorum of seven…and R. Simhah explained that this refers not only to the quorum of seven but also to the quorum of three, for the Mishnah states simply: “A minor may read from the Torah.” And even though the Talmud concludes that the sages said that a woman should not read because of the honor of the congregation, in a case where there is no alternative, let the honor of the congregation yield to the concern that we will defame the kohanim, so that people will not say they are the children of divorcees.
As is often the case in rabbinic discourse, the textual citations here are all post facto support (’asmakhtot), Scriptural citations which, while weak as formal proofs, quite honestly express the religious sensibilities of their authors and their communities. What is more, they are self-consciously so. Two significant things can be learned from Rabbenu Manoah’s telling closing words that “common sense indicates (נותנת הסברא “(that women do not count for the minyan for invoking God’s name in the invitation to Grace after Meals (zimmun) “since they lack the intellect [ " " ] to magnify and exalt the Holy דעת One’s name, as men can”. First, the authority who went to the greatest lengths to explain women’s exclusion from ritual minyan considered women, as a class, to be insufficiently educated to form a community for the purposes of publicly praising God.97 Second, he considered this social reality to be a relevant and, apparently, decisive factor toward the question of their participation.
That women do not count is intuitive to these Rishonim, just as the exclusion of slaves and minors was intuitive to R. Yehoshua b. Levi. Their citation of verses is not meant to prove these religious intutitions, but rather, to provide some allusive Scriptural context for them. The question that then arises is: why? What is behind this intuitive exclusion of women, absent any Biblical or rabbinic text that weighs in on the topic? How might we more precisely define the social considerations that are clearly at work in medieval discussions of this topic?
It cannot be that women are ontologically excluded from the minyan of prayer even as they count for the minyan of martyrdom. If women are fitting vehicles for the sanctification of God's name anywhere, they must, at least in theory, be fitting for its sanctification everywhere.
עברית
While it is possible to read Hazal’s term נשים as applying across history to all those who are biologically female, it is also possible—particularly when נשים is juxtaposed with the categories of slaves and minors—that this term is intended to refer to adjunct members of society who are dependent on and subservient to their husbands and a larger patriarchal structure for support. R. Yoel Bin-Nun has recently been advancing precisely this argument, suggesting that those women in our day and age who understand themselves to be חורין בנות ,freed from earlier patriarchal structures, are thus subject to all the traditional ritual obligations of men.121
it is not even accurate to say that counting women now would be a breach with tradition. That is to say, it wasn't women who were exluded throughout the generations, but non-citizens. The breach with tradition would be to exclude women in communities where women are full public citizens, because such a practice would effect an unprecedented standard of excluding Jewish citizens from the minyan. This, in turn, would lead to various infractions of halakhah, such as delaying communal prayer while waiting for ten men to arrive, even though a minyan of ten, dignified, Jewish citizens is present.