Dirshuni: Torah Study, II (Tamar Biala) The Giving of the Ten Commandments

This is a story of a young woman who was sitting in synagogue while the Ten Commandments were being read. The Reader was chanting so expertly that the young woman felt as though she was hearing them for the first time. And she was astonished at what she heard, and her heart became aggrieved.

She asked in her heart, what is the nature of "Remember the Sabbath to hallow it" (Exod 20:8), of which it is said "You shall do no work, you and your son and your daughter, your male slave and your slave girl and your beast and your sojourner who is within your gates" (Exod 20:10)—and his wife, what about her, is she not commanded to hallow the Sabbath?

And what is the nature of "You shall not covet," of which it is said, "You shall not covet your fellow man’s wife, or his male slave, or his slave girl, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that your fellow man has" (Exod 20:14–7)—and his wife, what about her, did the Torah not command her, too, not to covet that which is her fellow woman’s?

The young woman was pious, and not until that day had she had a single foreign musing or doubt regarding the truth of Torah. At that moment of questioning, her heart was wrapped in fear, beating and beating until she thought everyone in synagogue could hear its rhythm. The tears that rose in her throat had the taste of the deep, and the taste of the sea that drowned the Egyptians, and she was shaking and aghast, and her soul fled.

The Holy Blessed One gathered up her soul in the palm of His hand and was looking and smiling at her. He said to her: How long have I waited for you to come and ask Me, so that I might reveal to you that which has been hidden away with Me for three thousand years! She cast her eyes downward and asked: Did The Holy Blessed One not speak with women at Mount Sinai, and not command them the same things He commanded men with thunder and lightning?

The Holy Blessed One lifted up her head and said, when Moses ascended I commanded him: "And have them make themselves ready for the third day, for on the third day, God will come down before all the people on Mount Sinai." (Exod 19:11). Since Moses distanced himself from women, for he separated from his wife, Zipporah; he brought only men near the mountain, as is said, "And Moses brought the people toward God from the camp" (Exod 19:17).

And at that time, when Moses heard the commandments, and there were only men around him, he heard You shall do no work and said to himself, “and who will be punished for doing work, if not the man? And whose are the slaves and slave girls, chattel and children, whom he can command to do work, or to rest, if not the man’s?” And so Moses bade the men to keep the Sabbath, in the masculine pronoun. And because he was not me’urav ’im haberiyot, engaged with people, beriyot, in the feminine, for he had not been with his wife, Zipporah, for a long time, he did not remember that women too have desire, and so he did not include them in the prohibition not to covet.

The young woman asked The Holy Blessed One, if so, and Moses who separated from women could not hear those words which The Holy Blessed One ordained for them, will a sage who has not separated himself be able to hear? The Holy Blessed One’s countenance became grave, - "become grave" from the term "seriousness" and "because grave" from the term "desire or will" - and He answered her thus: Any beit midrash that has no women—My word will not emerge from there whole.