Berakhot 20

I am still struggling with the Rabbi who compared women at an immersion site to “white geese” and the Rabbi who was so good looking that he thought by hanging out at the site that the women would catch one glance of him and have beautiful children. (That passage seems to represent the height of male arrogance). 

I found today’s reading especially challenging, with its attention to time-bound positive commandments, obligations of women, “seminal emissions” and the discussion of whether contemplation is tantamount to speech: if one contemplates prayer is it the same as saying the actual words? The text does not state why women, who at one point are compared to “white geese”, are exempt from time-bound positive commandments. Is it because they are allocated to the same category as minors and slaves (another problematical treatment of human beings), who are not considered worthy of fulfilling commandments? Or because their voices are subsumed by their husbands, who fulfill this obligation for them? Or because they are considered too busy taking care of their homes and children? The discussion of positive time-bound commandments without stating why women are exempt, and the attention to details of everyday life and the requirement for men to bathe away “seminal emissions” before receiving the Torah, demonstrates how specific and confounding the text can be.