Tefillin for women?

This past week's parasha mentioned the mitzva of tefillin. The question was asked why women are exempt from this mitzva. An unsatisfactory answer was provided, with a lot of hemming and hawing, making it seem like Rabbi Block had something to hide.

In fact, although one could come up with tefillin-specific explanations, the main reason that women are exempt is that it is one of the class of time-dependent positive commandments, and women are exempt from most of these, such as keriat shema, tzitzit, shofar, lulav, and sukka. A simple, straightforward answer such as this, coming from the pulpit, would have been preferable to the evasive response that was given.

Next, the statement was made that women are permitted to put on tefillin if they wish. While there is nothing intrinsic to the mitzva of tefillin that precludes women from performing it, this was, basically, an incorrect response, or at the very least, a misleading one, on a number of fronts.

For one thing, even men put on tefillin as little as possible. The wearing of tefillin requires a "guf naki", a clean body, i.e. free of passing gas, etc. This is the main reason that we do not wear tefillin at night, since when one falls asleep, one can't prevent these things from occurring, and the sages were concerned that if one wore tefillin at night, he might inadvertently fall asleep. In the past, people were on a very high level of holiness, and were able to guard their bodies while wearing tefillin all day long, and so they were worn throughout the day except for meals and bathroom breaks. Nowadays, we wear them only for shacharit, so as to have them on for shema and amidah, but we remove them afterwards, so as not to run into problems. Since women don't have to wear tefillin, says the Aruch Hashulchan, why should they purposely risk not having a guf naki while wearing them?

There are other issues as well. Halacha prohibits men and women from wearing each other's clothing or bodily adornments, and from performing various grooming functions unique to the other. It is quite possible that for a woman to wear tefillin violates this prohibition (in fact, this statement is made explicitly in the Targum Yonatan). I suppose if a woman were to wear tefillin purely for the purpose of fulfilling the mitzva, she might not be transgressing this prohibition, but if she wore them for feminist reasons, "to be like the men", she would very likely be in violation.

We are prohibited from emulating the ways of the non-Jews ("ובחוקותיהם לא תלכו") and from subscribing to anti-Torah ideologies. Again, if a woman were to wear tefillin with impure motivations, such as wanting to do what the rest of the world tells her to do, namely, to be egalitarian or feminist or some such credo, she might be guilty of violating the prohibition of  ובחוקותיהם לא תלכו.

Finally, some people like to point out that Rashi's daughters as well as Michal, the daughter of King Saul, wore tefillin. On the first point, there is no evidence that Rashi's daughters did so; this is the stuff of urban legends. With respect to Michal bat Shaul, the Talmud Bavli states that the sages did not protest her doing so, but the Talmud Yerushalmi records a dispute as to whether they protested or not. Further, even if they didn't criticize her actions, it remains a question as to whether what she did was appropriate or not.

The bottom line: the Shulchan Aruch states clearly that if a woman puts on tefillin, "mochin beyadam", we are to protest, i.e., it is not to be done.

And the 600-pound gorilla in the room: why couldn't this have been explained from the pulpit? Is Rabbi Block embarrassed that women don't put on tefillin, that the Torah's ideology differs dramatically from that of the society in which we live? We embrace the Torah's way of life rather than that of Gentile society--we eat beef instead of pork, we work six days instead of seven, and we learn from Hashem's prescription for differences between people and their ideal roles in society, not from invented humanistic ideologies of sameness and egalitarianism.