Comment of the Month

By Vashty. From here.

Hmm, I think I'll make up the lovey-dovey explanations that Chabad might use...

There's always the "separate but equal" argument. Women have a special kedushah in the eyes of Hashem. There are female sefirot which come together with the male sefirot when a husband and wife do their Friday-night duty. But this doesn't work as well when the woman's organ has lost its keter. A retarded woman or an old maid of thirteen do not need the keter because who will marry them? As for the three-year-old, our sages lived before a time when our minds were polluted by genetics and evolution. They lived in a time of pure Torah study, a time when hymens grew back if broken before the age of three. Let us follow their example and live a life of pure Torah, scrubbed free of scientific practicalities. Just as the Sages believed that a hymen grows back if broken before the age of three, so, too, we should believe in seven days of creation, spontaneous generation of insects, and the immutable status of women as helpmeets and chattel, whose kedushah lies in the great mitzvah of enabling their husbands to do mitzvos. Amen selah.

Then there is the blame-the-victim argument. If there were no witnesses and the woman could not cry out, what was she doing violating the laws of yichud anyway? Why didn't she bring a male relative to chaperone her? Why was she not weaving and baking in the home at the time of the rape? This is Hashem's way of telling us that the kedushah of a woman's tzniyus must be guarded by her and her family at all times- asu seyag latorah! By extension, we can say that this applies to all aveiros: in order to avoid committing a sin, we must avoid chicken with milk, kitniyot on Pesach, secular books, and fraternization with goyim who might lead us astray.

As for my interpretation, the rabbis were probably following the practices of the late antique Near East with a little dose of Greco-Roman influence and a dash of Persianization. Plus, the rabbis had little authority to enforce these mostly theoretical laws...