Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Why Is There More Fixed Prayer for Men

Here's a proposal of my own. Women are more dependent in their role. Their sense of dependency therefore is more pronounced. Men are asked to go out and be conquerors. Therefore, therefore they engage in more prayer to bring out the feeling of dependency.

Of course, you could say to this that women are dependent on people so they need prayer to switch that to the awareness of God. And they do need prayer. But they don't need to be forced to start.

Now someone directed me to an idea, with a Torah source that I can't  recall, that less prayer was imposed on women because we don't ask the tzibur to do something they can't handle. Thus, maybe women are quicker to engage in prayer but can't handle as much. I met a young woman recently who attends a Modern Orthodox school where the boys and girls attend minyan together (with a mechitza). Thus, for the first time in her life she was doing a full schacharis every day. She said she found it overwhelming and didn't understand how men were able to do it everyday. Another woman who did the same for a time so that she could say kaddish for her further made the same comment.

So who is more spiritual, the one who starts more automatically or the one who takes it further?

I have no idea. They are different.

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