Compare and Contrast

[onionsoupmix]

According to most Orthodox poskim, women are not obligated in the observance of  almost all time-bound commandments. Including tallis and tefillin.

According to many Orthodox poskim, people with cognitive disabilities or mental illnesses are less obligated in the observance of commandments, depending on the degree of disability or illness. See here

Comments

[introducingyael]

The tendency is for women who want to take on Tallis and Tefillin to the exclusion of the Mitzvos to which they are obligated. Shouldn't the concentrate on their obligations before taking on something extra?

[onionsoupmix]

1. Would you say this for a Jewish man with a disability who wishes to put on tefillin rather than some other commandment that he is obligated in, say being shomer shabbos? So, would you tell him, no Beryl, you can't wear tefillin on M-S until you stop turning on the light on shabbos?

2. Say an orthodox woman who keeps pretty much everything within her ability wants to put on tefillin. What now? The second she puts them on, she is pretty much not orthodox anymore.

[introducingyael]

1- No, I would say do whatever he can because neither mitzvah is "more" obligated to him than the other, but I would advise a woman who thinks it's so important to be close to G-d that she must fulfill Tallis and Tefillin that she should probably put down the prverbial pork chop and re-evaluate her motivations first.

2 - Show me a woman who can 100% fulfill every mitzvah commanded to her by G-d and then as far as I'm concerned, A Be Gezunterheit with the tefillin. But if she's doing "as best she can" or "in her own way," then no, she's not already serving G-d to her fullest, she's serving her concept of spirituality, so no in that case she can't put on tefillin and call it frumkeit.

[hamaskil]

Show me a man ( or anyone at all ) who can 100% fulfill every mitzvah commanded to her by G-d.

[mamash]

Greetings and blessings

[onionsoupmix]

oy, too bad you didn't give this psak when you were alive.

[mamash]

What do you mean by "were alive" ? :)

[fetteredwolf]

FTW!

[anonymous]

Why would anyone want to put on Tzizis and Tefillin

Tefillin leaves this nasty red marks on your arm that hurt for 30 mins after they are removed

Tzizis strings jam into your back and feel like bugs crawling on your back

[hamaskil]

One can do lots of things with tight leather tefillin straps, if you know what I mean :)

[sethg_prime]

My understanding has been that in order to be patur from mitzvot, a cognitively impaired person has to have an extremely low mental capacity; the two organizations you link to appear to have functionally literate clients, which puts them over the bar.

In a case where someone is close to the fuzzy boundary of shoteh-hood, then I assume rabbis would encourage that person to observe mitzvot out of safek, but the same is true of the tumtum and androginos, where it is halakhically uncertain whether they are male or female.

(Fun halakhic trivium of the day: three androginosim, in the absence of any men, can constitute a mezuman, because they are either all male or all female and we have a safek about which is which. Three tumtumim cannot make a mezuman, because there is a safek about whether each of them is male or female. I have wondered whether, if two men, two women, and one tumtum or androginos have a meal together, the tumtum/androginos may lead a mezuman.)

[onionsoupmix]

Why do you think that these organizations exclude those who are not functionally literate? I do not think that is accurate. I would say functional literacy is unusual in someone with an IQ below 65. Mild retardation is btw 60-70 and moderate is btw 40-60.

Moreover, I do not think that a rav would discourage tefillin for a man, even in a case of a clear cut shoteh. I have never heard of any psak like that. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[sethg_prime]

I just mentioned literacy because one of your links had a letter from one client (which I suppose could have been dictated) and the other had pictures of kids at desks holding pencils.

I thought the classic definition of a shoteh was someone who, given a nut and a stone, does not have enough sense to keep the nut and throw away the stone. I don’t know how this maps onto IQ scores and I have no special expertise in this field, but it seems to me that any man capable of saying “I want to lay tefillin” is already disqualifying himself from shoteh-hood.

[onionsoupmix]

Any individual with the cognitive and speech ability of a toddler is capable of saying anything, including "Can I put these on?"

I don't think that ability disqualifies a person from shoteh-hood.

[lostreality]

you're missing the fact that OJ is a patriarchal system, and such a system needs to distinguish men from women in as many ways as possible in order to justify the better social position of men.

[onionsoupmix]

oh. yeah. Right. I forgot for a minute :)

[lostreality]

If someone was mentally ill and could hurt themselves with the Tfillin Strap

It would not be too hard to get a heter for them not to wear the Tfillin

It would be a sakana

[onionsoupmix]

I agree that getting a heter would be easy because there is likely not that much obligation in the first place. That has nothing to do with my question, though.