Hafaras Nedarim

 Many people are troubled by the Parsha of Hafaras Nedarim. A girl's father's or a husband's power to nullify nedarim and shevuos seems to imply that women need a man to protect them from irresponsible impulsiveness.

It is possible that this is based on the fact that throughout most of history, the average woman had very limited horizons. She did not do business outside of the house, she did not go to school, and she was taken care of in all matters relating to the outside world.  This is expressed by the dictum כל כבודה בת מלך פנימה.  The din of סוקלין אותה על פתח בית אביה כלומר ראו גידולים שגידלתם (Kesuvos 45a) does not apply to the man that was mezaneh with her, even with hasra'ah. The assignment of blame to the parents for a child's behavior only applies to a girl, not to a boy. This is because unlike today, when girls' behavior is strongly influenced by her school and her friends and news and social media, they only knew what they saw at home. (I don't know if Miriam bas Bilga's family would be blamed now as they were then. There are plenty of Roshei Yeshiva and gedolei Torah who nebach have children like Yishmael and Eisav and Avshalom, both boys and girls.)  Because of this, a woman would not necessarily think through the consequences of her nedarim, and might even rely on her more worldly husband or father to confirm or nullify her nedarim.

This is true, but I do not believe that is the entire answer. 

Scientists debate man's primary drive and motivation. We all know that Freud believed that man is motivated by a pursuit of pleasure, Adler believed the primary dynamic is a desire for power, to vanquish, and Victor Frankl believed men are motivated by a will, a search, for meaning. I'm sure each has some truth; Chazal foreshadowed these ideas when they said that the the unexamined life is prone to self destruction if one does not constrain the most powerful drives in our psyches;  הקנאה והתאוה והכבוד מוציאין את האדם מן העולם . Kin'ah is the desire for domination, Taavah is Taavah, and Kavod is, as Rashi says, Rabbanus; והכבוד. שהרבנות מקברת את בעליה.

Still, I think it is a truism that human drives and motivations are influenced by gender. Men are strongly motivated by dominance and aggression and an impulse to vanquish, while women are motivated by a desire to love and nurture and bond and stay close to home. If women ran the world, there would be far fewer wars.  Similarly, as Reb Meir Simcha says, women do not have the mitzva of pirya v'rivya because the Torah will not impose a lifelong mitzva which is inherently dangerous. On the other hand, Hashem gave women a super powerful urge, desire, to have children. If men had to bear children, I am certain that mankind would be long extinct. The vast majority of men would forego sexual relations if they knew that it might result in their going through the process of childbirth, and even worse, having to feed, diaper, and raise the child till they are old enough to be sent away. Only women's powerful innate desire to love a child they bore outweighs the fact that it is best to leave well enough alone.  Reb Meir Simcha's point applies equally well to human nature even outside mitzvos. Women's urge to bear children is greater than men's. Why? Because men don't need convincing to procreate. Women, at least thinking women, should fear childbearing. 

 It has become unpopular to say this because modern feminism is ironically anti-feminine. Because men have more power in society than women, and that power imbalance results from masculine aggression and drive for dominance, the desire to empower women led to mimicry of masculine traits and denial of the feminine. This is perfectly understandable. The discrimination against women when they are doing a job equal to that of men is unfair. 

But the point is that those emotional extremes that are and that should be characteristic of women, expressed in intemperate words, is a natural concomitant of femininity. It is only right that within a family, a woman can rely on her husband or father to release her from the halachic consequences of those words.  I see no reason for women to think of this as insulting. This is not a chisaron of infantile impulsiveness. It is a maalah, a testament to the power of emotion.

Of course, life is complicated, and humans are not mere machines. Masculinity and femininity are spectrums. Some women are relatively masculine, and some men feminine. A great example is the Shla'h (שני לוחות הברית , תורה שבכתב, וישלח, דרך חיים ) about Dinah, that she was born with masculine traits due to her ontogeny. 

ומכל מקום אין להרהר אחר יעקב ולאה איך יצא זה המכשול של דינה. דע כי טבע דינה היה טבע זכר שהוא יוצא השדה, על כן היתה יצאנית, והענין כמו שאמרו רז"ל (ב"ר עב, ו) שדינה היתה זכר בבטן אמה ויוסף היה נקבה בבטן אמו, והתפללה לאה על זה ונתהפכו שניהם, מכל מקום היה בה טבע הזכר. וזהו שאמר בת לאה, כי מה שנעשית בת ולא בן זה היה מכח תפלת לאה:

Reb Yaakov takes this the next step, which makes perfect sense, and applies this to Yosef's personality, to explain what Rashi says in Breishis 39:6, 

ויהי יוסף יפה תואר. כֵּיוָן שֶׁרָאָה עַצְמוֹ מוֹשֵׁל, הִתְחִיל אוֹכֵל וְשׁוֹתֶה וּמְסַלְסֵל בְּשַׂעֲרוֹ, אָמַר הַקָּבָּ"ה אָבִיךָ מִתְאַבֵּל וְאַתָּה מְסַלְסֵל בִּשְׂעָרְךָ, אֲנִי מְגָרֶה בְךָ אֶת הַדֹּב, מִיָּד:

that this 'feminine' behavior was also a consequence of his hormonal environment in utero.  (According to Targum Yonasan 30:21, they didn't change gender, they changed place- Yosef started out in Leah, Dinah started out in Rachel, and they miraculously were switched. That's why I say that it was their hormonal environment in utero that made the difference.)

You don't need rayos to prove something that is self evident. Still, despite personal variations and occasional mismatches of biological gender and personality, the same Ribono shel Olam Who created women and men with gender-specific proclivities, gave us halachos that reflect those differences.

Reb Micha Berger argues that the limitation of a husband's hafara rights to נדרי עינוי נפש ודברים שבינו לבינה gives the lie to the above explanations. He says that the din of hafara is because the husband is responsible for the finances of  his wife and  his family, and nedarim that affect the relationship impinge upon those responsibilities. In order to protect his ability to provide for an even-keeled and functional family, the Torah gave him hafara rights. This would also explain why Chazal say that even outside the formal din of hafara, כל הנודרת על דעת בעלה היא נודרת.