All of Israel received the same Torah. But the fact that this was preceded by two separate communications, one to the women and another to the men, implies a distinction between the women's reception of Torah, and the men's. Differing biologically and psychologically, men and women were empowered by their Creator with distinct roles in their life's mission.

Each of us relate to more than half the Torah. Man and woman are two aspects of a single soul, separated at birth and reunited through marriage. Each soul is charged to implement the entire Torah - its masculine element through a male body, and its feminine element in a female body to realize the Torah's feminine goals.

In the words of the master kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria, "When the male performs a Mitzvah specifically for men, the woman is included in his mitzvah... This is the deeper significance of what our sages have said,² 'A spouse is as part of the same body.'"

Each soul is charged to implement the entire Torah - its masculine element through a male body, and its feminine element in a female body

The distinction between these roles is expressed in the Midrash on Exodus 19:3. G-d told Moses to relate the "general principles" of the Torah to the women, and its "exacting particulars" to the men. The woman relates to the Torah's all-inclusive essence, while the man relates to the detail, specific law and particular application.

This also explains the differing roles of the father and mother in determining their child's identity. In Judaism, the mother determines the child's Jewishness: if the mother is Jewish, so is the child; if the mother is not, neither is the child.

But regarding the particulars of his Jewishness - his tribal identity, or his classification as a "Kohen," "Levite," or "Israelite" - the child takes after his father.

The man’s relationship with Torah is detailed, while the woman relates to Torah at its supra-rational root with her female faith, uniting with G-d without the need to dissect; a process that can deflect its force and refract the intensity of its light.

Moses went to the women first because the Torah's revelation unfolds from the general to the particular, from the supra-spatial point of concept to the breadth and depth of the law.

These were followed by the communication, through Moses, of the other eight Commandments, all Ten Inscribed on the Two Tablets. For the next forty years, Moses taught Israel the particulars of Torah, transcribed in the Written Torah (the Five Books of Moses); with its 613 mitzvahs detailing the principles in the "Engraved Torah" of the Ten Commandments.

The extrapolation of Torah did not end with Moses: thirty-five generations of interpretation and application produced the Mishnah, and 300 years of Mishnah analysis gave us the Talmud.

This process continues to this very day, as the streams of Halachah, Aggadah, Kabbalah, Chakirah, Mussar and Chassidut - continue to flow from the wellspring of Sinai, an ever- expanding mass of wisdom and law, every word is encapsulated in the single utterance of G-d’s original words⁴.

Go first to the Jewish woman, said G-d to Moses, for she is the prime conduit of this first step in the communication of My truth.

Go first to the Jewish woman, said G-d to Moses, for she is the prime conduit of this first step in the communication of My truth. Then, go to the men and instruct them the details, for they play the pivotal role in applying the Torah to the particulars of man's external experience of his world.

This explains the different emphases in men and women's roles in the sanctification of time.

The detail-oriented spiritual life of the male is a sequential string of particulars in which each item is dealt with on its own terms and fitted into context with the others.

In time, his is the domain of the year, month, week, day and hour. So the Torah charges him to imbue these time-particulars with holiness.

But while man is of the hour, woman is time incarnate. She relates to the essence of time, the pure potential of change and flux that transcends the particulars of quantified time. So her mitzvahs are primarily "time-neutral," relating to the whole of life rather than the specific slices defined by the clock.⁵

Republished with permission from Jewish-Holiday.com.