GEN294 …. the idea that the manner in which the male and female principle complete each other in the world is determined by the aggressive or active nature of the male and the passive and receiving nature of the female … is mainly reflected in the legal status of the woman. Because of the legal form of the marriage contract she was originally greatly disadvantaged. While the husband could divorce her at will and against her will, she could not, and cannot to this day divorce her husband. The husband could inherit her property, but a widow does not inherit her husband’s and has to be maintained by her children from the estate they inherit. The heirs of a man are his son, not his daughters. The daughters have to be supported and must be provided with an appropriate dowry, but they do not inherit as equals with their brothers. Women are not admitted as witnesses or as judges. Similarly, their religious status is also severely limited. They are under no obligation to fulfill the highest commandment of Judaism, to study Torah. Since they are not obligated to study, they can have no obligation to teach. Therefore, while it is incumbent upon a father to teach his son Torah, the same duty does not apply to the mother. But not only was there no obligation for a woman to study Torah, the teaching of the written law to her was actually frowned upon, while the teaching of the oral tradition was forbidden.  See T.B. Sotah 20a; Maimonides, Yad HaHazakah, Talmud Torah 1, 13; Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 246.6  Her place as a member of the religious community is strictly limited.  While she is obligated to adhere to all the negative commandments, she is exempted from the duties to practice most of the positive commandments whose observance depends on a specific time of the day or the year. She does not have to put on Tefilin (phylacteries) or to wear Zizit on the corner of her clothes, she does not have to dwell in booths during the Sukkot festival, etc. She cannot be part of a Minyan, a quorum of ten Jews required for a congregational religious service.  We may now be in a better position to understand how those negative opinions about female characteristics might have come about and might, notwithstanding their exaggerated generalization, often have been derived from experience. There is little doubt that notwithstanding these rather limiting rules and regulations, Judaism produced numberless Zadkaniyot, women who were pious, chaste, virtuous, and charitable often in a self-sacrificial sense and to an ideal degree.  Yet we have to consider what must have been the effect of the position granted to the woman on the great majority of their sex. Since education was essentially Torah education, many women had no education at all.  They were of course taught the duties appertaining to their responsibilities as wives and mothers, and also learned from the example of the living tradition that surrounded them. As compared to the education of the sons, many of the daughters of Israel must have been intellectually as well as emotionally stunted. They were largely excluded from and were often mere spectators of the drama of the creative forms of religious life.  Their legal status, too, is often that of a passively receiving, protective member of society. It should not, then, be surprising if many of them were thievish, because they might have felt that they did not have the share in the family fortune that was due to them. That they were quarrelsome is quite believable; dissatisfied people often react to their surroundings in such a manner. With our better psychological insight, we may well understand that the deeply frustrated person may seek comfort in over-eating and become gluttonous. Some of the other negative characteristics too, which were ascribed to women in Talmudic times, are better understood as psychological reactions to their condition. We need not at all be convinced that the good woman, whose goodness was said to be limitless, was indeed potentially a better human being than the bad one, whose wickedness, it was maintained, was without end. Could it not have been that a good woman was meeker by nature and because of that readily accepted her status, whereas the bad woman was more vital, more energetic, with a stronger will of her own and because of that, much more frustrated. Her “wickedness” might have been her unconscious rebellion against her inability to make meaningful use of her natural gifts.  Rabbi Eleazar, a Talmudic teacher of the early part of the third century, has an interesting comment on the creation of woman, which has a bearing on this aspect of our discussion. We read in the Bible that God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet (sic?) for him.” [this verse] Its rather awkward English phrase stems from the fact that an attempt is made to get as accurate a rendering of the idiosyncrasy of the Hebrew text as possible. A more literal translation of the second part of the sentence would read: I will make him a help meet (sic?) opposite him. The phrase, “opposite him,” is explained by Rabbi Eleazar to mean: If a man deserves it, she will be a help meet to him; if not, she will be “opposite him,” i.e. against him. T.B. Yevamot 63b. It may well have been the case that the numerous shrews about whom Talmudic records know were the kind of women that the society or some men deserved. All those sweeping generalizations about women may say very little about what women are, but rather about what they become and the circumstances in which they had to live. (By Eliezer Berkovits, "The Status of Woman within Judaism") KELLNER 359-61