Women wearing tzit-tzits?
This is a subject that I never thought of as concerning me; after all, I am a woman. Women aren’t supposed to wear tzit-tzits, or are they? Let’s look at the scriptures:
Bemidbar (numbers) 15:37-41
37And YHWH spoke to Mosheh, saying, 38“Speak to the children of Yisra’el, and you shall say to them to make tzitziyot on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a blue cord in the tzitzit of the corners. 39“And it shall be to you for a tzitzit, and you shall see it, and shall remember all the commands of YHWH and shall do them, and not search after your own heart and your own eyes after which you went whoring, 40so that you remember, and shall do all My commands, and be set-apart unto your Elohim. 41“I am YHWH your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Mitsrayim, to be your Elohim. I am YHWH your Elohim.”
There are many who would tell you that in this verse Yahweh is only speaking to the ‘sons of Israel’. Their reasoning for this is that the Hebrew word used for children here is ‘ben’; the first definition for this word is ‘son, grandson, child, member of a group’. In my study of this, I found that this is being taken out of context. Yahweh is speaking to ALL the ‘children’ of Israel, be they female or male, young or old.
There are over 2000 instances where the word ‘ben’ is used to mean ‘son’ in the scriptures; but not one of them is found where Yahweh is telling Moses to speak to the ‘children’ of Israel regarding his commands! If Yahweh is only speaking to the ‘sons’ here then that would mean ALL his commands are meant only for the men. In all of Shemoth (Exodus), Wayyiqra (Leviticus) and Bemidbar (Numbers) where Yahweh is telling Moses the things He expects from his ‘children’, the word ‘ben’ is used in the context to mean a group of people, not just the ‘sons’ of Israel.
I understand that we must all come to our own terms with what we discern when reading scripture, but as a wise friend once said to me; “How obedient will we be? Will we take Him at His Word, and willingly do what it says with a simple heart, or will we expound what we believe it means? I prefer to take the simple, innocent road and take Him at His Word. How can we explain the commandments when we are not Yahweh? We cannot possibly know the full impact of why He gave these instructions. However, they were given to us for blessing. So, I will stand on the side of blessing.”
HalleluYAH! I will be making tzit-tzits and putting them on four cornered garments for my family and myself so that we may willingly follow our Eternal Creators commands for us.
