Avraham and Sarah in Provence - Hakirah

The Consequences of Reinterpretation
Avraham and Sarah in Provence : 255
Rav Chaim Soloveichik, shlita, in his essay “Rupture and Reconstruction,”
notes how in the present era, the struggle of the Jew has been
shaped as a war against outside influences. 128 Rashba’s metaphor of
the Ishah Zonah as foreign influences and foreign wisdoms that lead
Israel astray has become the dominant focus of those who wish to
lead our generation away from temptation. The sciences taught in the
universities are the embodiment of the temptress who threatens the
future of Israel. But as Rabbi Soloveichik notes, in fact the ancient
challenge defined by Chazal is the internal battle with the yetzer hara,
that of the tzurah vs. chomer. Rambam’s metaphoric explanation of
Mishlei has almost been forgotten, and under the sway of another interpretation
129 a fundamentally different hashkafah system has
emerged. Only total immersion in Talmud and rejection of all foreign
wisdoms is permissible. Nor is it Torah with derech eretz that will provide
for all man’s needs, but only Torah itself.
Moreover, to the Mashgichim and Roshei Yeshivah of many of our
Yeshivos, the Ishah Zonah of Mishlei must also be taken literally, and
thus the answer to every calamity to befall our people is a strengthening
of the strictures of tznius, and admonitions to our wives—this
despite the fact that a generation of idealistic Bais Yaakov girls has
sprung up, with higher religious standards and sensitivities than their
male counterparts. According to Rambam, that this Ishah Zonah is the
call of material want, a more apt target for the Baalei Mussar would be
the desire for wealth that drives so many in the Orthodox community
to tax evasion, fraud, and outright theft. As far as women, the key to
their relationship with their husbands is that they be educated in the
principles of the Torah—as the metaphor clearly tells us. 130
128 Tradition, vol. 28, no. 4, “The thousand-year struggle of the soul with
the flesh has finally come to a close …the spiritual challenge becomes
less to escape the confines of the body than to elude the air that is
breathed.”
129 Rav Soloveichik attributes the change to the change in environment to
an open society from a closed one.
130 See Hakirah 5, “Rambam and Zevulun: Boz Yavuzu Lo” where this is
discussed.