Recap
Makkot 23b - quotes mishnah which makes distinction between positive and negative commandments
Kiddushin 29a
- quotes mishnah that states that women are not obligated to perform all of the mitzvot that men are obligated to perform
- calls out positive, time bound mitzvot as the distinguishing feature
- we see the rabbis look to scripture for precedents for future behavior
Shabbat 3a - establishes concept of patur aval asur, that the word "exempt" actually means "prohibited"
Kiddushin 33b-35a - later rabbinic conversation about women's exemption (prohibition?) from positive, time bound mitzvot
MISHNA: A man is commanded with regard to the mitzva to be fruitful and multiply, but not a woman. Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Beroka says that a woman is also commanded, as the verse states with regard to both of them: “And God blessed them, and God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).
(26) And God said, “Let us make humanity in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.” (27) And God created humanity in God's image, in the image of God did God create it; male and female God created them. (28) God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”
Rabbinic Assembly Teshuvah: Women and Mitzvot, pg 30
"The mitzvah of procreation applies to men and not to women because of the health risks of pregnancy and labor to women. Requiring women to become pregnant would subject them to dangers to their health. Even today, when the risks have decreased substantially, the risks inherent in pregnancy and labor for women still remain far greater than the risks of intercourse for procreation for men."
CCAR RESPONSA: In Vitro Fertilization and the Mitzvah of Childbearing - 5758.3
It is understandable, then, that procreation (periyah ureviyah) becomes a mitzvah, a religious obligation for the Jew, derived from Genesis 1:28: “God blessed (the man and the woman) and said to them: Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it.” Technically, this obligation is fulfilled when one has produced a son and a daughter; nonetheless, “a man who has already fulfilled this mitzvah is forbidden by way of rabbinic ordinance to desist from procreation so long as he has the power to engage in it.” Traditional halakhah, based upon a contentious interpretation of the language of the verse, regards procreation as a mitzvah for the man and not for the woman. This distinction may seem a curious one; after all, both a male and a female are needed to procreate. Still, since childbirth has always involved significant medical risks for women, the predominant halakhic view may have been motivated by the desire to protect those women for whom pregnancy might pose an unacceptable danger to life and health.
...With respect to our issue as well, while it is true that as a species and as a people we are “required” to bring children into the world, it is also true that Jewish law accepts that there are exceptions to the general rule. Thus, it neither compels individuals to marry nor infertile couples to divorce. And, significantly, it does not demand that a woman sacrifice her health for the sake of this mitzvah; as one emiment authority has put it, “one is not required to lay waste to one’s life in order to ‘settle the world.’"