Homosexuality is currently a hot topic in the religious Zionist community. Consider this: the popular “Srugim” drama about religious single life in Jerusalem, has a central figure who is gay; the Israel educational channel recently ran a documentary series on homosexuality in Orthodoxy that featured a panel of rabbis with a range of opinions; “Eyes Wide Open”, a look at gays in the ultra-Orthodox community, premiered at the recent New York Jewish Film Festival; and a group of rabbis recently signed a letter calling for better treatment of gays in the community. Now that homosexuality is “in,” the religious community has quickly turned its attention in the sexual abuse affair of Rabbi Mordechai Elon from talking about sexual abuse to talking about homosexuality. Putdifferently, focus has shifted from sympathy for the alleged victims to sympathy for the alleged perpetrator. If this discourse continues, it will add travesty to tragedy, miss a vital opportunity to root out evil from the community, and reinstate same old boys’ network that is Orthodox Judaism, only this time in the place that was meant to promote change.
Jewfem Blog
Sex sells. This marketing approach has become so commonplace that it is not only used to sell cars, beer, and football, but also to sell seemingly innocuous items like yogurt, laundry detergent, toothpaste, potato chips and lawn mowers. It is even used to target female consumers, for products such as facial cleanser, diet soda, perfume, tampons, and salads at McDonald’s. The marketplace has become so immersed in sexed-up images of women that, apparently, many people do not even realize anymore how hurtful these ads can be to the female gender. To remind people that using women as sex objects in order to sell products is hurtful anddistorted, WIZO has launched a campaign for the second year in a row to highlight “Israel’s Most Sexist Commercials of the Year.” No, not “sexiest” but most “sexist.” Their criteria for “sexist” is frighteningly simple. Sexist ads are ones that chop up women’s bodies into parts or depict women’s bodies without the faces, that depict women’s bodies as edible replacements for food or meat, that offer women’s bodies as objects for sale or consumption, that reinforce stereotypes and stigmas about women, that infantilize women or portray women as stupid, that promote women as sexual servants, that encourage violence or sexual violence against women, and that legitimize rape. Read the rest and watch the ads at the Forward Sisterhood.
The gap between women’s wages and men’s wages in Israel is getting wider. According to the latest annual survey conducted by Oketz Systems, men in senior management positions in Israel are making on average 29% more than women in identical positions. The survey results show a distinct widening of the gender gap in salaries. Last year, the gap was 26%; in 2007 the gap was 25%; in 2005, the gap stood at 23%. It exists in all levels of employment, but increases in senior management positions. The gap is 24% among CEOs, 26% among those second in command, and 41% among product managers. The widest gap of 49% is noted amongmarketing managers, in which men earn on average 29,480 NIS ($7,833) per month and women earn on average 19,730 NIS ($5,243) per month. Only in administrative positions does the gap all but disappear — with monthly wages of 5,270 NIS ($1,400) for men and 5,260 NIS ($1,397) for women. Read the rest at the Forward Sisterhood.
I'm heading off to New York next week for the bi-annual JOFA conference, where I'll be joining many distinguished speakers in what will surely be a stimulating, push-the-envelope kind of event. I'll be giving two talks, one about a vision of feminism in Orthodox education and one about about boys, men and masculinity based on my post-doc research on the subject. The conference schedule looks fantastic, a delectable smorgasbord of issues in Judaism and gender, and I'll be sure to report back. Here is more exciting info from JOFA.
UPCOMING CONFERENCE:JOFA, March 14 2010, Columbia University, New York “The Be an Orthodox Man Box”The Orthodox community sends messages to boys and men about what it means to “be a man.” Understanding these messages is vital for developing a healthy identity and for creating a vibrant community that is reflective, sensitive, and aware of the social and emotional needs of its members. The talk is based on independent qualitative research among Orthodox men. “Torah Im Shivyon:” A Vision of Orthodox Feminist EducationThe changes in Orthodoxy over the past three decades have failed to find parallel expression in the Orthodox school system. From preschool on, schools continue to send the message that women are predominately charged with the home, and men are in charge of prayer and ritual. Dr. Sztokman will discuss her vision of Orthodox Day School education that incorporates the values of equality, feminism and social justice intertwined with Jewish life and tradition – with perspectives on feminism for girls and feminism for boys. RECENT CONFERENCE:Conservative Judaism: Halakhah, Culture and Sociology at the Van Leer Institute, Dec 29-30 2009 To see a list of some available topics for engagement, click here. For more information, or to book a talk or consultation, email Elana at:
The Internet can be a nasty place. Whether due to the replacement of visceral human relationships with a cold, lifeless screen, or because people have learned to type faster than they think, something about Internet conversation seems to bring out the worst in human discourse. As my Forward colleague Jay Michaelson pointed out in his column last week, “the immediacy and anonymity of the Comment feature on the Internet encourages one to respond in the heat of the moment, and with as much fire as possible.” That said, there seems to be a particular fire in talkbacks relating to religious Judaism. Michaelson noticed this as well, what he called, “rage…dressed up in religious rhetoric.” In my writings on topics of gender and religious life at the Forward, in The Jerusalem Post, and elsewhere, I’ve been called a “man wannabe,” an “anti-Semite” and other names. It’s intriguing to me that essays about cultural trends often merit one or two comments while comments about gender and religion can get 20–30 comments. There is an ire around religious issues (especially gender) that begs explication. Michaelson calls for collective anger management, but I think there is something else at work here. This trend took a rather vile turn recently when my daughter Avigayil wrote a column about her experience being attacked by haredim at the Kotel.
You can learn an incredible amount about different people from language. There are, for example, 27 words for “moustache” in Albanian – including a word for what English-speakers would call “no moustache.” It seems that in Albania, moustaches are pretty important. Similarly, the Inuit are famous for having 30 words for snow – clearly they see things in the snow that most of us don’t. Unique linguistic forms abound, and provide intriguing insights into cultures. According to Adam Jacot de Boinod, author of 'The Meaning of Tingo', the Khakas people of Siberia have a word for the ring you put in the nose of a calf in order to stop it suckling its mother (“oorxax”); Indonesian has a word for flicking someone with the middle finger on the ear (“nylentik”); Hawaiian has a word for scratching your head in order to remember something forgotten (“pana po’o”); Pascuense in Easter Island has a word for a slight inflammation of the throat caused by screaming too much (“ngaobera”); Persian has a word for looking beautiful afterhaving a disease (“mahj”); and Brazilian Portuguese has a word for the practice of putting a live cricket into a box of newly faked documents, until the insect's excrement makes the paper look convincingly old (“grigalem”). So what’s Hebrew’s claim to fame? I would have liked to find a word, perhaps, for that hand gesture of squeezing thumb and middle finger in order to indicate to the viewer, “wait.” But no, we Jews are not quite that lucky. Instead, what distinguishes our culture is that ours is the only language in the world that has the word “agunah.” An agunah is a woman indefinitely stuck in an unwanted marriage, in which the husband is gone but she is still considered married. It is the word for a woman’s perpetual state of limbo, in which she is chained to a man who has complete freedom to move, marry, produce offspring and live a normal life. The cruelty reflected in a society that enables even one agunah to exist — and accepts this situation as a reality to such an extent that it gives her a name — should bring us all enormous shame. International Agunah Day is marked on Ta’anit Esther, which this year falls on Thursday February 25. I think it’s fitting but tragic to combine the Esther story with the agunah story. After all, according to the traditional story, Esther was trapped in an unwanted marriage as well, to King Ahasverosh, a man known for murdering disobedient wives and around whom Esther had to completely disguise her identity. In this marriage, Esther sacrificed her own freedom, her own dreams, and her own life, presumably for the sake of the Jewish people — although it takes several chapters of the book and an indeterminate number of years for a threat tosurface. I hate to say this but in a way, it’s a good thing Haman came along and gave her enslavement a greater purpose. If not, her sacrifice...
It’s been an intense week for me as a parent. I’m torn between using this space to address my daughter’s experience of being verbally attacked by haredim, while she was praying at the Western Wall (and her writing about the experience on The Sisterhood) versus addressing Rabbi Mordechai Elon’s alleged sexual abuse of his students. Both stories fill me with dread at sending my children out there into the wide world, where evil lurks in the very places that goodness is meant to be. I’m confounded about how to provide my children with tools to distinguish good from bad and right from wrong. And I’m deeply troubled about raising youngpeople to be part of a religious society that seems like it is drenched with iniquity at its very foundations. The story of Motti Elon is at once shocking and expected. Shocking because of his squeaky-clean public image, but expected because his alleged misdeeds make for a familiar story: Powerful religious leader, vulnerable youth, sexual assault – been there, done that. There was Zeev Kopelevich of Netiv Meir, Baruch Lanner of NCSY, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Byalik Rabbi Aminadav Krispin, Stanley Z. Levitt of the Maimonides School, and countless more. Many cases go unreported because of a “conspiracy of silence.” I can’t even count how many friends I have who have been sexually attacked by rabbis but ended up not reporting: my college flatmate was molested by a rabbi; another friend groped by her rabbi, while she was ill; a friend’s older brother raped by his Chabad teacher; a colleague harassed by her dean at rabbinical school. And on and on. So many of the attackers are famous, with worldwide reputations, sparkling smiles and enchanting charisma, that these qualities seem to be part of the profile. As if, the more famous the man is, the more I distrust him; the more celebrity status he has, the more likely I am to assume that he’s hiding his dark side. READ MORE AT THE FORWARD SISTERHOOD
The Wailing Wall. It’s considered a very spiritual place where you’re supposed to pray/wail (as the name implies) to God. It’s supposed to be a very moving experience — I mean, people come from all over the globe to see the Wall’s wonders. But after praying there with Women of the Wall, I now have a whole new side to this “experience” (not to mention a whole new side to the term “wail.”) Before I went on Monday morning for Rosh Chodesh Adar, I had a vague sense of what might happen. I heard about people tossing words and other things at the group. But I’m not sure I really understood what that might feel like. READ THE REST AT THE FORWARD SISTERHOOD
Feminism has no doubt transformed Orthodoxy over the past three decades. Women have gone from begging to hold a Torah on Simchat Torah to holding their own services, to creating partnership synagogues in which women take active roles alongside men in running the service. It’s not only about women learning Talmud, but also about being acknowledged with proper titles for the roles — from religious pleaders who argue cases in the rabbinical courts to the most recent breakthrough of calling women (almost) rabbis. Gender roles in Orthodoxy are rapidly being redefined in homes, communities and synagogues, where men and women share the tasks of preparing for Shabbat and educating children, leading prayer and giving a D’var Torah. The list of changes goes on, and it’s all quite exciting. Yet, remarkably, these changes have failed to find parallel expression in the Orthodox school system. Notwithstanding tremendous efforts by the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) and other groups to address these issues, the fact remains that from preschool on, schools continue to send the message that women are predominantly charged with the home,and men are in charge of prayer and ritual. School books show men as active and women as passive — a message compounded by school decors that have walls plastered with pictures of men/rabbis and women’s pictures few and far between, if at all. The issues surrounding how teachers relate to gender in the classroom, how girls are treated in math and sciences and how boys are treated in art and literature — issues that blasted open in America with the 1992 AAUW report “How Schools Shortchange Girls” and have since contributed to a complete evolution of gender in education in America — have barely been noted in the Orthodox day school system. Read more at the Forward Sisterhood
