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 leaders 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.
Jewfem Blog
Women, looking around at other women, are often so sensitive to being judged — whether or not the sentiment is justified. Working women feel judged as bad mothers, and stay-at-home mothers feel judged as inferior members of society at large, a society in which career often equals social status and identity. I think that much of the recent Sisterhood debate on this topic reflects this general insecurity. Mothers are so heavily judged and blamed for a whole host of societal ills. From Sigmund Freud to Robert Goren, mothers who don’t do their jobs properly are credited with smothering and emasculating young men and for causing psychosis and sociopathic behavior. No wonder women are always so insecure. READ MORE AT THE FORWARD SISTERHOOD
Women can solve the world’s problems by just being a little quieter. That is the message emerging from the resolution of a little fracas in the Religious Zionist world recently. The conflict revolved around the traditional IDF event memorializing the “Lamed-Heh,” the 35 men from the Haganah convoy who gave their lives to protect Gush Etzion in 1948. Bnei Akiva announced their withdrawal from the event because there are to be women singing in the choir. After some hemming and hawing and a few angry responses even from within the Bnei Akiva constituency — including condemnation of the boycott from Bnei Akiva World head Daniel Goldman, as well as Kibbutz Hadati youth, Kolech, and others —the groups reached a “compromise” in which women would not sing at the event, but would sing after the event (once all of the Bnei Akiva kids have left). Actually, this event is just the latest in a series of national religious boycotts of women’s artistic expression — boycotts that, for the most part, have resulted in public capitulation to demands of religious men, amounting to victories for anti-woman rabbis at the expense of women’s well-being. In 2008, for example, a leading dance troupe set to perform at the gala opening of the Jerusalem Bridge of Strings was forced cover up “Taliban-style” in order to placate haredi men (some of whom are on the city council). Similarly, a group of religious paratroopers walked out of an IDF event in which a woman was singing. According to Haaretz, there have been several similar incidences over the past two years: One army brigade canceled a female singer’s performance at a program for commanders after two religious commanders refused to attend. A year earlier, a group of men walked out in the middle of a woman’s singing, and there have been similar tensions at several other events. It is important to note that these events are taking place in public spaces. We are not talking about a private party run by some religious group. We are talking about the IDF, the Jerusalem Municipality, and programs aimed at the entire population of Israel. For these groups to capitulate to religious demands sets a frightening precedent — and I don’t think that the Taliban analogy is unwarranted. This is how it starts. There are a few issues here. One is the effect on women. I cannot help but wonder how the women singers feel about this. Yesterday, they were equal members of a mixed choir; today, they are the ones that are not meant to be heard. Their “leaders” basically offered the women as sacrifices in the name of peace between brothers. I would feel completely betrayed, with nobody covering my back. Moreover, the decision turns women’s singing into a sexual act. Men can sing freely without ever being accused of being provocative. Yet women, singing the same songs and with the same passions and motivations, are told that their voices are a turn-on to religious men. Let’s talk about this...
Terrible news for women: The government ruled today that it is legal for the public buses in Israel to send women to the back of the bus. The Hebrew report is here. I'm preparing a proper blog post in response, in the coming days. Anyone want to share thoughts and ideas?
Women can solve the world’s problems by just being a little quieter. That is the message emerging from the resolution of a little fracas in the Religious Zionist world recently. The conflict revolved around the traditional IDF event memorializing the “Lamed-Heh,” the 35 men from the Haganah convoy who gave their lives to protect Gush Etzion in 1948. Bnei Akiva announced their withdrawal from the event because there are to be women singing in the choir. After some hemming and hawing and a few angry responses even from within the Bnei Akiva constituency — including condemnation of the boycott from Bnei Akiva World head Daniel Goldman, as well as Kibbutz Hadati youth, Kolech, and others —the groups reached a “compromise” in which women would not sing at the event, but would sing after the event (once all of the Bnei Akiva kids have left). Read more
My colleague Debra Nussbaum Cohen, a wonderful writer who has been dedicated to the issue of advancing women in Judaism for 15 years, responded to my post on the Sisterhood about women and work. Read it here. What do you think? Where do you stand in this discussion? Weigh in, here or at the Forward.
In Friday's Jerusalem Post. If all the people whose biographies appear in Jewish Sages of Today: Profiles ofExtraordinary People were in the same room, it would be quite an impressive gathering, a venerable "who's who" of today's American Jewish and Israeli world. But fame and renown are not what editor Aryeh Rubin was looking at in the people whom he chose to profile. Rubin, a successful businessman, philanthropist and scholar, was not looking for "stars" but "sages."
As I was driving my daughter to school for an afternoon exam, I received a work call about a knotty issue that left me with a lot of explaining to do about power, money and some complexities of office politics. This is my life, I thought. Though I’ve long since abandoned any hope of being free to do only one thing at a time, and I’m not sure I would have chosen to expose my child to all that she heard on the speakerphone, nevertheless, after 17 years at this parenting stuff, I am happy to report that I am no longer self-flagellating about doing it all at once.
The purpose of this treatise is to examine the practice of gender segregated transport in the Ultra Orthodoxcommunities of Jerusalem.... [T]his is not a study of multiculturalism, rather an assessment of a specific religious cultural practice and its impact on gender equality in an advanced state purporting to be a secular democracy. We explore the way in which knowledge is imparted differently to men and women and support Tamar El-Or’s argument that Ultra Orthodox women are educated to maintain their ignorance, which has a profound impact on the way Ultra Orthodox men and women have come to understand their respective roles in a patriarchal society. The treatise also sets out to test some of the core assumptions inherent in feminist curiosity by suggesting that the Ultra Orthodoxy’s pathological curiosity and hypervigilance of the female body underpins some of the more discriminatory practices that disempower women.
Goel Ratzon, a 60-year-old man with long white hair and penetrating eyes, has at least 17 wives and 28 children, though the precise figure remains elusive. Ratzon, who apparently believes himself to be something of a messiah, or the modern embodiment of King Solomon, was arrested last week in Tel Aviv, as were some of the wives, following an eightmonth undercover operation that included some daring work of a female detective who presented herself as a willing conquest. The details emerging over the past few days about life in his cult/commune/harem form a disturbing and mysterious portrait, in part because of how zealously many of the women have come to his defense.
