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A Spiritual Spin on Anti-Women Nonsense 

To which I replied:

Why is all this anti-woman nonsense escalating davka now?

Posted by Rivkah Lambert Adler at 9:18 PM Chana Siegel said...

I can't believe someone else has read that book. It truly did blow me away, but I just don't think many people are ready to hear what she says.
I was also very put off by Paula's tone and what seemed to me to be posturing superiority. I'm probably wrong, I don't know her, but I do know other women I respect who happen to respect her a great deal. But this is not the first time that her writing has left me feeling this way, even though the other articles and letters were on very different topics.
 
Is the author the one that brings up the Talmudic story of the Sun and the Moon originally being luminaries equal of stature, with the tale being an elaborate metaphor of what actually happened in the Garden of Eden (that some interpret as Eve seeking to disrupt the harmonious balance between her and Adam in her favor by eating from the tree of knowledge to become “like G-d” and being punished by G-d in diminishing herself and having Adam rule over her, which in some ways is much a punishment to Adam and his male descendants as it was to Eve and her female descendants)?

It is interesting how many of the sects promoting the continual adding of Chumra in general and of keeping women out of the public eye for the sake of helping men guard their eyes (many of which appear to have no basis in Halacha), act in a similar manner to the historical Kizai Pharisee sect mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud Sotah 22b (that along with a few other sects are likened to a plague) - Kizai Pharisee: one who “makes his blood flow against walls” by smashing his face into a wall to avoid looking at a woman, in other words he (or the wider community) destroys himself (themselves) physically by going over the top to overtly demonstrate one's piety (becoming dysfunctional in the process). : http://www.come-and-hear.com/sotah/sotah_22.html

The bigger question is how does one really separate dysfunctional and impractical Chumra / stringencies (that is beginning to harm the community) from what was the original intent and spirit as outlined in Halacha?
 
I think I figured out what is so off-putting about the abovementioned blog. There's something pernicious about the way some women will cast aspersions on the "femininity" of other women because they happen to hold different views on matters of taste, aesthetics, opinion, or personality. Such women propose that the disagreement exists because there is something wrong with, or missing from, the other party.

It seems to me that "femininity", whatever it is, would have to be a natural and reflexive part of every female. Therefore, any woman who is being true to herself is therefore automatically "feminine", and no one should presume to come from outside to tell her that she is somehow warped or abnormal. We can disagree without making a caricature of the other side as "abnormal".
 Binyamin said...

like! Just feel that we should never wait for moshiach to solve any of our problems.
 Gitel said...

I don't feel any of the anti-woman stuff. Maybe life is different here in Haifa. I do, however, feel a lot of the anti-single stuff.
 
you put it so well and so respectfully. go you!!!!
 
I feel like saying that this increasing trend toward marginalizing women is a manifestation of a spiritual process is dangerous because:
1) it could be construed to excuse offensive people of their responsibility to be mensches, and
2) it could encourage people to tolerate something they view as an injustice instead of fighting to rectify it
 
If you feel in your kishkas that this is wrong (running with your cholent metaphor here), why duck and cover?
 Bat Aliyah said...

Rachel - I'm not excusing it. Just trying to understand it. To my mind, it's important to keep my eye on the bigger picture as Jewish history moves forward. But that doesn't mean I don't do my best to fight against injustice when I see it. Just that I try to hold it in a bigger context.
 Rachel S said...

Rivkah, as I read this latest piece you wrote, I was thinking "yes, yes, yes". I was thinking, "ah, Rivkah is so able to put words to that which I was feeling" and then I read your concluding statement in which you stated that you "duck and cover". And my heart fell. Plop! It was like waking up from a nice dream, only to find yourself in a reality that is not so nice. Yeah, I was and am disappointed. BUT -- if I were to look at myself in the mirror -- I would see a woman who..."ducks and covers". But I "duck and cover" because I am far less educated and far less able to fight with words. I do so because at this point in my life I feel old, I feel too old, to fight. I no longer have the energy and verve I once had when I was younger. Plus, I want to see younger women getting involved in these issues -- and I don't see them. It seems to me that the majority of women who are involved at all in these issues are older, middle aged women. Rachel Stomel -- if I am wrong, please correct me -- but I do not see women of your generation or younger getting involved. Now, I have a thought about why this is: it is because women are still the ones who bear the brunt of the responsibility for the children, the house and home, and managing the lives of their families. They do not have time to fight injustices, they do not have time to show up at the shul often enough to make theirh presence alone as a demand for equal space and time within the constructs of our ritual religious observances. But Rivkah, you have been very outspoken, via your writing, about some of these issues. And even if the pen is mightier than the sword, those words do require action backing them up. And unfortunately, "duck and cover" won't fly....
 
I believe that this was one of your best blog entries. I also appreciate that you left so much of it unanswered, since no one answer will satisfy here. we are very close to messianic times, and I often imagine our anointed one sorting things out by saying; ok, you temanim, you got this right. you, chaba"dnikim, you got this right. you yekkiim, you got this right, you hilonim, you got this right. and on and on, building up our reconstituted "tradition" from what each group carried with is since the dispersion and exile; each one carrying a precious germ, with a lot of "klipah," or hard shell around it, which rots in fertile ground. only then can the germ germinate and become the tree which is in its DNA.
 
To Gitel,

What about anti single women stuff?
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