The Atheist Rabbi
For all of my well-wishers out there (I know there’s at least a couple of you) I do apologize for my neglect of this blog. One of my new year’s resolutions is to do a better job of updating it. Thank you to those who have been encouraging me to get it going again.
As my first order of business, I want to address the latest, greatest issue coming out of the Jewish State, the exclusion of women in the public sphere.
You’re probably already familiar with the gender segregation on some buses. Surprisingly I have actually heard defenses of this coming from the enablers of the Haredi primitives who promote this kind of behavior. They say that it’s the women’s choice. In fact, there have been so many documented incidents of coercion on these buses that they can hardly be called a matter of choice.
My latest outrage was kindled by an incident that I have not seen widely reported in the English language press. It took place at an awards ceremony for medical researchers sponsored by Israel’s Ministry of Health.
Now first let me point out that the Ministry of Health is led by DEPUTY Minister Ya’akov Litzman. Why is the Ministry of Health led by a deputy minister? Because the Haredim who elected him are not really Zionists. They’re not exactly anti-Zionists, either. They like to be thought of as non-Zionists. They’re all too happy to receive all of the goodies that the state has to offer, they just don’t want to look too jolly about receiving them. They just do it for the sake of Torah, you see. Thus the deputy title for a guy who’s really the minister. It makes him look less invested in the Jewish State.
Anyway, according to the Hebrew language site, www.doctorsonly.co.il, two female medical researchers were asked to sit in the balcony during the presentation of their awards. Accepting on their behalf were male family members. The men who won awards were in the first row as is typical at such ceremonies. Litzman, by the way, pointed out that the women agreed. There were rabbis on the stage, after all, and the awards were for medical-halakhic breakthroughs, whatever those are.
A few days ago I heard a Haredi woman defend the segregation of buses by citing the fact that the holy men in their community, who are otherwise thinking about Torah all the time, are distracted by the women. Therefore, the women see it as a big mitzvah to help them out by being invisible.
It seems that whether on a bus or at an awards ceremony, Haredi men are constantly at the mercy of unwanted erections caused by any and all women.
Perhaps the next generation of medical researchers in Israel can find a cure for that.
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