{"id":721,"date":"2010-09-15T22:09:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-15T22:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/09\/women-and-tradition.html"},"modified":"2010-09-15T22:09:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-15T22:09:00","slug":"women-and-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/09\/women-and-tradition.html","title":{"rendered":"Women And Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Way back when I was first exposed to rabbinic literature, one of the things that struck me dumb was the treatment of women.\u00a0 On myjewishlearning.com<\/span><\/a>, Judith Bakin summarizes the view of women in the Mishnah, Talmuds and Midrash (Jewish works of law and lore):<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
Woman\u2019s otherness and less desirable status are assumed throughout the rabbinic literature. While women are credited with more compassion and concern for the unfortunate than men, perhaps as a result of their nurturing roles, they also are linked with witchcraft (Mishnah Avot 2:7; Jerusalem Talmud Kiddushin 4, 66b), foolishness (BT Shabbat 33b), dishonesty (Genesis Rabbah 18:2), and licentiousness (Mishnah Sotah 3:4, and BT Ketubot 65a), among a number of other inherent negative qualities (Genesis Rabbah 45:5).<\/span><\/div>\n
Add to this the undeniably unequal treatment of women in Halacha (Jewish law).\u00a0 Women can\u2019t serve as witnesses, be counted in a minyan (quorum of ten required for prayer) and so forth.\u00a0 Each morning Orthodox men bless God \u201cwho has not made me a woman.\u201d\u00a0 And don\u2019t even get me started on the laws regarding menstruation.<\/span><\/div>\n
As if all of this were not enough, there are all of the strictures on modesty (tz\u2019niut<\/i> or tz\u2019nius<\/i>) beyond reason, prohibitions on singing for a male audience and generally mingling with men.\u00a0 Radicals in Israel have been known to throw acid at girls not sufficiently covered up.\u00a0 An ultra-Orthodox singer just accepted the judgment of a religious court to receive thirty-nine symbolic lashes as punishment for singing to a mixed audience.\u00a0 Israeli buses now have special lines where women \u201cvoluntarily\u201d sit in the back of the bus.\u00a0 It\u2019s only voluntary in theory.\u00a0 Recently there is even talk of all-male and all-female cars on the new Jerusalem light rail.\u00a0 It\u2019s a perfect mix of misogyny and technology!<\/span><\/div>\n
The real reason for the rules is the tradition\u2019s fear of a woman\u2019s power to tempt a man into sexual misconduct.\u00a0 Women sit separately in the synagogue lest they interrupt a man\u2019s prayer with their sexiness.\u00a0 The Sifrei Deuteronomy (Piska 52) speaks about a woman\u2019s demonic power to sexually tempt men.\u00a0 Avot 1:5 admonishes men not to have much conversation with women and Rabbeinu Yona comments that the danger inherent in this is worse than the danger of death.<\/span><\/div>\n
This all came up because someone near and dear to me is receiving a traditional Jewish education with all the trimmings.\u00a0 Being in an all girls\u2019 school, her teachers are obviously anxious to tone all this down.\u00a0 Their technique consists of lots of talk about the elevated status of women in Judaism, their higher spirituality and nonsense like that.<\/span><\/div>\n
One of the most popular tricks is to use modernity as a punching bag.\u00a0 By hiding their outer appearance, they claim, women protect and nurture their inner beauty.\u00a0 By contrasting the objectification of women in popular culture with the modesty required by traditional Judaism, they create a false dichotomy.<\/span><\/div>\n
This line of thought is also an objectification of women.\u00a0 It denies them the dignity of being viewed simply as human beings with free choice.\u00a0 It reminds me of the people who cast blame on rape victims because of how they dress.\u00a0 Can there be any more of an objectification of women than that?\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s their men who should go into hiding to avoid seeing women at all.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Way back when I was first exposed to rabbinic literature, one of the things that struck me dumb was the treatment of women.\u00a0 On myjewishlearning.com, Judith Bakin summarizes the view of women in the Mishnah, Talmuds and Midrash (Jewish works of law and lore): Woman\u2019s otherness and less desirable status are assumed throughout the rabbinic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[26,27,31],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-misogyny","tag-morality","tag-orthodox-judaism"],"yoast_head":"\nWomen And Tradition<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Way back when I was first exposed to rabbinic literature, one of the things that struck me dumb was the treatment of women.\u00a0 On myjewishlearning.com,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/09\/women-and-tradition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Women And Tradition\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Way back when I was first exposed to rabbinic literature, one of the things that struck me dumb was the treatment of women.\u00a0 On myjewishlearning.com,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/09\/women-and-tradition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-09-15T22:09:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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