Showing posts with label Heloni. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heloni. Show all posts

Monday, June 1, 2015

Invisible females

Females pay price
For lack of self control

 

it's not the FEMALES who lack the self control; it is the male religious extremists who lack self control.

Judaism's religion-in-extreme - I won't write "religious extremists" since I think there is nothing "religious" about their actions, certainly nothing based on the Torah or even the talmuds justifies their behaviors toward women - would have Jewish females cover themselves from head to toe in black sacks.

G-d forbid that a "religious" Jewish boy or man should see so much as an ankle; he might go into a sexual frenzy and attack the female.

Turning Jewish females into Muslim look-alikes is something relatively new - hopefully, unlike the Torah from Zion,(כי מציון תצא תורה) this foolishness will NOT go out, although . . .

In England, the men in control of one "hasidic" group have, following the Muslims of Saudia, banned their women from driving cars; in effect, creating a Jewish sharia law in their ghetto; hopefully they won't stone women not in their sect for driving through their self-imposed ghetto on the city's streets.

The "super datee" (super religious) obviously lack any self-control. They can't trust themselves to

Sit next to a woman on public transportation (bus, plane, train)

Shake hands with a woman who may be their better (unlikely to be their boss since most spend their time in a study hall while their wives work and their less religious neighbors defend the country

Touch a female not their mother, wife, daughter, or unmarried sister

Accept a dish from a female not an immediate unmarried relative

Yet we read on a seemingly daily basis how this or that Orthodox rabbi is caught up in a sex scandal - sometimes peeping at females in the mikveh and sometimes with young boys - Catholic priests are not alone in their preferences for young people.

In some/many haredi newspapers, images of female faces are blurred out or air brushed (Photoshopped) out. It males no difference how important the female is to the photo or how newsworthy the female may be, she's out, never existed.

Member of Knesset and cabinet minister? Out.

Leader of a nation (on which Israel depends)? Out.

G-d forbid a "religious" man should see a females face, even one he would never encounter; he might have lecherous thoughts.

And why would he have lecherous thoughts? Probably because seeing a female's face - never mind her body! - was something he's never seen before; it’s a novelty to him.

In the heloni (non-religious) world, a man might look twice at a beauty in a teeny weenie bikini, but unless he is mentally disturbed he would control his impulses, his desires.

Perhaps the haredi newspapers should ban photos of ice cream - there are those of us who have a weakness for the stuff; perhaps ban all "less-than-nutritious foods" as New York City has banned sugar-laden dinks in its schools. (But what if someone has a carrot or pickle fetish? Ban veggies, too.)

It's perhaps understandable that the sheltered haredi boys find it difficult to control their desires when they encounter something from which they've been protected all their lives; from someone who they have been taught is just a necessary evil around for procreation - else why segregate them at the table much as we separate meat and milk dishes.

The problem does NOT lie with the females; it lies solely with the males who never learned self control.

But since in the haredi world the rabbis - all men, of course - are in control, the women will not only be not heard*, they also will not be seen.

* Men are forbidden from even hearing a woman's voice in song - "kol esha" - since, like seeing a woman's face, the super-religious Jew might get "turned on" by the voice and think an unapproved thought.

I guess I'm not ready for black hat prime time.

Lucky me.

** RELATED STORY: The distance between pixels and veils

Sunday, June 9, 2013

What's the big deal?

 

Women and their place

 

Understand this scrivener stands with Bet Shamai on most issues, see http://yohanon.blogspot.com/2011/09/shamai-that-you-never-knew.html.

If you never learned more about Shamai than the few words in Pirke Avot (פרקי אבות) - in which he is horribly given short shrift in comparison to his peer, Hillel, than "you don't know Shamai."

One of the current "tempests in a teapot" in Israel is "Women of the Wall," or "WoW" for short to appease hed (headline) writers.

As I understand it, these women go, monthly on Rosh Hodesh, to pray at the kotel, the Western Wall where the second Temple once stood - and where the abomination al-Aqsa now stands. Again, it is my understanding that they stand on the women's side of the mehitzah (מחיצה).

So far, no problem.

Trouble is, some of these women insist on a wearing tallit , and others both tallit and tefillin.

This troubles the haredim.

Women are not allowed these accouterments. They are the sole purview of males, and males older than 13 years and a day. The rabbis said so. Tallit and tefillin are "men's wear" and therefore, according to Torah (תורה שבעל-פי), forbidden.

The question, of course, is "when" did tallit and tefillin become strictly "men's ware?"

We are given to understand that (at least) one of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki's 3 daughters wore tallit and tefillin. Rabbi Shlomo is better known as Rashi. (According to a Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashi, "While some women in medieval Ashkenaz did wear tefillin, there is no evidence that Rashi's daughters did so.")

Of course, it must be admitted that Rashi's grandson, Rabbi Yakov ben Meir Tam, contested many of his grandfather's decisions; to this day, Ashkenazim and some Sefardim/Mizrachim attach mezzuzot at a slant ( \  ) to satisfy both Rashi, who stayed with the tradition of his time and fixed the mezzuzot upright ( | ) and Tam who wanted the mezzuzot horizontal (  - ). Many men - both Ashkenazi and Sefardi/Mizrachi - don two sets of tefillin, sometimes at once, to meet both the traditional/Rashi order of klaf and to meet Tam's revised order. (See http://ott.co.il/tefillin/tefillin-of-rashi-and-rabbeinu-tam/ for an explanation of the differences.)

In my mixed congregation - we have people following Egyptian, Moroccan, Syrian, and Turkish traditions (minhagim) - we have several Ashkenazi bachelors. None of there people wear a tallit except when they have a Torah honor. This begs the question: Is the tallit required at all? Among Sefardim and most Mizrachim, boys start donning a full (albeit boy-) size tallit early on; exactly when varies by minhag.

AN ASIDE: My wife - a Moroccan - likes the idea of unmarried men praying sans tallit; she also likes to see unmarried women sans hair covering. To her, this advertises who is "eligible" and who is not. Are all women match-makers at heart?

Shabat Rosh Hodesh Tamuz (Shabat Korah) 5773 saw the WoWs at the wall along with other observant women. There were no reports of conflicts among the women.

The haredi men, on the other hand - and I make a distinction between "haredi" and "observant" Jews - once again came to harass the women . . . women on their OWN SIDE OF THE FENCE. That smacks of hutzpa and it also tells me the men only insist on the mehitzah (מחיצה) when it suits them.

Unfortunately, the haredi men seem to think they ARE Israel and only what they want must be followed; they have become the ayatollahs of Israel. In the process, both at the Wall and elsewhere throughout Israel, these men are alienating "regular" Jews - observant and heloni (non-observant) to the point that the haredim are beginning to be held in contempt, and with them, the institutions they control.

Rather than arrange a marriage via the local rabbinute, Israeli Jews (continue) to marry outside of Israel or marry in a civil ceremony in Israel. It is not a matter of marrying a person with "questionable" Jewish bona fides, it's a matter of how the people applying for the rabbinical "stamp of approval" are received. In short, many are received in a manner foreign to Shamai as he is quoted in Avoth. For the record, I am fully in favor of proving Jewishness of both partners before a wedding. I don't care how each partner became Jewish - "accident of birth" or kosher-by-Rambam conversion - just that both are Jewish.

Personally, I do NOT like to see women in tallit and tefillin. I can't find anything that prohibits a woman wearing these accouterments, but being a "traditionalist" I simply am "uncomfortable" around women thusly appointed.

The reason women are exempt - critical word, "exempt" vs. "forbidden" - from tallit and tefillin is because both are "time sensitive"; that is, the related mitzvah must be performed after and before certain (proportional) hours. The rabbis of old, in their wisdom, believed that a woman with a baby cannot be expected to put down the infant or ignore a child while she is wearing tallit and tefillin, so they exempted women from such "time sensitive" mitzvoth. Makes sense to me.

My suggestion to the haredi - ignore the WoW. They won't "go away," but you won't get an ulcer and you might even find non-haredi start to appreciate you and your convictions. They still might not agree with you, but at least some sinat henam can be avoided.

Comments in English or Hebrew to: Yohanon dot Glenn at gmail dot com