Haredim

[stilltrucking]

“A fool throws a stone into a well and 1,000 sages can’t remove it.”

those who tremble before God

[silent woman]

Last month, an innocent, modestly dressed 8-year-old girl, Naama Margolese, living in Beit Shemesh, described being spat on and vilified by religious extremists — all men — who believed that she did not dress modestly enough while walking past them to the religious school she attends. And more and more, public buses in Israel are enforcing gender segregation imposed by ultra-Orthodox riders in and near their neighborhoods. Woe to the girl or woman who refuses to move to the back of the bus.

This is part of a larger battle being waged in Israel between the ultra-Orthodox and the rest of Israeli society over women’s place in society, over their very right to have a visible presence and to participate in the public sphere.

What is behind these deeply disturbing events? We are told that they arise from a religious concern about modesty, that women must be covered and sequestered so that men do not have improper sexual thoughts. It seems, then, that a religious tenet that begins with men’s sexual thoughts ends with men controlling women’s bodies.

This is not a problem unique to Judaism. But the Talmud, the basis for Jewish law, offers a perhaps surprising answer: It places the responsibility for controlling men’s licentious thoughts about women squarely on the men.

Put more plainly, the Talmud says: It’s your problem, sir; not hers.

The ultra-Orthodox men in Israel who are exerting control over women claim that they are honoring women. In effect they are saying: We do not treat women as sex objects as you in Western society do. Our women are about more than their bodies, and that is why their bodies must be fully covered.


In fact, though, their actions objectify and hyper-sexualize women. Think about it: By saying that all women must hide their bodies, they are saying that every woman is an object who can stir a man’s sexual thoughts. Thus, every woman who passes their field of vision is sized up on the basis of how much of her body is covered. She is not seen as a complete person, only as a potential inducement to sin.

Of course, once you judge a female human being only through a man’s sexualized imagination, you can turn even a modest 8-year-old girl into a seductress and a prostitute.

At heart, we are talking about a blame-the-victim mentality. It shifts the responsibility of managing a man’s sexual urges from himself to every woman he may or may not encounter. It is a cousin to the mentality behind the claim, “She was asking for it.”

So the responsibility is now on the women. To protect men from their sexual thoughts, women must remove their femininity from their public presence, ridding themselves of even the smallest evidence of their own sexuality.

All of this is done in the name of the Torah and Jewish law.

But it’s actually a complete perversion. The Talmud, the foundation of Jewish law, acknowledges that men can be sexually aroused by women and is indeed concerned with sexual thoughts and activity outside of marriage. But it does not tell women that men’s sexual urges are their responsibility. Rather, both the Talmud and the later codes of Jewish law make that demand of men.

It is forbidden for a man to gaze sexually at a woman, whether beautiful or ugly, married or unmarried, says the Talmud. Later Talmudic rabbis extended this ban even to “her smallest finger” and “her brightly colored clothing — even if they are drying on the wall.”

To make these the woman’s responsibility is to demand that Jewish women cover their hands, and that they not dry their clothes in public. No one has ever said this. At least not yet.

The Talmud tells the religious man, in effect: If you have a problem, you deal with it. It is the male gaze — the way men look at women — that needs to be desexualized, not women in public. The power to make sure men don’t see women as objects of sexual gratification lies within men’s — and only men’s — control.

Jewish tradition teaches men and women alike that they should be modest in their dress. But modesty is not defined by, or even primarily about, how much of one’s body is covered. It is about comportment and behavior. It is about recognizing that one need not be the center of attention. It is about embodying the prophet Micah’s call for modesty: learning “to walk humbly with your God.”

Eight-year-old Naama could teach her attackers a thing or two about modesty.

Dov Linzer, an Orthodox rabbi, is the dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/opini ... _LO_MST_FB

[the mingo]

Yeah, I read something about this - what the hell is up with that? 'Cept I don't know about the part of not gazing the way i do at women. I mean they speak of it as if this is something under my control. yeah, right. When does that happen? Maybe after i am dead. I got no patience any more for those who would pile shit (and they so do enjoy it) on me for being a man. O my god i said that m word - MAN. Or that I should somehow feel less than human for feeling joy of whatever kind in the presence of women. i guess i could go around with my head up my ass but i know for a fact, in my case, that it does not work - i only wonder all the harder at what i'm missing. So fuck all the killjoys everywhere. I like women no matter how i think of them. i don't worship them, i like them. Always have. Thank God. Assholes want first to have you fear the object of your desires then they want you to fear and be ashamed of the desire itself. Yeah, right!

bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh - Adam had it right and if he didn't have a problem with it then what the hell is anybody doing pretending a problem with it now?

[the mingo]

PS - glad ya enjoyed the Chris Rea - i discovered him about ten years ago, been listening ever since.

[the mingo]

Mornin' Jack -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJURd-FGr30

[Arcadia]

what I guess I know about ortodox men jews in Rosario is that they must be a little masoquists (I saw some of them days ago walking the streets near midday with traje and the shirt bottoned at top with near 40ºC... )

now talking seriously: sad news!..., but it´s a sort of relief ton know that Judih (and surely many others in a similar longwave) live also in Israel, so they -both men and women- are not alone and they can see and interact with living alternatives if they ocassionally can, want or be enough open to!

from the other side of the Mar Rojo last week I recived a mail about women´s role in today´s Egypt, it´s interesting!:

http://www.diagonalperiodico.net/Egipto ... de-la.html

[stilltrucking]

A short film shot at a recent family reunion of the tilles and shapiro families.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6C2Ufs5afM


All it means to me is family. The family into which I was acculturated into humanity. We are all family I know that now, but my first friends were my brothers and sister, from which I have tried to keep faith with that sacred friendship as I make new friends.

Those women who owned me when I was just a little jackster, took me years to realize there was more to life than nice Jewish girls, ah ha moment, a woman is a woman is a rose.

thanks for stopping by, I been following that Egyptian story. Amazes me how some well educated women there defend the trend.


There are all kinds of Judaisms these days, reformed, conservative, orthodox, one thing they all have in common for me is my ignorance of the practice of it.

My father a stone cold atheist Jew spared me a religious indoctrination.
At the time I was grateful for that. But he had other ways of introduction the fear of God into me. It was a psychopathic god, the god of his own torment.
Amor Fati, lions and tigers and bears oh my

My father so double minded about women.
Pardon the ramble I know it means nothing to you all,
Amor Fati, just means I have come to be grateful even for the losses,
lions and tigers and bears oh my
We are off to see the wizard
Freud my father's wizard
I was raised on a trinity of ego, super ego and id.

Id don't mean nothing
drive on

[MrGuilty]

a duality of soul body moments
hyletic data
as if a child were a man

a life of incomprehension and dread

soul and body