The one who teaches his daughter math is teaching her to lasciviousness

Posted on 02/14/2008 by Sotah

The modern day version of “the one who teaches his daughter Torah is teaching her lasciviousness” (Talmud, Sotah 20a) has arrived. An article in the Seattle Times links an increase in education for girls to an increase in drugs, alcohol and partying. The blog Feministing, picked up this article and critiqued it as a new strain of patriarchy. However, this argument is old, and identical to the one the Talmud makes for excluding women from learning Torah. Yesterday’s “lasciviousness” is today’s “drugs and partying.”

Some might respond to this critic, by attacking the conclusion (rather than the premise); this of course has been done in the Jewish community in regards to women’s learning. Jewish feminists he fought back by saying “It is not true, a learned woman will be just as moral as she was before, even more so.”

This argument is actually devastating to women’s dignity, because it assumes that a goal for womanhood is good behavior, and if men let us learn, we’ll continue to behave (aka be sexually pure). This of course is not true, it cannot possibly be true. Be it Talmud or calculus, a woman who lives in a world where she is taught what is considered valuable for her culture, will by definition have a measure of freedom that will enable her to be “lascivious,” a right that men have cherished for quite some time.

Bottom line: The idea of trading girls’ education, for their good behavior is still alive and well and it will continue to be that way while we accept their premise: women’s top priority is propriety. Time for a new premise: Women exist for their own sake, and not for the purpose of blindly reproducing the hegemonic regime of the moment.

Despite what some well intentioned feminists might say, Women’s liberation is a liberation from “good behavior” first and for most; because it was in the name of “good behavior” that women were locked away from the world, century after century, civilization after civilization.

Posted in blogs, education, gender, halacha | Leave a comment

A win for teen sex

Posted on 12/09/2007 by Sotah

It is true, that I walk through the world relating back most of what I see and hear to questions of human sexuality and gender. But this time I’m definitely not just “seeing things”, there really is a win for “free love” a la a study from the good folks at University of Virginia psychology department. They examined 534 pairs of same-sex twins, who had sex two years part.  And it seems that, the twin that has sex earlier had lower levels of delinquency and anti-social behavior.  This of course is good news, for those of us who think that engaging in what is normal behavior is actually likely to promote normal behavior.

This leads to a fairly straight forward conclusion. There is no public policy reason to stop horny high school-ers from having safe sex, with age appropriate partners.  The adults responsible for the health of teenagers should teach the teens in their life to be responsible sexual beings, just like adults teach children to be responsible street-crossers and ultimately responsible car drivers.   

This of course is not the message of  4parents.gov, a website of the Department of Health and Human Services, their commercial features a bunch happy go-lucky pre-teens, asking their parents to talk to them about sex, and tell them to wait till their married before having sex. This “moral” propaganda clearly, presents statistically speaking, anti-social behavior, likely to lead to delinquency. 

                Why do some forces in society want kids to wait to have sex, clearly it is not for the stated reasons of helping young people grow into “health adults,” (as 4paretns claims) since becoming a healthy adult does not seem to have a correlate on with not having sex until marriage.  Why oh why, then does the government have an investment in virginity?  

                The easy answer to this of course is religion thinly veiled as “health.”   I however, think that really this campaign is not about female virginity at its core. What lead to this silly idea?  The curriculum of a fairly popular abstinence only workbook.  Checkout  “Sex respect” or yourselves.

The curriculum then focuses on the differences between males and females when it comes to sex and relationships. It explains that, “a man can experience sexual release with a woman even if he doesn’t particularly like her. A woman, however, often experiences more sexual fulfillment with a person she trusts and whom she believes is committed to her.” (Sex Respect, Student Workbook, p. 11) To make this simpler for students to understand, it goes on to say, “some people describe the differences this way: Boys tend to use love to get sex; girls tend to use sex to get love.” (Sex Respect, Student Workbook, p. 11) This paragraph is from: http://www.communityactionkit.org/reviews/SexRespect.html

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Does sex cause depression?! and Shmuley Boteach

Posted on 09/04/2007 by Sotah

It’s been a while since I posted last. I left good-old Zionist Israel and moved to DC, to study Law. (Two weeks in and I still have my idealism, Still hoping to change the world, and all that jazz J Feeling pretty settled in over my long weekend, I went on a search for the next post, and I found it alright in the Jpost editorial written by Shmuley Boteach, the Jewish Doctor Phil “wanna be,” the formerly Chabad, preacher of torah psychology.

Well this time he went beyond feel good platitudes, to trying to explain the reason “Why women dress skimpily in the cold.” The answer of course is “complicity of an educated generation of women in their own degradation and denigration!” Never mind, that the skimpy dressed “degenerates” are going to get up the next morning (with a slight hang over :-) and march of to the office in business attire, of course even Shmuley admits that these women are “educated.” He accuses these women of being nothing but men’s “play things” rather than their own individual human beings. One would assume that someone with such harsh criticism comes from a community where women have more options, than the Dublin young Professionals; However, the Rebbi (dead leader of movement), spoke against the use of any of birth-control for Jewish and non-Jewish alike. The Rebbi said “We must convince the leaders of the country to fight against family planning and birth prevention by lobbying in Congress, simply soberly, and with common sense. (53)” I guess the real obstacle to women‘s dignity is mini-skirts and not reproductive freedom!

But, that’s not even the worst of it. Shmuley throws out, without citing, a particularly frustrating statistic that I seem to come across all the time (it’s the first five hits on google for the word combination of “depression, sexually active, girls).

A few years ago a similar US study, based on the government-funded National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, linked adolescent female depression and suicide with adolescent sexuality. The study found that about 25% of sexually active girls say they are depressed all, most or a lot of the time, while only 8% of girls who are not sexually active feel the same. While 14% of girls who have had intercourse have attempted suicide, only 5% of sexually inactive girls have. (Shmuley in the Jpost)

“A few years ago” is the key, because it turns out that this data is no longer accurate. The changing attitudes to adolescent sexuality removed some of the stigma , and the depression went with it. Thus it appears that premarital sex doesn’t actual cause depression, but social stigma does. Suppose, we all decide that eating apples is immoral, wait a while, and will find a strong correlation between eating apples and depression. I even have up to date information from a reputable source to back up my analysis. According the American Journal of Sociology

Girls who have sex at a young age relative to the norms of their peers experience a significant increase in depression, while those who have sex “on time” or later than the majority of their peers do not experience significant effects.

Apparently adolescent girls fall prey to….pear pressure. When they have sex “on time” all is well, but if they step outside the box depression hits. Sex, itself is not the problem at all.

A far more interesting question seems to be why are girls victimized by pear pressure in a way that boys are not at least when it comes to sexuality since according to the same study “males do not experience a significant increase in depressive symptoms after first sex, regardless of age norms or relationship status.” I’d love to have a serious conversation on this topic, because, all the answers I can think of are very sad. Perhaps, girls growing up in a liberal society are not very liberated at all, but stuck in whatever paradigm of sexuality is presented to them, be it virginity till marriage, or casual sex. In that case, neither model is particularly empowering or liberating. In that model the Lubavitch woman who is pregnant half of her adult life, and the Dublin partier are equally caught it in systems of power outside their own creation (some might call those systems of power patriarchy!), despite the varied window dressing.

Sources:

Kaploun, Uri. A Partner in the Dynamics of Creation: Womanhood in the Teachings of the Lubavitch Rebbe. New York City. 1994

Ann M. Meier, “Adolescent First Sex and Subsequent Mental Health”, American Journal of Sociology 112.6 (May 2007): 1-28.

Posted in blogs, gender, halacha | 3 Comments

Taking back Sodom

Posted on 07/31/2007 by Sotah

On a tour to Bethlehem, I overheard a devote Christian woman sitting behind me on the bus, discussing her aversion to visiting the dead sea as a cite of tourism, since once it was the site of Sodom.

Quick recap of Sodom: Story appears both in Muslem tradition and in the Hebrew Bible. Catch up on your Sodom facts on Wikapedia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah

Its been understood traditionally as God destroying a city of (you guessed it), folks engaging in SODOMY, because boy on boy action is such a terrible terrible sin! Even though you ask me, its is clear from the Hebrew Bible, that whats going on in Sodom is not alternative family structures and loving relationships (did that exist anywhere in the ancient world ???) but specific kind of prohibited rape.

Lot has a bunch of angels over for dinner, and the people of the city come to Lot’s door and say, “where [are] the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.” (Gen 19:5).

They ask, the for the angels, so they can gang- bang them, and Lot our good man, who God saves from the fire and brimstone, replies, “I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as [is] good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof Gen 19: 8).” Aka, don’t take the dudes, instead rape my daughters. In other words, its ok to penetrate women against their will, because, hell they are property anyway, but do that to dudes and your fry. This seems to be the moral of Sodom. (Look you got to start somewhere, they started with banning boy-boy rape)

Oh, and the best part, is that the area of Sodom and bunch of other “bad” cities would become uninhabitable desert for all time – hence the dead sea as Sodom fits the bill just right.

So, how about it – lets have the pride parade in Sodom next year – transform the history of the dead, salty earth into one of human love and egalitarian co-existence, no matter who is doing the penetrating (as long as its consenting adults). It is time to take back Sodom for several reasons, the best three I could think of are below. Post your reasons in comments.

Tommorow, I’m leaving Israel – and my last words from the holy land are indeed – “Take back Sodom” A fitting last thought to a rather strange and random summer.

1. God doesn’t get to just destroy cities – its time someone sent The Word up there. \

:-)

2. It could a beautiful location for a night rave in the desert.

3. Somewhere overtime, what seams like the literal meaning of the Hebrew bible got interpreted away – even back then the story was about the ethics of consent vs. no consent sex , versus who was doing the fucking. Thus, would it not be perfect restoration of damaged earth to make Sodom a celebration/location of consensual sexuality in all its many forms.

Posted in gender, queer, religion, torah | 1 Comment

The Rebbe, the Soul of Moses and “Continuous Revelation”

Posted on 07/27/2007 by Sotah

I went to the Accent Youth Hostel in Safed for a full Sunday. I sat on the porches with the beautiful overlooks of hills and valleys. I went for pizza on the busy commercial street of Safed, on the way, I had an incredibly honest conversation with a beautiful young wife in an incredibly natural wig. We discussed my problems with women’s role in Judaism and the eventual peace she made with her role. Somewhere, in this conversation while I tried to bring up the late entrance of some of the apologetics on women’s roles into the cannon she introduced a remarkable way of explaining away every argument I could ever make. According to her understand of chassidut (apparently it’s main stream, I asked around in Safed for starters), Tzadiks are directly divinely inspired, thus it makes no difference that ideas Judaism originate in particular time and place – because in fact the eternal word of God is being revealed each and every time. Thus, any conversation about the history of ideas in Judaism is over before it begins.

When, I heard this I was taken back by the stark clarity this outlook enables, the clarity is increased that much more when you add in the notion that the soul of Moses gets reincarnated in every generation, at least according to this particular woman (I’m not a chassidut expert, but the Chabad website does have a selection of prophetic predictions that the Rebbe made, which of course came true http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=75574).

The belief in the Tzadik whose got the soul of Moses and a direct line to God is at the heart of Chabad authority; however, after some thought it occurred me that there is a similar concept from which Orthodox Feminism derives its authority, “continues revelation” a la Tamar Ross in Expanding the Palace of Torah: Feminism and Orthodoxy. According to “continues revelation” each generation has Torah to teach the world, and the will of God is continuously revealed through said Torah.

This is incredibly similar to the Tzadik, yet I embrace the notion of “continues revelation” yet, I reject the tzadik. Why? What is the crucial difference between the two concepts? Is it just the message? Could you in theory have a tzadik who speaks a message of egalitarian gender equality? Would I like it then? What if the Rebbe said, women from now one count in a Minyan, would I appreciate what he stands for then? After some brief deconstruction of both concepts – it seems that what is identical at first blush, actually represents two divergent ways of understanding God. When Tamar Roth talks about “continues revelation” she is referring to a the flexible notion of truth and the ethical wisdom of humans – both are constantly evolving – and because God is truth and God is justice, evolving truth and justice, necessitates evolving our understanding of Gods will. However, the Tzadik is a single individual with a special connection to God – there is an assumption of unfiltered God-speak coming out of the tzadik’s mouth, versus a changing spectrum of knowledge facilitated by our joint perspectives/minds/intellects. The differences go beyond the one – versus the many, to the very core of where authoritative knowledge comes from. For “continues revelation” our truth is the manifestation of God’s will by definition, but for the Tzadik his word is truth because it comes directly from God’s will. (This of course is a version of a classic question: Is murder wrong because God said so, or did God say saw because it is wrong? Plug it what ever you want for “murder.” Guess the answer the Tzadik concept grants this clasic question!) Also the tzadik continues to be relevant always – he is never wrong, not even in a thousand years, he is not bound by particularity of time and space.

Thus, go the Safed, stay at Accent, take some Chabad classes, go ahead, get a kick out of it, but when you get back back check out Tamar Ross’s Expanding the Palace of Torah: Feminism and Orthodoxy (for starters).

Posted in Jewish, halacha, israel | 4 Comments

The will of God and leaving Orthodox Judaism

Posted on 07/17/2007 by Sotah

My last week of saying good-bye to Orthodoxy has begun, and after a lengthy google search I could find nothing relevant for “leaving orthodoxy” and thus I take it upon myself to create the post  I was looking for all day, or at least to start the process of creating the post I wanted to read.

There is very little out there for modern orthodox folks who are no longer buying it.  The Ultra-orthodox apostates can turn to organizations such as Footsteps in the states. The organization guides people who seek it out towards basic skill training, GEDs, and other survival tools. (Unchosen by Hella Winston tells you all about this organization). I hear that Israel also has a simular NGO, but I could not locate its website, if you know about it please write in.

In either case the modern orthodox don’t need GEDs – they have  higher education from top universities, what they need (that the ultra-orthodox might need as well) are people to talk to about their spiritual life.  Unraveling a system of meaning is terrifying when you see no other system to replace it – no other will of God, besides the normative orthodox observance. After all, that is the party-line in mainstream orthodoxy – they, apparently, hold a monopoly on the will of God.

Thus many who leave, continue to believe that Orthodoxy is essentially – Judaism/truth/Divinity and they simply do not like it, and thus leaving symbolizes rejecting Judaism/truth/divinity.

There needs to be a place to go for conversation on this issue – a place where the Will of God is understood in contingent and multiplicities ways. Where the ethical problems in Orthodoxy can be discussed – Where can you go to ask a question and receive an intellectually honest answer that takes into account multiple currents in Judaism (halachic and non-halachic) alongside world thought at large. For example, at least for me this question was very important “Why would God make me a woman, if I feel post-comfortable in male roles?”  As a very young woman, I loved the apologetics about the specialness of woman’s primary roles as private and domestic. As a 22, I understood the injustice of circumscribed lives. (I also understand that many people who are just and wonderful and thoughtful continue to find meaning in Orthodox.) There are hundreds of similar questions that challenge the ethics of a system where your birth determines what you can and cannot do. 

The one thing I wanted to find on the web and could not is the following message. People do not leave Orthodoxy because it is to hard, they leave because they are seeking the Will of God. At least I am.   If you are interested in discussing these questions from any end of the spectrum. Please post, I cannot wait to here form people who might know of some outlets for this conversation.

Posted in gender, halacha, religion, torah | 27 Comments

A word of Torah at Nahloat.

Posted on 07/12/2007 by Sotah

For reasons that escape me utterly I am still in Israel, now studying Judaism, at Nishmat, a Dati Lumi (Religious Zionist) seminary. (I will tell you all about it soon. Today I must write about the Dvar Torah I heard this past Friday.)

 

Nishmat took all the students for Friday night to what is known as a fairly picturesque and hippie-filled Jerusalem neighborhood, Nahloat.  The group went to what is supposed to be a famous area minyan – Kol Rina.  And thus, I went through the alleys and down to the basement, to Kol Rina and found my spot behind the great wall of separation, behind the man’s section.  This of course is the most offensive machitza ever – the women are not equal but separate, but actually behind the men, behind a wall, that thank god had curtains about four feet of the ground that could be moved away for the Dvar Torah (rabbinic homily).

 

This week, I decided to listen to the Dvar Torah – it must have been divine providence, because the Dvar torah was simultaneously the most honest, and most offensively hideous thing I ever heard within Orthodox Judaism – this guy, whose name I never found out, actually had the gull to say it like it is, and thus I know have language for saying Good-bye to Orthodoxy. Thank you random Dvar Torah Man.

 

This man, brought up a feminist classic:  Daughters of Zelophehad. In brief, its an account of women who ask Moses to alter the existing law, because it screws over their right to inherit their father’s land, and when Moses goes to God with the problem, God declares these women to be correct and changes the law to accommodate them   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelophehad).  This Kol Rina man went one to say that he understands that the women in today’s Judaism are also dealing with a great injustice. However, currently we do not have a way to communicate with God, the way they had back in the time of Moses, thus the women should just suck it up till messianic redemption.  When we are redeemed the women will bring their injustice before God, who will fix it the way he sees fit.  

 

Now, I have clarity, and clarity is a powerful thing – the core problem within Orthodox Judaism is the perpetuation of injustice, for fear of rocking the boat. (0nce upon a time they used to say that we cannot set up a Jewish state till Messiah comes, but for better of worse, someone had the balls to change that) Theologically, today’s rabbi’s  have no balls for fear of doing the wrong thing. Thus they willfully freeze the system; and this is inherently injust.  How can one simultaneously acknowledge human pain, and tell those in pain to wait…and wait…and wait, because those who can end the pain have no fait?  Yes, I say faith, because to combat injustice is an act of faith – in a good God, who created good humans, who will make justice manifest.  On the other hand, those who lack faith, fear for “Jewish continuity.” Their primary experience is fear:  of change, of modernity, of feminism, of evolution, of God.  Fear is the lack of faith, the lack of hope.

 

Continuity cannot be a separate goal; the goal must be to have something great, something that is striving to continue. For instance intermarriage is not a problem but a symptom of a problem….more to come.

Posted in gender, halacha, israel, religion, torah | Leave a comment

Last Word on FASD

Posted on 07/06/2007 by Sotah

So, I looked up Kathryn Page PHD, and she is big in the world of FAS. Her site: http://www.nofas.org/resource/results.aspx?ST=5&Name=California

She blaims FASD on everything from Epilepsy to loneliness. Thus clearly it a problem if it can cause any problem, and thus you cannot prove anything because, as suprising as it maybe, even women how do not drink have children, who may at sometime be lonely. However by far, my favorite line about FAS comes from a BBC article that is supposed to tell women not to drink, even one drink from the time they start trying to get pregnant till the baby pops out; however the following sentence makes me wonder

“Light drinking is not harmful but the only way to guarantee your baby won’t be affected is not to drink at all.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/619840.stm

What does that sentence even mean? It is like saying “The only way to prevent the unborn from getting hit by cars in side their mother’s womb is to stay at home, far from cars” instead of telling women to look both ways before crossing the street.

The end on this rather morbid, but fun topic!

Posted in blogs, women's health | 2 Comments

Woman as baby-making-machine:

Posted on 07/06/2007 by Sotah

I wondering what good it would do for me to write yet another article on the urgent issue of pregnant women being treated as baby vessels. A woman in Utah was actually charged with murder because she refused medical advice and delayed her cesarean, giving birth to still-born twins. Women are routinely incarcerated on the charges of felony child abuse for drinking or doing drugs during pregnancy.

Check out advocatesforpregnantwomen.org for the facts of countless stories, and activist opportunities.

Spending time in a Israel this summer, a place where women receive free fertility treatment from the government, while having to go before a committee of three in order to be granted permission for an abortion, I cannot help but search for the common links between free fertility treatment in one small part of the world, and criminalization of women’s bodies in another rather large part of the world. 

To begin with, the abortion committees, the fertility treatment, and the incarceration of pregnant women are all policies that are largely supported by the extreme religious folk in both America and Israel.

However, even that link does not run deep enough, because it does not answer why religion has become a repository for conservative perspectives (I believe religion at some point may have been a radical force for progress), and second of all why does everyone else go along with it? In the liberal circles crack mothers have little support as well.

This issue fascinates me to no end because more then anything other issue the rights of women when it comes their reproducing bodies or the lack there of, is the epitomy of  gender injustice, because to a large degree arguments for gender difference/ inequality stem from the reproducing bodies of women.  This being the case, there cannot be feminism without women having complete control over their reproducing bodies.  But according to the prevailing model the pregnant body becomes the exception to women’s rights. (Women generally, have rights, except when they are pregnant.) In such a system, women cannot, by define have rights, because for the majority of their adult life, that can at anytime become pregnant, and rights that can be removed at anytime, are not rights to begin with – rights by definition do not get taken away by the state.

However, there is a powerful argument that can be made for the “rights of the fetus.” After all, doesn’t my right to swing my fist end at your nose? So too, it ends at my “fetus’s nose,” says the rights of child ideology.  Thus women’s rights are sublimated to the rights of the fetus, which of course is not a problem considering that women are expected to sublimate themselves to the needs of their family and children, so why not start early, before the child is even born, and we might as well make it the law.   

 Pretty much all inequality for women stems from their role as baby machines (women are nurturers, aka  unqualified to public life and serious careers where competition  and hard work is required. (I say “baby machines” on purpose, because I speak of an ontology that sees women’s essential rule in society as reproducers  – objects, this is a universe away from an individual women’s right to be mothers on their own terms).

Today gender inequality persists because women are still “baby machines.”  The laws that makes this happen are not surprising, they are inevitable in society such as ours. Often these law are perpetuated by the extremely religious, because religion in its tradition manifestations is based on law and order that is constructed through predetermined and clear-cut roles for all members of society.  Women’s primary role is motherhood within this mapping of reality.  And thus “fetus rights” becomes away to continue a system that actually has nothing to do with rights for anyone and everything to do with predestined roles (aka what is socially constructed is absolute and inevitable.)

 This perspective is absolutely bad for women! and frankly everyone else, if you ask me.

Posted in Social Action, gender, israel, religion | Leave a comment

Response to Comments on FAS

Posted on 06/29/2007 by Sotah

The comments thus far prove my case. For example this line from Mr. Bagel “Its intellectually dishonest to claim that women who only drink moderately have little chance of their child having FAS; and thus this therefore means women can drink. The first part of the statement is true the second part is irresponsible.”

He admits that the statement is true (!) but because it he does not like my argument he calls it “intelectually dishonest” while what he actually means is “not in accordence with my morality,” which is actually the apposite of intelectual honoesty. Also, I’m fasinated by the link the government website that seems to offer nothing in the way of data. I challange you to find a reputable scientific source that links small amounts of drinking (up to 8 drinks a week) with any abnormalities in the child with any degree of conclusiveness. The ADD stuff seems like a huge reach considering the fact that women in the past drank more during preganancy (mostly likely since the drinking taboo in the states was not wide spread) but the rate of ADD related conditions is going up.

Posted in blogs, gender, women's health | Leave a comment