Elana Sztokman

"When I see a women wearing a tallit, it burns my eyes," an Orthodox man told me during the course of my research on Judaism and masculinity. "It makes the synagogue seem Reform or Conservative, where women are trying to me like men." The statement was and remains jarring for so many reasons. I wonder how a man, who presumably walks into synagogue to pray, can be so disturbed by the sight of a woman cloaked and engaged in prayer all the way on the other side of the mehitza. I wonder why a woman in a tallit has the potential to disrupt a man's entire Jewish identity, challenging his own self-definition as "Orthodox." The statement, though, about a woman "trying to be like a man," which has repeated itself in countless discussions -- in person and virtual -- is perhaps the most troubling and the most telling. The entire discussion of tallit is ultimately about men's perceptions of women, and of themselves, and a need to maintain a gender status quo. Read the rest of this entry →

Former Jerusalem City Councilwoman and current Executive Director of IRAC Anat Hoffman was detained last week for her suspected involvement in the crime of Wearing a Tallit.

According to Ynet:

The police reported that Hoffman was investigated at the Merhav David Station after the events at the Western Wall on the grounds that she disrupted the status quo at the site. Hoffman was questioned about her role in organizing the prayer service and the clashes that ensued. She was reportedly asked to give her finger prints. At the end of the investigation, she was released to go home. Hoffman, who was surprised by the police involvement in the issue, told Ynet, "An officer sat there who asked me if I initiated the minyan, how many women came, whether they wore tallitot (prayer shawls customarily worn by men during Jewish prayers) and donned kippot, and whether we held the Torah scrolls and held a procession to Robinson's Arch. This is, after all, what have been doing every first of the (Hebrew) month for 21 years already."

Joel Katz at Religion and State in Israel brings an array of items relating to this story, including video coverage of the incident, blogs, and a horrifying list of questions that she was asked in her interrogation, such as:

* Were women wearing tallitot? * What is a tallit? * Did the women wear kippot? * Did you hold a Torah scroll? * Did you hold a Torah scroll with intent to read it?

Anyone interested in joining a letter-writing campaign to protest this event, write in here.

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A man goes to a prostitute, and then blames her for making him sin. No, this is not the beginning of a joke. Rather, it’s the argument currently being made by Knesset members from the (all male) Shas party in a current round of deliberations about the legality of prostitution.

At issue is a bill recently introduced by Kadima Knesset member Orit Zuaretz, seen at right, outlawing the solicitation of a prostitute. Actually, the Zuaretz bill makes solicitation punishable with six months in prison only after the second arrest. First time offenders will be sent to a form of rehab that includes mandatory attendance at seminars on public health and human dignity, as well as lectures given from former prostitutes about the harrowing conditions of their lives. The bill is based on the Sweden model, where a 1999 law punished those soliciting and not those being solicited — and resulted in the number of women working as prostitutes shrinking by two-thirds....

Unfortunately, not everyone is in favor. According to Shas legislators, the main opponents of this groundbreaking bill, men are the victims and women are the criminals. “The women are the guilty ones in the prostitution industry, and men are just the victims, because women tempt them,” according to Knesset member Nissim Zeev, speaking at the hearing of the Committee on the Trafficking of Women last week.

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While the Israeli cabinet has been grappling with some of the most harrowing decisions it has ever faced — from the deliberations over the release of Gilad Shalit, to some particularly stringent conditions imposed by President Obama — the religious right wing community in Israel has been engaged in its own disputations about nothing other than the role of the women’s body in contemporary Israeli politics.

Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, rabbi of Har Bracha Yeshiva who is at the center of the current storm about religious troops refusing orders to evacuate Jewish homes, apparently believes that the real power of the religious right wing comes from women’s wombs. Two weeks ago, he wrote a column in the newspaper “Besheva” about the appropriate response to the settlement freeze: “By establishing large families, blessed with many sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters like the dust of the earth, inheriting the land.”

He went on to say that in order to have more children, people have to be willing to live “modesty” and to “give up permissiveness.” Finally, he suggested that if families in the West Bank would be willing to “crowd in the way they do in Meah Shearim, we could fit into our homes 900,000 people.”

Now there’s a vision to behold — imagine an entire landscape that looks like Meah Shearim.

READ MORE AT THE FORWARD SISTERHOOD

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In Japan, it seems, there are some women-only buses. They were established, according to journalist Chani Luz, to protect women from “groping men.” Luz, who writes for the Orthodox publications Makor Rishon and Hatzofe, supports women-only buses in Israel because, as she recalled in a recent Ynet column, she was once molested on a bus when she was in 12th grade. “An older man sat next to me on the bus from Rehovot to Ramle and did not stop putting his hand on me and making indecent proposals,” she wrote. “I wanted to get up but I froze in my seat until the end of the ride.” Luz thus concludes that feminists should be in favor of separate buses. Gender-segregated buses, with men in the front and women in the back, are currently a burning issue in Israel, as Transport Minister Israel Katz has until December 27 to rule on whether or not gender-segregated buses in Israel are, in his opinion, legal. READ THE REST AT THE FORWARD SISTERHOOD BLOG -- AND DON'T FORGET TO CLICK ON THE LINK TO SIGN THE PETITION Read the rest of this entry →

The fact that a woman was arrested for wearing a tallit at the kotel should give us all pause. We should be ashamed that a woman can be so humiliated for her ritual practice, horrified that this takes place in the State of Israel in the very spot where the shechina is supposed to rest,and absolutely aghast that it is the Jewish police in the Jewish state making tallit-wearing a crime. Nofrat Frenkel, the fifth year medical student whose prayer practice is at the root of these events, told her story in the Hebrew press and then in the Forward. Her sincerity and candor in her spiritual quest are admirable. I would like to say she was courageous, but my sense is that she had no idea that her actions would require courage. She was simply trying to reach God.

The atmosphere at the Kotel, the feeling that all those women praying around me were also turning to God and pouring out their hearts to Him, inspires me with the joy of Jewish fraternity. Here is one place in which, shoulder to shoulder, all the hearts are calling to God. Prayer at the Kotel is so different from private prayer at home, or from communal prayer at the synagogue. It is a mixed creation: I am in a communal place, with many worshippers, but not even one voice can be heard. Just soft murmurings, choked crying, mute requests.

Poignant, earnest, and spiritual. That's how I see Nofrat Frenkel's quest. But the responses of some the talkbackers at the Forward see it differently. Verna M. Black wrote, "What a pity that this woman does not truly comprehend the mitzvot that women have in Judaism, and the mitzvot that men have. There are laws, better known as Halacha which overides the ego of women acting like men." Paulette takes a similar attack and says, "I would love to understand what Miss Frenkel's great insecurities are that she feels the need to wear a tallis so 'she can be like a man'. Grow up!" Read the rest of this entry →

My dear friend Jennifer Brody Martin is not likely to tell you what a trailblazer she is. But in fact she is the first Orthodox Jewish woman funeral director in America. Most people don't appreciate the importance of the funeral home in their lives, because it is a topic that only becomes important at certain painful moments which we tend not to think about too much. But the fact is, the funeral and the cemetery are the location of some of our most emotional and dramatic life events. Yet in the religious Jewish world, these sites often remain off limits to women -- emotionally and physically. (See entry from earlier this year on the subject.) Below is an article by Chana Pinchasi about her vision of women and funerals. It appeared in last week's Ynet. I dedicate this column to Jennifer, with love and admiration for doing God's work. The Last Act of Kindness By Chana Pinchasi Read the rest of this entry →

Here's the latest news in the radical extremist, violent culture of sex-segregation in certain areas in Israel: According to today's Yediot Aharonot, a woman had her baby snatched from her arms by a haredi man in Meah Shearim. Apparently, this was done to her because she inadvertently entered the "men's" sidewalk. Yes, sidewalk! Read the rest of this entry →

<The following essay by Palestinian feminist Asma'a Al-Ghoul is being disseminated by Phyllis Chesler. Al-Ghoul was recently arrested on the beach in Gaza for wearing jeans, even though went into the water fully clothed, and the men around her, including a man who was trying to rescue her, were beaten by the police. In the spirit of helping our sisters in struggle, I bring the essay here in its entirety, followed by Chesler's commentary: Gaza: Silence, Collusion and Shame for Female Victims, While Killers Enjoy the Sun and Freedom By Asma'a Al-Ghoul Read the rest of this entry →

Miriam Woelke, blogging about religious life at "Shearim", writes :

When I walked through Mea Shearim last Erev Shabbat, I saw a huge Sukka in front of the Mishkenot Haroim building in Mea Shearim Street. A sign on an outer wall announced that women should stay away from the entrance to the Sukka because of modesty reasons. The problem is that the Sukka is covering the entire women's entrance into the Synagogue. How women are supposed to enter and have a look at the great celebrations at the men's side downstairs ? Are women allowed in at all this year ? If not, it would be a pity.

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