Elana Sztokman

The Internet can be a nasty place. Whether due to the replacement of visceral human relationships with a cold, lifeless screen, or because people have learned to type faster than they think, something about Internet conversation seems to bring out the worst in human discourse. As my Forward colleague Jay Michaelson pointed out in his column last week, “the immediacy and anonymity of the Comment feature on the Internet encourages one to respond in the heat of the moment, and with as much fire as possible.” That said, there seems to be a particular fire in talkbacks relating to religious Judaism. Michaelson noticed this as well, what he called, “rage…dressed up in religious rhetoric.” In my writings on topics of gender and religious life at the Forward, in The Jerusalem Post, and elsewhere, I’ve been called a “man wannabe,” an “anti-Semite” and other names. It’s intriguing to me that essays about cultural trends often merit one or two comments while comments about gender and religion can get 20–30 comments. There is an ire around religious issues (especially gender) that begs explication. Michaelson calls for collective anger management, but I think there is something else at work here. This trend took a rather vile turn recently when my daughter Avigayil wrote a column here about her experience being attacked by haredim at the Kotel. Read the rest of this entry →

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

The following article, published in the current issue of The Journal of Jewish Education, explores the difference between education for Orthodox religiousness and education for spirituality. The article, based on bits of my doctoral research, argues that the dogmatic, linear, "you're either in or out" approach that characterizes much of Orthodox education, does not leave much room for spirituality. So often, religiousness is instilled as an end product, a monolithic corpus of ideas to be singularly transmitted and subsequently owned by youth. In reality, though, youth are thirsting for opportunities to grapple, question, and wrestle with profound theological and philosophical issues—a process that ultimately leads to a richer religious identity. Spirituality amid dogma? Some approaches to educating for religious belief within in a State-Religious school in Israel :

I like being religious. But sometimes, I hate the way the rabbis preach things. I like to see what’s written, the Mishna, the Gemara, the Torah…and to do what they tell me. But I hate that the rabbis philosophize all the time. I don’t go to any rabbis or anything, I don’t like all that rubbish…. but I am religious the way I think I should be. (Tamar, 14).

Congratulations to Sara Hurwitz on being conferred the title "Spiritual Leader" of Hebrew Institute of Riverdale -- a well-deserved honor, though "rabbi" would be better. Kudos to Rabbi Avi Weiss on being a courageous leader in advocating for women, and I hope eventually HIR gives women the full and equal title that they deserve. In the meantime, change is undoubtedly in the air, and Orthodox communities everywhere should take note (hat tip: Matthew Maryles). Read the rest of this entry →

Printed in the Jerusalem Post, 13 March, 2009

"Women, stop crying! Calm down! No shouting. Control yourselves. We can't hear the eulogies with you going on like this." This is what the rabbis of Yavne have to say to women at funerals. "Oranit" was at a family funeral recently where women were not only forbidden from approaching the grave, but were forbidden from crying.

"Some religious women of my family repeated what the cemetery woman had said," Oranit recalled. "Some said, 'If it's forbidden, it's forbidden. Let us calm down.' Others said, "We must not harm the sanctity of the dead. Women should not come near the graves. It will damage our wombs."

The religious world is very creative at finding new and unthinkable ways to be cruel to women. This one, like so many others, is entrenched in religious powers that be, justified with a pseudo-religious language that asks women to sacrifice their entire selves for the sake of "the community", or in this case, "the city." According to Oranit, in Yavne, the rabbis have declared that due to a "high rate of deaths of young people in Yavne, we have vowed that women will not approach the grave during the burial - and that would be the Tikkun (healing) of Yavne," and that women are impure "because we menstruate and according to Jewish religion we are prohibited from walking amongst the graves."

When will this horrible absurdity end? How can we fight this?

Read Oranit's article on the Kolech website, in Hebrew or in English

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The public drive to create a viable alternative to the rabbinical court system received some significant support this week. Mavoi Satum, in cooperation with Kolech and Neemanei Va'Avodah, received a five-year commitment from the New Israel Fund to help make this vision into a reality. The implications are enormous, not only for agunot, not only for religious women, not only for the religious public, but also for women and men across all segments of Israeli society. Batya Cahana-Dror, Director of Advocacy at Mavoi Satum, recently published an extensive article on the significance of this topic in Eretz Aheret. Several volunteers from Mavoi Satum translated this important article into English. I am publishing it here for the first time. The future of Israeli society is undoubtedly at stake: [You can also read this post on the Kolech English Blog, Jewish Women's Voice] Read the rest of this entry →

Less than half of the eligible voters in my city exercised their electoral rights last week. The overwhelming majority of the adult population chose to stay home from the municipal elections for reasons ranging from indifference to protest, or perhaps mostly just boredom. Alongside some indications that the elections resulted in “more of the same” (such as the appalling number of women elected – only three out of 17 municipal seats in Modi’in, or 17.6%) some of the elections signaled significant shifts in Israeli ideologies. Read the rest of this entry →

In anticipation of Wednesday evening's Leah Globe Memorial evening, I have translated into English an interview I had the privilege of conducting with Prof Naomi Cohen, an astounding religious feminist scholar, who is one of this year's honorees. It is posted on the Kolech English website, and you can read it here. Read the rest of this entry →

Women's organizations are teaming up with liberal rabbinic groups for a landmark initiative to create an alternative religious court. This is an attempt at grass roots pressure to bolster real reform in the religious apparatus that chains women, converts, immigrants, non-Orthodox Jews, and others, and holds the entire country hostage to an antiquated system of political protektzia marketed as religiousness. It may in fact be the only way to break the haredi stranglehold on Israeli society. Yair Sheleg reported on it last week's Haaretz in Hebrew. For more details, contact Mavoi Satum -- mavoisatum@mavoisatum.org Read the rest of this entry →

השפה היא כלי מאד חזק ליצירת היררכיות תרבותיות ולעיצוב מציאות חברתית. לפעמים מילה קטנה אחת יכולה להשפיע בצורה מדהימה על הדרך שבה אנחנו תופסים את העולם. חישבו לשניה על המשפטים הבאים, והדרך שבה מילה אחת משנה את כל משמעות: • אפילו את יודעת איך להשתמש במכשיר • ברור שהוא צודק • השתגעת? אין את זה פה כלומר, מילה אחת [...] Read the rest of this entry →