Jew in the City - I Beg to Differ (Part 2)

To be fair, most Orthodox Jewish women are not aware of their subjugation. They simply live their lives the way that they saw their mothers live theirs and are fairly happy in their ignorance. 

I don't think anyone intelligent in the frum community would deny the fact that we brainwash our children. Like all cultures, we have values, norms, beliefs, and traditions that we cherish and want our children to cherish, so we indoctrinate them with our chosen values from the moment they're born. It is this brainwashing that allows women to live under subjugation without realizing it. 

Just to be clear, I don't have a problem with teaching children values; that's a healthy part of socialization. It's the values that are unfair and closed-minded that I take issue with. 

Such as the way that girls are trained to think and behave in the frum community. We are instilled with a message of, "Being seen and not heard." Except we're not supposed to be seen either.

They stick us women behind partitions in shul (synagogue) and tell us to keep quiet. The men will sing and dance on their side of the partition, praying to G-d with joy and happiness while the women just sit, watch, (through the curtains,) and listen. 

They teach us to be modest in clothing and behavior and use the laws of modesty to keep us from expressing ourselves through the way we dress by saying that we shouldn't wear loud colors or (what they consider) outlandish (i.e. different from what everyone else is wearing) garments. One of my high school principals favorite sayings was, "Ask yourself: Would my Chumash (Bible-studies) teacher wear that? If not, you shouldn't wear it either!"  If you enter an ultra-Orthodox community, one of the things that you'll notice is that most of the women are wearing very similar clothing in very limited colors. 

As for modest behavior, we're expected to be always calm and collected. To not draw attention to ourselves in any way... Which rids us of the ability to be unique. 

They inundate us with the message that we girls\women can fulfill our purpose in the world just by getting married, keeping a Kosher home, and having children, removing the possibility for other ambitions. 

Female socialization in the ultra-Orthodox community thus ends up being the creation of cookie-cutter women who, as long as they remain "brainwashed", and happy in their subjugated situations.

I was. In fact, when I was about 21, I wrote an article that was published in an Orthodox Jewish women's magazine in which I spoke with pride about returning a skirt that I bought from GAP because even though it was long and modest, it's style and color was too outlandish. 

I wrote another article, which was published on a Jewish website, that claimed that women should be happy and fulfilled in their roles as wives and mothers because it's what G-d created us for. 

I shudder, now, thinking of those articles, but also realize that I was just spouting back the things that I'd been taught. 

It was only when I dared to step out of the frum woman's box that I started to see things from an objective perspective. Unlike nearly all of my contemporaries, I wasn't given the chance of getting married and having children young, which is the only really approved path for frum women. And so I found myself "off the path" - taking a job outside of the frum community, working with non-religious and non-Jewish people, and going to college because I had to do SOMETHING with my time. 

It was "off this path" that I started to gain perspective and began to see the patriarchy inherent in the frum world. (Not really) coincidentally, that's when I started this blog, and if you go back to the beginning and read my earliest posts, you'll find how I struggled with this new perspective. If you continue reading, you'll see how my views evolved.

Outside of the "approved path", I began to ask questions. And did not like the answers.

STAY TUNED: I'm going to write more detailed posts about more specific subjugations of frum women, such as Kol Isha (the "Voice of a Woman" being forbidden from being heard), Gets (the Jewish divorce process), and the faults in a "Separate but Equal" ideology

Jew in the City - I Beg to Differ (Part 1)

Many of my readers have probably come across the internet personality, "Jew in the City", whether on YouTube, on her Website, or on her recent Buzzfeed article, "13 Annoying Things Most People Assume About Orthodox Jews."

Some of the 13 "Annoying Things" that she mentioned are, indeed, misconceptions. We don't have sex through a hole in a sheet. Not all - or even most - Orthodox women shave their heads when they get married. Our food doesn't have to be blessed by a rabbi. I'd venture a guess that most of us HATE Manischewitz wine. 

But there were also a few that she got very, very wrong. 

One of them - where she claims that birth control is readily allowed - I addressed previously in my post, "Dark Side Confessions #2: Birth Control." She's right that Jewish law allows the use of birth control, but she fails to mention the immense social pressure to have many kids. Maybe her particular community, which sounds Modern Orthodox Judaism, doesn't preach to, "have as many children as G-d gives you", but ultra-Orthodox communities do. 

Another of her 13 "Things" states that Orthodox Jewish women not only work, but even have top positions in companies, hospitals, and law firms. Again, I think she's speaking for the Modern Orthodox world because in the ultra-Orthodox world, college is severely frowned upon, for men AND women. It's slowly becoming more accepted to attend Orthodox colleges, where men and women are separated, but in the ultra-Orthodox world, where girls generally marry and have children very young, young women do a quick undergrad degree by getting credits for seminary and taking CLEPs and\or choose to major in an area where they will have flexible hours so that they can care for their children, such as speech therapy, graphic design, and teaching. 

Just to be clear, I'm not criticizing these women for wanting to put their families before their careers because that's admirable. But the picture that "Jew in the City" paints of Orthodox women as career women is, by majority, inaccurate. 

The last of the "Things" that "Jew in the City" writes about that I take exception to is when she writes that Orthodox women are not subjugated. In that one, she is absolutely wrong. 

TO BE CONTINUED...

International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day! (Image courtesy of today's Google-Doodle.)

According to the Christian Science Monitor (and, yes, I recognize the irony in a "Frum" woman quoting from a Christian "source" - but they have really good reporting, so I'm going with it), "International Women’s Day originally commemorated the working rights protests led by female garment workers."

I'm proud to say, although the article points out that that, "Many seem to forget the holiday’s ties to the working rights movement in the United States and the Socialist Party",  a movement that has become something that I have negative opinions about, that my frum great-grandmother was one of those protesting garment workers.

Yes, proud. Because although the "working rights movement" and - especially - "the Socialist Party", have tendencies that I find destructive to democracy, (fodder for an entire different post), those women who fought for the rights of women in the garment district were fighting for the basic, and essential, equality that women deserve - and that's a fight worthy of respect and pride.

Knowing that I had a great-grandmother who fought for women's rights is definitely a big part of what inspired my own strong feelings about women's rights and equality, so today, on International Women's Day, I want to honor her and thank her for fighting for my, and all American women's, rights. Thank you Grandma!

The Terrible Tragedy

This video is so ridiculous, I just had to laugh watching it. It was shown at a huge conference for frum (ultra-Orthodox) Jews in 2009 and speaks of a "great tragedy": that 14% of  "girls" (their word, not mine) from the community polled, ages 24-29, are - wait for it (hat-tip Barney Stinson!) - still single. Unlike (SPOILER!) Barney Stinson. 

I find it particularly amusing because I was probably included in this poll. The high school that I graduated from actually reached out to find out if I was married or single a few years ago. I couldn't understand why the heck they would care, but now it all makes sense. They needed me for their tragic poll. 

I actually feel awful titling this post, "The Terrible Tragedy," in the wake of the Newtown massacre and argued with myself for a bit before deciding to stick with the title  - because I want it to be clear how utterly absurd it is that "They" consider this such a tragedy. 

Being single is not tragic. Living in a world where it is considered a tragedy to be single, as I've written before, is not only unhealthy, but can actually be dangerous. 

You would think that a community that, within living memory, suffered an actual genocide would be more careful in using the word "tragedy" so freely. Because although I laughed watching this video, it really isn't funny.

Amazing Women: Sharpshooter

Let's raise a glass to Annie Oakley, a female sharpshooter in a world of male sharpshooters.

I'm a big proponent of Second Amendment rights, in part because women do not have the same upper-body strength as men and a gun can mean the difference between life and death if a woman is attacked. And as Ronald Reagan said:

“The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all.” ~Ronald Reagan

Amazing Women: Baby Protector

Repost from Facebook: 

Irena Sendler 
Died 12 May 2008 (aged 98)
Warsaw, Poland

During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a plumbing/sewer specialist. 

She had an 'ulterior motive'. 

Being German, she knew what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews, so Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids). 

She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises. 

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. 

She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her backyard. 

After the war, she tried to locate any parents who may have survived to reunite families. 

Most of the parents had been gassed. The children she rescued were placed into foster family homes or adopted. 

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected. 

President Obama won one year before becoming President for his work as a community organizer for ACORN and Al Gore won also --- for a slide show on Global Warming. 

In MEMORIAM - 63 YEARS LATER, I'm doing my small part by sharing this message.

I hope that you'll consider doing the same. 

This message was originally sent as an email sent as a memorial chain in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated.

Amazing Women: First Computer Programmer

Today's Google Doodle taught me that the first computer programmer was a woman, which is just awesome. 

Her name was Augusta Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace. She lived in the 1800's (1815-1852, to be precise) and while, no, there were no computers back then, her notes were found to contain an algorithm for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine which turned out to be the first algorithm that was intended to be processed by a machine. 

I love finding out things like this. :)