Burkhas in Beverly Hills

It's a sunny day here in Southern California and I just saw a woman walking down the street in Beverly Hills covered head to toe in black, the only part of her showing: her eyes. She was even wearing gloves. It was obvious that she was Muslim woman wearing the traditional garb that you see in movies and read about in the news but rarely see yourself.

It gave me a bit of a shock. I couldn't help staring and wondering about the woman underneath all that black cloth. About what makes her choose to wear it - or if she even was the one to make the choice to begin with.

And I couldn't help thinking, "For all that I complain about misogyny in the Orthodox Jewish community, these Muslim women have it so much worse."

It isn't very fashionable in the frum community to sympathize with Muslims and believe me, I have no sympathy for those of them who are evil or are terrorists, but I can't help feeling sorry for their women. They are treated worse than dirt in many (if not all) Muslim countries.

It makes me grateful that I'm a Jew. Yes, there are problems in the frum world with how women are treated and, yes, I do write this blog anonymously for fear of what it could do to my "reputation" in the frum community, but those things seem trivial next to the fears that so many Muslim women live with all their lives.

Now there are some women who need a serious dose of feminism.

Study: Orthodox Women Have More Anxiety

According to a study done at the University of London about Orthodox Jews:

"Quantitatively, severe stress and clinical levels of depression and anxiety were similar among the men and women studied, but women had overall more eventful lives than men, and were more likely to suffer from borderline depression and anxiety..."

Not that this surprises me, but I found it an interesting anecdote nevertheless. Women in the Orthodox community are expected to be mothers and homemakers and, particularly in recent times, also to be breadwinners. Is it any wonder that they're stressed?

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9803687
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9479612

An Opening for Frum Women

'Tis the season for the High Holidays. We've just gotten through Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. Those of you who have attended services during these holy days are probably aware of the custom in many synagogues to sell portions of the high holiday services to the highest bidder.

(Side Note: Yes, we hold auctions in our holiest sanctuaries on the holiest days of the year. If that sounds strange to you... Well, join the club. If it doesn't, can you explain it to me?)

The parts of the service that are up for auction are all parts that the men perform. Opening the ark, getting to say a blessing on the Torah when it is brought out, having the honor of lifting the Torah up in the air for everyone to see and make their own blessings on, etc.

I wasn't aware of it when I was a child, but apparently there are some serious politics that take place in the men's section of the shul over these bids. There are certain parts of the service that are favored more than others and the guy who gets them is considered pretty important.

One these parts in the Yom Kippur service is the act of opening the ark for the last prayer of the day - neilah. Even without being aware of men's-section politics, I always knew that this part of the service was considered important because it always sold for a lot more than other parts of the service. Getting "psicha d'neilah" is a big honor for whatever man wins it.

You can't imagine my delight when I was told by a friend last night that she, along with 19 other young women, got together in a shul in Brooklyn and outbid all the men for this part of the service. And not just any women. Single women, who weren't just out bidding for their husbands. They bought it for themselves.

It's an historical event. Unheard of, as far as I know. No, they weren't able to perform the actual service: they had to have a man stand in and open the ark for them. But he did it on their behalf, acting as a stand-in, and all the credit for this age-old honor went to them.

To those young women: I salute you. You are an inspiration to frum women everywhere. I thank you for creating an opening for the rest of us.

American Woman

"American Woman" song a "slap in the face to American women everywhere!"

It's always Canada's fault.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

Women can be Geeks too

I have no data to back this up, but I think that we can all agree that there are more male geeks than female geeks. As a female geek myself, my personal experience has shown me to be a minority among women.

Take the LOST finale party I attended last week. There were eight guys, and then there was our hostess and me. That's a 1:4 ratio. Not a scientific calculation by any means, but it sounds about right to me. Whatever the numbers are, we are a minority.

You'd think that the mere fact that we were attending a LOST finale party would be enough to prove our geekness, yet still we were treated with suspicion.

"You women over there," our host warned us, "No talking!"

"What?" I asked. "Just because we're women that means we're going to be talking throughout the show? We want to see the finale just as much as you guys! That is so sexist! This is totally going on my blog!"

To be fair, once the show started, the hostess and I did have to be shushed. We couldn't keep from laughing out loud because the guys were all leaning in toward the screen with looks of rapt adoration on their faces. Can you really blame us?

Post dedicated to Holy Hyrax. ;)

Bend over, Israel

In a recent AP report criticizing Israel:

"Israel annexed east Jerusalem after capturing it from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war. But the international community does not recognize the annexation and considers the Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem to be illegal settlements."

Just who is this "international community"? The United Nations? Because they're not anti-semitic. (Sarcasm, there, in case you missed it.)

So the anti-semitic international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem to be illegal settlements. Better bend over to the anti-Semites, Israel. Don't worry: they promise not to make any, "Final Solution"s.

Hats

Women in the frum community cover their hair after they get married. It's halacha (Jewish law,) the explanation of which is longer than I want to get into right now, so let's just acknowledge this as fact. Orthodox women cover their hair.

They use scarves, hats, wigs, and (ugly) snoods. Depending on the community, some wear only scarves, only wigs, only hats, and even only wigs with a hat on top. I never understood that one - it seemed kind of deceptive to me to be wearing a hat on top of a wig, which could be mistaken as the real hair that the woman is trying to cover with her hat.

Personally, I like hats. Not for covering my hair (unless you count bad hair days) but just because I like hats.

That doesn't mean that when I get married I'm going to wear hats to cover my hair; in fact, I plan to wear -- very expensive, very authentic-looking -- wigs when I get married.

But you can't say, "I like hats," in the frum community without getting a barrage of comments about covering your hair for marriage.

Case in point: I visited some cousins in Israel during the summer a few years ago and happened to be wearing a hat. It was sunny and the hat was cute, so I wore it. As girls tend to do, I asked my cousin, "So, how does this hat look?" and instead of telling me whether she liked the hat, she said:

"Don't wear it. You look married."

Seriously? I'm supposed to give up wearing hats because someone might mistake me for being a married woman? Oh, the horror.

I haven't given it up, and neither have the double-takes that people I know give me when they see me wearing a hat. Just a few weeks ago I was wearing a hat in the supermarket and bumped into the husband of a friend of mine. It was raining hard that day, which should have been enough to keep him from standing there blinking at me owlishly, but it wasn't.

"Did you get married?" he asked me.

"Nope. It's raining. I like wearing hats," I answered him. "And that's hat discrimination!"