With a minimum donation of $54 receive a Chochmat Nashim calendar with beautiful images from the Jewish Life Photo Bank. Important dates, reminders and resources – everything you need and more!!
With a minimum donation of $54 receive a Chochmat Nashim calendar with beautiful images from the Jewish Life Photo Bank. Important dates, reminders and resources – everything you need and more!!
הילה חסן לבקוביץ התראיינה בכאן רדיו ותיארה את פרויקט הצילום החדש שלנו
המחיקה של נשים היא כל כך נפוצה בעולם הדתי, שאלה שכן רוצים לפרסם עם תמונות של נשים מתקשים למצוא תמונות המתאימות למגזר
פרויקט זה נועד ליצור מאגר תמונות של נשים ומשפחות לשימוש בקהילה גם בקהילה הדתית
:האזינו כאן לקבלת מידע נוסף על יוזמה זו
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/breast-cancer-behind-the-mechitza/
I was going to be the Minister of the Environment. That’s the answer I gave my parents when they asked me my plans for moving from New Jersey to Israel at age 22.
I believed it. And why not? I had a degree in Environmental Studies and was accepted to an MA program at Hebrew University. Living in Israel was the dream; doing what I could to make it better was the plan.
As it happens, within a few weeks, I met my husband-to-be on the beach in Eilat (during a marine biology course!) and, well, five kids and three transatlantic moves later, I am not the Minister of the Environment.
What I have become is a product of my environment: a reluctant warrior, an accidental activist.
For the past ten years, I have lived on the front lines of religious extremism in Israel, and I have seen it slowly take over both communal and political institutions.
Had I moved to moshav in the Galilee, instead of Beit Shemesh, I’d likely be happily sipping coffee on my porch, watching the sunset, knowing nothing about women being erased from publications, girls relegated to the back of the bus, the struggles of women as they try to leave marriages, or the alarming health statistics of Haredi women.
“The Orthodox community is sliding towards extremism, and the first victims are women.”
But I didn’t, and I do. And having stood at the side of an aunt, as she slogged through the misery that is divorce through the Israeli religious court, fighting to be freed from the man who had left her and her children, and having cried and begged the court’s judges to do better, but instead seeing papers “lost,” promises broken, and apathy unhinged, I have become someone who knows too much to hold her tongue.
And so, I began to write. I wrote about agunot, women chained to failed marriages like my aunt, and about the failings of the system. I wrote about women’s images being censored, and about how girls in my neighborhood were being spit on. I wrote what I saw and how I felt and that we must do better.
At that time, I continued to seek help for my aunt. I turned to anyone I could find: lawyers, activists, MKs, rabbis, rabbaniot, legal advocates. Everyone I met introduced me to someone else.
The more I learned, the more I wrote, and the more I wrote, the more I understood.
In the end, I came to perceive a systemic problem in Judaism—the Orthodox community is sliding towards extremism, and the first victims are women.
The sign in the photo above is one of several similar signs in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, a neighborhood populated by some of the most extreme sects of Judaism.
It proclaims that all women who enter the area must be modestly dressed — and spells out what that means. The graffiti underneath it echos the sentiment.
“What is the big deal? It’s just a sign. Ignore it,” people say.
But it is not just as sign. It is a symbol of control. It is a rallying point. It is the justification for violent behavior. It is a designation of turf and power.
In this neighborhood, a self-designated “Committee for Purity” decides what images and words may be published. They, and others who follow their lead, levy threats against publications and businesses, and assault those who get in their way. The committee has intimidated local businesses so thoroughly that no locally produced publication depicts women of any age. The local health clinics and banks won’t portray women, making for some disturbing promotions of women’s health featuring only boys and men for whom the same services are irrelevant.
Modest women have been called “shiksa” and “prutza.” Some of us have been spit on as well. Teens walking to their volunteer Shabbat programs have been pelted with garbage, diapers, and even bottles. A teenager cut a woman’s head open with a rock because he didn’t like the way she was dressed.
“It is not just as sign. It is a symbol of control… It is a designation of turf and power.”
It may start with women, but it never ends there. IDF soldiers have been attacked by Haredi men and boys. Women and children call the Israeli police “Nazi,” and garbage bins and tires are burned in the streets.
If the extremism were simply a phenomenon of a small group, it might be possible to ignore. But it is not — how can it be, when it exists on the political level as well?
Of the two Haredi political parties, neither allows women. Though they claim to represent the women of their community, no Haredi MK even attends the committee on women’s health (which is indeed relevant to the women of their community). The lack of representation and of listening to the needs of women has real-life consequences. Haredi women die 30% more of breast cancer than other women, and their life expectancy is 8th out of 10 lowest, compared to Haredi men’s 2nd place. I have been accused of hating Haredim because I have written about these statistics. But I’m speaking out on behalf of the Haredi women; with no Knesset presence, who will fight for their health if we don’t make the situation known?
In the Israeli religious courts, women seeking divorce are too often sent back to abusive husbands, with the judges’ reassurance that they won’t be beaten as long as they don’t ask for a divorce. Agunah cases wait endlessly on the docket, get extortion is not only allowed, but actively encouraged, as the easiest way to achieve a halachically acceptable divorce
“This is not Judaism and this is not Halacha.”
This is not Judaism and this is not Halacha. Anyone who tells you differently is at best ignorant. Much can be done to reverse these injustices without touching Halacha. Changing court practices — even how long it takes for a case to be heard — would eliminate much suffering. Get extortion should be outlawed. Evidence suggests that when women are brought into the process, as advocates, or even as administrators, divorce cases are resolved more quickly and more easily in than the current system.
The trend in Judaism is to circle the wagons, but no one notices those trampled under the wheels.
My conclusions, from all that I’ve seen, is that women have become afterthoughts. Women’s needs are considered after, and so long as they do not interfere with, those of men. Women’s perspectives are not sought out when it comes time to make decisions or establish policies, which means that, very often, women’s perspectives are not taken into consideration. The effects are devastating—on both women and men.
This is not the Judaism I know and love. My religion has been hijacked and I want to take it back. It is not easy. I have seen it repeatedly — how extremism gets worse when no one stands against it. But we must.
Until I move to that moshav in the Galilee, this is where I’ll be: working to get Judaism back on track. Writing, protesting, collaborating with others to resist policies that harm those the Torah is meant to protect. I invite you to join us.
About The Project
The Jewish Week and “The Layers Project” have collaborated to bring you the series, “Hidden Reflections, Revealed: A Communal Introspective on the Thresholds of Orthodox Femininity.” This is the fifth installment in the series that will contain images and essays that serve as a communal cheshbon hanefesh (accounting of the soul) on the topic of several women’s issues in Orthodoxy. Read the rest of the series here, and look out for the next installment on The Jewish Week. For more personal stories and ‘in-depth insights into the lives of Jewish women,’ check out “The Layers Project” on Facebook. Images created by Shira Lankin Sheps, founder of “The Layers Project.”
Regarding the article thing about woman [sic] and breast cancer, that’s a sobering statistic. Of course it has nothing to do with what I wrote.
In his Mishpacha article, Sruli Besser reflects on his experience on “the other side of the mechitza” during his daughter’s Bais Yaakov graduation. Among the many rebuttals of his piece, which praises Jewish women for being pious and suffering subpar conditions in silence, several people noted that Haredi society’s negligence of women’s needs leads, among other things, to higher rates of breast cancer deaths in the community. According to Israeli studies, Haredi women die 30% more often from breast cancer than women in the general population.
Besser insists this has nothing to do with his jolting experience of what it’s like to be on the women’s side of the mechitza.
But it has everything to do with it.
There is a systemic problem of ignoring women’s experience in Orthodox Judaism, and it has far more severe consequences than stale cookies and poor air conditioning.
In Judaism, those who make policy for the entire community are men. Men, by virtue of being men, don’t experience Judaism as women do. This is natural.
What is not natural, however, is not listening when women describe their experience and ask for change. Communal and rabbinic leaders simply do not consult with women. They don’t allow for serious input from them, and they don’t hear from them about the consequences of communal policy and priorities. Thus, women’s needs come after a long line of other considerations and as a result, policy doesn’t take them into consideration.
This is wholly unnecessary and wrong. Moreover, the failure of policy and priority to consider women leads directly to many of the issues we face in Judaism today.
Policy fails Jewish women.
In marriage and divorce:
Religious courts often ignore the needs and wants of Jewish women and do not use their power to protect them where they should. As a stark example, earlier this year, in Jerusalem, a woman seeking a divorce from the husband who beat her, was refused by the rabbinical court which said, “since he only beat you because you asked for a divorce, you should go back to him and not ask for a divorce and then you won’t be beaten.”
In religious courts, get extortion is encouraged and judges who seekhalachic solutions to terrible situations are punished.
In women’s Jewish life:
Haredi political parties control the Rabbinate, and the Rabbinate controls all Jewish ritual life. Though they purport to represent all those who practice Torah Judaism (including women), no women are on any committee or allowed onto any haredi political party list.
During a Knesset meeting to discuss a Supreme Court case brought by religious women to improve services and practices in the mikvaot, MK Moshe Gafni looked around the room, packed with religious women seeking change and said, “there are no problems in the mikvah!”
A law passed only a few years ago placed women on the committee to elect religious court judges for the first time. It guarantees four out of the 11 spots to women. Haredi MKs who opposed the law when it was created are trying to reverse this decision to weaken women’s representation.
In women’s health:
In Israel, Haredi women rank 8th for life expectancy. Haredi men rank 2nd. The disparity is huge.
Yet, not one haredi MK has yet attended the committee on women’s health in the Knesset. The Minister of Health is himself haredi.
‘Kosher’ radio stations won’t say the words ‘breast cancer’ and events on fertility and women’s reproductive health are routinely held with no women presenters or women in the audience.
Haredi women develop breast cancer less often than the general population, yet they die 30% more often. This is a fact confirmed by three medical studies in Israel. The high morbidity rate can be attributed to a number of factors, from poor knowledge of the disease, to the fact that it is considered immodest to talk about, to the intense pressure the community has to appear healthy for marriage matches, to the refusal of many to allow for awareness raising. All of these communal issues add up to women dying.
In the obsession with ‘modesty’:
Women and girls are hurt, confused, and outraged at being blurred or photoshopped out of existence. Yet, when they speak out against the practice, their voices and protests are dismissed. Boys are taught that they cannot look at or see women. They are trained to not see or relate to them, and the balance of society is upended with Jewish women being portrayed as objects of sin to be avoided and shunned.
This leads, as we see in Bet Shemesh, to justifying verbal assault and even violence as men and boys scream ‘shikse’ and throw trash and rocks at girls and women who don’t look the way they think they should.
* * *
Besser says that Halacha is perfect.
This is not about changing Halacha.
This is about changing social policy and priorities towards a more just Jewish society.
When Bnot Zelafchad came to Moshe and all of the communal leaders to claim their portions of the Land of Israel, they said: “Our father died in the desert… has no son. Why should the name of our father be omitted from among his brothers because he had no son? Give us a portion among our father’s brothers.”
Moshe did not dismiss them saying, “The Torah is perfect, accept your lot.” He took their voices seriously, and the law was amended according to their logic and arguments.
For Judaism to thrive, we must end this culture of ignoring women’s experiences.
For Judaism to be healthy, we need to have women’s voices and images as a full part of Judaism.
For Judaism to be just, women must be a part of the process of policy and standardization.
Change on the ground starts with change in the conversation — and that conversation must include the Orthodox Jewish woman’s voice.
See the original article in The Times of Israel
So said the former chief of staff for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, Rabbi Dov Halbertal. He was explaining why posters raising awareness of breast cancer screening in Charedi society were inappropriate for the very population they were crafted to reach. No matter how carefully posters talking about women’s health are worded, he explained, the fact that they address women at all makes them inherently immodest.
How, then, does one convey a message about women’s health to those who have no access to the internet or television, and where “kosher” radio stations won’t utter the words “breast cancer”? Doesn’t the very absence of information in these women’s lives mean that they are the ones who most need to hear it?
Three major Israeli medical studies in the past decade have revealed that, despite the fact that Charedi women develop breast cancer at a lower rate than the general population, they suffer a 30 per cent higher mortality rate from the disease.
There are numerous unofficial theories as to why they are disproportionately dying from breast cancer. Ashkenazi Jews have a one in 40 chance of carrying a BRCA mutation, which significantly increases the risk and aggressiveness of the disease. Socioeconomic, health and lifestyle factors, such as poverty, poor diet and lack of exercise increase risk. In addition, too many are diagnosed in later stages due to lack of awareness about screening.
Charedi society values modesty as a high priority. The word “breast” is rarely uttered, even in women-only settings. When heightened modesty is coupled with a cultural reluctance to discuss “negative things” plus the need to appear as healthy as possible for potential marriage matches, and compounded by an overall reluctance to medical testing, it creates a population unaware of the risks and signs of a disease whose survival rate decreases rapidly the longer it is left undiagnosed. I’ve written about this extensively and lectured about it at the JOFA (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance) conference in New York. It will be the topic of one of my upcoming UK lectures in July.
Ruth Colian of U’Bizchutan, a movement to get Charedi women into the Knesset, embarked on a campaign to raise awareness of breast cancer screening within her community two years ago. Recognising the sensitivity of the subject, she created a campaign designed to meet the needs of Charedi society.
Her billboard poster — a pashkevil, as they are known in Yiddish — called on women to “perform the Torah commandment of guarding one’s health” and to call a number for more information about mammography. She got rabbinic approval for her wording and set to work hanging the posters in Charedi neighbourhoods. Chochmat Nashim, an organisation of religious women that spotlights issues facing the Jewish community, raised funds for the campaign.
This year, 2,000 posters, 2,000 fliers and an enormous highway billboard broadcast the message. So far, Colian reports that 250 calls have come in, with men and women calling in nearly equal numbers. She tells them about the issue and gives them the current medical guidelines appropriate for their age.
When Colian tried to bring her campaign to the city of Bnai Brak, the majority of whose 182,000 residents are Charedi, she was told the posters would create panic and were immodest and inappropriate.
Halbertal echoed these claims in a television appearance with Colian, saying that public streets are not the place to discuss women’s issues but failed to suggest a viable alternative. Previous campaigns had attempted to raise awareness with brochures placed in mikvahs, that most private and feminine space, but were nixed by rabbis who claimed women would become fearful about their health, which in turn would ruin the mood on a night when husbands and wives were meant to be together.
In a segment of society where women’s health cannot be discussed, where internet campaigns don’t exist, where pink ribbons mean nothing, where health care clinic pamphlets are censored to remove women, where there are no women MKs and none of the male MKs attend women’s health committees, and where Charedi women from within the community like Colian are blocked from disseminating life-saving information, how exactly are women supposed to discover the need for the proactive, preventative care that can save their lives?
We need to make education and awareness accessible to all.
Originally published in the Jewish Chronicle
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