I'm glad blogs are a place where personal stories of individual agunot are being told. However I kind of cringe when the point is to ask us to pray for these women. It's not that I don't believe in prayer at all, but will God really lend a helping hand if we are all passively reading (and writing) blogs and praying form our computer chairs. What can we do to make a difference?

Perhaps the internet mutes our sense that we need to act becuase we become concerned with the few cases that receive publicity though they may be far from home. We need to be linked into smaller community networks. I want to protest outside of the home of the man down the street, I want to support the woman in my neighborhood. Otherwise our concerns remain waves in the broadband or a prayer blowing in the wind.

 

Check out Rena Sherbill. She is an amazing spoken word poet who speaks out about feminism, empowerment, women's role in relationships, and the experience of agunot.

 

Some important legal protests to the current state of the Rabbinical Courts have appeared in the papers this week.

Mavoi Satum and several other groups sued the Minister of Justice in the Supreme Court of Equity. The supreme court actually moved to open the protocols of the committee that chose the latest batch of nepotistically appointed judges. This is a wonderful sign that perhaps people/politicians are becoming aware of the problem of selection of Charedi judges 

Also in recent news, Rachel Avraham, backed by the Center for Women's Justice, is suing the Ministry of Justice for the negligence and malice of the Rabbinical courts which kept her waiting 18 years for a divorce from an abusive husband. If you want to know how problematic these judges are and how terrible it is that men can manipulate the system while women can barely use the system- read this article.

 

When was the last time you read through the end of Shoftim.  I remember being individually upset by the stories of Pilegesh bagivah and the celebration of tu beaav as both these stories demand a female sacrifice. But I forgot how intertwined they are.

In Pilegesh bagivah a man sets out to return his wayward concubine, who has returned to her father’s house. Her father is so happy to greet her liaison and to send her away again as a concubine with this man. She doesn’t talk or express her feelings, but all we know is that her initial attempt to get away fails because of the collusion of her father and the man she serves.

On the way home this man chooses not to stop at the non Jewish village along the way but to continue to the S’dom- like town of Givah. His choice strikes me as some strange hypocritical act, choosing the evil Jews over the seemingly neutral non Jews. Here ensues a story dramatically similar to the Story of Lot in S’dom (from this past weeks parsha). When the people demand the male guests, the host and guest decide to toss out the concubine – the one he cared so much about as to retrieve from her father’s house- to the wolves, where she is brutally gang raped till morning.

He goes to sleep, he forgets about her, he finds her only because he stumbles over her limp hand as he leaves the house in the morning. Yet he is inflamed with self righteous anger about how his concubine was treated by this den of Jewish wolves- what did he expect when he locked the door behind himself. It is not even clear that she is dead, but he chops her up into 12 pieces and sends them to all the tribes as a proof that the tribe of Binyamin is corrupt and deserves to be eradicated.  Indeed Israel comes to his aid and there is a bloody civil war as a result.

The Binyaminites perhaps did deserve what they got, though a lot of blood was shed on both sides. Still the sacrifice is the woman, whose name we don’t know, who isn’t even a proper wife, who may not have even been dead when her uncaring proprietor chopped her into pieces to get revenge. Do the Binyaminites learn anything? For that matter do any of the Jews learn anything?

After the war the Jews swear not to marry any of their daughters to the tribe of Binyamin, but still are concerned with the identity of the tribe which is about to be extinct because apparently all the women have been killed- though some men remain. So what do they do they find another city that deserves punishment (people who didn’t show up to fight the civil war to begin with) they kill all the men and women accept those women who are virgins. (Because in this pure world of theirs I suppose it is important that the Binyaminites marry virgins!) Then these women are forcefully given to the Binyaminites who survived. And when there are not enough women to satisfy their needs, women are sent to the fields to dance while the Binyamin men are allowed to kidnap them avoiding the problem of breaking their oath not to marry their daughters to this morally decrepit tribe.

No one will claim that this is a story of a model society. In fact it seems to suggest that in morally decayed societies the powerless women are those who feel the brunt of the depravity. They are used as pawns: to satisfy sexual and financial needs of husbands and fathers, to protect individual men from the ravages of the street, to prove a national point, and then to rehabilitate the very corrupt tribe that abused the concubine to begin with.


 

My first recorded class online! You can hear me speak on "Writing our own Aggadot" at the last JOFA conference from their web site. It was a writing workshop so you can listen and write if you like.


 

Had an interesting conversation with a teacher at Matan about how seriously to take categories and cases constructed by the Rabbis. Sometimes it is clear that there are fundamental values and conceptions that underlie the opinions of the Rabbis, while others – this teacher was saying- that the Rabbis are technically playing with categories without really intending the conceptual implications of their constructions.

For example- the opinions about rape discussed yesterday: When Rav Abahu says all women who are raped are forbidden from returning to their husbands what does he really mean? Here are three possibilities for the deeper meaning – or lack their of – implied by his statement.  

1) Is he making a psychological point that women are so easily swayed that they really enjoy and desire the rape. Therefore he assumes most women consent at some point during rape and truly cheat on their husband’s during the act.

2) Or does he think the fact of rape in itself is a form of bodily infidelity (despite the woman’s inability to prevent it). Then imagining women’s desire may be an artificial vehicle used to force a man to divorce his wife despite her emotional or intellectual fidelity.

3) Or is he playing a detached game of halacha; he toys with the concept of a deed that started by accident or by compulsion and ended with desire and consent. He applies it to rape as it may be applied to any of many areas of law.

The same can be asked about Rava, who acquits a woman who displays desire for her rapist. Does he see actually see the woman as super sexual? Does he create the case to be the most extreme as possible just to prove his point that rape is always rape. Perhaps he believes that a woman does not truly consent even when she feels pleasure? Or does he believe a woman who consents only because a rapist brought her to this desire to this evil inclination is ultimately not responsible. Or is it a technical point that the original impetus of an act defines rape, and any act, despite the final motivations or feelings.

I personally don’t want to believe that the Rabbis were so disconnected from their material that, as the last possibilities suggest, they thought about all deeds similarly, applying theoretical conceptions to rape without imagining and considering the cases at hand.

But perhaps the Rabbis were disengaged from the material at hand. I can fathom that good Jewish men don’t think about raping women, it is far from their daily thoughts and plans. While women, as I mentioned last post, think and dream and obsess over issues of rape even when they live in relatively safe neighborhood and take normal precautions against being alone in the wrong places. When we learn Gemarah, perhaps we search harder for the conceptual and sociological implications of these halachik stands.

But I would suggest that even if these weren’t “real” in the psyche of the Rabbis, I do think that the cases represent the imagination of the Rabbis. More on imagination next time.


 

Someone told me recently that I sound bitter in this blog. I took a short break to think about how I can make feminist points that may at times reflect frustration, anger or plain surprise without having the public think I’m a ranting extremist bra-burning feminist. (I like my bras thank you very much). On the other hand I see no reason to trade in my express loud feminist boom for the sweet, barely audible, nice- Jewish girl’s voice I used most of my school days.

Beyond the rhetoric, I do want to convey to my readers the nuanced voice of good scholarship and luckily the Gemarah is quite a nuanced book. Of course this may mean that my posts are a bit longer...

Yesterday’s daf brought up the topic of women’s role in rape. The bible itself makes a point of saying that an engaged woman who is forced into sex is not guilty of adultery, a distinction the Bible makes seemingly in contrast to other societies it knows. Hence the woman’s desire and/ or consent is the deciding factor as to whether the sex is considered rape or adultery, which would result in capital punishment at worst or at best in being forbidden to return to her husband.

So if the woman’s feelings during the rape determines the identity of the act, this might seem quite women focused. Not quite. R. Abahu, the first voice in this discussion, worries that a rape victim may have enjoyed part of sex, even if the beginning was against her will, therefore all victims of rape may not return to their husbands. The burden of proof is on the woman to scream out for help from beginning to end. And without such proof, he assumes that the physical act of sex is likely to bring pleasure to the woman.

It is nothing new that the Gemarah attempts to come to a conclusion based on statistics without taking an interview with the individual women whose life and marriage is at stake. Of course I would have to agree with the Gemarah that such a woman is partial and may choose to lie if she indeed felt desire or pleasure during the rape. She wouldn’t want to be forbidden from returning to her previous marriage and even within that marriage she probably would have a hard time speaking openly to her husband about this extramarital sexual experience. However in this vacuum of her forced and traumatic state of mute, the assumptions of women’s experience of sex are determined by the Rabbi’s imagination about women’s sexuality.

Do some women feel bodily pleasure during rape? Is that measurable? Do some women orgasm during rape? We discussed this at great length here at Matan. Mot women did not think that women feel pleasure during rape. Maybe I’m going out on an essentialist limb here, but my gut reaction is that sexual feelings may be more psychological for women. Only a phallic man would assume that a woman being raped will be likely to feel pleasure.

But more importantly a woman should not feel guilt (emotional or actually meted out through punishment) for feelings evoked by the violent act of another! Rava (our feminist hero for the daf- sort of) counters R Abahu and says even if a women says I want to hire the rapist and pay him for him to continue- meaning she desires him and consents- she is not held responsible. If the beginning was rape the entire act is rape.


While Rava uses the most extreme case he can imagine, one where the woman falls in love with the rapist, clearly his statement also exonerates the woman who resists at the beginning and resigns herself, stopping to struggle during the rape. He does not require visual proof from start to finish that every moment of the act was rape and not consensual.

This issue was eerily echoed in a Shabbat meal this past week. A group of women were discussing their own living nightmares about how they would react if they were attacked. Almost all these women said they would not struggle, they would given in keep quiet and hope the man wouldn’t kill her when he was done. Let me note these were not meek women. These women would all be misunderstood by R. Abahu who doesn’t understand the complicated network of reasons that silence and paralyze women).

One woman at our Shabbat table had been to a self defense class. She explained that one should yell and resist from start to finish. If the rapist isn’t allowed to ever feel in total control then you are more likely to get away. You don’t want to be waiting passively to find out what will happen at the end. Surprisingly, unbeknownst to R. Abahu, by requiring women to resist loudly to prove that she is not consenting, he is in fact describing the self defense of the moderns- not how to defend yourself in court after the fact, but during the rape itself.

This is a very touchy and complicated issue and I hope to learn more as the dapim march on.


 

Today I joined the Women of the Wall in their monthly prayer group that meets at the Kotel, the Western Wall. We stood at the far right rear of the women’s section and when the first Charedi woman started to scream the chazanit invited everyone to stand closer together and need step further into the tight crowd. “Assur Assur” one woman yelled “you can’t sing there are men hear they will hear you.” She wasn’t moved by the fact that we didn’t seem swayed. Another woman was ranting about we were making a laughing stock of their Judaism and that Christians would kill us Jews if they went to pray in their churches. I’m not sure if the analogy was that we were as foreign to the Jews at the Kotel as Jews in a church and that we should be killed for praying out loud at the Kotel.

I had the shivers for most of the prayer. I don’t know if I have ever pushed myself into a place where people would yell in public at me. I didn’t like it. I have mixed feelings. I don’t know if praying at the Kotel specifically in a group is worth the fight. If I want to put myself in danger of being yelled at or much worse for this cause. Nor is it a particularly meaningful davening for me when people yell insults publicly. On the other hand to give up on the right seems absurd. Do the Charedim actually have more authority over the kotel than other types of Jews? Perhaps just once a month it is important to demonstrate that devoted Jews pray in different ways. Men cannot be the only ones who have the right to express their prayer in song at our holiest of sights!

If you are interested in more details, Women of the Wall have been fighting for years for the right for women to pray as a group and sing together at the Kotel. They are presently not allowed to do Torah reading a the wall because it provokes others to “disturb the peace” by throwing things and rioting. Recently their story was recorded in a documentary. I salute them.


 

I was at a panel discussion tonight on the topic of Chevrah Meurevet, mixed groups, Co- education, or co-ed socializing. The panel clearly missed the mark on several accounts. Mainly they could not define the value of having young men and women mix, but rather just assumed that it was a given that they couldn’t do away with even if they wanted to. Secondly they vaguely referred to the costs of having mixing at all, without defining what we are so afraid of: Men and women touching? Premarital sex? A level of friendship that might lead to adultery? This vagueness, which skirted around the issue, left the audience feeling that even the formula laid out by the panelists - separate sex education side by side with serious content based programming from time to time for mixed groups- did not address how the sexes are meant to interact with each other, (friendship, love, collegiality) or what values are actually being embodied with by this approach.

Here are a few more specific things that really upset me.

Despite a couple attempts, for the most part the perspective was male (even from the one woman on the on the 4 person panel). The discourse was what should we do with the women, should we let the women in. I wanted Malka Bina- the head of Matan, who had already expressed a rather conservative position -to say, ‘we women have to decide whether we want to let the men in!’ or ‘Women’s only education is good for women.’ I think she was trying to express similar sentiments; but, instead a powerful feminist statement, she told a story of a strong woman who desired to learn with the men, until she was beaten down and rejected enough that she finally discovered that she could be a good meek Jewish he women and learn Gemarah with the women.

Then, in an attempt to fill in the women’s perspective, Rav Bigman posited that women feel more subjective Kedusha when they pray in women’s tefilot than when they are called to the torah in progressive minyanim that include women in a limited fashion. I suppose he didn’t poll me before he made such a blanket statement. I don’t want to get rid of all single sex spiritual expression- but I don’t want men making an argument for sex segregation in the synagogue based on the excuse that they are protecting women from loosing out on women’s tefila- most of which are dying, dead, or at the very least infrequent!

Lastly the pink elephant in the room as I mentioned above was sexuality. These questions I don’t have answers to but were blatantly absent from the discussion. What are the actual dangers of mixing the sexes? Is there a way to increase respect on both sides of the gender divide and yet to prevent premarital sex? Is premarital sexual experiences- lets take touch- something that teenagers can actually be asked to avoid completely? If we emphasize exclusively intelligence and serious conversation, will we deemphasize a natural healthy sense of sexuality? If men and women feel more comfortable together, will there be a rise in successful married relationships or failed ones? If boys are trained to talk and listen to women, will they not naturally fall in love and want sex all the more? But if we think respecting the intellect of a woman is going to curb sex, then won’t sex in marriage turn the woman back into an object?

Ok the last few questions were leading…but I do honestly believe there is a lot to explore, for which I do not yet have the answer. But I want to work on developing some theories, and not simply start wringing my hands at its complexity.