Women have struggled for a long time to be able to pray—sing, wear prayer shawls—at Jerusalem's Western Wall, the treasured remnant of the Temple the Romans destroyed 1,943 years ago. We have been harassed, arrested, and subject to rules propagated by those who appear to believe there is one and only one way to live a Jewish life.
A judge in Israel has affirmed a lower court ruling that there was no justification for the arrest of several members of the advocacy group Women of the Wall and that a police request for a restraining order against the Women lacked merit.
"Significantly, the judge ruled that in the Law of Holy Places, which compels Western Wall visitors to pray and hold religious celebrations according to the 'local custom,' this phrase doesn’t necessarily mean Orthodox custom," according to a report in the Forward.
The pervasive disdain for women at the orthodox end of the spectrum of many faiths deserves scrutiny. Jimmy Carter recently left the Southern Baptist Convention explicitly over its positions on women. Roman Catholic doctrine continues to ban women from the priesthood, though ordination remains a goal for some Catholic women. While the Qu'ran asserts equality between the sexes (with distinctions), customs persist that relegate Muslim women to lower status in many places. And Orthodox Jewish women often experience a range of restrictions, including not being allowed to touch the Torah, "because...you know..." as Rabbi Benay Lappe puts it with sardonic wit (i.e., we might be menstruating, among other reasons), though the development of "Morethodoxy" and the growth of leadership opportunities for Orthodox women give heart.
How does it persist that the closer people cleave to the character-by-character literalism of a revered text, the likelier it is that women will bear the burden of that abnegation of imagination?
No comments:
Post a Comment