When “modesty signs” instructing women how to dress were used as justification for assault against women and girls in Beit Shemesh, a number of residents sued for discrimination – and won. But within hours of the signs coming down, new ones had taken their place. Chochmat Nashim weighs in on how this court case signifies the turf wars between Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and the rest of Israeli society.
Though charedi women develop breast cancer less often than the general population, their mortality rate is 30% higher. Among the reasons for this is a lack of awareness of the disease and how to spot it. To counter this, Ruth Colian of Ubizchutan (a charedi women’s political party that ran for Knesset) decided to create ‘pashkevelim’ in modest language and post them in charedi areas.
For the second year running, Chochmat Nashim has joined with Ruth to raise funds for the campaign which reaches out to charedi women calling on them to ‘guard their lives’ (a Torah commandment) and to go for certain medical checks. The posters are written in the charedi style and in very modest language.
Unfortunately, when Ruth contacted the municipality of Bnai Brak- a very large charedi city, she was denied the right to hang posters there for fear of ‘creating panic in the city’. You can see the news story (in Hebrew) here.
This is the silence we are up against. The notion that a breast cancer awareness campaign (which never mentions the word breast or cancer out of sensitivity to the population) is suppressed by a municipality on the basis of creating panic…
With your help, we raised enough funds to create 2,000 posters and to rent a billboard at a major intersection (the Coca Cola intersection) of Bnai Brak (owned by a private individual). Posters were hung in Bet Shemesh, Jerusalem, El Ad and 2,000 fliers with the same message were given out in Bnai Brak and Jerusalem.
Last year the campaign brought in over 200 phone calls from men and women asking what they should do and what a mammogram is. We will continue to raise funds and awareness and collaborate with other organizations working within these populations to reduce these horrible statistics and save lives.
But most shocking of all that Rabbi Shafran writes is the question he asks rhetorically. “Are religious Zionists to be expected to condemn every outrage committed by a “hilltop youth?” YES, Rabbi Shafran. YES they are! That is what it means to be a moral and responsible person.
I wrote these words on Yom Hashoah and this is the number one lesson that I have taken from the Holocaust. Not that people hate us, not that we must circle the wagons, not that we should make excuses for extremism and say it’s only a few crazies, but that when people do bad things, it is our moral and religious obligation to stand against them — every time. I honestly cannot believe this is something I need to explain to a rabbi.
I invite Rabbi Shafran to come and spend some time in Beit Shemesh since he appears not to believe its residents. He will see children tearing Israeli flags off cars, soldiers being physically attacked and called Nazis, and young boys with payot calling Jewish mothers ‘shiksas’.
Come ride the Number 11 bus and you can hear Jewish men telling Jewish women and girls to go to the back of the bus. This is the next generation of Haredi Jews here, Rabbi. Our town is the canary in the coal mine of Jewish extremism. That you care more about the reputation of your community than its actual health and future says more about its decay than any additional evidence I might bring.
Read more at The Times of Israel
Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll
What was once called “extremism” is the new normal. It is not, as Shafran writes, a phenomenon of a small group of “outliers” who throw things or call people names, while the majority “fully embrace all Jews, including those estranged from observance or mired in the milieu.” Rather, both the political and religious establishments in the Haredi world are increasingly intolerant of anything but the Haredi worldview.
Read more in The Forward
Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll
At Monday’s Knesset debate on the Mikveh Bill, those in attendance were treated to mansplaining on an institutional level, some serious political games and, possibly, a bit of fraud.
Background
In Israel, what a woman does in the mikveh is not simply her own business. The Chief Rabbinate, religious councils and the balanit (mikveh attendant) are all involved. Women whose immersion practices and traditions are at odds with the dictates of the Rabbinate are often refused access to the publicly-funded mikvaot. In order to put a stop to this, a number of lawsuits have been filed with the Supreme Court in the past few years. Though successful in theory, the rules which establish women’s rights in the mikveh have not been put into practice. Thus, in a new suit, filed by the organization ITIM, 13 women are suing the Chief Rabbinate. The hearing is set for later this month.
Earlier this year, another Supreme Court case was filed – and won – about mikveh use. This case made it illegal to refuse the right to use state-funded mikvaot for Conservative and Reform conversions.
It was this case that led MK Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism to sponsor the so-called Mikveh Bill. The original writing of the bill states that “using a public purification mikveh, which is intended for immersion for purification or for conversion purposes, will only be permitted for halakhic immersion, conforming with the halakha (religious law) and with Jewish custom according to the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish law) and the rulings of the Chief Rabbinical Council in Israel.”
While Gafni claims that the law is simply to ‘safeguard Judaism’ and prevent non-Orthodox conversions in state mikvaot, the people who will be most affected by the bill are Orthodox and traditional Jewish women who use the mikveh monthly.
How so? Under this ruling, women may only use the mikveh according to the Chief Rabbinate’s interpretations of Jewish law and tradition. If a woman’s tradition or ruling by her rabbi are not in line with the rulings of the Chief Rabbinate, she can be denied use of the mikveh. For example, women are barred from immersing without an attendant (despite this being permitted by the Shulchan Aruch). The bill also bars single women, women preparing to ascend the Temple Mount and women who would like to immerse for whatever purposes that they may choose — for example, to renew themselves after trauma or to mark an occasion (see here for more).
The bill was signed by 11 male MKs from UTJ, Shas and HaBayit HaYehudi and one female MK: Shuli Moalem of Bayit Yehudi. From the beginning, however, Moalem made her support for the bill contingent on key changes to the bill’s wording that would protect the women who use mikvaot, allowing them to immerse according to their own traditions.
Monday, June 5, 2016
The debate was nearly over before it began. In attendance were: MKs Gafni, Eichler, Azulay, Moelem, Azaria, Lavie, Stern, Swid, Glick, and Paran. Also present were representatives of numerous organizations, as well as individual women for whom autonomy and privacy in the mikveh are vital. It was standing-room-only; nonetheless, many of the men in the room seemed bewildered as to why so many women were present for the discussion.
The discourse was truly shocking. The concerns of religious and traditional women, whom the religious parties claim to protect, were dismissed completely out of hand.
The Play-by-Play
Because Gafni had not disclosed changes he had made to the bill, Moelem insisted on tabling the discussion.
MKs Rachel Azaria and Aliza Lavie, as well as Elazar Stern echoed Moelem’s demand. Gafni responded: “I never imagined that the wording of the law would be so important that anyone would need to read it first!”
Committee chair of the debate MK Amsallem of Likud, together with MKs from UTJ and Shas, insisted that the debate go forward, but the women MKs were having none of it. They vociferously opposed the bill for being harmful to women.
MK (Yesh Atid) Aliza Lavie pointed out that instead of promoting religious observance, this bill will actually result in violations of religious practice as long as the religious institutions continue to dismiss women’s concerns about the mikveh.
Rachel Azaria (Kulanu), furiously argued that it was unacceptable to reject the legitimate concerns and experiences of women in the mikva when women are the ones who are most affected and who have so much at stake if this bill is passed. She shouted over their interruptions and protestations that they were stripping women of their rights and traditions without hearing women out. Her passionate outburst resulted in her forcible removal from the room.
Throughout these exchanges, Gafni kept repeating his claim that women have nothing to worry about. But his claim that “this law doesn’t affect women at all!” is disingenuous, given that, as a man in the ultra-Orthodox community, he knows full well that married women immerse in the mikveh regularly. How could he claim women would not be affected by the changes his bill makes to the most intimate and feminine space in Judaism?
Indeed, his statement is laughable. To suggest that a law governing use of the mikveh won’t affect women is preposterous. Even to suggest, as he has done, that the bill does nothing more than establish the status quo is problematic; as Moalem pointed out, the status quo isn’t enough. That’s why women have been bringing suits for some time! Moreover, Gafni and several of the other male MKs present appeared to willfully ignore the implications of the bill that the female MKs were very loudly explaining to them.
When after an hour, the actual text of the revised bill was produced for the other MKs, it was immediately clear that the wording had been dramatically altered from the previous version and that Gafni had tried to hide it. MK Michal Rozen (Meretz) left no room for doubt: “I’m looking at both versions of the bill, the old and the new. This is not a revision of the the bill. These are two different bills.”
The legal advisor began reading the new bill aloud and the objections began in earnest. In response, Gafni screamed that it was not the legal advisor’s place to comment on the legality of the bill. He rose from his seat and yelled that it was “none of your business,” and that he was interfering with coalition agreements of which this bill is a part. Then he stormed out.
With Gafni gone and the clock ticking, MK Amsallem finally allowed four non-MKs to speak and learned a bit about what is at stake beyond a coalition agreement — and on whose (naked) backs this legislation tramples.
The first of these four, Keren Hadad Taub of Advot,, explained that most of the people affected by this bill are women, not only because it is women who use the mikveh regularly, but because the overwhelming majority of converts in Israel are female. The male MKs’ were surprised to learn this critical piece of information, the knowledge of which is vital to knowing how the bill will play out in practice. There is no way one can understand the real life implications of a bill without knowing who the bill affects.
“I hope you sleep well at night knowing that women have stopped going to the mikveh because of you,” saidfounder of T’nu Litbol Be-Sheket (LINK), a movement advocating for women’s rights in the mikveh, and secretary general of Yerushalmim party.
Rivka Shimon of Women for the Mikdash also pointed that, “this [bill] prevents women — married and single — from going up to Har Habayit.”
MK Amsallem interrupted her: “Wait, you’re saying that if a single woman shows up to the mikveh to immerse, they will tell her no?” The frustration in the room was palpable as the women answered with an exasperated “YES!”
The Core Issue
Amsallem was one of few male MKs in the room to pay attention to the implications of the bill (newest MK Glick and MK Stern did as well), and that is the crux of the issue. The bill will affect those who use the mikvah most, and not the Conservative and Reform conversions it’s purportedly designed to deter. But the Charedi parties that wrote the bill – for whom Torah observance should be of paramount importance – turn a blind eye to the pleading of the women to be heard and considered. Could it be that they simply do not care? Shouldn’t that be unthinkable? Yet when a high ranking charedi official in the the religious council of Jerusalem was told that, because of this bill, women won’t use the mikveh, he shrugged. “So, they won’t use the mikveh.”
This bill is supposedly about preserving Judaism, safeguarding the Torah, and the Jewish people. But it is not; it does none of those things. Rather, the bill is about power and control — about a coalition deal. The fact that it may result in the suffering of religious and traditional women, who by their very actions are preserving Judaism and safeguarding both Torah and the Jewish people, is of no concern. The women’s suffering and discomfort, the dismissal of their needs is simply collateral damage in the Charedi MKs’ service of a larger cause — their own political clout.
A 48-year-old woman goes to see a breast surgeon. She has four lumps in her breasts, a large ulcerated mass and cancer that has spread to her lymph nodes. She says she had not come in earlier because it didn’t seem so important.
A 36-year-old woman sees her dermatologist for an irritated nipple. The doctor palpates a tumor the size of a golf ball and immediately sends her to a breast surgeon. The patient returns to the dermatologist a month later for the same condition. The doctor, shocked to see that she has not had surgery, asks if she had seen the surgeon. The woman says she was concerned about the level of kashrut at the hospital to which she was sent and, upon her rabbi’s advice, was waiting to have surgery at another hospital with stricter kashrut. She dies not long after.
A mother of seven is fully aware that she has a gene that makes it very likely she will contract the cancer that killed her mother and sister. She knows that if she has her breasts and reproductive organs removed, it could save her life. But she refuses. Not because she wants more children, not because she is afraid of surgery, but because she is afraid that if the neighbors find out, it will ruin her daughters’ chances for a shidduch (match). After failing to convince her that she could have the surgery with no one knowing, her doctor puts her in touch with a woman who has had the surgery and reconstruction undetected by her community. She finally agrees.
These stories seem very hard to believe. But imagine that you had heard almost nothing about breast cancer, that it was something not spoken about.
Imagine that you did not know the statistics and had never seen the pink ribbons, heard the calls for self-examinations or witnessed the marathons to raise money for a cure.
Would you know that cancer was lethal? Would you know that early detection was key to survival? Would you understand that talking about it could literally save lives? And even if you did know, suppose you also knew that if anyone was aware you were ill, your daughters’ chances for a good marriage could be significantly lowered (a terrible fate in your community)? Three major studies in the past decade have revealed that haredi women have fewer incidences of breast cancer, but that more of them die from the disease than women in the general population.
Read more in the Jerusalem Post
Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll
