From the inception of this blog, I have had in mind to use it for two things; primarily it’s for working my way through the Chumash and if I finish that other texts like Mishna and then Gemara. The other purpose is to express my opinion on issues here in the charedi or more broadly daati world in Jerusalem and Israel more widely. So, I’m going to get on my proverbial soapbox today and talk directly to other people like myself (especially charedi men in Israel) who contrary to the stereotypes do use the internet. (There are far more of us than some people think.)

I live on the Romema side of Mattersdorff, a neighborhood here in Jerusalem. We don’t have gender segregated buses here and we don’t want them. When people have tried to impose them, people in the community simply refused to cooperate. I remember well when signs went up declaring the #2 bus route (now defunct) which I took to work each at the time (this being well before I was married) to be a “mehadrin bus”. The signs said women should sit at the back. Well, except for the issue of littering, I didn’t object when someone standing next to me tore the sign down and threw it on the ground like so much trash. When I got on the bus, I sat at the back, noting how men and women seemed even more intermingled than usual. At the time, I went for meals every shabbat to a family in which the mother had trouble walking. She was a frum woman but she couldn’t physically walk to the back of the bus, and why should she have to? Rabanim I talked to in the neighborhood casually about the latest goings-on emphasized that Torah forbids trying to impose one’s chumrot on others and that nothing forbids men and women sitting together on a bus. The idea of trying to make the #2 a segregated bus route was quickly and quietly dropped. So, I felt like our neighborhood, our community, had faced that particular battle and won it.

Rightly or wrongly, whether the press coverage is fair or correct, the secular press virtually always refers to two neighborhoods in its anti-charedi (“Ultra-Orthodox“) stories, the kind that portray religious people as hatefully and fairly as the Nazis’ press portrayed Jews generally: namely, they mention Beit Shemesh and Mea Shaarim. The first neighborhood, I’ve never been to although I have friends who live there. The second I’ve been through or in shopping or catching a minyan, but I don’t know the place or its people. My point in mentioning them at all is that these are the places the press vilifies (whether justly or not, I can’t say) and I’ve always been content to think that the press was either outright lying or at least exaggerating and in the unlikely event the news stories were true and not unfairly skewed, I’d think “I don’t live in those neighborhoods, I’m not likely to with my hashkafot (sfardi minhagim, charedi standards of Observance and daati leumi attitudes to the medina and the secular world) and it’s not my place to tll anyone else how to live their lives.” Traditionally, people are told to find a community where they fit in, and from what rumors I’ve heard those two neighborhoods attract people who want to keep stricter chumrot than I would want to, but as long as a person is not hurting anyone else, they can do what they want– especially if it means they’re keeping Torah.

Yet, here we are a few years later and the same issues keep coming up again and again. Disturbingly, attitudes which are utterly incompatible with Torah Judaism and halakha are making inroads everywhere in our communities. The two most disturbing of these are racism and attitudes towards women. For right now, I’m going to talk about the latter.

Hazal have always been clear that while the roles of men and women differ, the role of women is at least as important as that of men. Yes, it’s not the way the secular world does it but Hazal’s approach to making sure that “separate but equal” really is “equal” has been to require that those making the decisions (men here) accord any preferential treatment to those not making the decisions (women in this case). Hence, if for example only one bed is available, the servant gets it rather than the master and the wife rather than the husband; in these cases respectively, the master and the husband are presumed to be the one able to provide a second bed if needed in the first place.

Men are expected to study the Torah, especially Talmud, emphasizing how we come to the halakha rather than the halakha itself. Women are trained primarily in the actual halakha and secondarily in the theory. If there is a question are what to do in the house, traditionally as reflected in Hazal, it is women who are presumed to be more reliable until one can ask one’s rav. Why? Men learn the theory more than the practice traditionally, and also traditionally women learn the practice more than the theory. In other words, women are accorded respect. Yes, there is the bracha בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֶלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁלֹּא עָשַֽׂנִי אִשָּׁה, but that is intended to make a man appreciate his privileged status in the sense of having more mitzvot to perform. A man is not “better” than a woman in Judaism any more than a kohen is somehow “better” than a yisrael. I don’t think that anyone consciously thinks they are putting Jewish women into a status of second class citizens. Yet things are happening.

Our papers, like Hamodia, have given into pressure not to show any pictures of women. Now, I agree, one should not show sexualized pictures– of men or women. Yet, if one looks at old haggadot for example, they show pictures of men and of women, even in the same picture– together! Where did this chumra come from and why? There have even been instances of eliminating women from pictures or not crediting women, and there was rightly an outcry against it.

Increasingly boys and girls from an absurdly young age are entirely gender-segregated. Now, I agree that mingling of boys and girls, especially of teenagers, should be supervised, but how are for example boys going to learn to treat girls like people if they don’t interact with any until they go on shidduchim? Even twenty years ago, this was not done and Hazal never says to do it. So why are we doing it?

The problem as I see it is that we are letting ourselves be swayed into accepting chumrot that come from people who want to be “frum”. You know what? I don’t want to be “frum”; I want to follow halakha. It’s fine and proper to accommodate other people’s chumrot but passively letting those chumrot be imposed on everyone else is not the same as letting other people do what they want in their personal Observance of Torah. I’m a charedi man, and I’ll sit with my wife and daughters on a bus. I’m sfardi, even if I look “white”, and so I’m not going to dress like ancestors I don’t have from eastern Europe. The only people I will recognize as leaders of our community are the Gadolim; that is the Torah way. If you’re not a rav and a poseq, you can and should keep your views on halakha and especially your chumrot to yourself unless we’re a shiur. If you’re not my rav, I’m not asking you how me or my family should do things.

In all this, I haven’t said a thing about signs asking people to dress modestly when passing through a neighborhood or people harassing people who are presumed to be less Observant. The latter is a chilul Hashem, plain and simple, and the former isn’t much different. First, how Observant a person is or is not is an issue between a person, that person’s rav (if applicable) and Hashem; if you’re not one of these three, how much they do or do not do mitzvot is not your business. Guess what? Halakha comes in to play too here! (No surprise.) If you’re talking about how Observant you think someone is, that’s lashon hara. If you’re harassing someone because of how Observant you think someone is, e.g., because they aren’t dressed to your community’s specific standards of modesty, this is also forbidden; if you can’t figure out why for yourself, ask your rav.

Here’s another question, if you yell at a women because she hasn’t got stockings on, do you also yell at a man dressed in shorts? In other words, why are women singled out? That’s not the Torah way, but then again harassing people at all isn’t either.

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