I wish I could explain to these men (and their wives) what is wrong with this picture. But then, if they had the mental capacity to understand it, I wouldn’t need to, would I?
Perhaps mental capacity is wrong. They do have it. It is just walled around by years and years of racial, religious and personal family hands-on, brainwashing.
I heard the Jewish Morning Prayer on the few occasions that I went to a synagogue in the morning. I also read a lot about it, especially from learned Rabbis who were trying to explain it and shine a positive light on the intent of it. I only truly understood it tor the first time when I went to use the men’s room at a large concert (I think it was that nice Jewish boy Zimmerman, in Boston.) If I had to stand in the women’s line I would have probably missed part of the concert.
O.K. just trying to see if you’re paying attention. Here are some true facts about women in Ultra-Judaism:
- In an orthodox synagogue, the women are segregated from the men, usually on a balcony if they can afford it. Here are a few more relevant facts:
- Just as there is no civil marriage in Israel, there is also no civil divorce. The divorce needs to happen in a Rabbinical court and here’s the rub: under no circumstances of any kind can a woman divorce her husband unless he is granting the divorce.
- On Simchat Torah (The Joy of Learning,) women celebrate by throwing candy at the men and little boys who are downstairs dancing with the Torah in a celebration of Joy and Learning.
- The Western Wall in Jerusalem is presided over by the Rabbis. Men and women are not allowed to worship there together.
- A menstruating woman is considered unclean for seven days from the inset of her menstruation. Anyone and anything that she touches during those days is also becoming unclean. After seven days she must go to a mikveh where she needs to perform a cleansing ritual. According to my sources the water is not always very clean.
There are other discriminatory practices against women, but just as with the men, very few of them find the wisdom and courage to leave their Orthodox communities.
One last note: I couldn’t find many pictures of Orthodox women on the web. A few that I found actually were of women wearing some kind of burka, which I do not know anything about and I do not feel the urge to research currently. Hilariously, I found the picture that I am using on the Al Arabiya site. Al Arabiya is a Saudi owned and operated TV station.
This is a growing portion of the population in the great “DEMOCRACY” of the state of Israel. And as if that was not enough, they carried that oppressive doctrine into every other democratic country that they moved into, like France, Italy, The United States. It is hard to understand why a lot of people are opposed to sharia laws but ignore the equally antiquated and un-democratic orthodox Talmudic ones.