Are Women Human? Women’s Religiosity in Israel
by LorraineI do not know what it is to be a woman in Israel. I cannot pretend to, as I have never been there. I have friends who have lived in Israel, some observant Jews, some not, but other than that, I don’t have much of a clue. Yes, of course, I read things. But I just want to point out, before I begin, that I am not speaking as an Israeli woman.*
I am speaking as an American feminist who is trying to figure out the mixed messages that women are sent in Israel, and the frightening world of surveillance that many Israeli women live under. (And if Israeli women live under surveillance, multiply that exponentially to get to Palestinian women’s experiences.)
But I was struck by two stories that appeared close to one another in Ha’aretz, one of the more leftist Israeli newspapers. In one story, a woman was arrested for praying at the Western Wall (frequently referred to as the “Wailing Wall.”) In another, women can be forcibly inducted into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) if they are thought to be faking their religiosity.
As many of you know, all Israeli young people–male and female–are required to serve in the IDF. According to War Resisters International, Israel violates young people’s human rights in that there is no conscientious objection status for men, and only partial c.o. status for women.
A woman can claim c.o. status:
Art. 39 (c) deals with the exemption of women with a particular religious background. According to this article: “A female person of military age who has proved, in such manner and to such authority as shall be prescribed by regulations, that reasons of conscience or reasons connected with her family’s religious way of life prevent her from serving in defence service, shall be exempt from the duty of that service.”
Men are allowed to claim religious education (e.g. studying to be a Rabbi) as a basis for exemption, but with women (who may not join the Rabbinate,) the right to claim c.o. status is directly linked to her family’s level of religious orthodoxy. Article 39 seems to assume that a woman (who is apparently old enough to fight and die for Israel) is still subject to her family’s religious beliefs. In other words, she is not recognized as her own person, but as an extension of her father. The religious exemption is not based on objection of war, as Judaism is not a pacifistic religion; rather, it is the family’s fear that she will “stray.”**
The legislation on exemption of religious women is based on Jewish tradition, which does not permit daughters either to stray from their father’s authority or to live in a mixed-gender society. Military service by women would conflict with both these proscriptions, hence with the traditional religious way of life.
Art. 40 specifies exemption on religious grounds. According to it, exemption is permissible when: “(1) reasons of religious conviction prevent her from serving in the defence service and (2) she observes the dietary laws at home and away from home and (3) she does not ride on the Sabbath.”
I would be curious as to whether there is someone reading this who can enlighten me why these same observances do not preclude men.
November 22nd saw the introduction of a bill that will radically change this.
The Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday approved a bill aimed at curbing the growing number of secular girls evading service in the Israel Defense Forces by claiming to be religious.
The bill, which was proposed by the Defense Ministry, advises that the Israel Defense Forces keep close surveillance on every prospective recruit who cites religion as a reason not to complete service. This way, say minister, the IDF will have an easier time determining which claims are valid.
The article does not detail how a woman’s religiosity will be determined. Will she have to take a test? I assume that this will automatically preclude any Conservative or Reform Jew from claiming the exemption. But what does a woman have to do to prove that she’s religious “enough.”
Approximately one-third of women seek the exemption. This is seen as a problem, but this bill is also seen as a continuation of the struggle between the secularists and the religious in the Knesset.
The most chilling part of the bill is the surveillance apparatus that these new rules will create:
Hasson called his bill an opportunity intends to equalize the conditions under which women can receive exemptions, characterizing the ministers’ proposal as one that would simply enable the establishment of a team of private detectives whose sole purpose would be to follow up on women already exempt from their military service
Imagine: private detectives whose sole purpose is to follow women exempt from military service to make sure they are religious enough.
Having just read that article, you can imagine my bewilderment when I read this article:
Police on Wednesday arrested a woman who was praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, due to the fact that she was wrapped in a prayer shawl (tallit).
Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz said the act was a provocation meant to turn the wall into a fighting ground. “We must distance politics and disagreement from this sacred place,” Rabinowitz said.
Rabbi Gilad Kariv, associate director of Israel’s reform movement, said that all over the world women are entitled to wear the tallit, and only in the land of the Jews are they excluded from the social custom and even arrested for praying.
Last week Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Shas party’s spiritual leader, said during his weekly sermon that the women in the feminist movement are “stupid” and act the way they do out of a selfish desire for equality, not “for heavens’ sake.”
I have quoted most of the article because I find it appalling. In effect, a woman was arrested for wearing a prayer shawl and reading the Torah at the Wall. She was arrested because the courts have ruled that visitors to the Wall must comply with its dress code.
In the practice of something private, praying to G*d at a holy site, this woman was arrested. Someone was watching her. Ironic, huh? Not religious enough? You’ll be noted in some little book. Trying to practice the religion? Back in the book.
Both cases are about how women are not seen by Israeli law as equal in the eyes of God. They can die for their country, but they cannot pray for it–at least not in places that have been reserved for men.
Why does this infuriate me so? I’m not Jewish. I support a two-state solution, in which both Palestine and Israel would be recognized as sovereign nations. (Yes. I’m aware that Palestinians are second-class humans in Israel. I’m not trying to have that argument.)
But I find it interesting that, when you have determined that women are lesser beings, the perimeters that you put around acceptable female behavior is so constricting that “too much” –whichever way you go–brings you into conflict with your society.
Israel is a modern nation. The United States is a modern nation, but we have our own issues that are similar to those of Israel. For example, women are still exempted from conscription. I do not believe that anyone should be conscripted, but if the draft exists, then everyone–male and female, rich and poor–should be eligible. I don’t think that women in this country will have full equal rights until they can be drafted. ***
Military service for women is fraught with danger–not only from the enemies, but also from your fellow servicemen.
The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, where I met with female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic say they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and the downward spirals many of their lives have since taken.
In this country, there are those who continue to insist that while women are also children of God, they are first their fathers’ daughters, and then their husbands’ wives. Their personhood is defined by their relationship to men.
Such seems to be the case in Israel. The only route to conscientious objection in Israel is to claim that one’s father’s religious beliefs preclude one from being exposed to military culture. Where is the claim that you simply do not want to participate in what you perceive as an immoral war? Can you serve in a non-combat position?
Perhaps this blog post makes little sense. I cannot pinpoint what made my eyes skip through the headlines to settle on these two separate stories. But as I read both of them, I envisioned Israeli women in a box.
And, as I hear our politicians negotiate a health care bill that would preclude women’s access to medical procedures because of some legislators’ moral concerns, I realized that we’re in a box, too. Maybe a different shape and color. But a box nonetheless.
*See Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things You Need to Know about the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin.
**Friends of mine were part of the Peace Now! movement in Israel. They were at a rally when a friend of theirs was killed by a fellow Jew, who objected to those who objected to Israeli policies.
***Newt Gingrich once famously said that women should not serve in combat positions because sitting in damp fox holes would give them yeast infections. (He said it more crudely.)
Update:
I’ve just assigned an essay to my students for them to read. By chance, the Western Wall comes up in the essay.
From Richard Rodriguez, “The God of the Desert,” Harper’s
“After the Six Day War, the Israeli government bulldozed an Arab neighborhood to create Western Wall Plaza, an emptiness to facilitate devotion within emptiness–a desert that is also a well…
Western Wall Plaza levels sorrow, ecstacy, cancer, belief. Here emptiness rises to proclaim its unlikeliness to God, who allows for no comparison. This is His incomparable Temple. It does not resemble. It is all that remains.”