Women on Women

No, that's not what I meant.

Along with what seemed like the entire Modern Orthodox community in the NY/NJ area, I attended a morning of learning at Yeshiva University devoted to "controversial" figures in Tanach. Overall, I'd say it was a very positive experience -- people who devote themselves towards thinking about Tanach most often have very interesting insights, and since most of Tanach is interpretation anyway, it's hard to have solid refutations if the speaker is coming at the material from a logical perspective.

Once exception: I was silly enough to attend a lecture devoted to the character Devorah. The shiur basically started by talking about how Devorah wasn't really contreversial or ambiguous. She was a great leader, with great religious morals and standards, who kept the nation of Israel at peace for 40 years under her rulership. Error #1: As the speaker before noted, no figure in Tanach is uncontroversial. All have ambiguities -- things about them that don't seem to clear. Devorah is called "eshet lapidot" by the text. She is either the wife of a man named lapidot or she is a woman of wicks, whatever that means. Assuming that the text means to say that her husband's name was lapidot, as is the plain meaning of the verse, it seems a bit sketchy that she's spending so much time with this guy Barak. Many mepharshim note this, and try to come up with a reconciliation in that Barak's other name was lapidot. Not necessarily the interpretation I would go with considering some of the other things that happen in the text, but at least it's being grappled with. The speaker today barely addressed that, treating the situation as though Devorah could not possibly have ever done anything wrong.

Ok, that's a common feeling among religiously naive, but I'll go with it and say that upon further study I could potentially agree that the text meant to portray Devorah as completely upright and righteous.

Then, the speaker made Error #2, going on to note that the midrashim and rishonim have major grapples with the fact that Devorah was a woman, and went on to delineate the ways in which the commentaries attempted to resolve this "problem." HUGE problem! This is the perfect example of when historical contexts need to be acknowledged and discussed. The commentaries all lived at time when there was a huge patriarchal influence in Judaism, and in the world at large. Of course they couldn't understand how a woman could rule a nation, when women were barely allowed out of their houses! Considering the fact that the text (you know, that thing that we talk about as being divine, or at least of primary importance in our religion) doesn't make a big deal out of her being a woman at all, it's ridiculous to ask these questions in a modern capacity as though its unimaginable that a woman could hold a position of power.

The worst part about this was that the speaker was a woman. Now, I've never conducted a scientific study on this or anything, but I find that women speakers overwhelmingly downgrade women characters in Tanach to traditional gender roles far more than male speakers do. Perhaps the males are more sensitive to offending their audience, whereas women think that they have the right to speak about women however they please. Whatever the reason, it's pretty terrible and very offensive. I can't understand what propels these women to think along terms in which they have a secondary status to men in the Jewish religion. These are not question we should be asking in our terms. Period.

End of Holiday Musings

The holidays have finally ended. Insert sigh of relief here. It's been a long, hard, and stressful season. Of course, I've felt this way every year since I started college and schools stopped giving me vacation every time a Jewish holiday rolled around. This year, however, was particularly difficult and forced me into thinking some thoughts about schooling that I never have before. 

Since I can remember I have been a fan of secular education, especially for college. To me, the idea of staying locked up in a Jewish bubble so that you don't have to deal with the outside world is a complete vinahafoch hu of what Judaism is supposed to be. As Norman Lamm said repeatedly in Torah U'Madda, Jews are not supposed to be insular and only be among ourselves. We're supposed to be an or lagoyim, and that entails being among the other nations. Aside from that, I always felt like going to YU and working for a Jewish organization was, in essence, giving up on something better for the sake of easiness. Paying $30,000 of tuition is a steep price to pay to get vacation on Succot.

This mentality served me just fine during college. There, I got to choose my schedule and could easily make my schedule so that I didn't miss too much during the holidays. Yes, on a few occasions it was impossible, but professors were generally understanding and according to university policy they were obligated to accommodate us. Was it annoying when all my friends at Stern and YU got off for basically the entire month? Yep. But I would continually pat myself on the back, knowing that I was living up to my ideals and taking the road less traveled.

Move on to my first year of grad school. All of a sudden I can't choose my classes. I have obligations in my lab. All of a sudden, the holidays mean missing out on major chunks of information. Even worse, it means continually telling me colleagues that they need to cover for me in various lab tasks. As the month wore on, I felt guiltier and guiltier leaving. Judaism was suddenly a burden, a terrible burden that I kept wishing I could throw off and get rid of. 

And now I wonder. Though I am extremely proud of the route I've chosen, I wonder if some of my friends really made very intelligent choices. Those that work for Jewish institutions don't have to deal with any of this. The month was an enjoyable one with time off for family and friends, and more importantly, time off to appreciate the holidays themselves. What I wouldn't give to have felt that appreciation this year rather than an impending sense of doom. 

Election '08

Like everyone else out there, I've been thinking a lot about the election.

The way I see it, I fall one of two ways on most issues. On many, I am definitely for Obama. These issues would include abortion, health care, and the economy. On a few, namely foreign policy, I'm in more of a bind.

Foreign policy is always a tricky issue in my mind. For one thing, there is so much intelligence that we know nothing about, that it's often hard to trust anything anyone says about how dangerous or not dangerous a particular person or country is. For another thing, I know nothing about being in an army, so for me to say that I have an opinion about when the troops should be withdrawn from Iraq would be naive. I honestly have no clue. I find a lot of what Obama says on the subject to sound quite sensible, but at the end of day he could be wrong and McCain could be right, and I wouldn't be incredibly surprised either way.

I do believe that Iran poses a huge threat, however, but that doesn't make my decision on that aspect any easier. How does one deal with such a huge threat? The rest of my family equates this situation with WWII, Ahmenidijad with Hitler, and any sort of diplomacy with the appeasement that allowed Hitler to get as far as he did in his plans.

I see this as sort of a "fear mentality," and while I think it is certainly a justified fear, I just don't think that I can let that sort of thing dictate my vote when the issues I AM certain about point me very clearly at Obama.