Judaism discovered

The Rabbinic Hatred of Women

The New York Times exposes Iran's "fashion police" in the photo and caption below.

In Iran, Tactics of Fashion Police Raise Concerns

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"In an encounter last month on a street in Tehran, two policewomen with tightly fitting head scarves chastised a younger woman whose hair showed. Since 1979, Iranian law has specified that women and men dress in a manner befitting Islam and the law is interpreted very strictly at times."

-New York Times, May 4, 2007

...but the Times "forgot" to tell its readers that the Iranian attitude is exactly the rabbinic attitude, head coverings are required and "It is forbidden to gaze at the small amount of hair that sometimes protrudes from under the headpieces of many women." ⁸³¹

"Wig ban has Israeli women donning hats. Jerusalem — It may only be about hair, but a rabbi's ruling that wigs imported from India are 'unkosher' has caused a ruckus in some of Israel's religious communities. Having burned

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or stashed their wigs, thousands of ultra-Orthodox women are now covering up with hats and scarves, a decidedly less popular or fashionable alternative for meeting their religion's strict hair-covering requirements. 'I talked to older people, and they say they don't remember such a tremendous thing (ever) happening," said Avi Rosen, editor of a chain of Orthodox newspapers. The controversy began last month when Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, a top authority on Jewish religious law, banned the use of wigs from India, saying the hair in them may have been used in Hindu ceremonies involving idol worship. More than 70 percent of the hair in wigs sold in Israel comes from India, according to some estimates. Elyashiv is considered a sage among the 'mitnagdim,' a particularly strict branch of Orthodoxy with tens of thousands of followers, and his ruling sowed consternation in the tight-knit community. Unsure of the origins of their wigs, many women shoved them into their closets. Others burned their hair pieces in a bonfire in an Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem as men and women danced around the flames. Sima Eiron, a kindergarten assistant, was forced to shun her wig during her wedding week. 'It was horrible,' she said. 'I was wearing elegant clothing and I had to wear a hat.'

"Under Orthodox Jewish law, married women must cover their hair because it is considered provocative to men. Though some women routinely wear hats or scarves, many cut their hair short or shave it and cover their heads with fancy wigs, some costing thousands of dollars. The wig tradition began in the late 19th century, when the most privileged women began showing off their wealth by wearing wigs in contrast to cheaper coverings worn by other women, said Menachem Friedman, a sociology professor at Israel's Bar Ilan University. By the 1950s, when families grew wealthier, wigs with imported hair from developing countries grew cheaper and all married women began wearing them, setting off debate among religious leaders, Friedman said.

"Most of the rabbis are very embarrassed by the phenomenon of the wigs,' he said. "You should cover your hair because it provokes men, but you're doing it by covering your hair with more beautiful hair....' In one day everyone took off their wigs because they didn't know where they came from,' said one woman, who would give only her first name, Lea. She spoke to a reporter while being fitted for a new wig of synthetic and European hair at a Jerusalem wig salon. 'The scarf is tight and hot on my head, uncomfortable,'

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she said. Wigs of European hair can cost as much as $3,000 in Israel, while wigs from India are a little over $130. The ruling by Elyashiv caused wig discarding in Orthodox Jewish communities around the globe...In Israel, some wig stores have closed after seeing sales evaporate...Eiron, the kindergarten teacher, still has her wig, but she keeps it hidden away. T don't take the wig out of the closet because I am sad when I look at it." ⁸³²

Judaic female journalist Tova Mirvis compares the Iranians with the rabbinic world: "Her (Wendy Shalit's) notion of fiction brings to mind the world described in Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: 'We lived in a culture that denied any merit to literary works, considering them important only when they were handmaidens to something seemingly more urgent namely, ideology.' The Orthodox (rabbinic) world might not be Tehran but it does not enjoy an uncomplicated relationship to artistic expression and open exploration; when I read Reading Lolita in Tehran, it made me wonder about the experience of reading Lolita in Boro Park" (a New York neighborhood with a large Talmudic population). ⁸³³

The Muslims are made to look hopelessly barbaric for upholding the same standards which the Orthodox rabbis enforce, and about which the Zionist New York Times either has nothing to say or is actively engaged in abetting. Islamic women are viciously oppressed, but Orthodox Talmudic women are liberated! (just ask the Times):

"A State-of-the-Sect Message By Elsa Brenner...Rabbi (Velvl) Butman, for his part, denied the existence of the schism, describing such reports as media hype. His father, Rabbi Shmuel Butman, the longtime director of a Lubavitch group in Brooklyn, has held publicly that Rabbi Schneerson is the messiah. But he would not comment on his father, saying only: "As representatives of the rebbe our job is to make the world a better place and usher in the time of the messiah.'

"...Mrs. Butman, on the other hand, is not easily singled out in a crowd as Hasidic. Although she observes the code of modesty that forbids a married woman to display her hair in public, her sheitel, or wig, is made of human hair and she wears it in a shoulder-length, layered modern style, sometimes even pulled back in a ponytail. (The Butmans were not among those Hasidim

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who last year burned wigs of Indian origin, which some condemned as having emerged from idolatrous practices.) And while Mrs. Butman's skirts always fall below her knees, they are stylishly cut. Her jackets and blouse sleeves end no higher than the elbow, and her collarbone is never displayed publicly, in accordance with Jewish law. 'But just because I dress modestly doesn't mean I have to look dowdy,' she said. 'Like most women, I love fashion, and my husband likes it very much when I look nice.' Does a Lubavitcher woman assume a secondary role in the family? Must she sit in the back seat of a car when her husband is driving, as some people believe? Does she walk behind her husband on the street? And is she by Jewish law tied down by a large brood of children?

"Nonsense!' Mrs. Butman said in response to such questions. 'We're not subservient, and we often hold down important jobs. In fact, we were liberated long before the Women's Movement even began.' Most often, the criticism of Hasidic women comes from other Jewish women, who fear that their sisters' lives and best interests are eclipsed by those of men. In particular, some less observant Jewish women who were asked to share their impressions of Hasidic families questioned why Lubavitch women have so many children. 'Children are a blessing,' Mrs. Butman asserted. But she said family planning was allowed, if for example more children would physically or emotionally harm the woman. Nowhere can the woman's role in a Lubavitch family be seen more clearly than in the hours before sunset on a Friday....And lest the woman's efforts as the key player in bringing the family together for the Sabbath be overlooked, a passage from Proverbs is read among the men every Friday night extolling her virtues. The woman, according to Rabbi Butman's interpretation of Jewish law, 'is front and center of every aspect of our lives.'

"For us, marriage is partnership,' he said. "We're running a business together, and anyone who thinks that the woman in a Lubavitcher household is relegated to cleaning the house and caring for the children is wrong. I take the kids to school in the morning, diaper the baby, help clean the house and often do the shopping. Men are very involved with raising a family. Chauvinism in a Jewish family is a myth," he concluded. ⁸³⁴

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There is no ideology or religion that can compare with Judaism for oppressing women, unless it would be some tribe of Neanderthals, off in a cavern somewhere. What is risible is that the New York Times and the other east coast media mafia, when reporting on the most oppressive of all the rabbinic factions in this regard (Hasidim, in this instance the politically well-connected Chabad-Lubavitchers), paint the lives of degraded Hasidic women in glowing colors of fulfillment and serenity, even as they grimly report on oppressed Muslim women who rebel against Islamic fundamentalism.

In the eyes of the Establishment media there are no such rebel Judaic women, just a vast cross-section of profoundly fulfilled Talmudic wives, mothers and school girls. An example of this type of outlandish whitewash, is Elsa Brenner's preceding "A State-of-the-Sect Message." Mrs. Butman, the focus of the piece, should tell her story to Evelyn Kaye, author of the landmark (and now out of print) expose of rabbinic misogyny, The Hole in the Sheet. Kaye's book is hard to find, but Amos Gitai's important 1999 film, "Kadosh" is still available on DVD, with its factual portrayal of the harrowing fate of women in Orthodox Judaism (this film is rated R and is not for viewing by children or adolescents).

Talmudic husbands may treat their wives like "meat from the butcher shop" The Talmud permits the Judaic husband to sodomize his wife to his heart's content, since Chazal (the Talmudic "sages") decree that she is not entirely a human being, but rather a piece of meat from a butcher-shop. Anal sex and other practices are permissible to the Judaic husband because in his relations with his wife, he is dealing not with a woman but meat, the designation feminists rightly decry, and here is a religion that formally prescribes it. In considering which sexual practices are fitting for the husband and wife, the Talmud states, concerning intimate relations with the Judaic wife: "Meat which comes from the butcher may be eaten salted, roasted, cooked or boiled; so with fish from the fishmonger." (BT Nedarim 20). In Orthodox Judaism the sexes are heavily segregated and men mostly congregate with men. Women are segregated in the synagogue in the ezrat nashim section, and on mehadrin transportation, they have to sit in the back of the vehicle like Negro ladies in the old, segregated South, as the following news report attests: "Woman Beaten in Jerusalem Bus for Refusing to Move to Rear Seat. By Daphna Berman. A woman who reported a vicious attack by

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an ad-hoc 'modesty patrol' on a Jerusalem bus last month is now lining up support for her case and may be included in a petition to the High Court of Justice over the legality of sex-segregated buses. Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi/Hasidic) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend her attackers.

"In her first interview since the incident, Shear says that on the bus three weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women. The bus driver, in response to a media inquiry, denied that violence was used against her, but Shear's account has been substantiated by an unrelated eyewitness on the bus who confirmed that she sustained an unprovoked 'severe beating.' Shear, an American-Israeli woman who currently lives in Canada, says that on a recent five-week vacation to Israel, she rode the bus daily to the Old City to pray at sunrise. Though not defined by Egged as a sex-segregated mehadrin bus, women usually sit in the back, while men sit in the front, as a matter of custom. 'Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not/ she recalled this week in a telephone interview. 'I was always polite and said 'No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.'

"But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on the morning of the 24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat — even though there were a number of other seats available in the front of the bus. 1 said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.' Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me. My snood (hair covering) came off. I was fighting back and kicked one of the men in his privates. I will never forget the look on his face.'

"Shear says that when she bent down in the aisle to retrieve her hair covering, 'one of the men kicked me in the face. Thank God he missed my eye. I got up and punched him. I said, 'I want my hair covering back' but he

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wouldn't give it to me, so I took his black hat and threw it in the aisle.' Throughout the encounter, Shear says the bus driver 'did nothing.' The other passengers, she says, blamed her for not moving to the back of the bus and called her a 'stupid American with no seeheV (common sense.) People blamed me for not knowing my place and not going to the back of the bus where I belong.'

"According to Yehoshua Meyer, the eyewitness to the incident, Shear's account is entirely accurate. T saw everything,' he said. 'Someone got on the bus and demanded that she go to the back, but she didn't agree. She was badly beaten and her whole body sustained hits and kicks. She tried to fight back and no one would help her. I tried to help, but someone was stopping me from getting up. My phone's battery was dead, so I couldn't call the police. I yelled for the bus driver to stop. He stopped once, but he didn't do anything. When we finally got to the Kotel (wailing wall), she was beaten badly and I helped her go to the police.'

"Shear says that when she first started riding the No. 2 line, she did not even know that it was sometimes sex-segregated. She also says that sitting in the front is simply more comfortable. 'I'm a 50-year-old woman and I don't like to sit in the back. I'm dressed appropriately and I was on a public bus. It is very dangerous for a group of people to take control over a public entity and enforce their will without going through due process,' she said. 'Even if they (Hasidics who want a segregated bus) are a majority...they have options available. They can petition Egged or hire their own private line. But as long as it's a public bus, I don't care if there are 500 people telling me where to sit. I can sit wherever I want and so can anyone else.' Meyer says that throughout the incident, the other passengers blamed Shear for not sitting in the back. 'They'll probably claim that she attacked them first, but that's totally untrue. She was abused terribly, and I've never seen anything like it.'

"...Although the No. 2 Jerusalem bus where the incident occurred is not actually defined as a mehadrin line, Erez-Likhovski says that Shear's story is further proof that the issue requires legal clarification. About 30 Egged buses are designated as mehadrin, mostly on inter-city lines, but they are not marked to indicate this. 'There's no way to identify a mehadrin bus, which in itself is a problem/ she said. 'Theoretically, a person can sit wherever they want, even on a mehadrin line, but we're seeing that people are enforcing (the gender segregation) even on non-mehadrin lines and that's the part of

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the danger,' she said. On a mehadrin bus, women enter and exit through the rear door, and the seats from the rear door back are generally considered the 'women's section.' A child is usually sent forward to pay the driver. In a response from Egged, the bus driver denied that Shear was physically attacked in any way. In a thorough inquiry that we conducted, we found that the bus driver does not confirm that any violence was used against the complainant,' Egged spokesman Ron Ratner wrote.

"According to the driver, once he saw that there was a crowd gathering around her, he stopped the bus and went to check what was going on. He clarified to the passengers that the bus was not a mehadrin line and that all passengers on the line are permitted to sit wherever they want on the bus. After making sure that the passengers returned to their seats, he continued driving.' The Egged response also noted that their drivers 'are not able and are not authorized to supervise the behavior of the passengers in all situations.' Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Avner Ovadia said in response that the mehadrin lines are 'the result of agreements reached between Egged and Haredi (Hasidic) bodies' and are therefore unconnected to the ministry. A spokesperson for the Jerusalem police said the case is still under investigation," ⁸³⁵

The preceding news article reported mainly by the Israeli press, shows the level of filthy spitting, sadistic violence and expert lying that is routine among the Talmudists. If the reader imagines that the misogyny of Orthodox Judaic males is limited only to buses, note the ominous statement of Miss Shear, "No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back." The request in the Jim Crow South for black people to "move to the back of the bus," made Rosa Parks a lay saint among the American Establishment. Will Miriam Shear become just as much of a famous icon in the fight against segregation? A search of the New York Times' archive on April 30, 2008, showed not a single report or editorial ever having mentioned Miriam Shear, but we did find dozens of articles in the Times' archives about the plight of "oppressed Islamic women." Shear is a second-class citizen in the religion of Orthodox Judaism and even though the US media do everything they can to constantly remind Americans of tyrannical Islamic "modesty patrols" and

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"the low status of Muslim women," the abysmally low status of Orthodox Judaic women is not something they are keen to report.

(Reuters) Jan 15, 2008: "Jerusalem —Every time Israeli student Iris Yoffe takes the bus to Jerusalem, she has to be ready for abuse from ultra-Orthodox Jews who say she should be kept off because she's wearing trousers. Assuming she makes it onto the bus at all — on several occasions groups of Orthodox men have tried to block the door — Yoffe, 24, heads for the 'women's section' at the back of the bus, keeps her head down and tries to ignore the insults. 'I end up feeling helpless and humiliated, like an outsider,' said Yoffe, whose public bus from her home in northern Israel to Jerusalem has separate male and female seating..." ⁸³⁶

A rabbinic court in Tel Aviv issued a decree ordering men and women to walk on separate sides of the road. Signs are posted on the main street in Bnei Brak stipulating that all males have to walk on the west side and all women on the east side. The religious court which issued the edict said that the ruling had been made "so that the restrictions of modesty and holiness can be properly maintained on the street." ⁸³⁷

The "Chained" Women Judaic Wives Oppressed by Misogynist Rabbinic Divorce Laws The agunot, (literally "chained") women are wives who have been abandoned by their husbands. They cannot remarry without their former spouse's permission. Until the me'aggen (obstinate husband) gives her (the agunah), the "get" (bill of divorce), her marriage to him remains in force, while she is left chained in a legal limbo, unable to remarry.⁸³⁸ It is not uncommon for Orthodox Judaic husbands to only grant the "get" after they

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have extorted from the erstwhile wife's family, a large sum of money. This horror is partly documented in Anat Tsuria's film, "Mekudeshet." ⁸³⁹

The dayyanim (judges of the beit din i.e. rabbinic court) have powerful sanctions available for use against the stubborn or extortionist husband: herem (a curse specific to excommunication) and niddui (shunning). But the entrenched bias against women in Orthodox Judaism has resulted in a different outcome: "Though thousands of agunot worldwide have turned to the batei din⁸⁴⁰ for relief, very few orders for a herem or niddui of a recalcitrant husband have ever been issued. Thus, if a me'aggen wishes to remain in the community and even belong to the local synagogue, he can do so. While virtually imprisoning his wife, he is allowed to simultaneously continue to conduct his affairs in a normal fashion." ⁸⁴¹

"According to halakha (traditional Jewish law) and contemporary Israeli law, a Jewish woman must receive a religious bill of divorce (a get) in order to remarry. In the absence of a get, any child of a future relationship will be a mamzer — loosely translated as 'bastard' — and will be stigmatized under Jewish law...Israeli citizens do not have the luxury of considering the issue of agunot a 'religious' or 'arcane' problem. All Israelis are required to marry and divorce within a religious (Talmudic) framework, so that even the most secular Jew is affected....Unfortunately, despite the hard work of various organizations, there has not been a marked improvement in the status of agunot."*⁴²

Rabbinic courts typically favor the father over the mother in all matters, not just divorce. One example among many involves a mother and two children: "Mother fears for kids' safety if deported to Israel: Montreal — An Israeli woman with two children is fighting deportation from Canada, claiming that she fears returning to Israel because a rabbinical court there has granted custody of the children to their abusive father. Last week, one day before she was to be removed from the country, Renata Makias won a temporary stay from a Federal Court judge pending a judicial review of her

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case. Judge Sean Harrington wrote that Mrs. Makias and the children 'face imminent peril on their return' to Israel because the rabbinical order makes clear the children must be handed over to their father, Yossef Makias, immediately....Mrs. Makias' lawyer...said the stay gives his client about a six-month reprieve....The children, daughter Shany, 13, and son Or, 12, are in hiding, and she is refusing to divulge their whereabouts. The immigration department has warned that she will be deported without them if she loses her appeal for permanent resident status...Mrs. Makias pleaded to be allowed to remain in Canada on humanitarian grounds... Mr. Makias has been living in Israel since 2005... The rabbinical court decision is at odds with a Quebec Superior Court judgment granting Mrs. Makias custody of the children and apparently does not take into account the fact that Mr. Makias was charged in British Columbia with uttering threats of death and violence against his family and with breaching a restraining order.

"...Mr. Makias was charged with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm to his wife, but he was released on conditions that included a restraining order that forbade him from having any contact with his wife or their children. He did not respect those conditions and was convicted of breach of the order...(Judge) Harrington seemed to show compassion for her. 'The (Citizenship and Immigration) Minister complains that she is a scofflaw because she will not reveal the whereabouts of her children. If she does, they shall be put into the custody of a man who has threatened-to kill them. She has even gone to jail. What mother would not do the same?'...Harrington wrote that he finds it 'disturbing' that, despite Yossefs record and the decisions of Canadian courts, that the Regional Rabbinical Court of Tel Aviv has ordered that the children be handed over to him 'immediately and with no further delay,' quoting the rabbinical court....the couple's son, testified that he was afraid to go back to Israel because his father beat him and his sister frequently and 'always used to threaten to kill' them. 'He would run after me with a hammer in his hands to hit me with it.' The boy also stated that his father 'almost killed my mom once by throwing a very heavy cup of glass and he would throw stuff at her like cellphones and plates..." ⁸⁴³

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"Woe to the women and our lot! Not only do they degrade us, but they treat us worse than animals.' She said to him, "You're surprised about this? You don't believe what I'm saying?"

— Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein's aunt

Anti-female tyranny reigns among educated Judaic people living in a twenty-first century western technological culture, as compared with Pathan tribesmen in Afghanistan barely out of the Neolithic era. But the rabbinic oppression of women is largely unknown, whereas the media have made Afghans synonymous with it to such an extent that they are gleefully killed for their failings in this regard, as a U.S. Marine commander has admitted: "At a panel discussion in San Diego, Tuesday (Feb. 1, 2005), a top Marine general tells an audience that, among other things, it is 'fun to shoot some people.' The comment (was) made by Lt. Gen. James Mattis... Tou go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,' Mattis continued. Tou know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.' About 200 people gathered for the discussion, held at the San Diego Convention

Center...many (U.S.) military members laughed at the comments General

Mattis is now the commanding officer of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va., which is responsible for developing Marine war-fighting doctrine, techniques and tactics..." ⁸⁴⁴

"Hasidic Village Keeps Women Out of the Driver's Seat: Even as the White House presses Saudi Arabia to permit women to drive, an ultra-Orthodox community in New York has launched a campaign to reassert its ban on female motorists. During her trip last month to Saudi Arabia, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes delivered a speech in which she stressed the Bush administration's determination to see Saudi women obtain more rights — including the right to drive. Meanwhile, in the Hasidic village of New Square, N.Y., religious leaders recently issued a document reminding residents that 'women should not sit in the front of a car.' Released in July (2005) by the community's top rabbinical court, the document was aimed at

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shoring up several communal standards — especially those regarding women's conduct. 'It's considered not tzniusdik (modest) for a woman to be a driver, not in keeping with the out-of-public-view (attitude), village spokesman Rabbi Mayer Schiller said.⁸⁴⁵

"...New Square, a 7,000-person enclave located 40 miles north of New York City, was founded by the late Skverer rebbe Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Twersky, a Holocaust survivor, and his followers. The village was established in 1954 and officially incorporated seven years later. It relies heavily on private charitable donations and on government-assistance programs. In the recent document, New Square religious leaders reiterated the prohibition against girls riding bicycles...The rules 'are nothing new,' Schiller said...The recent document in New Square addressed a wide range of prohibitions. One rule...states that exercise groups can be formed only with the permission of a rabbinical court and that they require a mashgiach (religious inspector) to oversee them... Some of the regulations are targeted at men, including a clause instructing male worshippers to keep their cell phones off and to refrain from talking during prayer times. But it is the rules pertaining to women — in particular, those related to driving — that bear a striking resemblance to the Saudi practices criticized by the Bush administration. In some ways, Saudi Arabia's laws regarding women are more permissive than the religious edicts in New Square. For example, a Saudi woman is allowed to ride in the front seat of a car if the driver is her husband. While husbands and wives in Saudi Arabia are allowed to walk with each other, New Square men and women always must walk on different sides of the street....While the rules are meant to apply to residents, clearly they're not part of the criteria for endorsing candidates for elective office. New Square's top rabbis endorsed Hillary Clinton in her successful run for the senate in 2000, and delivered all but a few votes for the former first lady. Clinton spokeswoman Nina Blackwell did not return repeated requests for comment..." ⁸⁴⁶

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