On February 12, 2009, Jonathan Kay, the Editorial Page Editor, published the eye-witness account of Jonathan Blake Karoly in the National Post. Karoly describes the clever verbal tactics used by the mobsters to try and rush the already overcrowded room. "Let the colored people in," "Maybe if my friends bleach their skin they’ll be let inside," "Zionism is Racism." Karoly notes that as he took pictures of the melee, the Middle Eastern student who had yelled many of the racial slurs, saw that Karoly was also wearing a kippah and threatened to "take his camera and smash it." He threatened no other student, only the Jew. According to Karoly, after the press conference was over, the mob outside the student press conference came and stood outside the Hillel office on another floor. They chanted, banged, yelled, and menaced and would not leave. When the Toronto police finally came, "one pro-Palestinian student (pulled his) Kaffeiyah scarf all the way up to his eyes." And, as the police led the twenty Jewish students out, single file "through this unruly mob, they were pointing, laughing and chanting that we were ‘racists on campus.’" None of this is new. In addition to an alarming number of anti-Semitic incidents which took place in Canada during the first intifada, the suffocated intellectual atmosphere on many campuses was also noted. On December 17, 2002, one hundred well-known Canadians signed an ad in the Globe and Mail that read "[a]n increasing number of students in universities and colleges say that they fear reprisals if they challenge prevailing pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli views. If they argue that Israel has the right to exist, they are often greeted with threats, even physical assault." And then, on September 9, 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak at Concordia University in Montreal. One thousand Palestinians and their supporters gathered to scream vitriolic hate. They also taunted, spat at, and physically and verbally harassed all those who had come to hear Netanyahu speak. The police cancelled the event but they did not intervene as individuals were attacked. I personally knew some of the people who were attacked at Concordia. They included Concordia professors who were badly beaten and highly traumatized. As usual, the ADL’s Abe Foxman is dead wrong.  In an ADL press release, Foxman links a "pandemic" of anti-Semitism to Israel’s military action in Gaza to defend its citizens from non-stop, relentless rocket attacks.  He writes, that no one imagined that the war in Gaza would "so explode in an epidemic, a pandemic of anti-Semitism." The press release goes on to say that the global fallout from the Gaza crisis (is) the biggest threat to the safety and well-being of Diaspora Jewry in decades. "This is the worst, the most intense, the most global that it’s been in most of our memories." Where has he and the ADL been for the last eight years? Flying to conferences with Saudi princes and assuring their Jewish funders that they had it all under control? Or does the ADL expect Israel alone to bear the relentless burden of Jew-hatred, but never Diaspora Jewry who are meant to live safe lives? Foxman’s 2003 book on the subject also missed the boat. He viewed the danger of anti-Semitism as coming to us mainly from the Christian right-wing. He totally underplayed the danger which is facing Jews, Israel, the West, and America and which is coming our way courtesy of Islamists, Muslims, jihadists and their left-wing supporters in the West. I no longer can speak on campuses without armed security. This is true even when I am not speaking about Israel or anti-Semitism. (Perhaps my reputation precedes me.) But, just as the student press conference at York: These days, on campus, whatever the subject is, it is always about "Palestine." And, those who support "Palestine" behave like brownshirts–or worse.

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Theirs is a new, "pick-and-mix feminism," which allows women to be both "feminist and glamorous," and to avoid all guilt about their "obsession with youth, thinness, and celebrity." 

I wish the younger sisters well. Like them, I was once also boy-crazy, girl-crazy, crazy for torch songs, jazz, and opera even more; like them, I wore lipstick, (still do), as did so many others of my feminist generation. I wore high heels when I was younger and, like Germaine Greer, (who is being told to "stand down" or "step aside" in the article), I’ve also been known to strike the occasionally glamorous pose. 

But such details are minor. How we look when we free the prisoner or feed the hungry does not matter that much.  

In my time, it might have been slightly revolutionary to refuse to wear bras, girdles, lipstick, and high heels–but today, does wearing (or not wearing) lipstick a feminist make?  What do such narcissistic, personal body-concerns have to do with the fate of women or of the world today?   

I wonder whether these no-doubt well-meaning younger sisters actually live in the same world I do.

Indulge me for a moment. 

On December 18, 2008, in Kirkuk, gunmen broke into the home of Kurdish women’s rights activist Nahla Hussain. They shot her and then they beheaded her. 

For a long time, Iraqi women have been beheaded  for refusing to veil themselves.  This   is true in 2008 and it was true under Saddam Hussein.   

Since Khomeini came to power, Iranian women  have been veiled against their will, then imprisoned, tortured,   and publicly hung  for daring to allege rape or for having joined peaceful marches for  womens’ and human rights.

Atrocities against girls and women in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Darfur are well known, and I will not go into  these examples of Muslim-on-Muslim violence. But    permit me one story that illustrates  how Islamic gender apartheid  has  increasingly been  penetrating the West. It concerns something that happened this year to a woman physician in Great Britain.

Thirty two year-old Dr. Humayra Abedin ‘s own family drugged, bound, and gagged her, then forced her into a marriage in Bangladesh. Amazingly, the British police rescued her, (she was held captive for nearly five months), a Bangladeshi court freed her, and, on December 19, 2008, a British judge issued an order telling her parents not "to pester, harass or intimidate" her.

Given that things like this happen every single day all over Europe–not to mention what happens in the Islamic world–I cannot understand how younger feminists do not factor this into their definition of feminism.  

I understand: such terrifying realities can be overwhelming, one also wants to escape from this if one can, one wants far more than a room of one’s own, one wants a life of one’s own, joy, some happiness, love, pleasure, foolishness. We lucky few…

Well, are we our sister’s keepers or not? Are we only concerned with how we look and feel, let the wide world be damned? Isn’t a better balance of selfishness and selflessness  possible?

I admit it: I’m embarrassed by younger women who define themselves as feminists but who are completely concerned with their own bodies, beauty, financial security and prosperity, their right to lesbian, transgender, and bi-sexual pleasure, and with an obsessive focus on abortion, which I support, and on gay marriage, which I certainly don’t oppose but c’mon: they are stoning women to death in Muslim countries, face-veiling them against their will, trafficking children and women into brothels all over the world.  Are we lucky few going to spend our time on earth gazing at our own navels until the knaves come for us too? 

On December 10, 2008 an historic bill was passed unanimously in the United States Congress. It is called the William Wilberforce Trafficking in Persons Act, named in honor of the 18th-19th century British parliamentarian who spent 18 years lobbying for a bill against slavery. He finally succeeded. The left-right American coalition behind this bill spent 10 years working for it.  It concerns not only sexual slavery and trafficking, but also domestic slavery and, believe it or not, the rights of children not to be kidnapped to serve as child soldiers all around the world.

Will younger feminists in the West work on such legislation in their lifetime? I don’t care who they sleep with, (as long as the other person or persons are not underage), what they wear, or how they look. I care about the work they will do. The books, poems, equations, and symphonies they will write, the acts of generosity  they will perform. Will they ultimately be isolationists or will they take up womens’  (and human) rights as a universal cause? Will they stand with  Muslim and ex-Muslim feminists and dissidents and against fundamentalist terrorists? Will they argue for the rights of African women not to be raped by their husbands who are increasingly infecting  them with AIDS? Will they challenge arranged child marriages, polygamy, forced face veiling, and in short,  deal with the other features of gender Apartheid? 

Most Western feminists have refrained from  "judging" barbarous misogyny lest they be accused of "racism." Well, how about sexism? Are we willing to abandon the most vulnerable children and women on earth in order to retain our politically correct credentials–as so many Second Wave feminists have done? 

Phoebe Frangoul, the editor of Pamflet, declares that it is time for Germaine Greer (and I suppose the rest of us) to "step aside. We’re grateful for what you did but it’s time for you to hand over."

Not to worry, Phoebe, time takes care of that very well. So many Second Wave feminists have died or are ill and no longer able to "carry on." So, it’s important that someone mind the store. 

The post The Selfishness of “Pick-and-Mix” Feminism appeared first on Jewcy.

Re: "Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Crossing Borders" (December 20th): "On the surface, Diana B. Henriques describes what appears to be the  largest Ponzi scheme in history. Here’s my problem: While we learn that con artist Bernard L. Madoff and his ‘feeder,’ Ezra Merkin are Jewish and that many of their victims (Katzenberg, Spielberg, Weisel, Zuckerman), are also Jewish, we are never told the religious affiliations of any of Madoff’s other "feeders" (Walter M. Noel, Andre Piedrahita, Yanko Della Schiava, Phillip J. Toub, Jeffrey Tucker, Matthew Brown,) or the religious affiliation of additional Madoff victims. For example, Heriques does not tell us the religious affiliations of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Banco Santander, A.G. Edwards and Sons, Korea Life Insurance, Cathay Life, Samsung Investment and Securities, Bank Medici, (headed by Peter Scheithauer), etc. What is the point of identifying the Jews but no one else?"

Maybe they’ll publish it, maybe they’ll even have a change of heart. (Sometimes I have moments of delusion). Look: It still might see the light of day over there. But, the day after I sent this letter, I saw that David Harris of the American Jewish Committee had just published a letter along the same lines in their pages. Harris’s letter was pegged to an article which had appeared on December 13, 2008.  This means that the Times had more than a week to re-examine or change their policy. Clearly, they decided not to do so.    People often wonder: What did they know and when did they know it –referring to political corruption scandals or to the cover-ups of monumental disasters like genocide? We now know that the Times knows precisely what they are doing. Just as Bernie Madoff did. Yes, of course, Madoff’s betrayal is unforgivable. He has gutted an entire generation of Jewish philanthropic wealth, destroyed trust within the Jewish philanthropic world but, far more important, impoverished widows, orphans, and the elderly and, in so doing, endangered and shamed the Jewish people at a time when we have many real, not merely neurotically imagined enemies. The fact that Arab and African oil sheikhs and countless tyrants on every continent impoverish and destroy their own people, their neighbors, and their enemies every single day is irrelevant. The world does not hold non-Jews accountable for the harm that they do. Only Jews are expected to meet their own high Jewish standards (for which they are hated and envied). But woe to the Jew who flagrantly betrays those standards and woe to the Jewish nation that has spawned him. In the Middle East, graft and nepotism make the wheels turn. Everyone is on the take. Beggars aren’t beggars, entire civil services are staffed by one or two clans. I could tell you a thing or two about corruption in southern Asia today, let’s say in Afghanistan, that would make Heller’s Catch-22 seem like child’s play. Everyone, from the President on down is on the take and opium is a most abundant and attractive cash crop. The Afghan drug lords are addicting, infecting, and murdering entire global populations with their poppies as are those who buy and sell the heroin. No one holds the Afghans accountable. But woe to the Jewish nation that has harbored, abetted, profited from, or has even been fleeced by Madoff, the greedmaster. Read Isaiah, it’s all in there.

The post Madoff the Jew: The Media’s Hypocritical Obsession With the Fraudster’s Faith appeared first on Jewcy.

Good Shabbos everyone.

I want to focus on five words in this parasha: "Vayomru: Hakizonah yaaseh et ahotaynu?"  (Bereshit 34:31). This is what Shimon and Levi tell their distraught and disapproving father Ya’akov after they have rescued Dina by destroying the city of Shechem–the guilty and the innocent alike–all because its prince has kidnapped and raped their sister Dina. I translate their brief but fiery words this way: Shall we stand idly by while our sister is treated like a prostitute?

It is a question that stands for all time. The question is still here, it awaits an answer from each generation. Shall we stand idly by as women are raped– even as we judge Shimon and Levi harshly for engaging in "overkill"? Do we stand idly by as women are forced into prostitution by dire poverty and abuse, or, like Dina, are kidnapped, forced into marriages against their will, trafficked to foreign countries and chained to brothel walls?

Am I my sisters’ keeper? "Hashomer ahi/ahotee anochi?" In a sense, Shimon and Levi have answered God’s question in a way far different than Cain once did.

Rape remains epidemic in our world today. Here on the Upper East Side, in other neighborhoods, and on every continent. South Africa, liberated from apartheid, has the world’s highest rate of sexual violence towards women. In places like Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Congo, Darfur, and Rwanda, rape has become a weapon of war, not merely a spoil of war. I view the repeated public gang-raping of female children and women in these and other war zones as "gender cleansing." The international legal community has even decided that such rapes are "war crimes."

Still, we have not been able to do much to stop such rapes or to bring justice to the victims.     

Granted: Shimon and Levi did a terrible thing, a "Ya’aakovianly," tricky thing and yet, most amazingly, they did not kill their sister because she had dishonored her family, had gone out, presumably alone (from which the Sages derive that no Jew should go out alone in a potentially dangerous neighborhood)–and yet Dina did what her great-grandfather Avraham, her grandmother Rivka, and her own mother Leah did: she comes from a long line of "Tay-tzaers."   

Yes–and incredibly, Shimon and Levi did not kill the "defiled" Dina; they killed Dina’s rapist instead–and, for good measure, his entire male family!

As we know, even today, honor killings are rampant in the Middle East and South Asia, mainly among Muslims, and to a lesser extent, among Hindus and Sikhs. This odious custom has increasingly penetrated the West.  I’m about to publish an academic paper about it. But here, early on in the Torah, when polygamy, cousin marriage, child marriage, arranged marriage, concubinage, prostitution, and human slavery are taken for granted–this is a rather remarkable thing for Shimon and Levi to have done. Is it not? 

Women were once expected to marry their rapists. Dina’s brothers do not force her to marry Shechem. Once, women were advised to "keep quiet" about being raped. Shimon and Levi do not keep quiet about their sister’s rape; it is their stated reason for destroying Shechem. Although progress has been made, in our time, when women attempted to have their rapists prosecuted, they were often dis-believed and not treated humanely in the courtroom, where most victims were "raped" again, this time legally. Dina is neither challenged nor disbelieved.   

But Dina does remain silent, "hidden" from us. Indeed, according to Nachmanides, the Ramban, the brothers do not let Dina out again, they keep her hidden because she has been "defiled." "Hidden," just as the midrash tells us she was hidden by her father Ya’akov in order to prevent Esav from seeing her and wanting to wed her. Some say that Dina withheld is what led to Ya’akov’s troubles, beginning with Dina’s rape. But Leah, who arguably "belonged" to Esav, the older of her first cousins, wept her eyes out until they became "rakot," gentle, tender, wept in fear that she would have to marry Esav.

But why? Esav is by far a better son to his parents than Ya’akov ever was. Esav stays close to home and does what his parents want. Ya’akov leaves–true, he does what his mother Rivka privately tells him to do–but that means leaving home, lech lecha-ing, moving on, choosing public and religious duty over family responsibility. 

Does Dina’s brothers’ action, variously described as "overkill," "terrorist-like," "heartless," "dangerous," and "vengeful," make Dina whole? 

Ellen Frankel, in The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman’s Commentary on the Torah, presents Dina as a Talmudic commentator. "Rav" Dina notes that "[My brothers] recognized that honor stolen can never be recouped: Hamor’s proposed payment transformed rape into prostitution. The only compensation they [Shimon and Levi] would accept was vengeance. But neither act could compensate me for what I had lost."  

What would? As most feminist therapists know, a rape victim does not "heal" by "forgiving" her attacker. Forgiveness as a path to wholeness is a misguided notion in cases of rape, incest or battery. A rush to forgive often means that the victim is unable or unwilling to acknowledge exactly what has happened, or that she has been harmed by it.  Without such acknowledgement one cannot begin the arduous and painful work of healing. In any event, a private, psychological, individual, act of forgiveness does not constitute justice, nor can it prevent the forgiver or others from suffering a similar fate at the hands of the unjudged, unpunished rapist, his city, and his culture. 

Many survivors of rape and torture say that the most lasting harm resides not only in the atrocity itself, but also in how others either dealt with it or failed to do so. Survivors are haunted by those who heard the screams but turned their backs, blamed the victim, who preached against revenge, but envisioned no justice.  As Judy Herman has written: "It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering."

Please understand: The Torah and Talmud’s position on rape is complicated, contradictory and, from my point of view, quite misogynistic e.g. raping a married woman is a capital crime since she is another man’s "property;" but, the rape of a single, un-betrothed woman sentences her rapist to a lifetime of marriage to her unless she won’t have him. He must still pay her father a monetary fine.

Therefore, what Shimon and Levi did was extraordinary both for their time, and for the geographical region. It still is today. What can possibly explain what they did?  

They explain it this way: Rape is not done amongst us. "V’cayn lo ya-aseh." It is a sin, an abomination in Yisrael: "Kee nevalah B’Yisrael." 

Rashi tells us that the nations of the world feared "incest," or other "sexual crimes" as a result of the Flood. I totally agree. Quite simply, the brothers feared that God might destroy the world again because of male sexual violence. They destroyed Shechem in order to defend God’s honor and to protect humanity.

I do not agree with the many honorable feminists who believe that Dina’s brothers ruined it for her, that she really loved Shechem, that he’s a symbol of Palestinian or pagan purity. If Dina really loved Shechem, why would Shechem need to "talk to her heart," (v’yidabayer al lev hanaarah")? Shechem only did so after he "took" (va’yikach otah), slept with, (yishkav otah) and tormented or humbled (vaya-aneyhaa) her.  Only after all this did Shechem’s "soul cleave" to her (va’tidbak nafsho), and "he loved the young girl" (va’yeahav et hanara). 

Where else do we hear the phrase: "He talked to her heart?" 

In Shoftim, at a time when Israel has no king, we have another example of a man who is described with the exact same words. A concubine (pilegesh) has run away from her master/husband. Perhaps he has abused her. Maybe she just missed her father at home. In any event, this master/husband of the unnamed pilegesh also "yadabayer al lebah," he sweet talks her to leave her father’s home in Bethlehem, in the territory of Yehudah.  

As we know, her fate is an awful one. As they journey, night falls, and a man offers the couple hospitality for the night. A Sodom and Gomorrah-like male mob demands the man as their sexual sacrifice.  The master/husband does not sacrifice himself but rather gives his pelegesh over in Givha to be gang-raped to death. Obtaining justice in her case, does not involve the destruction of pagan Shechem; it involves the near destruction of the entire tribe of Binyamin. 

Just because a man says he lusts for or even "loves" a woman whom he takes by force does not mean that he really does so or that his "love-lust" will last or that the story will end well.

In Shmuel Bet, we read that Amnon desired his half sister Tamar. He asks her to sleep with him. Tamar echoes exactly what Shimon and Levi say: "This is not done in Yisrael, don’t commit this abomination." Kee lo ya-aseh kayn b’Yisrael, al ta-aseh et ha’navalah hazot." She tells him to go to their father King David and ask for her hand in marriage. Instead, like Shechem, Amnon humbled, tormented, and forced Tamar to sleep with him. "Viyaaneyha v’yishcav otah." Unlike Shechem, immediately thereafter Amnon’s lust turns to hate. This single act of rape, which is Tamar’s undoing, has dire consequences. Avshalom, Tamar’s brother, kills Amnon, David their father mourns, Avshalom foments a rebellion against King David and is himself eventually killed.

The sexual mistreatment of Tamar destroys her, King David’s family, and nearly leads to David’s downfall. 

Perhaps we might say: In all three instances, the mistreatment of a single woman led to a major catastrophe.

None of this is surprising. God strongly disapproves of rape. It is the reason that God decided to destroy the world with a flood. Remember the language. Just as Shechem took Dina (vayikach otah), in Bereshit 6:2, the sons of God "took (vayyikhu) any woman, any daughter of man, they so chose.( Bereshit 6:2).Widespread, indiscriminate rape. Almost immediately, God states: "My spirit will not dwell within or wrestle against myself with humanity forever because man is only flesh and blood: "Lo yadun ruhi b’adam liolam b’shagam hu basar." (Bereshit 6:3).

Lo yadun ruhi… Din, judgment, law, Dina’s very name reminds us that God finds rape repugnant.  Rape is not only a crime against humanity; it is also a crime against God. Perhaps this is the reason that God ensures that none of the other pagan cities or tribes rise up against Ya’akov. They suffer no repercussions for their destruction of Shechem. "And they journeyed and a terror/fear of God was upon the cities that surrounded them and they did not pursue the sons of Ya’akov." Va-yisahoo v’yihee hetat elohim al ha’arim asher svevotahem v’lo radfu aharei bnai Ya’akov."

Thus, we learn that rape is forbidden. From this we may also conclude that we are obligated to rescue, comfort and obtain justice for a rape victim. Troublingly, Ya’akov, who suffers the loss of Yoseph and the potential loss of Binyamin, is not seen weeping for or even talking to Dina. She remains "hidden," her father remains "silent." Surely, we are obliged to bring up our sons so that they do not become rapists or bystanders, nor should our daughters ever blame or shun a rape victim.   

In Dina’s story, her brothers do not blame her. They rescue her.  May God grant each and every one of us the power to do likewise.  

Good Shabbos.

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For years, I did not know why Rivka, with whom I would go on to co-author a book about this struggle, Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism’s Holy Site, had picked me. There were so many scholars and rabbis amongst us. Only recently, Rivka told me that she chose me because I had "an otherworldly look on my face" while I was praying. We left Israel, high as kites. The Jerusalem-based women, initially led by Bonna Haberman, Miriam Benson, Shulamit Magnus and Anat Hoffman, a.k.a. the Women of the Wall (WOW). continued to pray. They were mainly "nice Jewish girls." With one exception, the group was not involved with politics of any kind. Nevertheless, beginning early in 1989, WOW was met with serious and continuous violence. Ultra-orthodox (haredi) men threw heavy metal chairs at them over the high barrier that separated men from women. One young girl was hit and had to be hospitalized. Canisters of tear gas were thrown into the womens’ section. Ultra-orthodox women, often following male orders, sometimes on their own, uttered terrible curses, and tried to silence the quietly praying women in every way possible. They shrieked, circled, raged, and made awful faces. They pushed and shoved a pregnant Bonna Haberman who was holding onto the Torah with all her might. At one point, the government of Israel actually hired women to physically remove the women– not for disturbing the peace but for praying. At first, we organized solidarity prayer services for the women under siege in America. We were on the phone to Jerusalem almost constantly. We founded a not-for-profit International Committee for the Women of the Wall (ICWOW). At the time, there was no law which prohibited what the women were doing. But the violence escalated and the women decided to go to the Israeli Supreme Court to demand protection for their peaceful, religiously lawful prayer services. The Court took the case but prohibited the women from praying at the Kotel with a Torah until the court rendered its decision. The women continued to pray at the Kotel but went to the Archeological Gardens, Hulda’s Gate, or to a site overlooking the Kotel plaza, for their Torah service. And so, we decided to raise the money, acquire a Torah, dedicate it in the streets of Jerusalem, donate it to the women of Jerusalem, and pray with it at the Kotel, according to our custom, as we had done the previous year and as many of us routinely do in our synagogues all across America. We were prevented from doing so–and were thus able to join WOW’s lawsuit in the Israeli Supreme Court. After much discussion and many disagreements, we petitioned the court for only eleven hours a year, on Rosh Chodesh, the new month, a holiday expressly given to Jewish women. (In the month of Tishrei, Rosh Chodesh is actually Rosh HaShanah). On other holidays, where non-Torah scrolls are read, (as on Purim or Shavuot), WOW continued to pray there, reading aloud from the megilla of Esther and Ruth. We understood that even a modest demand was revolutionary. The opposition saw us coming, they saw the future in us, and they knew that if they yielded even a little, that the future would instantly be upon them. In upholding tradition, they not only continued to uphold misogyny, they also sought to hold back and sully the inevitable tradition-honoring changes that Jewish women, (and men), living in a feminist era, were obligated to bring to our tradition. WOW has never stopped. WOW has prayed at the worst moments of this most recent, endless Intifada. According to Rivka Haut, "WOW has maintained a group presence that is welcoming to every Jewish woman, teaching bat mitzvah girls as well as elderly women who never heard women leading prayers and never saw women reading from a Torah scroll, that they can actively participate in prayer. The women have persevered despite the rocks thrown over the mehitsa at them by haredim, despite the rocks raining down upon the Kotel area from the mosque above." WOW became "legendary" and was written up everywhere–and uproariously misunderstood by almost everyone. Some reporters thought we wanted to pray on the men’s side of the mehitza or together with men. Others thought that we had "feminized" the prayer service and were counting ourselves as a minyan (Prayer quorum). None of this was true. It took us awhile to understand that people visited their own longings upon us; we were a "projective" test. Artists created tallesim (prayer shawls) and tambourines in our honor. We were included in feminist Passover Hagadot. Two films have already been made about this struggle. The most recent film, by Yael Katzir, a secular Tel Avivian and a professor of film, is a powerful, haunting, soulful, heartbreaking, and enraging film. It is called "Praying in her own Voice." You may both read about it and order it here and see clips of it here.

This film shows WOW’s inspiring and steadfast women, both at home and under siege. It is a searing film. It cries out to heaven for justice. It also shows WOW’s last visit to the Israeli Supreme Court; hope dashed; and it shows the archeological dig/prayer site the government has prepared for them. Katzir, whose film was recently showcased at the Israeli Film Festival, managed to catch on film a great deal of WOW’s hope and joy, as well as several particularly ugly instances in which ultra-orthodox women, led by one Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, may be seen cursing, surrounding, and creating a riot against WOW. Schmidt is seen on camera trying to steal their Torah away. (I have been told that Schmidt has begun to tell people that she had been "paid to be an actor in the film." This is a bald-faced lie.) Katzir’s film now includes opening comments from prominent American woman rabbis but it also includes deeper portraits of WOW’s core of long-timers: Danielle Bernstein, Batya Cohn-Kallus, Anat Hoffman, Rahel Jaskow, Haviva Ner-David, Peggy Sidor, and lawyer Frances Raday at their most heroic. How ironic! All over the world, including in Israel, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Jewish women are rabbis and lead their congregations, both male and female, in prayer. Orthodox women in Israel, the United States, Europe, and Australia, pray together in women’s prayer groups in which they chant from the Torah. More recently, orthodox women began to pray together with orthodox men in partnership minyanim (prayer quorums). This has included both women and men chanting from the Torah and receiving previously male-only honors. Only in Israel, and at the site most holy to Jews, at a site where soldiers are sworn in, and national celebrations are held–at that place, Jewish women were, (and still are), prohibited from praying aloud in a group with a Torah. Although I care deeply about Jewish womens’ religious rights in Israel and of course, about all womens’ right to both practice their religion–and to not be coerced into doing so–the struggle in Jerusalem is an intra-tribal matter and important in its own right. However, as the Intifada of 2000 continued to rage against Israel, as did the United Nations, Muslim terrorists, and Western academics everywhere, I did not have the heart to join the jackal chorus against the Jewish state. Rivka and I decided to dedicate our book to the state of Israel and to refrain from writing articles or giving interviews to the non-Jewish media on this subject. But such silence is not possible forever. Is Israel head and shoulders above Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia in terms of womens’ rights? Absolutely. But our struggle also proves that justice for Jewish women is quite imperfect in the only Western-style democracy in the Middle East. The Israeli Supreme Court would ultimately render three decisions. The first decision, in 1994, sent us to the Knesset where, I kid you not, the guys tried to banish our prayer group to rubble-strewn Arab areas of Jerusalem. We returned to court and, in 2000, rejoiced over a unanimous three judge decision in our favor. The state immediately appealed this decision. We then faced nine judges. In 2002, four judges were in our favor, four opposed us–and the fifth and decisive vote against us was cast by none other than the great liberal and humanitarian, Chief Justice Aharon Barak, a man who has been able to find justice for Palestinian Arabs, both Christians and Muslims but not for Jewish women. This 2002 decision ordered the government to build a prayer site for us at Robinson’s Arch which is mainly an archeological and tourist site. They have done so, at great cost. You may see it all in Katzir’s moving film. When I asked Rivka for her comments, here is what she said:

"Looking back 20 years after having organized the first halakhic women’s group prayer at the Kotel, complete with prayer leader singing aloud and Torah reading, I have mixed emotions. I was 20 years younger, my husband was alive and with me then, and I felt exhilarated and proud at having begun a great spiritual adventure. Since then, however, the brave and pious Israeli women who have doggedly continued, coming every month, despite the narrowness and hatred they experienced emanating from our own tribe, have endured much, and have not succeeded in the Israeli Court. They have been banished, exiled, to Robinson’s Arch, an archeological site they do not want and did not choose as a place of group prayer. What we all wanted to accomplish has not happened. We are still journeying towards our dream, towards women’s freedom to pray, halakhically, and read torah, at our holy site."

This struggle empowered me to study Torah something which gives me much joy. It taught me that one should not try to change tradition if you have no intention of practicing it and without re-interpreting it smartly, humbly, carefully. WOW symbolizes the extraordinary learning in which Jewish women have been engaged and, as important, prides itself on finding ways to include all Jewish women in its prayer service. WOW does not separate from women of any denomination and is willing to sacrifice in order to do this. From the outside, it may appear that our struggle has been legally defeated by ultra-orthodox fanatics. To some extent that is true–but we have also had orthodox supporters, both male and female, as well as orthodox detractors; feminist supporters as well as feminist detractors; Israeli supporters and Israelis who have such negative views of the Orthodox rabbinate that they will have nothing to do with religion–and they have viewed WOW negatively, as yet another religious group. Please remember that, as I’ve noted, it was a liberal, progressive, highly esteemed man, the President of the Israeli Supreme Court, who refused to grant justice to Jewish women in this era. To WOW: Happy 20th Anniversary! We only have 20 more years to go before we reach the Promised Land in the promised land. To Jewcy‘s readers: Please see Katzir’s film, read our book, and go and pray with WOW when you are in Jerusalem.

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WSJ describe African-Americans who feel that they can now hold their heads a "little higher" and, as important, hide behind fewer excuses in terms of their own achievement. In addition, white folk may feel that, in voting for Obama, they have atoned for their considerable historical sins and either are no longer "racists," or will no longer be perceived as such. Here’s what’s missing from the national conversation. In what way will electing another man, even a man of color, to be our Authority-in-Chief, psychologically effect young girls and women? Are they also holding their heads higher, are they also now empowered to break glass ceilings without any excuse for failure? Perhaps and yet: If we still conceive of God as a tall man, and imperial authority as residing in a man, how does this enable women to become like them, as opposed to merely marry or sleep with them? According to Jena McGregor, in her Business Week article, "Gender Pay Gap: Still Alive at the Top, Too," women (working full-time) still make 79 cents on the male dollar. Well, this is slow and painful progress. When I started out in this, the "longest revolution," American women made 59 cents on the male dollar and were locked out of most high-paying positions. Imagine that: It took a mass movement to achieve twenty cents in forty one years. Holding aside lower paying jobs where, some have argued, womens’ lower compensation is due to their leaving to have children or due to a decision to work only part-time, McGregor examined the compensation only for corporate CEOs. "The Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm, is just out with a 2008 study of more than 3,000 North American companies which documents that indeed, "total compensation for women CEOs lags behind male CEOs after all." In short, female CEOs make about 85% of "male total actual pay." Interestingly, on paper, the women start out with slightly higher base salaries but "add in cash bonuses, perks and stock compensation–the goodies that really get CEO pay skyrocketing– and the differential is clear. The gap is the widest for female CEOs of the largest companies, who make less than two thirds of their male counterparts." And now for some more good news: Only 3 percent of the CEOs are women–a "shockingly low number in any major Western economy" said Senior Research Associated, Paul Hodgson. And further: Male CEOs are seen as responsible for increasing or decreasing the company’s wealth–but, according to co-author Clara Kulich, when female CEOs do so"[boards are] more prone to use external situations, economic situations" to explain their performances. There is almost an "indifference" to the women leader’s impact. According to Merissa Marr, also in today’s Wall Street Journal, Catalyst, a New York research group, found that women hold 15.4% of the top jobs (not the CEO positions) in Fortune 500 companies. However, this is a decrease 16.4% in 2005. Now, due to mainly male leaders, our nation has suffered an economic meltdown of gigantic proportions. Many men and their families will suffer; women as full-time wage earners and single heads of household will suffer more. So: I would like our national conversation about race to be expanded to one about gender as well. And, I would like people to grapple with the issue of how electing a male leader, even an eloquent and inspiring male leader, will translate, psychologically, into elevated ambitions for girls and women.

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The Culture and Media Institute has just released a study entitled Character Assassination: How the TV Networks Have Portrayed Sarah Palin as Dunce or Demon. It documents that the mainstream media’s hostility to Governor Sarah Palin has been extreme, perhaps unprecedented. While the majority of the attacks have been launched by men, media women, including feminists on both sides of the aisle, have not been shy.

Many female journalists, including feminist activists Eve Ensler, Kim Gandy, Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem, and Judith Warner, attacked Palin on the issues–abortion, birth control, equal pay, gun control, the environment, energy, and religion. This is entirely legitimate. But their tone was often unexpectedly and extremely personal, cruel, slightly hysterical. Palin gives Ensler “nightmares.” Warner views her as “fake as they come” and as “America’s Hottest Governor (Princess of the Fur Rendezvous 1983, Miss Wasilla).” Warner softens and, in a second piece views Palin as womens’ “inner Elle Woods,” the heroine played by Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde.

Some journalists, both male and female, including liberals and conservatives (Katie Couric, Maureen Dowd, Peggy Noonan, and Kathleen Parker), repeatedly insulted Palin and attacked her as both unprepared and unworthy. Dowd described Palin as “a fun zealot. She has a beehive and sexy shoes,” and as “the two-year governor of an oversized igloo.” Noonan writes: “She doesn’t think aloud. She just says things.” Parker, who initially praised Palin for having “common sense” concludes: “She is clearly out of her league.” The mainstream journalists, both male and female, and the left-liberal blogosphere, criticized Palin’s appearance, clothes and grammar, as well as her reproductive, parental, and beauty contest history. Fake pornographic photos of Palin appeared instantly and everywhere.

Shame on them—yes, of course, McCain picked someone who does not meet the usual standards for a male candidate but who meets his standards for a (modern) girlfriend or a wife. This is why career women feel “humiliated” and “unchosen” by him. But, of course, they are also jealous as hell. Palin, the Beauty Queen, has a handsome husband, five children, is also the honest-to-goodness governor of an American state, (you’d never know that if you heard them discuss Palin as an unqualified nobody), and to top it all, has now been picked to run for the Vice-Presidency. Who does she think she is? Why pick her and not me? Or Hillary?

Palin has driven them a little crazy. Palin is an ambitious and powerful woman, but she is not a secularist, a lesbian, or an intellectual. She opposes abortion–but describes herself as a "feminist" for Life. She believes in God–God! How reactionary can she get? By the way, Obama’s relationship to Christianity has also been discussed but not in the same way. That he is a man of faith has not reduced him to a dangerous laughingstock.

Her record on women’s rights is unknown, and McCain’s is abysmal. However, Palin might potentially be a good law-and-order candidate on the issues of domestic violence, rape, incest, child pedophiles, and sexual harassment. And, most important and most underrated: She seems to “get” jihad and Islamic fundamentalism and knows that they’re bad for women.

Obama’s position on this is more… nuanced, cerebral, unknown.

But back to basics: The same people who privately view women as “bitches” towards each other are suddenly puzzled. Why are women attacking Palin, another woman?

The very question is, in a way, sexist. No one asks why male journalists routinely attack John McCain or Barak Obama. Open, direct, male-male aggression and competition are taken for granted.

Women, however, are socialized against competing openly. They are supposed to compete "indirectly," in "backstabbing" ways that include slandering and shunning a female opponent—and all with a smile. When women assume public roles, they are both guilty, (about departing from their visibly "nice girl" socialization), and afraid of being punished for adopting an openly male style of aggression.

Obviously, I am not talking about Ann Coulter or Camille Paglia who are, unapologetically, as aggressive as men.

Unlike men, who are trained not to take things "personally," women are trained to take everything "personally;" therefore, when women fight, they do so with passionate intensity, they hold grudges, they slander a woman so that her entire social-political world ceases to exist for her. They do not stop attacking until their female opponent is "dead," has been rendered socially invisible. Women do not usually re-connect, something that male competitors routinely do. However, because women also depend on other women for intimacy and bonding, they tend to disguise their differences and to avoid open warfare. What we’re looking at now is an entirely new anti-ballgame.

I’ve documented this in my book Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman which will be available in a new edition in the spring of 2009.

So, is Palin standing alone without any female or feminist support? Not exactly.

There are many God-fearing "hockey moms" out there whose views on marriage, guns, abortion, and personal and national self-defense match Palin’s. They love her.

And, on September 7, 2008, feminist Tammy Bruce wrote a positive piece about Palin’s gutsy and populist style and on October 8, 2008, so did Camille Paglia. Both stopped short of an outright endorsement. I also wrote about Palin’s extraordinary charm and her ability to connect with a crowd and I condemned the way in which she was being attacked. However, like Paglia, I stopped short of endorsing her candidacy.

We three were in the minority until a handful of feminists, including Elaine Rafferty and Shelly Mandell held a press conference in Nevada, endorsing Palin. But who are these feminists? The Daily Beast describes Rafferty as a "former Ms. magazine editor." But in truth, Rafferty was a long-time California NOW operative and close friend of Los Angeles NOW President, Shelly Mandell. She was also at Time Magazine for a decade. Rafferty was the editor of Ms. magazine for only two years and left in 2005, three years ago. Rafferty writes that Palin is really "smart." Rafferty was hired to help draft a women’s rights speech for Palin. Shelly Mandell has also been involved in California NOW for a long time.

Mandell, Rafferty and former California NOW President, Ginny (Galluzzo) Foat, were once close. Back in 1983, Mandell and Rafferty had a disagreement with Foat. Thereafter, Mandell split California and national NOW when she turned Foat over to the Louisiana police. Mandell got rid of a perceived opponent by turning her in on an outstanding warrant. Foat stood trial for the alleged murder of a previous husband whom Foat insisted had "battered" her and whom, she said, she had not killed. The star witness against her was another previous husband, John Sidote. Foat was found innocent and released.

Perhaps Mandell and Foat have made up; perhaps Foat has forgiven her for the agonizing time she spent in jail and for the stressful trial. Even so: I’d advise Palin to watch her back and to look into Mandell’s and Rafferty’s histories before hiring them on a permanent basis.

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