Give It Away | Microphilanthropy Blog

Give It Away #11
Women Can Do It, Too

Life on the material plane is full of all kinds of contradictions. It's impossible to always walk the talk; inevitably, there is going to be a gap between what we say and what we do. If you slip up once in a while, it doesn't discredit every single thing that you stand for. But at the same time, there has got to be some consistency in your rhetorical arguments. If I'm able to poke holes in your propaganda without even working up a sweat, then you had better go back to the drawing board and start plugging up those holes in your internal logic. And if you try to force your imperfect ideology down my throat... then to paraphrase John Wayne, I'll make such a stink that you'll be walking in and out of your Yeshiva with gas masks.

This article is about religious ritual and cultural appropriation. It's about religious sensitivities and fundamentalist fury. It's about identifying enemies and the separation of synagogue and state. And it's about a Jewish woman living in Israel, standing at a bus stop in Beersheba last week, minding her own business... and being beaten by a stranger. Her crime: her uncovered arms bore the imprint of tefillin -- phylacteries, the leather straps that Jewish religious men strap to their arms every morning. This article is about male privilege and misogyny. It's about power-play and sadomasochism. And it's about the hypocracy of Zionist Jews hating Islam for supposedly feminist reasons.

Orthodox Jews follow the Torah and Talmud to the letter of the law, so they must justify any position that they take with supporting scripture. This allows for some flexibility, because many religious issues remain in dispute. If you can find at least one respected rabbi that shares your point of view, you can claim to follow his interpretation of the law. In the case of phylacteries, it states in the Talmud that Michal, the daughter of King Saul and King David's first wife, wore tefillin, as did all three of Rashi's daughters. By legalistic standards, that settles the matter. Rama, a Polish dude that lived some four hundred and fifty years ago, believed that women should be discouraged from laying tefillin. But he never said a single thing about beating them.

In a secular democracy, we do not defer to a bunch of dead white guys when deciding what to do. Correction: we defer to a different bunch of dead white guys when deciding what to do. There are plenty of problems with representative democracy, and there are many obstacles that are preventing women from achieving full equality in Israeli society. The Israeli government is an old boys' club: only about 17% of the Knesset seats are filled by female members. But at the very least, on paper, women are guaranteed equal rights under the law. That means the freedom of speech. It means the freedom of religious expression. It means the freedom to dress any which way they want to in a public place. If you don't like what you see, then look in the other direction, or just walk away. And keep your damn hands to yourself, thank you very much.

Now I'm going to say a few things about tefillin itself. Physical phylacteries were found in the Qmran caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were uncovered, so we know for a fact that this actual practice is at least two thousand years old. In the biblical book of Deuteronomy (11:13), Yahweh instructs the people to bind themselves with signs to symbolize their subservience to him: "to serve me, with all of your heart and soul". Regarding the reasons for laying tefillin, Maimonedes said, "As long as the tefillin are on the head and on the arm of a person, they will be modest and God-fearing". So both the Torah and Talmud explicitly state that phylacteries are a symbol of bondage, to God. Of course, this would be incredibly obvious to anyone without all of our cultural baggage. I'm not going to post photos of any real people wearing leather straps on their arms... but if a UFO full of space aliens came down to earth and saw what we were getting up in arms about...

All I am saying here is that tefillin is an article of clothing that symbolizes the exchange of power. It is about giving your power up to God -- committing yourself to follow what you believe to be His wishes. But it is also about absorbing power -- create a connection between yourself and the Diety, the Divine. These rituals -- and the daily life of an observant Orthodox Jew is chock-full of dozens, or even hundreds of rituals just like this -- bestow upon the actor enhanced status, and they grant him greater standing in the community. In a class society, heterosexual male privilege is the final refuge for men whose lives have been stomped on by systemic poverty. That's why, when women and sensitive men challenge conventional notions of masculinity that say that women and men are diametrically different, and that the man is always the head of the household -- it is a kick in the groin to the poor sod that has long-since cut a deal with the religious power-brokers, trading his freedom for some small measure of political power.

One last point: those Jews that would attack Iran, claiming that its religious regime oppresses women and other minorities, would do well to ensure that their own homes are made out of a lot less glass than they currently are, before they start throwing stones by the sack-full. Of course, it is dead wrong for Muslim modesty police to beat women on the streets and back alleys of Isfahan for not complying with their repressive dress code. The religious elite may legislate the activities that are permitted to take place in the public space, but they cannot control women's bodies; they can wear whatever they want to, and adorn themselves as they wish. But our own three-thousand-year-old religion is rife with similar restrictions, and its practitioners are violating people's human rights right here in the Holy Land. So if you want to go to war with Iran, come up with some other justification, don't use a feminist fig leaf. Let the Persians protest against their own persecutors... and if you want to fight for the feminists, then bring the battle back to Beersheba.

Ultimately, symbols cannot ever be owned. They can be utilized for the effect they were intended for, and they can be culture-jammed to serve the exact opposite purpose. If you don't want to be associated with something or someone that you strongly disagree with, then don't become attached to any symbols that can be reappropriated. After all, the most fundamental tenet of Abrahamic Judaism is iconoclasm, the smashing of all false idols. And maybe the most fundamental tenet of Rabbinic Judaism is the multiplicity of interpretations, the never-ending debate over the best way to be a better person. So if you want to give women a way to study Torah and reclaim it for themselves, then check out the Women's Institute for Jewish Studies. And if you want to support women who have been the victims of violence, then check out Empowerment for Independence. Because this isn't a democracy until the streets are safe for all of our sisters. Happy Shavuot!