The F word....

F has been getting women in trouble for a long time
F is about liberation
F is a word only whispered in religious neighberhoods
F is a very very dirty word- never talk about it on shidduch dates

and apparently in the past month, "F" is me...

Feminism, that is ( get your mind out of the gutter)

I never used to think I was a feminist, I thought I was a normalist ( an SG word, don't try to find a definition in Websters). I thought that most modern orthodox Jews felt just like me. No big deal, 2006, of course women are no longer considered inferior/weaker/just plain silly...

that is until moving to a religious neighberhood in NY.

I grew up in a coed Jewish education environment, where women were great students, often able to outlearn any guy... which we did, men and women together..
I was a woman, and hence I was ABLE to learn/ do/ be whatever it was that I envisioned in life..
I spent the past few years , the start of my independant adulthood, in a religious out of town community. There women were so involved... women wanted to come to shul and it wasn't just for the chance to talk about stilletos over kiddush..
we made a mizumenet without a blink during all female shabbos meals
and, shanda, we made coed meal where the guys did most of the cooking...

fast forward 7/2005, SG emails the new religious NY community list serve a simple question "where do singles daven friday night?
the answers: "most men go to the following shteibels, I dont think any have womens sections"
"women dont want to/need to daven in shul"
" women are too busy making shabbos to worry about shul"

I resigned to the start of shabbos davening alone on my couch, if at all... before heading off to a "pitty the singles" family meal ( more ranting on being single later)

next I found the most "modern" shul in the hood,
and found the mechitzah alike to the old berlin wall


people would say, "its not tsnius...
women have women only parshah shiurs here, thats enough, no?"

during kiddush, the few married women that showed up, would clump, discussing the virtues of sippy cups and diaper rash horror stories ( dont get me wrong, as a pediatrician, this stuff is important, but not really the meat of a dissertation, you know?)

I was once at a meal with a nice young couple.. I told them how when I get married I might want to make motsei for my husband at our own shabbos table...
the wife said " dont say that out loud here, youll never get married"

a local kiruv organization holds a weekly girls only yoga and parsha class. men have four classes a week, including the one that makes me most jealous.. thursday night cholent, kugel and daf yomi.

it was all adding up

I couldnt take it anymore

I was being silenced, boxed in, limited, simplified and ostracised.

I was dating a guy who wore a black hat on shabbos.. only, he swore he was open minded, and only did things that made sense halachically. In this community he considered himself a free thinker, a liberal. black hat was only clothing, he swore. I agreed, after all, I wouldn't want anyone to judge me only based upon my imelda marcos sized shoe collection.

I needed to give myself some breathing space, so I asked on our 5th date "what do you think of women and gemarah?"

in 2 seconds flat "ASUR!!!! DUH!!!!"

he then continued to quote every gemarah which had something not so nice to say about us flighty women. even the statement he believed which clearly stated women and gemarah are like a calf in its mother's milk (just figuratively speaking)

he said, women have so much to do, at home, at work. why fill their heads with the complexities of gemarah which they most likely wont understand. women can maybe learn a photocopy of a gemarah, but only a quote, not a whole daf. women just dont have the intellectual capacity to learn that level.

I guess, however our intellectual level is sufficient to know a moron when we see one, and I quickly ended that relationship.

then i was at a shabbaton this weekend. women were instructed at the shabbos table ( there were 60 participants) to not sing shalom aleichem. later at the shiur after dinner, a local lawyer/rabbi was giving a dvar torah and mentioned that "wouldn't the woman of the house get so upset if someone brought chametz in on pesach"--- the woman? I question. is the man not upset about chametz? I asked the lady next to me, she looked at me as if I was new to Judaism and explianed, women work hard to keep the house clean, so that's why chametz would bother her! this lady didnt even understand how this comment is based on the notion of gender inequality in the houselhold.
where was orthodoxy during womens liberation?

am I a pediatrician because it is my unanswered womanly desire to nurture my unborn children? (as has been stated to me, to excuse the fact that I spent 27 years of my life in the library and not in the kitchen)

friday night, a "normal" guy at the shabbaton, pursuing a career in secular music said to me "if women go to work, learn gemarah, get advanced degrees, who is going to me the woman?"

well then I guess the men then will have to be degraded to scrubbing toilets.

I ask you, my fellow readers,
question the world around us!
open peoples eyes to inequalities.
support your daughters in their pursuits.
and dont ever limit yourself.