Two “ultra-orthodox” Jewish newspapers “altered a photo of Israel’s new cabinet, removing two female ministers” — one replacing them with men and the other blacking them out.
Why would they do such a thing?
Publishing pictures of women is viewed by many ultra-orthodox Jews as a violation of female modesty.
Other Israeli papers reprinted the altered images next to the original photos, with one headlining it “Find the lady”.
Isn’t it interesting that it violates female modesty, but not male? How convenient!
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43 Comments
That’s just weird. Really, really weird. What’s even weirder is replacing on of the women with a man. I assume most Israelis could tell by the name whether the minister was male or female.
That’s hilarious and sad at the same time.
I can’t understand why any woman would choose to follow an orthodox religion. How they can justify being a floormat for men as a good life choice is baffling to me.
That’s just plain sad. By the way, I think the modesty thing is just a bullshit excuse.
Here’s my theory: Those two women worked hard enough to get to where they are today, and some fundies can’t handle change, so they just choose to black them out of the photographs that recognize their achievemnt.
Ultra-orthodox Jews are living in the dark ages, along with the most fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. Many of them are completely convinced of their special sanctity.
They do follow the lunar calendar, though…so calling them lunatics isn’t far from the truth.
Human beings are a silly bunch of animals, aren’t they?
If the women themselves feared for their modesty, then they wouldn’t have posed for the picture. So why exclude them if they were okay with it?
Too bad women never had any say in the rules concerning female modesty.
I have a picture of a woman having sex with a pig while lighting a fire on a Saturday. I wonder what they would think of that.
If that’s the real reason, then at least they’re not opposing women taking up a public function. I know in Holland there is an ultra-conservative political party that claims that public life belongs to the male domain.
Oh my!
I thought Israeli’s were a more advanced society than that. How does the United States justifies supporting a country with such traditions? (Or the rest of the Western countries, for that matter.)
It look like people are confused about the different sects in Judaism so I will try to get some order into it. Judaism can be divided roughly to orthodox, conservative and reform, you can think of that as the distinction between catholic and protestant christians. The conservative and reform are relatively young movements started in Europe in an attempt to bring Judaism into the modern era. The conservative and reform are a a major part of the american Jewish community but are only a very minor part in israel. Orthodox jews range from very strict to practically secular who will just celebrate major holiday and may go to a synegoge once a year or less. You also have atheist jews that may fall into one of the three according to whatever their families used to be. The Haredim are very strict orthodox sects that usually will live in separate neighbourhoods they are best compared to the kind of fundamentalist christians that live in compound somewhere and end on the news when they shoot it with the FBI. They are split into Hasidic and non hasidic and within each group there is sub division that an outsider wont be able to figure but are deep enough that a member of one group will not marry with a member of an another or even eat food that was marked Kosher by a rival fraction. In the area of so called modesty these groups have retreated into a more extreme position over the last decades probably as a response for the increased difficulty of keeping their members apart from the rest of the world which is essential in order for the leadership to retain their control over the rest of the community which is always at the bottom of that kind of rules in such sects. These group keep their children in separate schools where they are being indoctrinated from early age that obidiance to the rabi is the will of god and are usually only getting a very basic secular education and are pushed to marry and have children as soon as possible which make it almost impossible to leave the group they also use the kind of emotional blackmail common in such conservative cults keeping people who are no longer belive playing good sect member for the fear that their leaving will have an adverse effect on the social standing of their families. Israel is a liberal state and the law ensure equality for women. The paper is published buy one of the most extreme groups and as the original post state the whole thing was ridiculed in the mainstream israeli media.
Sorry for going on and on but hopefully I made some things clearer.
not surprising…women have their own little section of the wailing wall where they are allow to weep against the stone:
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/7550/wailingwallo.jpg
I love the way that religious fundamentalists justify their exclusion and restriction on women’s voices/bodies/expression on the grounds that it ‘protects’ them, when they are obviously using this as a convenient lie to cover up the fact that they cannot bear to see women in empowered positions or making decisions for themselves. It’s a little like radical Christian groups making blanket statements about pornography/stripping/prostitution or even just wearing revealing clothing (it’s degrading and exploitative!) while completely ignoring the fact that it may well have been the woman’s choice to be there in the first place.
The hypocrisy is also blatant – if they really cared about the exploitation and degradation of women then maybe, just maybe some of these fundy nutjobs might actually give women a little more freedom over her reproductive health and a life-purpose that doesn’t revolve solely around the kitchen and childbirth.
I can’t understand why any woman would choose to follow an orthodox religion.
Then ask one.
For the same reason that many women actively support patriarchal power structures. For the same reason that women not only buy into the concept that they have to be beautiful to be successful, but actively persecute other women for not fitting into the aesthetic ideal. For the same reason that people stay with their abusive partners, follow along with fascistic dictatorships, ridicule the deformed and the different and the unusual. For the same reason that a girl in a class of mine felt it was appropriate to tell me and my teacher that we were making a fuss over nothing when we discussed feminism, and that she ‘felt equal’ so why couldn’t we?
Social pressure and cultural expectation are enormously powerful tools of oppression. It’s not even necessary for someone to sit down and actively work these weapons out for them to work very, very well. People are often very happy to trundle along maintaining the status quo, no matter that it damages them, because the fear of the consequences of standing out can be crippling.
For the same reason everyone else does – they just believe it’s right before they even understand it.
“I can’t understand why any woman would choose to follow an orthodox religion. How they can justify being a floormat for men as a good life choice is baffling to me.”
If you’re raised in such a culture from birth it’s not a big deal. After all, your mom put up with it why can’t you?
Yeah yet Orthodox Jews often are overlooked from criticism due to their small numbers. I guess they are just not seen as to be as threatening for that reason. Like many fundamentalists though, they take their swipes at *other* types of fundamentalists. I have read many conservative Jews pick on Islam’s treatment of women but call one of them on their views….like not touching any unrelated females…woah!
You know, it’s possible to get the answer straight from the horse’s mouth and still not understand.
I have.
Then ask one.
Asking would be pointless. It would be no different than asking a woman why she stays with her evil abusive husband. Fear makes people do crazy things.
When I was at university the first time, I had a friend named Rachel who was a (lapsed) catholic, and who wanted to convert to Islam. I mentioned this, in her presence, to my Malaysian (and Muslim) housemate, Kuhar. His response was hillarious: “WHY? Have you SEEN how we treat women? Are you INSANE?”
What’s less hillarious is that Rachel did eventually convert to Islam. When she met a man who seemed nice and married him a few years later, all of her email accounts and her mobile ‘phone were cancelled within a couple of weeks, and none of her friends or familly have heard from her in years. I’m not making this up.
Last I heard (from a friend of a friend of a Muslim friend), Rachel isn’t allowed out in public without wearing a hibab.
Not a theological reason, but having had experiences with members of my fellow gender succumbing so easily to mistreatment I have developed this theory:
Women will often identify with their group before their gender. So they will defend the practices of their group even if those practices are detrimental to their gender.
I suppose I could see some evolutionary call for preserving the group over gender which makes some sense, yet I continue to find it annoying.
Intelligence is life’s greatest curse.
“Fear makes people do crazy things”
Dingdingdingdingdingding!
Fear tactics…plain and simple. From birth they are put into a state of fear of a higher power and their pro male society. It’s not like they could up and leave and mail in some divorce papers.
Oh, I’m pretty sure they have a problem with that, too…
No, the sight of a female body might corrupt a man. Seriously.
Unclean. :)
In terms of sexual relations, a pig is no more unclean than any other non-human animal. If for some reason she was married to that pig she would actually be performing a mitzvah by having sex with it on Saturday.
Although I think having sex with anything while kindling a fire is sort of impressive, beastiality aside.
“How does the United States justifies supporting a country with such traditions?”
Freedom, it’s not just for things you approve.
Israel is a hodge-podge of beliefs. In some ways it is more progressive than the US. For example, Israel recognizes gay marriages.
Freedom includes freedom to edit photos that go in a privately-owned newspaper.
Freedom also includes freedom to make fun of editors of said newspaper for undertaking said edits.
It’s obvious from the picture that they do.
Some Hasidim do. Not all. It’s not official Hasidic doctrine that women must remain in the home or refrain from public life – that’s an individual thing, more often a result of middle-eastern cultural norms than an inherent aspect of Hasidic Judaism.
Hasidic Judaism is weird, but at least in terms of modesty between men and women it’s more equal than some other, similar religions. Men always wear hats outside the home, for example, so it’s *slightly* less uneven than it could be. But yeah, the photography thing is not so hot.
Orthodox Jews are not critized because people fear being called anti-semitic.
I don’t like the term “ultra orthodox,” because the Hasidim (aka Hasidic Jews) are soooo vastly different from the orthodox! It can confuse non-Jews. Also, Conservative Jews are not at all what could be called “conservative.” For example, conservative synagogue sanctify gay marriages etc.
Just for clarification, from most radical to most liberal:
Hasidim / Hasidic Jews
The Orthodox
Conservative
Reform
Reconstructionist
The Hasidim and Orthodox and rarely the Conservative are Zionist, the Reform and Reconstructionist often aren’t. From the Conservative on down you get a lot of secular or atheist/agnostic Judaism. You basically NEVER see that among the Hasidim.
But yeah this whole issue is weird. I just wanted to clarify things a little, because there are some pretty big differences in groups here.
Oops. I wrote “Hasidim” but I meant “Haredim.” Sorry!
Shoot, did it again.
That’s true. I conflate the Haredim and the Hasidic because they’re similar, but even they have slight differences.
Plus, it’s not the Israeli government producing those papers. That’s like saying, “OMG, how can Canada trade with the USA? They have Fox News!”
Also not for Palestinians, apparently.
The free choice point is a good one, but it also cuts both ways. When above I suggested that a person who was perplexed by a woman who voluntarily lived in such conditions should ask one how they feel about it, I was being somewhat glib, but there is still an element of choice that I was trying to illuminate.
Certainly some, perhaps most, women in such situations only adhere to such a lifestyle out of fear or self-loathing. However, I would submit that some others do it because they like it, and this choice of there’s is terrifying on a basic level to people who elevate freedom as an axiom. Sometimes when people are given a choice, they *choose* to relinquish it. Some people like to be dominated, some people like to be subordinate, and it is probably arrogant to think that there is ’something wrong’ with such people or their choices.
It’s something that can’t be discounted, though it is inconvenient for the larger and probably correct narrative of these religiously-inspired practices and institutions being oppressive and negative on balance.
It is important to note that these choices are only possible in a culture that does not directly support (by force) the repressive institution. In cultures where this is not the case, there is no choice, and therefore it’s oppression *even if* the people so oppressed like it.
I agree only in theory. I mean, sometimes there is a theoretical choice but not a real one. At least not a fair one.
You can choose your freedom or leaving your family and the community. Yes, it is a choice. Is it fair? Luckily not all the women have to choose in a so difficult situation.
Besides, you can leave your group. Now what? They haven’t had a proper education, because his future in life was simply to be a wife. Most of them haven’t known for all his childhood what’s to be free, nor what’s to do her own life.
And lastly, they may not known what are their benefits from the choose, if they choose to be free; and maybe they don’t see those benefits from the same point of view than we do, but they see them as losses.
Anyway, why were peasants that supported monarchy in medieval europe? Dictatorships are only supported by the people who gets more power?
You could do the Jehovah’s Witness thing.
Since ‘eat’ entails ‘take into yourself,’ anything the bible says not to eat, it really means ‘don’t put it in your body’
Therefore, when the bible tells Jews not to eat pig, it also means don’t let pig in your body. And so, screwing a pig is worse for a Jew than, let’s say, screwing a cow.
See that feat of logic? I should be religious, I’d be good at it!
What if it’s a man screwing a pig? That should be alright, then.