Ahhh…and so it continues. This morning, despite a compromise looming toward law, Israeli police arrested five women (members of Women of the Wall or WOW) for wearing tallitot (prayer shawls) while participating in a Rosh Chodesh prayer service at the Western Wall attended by some 200 women. They also arrested a man for lighting one of the women’s prayer books on fire.
This morning, an article by Yori Yanover of the Jewish Press popped up in my news alerts entitled, The Most Dangerous Women in Israel. Interestingly, Mr. Yanover quotes sources from the Talmud and Maimonides that give halachic permission for women to wrap themselves in talitot and put on tefillin. However, he later cites revered rabbanim who prohibited such actions because women who choose to take on these mitzvot must be doing so out of haughtiness or resentment.
Yanover then goes on to agree with JAFI Director, Natan Sharansky, who hurls a bitter prediction that the Women of the Wall will cause a civil war in Israel. Yanover bemoans the fact that, on a practical level, instead of cursing them out 25 years ago and “arresting them and schlepping them to court and humiliating them, it would have been better to have just tolerated those women coming once a month to sing before the Kotel an hour or two, and go home.” Well, you do catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
This article caught my eye because of a conversation I had yesterday with my husband who said that the ever increasing stringencies imposed upon women regarding tznius (modesty), media images, and public life, is due to fear. Truthfully, he was speaking about a very select, although growing, portion of frum society. The society in which the husband learns full time while the wife works, takes care of the bills, takes care of the kids, takes care of the home, and in reality is in charge of everything except halachic and hashkafic decisions.
How to Train an Elephant
I am reminded of a story I heard a few years ago about training circus elephants. When a baby elephant first joins the circus, the trainer attaches one end of a rope around its leg and attaches the other end to a stake in the ground. Initially, the baby elephant fights to pull free from the rope, but soon exhausts itself to no avail. The harder it pulls the more the rope digs into its skin causing bleeding and pain. The baby simply isn’t strong enough to break free.
Learned Helplessness
Eventually, the little elephant finally learns that it is useless to struggle against its bondage. It will never break free. In fact, even when it grows up to 13 feet and 14,000 lbs, the circus handler can still use the same rope and stake from infancy with the same effect. The elephant learned a lifelong lesson that it can never break free, regardless of its size or power.
Enlightenment
Do you know what happens when there is a fire at the circus and the elephant, in its panic, accidentally breaks its rope and escapes? The elephant can never be used in the circus again, because it now realizes its own strength and ability to break its bonds. It will no longer obey its trainer.
Do I smell smoke?
