(no subject)

[rymenhild]

I understand that the following incident (from November 2006) has been well-publicized in the Jewish blogosphere since December, but I only discovered it this morning at Apikorsus Online. A large proportion of my friendslist does not read Jewish blogs, so I feel justified in reposting here.

An Orthodox Jewish woman was beaten for refusing to sit at the back of the bus to the Kotel (the holiest site for Jews in Israel). Also, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz has reported on the case.

I am sick to my stomach thinking about this. Miriam Shear got up before 4 AM to go and pray. She took a bus that was officially unsegregated (and apparently there are gender-segregated public buses in Israel, much to my horror) and sat in the front, near chareidi* men. A man spat on her. Shear, being a brave woman, spat back, at which point the man and four others started physically attacking her. (Please note that, given their observance level, these men should not have been touching a woman who was not married to them at all!) Shear fought back, but no one else came to her defense. Most bystanders seem to have said things on the order of "She had it coming." There was an eyewitness willing to speak, who will testify in Shear's upcoming suit.

What kind of Jewish country is it when a Jew going to pray can be attacked by other Jews who are also going to pray? What does it mean for there to be a Jewish people at all? What kind of civilized nation thinks segregation is remotely acceptable? I simply don't understand. I don't.

One more note: Since seeing Elf's links and the Ha'aretz article, I've looked around other blogs to see what they had to say. I am not going to link to the last blog I read, nor am I going to try to engage with the virulent idiocy of some of the comments there, but I do want to say that I am literally crying and pounding the sofa with rage and disgust. God help us all.

*The word is usually translated "ultra-Orthodox", but the English term is fairly useless as description goes.

Comments

[rowanberries.livejournal.com]

*Sigh*

Sadly, we live in a world where people have selective hearing when it comes to their religion, even if they use it to justify everything else they do.

*Offers a hug*

I'm not a religious person. But I do respect the feeling behind... nearly all of them, and it's horrible to see people abusing theirs to hurt someone else.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Hugs are always useful.

[innerbrat]

I can't.

It's one of those things my brain won't process. SEGREGATION IS BAD. And I can'r figure out why people would do that to a woman. I have no point of empathy.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

The part where my already-strained empathy gives up and dies is the bit about laying violent hands on a woman for the (falsely-alleged) sin of immodesty when the attacker's own moral system should prohibit physical contact between man and woman for reasons of modesty. I mean, my personal conception of immodesty bears very little resemblance to the personal conceptions of anyone involved, and there are a hell of a lot of things wrong with the story above from my point of view. But I can't get past how the attackers, besides all of their other faults, are flaming, howling hypocrites!

[innerbrat]

S'funny, I don't find it hard to believe that the kind of person that would insist she move to suit their whims would also be the kind of person that would happily apply violence to get their way. I guess this is because I'm a prejudiced so-and-so.

However, that this kind of person exists at all, that I can't get a handle on

It's very Rosa Parks, this, isn't it?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

More so. The bus wasn't legally segregated, although legal segregation exists; Shear wasn't breaking a law, she was defying custom.

[innerbrat]

Which is the worst part - laws can be changed when they're seen to be unjust. Customs, much less so.

[meep.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of when "peace activists" get violent.

When you realize that said people might not be for actual peace or actual modesty, then it's not that difficult to understand.

[agonistes]

The tenets of my own religion require me to learn, to observe, to understand, and to tolerate. Tolerance is entirely different from acceptance.

In doing all this observing, I can't help but notice that the religion itself -- not just Judaism, but all traditions I've encountered -- isn't inherently misogynist. More often the religion is used as an excuse for misogyny, for violence, for segregation.

This doesn't make a definitive statement about either Judaism (no matter how it's interpreted) or Israel as a Jewish country. Am I outraged on behalf of Miriam Shear? Fuck yes I am. And god knows it's different when it's a group you identify with that has stuff like this happen. It's different when you're on the inside. It's different when it's something you really believe in that's being used to condone -- to accept -- this kind of thing. (Being a liberal humanist in the Deep South, you pick this knowledge up very, very quickly.)

But speaking as an outsider -- this doesn't say anything about Judaism, and it doesn't say anything about how you live. Which isn't to say that it's not okay to be outraged, because it's the voices of outraged moderation that make situations like these go away.

In other words: I'm sorry, and thank you for posting this. Seriously.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

First, thank you for your thoughtful reply. It does help.

See, I don't know if I am an insider. That's sort of one of the problems, one of the harder issues to articulate. I identify as a Conservative Jew, which is approximately the centrist Jewish movement in America. I'm sort of towards the leftward end of the movement in observance level and all the way into the leftward end in social issues. The blog commenters insulting Miriam Shear for not being a good enough Jew would be as grossed out by me as I'm grossed out by them. The models of Judaism being raised and compared in the debates over this incident exclude me almost entirely. I don't think I'd always want to be included.

And yet, and yet -- Judaism is a huge religion, with more movements and submovements than I think I could count, and it matters to me to think of us all as, in some sense, one people. I want to believe that there are some underlying values we all share, at least the desires to love God and love our fellow humans. I don't ever want to be this enraged, and, well, to be honest, this full of hatred for people whose religion has the same name as mine. I find myself asking whether we are really one people, whether I would want us to be, and what on earth I should be doing now as a liberal Jew in the year 2007. So. Sorry for spouting all that on you.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

I just want to say word to this comment, which also articulates pretty much how I feel (as a liberal Christian) about my more batshit coreligionists.

*hugs*

[flintknappy.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard about this at all either until you posted it, so thanks for doing so. I am now, of course, as enraged as you are. It is just horrible, and I think I am currently lacking words to adequately express my reaction beyond that right now. Perhaps when I simmer down a little.
The sexism in Orthodox Judaism has been increasingly frustrating and pissing me off lately. Kind of like you said, there is no place for me where I can possibly fit in my own family's shul.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I'm in total shock about this. Disgusted doesn't even begin to cover it. Would you cross-post this to faith_feminists?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

In a day or two, I think. I want to look into what kinds of actions we can take, (and, in fact, whether we should take action) before passing the story on to a wider audience than my (admittedly large) friendslist. One interesting thing I saw reading blogs is this series of comments from Mrs. Shear herself explaining that she's chosen to avoid interviews from mainstream, non-Jewish media about the incident whenever possible, apparently because she doesn't want to defame the Chareidi movements any more than necessary for justice. Would she want our help? I don't know.

[morganlf.livejournal.com]

That is a truly horrifying story.

[silveraspen]

I'm so sorry, Rym. What an upsetting thing to read-- both in general, and as a Jewish woman yourself.

I think that wherever there is extremity of belief, there is extremity of action, and this applies across all religious and cultural boundaries. It seems to be a very human pattern, from the dawn of time on forward.

All we can do, I think, is the best that we can do to promote change. Which may sound fatuous or aphorism-laden, but it's not intended as such, I swear.

[rhymester.livejournal.com]

This frightens and disgusts me. I'm not a religious person myself, but I can certainly imagine how much it would pain anybody to hear of this occurring within a faith that they hold dear. I'm so sorry.

[batyatoon]

My reaction to things like this tends to be "Right. YOU LOT. OUT of my religion."

...possibly with slightly more swearing.

[parlyne.livejournal.com]

Is that strong enough? I'd go for "Right. YOU LOT. OUT of my PLANET."

Really. That kind of behavior just isn't acceptable regardless of religion.

[flintknappy.livejournal.com]

Amen to both of you (batyatoon and parlyne).

[the-paper-nun.livejournal.com]

No comment, really. Just disgust. The loss of common decency is a sign of the decline of a society.

[folk.livejournal.com]

I once had a shopping trolley and faeces flung at me in Mea Shearim. It used to be a rite of passage for all us UN kids when in Jerusalem.