Blaming the world's tragedies on women's immodest dress
In Hendonistan, there's a new message that's been circulated via email
and posted on relevant notice boards inside one particular shul
[synagogue] (although by the time you read this, I understand the
notice will have been taken down). In a paean to Mea Shearim
typography, the black and red banner in this popular Orthodox London shul requests that girls and women maintain proper halachic [according to Jewish law] standards of dress in shul.
They are to refrain from 'low necklines, see-through and short-sleeve
tops and short skirts.' And finally, there is the classic plea 'Please
help us to preserve the Kedushat Beit Haknesset.' [sanctity of the synagogue]. Yes, all that holiness resting on the errant elbow of Hendon housewife. Recession in a failing religious system
In my real life, I am about to lose my job. Furious networking and frantic emailing have left me little time to write anything other than job applications and embellishments on my resumé (all job offers welcome). However, I have had a lot of time to think about what the recession means for Orthodox women, and how paid employment differentiates the role of women across various segments of the Orthodox community. In the charedi community, especially in those sections where the men are in full-time learning, women are childbearing and bringing home the proverbial bacon. They generally have relatively low-paid jobs such as teachers, secretaries, beauty therapists or shop assistants that provide the basic infrastructure for a community to function. Rarely are they in business (unless it's sheitels [wigs] or housecoats) and even the recent Israeli initiatives to provide computer training and jobs found that many women were willing to take lower pay for working in an all-female work environment with flexible hours. The Tehillim tipping point
In the latest attempt to resolve the 'shidduch crisis,' women across the religious globe have been scuttling to each other's homes to huddle and recite Tehillim (Psalms), entreating God's kindness for a good shidduch [match] for all the single people in their community. In London, one matchmaking organization, Made in Heaven, offers regular classes for women on Shmiras Ha Loshon (not speaking slander) as a means of mystically helping single people. Women are the corrections of a community: when disasters strike, the rabbis often blame the women for gossiping or immodest dress (gossiping while dressed immodestly is a double whammy). As if women don't have enough to do, now they are responsible for the marital and spiritual well-being of a whole community and have been instructed to say Tehillim to avert further disasters. What was the Tehillim tipping point? How did these verses come to substitute serious learning and empowerment for women? Isn't it strange that while women's voices are accorded tremendous power to change the divinely ordained course of events, they have virtually no voice in the decision-making process of a religious community? Promoting promiscuity?
The perils of public transport are too much to bear for some of the delicate flowers of northwest London. Golders Green and Hendon have a seedy side and many anxious parents insist on driving their daughters to and from school to shield them from the sort of people they are likely to meet on the bus en route to one of the religious schools in the area. I have a different approach - stick our kids on the bus and let them see how the other half lives: girls with skirts up to their pupik [belly button], with pallid skin and multiple earlobe piercings, smoking nervously and looking pathetic hanging onto the shirttails of smelly, gangly and pimply boys. This has to be the most effective antidote to any frum girl's aspirations to be 'normal.' The pink blackberrys
Frum women dangle. Their car keys, usually attached to photos of their children and grandchildren, their house keys, iPod, supermarket card and gym locker tokens are all hanging off them. In one hand they are holding clunky wallets brimming with credit cards, dry cleaning receipts, parking tickets and cash. In the other, they are clutching onto an important database of sociological data currently held on the SIM card of their mobile phone. Find the phone and you will unlock all the important numbers a woman needs to know: shaytel macher, kosher butcher, mikvaot, rabbi, my cleaner and her sister in Poland However, one item sits on the other side of the electronic mehitzah - the Blackberry. This symbol of manly achievement eludes most frum women, for it symbolises corporate power and importance. It means you've got a well-paying job. Smart is out, mediocre is in
"These clever girls," a friend said to me the other day, "they're taking it too far now. My son isn't going to want such a clever one. It's not going to be so easy for her to settle down, make a home..." "My daughter is doing brilliantly at university," said another. "But I don't know what good it's going to do. It wouldn't hurt her to be a little less clever....at least in public." For the first time in Jewish history, mothers are encouraging their daughters to underachieve. They shouldn't be too pretty, too smart or too competent for fear of scaring the boys away. It's particularly nerve-wrecking for Orthodox mothers who are concerned that their daughters are pricing themselves out of the marriage stakes with all their accomplishments. "With a PhD under her sheitel," thinks the anxious mother to herself, " a man is going to worry that my daughter will never be happy changing nappies and making kugel." Mothers and fathers
Sports day next week. Followed by the end of year concert. Hot on the heels of graduation day. And they expect me to go to each event. Couldn't I just send a tired, badly dressed, breasts sagging, blow up life-sized doll that I could remotely contol to wave and cheer when one of my kids appear? It has to be a more effective use of my time than actually being there. Fathers have it easy: they are not allowed to attend the concerts at my daugter's school due to the religious code of the school (to which we freely signed up, so I shan't moan). They cannot watch the mothers' race on sports day for fear of seeing real sagging breasts bobbing up and down across the 100 metre finishing line. What is it with religious women and Sex and the City?
The text message on my phone the other day read: "Come and see Sex and the City and raise money for underprivileged kids.at the same time." Hundreds of religious women are flocking to see Sex and the City. 'It's a charity thing,' said one. 'It's just a bit of fun,' protested another. Seems to me that the money collected might be better spent on a bit of stomach stapling for these SATC doppelgangers from the London suburbs of Hendon and Hampstead Garden Suburb. |
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