Women's Empowerment, Part Two
In my previous post, mindycl wrote:

I'm just a little surprised that you even think women are empowered in judaism. we're second class citizens. were totally not empowered. Its not something I mind, I'm not a feminist. But your very premise puzzles me...I guess because I was raised in this man-centric culture and we women are taught to never be seen, never be heard, stay in the kitchen yada yada yada and I'm so used to it, that if I were to explore it and become resentful i'd be in a terrible place in my community, be looked down upon by dh and parents etc - it's usually the start of a rebellion which leads to going OTCD. It's just not something I thinkn about. This is how I was raised, I'm cool with it, and it's totally fine. I'm so not a feminist. I'm content with staying in the kitchen...
 
I want to talk about her post. It threw me for a loop because I'm so used to people insisting Judaism treats women equally. I think Mindy is a kind, sincere person who is doing everyone a favor by being honest about her culture. So, in constrast to my usual policy, I will have to delete insulting comments about her and her derech. But I want to discuss what she wrote. So here are the questions I'm interested in, please feel free to respond or add:

1. Do you think this view of women is limited just to that particular branch of Orthodoxy? Mindy belongs to a non-chabad chassidic group, maybe Satmar, I'm not sure. Do you think only her group sees women as second-class citizens? Or do you think this is actually a perspective held by most Orthodox adherents and some of them hide it better than others? Or do you think that Judaism is changing, but some groups specifically choose to hold on to the social norms of  the pre-feminist days? How does halacha figure into this? How are halachos which reflect negatively on women's roles adhered to or minimized or changed?

2. Do you think God could condone a hierarchial system like this? In other words, if there is a God and He created the world, do you think that He could have set up a system in which women are meant to be subservient? Or does God create all people as equals and  this is a man-made invention, something men of all religions did for their own self-serving interests? How do you see the curses in Bereishis, if you believe the text is Divine or Divinely-inspired? Is it just that God was describing how the world would be and that men would dominate women, but that can change with time or is an inherent, immutable part of the overall cosmic plan? How is this different than the hierarchy with regards to cohanim and leviim, which clearly seems to be endorsed by Judaism?

3. Do you think women can be truly happy and fulfilled in this sort of system? Do you think that most adherents of a group who are considered second-class citizens are just socially conditioned to adhere to the rules, not to rock the boat? Or do you think people can find real satisfaction from that kind of life? What about Untouchables in the Hindu caste system?

I personally think that the basic premises of Judaism is that women are second class citizens, because this was the social norm way back when halacha was codified. Most sects still follow that mode today, although some groups, like chabad, are very inventive in the explanations and rationales that they come up with. Some sections of Modern Orthodoxy openly reject some of these premises and have women's minyanim and so on, but they are considered fringe, a bit on the conservative side of things. I think God created people equal and all the hierarchies are man-made. But I think that people can convince themselves that God allows for these hierarchies because their social norms support that. So, in other words, if you have grown up in a culture which treats women as subservient and second-class, it's not difficult to believe that God set it up this way. What do you think?