I just received the following comment from Gabriella222. While I am not sure the meaning of the end of the comment. The beginning is clearly asserting that descendants of conversos have a right to being acknowledged as Jews while the Ethiopians don't. It is also clearly not based on an understanding of halacha but on the assertion that since the ancestors of anusim were clearly Jews while the Ethiopians were probably never Jews the descendants of anusim are merely publicly acknowledging their Jewish status while the Ethiopians are claiming to be Jewish when they are clearly not.
Once you factor in halacha the reverse could be argued. The descendants of anusim have very little if any evidence of matrilineal descent from Jews and thus their status is a presumption that they are not Jews at all. On the other hand the Ethiopians at least has Rav Ovadiah Yosef who claims that they are full Jews and don't need to convert. It is only because almost every major posek in recent history views their claims as doubtful that Rav Ovadiah Yosef suggests that they have geirus l'chumrah.
I am making this into a post - since I think that others - including Rabbi Manny Vinas also agrees with this view and thus further discussion can be helpful. Also she asserts something which I don't believe is supported by any authoritative source -that woman are on a higher spiritual level than men. Any sources to that effect would be appreciated.
Bottom line - Gabriella is making some clear assertions - which I don't think have halachic significance but I am open to being convinced otherwise.
Once you factor in halacha the reverse could be argued. The descendants of anusim have very little if any evidence of matrilineal descent from Jews and thus their status is a presumption that they are not Jews at all. On the other hand the Ethiopians at least has Rav Ovadiah Yosef who claims that they are full Jews and don't need to convert. It is only because almost every major posek in recent history views their claims as doubtful that Rav Ovadiah Yosef suggests that they have geirus l'chumrah.
I am making this into a post - since I think that others - including Rabbi Manny Vinas also agrees with this view and thus further discussion can be helpful. Also she asserts something which I don't believe is supported by any authoritative source -that woman are on a higher spiritual level than men. Any sources to that effect would be appreciated.
Bottom line - Gabriella is making some clear assertions - which I don't think have halachic significance but I am open to being convinced otherwise.
Gabriella222 has left a new comment on your post "European rabbis invalidate conversions done by Rav...":
In the first place I am not sure what you are speaking of since there are conversos from all over the world given that Sephardic Jews traveled the earth trading.The conversos have a right to come back to Judaism. But since the Ethiopians were brought to Israel there has been a difficult problem in Judaism. The Ethiopians when asked to convert called the state of Israel racist and whether their modern origins were Jewish is nebulous at best. They associated conversion with gentiles and conversion to be negative for their community. Even though their community read a "sacred" book in Amharic that I dare say the majority of rabbis could not translate and there was circumcision among the females.Circumcision of females is not a Jewish ritual and that should have sent chills down the spines of the whole Jewish world.They had holidays that had nothing to do with Judaism of the Torah.Somehow they did not know that Rut was a convert and that her grandson it was King David whose city they were brought to.Conversion was looked upon as negative among black Ethiopians and the essence of where they were coming and the holiness of the city of Jerusalem, how King David sacrificed was lost on them.
Moving on to the particulars of the case, women are at a higher spiritual level than men because we bare children. Women are responsible for lighting Shabbat candles including praying for the temple to be rebuilt, taking of challah and keeping the mikvah.If they choose to pray beautiful!
I have been reading that a convert wanted a divorced and was questioned about whether she was religious. I think that rabbis and Jewish men in general better need to start telling the truth about whether they are respecting their wives decisions to keep mikvah. I have worked in a referral agency for Jewish women where we frequently got calls of abuse from women who were even being raped in their marriages. If a woman is going to to keep mikvah her spouse must agree.I am trying to be delicate. If a man will not listen to your desire to keep the family pure what are you to do?
Next issue, Judaism is a religious and not a race. There are too many Jews not raising their daughters to be religious . They run off to college fornicate, do everything imaginable thing and then seek marriage. Some of my own friends have entrapped men into marriage who later divorced them to marry converts. If you are not keeping the laws of G-D then you deserve the consequences. I am sick and tired of the hypocrisy of rabbis who will not even bother asking are you a virgin, do you light candles,take challah when dealing with women who want to be married.
"Also she asserts ... that woman are on a higher spiritual level than men. Any sources to that effect would be appreciated."
ReplyDeleteI've come across this idea in a number of kiruv talks and dinner table discussions. I think it's used to counter the strong assumption among most non-religious American Jews that Judaism treats women as second-class members. The rabbi will say, "No, no. It's actually the opposite of what you think. According to Judaism, women have a HIGHER spiritual level compared to men!"
Some "mekoros" I've seen brought up are:
1) We see that women were not involved in sins involving avodah zarah in the midbar (e.g. Egel haZahav and and Midian/Ba'al Peor), implying that men are much more prone to sin than women, who has a stronger intrinsic spiritual "sense".
2) Men need the tikun of Bris Milah to achieve the full status of being Jewish. Women do not require such an operation, implying that there is less of an instrinsic spiritual defect among (at least newborn baby) girls compared to boys.
I haven't seen these ideas linked to particular ma'amarei Chazal or Rishonim, so I've been quite curious myself about how to frame this idea.
Regarding women's supposed spiritual superiority. there is an interesting book
ReplyDelete"Male and Female He Created Them: A Guide to Classical Torah Commentary on the Roles and Natures of Men and Women.
Ben Reuven, Yisrael.
Publisher Information: Targum Press, 1996."
which directly tackles this issue and concludes that there is no actual basis for the assertion.
I have always liked Rabbi Moshe Meiselman's "Jewish Women in Jewish Law". 1978.
ReplyDeleteI was taught that men put on tefillin in order to reach the level of spriritual connection with Hashem that women naturally have.
After all it is the Jewish WOMAN who transmits Jewish lineage, not her husband.
It is sad that so many American Jews feel that women are relegated to a secondary role in Orthodox Judaism. This certainly was NOT the case traditionally.
In the Sephardic communities where my mother's family is from, the wives and daughters of the community Rabbis practiced traditional medicine.
When I was a child, both Jews and Gentiles would line up to see my mother for the medical advice learned from my grandmother and great grandmother.
My mother, who speaks 7 languages later got a degree as a CNP and went on to run a busy clinic in an underprivileged neighborhood.
On both sides of my family, the women are known (and according to my father raised) for their business skills. My father was under the belief that after middot, business acumen was the most important quality in the selection a wife and therefore pushed us to study Accounting and Finance to be more "marriageable".
We were brokering an acquisition some years ago when the bank President revealed that he had Orthodox smicha and also that he had never done a deal without his wife; a major difference, he felt between Jews and Gentiles he knew in business.
Both my mother and my mother in law were very involved in the day to day affairs of the family businesses. When my mother had major surgery 35 years ago, my father had to hold up all bids for a month until my mother was well enough to review them.
There are so many varied aspects of "Torah Imecha" (see "Aishet Hayil").
It saddens me that organizations such as EJF would like to reduce the role of Jewish women to that of "toiveled womb" by permitting Jewish men to be married to any Gentile woman who will dip in the mikveh and agree in theory to observe the mitzvot.
Rabbis who do conversions which permit intermarriage are doing more to diminish the role of Jewish women than anything else today.
Ask any young man in the shidduch parsha what he is looking for and more often than not, he will answer "pretty", "size 2", "blonde", etc.
Jewish men of past generations had a better understanding of the value of a good Jewish wife (her price is far above rubies).
The example of Rabbis who will convert the Gentile spouses of Jewish men is that Torah Imecha is of little or no value.
Jewish woman today so desperately seek to observe as men (ie. learn Gemara and put on tefillin) because the traditional roles of Jewish women have been so diminished because Rabbis have redefined the role of a Jewish woman to that of merely carrying on the genetic material of Jewish men, therefore reducing the role of the Jewish wife and mother to the purely physical.
And this is why when you ask a young man in the shiddach parsha "what are you looking for?" he will usually answer with physical characteristics only.
If a woman's only value is physical, why should any man limit himself to the small genetic pool in our communities, when literally, the whole wide world is open to him?
It's not that women are spiritually superior but rather when both men and women are doing their best, they can both reach a high level of spirituality.
ReplyDeleteFor example, yes the women of the Dor Hamidbar didn't sin with the Eigel or the Meraglim. But the women of Yirimiyahu's time were amongst the chief supporters of idol worship despite the destruction of Judah by the Babylonians.
What people often forget, living as we do amongst Chrisians who have a church-based religion, is that Judaism is not a shul-based religion but one centred around the home. One can live just fine without a SHUL around (not ideal but doable) but without a kosher, shomer mitzvos HOME one's Jewishness is certainly compromised. And the woman is the Akeres Habayis, the principle supporter of the Jewishness of the home.
MEN AND WOMEN ACHIEVE INTELLIGENCE DIFFERENTLY
ReplyDeleteMen and women who have equivalent IQ scores get to those levels of intelligence using different areas of the brain, Richard J. Haier, PhD, and colleagues reported in the January 20 online edition of NeuroImage:
• Women have more white matter and fewer gray matter areas related to IQ than men do.
(The white matter is the tissue through which messages pass between different areas of gray matter within the nervous system. Using a computer network as an analogy, the gray matter can be thought of as the actual computers themselves, whereas the white matter represents the network cables connecting the computers together. The white matter is white because of the fatty substance (myelin) that surrounds the nerve fibers (axons). This myelin is found in almost all long nerve fibers, and acts as an electrical insulation. This is important because it allows the messages to pass quickly from place to place.)
• In men, the strongest correlations between gray matter and IQ are in the frontal and parietal lobes.
• In women, the strongest correlations between gray matter and IQ are in the right frontal lobe and in Broca’s area.
Dr. Haier, a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine, told Neuropsychiatry Reviews that these differences may have some important clinical implications.
Men had 6.5 times more gray matter linked with intellectual functioning, and women had about nine times more white matter linked with intellectual functioning, Dr. Haier reported. “In women, general intelligence is related largely to the white matter, while in men general intelligence is related to gray matter. Perhaps when you get away from general intelligence, to such things as verbal or mathematical ability, there might also be different brain patterns,” he commented.
Haier RJ, Benbow CP. Sex differences and lateralization in temporal lobe glucose metabolism during mathematical reasoning. Dev Neuropsychol. 1995;11:405-414.
Haier RJ, Jung RE, Yeo RA, et al. The neuroanatomy of general intelligence: sex matters. NeuroImage. 2005;25:320-327.
"Next issue, Judaism is a religious and not a race. There are too many Jews not raising their daughters to be religious . They run off to college fornicate, do everything imaginable thing and then seek marriage. Some of my own friends have entrapped men into marriage who later divorced them to marry converts. If you are not keeping the laws of G-D then you deserve the consequences. I am sick and tired of the hypocrisy of rabbis who will not even bother asking are you a virgin, do you light candles,take challah when dealing with women who want to be married."
ReplyDeleteCan somebody make heads or tales of the point in reasoning of this paragragh?
"run off to college fornicate, do everything imaginable thing and then seek marriage."
ReplyDelete"If you are not keeping the laws of G-D then you deserve the consequences. I am sick and tired of the hypocrisy of rabbis who will not even bother asking are you a virgin, do you light candles,take challah when dealing with women who want to be married."
I have experience with two female Christian missionaries who were once hired to work as secular studies teachers in a High School for Jewish girls.
Their goal was to convince Jewish girls that if their own observance was at all imperfect, that they were not qualified to marry a Jewish man or that they have already lost Olam Habah.
This is a common missionary tactic and while it does not lead to conversion in the first generation, it often leads girls off the derech so that their offspring will be ripe for conversion in the future. Christians are very far thinking people.
The missionaries are having an impact because I cannot tell you how many young Jewish women I encounter who are under the mistaken belief that they are not "good" enough to marry for one reason or another that is not part of our tradition.
Ie. "rabbis who will not even bother asking are you a virgin"
"I think that rabbis and Jewish men in general better need to start telling the truth about whether they are respecting their wives decisions to keep mikvah. "
ReplyDeleteI do not understand what you are trying to say in this statement.
A woman purifies herself in the mikveh, removing her niddah status so that the COUPLE may have intimate relations in holiness.
Keeping family laws fosters a man's respect for his wife outside of merely gratifying his physical needs.
Incidentally, a Kinsey report found that married Orthodox Jewish men were among the most sexually active compared to other men in their age groups. For many this survey put the end to the misconception of the prudish Orthodox Jew.
What disturbs me is that you say that you:
"have worked in a referral agency for Jewish women where we frequently got calls of abuse from women who were even being raped in their marriages."
You should have learned in your work, that rape has NOTHING to do with sex!!!
Rape is a violent crime against women. It is a myth that women are raped because men want sex.
Most women are raped by someone they know–a date, an acquaintance, a neighbor, a relative. Most rapes go unreported. Any woman forced into having sex against her wishes is a rape victim. When the rape occurs with a friend or relative, the victim often feels somewhat “responsible” which further increases the injury to the victim.
It is a myth that men rape because they want sex or that they are frustrated because they have limited opportunities for sex.
The motivation for rape is the need to have power and to control. The rapist wants to HURT the woman, not to pleasure himself!!
Forcing a woman to have sex against her will is an act of aggression and violence. The rapist is angry and violent so he uses sex as his weapon with which to HURT the woman who is his victim.
I cannot believe that you ever worked with rape or domestic violence victims!!!
How horrible it would be for a victim of a violent crime to have the person interacting with her to be under the belief that observing Family Laws somehow causes or makes her DESERVING to be a victim of a violent crime!!
How can you say:
"If a woman is going to to keep mikvah her spouse must agree.....If a man will not listen to your desire to keep the family pure what are you to do?"
Are you KIDDING???
You do not write as someone who is Jewish or who is familiar with the Orthodox community. You do not even write as if you are a woman.
You are effectively saying that a woman should make sure that she has her husband's PERMISSION to observe Judaism or else she should expect to be RAPED??
If you were ever employed (volunteer or not) by a Rape or Domestic violence helpline and somehow have such ridiculous beliefs about sex, violence, rape and women, please tell me who you worked for so that I can connect them with a trained therapist who
can educate them about the differences between respectful marital sex, violence, rape and a woman's right to her own body. These concepts are not unique to Orthodox Jewish women!
It's an OUTCRY to say that a woman should:
1. Need her husband's permission to observe Jewish family laws (or that any woman, Jewish or not, married or not), should not have the right to refuse relations if she does not wish to be intimate.
And that without her husband's permission to observe family laws (or abstain from sexual relations):
2. she is deserving to be a victim of a violent crime such as rape or domestic violence abuse.
OUTRAGEOUS!!!