Jeremy Rosen
Is Judaism Sexist?

Jeremy Rosen - Is Judaism Sexist?

- So ladies and gentlemen, this is a very, very controversial subject. Is Judaism sexist? And the straight answer has to be yes, absolutely, every culture and civilization until relatively recently and still presently is sexist. The question is to what extent, to what degree and what we should do about it? Now the truth of the matter is there has always been disparity, whether it’s disparity between a powerful empire and a less powerful empire between the rich and between the poor, between the aristocrats and the peasants and between male and female. This seems to have been the human condition going back to the caves, if we’ll put it as crudely as that. But of course it’s not so simple, we can look at the Greeks who didn’t give citizenship to women or the Romans who misused women. Not to mention the fact that the Swiss didn’t get a vote for women until 1977, or that during the 50s and the 60s the 1950s and 60s, women couldn’t open bank accounts without the permission of their husbands. So there’s no question that we have been male chauvinist pigs, most of us. There have been some exceptions of course. But I want to look at the evolution, if you like, of the attitude towards women, both the progress, and at the same time the regressions that have taken place since we began as a religious tradition. If you look of course at the Bible, it seems to be a very sexist book ‘cause we keep on talking about God as he or the master, and yet in the opening statement of the Bible, you have a female verb applied to God that is hovering in a female form. And certainly by the time we get to the Kabbalah, a mysticism, the male and the female are interchangeable.

And yet of course, Adam seems to be the guy who takes the decisions and Eve has to be the one who works around it in some way and finds a more subtle way of dealing with things, of course, this could simply be a parable of the different ways of dealing with issues, the straight in your face aggressive male, and the more subtle female. But nevertheless, when we look at the Torah itself, certain things become abundantly clear. And the first thing that becomes abundantly clear is that when it comes to civil laws, civil rights for the first time, for the first time in all the other documents we have of early legal systems, men and women are equal civilly. Definitely they’re not equal when it comes to ritual. And you have this distinction between what we would call male priests and female priests and the coexistence. And we have a difference between the ancient eastern world and the ancient western world. But certainly as far as the Torah is concerned, when it comes to the Torah, the constitution, men and women are expected to come together and be together at Mount Sinai. And at the seven year Hakhel ceremony in which the Torah was repeated or parts of it were repeated for the community, women were part of that, they were not excluded, neither were they excluded from the temple. And it’s only actually, or the tabernacle where the Torah refers to their presence in the tabernacle and around the tabernacle. Only later on does it appear that in the construction of the temple, there was a requirement actually coming from the women who didn’t want to be pushed and handled in the crowded temple courtyards to have a courtyard of their own, but essentially there was no distinction.

And not only that, but because the home was the centre initially of all religious ritual within the home, there was no statement to the effect as far as the Torah is concerned that the man was the boss, and yet clearly in all the cultures that existed at that time, men were the dominant feature in terms of everything that was going on. Oopsie, sorry. So when we look therefore in the broad perspective, there was no distinction. Interestingly enough, there was also a distinction in the Bible between those who were appointed and those who achieved significance through their own personal qualities and charisma. And so whereas priests were male, and you don’t have female priests when it comes to judges or prophets, which were based on charisma, you have of course a famous case as Deborah who was both a judge and a prophetess, you have Miriam who was described as a prophetess, you have women in this significant role, except of course, yes, you have more men than women. And the same thing of course we can apply to the controversial subject of why so many artists in the mediaeval renaissance and post renaissance era were men when now we know there were far more women involved, but they were in the background. And we also know that the Torah was given at a time when polygamy was considered the norm, you could have more than one wife.

And that of course affects so many issues such as who gives the divorce, and whether there’s any choice in divorce. But also what’s interesting is the Torah specifies that women have certain rights within the family. The , the obligation to make sure she’s well clothed, she’s well fed, and interestingly enough that her sexual aspects are being satisfied by the male and that these were grounds in the Torah itself for divorce, and divorce is mentioned in the Torah, but clearly it was a divorce given by men to women and that created a problem. The other problem that the Torah creates is the fact that witnesses, an appearance in court were expected to be male and not female. Now we can understand to some extent why in the ancient world and as why today male don’t want their women to be seen in public or to be challenged in public. This is still the dominant mood in most parts of the Muslim world we get today, where you will notice that the men will wear perfectly normal Western clothes, and yet the women will be expected to wear something much more different and much more covered. And if you say the same thing applies in Judaism, to a point it does, but actually both men and women within Judaism are expected to dress in a modest manner, hence the black clothes of the Haredi world balance if you like the and the head covering of the Haredi world. But there were certain issues that we look back and we see from a sexist point of view are a problem. Most often you will hear people say, “Why is it that a woman in her period is if you like, as the man is banned from sex between them, and whether this implies that they are impure in some way.”

But when you look carefully at the Torah, you see the concept of purity simply applies to when the body is functioning normally. And just as women when their body went through a change, had to go through the mikva and the sense of spiritual purity, so did a male or anybody who was sick and there was body dislocation also had in the same way. So this wasn’t something that was relegating women to a subservient state, even though unfortunately in many societies, and still today, they are. And there are some people and at some stages in Jewish sects, not in the mainstream, women during their period were expected to be in what is called, which of course is an Indian expression and not a Jewish expression. So we have to be very careful when we look at biblical terms of purity and impurity. But there is this challenge without any question which applies also on the male side. This inordinate priority that was given to firstborn males seems to me to be very unfair to the rest of the male population. But that was part of the culture and the ethos at that particular time. What I find interesting is that by the time you get to the Talmudic era, and we are talking about a period before and during the Greek and Roman time and the Persian Islamic period that you get the rabbis of the Talmud making a very, very serious effort and a strong effort to make changes that would accept the balance is somewhat skewed. The most important one I think is with regard to marriage, where according to biblical law, essentially you have sex with a woman and you marry her. And that was the assumption behind the sexual laws of the Torah, and behind the various laws relating to rape.

I find it very interesting that in the Torah, the Torah compares rape to murder, something which to this very day is not built in to the legal system even in Western countries, let alone into Oriental and other countries that are less enlightened. So the rabbis introduced something called a ketubah, and the ketubah, which is a requirement of every Jewish marriage to this day, laid out certain financial obligations. And these financial obligations were obligations on the male to make sure he was taking care of the female, to guarantee that the female’s assets would remain her assets and to be passed on to the next generation as she thought fit, even though the husband had certain rights to the benefits of those assets. And in addition, there were conditions that were allowed to be inserted into the marriage certificate, such as you may not take a second wife, or you may not take a second wife without my approval. All of these were just as much because of the conditions that existed outside of the Jewish world as those within the Jewish world, and above all required female consent. Now, you know and I know that throughout the mediaeval, post mediaeval, even to this day, women are married off for dynastic reasons without consent, although predominantly in the West, consent is now considered to be absolutely required. And not only that, but also when it came to freeing women from husbands and the rights of divorce, women at that stage were given the right to require and demand of divorce, and in fact, if the courts decided she had a right to force the male to abide by the requirement to give her a divorce. These are things that are going to change as we come into contact with other societies that impose certain restrictions.

And we have within the Talmudic era reference to Jewish queens, Salome, Shelamzion, the greatest in my view, queen of the Maccabean period because she was not a warrior and she did bring about peace and reconciliation. You have famous characters in the Talmud, you have Queen Helene who was in charge of her own affairs, and the rabbis paid tribute to, you have great scholars, whether it is Bruriah, have important wealthy women, all of them mentioned, most famous was Martha bat Boethus, mentioned in the Talmud as having control over their affairs both financially and socially. You have however different approaches within the Talmud. So the questions of modesty, where does modesty come into the regard to sex? So there was a division between those rabbis who thought that sex was a very good, healthy, necessary, something to be enjoyed, and those rabbis who took a point of view that sex was something really you had to do out of obligation and treat as an obligation rather than as a pleasure as such. So these issues were raised by the rabbis, as was the very controversial issue of why were women freed from certain religious obligations. And so the rabbis came up with this famous formula which said in essence that women do not have to be bound by any religious commandment linked to time. What they had in mind was this, that if a woman is at home looking after the children or cooking and providing for the home, she can’t suddenly drop the baby and say, “I’m sorry, it’s time to go to the synagogue for a service.” And similarly, the freedoms that she had were restricted by family obligations.

Now the Talmud also recognises there are exceptions. There might be people who don’t want to take on the obligations of the women or indeed the obligations of the male. And whereas exceptions were made as a general rule, they laid down the principle that the primary obligation of women was to the home, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be exceptions, and there was never a period in the Talmudic era, and indeed beyond where women were not allowed to work and to have jobs, and very often careers within that framework of their own, although external societies did impose certain restrictions. But certainly as we move into the mediaeval era, you have women playing a much more dominant part, except that once we come into the mediaeval period, we’re going to come across the very unpleasant attitude that parts of the Christian world are imposed on women and still do to this very day. But the principle of ketuba of securing women’s rights, the question of financially, the question of relieving them from certain obligations in order to prioritise something else were important principles that the rabbi laid down, they also in fact removed certain biblical obligations. So for example, the Bible has this obligation, this right, that if a husband suspects his wife of infidelity lays down that he has already told her not to have anything with a particular man and she ignores the husband’s commands, the husband has the right to bring her to the priest who makes her go through some ancient ordeal because they have to have evidence, and if they don’t have evidence, then they can’t convict anybody. And one of the ways and using the idea of trial by ordeal was something that’s continued and certainly until the 16th, 17th century and still is in parts of the world today. And he would get the woman to come to the priest and she would have to take either confess or take this bitter water in which the priest will say to her, “Take this and if you’ve done wrong, it’ll affect your body and if you haven’t done wrong, you’ll be cleared of anything.” Now this was a right that was given in the Bible to a man to do.

By the Talmud period 2000 years ago, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, leader of the community says, “I can’t allow this to happen. First of all, because so many men are misbehaving, why should they have a right, which the women couldn’t have a right? And besides, according to our understanding, this trial by ordeal was an ordeal for the man as much for the woman.” And so if the man was not a 100% clear in everything, he was going to get into trouble too. So first of all, they tried to restrict it and finally they actually banned it. Yet, still there were issues of the firstborn getting a double portion, issues of disposing of assets. And again, they found and initiated ways of getting round these by simply dividing up your estate before you die or giving assets to children directly instead of leaving it to the randomness of the courts and their decision and their biases. And it’s true equally that in those ancient days, most women were not considered to be scholars. There were occasionally Greek women and Roman women who were scholars, but they were the exception. And in general, if you look at both Greek and Roman culture, they are very demeaning and dismissive of women. And let us not forget again that women were not admitted into the great universities of Britain until the 19th century because they were not considered to be intelligent enough and capable enough and do we not have in our period those people who think women can’t do maths and science because they don’t have the brain for it? The problem with Christianity was that Christianity A, considered sex to be a necessity and not something to be enjoyed. The ideal was celibacy, the papacy was celibate, the priesthood was celibate, women, nuns were covered up and expected to be covered up. And in this world, divorce was forbidden.

And that is why all those examples that were given of leniency of divorce within the Jewish world, by the time you get to the 12th century, you find the Jewish authorities are peddling back and they’re paddling back because they are frightened of the Christian response. And so the right to beat up a recalcitrant husband who didn’t do what was required wasn’t used. Also in the mediaeval period, this was the first time that the Ashkenazi world of Robino Gersen, the first millennium said, “Sorry boys, you can’t have more than one wife. It’s not allowed.” Of course, unfortunately in many communities this was ignored, in the Sephardi community, you could have more than one wife, and people did until the state of Israel banned it, and it has become universally banned to this day. But nevertheless, there were opportunities of having more than one wife. And we find again to the 15th, 16th, and 17th century, that are available now in which people are, the wife is saying, as I mentioned before, “I’m sorry, you can’t get more than one wife without my approval, or you can’t have more than one wife full stop if that’s a deal we’re going to have.” So these opportunities within Jewish law for lenience were there initially, but then were not used except that by the time we get to the mediaeval era, we have a situation in which men are not only in charge, but imposing their will to a greater extent than they did at other times. And so for example, the famous case of the Agunah, that is to say somebody whose husband has disappeared, and we don’t have any evidence that he has disappeared. And Jewish law is always based on evidence, and therefore if he’s not disappeared, how do we know he hasn’t gone on a long business trip to China and hasn’t come back?

One of the ways we dealt with that in the ancient times was that if anybody went away, they had to give their wife a divorce in advance and say, “If I don’t come back by a particular time, you are automatically retroactively divorced.” But that also created certain problems, and what happened if somebody did not give a bill of divorce? How are you going to deal with this? The rabbis initially made this an example of where one witness will do rather than two in order to give people the right to live a new life and get on with their lives. But even then, it was still a problem. Initially in the Talmudic period, the rabbis had a principle that anybody who marries, marries according to rabbinic law, and the rabbis have the right to annul a wedding or to impose a solution. Now why is that not used nowadays? Again, because in the mediaeval period, the pressure was so strong that they didn’t want to use this, they didn’t also want to appear to be too lenient in the face of the Christian world. And so the tradition developed and became ingrained not to take advantage of all the loopholes that the rabbis did in fact have and were in fact on the books. And so today, the fact of the matter is that there is in my view, a tendency of continuing male chauvinism to find excuses for getting around the law when it suits the man. For example, there’s a principle that when you have a rabbinic innovation, although it stands, if you can find a 100 experts to say, “We don’t need to abide by it, we get round the innovation.” Now the restrictions according to rabbinic law, if a woman refuses to accept a divorce, she doesn’t want to accept it, you can’t impose it on her.

These all have to be done by agreement. To this day as a general rule, that applies within the Orthodox world to men and not sufficiently to women, because what you can do is get round the law of having not being able to have more than one wife because that’s a rabbinic law, and if you can find a 100 rabbis to agree, you can get out of the problem. Unfortunately, advantage is taken and you don’t need a 100 rabbis, just find a 100 guys and and sign a document and it gets rounded. So how then did the rabbis as we came to the modern era deal with this issue of divorce? Well, one of the ways that they could do it was by putting somebody in jail and saying, “They’re going to stay in jail until you agree to give a divorce”, which is what has been done in the land of Israel. And men have sat in jail and sat in jail and still refuse to give a divorce. And then you have the question of how do you deal with somebody who’s lost their mind and has gone crazy? And so what has happened is because the rabbis of our generations have not moved fast enough, and one of the reasons why they haven’t moved fast enough of course is because the world around them is going too fast ahead in the direction of throwing out old rules that they are reluctant because fashions change, and so we’ve now come to rely on the courts, the non-Jewish courts to solve the problem of divorce, and very often they impose restrictions and financial fines until somebody decides to make a concession. So here you have a very good example of why it is that there are so many situations in which women find themselves in a disadvantaged position to this very day, despite the fact that tools exist within the constitution to find ways of dealing with it, the modern era in which we live has now brought in a huge other area of if you like, possible change. And this is in the area of ritual.

Now, originally the synagogue was developed simply as a community centre in the marketplaces of the working man, where in the ancient world, men in general had total control over the affairs. If they were bribed enough by a wealthy woman, of course they would make concessions. So the whole idea of prayer is something that originally was very subjective. You did at home by yourself whenever you felt like it. So according to , prayer in the temple was something which was not included. In fact, prayer was at home. The only time there was a prayer in the temple was on the day of atonement when the high priest prayed on behalf of the community. Other times in the temple certain things were said like the shema, but that’s not technically a prayer, that is a recitation from the Torah. So prayer originally was designed for male in a routine, a daily routine that would keep them busy, morning, afternoon, and evening in a routine in a male environment. In addition to this question of the environment was also the question of public prayer, which became something formal after the destruction of the temple, the three prayers that had to then be said in a minyan. This idea did not apply before, and the rabbis decided that a minyan had to be 10 males. So for this reason, the synagogue tended to be a male dominated institution, and both the prayers and the liturgy reflected this, which is why for example, in the most famous problem that we have in liturgy today is the issue of the morning blessing in which we thank God for not making me a pagan, not making me a slave and not making me a woman.

If you go back to the origins in the Talmud, you can see that the origin was to exclude not women so much as the , the person who was not a scholar and as women were not a scholar in those days, they were excluded. And yet many of us feel very much offended by having to say every day, thank God for not making me a woman. And there are people who prefer the woman’s prayer which says, “Thank God for making me the way I am. I may not be intelligent or too intelligent or whatever it is.” And in fact, there is a halachic discussion, and halachic discussion says that you should not say a prayer if you find it offensive. But then the question is, “Well, then should we change the liturgy altogether?” And we should change the liturgy to be not male orientated, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but to include females in that liturgical structure. And this is an area where we are still debating, like so many issues, whereas the conservative and the reform movement and some of the left wings of modern orthodoxy have already made the decision to go in that direction. Normally the conservative churches and the conservative synagogues prefer not to change, and they prefer not to change for two reasons, one of them is this sense that if the world is moving too fast to make too many changes too quickly, then maybe that’s not the best way to go. We should go slowly if we are going to go at all and we should go by consensus rather than taking the law into our own hands, which is an interesting issue where we have a religion and a tradition where we do take exceptional circumstances and individuals into consideration. So now the Jewish world is divided between those who want to change the liturgy that goes on in the synagogues in order to make it more egalitarian and those who either compromise or resist.

Now this rather like politics is an area where you have different points of view, different pressure groups, each pressure group thinking it is right, and the other one is wrong and pushing hard either in favour of change or against change. And it’s right that this debate takes place, it’s right that this discussion takes place, but one has to reconcile the fact that there are different opinions. And so for example, one opinion is to say, “Look, instead of fiddling around with an ancient tradition, we should set up alternative traditions to go parallel instead of censoring Shakespeare to take out all the sexist and negative texts, we leave the text in Shakespeare, but we prefer to add alternative texts, alternative narratives.” And so the same thing with the Torah. If we are going to start censoring the Torah and taking words out and removing any male reference to God and substituting it to a neutral one, how far do we go? How far do we go to including all the different identities that people have nowadays? So we can recognise these identities in how we live and respond now, but that doesn’t mean to say we have to change a text from the past in order to accommodate it. And the alternative then is to set up the alternative. And just as that applies to text and literature and to not fooling around with a liturgy, set up an alternative version where you can have whatever liturgy you want and give people choices. And I am all in favour. I’ve been present at female services and I have sat at the back so to speak, and I think having choice is very important. I think there are female forms of spirituality that should be recognised and should be encouraged and shouldn’t be, it’s claimed, decided they are not legitimate.

And similarly when it comes to studying, there was a time in the Talmudic period where some rabbis were in favour of women studying and some were not. But in a world, a Christian and and Islamic world where generally this was frowned upon and women were not encouraged, that began to influence Judaism. And despite the fact that there were individual women like the daughters of Raji who were great scholars who knew a lot, nevertheless, and both in Talmud and beyond, and nevertheless there are still biases today. And yet what is happening today is that there are institutions of learning where women reach the highest level. And not only that, but there are women religious authorities where in Israel today and mainly in Israel, surprisingly it’s advanced more within the role of women in the Orthodox world than outside where you can, when you go to Aberdeen in a court of law, you can ask for a woman expert to give you an opinion. You have women pleaders in religious courts, you have women advocates, you have ultra-orthodox women who are playing a significant role in commerce. And in Israel particularly, they have a vote because they need their votes, even though at this moment they are still being excluded from the elite legislature of the Knesset in the Haredi world that you have women with their head covering an orthodox within the Knesset and functioning as anybody else would of any of the other sex.

And so in short, I cannot for one minute deny the male chauvinism of history that’s affected us all and the reluctance of the, shall we say, the right wing Haredi community to move as quickly as I would like them to see them move on matters that would make life easier without having to rely on non-Jewish courts. I think all the evidence shows that change is happening within the Haredi world and beyond, if not fast enough. And I think we humans are very impatient. We expect something that has been going on for 1000s and 1000s of years suddenly to change direction, and it doesn’t, it becomes an ongoing process of negotiation. And so in this sense, I’m optimistic about the developments. I recognise there are still limitations. I think we are still in a male dominated sexist world, but one which I hope is changing and will continue to change. And so if you want to say that Judaism is sexist, I would say so is everybody else practically in this world, and the mitigating circumstances, I hope that I’ve been able to point out, there have been changes, there are ongoing changes, there are as much influence by external circumstances, by internal circumstances. And I want to end on this note. One of the reasons that the Haredi world is so reluctant to make changes is because they rightly say the values of the secular world are values we are strongly opposed to, these are the values that enabled the non-Jewish world to ignore the plight of the Jews, to ignore us, to persecute us, to continue to dismiss us with ongoing antisemitism. Why should we pay any attention to any new moral development or attitudes that come from that world?“ The trouble is they’re throwing the baby out with the bath water because ironically one of the reasons why the Haredi world has done so well is because of the concept of social welfare. And that comes from a totally secular socialist, atheist society and its values, and yet when it suits them, they’ll adopt it, and when it doesn’t, they won’t. I’m afraid this is a problem of human nature. And on that point, I’ll conclude and turn to the questions some of you may have to put to me. I hope you do and I hope we’re going to have an interesting discussion on this subject.

Q&A and Comments:

So let me start with that saying. Lorna says, "I know you’re going to be exonerating Jesus of anything negative in advance.” Oh yes. Well, I hope my lecture has proved you wrong. So Lorna, I hope you were going to sign in and tell me that I wasn’t so one-sided.

Q: Romain, “Explain the implications of Hashem, is he in the Torah and Psalms?”

A: Well, everybody in the ancient world talked about God primarily as a he. In the ancient eastern world, there was God as a she. And you see that in various reflections. But nevertheless it is true that until our day, the king was considered to be the boss. The man was the boss. But you don’t have to take that literally, you can treat it as a poetic phenomenon of a particular period when everybody did that. And it wasn’t meant to exclude. And even if you want to say it gave men priority, as I hope I’ve shown that in the Torah, women have a tremendously significant and important role. It’s interesting, another point I should have mentioned is that in the Talmud you have those opinions that are positive about women and spirituality, and those that are negative. But also in the Talmud you have a difference between those opinions that come from rural communities and those that come from urban communities, those that come from educated communities and those that come from less educated communities.

Q: So what about the controversial issue of and husbands with ?

A: Well, I hope I’ve dealt with that, but if I haven’t, come back to me and I’ll answer it again.

Q: “Am I correct”, says Harriet, “that you are not drawing an equivalence between sickness and menstruation?”

A: Oh, absolutely I’m not. I’m merely saying that there are transitions in a body and the transition of a body was something that was marked, and marked with dignity and marked with holiness. Might not be a covenant of to separate? No, because when we talk about to separate, like havdalah separating the holy from the non holy, we’re not saying one is bad and the other is good. We are saying one is different, there’s room for both.

Leslie asks, “Perhaps LD, you should invite a feminist rabbinic view of this topic. You are a mayor, Orthodox rabbi.” Yes, I don’t see why not. I think we should have as many different of views as possible.

Shelly says, “My son is involved in what I would call neo paganism, and he told me that menstruating women are not allowed to participate in sweat lodge ceremonies.” Well, yes, and that’s a feature of many cultures, of many traditions. It’s not a feature of ours. For example, in some Sephardi communities, Oriental communities, there’s the idea that worn in a period can’t touch a safer Torah. But that’s not the , that’s not Jewish law. We can perfectly touch things, other objects. We are encouraged during the period not to have sex. That’s a different matter.

Q: Philip says, “May a man marry a woman who he has previously divorced?”

A: Interesting point that. The Halakha says, “If this woman has not married anybody else, you may marry her back. But if she has married somebody else, you can’t.” And that like many issues such as issues of , of who is can’t marry whom, there are ways around many of these laws. But that happens to be the case.

Q: Susan, “Since the Tamub was written by men, isn’t it sexist by definition?”

A: Yes, Susan. Like every, every single document until probably about 50 years ago.

Q: Louise Sweet. “Is the interpretation of prayer with gratitude that man was not born with a woman?”

A: I think I’ve dealt with that already. But again, if you think I haven’t dealt back, come back again, and at the end of this, I will repeat it when there’s some question that I’ve not over already dealt with. You mentioned , she was a great scholar who taught lots of people, male and female. So yes, let’s get back to that. Contemporary English, if X isn’t true, I’ll eat my words, clearly Torah derived. That’s an excellent point.

Q: “Did women have more than one husband at the same time?” Says Ruth Lewis.

A: No, you couldn’t have more than one husband at the same time. This was again a difference between what women could do and men couldn’t do. Some people say that this is because you know the woman is the mother, but you don’t always know who the father is. And if you have multiple fathers, they didn’t have the sort of science we have now of being able to do genetic testing, and so that was one of the reasons why.

Q: “Rabbi, why can a Cohen not marry a divorcee? But I think a divorce Cohen can marry an available woman.”

A: Hindu, this is another example of something that I think is totally out of date. We don’t know for certain who the priests are, the priesthood that’s maintained today, is maintained on the basis of custom from 2000 years ago. It’s interesting that although the Torah and the Gomorrah, the Talmud says that technically a kohen cannot marry a divorcee, it actually also says that if a kohen did marry a divorcee, that marriage counts. Whereas if then any of the other band marriages take place, they are not recognised as marriages if a brother marries a sister. Whereas if a high a priest marries, that marriage is accepted as a marriage. Now most people, most religious alter orthodox people don’t want to take advantage of that nowadays. I happen to think they should. And that’s another example of where I think change should and could and hopefully will come.

Heather says, “Increasingly intriguing, the husband is meant to support his wife and children. Far from the situation in Israel where the breadwinner were almost exclusively wives. Now you are talking about in the Haredi community where women go out and work in order to support their husbands as scholars, which in one way is no different to the fact that in many universities and colleges around the world today, you do still have women working while their husbands qualify and get a job.” So it’s not a completely nonsensical situation. Most Haredi women are pleased to have that role because their attitude towards study is very significant. But also within the Haredi community, there are a lot of men who are making a tremendous amount of money and they are the main breadwinners. And probably there are as many Haredi men who are supporting their families as there are women supporting their families. Because even though they might in Israel particularly not be able to get a job and they don’t go into the army, the fact is that for example in America, most Hasidic men are told after marriage and maybe a couple of years of study to go out and get a job. So you know you are listening to too much propaganda and not hearing the full story of what goes on within the Haredi world, in the same way that people say everybody in the Haredi world without having an education, “How can they earn a living?” Well, the fact is that if you have a Haredi education, which sharpens your brain, you can do brilliantly using the internet to buy and sell on the internet, to invest, and indeed to qualify as lawyers, or go into real estate and do things like that. Which anybody who knows the Haredi community, whether it’s in America or in Israel will know there’s a lot of this going on and not to know about it is not to get the full picture Marilyn.

Q: “In the UK, decree absolute can be delayed by the civil authorization until it gets been granted. Of course the woman has to know about this legislation.”

A: That’s right. But again, that’s an example of where we’ve come to rely on the secular courts to deal with something that I think we should be dealing ourselves.

Philip says, “The made me the way I am. That’s a prayer I like. I prefer that one, and I think that’s the one one should say. And I think that if there is something that you don’t like, don’t say it.

Yudah says, "The male minion should be abolished.” And again, with all due respect, I don’t think it should be abolished. I think you should set up alternatives. And there are alternatives, particularly in Israel, many more in Israel than there are elsewhere where you have combinations and alternatives. So I’m not in favour necessarily of abolishing, I’m afraid in favour of adding.

Shelly, “I can see a polygamy would be useful for women in a situation like two world wars where so many men in manageable age where soldiers died and many women are unable to men and have children. Not ideal, but maybe better than being alone.” I can see that argument too. And in my view, if a person wants to make a decision affecting their lives, they should do that. Just don’t expect everybody else to agree and don’t expect to change the system. Systems change slowly, as we see with the Supreme Court in America can swing one way or another. So if you are in, I’ll give you another example, you may think this is a strange example, but I once knew a situation in the Rabbinate where a quadriplegic Jew was happy to marry civilly, a non-Jewish nurse who was prepared to take care of him. And although I couldn’t marry them, I could tell 'em I approve of your relationship. So sometimes even if the law makes it a difficulty, individuals have the right to make their own choices. And I approve of that. There are many instances that we are not allowed in Haredi buses, appalling. I completely disapprove of that. But there are other ways of getting around and I happen to think there should be alternatives for people who want alternatives. But yes, I don’t approve of not allowing a woman to sit on a bus, I think that is quite unreasonable and I don’t think we should accept that. Rita, thank you.

Q: Judith says, “When were women told to sit separately for men in the back or the side of the synagogue?”

A: The first example of that really in a sense doesn’t appear till mediaeval times. And remember in mediaeval times, men and women were very much segregated. So the idea of sitting separately develops with the idea of synagogues. Now synagogues are relatively recent in our history. They date back roughly 2000 years, although some were there not as synagogues before that in Babylon. And in those environments, the whole world around was segregated, both in the mosque, to this day there are segregations, as in churches, there were segregations, and Judaism borrowed the norms from outside rather than claim that this was originally there on Mount Sinai when there’s no evidence in the Bible that they were segregated at Mount Sinai or at any other time. So this is a product of a different environment. “In Israel, when pray at the wall, they pray at the wall”, and even where I don’t see where else you’ve said, so I’m going back to that, if you want to clarify, Miriam.

Maxine, “It took a visit to Israel for me to realise the kindness of the compulsory mikva. I would appreciate the mikva being offered to me is if I were living in a hot place without enough water for everybody to have a bath.” Maxine, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. So perhaps you’d like to explain and clarify.

Miriam goes on to say, “Especially designed area apart from the Orthodox area, they’re physically attacked by Haredi for daring to do this, something they assisted.” I find that quite exceptionable, quite unacceptable. I find the behaviour of those little fanatics, everything I despise in that world as I do people who throw stones, as I do people who attack priests of another religion. I’m afraid in every community you have your fanatics. And I do agree that the religious authorities ought to do more to reign them in. But unfortunately in every religion, in every part of the world, religious authorities have limits to what they can achieve. And so, you know, I’ve come across cardinals in the Christian Church who’ve said, “We’ve tried our best to root out antisemitism amongst our priests and we have failed.” So I accept that this is a problem, I wish it wasn’t, and if I had my way, I’d put them all in jail. Do you imagine a woman wishing to be rabbis will come about? Well, it depends what you mean by a rabbi. You’ve already got women with a title of one sort or another who are teaching, who are lecturing, who are playing a very important role in orthodox synagogues. They are not conducting services which are conducted by men, but they can conserve, they can conduct services for women. So if you define the job as a rabbi, as a teacher, which I do, and that was the original meaning, of course they can become a rabbi, if you are using it in a sense where ritually, they do the same things as men, that hasn’t yet come about. “Soldiers on duty, quite appalling.” I dunno what you mean by soldiers on duty.

Q: “You said something before in Israel, I won’t pray at the wall evening. You are referring to that.” Sorry, Miriam, I don’t understand the question. Was the Shekhinah female aspect of God?

A: Well, yes, now you are into Kabbalah. And Shekhinah is another way of talking about the divine presence, which is female. In the Kabbalah, in the kabbalistic system, male and females are a feature of the male and the female. The male has a female element, the female has a male element. And in the 10 sefirot, which are the vehicle of God’s communication, to us, that communication is bisexual. And that is a fundamental principle of Jewish mysticism. Now that doesn’t mean to say that when it comes to rituals, when it comes to coming together in communities, there isn’t segregation. The reason for that segregation is not necessarily if you like one of superior or inferior, although often it turns out that way, it’s more a matter of recognising the different spaces, a female space and a male space, just as there can be different atmospheres and different spaces, a safe space in the world in which we live today. And so just as nowadays people claim safe spaces, in those days, women could also claim safe spaces.

Q: Harriet says, “Apparently Israel education quality data do not rank highly. Is that the consequence of religious education that’s set on women in particular?”

A: Well, you know, no, I think the problem is in the state system, which is terribly underfunded. In fact, if you look at the religious schools, the religious schools have a much higher standard, both the modern religious and the non-religious. And it depends on what curriculum you’re talking about. The intellectual ability of men and women in the Haredi world of learning is phenomenal. But it’s not necessarily in areas that the secular world value. So the, it’s true that in the secular world, in the religious world, people are poor, but then the religious world takes care or gives free education to everybody within the religious communities. So there’s again, a disconnect between what religious education does. I have to say that having graduated in philosophy from Cambridge University, I found the intellectual demands of going to yeseva studying as an adult far greater than the pressure, intellectual pressure of philosophy at Cambridge.

“In a typical neolithic society lived in mixed settled agriculture grazing away from home, there was a clear necessary necessity for separate roles imposed by relative immobility of young women nursing children. Such necessity remained enforced well beyond the bronze age into the modern period.” Well, there’s a counter-argument and the counter-argument goes this, in agricultural societies where women played an important part in skinning the animals, in producing the bread, in and producing exports, weaving and doing things like that, women played a very important role. Whereas in urban societies, women tended to end up in the hareem. They ended to end up in these closed societies where they were locked away from the rest of society. And so many of the opinions in favour of women come from agricultural societies, and many of the places where women are supposed to be inferior under control of men were urban.

Q: “In the Haredi world, the question is, is it true that generally schools don’t offer girls school leaving exams, they’re unable to go to university? Our young Haredi women now encouraged to study further after leaving school.”

A: Well, look, it is quite true to say that girls did not have the same intellectual demands in the Haredi world as they did of men in the sense that their curriculum was restricted to certain areas. But in those areas, for example, areas of biblical study, commentaries, analysis, the standards were incredibly high. And women came out with tremendous advantages, which did give them the ability to do extremely well. Many of them went into education and, but many have gone into other areas. Now Haredi women were not encouraged to go to universities where they would mix with people who were less religious, in an atmosphere which would be antagonistic to religion, but now that’s happening with men too, now in the United States because more and more universities are making Jews feel uncomfortable. There’s a trend even in the non-Haredi community now, to send your daughters and sons to Jewish universities and to Jewish centres of education precisely because the atmosphere outside is so uncomfortable. That’s also one of the reasons why the orthodox world was always unhappy about women in the army because women in the army were subjected to armies too, to male interference. And if you think I’m exaggerating, look at the cases in the United States of America where women serve in the army, where they are constantly being harassed and sexually abused by men. So I understand the desire of parents to protect their children, and yet, as I mentioned before, you now have Haredi women studying to the highest possible level.

Q: “Was there a woman’s courtyard in the temple area?”

A: There was, there’s called the Ezras Nashim, which was called initially the area of women’s temple. But there was also a kind of a platform created for women on the request of women so that they would be kept apart from men rubbing up against them in a crowded, very crowded arena, like a rock concert.

Q: “How do binary, non-binary prime agendas in language affect today’s discussion?”

A: Well, you know, they should affect our discussion very much because this is a phenomenon we have to take into consideration and respect. But there is a difference between respecting and providing and facilitating whatever people need and taking away something. So once again, I’m not in favour of taking away, I’m in favour of adding.

Q: “If a woman becomes a male, which a Jewish religion would accept that person to be the 10th man of a minion?”

A: Well, you see, if you go back to the time of the Talmud, there were different categories, there was male, female and there was also hydrogenous, androgynous rather. And the androgen was a legitimate character that was given status and respect within the community. And therefore I think this is grounds for saying we should respect whatever the gender is. If there is a question then of safe space, then we have to create the safe spaces for those genders. I think that then comes to the end of everything. And so at that, I will say goodbye, and thank you very much for listening.