I wrote the following for my Beit Midrash's weekly email, and on reflection I'd like to get feedback from a broader population, so I'm reproducing it here:
Two weeks ago, journalists revealed that Harvey Weinstein, a very influential Hollywood film producer, stands accused of many acts of sexual harassment and assault. The story has been given top coverage on every major news website.
Commenting on Hollywood's abusive culture, Orthodox Jewish actress Mayim Bialik wrote an apparently well-intentioned essay for the New York Times last week, describing her own experiences. Toward the end of the article, she stated, "I still make choices every day as a 41-year-old actress that I think of as self-protecting and wise. I have decided that my sexual self is best reserved for private situations with those I am most intimate with. I dress modestly. I don’t act flirtatiously with men as a policy."
Ms. Bialik also wrote very clearly, "Nothing — absolutely nothing — excuses men for assaulting or abusing women." Nonetheless, she has been attacked by numerous victims of sexual abuse, who claim that she is blaming the victim. Ms. Bialik's message of 'I help protect myself by acting modestly' is understood as alleging that victims must not have acted modestly.
This is not what Ms. Bialik meant, as she has responded. However, I think the fact that people read her comments this way is important. As the Talmud (Bava Metzia 58b) explains, we are guilty of ona'at devarim [verbal abuse] if we convey to sufferers that they are responsible for their own pain, even if we don't mean that.
I think if we are to be honest, we must admit that ideas expressed in Torah can be seen as blaming the victims. The Talmud Yerushalmi (Sanhedrin 2:6) associates Dinah's rape with the fact that she mixed among the people of Shechem. A well-known midrash (Psikta Zutrita to Shemot 2:12) links the rape of Shlomit bat Divri to her friendliness toward an Egyptian slavedriver. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 21a) states that the sages reacted to the rape of Tamar, daughter of King David, by prohibiting seclusion of men with unmarried women. To my mind, these comments of our sages are meant to educate about hazards, not to claim that victims of abuse must have put themselves at risk. But if they are cited without context, or to a sensitive audience, or without complete explanation, these sources come across as indictments of rape victims.
We do need to learn and teach Torah, and halachic sexuality is certainly worth promoting. At the same time, we who learn/teach these texts are obligated to be very careful with our words. As the Talmud (Sanhedrin 107a) quotes King David, "One who commits adultery receives capital punishment, but he enters the next world. One who causes another person to blanch [in shame] in public has no share in the next world." May we learn from the events of the past two weeks; when addressing sensitive matters, even [or especially] when quoting Torah, let us choose our words with extra care.
Showing posts with label Judaism: Torah as weapon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judaism: Torah as weapon. Show all posts
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Defrocking a chassid
[Post I’m reading: Egypt’s new “democracy” wants to destroy Israel, at the Muqata]
So I’m standing on line at passport control with a couple hundred of my closest friends of the past eleven hours, all of us naturally wondering why Monday morning at Ben Gurion saw only 3 lanes open for foreign passports [“We had no idea there were planes coming in!” someone sitting in an office somewhere might explain…], when a youngish traveller brought forward an elderly man in a wheelchair and cut an entire line, dozens of people.
A woman toward the head of the line muttered loudly, and then repeated several times with successively greater amplication, that he should have asked, that he should be ashamed of himself, and that “derech eretz kidmah [sic] latorah” [half-quoting, and somewhat agrammatically altering, the midrash in Avot d’Rabbi Natan that points out that human beings were told to live as a decent society long before they were given the Torah, in order to prepare them for the Torah].
From an emotional standpoint, I agreed with her; perhaps the man in the wheelchair needed a bathroom or some sort of medical care, or couldn’t take being in the chair for the next hour, but who gave them the right to jump the queue without so much as an apology? She should have addressed the young man directly and not simply rabble-roused for the crowd around her, but the complaint itself made sense.
But there was an additional element here, which upset me. The wheelchair-bound man, and the person wheeling him, were chassidim; Skverer, I think. And if I had to make certain stereotype-based generalizations based on dress and tone, I’d guess the woman was right-wing Conservative or left-wing Modern Orthodox. And it seems to me that the complaint was more a product of religious animus than indignation at the chassid’s rudeness.
I’m not excusing people who cut lines; I was as upset as she was, and more so because it was obvious that this would generate chillul HaShem. But her tirade made offensive assumptions about Torah. She could have complained about his behavior without turning Torah into a weapon, without acting as though she had exclusive claim to interpretation of the Torah’s desires.
From my vantage point, the woman was not venting frustration with his behavior; she was delegitimizing him as a Torah-observant Jew.
I sometimes hear observant Jews complain about women who want to wear tallitot or tefillin, saying that the women involved don’t grasp the true nature of these mitzvot, that if they understood what tallit and tefillin were all about then they wouldn’t campaign for the opportunity to wear them. I understand their point – but I don’t necessarily have the right to delegitimize others’ views. And the same should have been true for this woman, standing in line, delegitimizing the view of the chassid who was wheeling the elderly man.
Perhaps he has a different view of Torah and its priorities. Perhaps he felt the people on line would remember מפני שיבה תקום and similar statements about respecting the elderly and their needs. Maybe, as he sees it, דרך ארץ קדמה לתורה means that people who are in line should be automatically understanding of the needs of the elderly, and should not demand apologies for addressing those needs. Or, perhaps, he assumed that people in line would see that he was helping an elderly person and would apply the principle of דן לכף זכות, of judging others favorably.
And she responded by revoking his status as a chassid, so to speak. Uncool, in my book.
So that’s my rant for the morning. Have a great day.
So I’m standing on line at passport control with a couple hundred of my closest friends of the past eleven hours, all of us naturally wondering why Monday morning at Ben Gurion saw only 3 lanes open for foreign passports [“We had no idea there were planes coming in!” someone sitting in an office somewhere might explain…], when a youngish traveller brought forward an elderly man in a wheelchair and cut an entire line, dozens of people.
A woman toward the head of the line muttered loudly, and then repeated several times with successively greater amplication, that he should have asked, that he should be ashamed of himself, and that “derech eretz kidmah [sic] latorah” [half-quoting, and somewhat agrammatically altering, the midrash in Avot d’Rabbi Natan that points out that human beings were told to live as a decent society long before they were given the Torah, in order to prepare them for the Torah].
From an emotional standpoint, I agreed with her; perhaps the man in the wheelchair needed a bathroom or some sort of medical care, or couldn’t take being in the chair for the next hour, but who gave them the right to jump the queue without so much as an apology? She should have addressed the young man directly and not simply rabble-roused for the crowd around her, but the complaint itself made sense.
But there was an additional element here, which upset me. The wheelchair-bound man, and the person wheeling him, were chassidim; Skverer, I think. And if I had to make certain stereotype-based generalizations based on dress and tone, I’d guess the woman was right-wing Conservative or left-wing Modern Orthodox. And it seems to me that the complaint was more a product of religious animus than indignation at the chassid’s rudeness.
I’m not excusing people who cut lines; I was as upset as she was, and more so because it was obvious that this would generate chillul HaShem. But her tirade made offensive assumptions about Torah. She could have complained about his behavior without turning Torah into a weapon, without acting as though she had exclusive claim to interpretation of the Torah’s desires.
From my vantage point, the woman was not venting frustration with his behavior; she was delegitimizing him as a Torah-observant Jew.
I sometimes hear observant Jews complain about women who want to wear tallitot or tefillin, saying that the women involved don’t grasp the true nature of these mitzvot, that if they understood what tallit and tefillin were all about then they wouldn’t campaign for the opportunity to wear them. I understand their point – but I don’t necessarily have the right to delegitimize others’ views. And the same should have been true for this woman, standing in line, delegitimizing the view of the chassid who was wheeling the elderly man.
Perhaps he has a different view of Torah and its priorities. Perhaps he felt the people on line would remember מפני שיבה תקום and similar statements about respecting the elderly and their needs. Maybe, as he sees it, דרך ארץ קדמה לתורה means that people who are in line should be automatically understanding of the needs of the elderly, and should not demand apologies for addressing those needs. Or, perhaps, he assumed that people in line would see that he was helping an elderly person and would apply the principle of דן לכף זכות, of judging others favorably.
And she responded by revoking his status as a chassid, so to speak. Uncool, in my book.
So that’s my rant for the morning. Have a great day.
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