A leading national-religious rabbi, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, has called upon the new Knesset Members to initiate legislation that will help women to find part-time employment. Laws like this, he wrote, will make it easier for mothers to work outside the home and supplement the family’s earnings while maintaining their traditional home-related roles.
Rabbi Eliezer Melamed devoted his weekly column in the popular B'sheva magazine Friday to a discussion of the pros and cons of the modern feminist movement – a delicate subject that most rabbis prefer to avoid tackling head-on in the press. Responding to a reader's queries, Rabbi Melamed pointed to parallels between the current debate on feminism and the controversy around communism in the previous century: just as communism and capitalism have both bad and good aspects, so feminism has both bad and good aspects, he explained.
While the feminist movement has empowered women and allowed them to make contributions to society through various talents that had hitherto been hidden, he said, it also has hurt the Jewish family and eroded “certain feminine traits.” Religious women who identify with the feminist movement are allowing a foreign influence into their lives, he explained, and they often find themselves in conflict with basic Jewish values. Some of them admire feminist leaders who do not represent Torah-based thought and hurl harsh accusations at the representatives of tradition, he added.
Feminism vs. family
Rabbi Melamed opined that if a survey were held, it would most likely find that the more a woman identifies with feminist ideas, the greater the chances that she will be unmarried, or divorced, or that even if married, she will have difficulty building her family. He conceded that there would always be exceptional women who could successfully enjoy both worlds -- career and traditional family life -- but that these are a unique minority.
The Rabbi pointed out that in practice, the advancement of women through “reverse discrimination” often means the advancement of leftists into positions of power. Most religious and traditional women put family values above their career, he noted, whereas secular women put their career first more often. The result of this, he explained, is that “when we pass laws that give preference to women in senior positions and directorates, we are in effect passing a law that gives preferment to the secular Left.”
An idea for legislators
Rabbi Melamed quotes from a letter he received from a 26 year-old-woman, who complained that at present, women who want to work and supplement their family incomes are forced to choose between a high-powered job that leaves little time for the home or not working at all. The other two choices, she said, are to be teachers, for which not everyone is suited, or to get jobs as secretaries or nursery school attendants for which they are overqualified.
The solution, she said, could be to offer employers tax breaks in order to encourage them to hire women in part-time positions, as well as to subsidize day-care centers and kindergartens.
Rabbi Melamed called upon “the new Knesset Members” to act upon the ideas put forth in the anonymous woman's letter – “for the sake of the families, the nation, the economy and the women.”