The feminists? rapid infiltration into the national-religious community continues to astound me. In the past couple of years the Hatzofe, Nekuda and Makor Rishon religious publications have published literally dozens of pro-feminist articles. Even the Arutz-7 radio station now broadcasts ads for the radical Kolech organization. If that weren't enough, the head of the Emuna women's organization recently declared herself a feminist and Hatzofe tells us (proudly!) that one in three religious girls now prefers to go to the army (where they can learn to kill and maim) instead of doing national service. As feminism has swept the secular world in the last generation, it is now sweeping the religious one in ours. But shouldn't a discussion be held before the religious community rushes to embrace feminism wholeheartedly?
The feminists main claim is that women are treated unequally to men. In what way do they say women are unequal? Because women are not proportionally represented in all the things men traditionally have done they say women are discriminated against. Feminists never consider demanding equal male representation in traditional female roles as these tasks are, to them, obviously useless.
I first became suspicious of feminism when I was visiting a friend's house and saw the feminist book Machiavelli for Women lying on a book shelf. Interesting, I thought, a book by the foremost advocate of domination by power written specifically for women. What would women possibly want to learn from this expert on the politics of intimidation and cut-throat tactics?
I admit I was naive back then. I thought a movement that called itself feminism would naturally be promoting feminine values, not masculine ones. But the more I looked into it, the more I noticed that "being equal" according to the feminists meant acting like a male.
For example, with clothing. Beginning with the advent of feminism in the 1960s, Western women began forsaking the female dress for male pants. This trend of women dressing like men is now spreading through the religious community. In contrast Western men have not started wearing dresses. Men wearing dresses? Yes - at least half the world's male population dress this way. In the East, the smock is the typical garb of the male. The East, which puts the spiritual before the material, naturally goes to the opposite extreme and puts the female before the male.
In the Hasidic world, we also find the opposite extreme. There, it is the men who dress like women. Many Hasidim wear dress-like smocks. However, no Hasidic women dress like men. They all wear dresses. In fact, it could be argued that Haredi society, where the man stays home and learns and the woman supports the family, is the ultimate expression of feminism. The only portion of Israeli society that still respects traditional, gender-specific attire are the national religious.
In keeping with its masculine agenda, feminism naturally lauds the traditional male domain of the workplace. Hard to believe today, but until the 1960s, the majority of Western women did not work outside the home. This all changed with the advent of feminism and its preference of workplace over home. As Kolech puts it, they demand "equality in the workplace". Because, as everyone knows, what is important in life is having a career, making money and having power. What the world really needs is more lawyers, computer programmers and engineers. Writing computer code or suing somebody for a million dollars is obviously more important than raising children, nurturing them and giving them love.
In truth, it is easy to sympathize with the feminists. Living in a Western-oriented society, where the male role is celebrated and the woman's denigrated, many women naturally feel that the only way to achieve equality is to "be a man". As the saying goes - "If you can't beat them, join them." But, by accepting the male value system of what is important in life, women ultimately do much deeper harm to their status than good.
And what about to society? What happens to a society when its women abandon the traditional inner, female world of the home and child-raising in favor of the outer, male world of money, career and power? What happens in a society in which both men and women act like men? In short, what are the consequences of the masculine movement?
Since the male is by far the more violent sex, one would expect a society that demands that all its members, both male and female, act like males - to be much more violent. This is, in fact, exactly what has happened. Professor Francis Fukuyama, who received his doctorate from Harvard University, tracks the destructive effects of feminism on the Western world in his book The Great Disruption.
In the past fifty years in the US, the number of women between the ages of 20-40 working outside the home has risen from 37% to 76%. In the United Kingdom, this went from 40% to 75%, and in Sweden, from 38% to 79%. The resulting effect on the social fabric of these societies has been devastating. Violent crime rates in the US, England and Sweden have skyrocketed some 700% between 1950 and 1996. From about 100 incidents per 100,000 to about 700. The same goes for theft rates. Between 1950-1996, theft rates rose 500% in the US, 400% in England, and 300% in Sweden. Rape and sexual abuse against women has also risen dramatically along with the rise of feminism.
The only countries that have managed to escape the modern crime and violence wave are Eastern countries. Korea, for instance, continues to experience low rates of violent crime and theft. What is the reason? The majority of Korean women do not work outside the home. Korean women labor force participation has risen only 6% in the past 37 years from 34% in 1963 to only 40 % in 1990.
As the feminists laud the outer world of the workplace, it naturally denigrates the inner world of the family and home. As such, the only reference to the family in Kolech's list of its conference topics is a negative - "Violence in the Family". According to the warped vision of Kolech, the family is, of course, a place of violence.
Unfortunately for Kolech, all the major studies on the subject show the exact opposite. The family is the best protection against violence. For example, a study by the Family Trust of Britain found that children living with both natural parents are half as likely to suffer abuse as those living with only one parent. Children living with single mothers are up to 2.3 times as likely to suffer abuse and those living with their mother and a father substitute are up to 5 times as likely to suffer abuse. A US Health and Human Services study found that single parent children are almost twice as likely to suffer abuse. According to one Canadian study, children living with a step-parent are 40 times as likely to suffer abuse.
Being a mother, according to the feminists, is wimpy. Women who choose to stay at home raising and nurturing children are dismissed as weak and submissive. Most importantly, they make no money from their work, which is, of course, the real measure of importance. A career is therefore to be preferred. But if Mommy is out all day making big bucks, then who is bringing up baby? The answer is, of course, daycare. And what are the effects of daycare? What happens if during the most formative years of a child's life, the mother is not there?
The most comprehensive study ever carried out on the effects of daycare on children was done by the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development. It followed more than 1,300 children in 10 US cities. Dr. Jay Belsky, who led the study, summed up its conclusions this way: "We found indisputably and unambiguously that the more time children spend in daycare the more likely they are to be aggressive." The study found that the more time children spent in daycare, the more likely they were to get into fights, bully other kids and be mean. Should we really be surprised? As one writer put it, a child and a parent are bound eternally by blood and destiny, while a daycare worker is doing a job.
Kolech's anti-motherhood agenda is, in fact, only following in the footsteps of that of the state. Last year, our leaders implemented a special housewife tax of 70 shekels per month, to punish women for the crime of staying at home with their children. The State of Israel is also the only country in the Western world that has drafts women into the army.
The Kolech platform states solemnly that "their first obligation is to halacha". They must have been laughing on the floor when they wrote those lines. The Torah forbids women to wear men's clothing, yet the Kolech women are silent on this bizarre phenomenon in the religious community. The Rambam states explicitly that it is forbidden for women to learn Gemara, yet Kolech in fact encourages this trend. Can women who completely ignore the halacha continue to call themselves Orthodox?
Those who belittle motherhood as weak soon discover its brute strength. As one writer put it, while a man's job is to teach children how to survive physically in the world, the woman's is to teach children morality. What happens in the inner realm of child-rearing ultimately becomes the prime factor in shaping our society. This, and not a "career", is truly the most powerful position in the social structure. A society that does not teach its children morality is plagued with ever-increasing nihilism and violence and ultimately destroys itself. Against its will, Israeli society is about to discover the price of denigrating motherhood.
Before it gives in completely to feminist demagoguery, it would also be wise for the religious community to remember that its long history of imitating the secular one has not been a very successful one. When the secularists promised that communism and socialism would bring utopia, the religious rushed to establish the religious kibbutz movement. Only after it became clear that communism murdered tens of millions of innocents and socialism destroyed the foundations of the economy, did they admit failure.
In our own day, the left-wing Meimad party jumped on the Oslo bandwagon, promising peace throughout the Middle East if only Israel would surrender half her territory to terrorists. Only after they succeeded in increasing Arab terror a hundredfold, leading to the murder of over a thousand Jews, did anyone in Meimad begin to realize that they might have made a mistake. After these enormous successes with the secular "solutions" for the economy and peace, does the religious community really want to implement the secular "solution" for the family?
Numerous studies show observant families suffer significantly less than secular ones from alcoholism, divorce, drug abuse and violence. The secularization of the religious community will only lead to the admission of all the problems of the secular world into their homes. Is this what the religious community wants?
I was taught that the religious community believed in the unity of the secular and religious worlds, between the materialism of the West and the spirituality of the East. Does this new favoring of the West's materialistic secular viewpoint signal an end of the national religious community?
It?s not too late to stop the feminist disaster, but several steps must be taken immediately. First, the religious community must stop its denial of the destructive effects of feminism. Secondly, newspapers that claim to be religious must stop giving a forum to the feminists? radical views. Why are religious newspapers espousing secular values anyway? Furthermore, the women of Kolech must be told that religious girls do not need to be embarrassed by their femininity and that women do not have to act like men to be equal to them. Our girls must be taught to be proud they are female. Real equality for women will come when society respects them for what they are - women. And not by respecting them for how well they can imitate males. As William Bennett, former American Secretary of Housing and author of the book The Broken Hearth put it, if we want to save our society from collapse, we really have no choice.
The feminists main claim is that women are treated unequally to men. In what way do they say women are unequal? Because women are not proportionally represented in all the things men traditionally have done they say women are discriminated against. Feminists never consider demanding equal male representation in traditional female roles as these tasks are, to them, obviously useless.
I first became suspicious of feminism when I was visiting a friend's house and saw the feminist book Machiavelli for Women lying on a book shelf. Interesting, I thought, a book by the foremost advocate of domination by power written specifically for women. What would women possibly want to learn from this expert on the politics of intimidation and cut-throat tactics?
I admit I was naive back then. I thought a movement that called itself feminism would naturally be promoting feminine values, not masculine ones. But the more I looked into it, the more I noticed that "being equal" according to the feminists meant acting like a male.
For example, with clothing. Beginning with the advent of feminism in the 1960s, Western women began forsaking the female dress for male pants. This trend of women dressing like men is now spreading through the religious community. In contrast Western men have not started wearing dresses. Men wearing dresses? Yes - at least half the world's male population dress this way. In the East, the smock is the typical garb of the male. The East, which puts the spiritual before the material, naturally goes to the opposite extreme and puts the female before the male.
In the Hasidic world, we also find the opposite extreme. There, it is the men who dress like women. Many Hasidim wear dress-like smocks. However, no Hasidic women dress like men. They all wear dresses. In fact, it could be argued that Haredi society, where the man stays home and learns and the woman supports the family, is the ultimate expression of feminism. The only portion of Israeli society that still respects traditional, gender-specific attire are the national religious.
In keeping with its masculine agenda, feminism naturally lauds the traditional male domain of the workplace. Hard to believe today, but until the 1960s, the majority of Western women did not work outside the home. This all changed with the advent of feminism and its preference of workplace over home. As Kolech puts it, they demand "equality in the workplace". Because, as everyone knows, what is important in life is having a career, making money and having power. What the world really needs is more lawyers, computer programmers and engineers. Writing computer code or suing somebody for a million dollars is obviously more important than raising children, nurturing them and giving them love.
In truth, it is easy to sympathize with the feminists. Living in a Western-oriented society, where the male role is celebrated and the woman's denigrated, many women naturally feel that the only way to achieve equality is to "be a man". As the saying goes - "If you can't beat them, join them." But, by accepting the male value system of what is important in life, women ultimately do much deeper harm to their status than good.
And what about to society? What happens to a society when its women abandon the traditional inner, female world of the home and child-raising in favor of the outer, male world of money, career and power? What happens in a society in which both men and women act like men? In short, what are the consequences of the masculine movement?
Since the male is by far the more violent sex, one would expect a society that demands that all its members, both male and female, act like males - to be much more violent. This is, in fact, exactly what has happened. Professor Francis Fukuyama, who received his doctorate from Harvard University, tracks the destructive effects of feminism on the Western world in his book The Great Disruption.
In the past fifty years in the US, the number of women between the ages of 20-40 working outside the home has risen from 37% to 76%. In the United Kingdom, this went from 40% to 75%, and in Sweden, from 38% to 79%. The resulting effect on the social fabric of these societies has been devastating. Violent crime rates in the US, England and Sweden have skyrocketed some 700% between 1950 and 1996. From about 100 incidents per 100,000 to about 700. The same goes for theft rates. Between 1950-1996, theft rates rose 500% in the US, 400% in England, and 300% in Sweden. Rape and sexual abuse against women has also risen dramatically along with the rise of feminism.
The only countries that have managed to escape the modern crime and violence wave are Eastern countries. Korea, for instance, continues to experience low rates of violent crime and theft. What is the reason? The majority of Korean women do not work outside the home. Korean women labor force participation has risen only 6% in the past 37 years from 34% in 1963 to only 40 % in 1990.
As the feminists laud the outer world of the workplace, it naturally denigrates the inner world of the family and home. As such, the only reference to the family in Kolech's list of its conference topics is a negative - "Violence in the Family". According to the warped vision of Kolech, the family is, of course, a place of violence.
Unfortunately for Kolech, all the major studies on the subject show the exact opposite. The family is the best protection against violence. For example, a study by the Family Trust of Britain found that children living with both natural parents are half as likely to suffer abuse as those living with only one parent. Children living with single mothers are up to 2.3 times as likely to suffer abuse and those living with their mother and a father substitute are up to 5 times as likely to suffer abuse. A US Health and Human Services study found that single parent children are almost twice as likely to suffer abuse. According to one Canadian study, children living with a step-parent are 40 times as likely to suffer abuse.
Being a mother, according to the feminists, is wimpy. Women who choose to stay at home raising and nurturing children are dismissed as weak and submissive. Most importantly, they make no money from their work, which is, of course, the real measure of importance. A career is therefore to be preferred. But if Mommy is out all day making big bucks, then who is bringing up baby? The answer is, of course, daycare. And what are the effects of daycare? What happens if during the most formative years of a child's life, the mother is not there?
The most comprehensive study ever carried out on the effects of daycare on children was done by the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development. It followed more than 1,300 children in 10 US cities. Dr. Jay Belsky, who led the study, summed up its conclusions this way: "We found indisputably and unambiguously that the more time children spend in daycare the more likely they are to be aggressive." The study found that the more time children spent in daycare, the more likely they were to get into fights, bully other kids and be mean. Should we really be surprised? As one writer put it, a child and a parent are bound eternally by blood and destiny, while a daycare worker is doing a job.
Kolech's anti-motherhood agenda is, in fact, only following in the footsteps of that of the state. Last year, our leaders implemented a special housewife tax of 70 shekels per month, to punish women for the crime of staying at home with their children. The State of Israel is also the only country in the Western world that has drafts women into the army.
The Kolech platform states solemnly that "their first obligation is to halacha". They must have been laughing on the floor when they wrote those lines. The Torah forbids women to wear men's clothing, yet the Kolech women are silent on this bizarre phenomenon in the religious community. The Rambam states explicitly that it is forbidden for women to learn Gemara, yet Kolech in fact encourages this trend. Can women who completely ignore the halacha continue to call themselves Orthodox?
Those who belittle motherhood as weak soon discover its brute strength. As one writer put it, while a man's job is to teach children how to survive physically in the world, the woman's is to teach children morality. What happens in the inner realm of child-rearing ultimately becomes the prime factor in shaping our society. This, and not a "career", is truly the most powerful position in the social structure. A society that does not teach its children morality is plagued with ever-increasing nihilism and violence and ultimately destroys itself. Against its will, Israeli society is about to discover the price of denigrating motherhood.
Before it gives in completely to feminist demagoguery, it would also be wise for the religious community to remember that its long history of imitating the secular one has not been a very successful one. When the secularists promised that communism and socialism would bring utopia, the religious rushed to establish the religious kibbutz movement. Only after it became clear that communism murdered tens of millions of innocents and socialism destroyed the foundations of the economy, did they admit failure.
In our own day, the left-wing Meimad party jumped on the Oslo bandwagon, promising peace throughout the Middle East if only Israel would surrender half her territory to terrorists. Only after they succeeded in increasing Arab terror a hundredfold, leading to the murder of over a thousand Jews, did anyone in Meimad begin to realize that they might have made a mistake. After these enormous successes with the secular "solutions" for the economy and peace, does the religious community really want to implement the secular "solution" for the family?
Numerous studies show observant families suffer significantly less than secular ones from alcoholism, divorce, drug abuse and violence. The secularization of the religious community will only lead to the admission of all the problems of the secular world into their homes. Is this what the religious community wants?
I was taught that the religious community believed in the unity of the secular and religious worlds, between the materialism of the West and the spirituality of the East. Does this new favoring of the West's materialistic secular viewpoint signal an end of the national religious community?
It?s not too late to stop the feminist disaster, but several steps must be taken immediately. First, the religious community must stop its denial of the destructive effects of feminism. Secondly, newspapers that claim to be religious must stop giving a forum to the feminists? radical views. Why are religious newspapers espousing secular values anyway? Furthermore, the women of Kolech must be told that religious girls do not need to be embarrassed by their femininity and that women do not have to act like men to be equal to them. Our girls must be taught to be proud they are female. Real equality for women will come when society respects them for what they are - women. And not by respecting them for how well they can imitate males. As William Bennett, former American Secretary of Housing and author of the book The Broken Hearth put it, if we want to save our society from collapse, we really have no choice.