Saturday, December 03, 2011

They have to borrow terms from another culture and language to describe their own prejudice and misogyny

When the 'Taliban women' phenomenon finally reached Mea She'arim:  ""It is hard to ignore the sense that part of the impetus for the Badatz condemnation of the group known as "Taliban women" derived from the men's feeling of intimidation by those women. Fathers of daughters who joined the shawl-wearers in spite of the stated objections of the men, among these some well-known rabbis, as well as displeased husbands, testified for several hours at the Badatz about what is going on within their homes. The women were vilified for not accepting rabbinical authority; for taking their daughters out of school to be educated at home; and most serious of all, for disobeying the most stringent rules of halakha.  The fact that there are husbands who support them was played down, and those husbands were presented as weaklings who allow themselves to be dragged along. Meanwhile, accusations that had surfaced previously began cropping up in conversation with greater force. For example, that the shawl-wearers do not breast-feed their sons, only their daughters, for reasons of modesty."