Mothers on the Mind

It appears Israel is the 25th best country in which to be a mother, the Times of Israel reported today:

Israel was ranked 25th on a list of countries where it is best to be a mother and have children, in an extensive study for the Save the Children charity, published Tuesday. The US came in five places lower, at 30; the UK was at 23.

Anyone interested in looking at the Save the Children‘s full report, can find it here. The full list of rankings is on page 69 of the report. Seems that we are in better shape than Japan, the US and Luxemburg (of all places, I sort of thought everything was fairy-tale perfect there), but that Greece, Estonia and Slovenia rank higher than us.

No matter, I still think it’s a phenomenal place to be a mom. Of course, you have to have thick enough skin not to take offense when perfect strangers tell you that your child is over/under dressed, when someone who has no clue when your baby last ate informs you with certainly that she’s crying because she’s hungry,  or admonishes you for not having your child’s rash taken care of when  in fact you’re on the way back from the dermatologist. It’s all part of the fun and challenge of living with one large over-extended family.

And, in anticipation of Mother’s Day for those of you living in North America, here’s an offering from The Forward, which asked readers to describe Jewish mothers in just six words:

You met a boy? Jewish, right?
— Olivia Bercow, 21, Miami Beach, about Julie Russin Bercow

Leaned out, leaned in, leaned on.
— Gabrielle Birkner, 34, New York, about Roni Lang

She’s older. Now I’m the worrier.
— Bob Wolf, 62, Chappaqua, N.Y., about Annette Wolf

You shtopt my soul with character.
— Edgar Weinstock, 71, Brooklyn, about Libby Weinstock

Unconditional love but hates my outfit.
— Karyn Gershon, 51, Wilmette, Ill., about Gloria Grossman

Strong, independent rethinker of tuna casserole.
— Ari VanderWalde, 35, Los Angeles, about Joan VanderWalde

She is lox to my schmear.
— Lauren Rosen, 42, New York, about Doris Rosen

Strudel, soup, challah — remembering the taste.
— Joan Hollander, 84, Siasconset, Mass., about Rose Swit

She’d divorce Dad for Jon Stewart.
— Danielle Klein, 20, Toronto, Ontario, about Wendy Klein

My father is the Jewish mother.
— Annette Powers, 40, Brooklyn, about Edward Powers

Welcome home. Want something to eat?
— Naomi Adland, 27, Brooklyn, about Gale Adland

You want I should worry yet?
— Rachel Gorman, 33, Morrisville, Pa., about Louis Astern

Fill that Void

Whatever the reason, people in both Israel and abroad seem to have strong opinions about the  haredi world or ultra-orthodox world, without knowing very much about it other than what the headlines may tell us. It’s time for that void to be filled.

Honestly, I’ve had so many people inform me with great certainty about what does or does not go on in the haredi world – and particularly in the world of haredi families in general and marriages in particular – people who have little or absolutely no close-up knowledge of this segment of society, that it’s enough to make me roll my eyes every time I hear someone begin to make one of these pronouncements.

So, I was happy to see an article in the New York Times  discussing Rama Burshtein’s marvelous film, Fill the Void, about to open in theatres in the US. The article – to say nothing of the film – creates an opening for a discussion about haredi families that goes beyond the stereotypes.

The story centers on 18-year-old Shira, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox family in Tel Aviv, portrayed by Hadas Yaron, in her first starring role in a feature, who won the best actress award at the Venice festival. As the film opens, Shira is girlishly excited about the prospect of an arranged marriage to a promising young man from a good family. But before the engagement is made final, her older sister, Esther (played by Renana Raz), dies on the Jewish holiday of Purim while giving birth to her first child, plunging the family into crushing grief.

The movie is neither apologetics, nor an anthropology of the haredi community: the tale it tells is one of life challenges, family dynamics, intimacy and romance. Oh and yes, marriage too. Viewing the film allows the audience – first of all, to take part in a wonderful cinematic adventure – but second, an insight into one segment of the haredi world (there are no monoliths here) as it truly exists.

Read the entire article, and take yourself out to see the movie.

Meanwhile, here’s a little appetizer:

Stealth Pregnancy

Generally, when the court system uses the term “stealing sperm” it has to do with claims filed by men who had relations with women who told them that they could not become pregnant. When these women had children and then sued these fathers for child support, the fathers often claimed that the women used them in order to have a child, and in doing so committed  a form of fraud and “stolen their sperm”, so that they were not liable for child support.

Israeli courts systematically threw these cases out of court; the premise has been, that if you have sex with someone, you’re responsible for the consequences no matter what anyone tells you; the other part of this picture is that the child may not suffer because of anyone’s irresponsibility or duplicity, and child support must be paid.

So, I was fairly surprised to see a headline reporting that the Jerusalem Family Court had recently accepted a suit which was based on the claim that the woman had stolen the father’s sperm and brought a child into the world.

Upon reading the entire decision by Judge Nimrod Flax, turns out the facts of the case are somewhat bizarre, to say the least. The Hebrew decision can me found right here.

Despite a variety of fertility treatments, a couple was unable to have children. For the purposes of this judgement it is critical to note that there was written correspondence between the two which made it clear that while married they never tried IVF, and more, that the father objected to IVF.  The couple were  in divorce proceedings, and the divorce agreement ultimately provided for rather generous financial arrangements for the wife.  A short while before the date for the actual delivery of the  get (Jewish bill of divorce), the wife told the husband that she would accept the get on the condition that he would have sex with her one last time. (At some point in his testimony before the court the husband did say that had the woman become pregnant, he would have remarried her.) The husband accepted the condition, the parties divorced, both went their separate ways, and thus, or so the husband at least thought, that was that.

Except “that” was not “that”.

Hope

After yesterday’s rather depressing post, here’s a contribution from The Fountainheads of Ein Prat to pick us all up.

It’s their contribution to this year’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations, Israel’s Independence Day which falls exactly a week from today.

Enjoy!

“

Shameful Remembrance

Here’s a post I would rather not write, about the shameful blurring of the images of women on the cover of an ultra-orthodox magazine, Bakehila,  which commemorates, Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance day in Israel, which falls today.

As the post by Tzvi Graetz in the Times of Israel notes:

When all women are treated as sexual objects, even the Jewish women of the Warsaw Ghetto need to be blurred out or erased. Ironically, erasure is used as an epithet every time Hitler’s name is mentioned: Imach Shmo “may his name be erased.”

When a man needs to worry that every woman will seduce him, then even the Jewish women of the Warsaw ghetto need to be censored.

When a society is so nervous about what a Jewish man will do with his newspaper in his own private home, then even the Jewish women of the Warsaw ghetto need to be censored.

Clearly, there is nothing in Jewish Law which forbids pictures of women, this is part of a dangerous trend we see in the Jewish world over the past decade.

One of the least of the tributes that we can give to those who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust – both those who emerged alive on the other side of living hell and those who were murdered – is to remember them, their faces, their names and their identity. The cruelty of obscuring someone’s face simply because they are female, is really too cruel for words.

I once learned from a great rabbi and teacher that of the more than six million horrors of the Holocaust, one of them is that we lost a generation of teachers and leaders to guide us just when we need them the most. If we needed further evidence of this point, the appalling behaviour of Bakehilla magazine would surely suffice.

Labour Pains

The Tel Aviv District Labour Court (Judge Osnat Rubowitz-Barchash) recently gave a decision which dealt with a uniquely Israeli question: what happens when an unmarried teacher in an all-girls religious high-school becomes pregnant not the good old-fashioned way, but using in vitro fertilization (IVF)? Does the school have the right to fire her on the grounds that she has contravened the values of the school and as such cannot serve as an role model for her adolescent students? If the school does not have the right to fire her but nonetheless does, to what kind of compensation is she entitled?

Well, the school did, the woman sued and ultimately the judged ruled this was a wrongful firing, and ordered the school to pay her compensation.

Due to the public importance of the case, the court allowed the Council for Equal Opportunities in Employment and  Kolech-Religious Women’s Forum to join as Friends of  Court and to present their positions to the court on the matter.

Here’s a link to the court decision in Hebrew, which I’ll summarize briefly below.

What’s important to understand for the purposes of this decision, is a trend among single religious women in Israel who have not married and want to have children.  As I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog, Israel is a fairly pro-natal society. As such, single women over a certain age (somewhere in their thirties) who have no children, are eligible as part of the regular state health services to undergo IVF treatments with anonymous sperm donors. They are allowed to have two children under this arrangement; I assume that if they want to have more, they must foot the bill for the IVF treatments.

For many single women this is attractive since it allows them to have a child without the complications of having to deal with a former boyfriend/partner. (As to whether or not this is ultimately good or bad for the children, that’s another discussion).

For religious women the option is particularly attractive, since it allows them to have a child without engaging in forbidden sexual relations with a man to whom they are not married.

As a result, we see a growing trend in the religious world of women in their thirties and forties having children on their own.

Grinding Wheels

As an avid biker myself, I know well the exhilaration of riding down the open road, wind at my back; or, the less than noble schadenfreude of whipping past cars in the city creeping along at a snail’s pace in traffic, while I pedal  to my destination with speed and efficiency.

Given my hobby, I couldn’t help but notice today that women in Saudi Arabia have been granted the right to … yes, ride their bikes. As an article in The Saudi Gazette has it, this permission has some strings attached:

But women will be free to drive under one condition: a male relative or guardian (Mahram) has to be present with them while they ride a bike, Saudi daily Al-Yaum reported on Monday. “Women are free to ride bikes in parks, seafronts, among other areas, providing that they are wearing fully modest dress and a male guardian has to be present in case of falls or accidents,” the newspaper reported, quoting an unnamed source from the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

And a well-placed word to the cautious:
Samia Al-Bawardi, the head of an NGO for the victims of car accidents, warned women about riding bicycles and buggies. “Wearing abayas and erratic driving could result in terrible accidents,” she told the daily.

As someone who has been known to ride a bike in a skirt, I can attest to the fact that even that piece of attire can at times complicate bike riding. I can’t even wrap my head around how one would begin to ride a bicycle while wearing an abaya, the cloak Saudi women are required to wear in public.

Though the above is written in a lightish tone, this is a serious matter. In a recent article in Standpoint Magazine, Nick Cohen once again asks why the misogyny of regimes such as Saudia Arabia is not an issue about which Western feminists are vocal. In the worst cases, they may even be enablers of ongoing oppression. Here’s a choice piece from the article, well worth reading in its entirety:

Forget that you should oppose misogyny wherever you find it, and notice that by implying that violence and sexism are excusable Norton does not refute stereotypes but excuses them. With an ignorance remarkable in a professor of political science, she makes my point for me by saying that Marx’s On the Jewish Question inspired her. This founding document of left-wing anti-Semitism was hardly friendly to the Jewish people. Marx repeated every prejudice. The religion of the Jews was “huckstering” and their god was money. He concluded that only when “society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism — huckstering and its preconditions — [will] the Jew have become impossible”. For left-wing Muslims and ex-Muslims Norton’s writing is just as insulting. Yet I suspect that she thinks of herself as being left-wing in some sense.

So, I wish the women of Saudi Arabia to soon know the thrill of the freedom of the bicycle, and wish them safe riding with the encumbrance of the abaya. More than this, I wish them the same freedoms that we in the West enjoy – and yes, there are still problems that need fixing, but we are far ahead on this.

I wish the women and other good people of the West the moral and intellectual courage to oil the wheels of progress so that they grind more swiftly and smoothly for women in other parts of the world. We should feel discomfort that we applaud a society for granting women so banal a right as the right to ride a bicycle.