These are two entirely different scenarios. As others have mentioned, Jewish law says that almost all religious laws can be disobeyed if it is a matter of saving a life.
I’m surprised that the airlines don’t use this in cases where, for instance, a plane’s landing was delayed because the ultra-orthodox men on board the flight insisted in standing in aisles for evening prayer.
Unfortunately, once you are aware of the various ways in which some haredi communities try to remove women from the public sphere, it can’t be seen as anything but an insult. The women’s faces on public billboards or the sides of buses covered with spray paint, or photoshopped out of news photos (e.g. Angela Merkel or Hillary Clinton). The proposed sidewalks only for women. The spitting and screaming at girls in a merely “modern orthodox” school for not being dressed sufficiently modestly for haredi tastes. The refusal to allow women to read from the Torah (the first five books of the bible) in public at the Western Wall, not to mention the teeny space allocated to women at the Wall. The orthodox women who are denied a religious divorce because their husbands won’t release them unless they pay bribes. And on and on and on. “Let both sides be respectful”, indeed.
If the haredi want to travel by airplane and not sit next to someone of the opposite gender, they can buy two seats.
Actually it would be interesting if Hillary Clinton were elected president, just to see how the ultra orthodox newspapers in Israel would deal with blocking her out of pictures, as they did photoshopped her out of the Situation Room the day we got Bin Laden. Netanyahu shaking hands with empty space, perhaps?
"Strongly disagree with this. An Orthodox Jewish male praises God every morning, in so many words, for not making him a woman. There is not a shred of equivalency on the other side. All the religious and social authority is held by rabbis, who are men. The woman has lesser value in this worldview."
The context of this prayer is that it rests between “that He hasn’t made me a gentile” and “that He hasn’t made me a slave” - in other words, “thanks for allowing me to have more commandments to be able to follow.” The idea that it was created because women are worse or lesser is an outside projection or speculation. I am NOT saying there are no gender issues in the community; however, I don’t think this prayer is relevant. The reason women don’t have as many commandments is because they are considered intrinsically holier and more connected to God. It’s why men wear kippot, they need the reminder, while women don’t. Do you know the reasoning why women are not allowed to be rabbis? I heard a great lecture about it by a famous rebbitzen. I don’t know. I’m tired and I don’t think I’m explaining it well but as a staunch feminist and fairly Orthodox Jew it can get frustrating to see misconceptions and stuff all the time.
“It is not, however, a practice that could inconvenience anyone other than the woman, her husband, and the rabbi, so I don’t care at all about it.”
I care about it in this context because it sheds light on the role of women within this worldview and the underlying motivation for asking a woman to move.
Let both sides be respectful - him in how he asking for accommodation, and her not seeing it as an insult but a chance to be kind and considerate."
These men are putting the burden entirely on the woman. I’d have no problem if they privately arranged to switch with another person. But they are refusing to move THEIR seats and insist the WOMAN move. This part keeps getting overlooked.
The Jews-being-forced-to-eat-pork is in no way comparable. No one is FORCING these men to sit next to women. They all could have bought an extra seat or flown first class. They chose not to.
Rebeccar, I appreciate your position, but I consider those kind of explanation unconvincing. I am not closer to G-d than my male friends and relatives. I also very much appreciate being able to make a minyan or read Torah for my small, lay-led congregation. So while I don’t think all Orthodox women are oppressed, it is really, really hard for me to see the respective roles of men and women in traditional Judaism as anything other than a reflection of sexism typical of the period in which they were implemented. And it takes some real contortions to see “Thank you for not making me a woman” as free of sexism.
To Hanna, Pizzagirl and others, as you can see I don’t for a second dispute the sexism of Orthodox Judaism – but, as I said earlier in the thread, the behavior of Orthodox Jewish men on airplanes is not directly linked to that sexism. The relevant law applies equally to men and women, and ultra- Orthodox women obey similar stringencies. Religious Modesty laws do tend to police female behavior more harshly than that of men, but if a man won’t sit next to you on a plane or shake your hand, it is very likely his wife wouldn’t want to sit next to your husband or shake his hand either.
Nothing like putting women on a pedestal to keep them in their place. This is pretty much the argument of everyone who wants to restrict women’s rights. Maybe they “believe” they are being respectful, but if the perpetual and inevitable outcome is that it restricts rights it’s hard to argue that wasn’t the intent. And it crosses religious and cultural lines.
(Good heavens, this is by the author of Uncle Eli’s Passover Haggadah, the Dr Seuss-styled haggadah that has entertained our family for a long, long time…and wow, there’s also an Uncle Eli High Holidays machsor (prayerbook) which I’d not known about before! I’m grateful to this thread for allowing me to stumble upon this.)
I thought it was because in the traditional society in which the commandments were established, it was assumed that essentially all women were raising children, and anyone who’s raising a child can’t reasonably be expected to carry out a commitment that has to be performed at a specific time. So women were exempted from all the time-sensitive commandments.
This seems sexist to me only in its assumption that all parental duties fall to women. The idea that it’s difficult for anyone who’s caring for a child to do anything at a predetermined time actually makes a whole lot of sense to me – especially if the child is still in diapers.
Women aren’t prevented from doing the time bound commandments at all. It’s just that they don’t have to. I understand the distaste about the assumption of women in the home. But I fully understand that I’m not going to change opinions, just felt like I needed to at least present the opposite side because there’s a lot of misconceptions. I don’t think it’s a matter of women being put on a pedestal. Maybe it’s because I’ve been accused so many times of being brainwashed or stockholm syndromed or just not fully understanding, all of which I find pretty offensive, but it really rubs me the wrong way. I have a lot of really strong Orthodox female influences in my life and I have a hard time with the idea that everyone is being horribly oppressed and participating in upholding this sexist ideal that they just “don’t understand” is very irritating. Anyway- I have to get ready for shabbat, but that’s my two cents!
This has been a fascinating thread to read and I am definitely in the “not giving up my seat, you can be the one to move” camp.
About 10 years ago I was booked on a flight from JFK to Los Angeles, last flight of the day, completely full and we were late boarding due to some delay. A lot of us were sitting at the gate chatting while we waited and one of passengers was a very friendly, cherubic looking elderly woman who could have been anyone’s Grandma. She had purchased a large box of cookies from the Au Bon Pain in the terminal and was passing them around. Very sweet of her.
Gate attendants finally call for boarding and everyone proceeds to get on the plane. Grandma is in the last group to board and when she does, discovers the aisle seat she thought she reserved, was given to an elderly man and she is in the middle seat. She asks him to move, politely but firmly insisting the seat is hers. He just as politely and firmly declines, insisting the seat is his and I could understand why. He was well over 6 feet tall and to cram into a middle seat for a 6 hour flight would have been torture. It was then mild mannered, pleasant Grandma turned into cursing, vitriol spewing, screaming Grandma to the point where the flight attendants had to call for security to physically remove her from the aircraft. I will never forget the sight of two large security guys wrestling Grandma down the aisle and off the plane all the while she was calling them names I cannot repeat here.
I have no doubt, were that to happen today, every other passenger would have their cell phone camera out videotaping the entire scene which would end up on youtube before the plane even left the gate. The next day, the headline on the New York Post would read “AIRLINE MANHANDLES GRANDMA!!!” with the name of the airline prominently featured.
I think this is why airlines will try everything they can to resolve these situations to everyone’s satisfaction because the last thing they want is video all over the Internet, of a religious man being dragged off the plane with the accompanying caption “AIRLINE PREVENTS DEVOUT PASSENGER FROM FLYING” or something like that. Personally, I’d be fine with dragging them off if they refuse to sit down.
Funny, I haven’t thought of that scene in years and this thread brought it all back.
There was something last year where a group of school kids was kicked off the plane because they wouldn’t stop using their cell phones. It was a Jewish school I believe and of course, it did make headlines.
Please be careful to note that Orthodox is not the same as Utra-Orthodox/Haredi. Not even close. I not know Orthodox families but have Orthodox family of my own and they do some things differently - like they won’t have trick or treaters on Halloween and the women wear wigs in public (and the men the various ritual garments similar in many ways to Mormon ones) - but they are integrated into regular society, live in the neighborhood, go to my gym, etc. The Haredi, to use a broad term that includes all sorts of sects (Satmar, Lubavitch, etc.), tend to self-isolate even if they live in an area. Their kids go to their schools, not even community religious schools, and they rarely if ever socialize outside their world. The plane issues always involve this group not the regular or “modern” Orthodox.
As for the prayers and status of women, I think it’s very clear that women are indeed second class citizens. That shows in basics like the control men have over divorce. The prayers are ancient and reflect maleness, but they also reflect a sort of self-isolation that’s marked Jewish groups over the millenia (and which reflects to some extent the way Jews were isolated (as in locked in streets at night) by Christians. The argument about how women in the various levels and sects of Orthodoxy see themselves is similar to how devout Christian and Muslim women see themselves and I don’t think there’s a single right way to talk about personal decisions. The reality is that women are second class citizens in all devout religions because all of them are rooted in a male dominated past.
^Oh, they did - many, many times. She refused to sit in the middle seat, even though that’s where she was assigned. Claimed the airline had switched her seat without her knowledge and maybe they had. The elderly man was in his correct seat and not budging. When it became clear to everyone that she wouldn’t sit down, security had to be called.
