The Lilith Blog

October 28, 2011 by Tara Bognar

Of Buses and Borough Park

Image via Wikicommons

Segregating a certain class of people to the back of the bus has an intense resonance for anyone raised on stories of the Black civil rights struggle, Rosa Parks, and the irresistible narrative of how far we’ve come. So it’s not surprising that a story about the quasi-public New York city bus, the B110, where “the women is in the back. The men are in the front” [sic] has spread far and wide from the Columbia University newspaper that ‘broke’ the story.

Blogger Unpious describes the general tenor of the media response: “Like a school of hungry piranhas, the secular media seems to have discovered misogyny in the Chasidic world and they’re having themselves a feast.” He has a thoughtful critique on the dynamics of outside criticism on this insular community:

The outrage of outsiders won’t effect change largely because outsiders don’t seem to actually care about the plight of Chasidic women. Rather, they seem driven by a general distaste for all things Chasidic and, in this case, by the larger symbolism of back-of-the-bus discrimination. To them, Chasidic women are pawns in a larger struggle to root out discrimination everywhere, a worthy cause, no doubt, but one that Chasidic women, by and large, will not care for. Moreover, outsider outrage produces a defensive posture within the Chasidic community – on the part of both men and women – and speaking out against discriminatory practices, even by the tiny minority who might do so otherwise, becomes even more unlikely. I have yet to see those indignant outsiders bother to speak to actual living, breathing Chasidic women (or men, for that matter) to gauge how they feel about it.

The Lilith Blog

January 5, 2011 by Tara Bognar

Mediterranean Family Size Religious Israeli Jewish Women Win (Lose?)

A great article from our friends at the Berman Jewish Policy Archive!

Women and Demography in the Mediterranean States (2009), by Ariela Keysar, compiles and analyzes demographic data from Algeria, Egypt, Turkey, Israel, Italy, Greece, Spain, and France.

The general results were unsurprising – lower fertility is associated with women’s greater participation in the workplace and educational, civil and social equality. More surprising, however, is that family size has decreased across the board, even in the most religious countries (based on questions about the importance of God and religion in people’s lives).

For example, Morocco has the lowest rate of female literacy and education, and also relatively low female workplace participation, nevertheless saw the average number of children per woman decrease from 6.9 at the beginning of the ’70s to 2.4 in the last couple of years. The highest current fertility rate is in Syria, which is only 3.1.  (more…)

The Lilith Blog

November 3, 2010 by Tara Bognar

Keeping Jewish Boys Involved

A great article from our friends at the Berman Jewish Policy Archive about our friends at Moving Traditions! For Lilith’s take on Jewish boys’ identity today, you should definitely take a look at our Fall 2009 issue, pictured here. You can even download the special section for free here.

The role of men and boys in American Jewish life is a topic of growing concern – current research on boys available on BJPA ranges from Wishing For More: Jewish Boyhood, Identity and Community to  “Bros” and “Ho’s” in Jewish Life Today.

Monday night, Moving Traditions, the organization that gave us the “Rosh Hodesh – It’s a Girl thing” program, unveiled a new program geared at teenage Jewish boys – along with a substantive report on Jewish American boys’ participation in American Judaism.

We are living in exciting times. There is no historical precedent for the problem of the disenfranchisement of boys in the religion of “Shelo asani isha” (the blessing traditionally recited by Jewish men, thanking God for not making them women). Certainly there is no shortage of men at the tops of Jewish structures, as the ongoing work of organizations like Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community continues to document. But what does that avail us if we are bleeding boys from the bottom?  (more…)