Religion, Sex & Gender

Part of the Problem, Part of the Solution

Nicholas Kristof, venerable New York Times columnist and African enthusiast, writes on his blog about the religious oppression of women. He takes such a political stance it is almost painful. He explains:

My own take is that religion has often been part of the problem, but that it also can be part of the solution. … In short, I don’t think there’s any glib answer to the question, but there is no question that religions can be a force for justice and equality that they are now not.

Well that was expected.
Religion isn’t monolithic and therefore its interpretations of the role of women (or men, or LGBT invidividuals for that matter) are never going to be the same. Of all the columnists at the Times I am kind of surprised that Kristof didn’t take this issue a little further than this hackneyed “yes and no” response.
The oppression of women in the name of religion is just one horrific aspect of what can be called traditional religious observance.* But the fact that our society sees only this traditional interpretation as “religion” gives me cause to worry about the future of progressive and liberal religious thought.
Looking forward to the next generation of religious leaders we see a shift to the right. This is not only taking place in the most fundamentalist sects but also in what was once considered the most liberal. Reform Judaism has moved right, incorporating significantly more ritual practice. Mainline Protestant denominations are falling victim to Wal-Mart sized mega Churches that practice a significantly more conservative brand of religion. Liberal Muslim communities in the West have returned to a much more traditional way of practice, just look to Turkey.
Yet as a progressive Reform Jew, who likes some of the above described shift in practice but not all of it, I wonder if my view of religion will disappear and leave the progress that could be considered Kristof’s “part of the solution” in its wake.
Progressive religious thinkers, contributors and commenters of this blog included, must take a more active role defining the world religiously in our terms or we will be spoken for by the fundamentalists.
So I leave this post with a note for our friend: Mr. Kristof, Our religious tradition teaches equality and fairness. It teaches that all of us were created in the image of God and should be treated accordingly. Religion used for its intended purpose of bring society together in the service of God is a good thing always but its misappropriation by misogynistic, power-hungry, weak men around the world is always a bad thing.
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*yes, yes I know. Not all traditional religious people do these things but there are only so many words I can use here to describe what you know I am talking about.

12 thoughts on “Part of the Problem, Part of the Solution

  1. I’m not sure it’s fair to say Mega Churches signal a move to the right without considering the rise of emergent churches as a counter balance. I can’t speak to what’s going on in Reform Judaism with any kind of real authority (and only limited experience), but I trust BZ will jump in and explain how more Reform Jews praying in Hebrew or wrapping themselves in tefillin doesn’t really signal the same kind of ideological move to the right that you seem to be implying.

  2. Sarah M – Not to be sophomoric, but it is and wildy understood as a move to the right. Perhaps not politically or socially but religiously for sure. (I am ready for the fight this will cause with the Reform Jews who regularly post here.)

  3. dlevy writes:
    I trust BZ will jump in and explain how more Reform Jews praying in Hebrew or wrapping themselves in tefillin doesn’t really signal the same kind of ideological move to the right that you seem to be implying.
    Happy to oblige! Wow, that’s two threads in one day where my responses have been foreshadowed or even preempted. I guess I’ve really gotten predictable. The next step is to write a bot to post my comments for me.
    dcc writes:
    Reform Judaism has moved right, incorporating significantly more ritual practice.
    The shifts in Reform practice over the last few decades are neither “mov[ing] right” nor “more ritual practice”. It’s not a shift to the “right” because the traditionalist, small-c conservative arguments (“If it was good enough for our grandparents, it’s good enough for us”) are coming from the Classical Reform camp, and the proponents of change are coming from a small-p progressive framework (“Judaism has always evolved with changing circumstances”). The only context in which it makes sense to call this a shift to the “right” is a context that views Reform Judaism through non-Reform frames.
    And it’s not “more ritual”, it’s just different ritual. One could come up with just as many examples to show that contemporary Reform practice rejects rituals that were common in the past: rabbis generally no longer wear robes, many congregations have dispensed with organs and choirs, Torah reading on Friday night is less common, the movement has adopted a new siddur that is less tied to the idea that everyone is doing the same thing (rather, there are multiple options on each page), etc. (Yes, you could decide that some rituals count and others don’t, but then see above about non-Reform frames.)
    In any case, there is not a scrap of evidence that the shifts in Reform ritual practice correlate in any way to a “move to the right” on the specific issue that is the topic of this post: the oppression of women. On the contrary, anecdotal evidence indicates that the proponents of these shifts are likely to be more feminist than their predecessors (e.g. all the women who are putting on tefillin).
    Mainline Protestant denominations are falling victim to Wal-Mart sized mega Churches that practice a significantly more conservative brand of religion.
    These megachurches don’t tend to be affiliated with mainline Protestant denominations — they are generally affiliated with evangelical or Pentecostal denominations (e.g. Assemblies of God) or unaffiliated. Perhaps people are leaving mainline churches and joining megachurches, but that’s not the same as saying that this shift to the right is taking place within the mainline denominations.

  4. BZ- I get that Reform Jews should developed identity independent of the Orthodoxy (or “Traditional”) but these changes are not progressive or outside of a continuum that you distain so much. They move back to an older time incorporating traditions that have little or no meaning to a vast majority of people and are preformed with no thought to why it may or may not elevate an experience. They are preformed because the small p progressives who dominate the Movement’s younger leadership say these rituals help make us “more” in tune with our traditions. Tell me how that doesn’t go against exactly what you are talking about? I am not an advocate for Classical Reform in its robes and organ, but have trouble engaging with such a conservative approach to Reform Judaism. Even if this movement is in fact changing Reform Judaism to be something wasn’t in the past, this is a conservative shift. Change isn’t always progressive.

    1. They move back to an older time
      Which older time was this, when women rabbis were putting on tefillin, and kosher food was served at same-sex weddings?
      incorporating traditions that have little or no meaning to a vast majority of people and are preformed with no thought to why it may or may not elevate an experience.
      What David and Ruth said.
      Jewish rituals in general (including and perhaps especially Classical Reform Jewish rituals in our time) have little or no meaning to a vast majority of people (or even a vast majority of Jews). But they have meaning to the people who find them meaningful. Just because you don’t find these rituals to “elevate and sanctify our lives”, why assume that the people who do these rituals share your opinion, or haven’t given any thought to the question?
      They are preformed because the small p progressives who dominate the Movement’s younger leadership say these rituals help make us “more” in tune with our traditions.
      That characterization of the reasons behind these ritual shifts comes more from the opponents of the shifts than from the proponents. That’s not the reason given by the people you’re talking about.
      I am not an advocate for Classical Reform in its robes and organ, but have trouble engaging with such a conservative approach to Reform Judaism.
      The only definition of “conservative” that accurately describes the trend we’re discussing in Reform practice is “limited government”, but that’s probably not the definition you meant.

  5. I am the product of a Reform synagogue, and I have to disagree with dcc. I think the two issues of ritual observance and gender equity have exactly nothing to do with each other. There is no rightward shift in the Reform movement that I can see–the URJ as whole is supporting fully “liberal” causes like health care reform, global climate change programs, and same-sex marriages. HUC campuses have a female student majority. I really don’t see how wrapping t’fillin, for instance, has anything to do with being moving towards the right, and certainly nothing to do with the oppression of anybody.
    I do agree with dcc on this though:Change isn’t always progressive. Which is why successive platforms of the Reform movement after Pittsburg in the 1880’s moved toward more normative Judaism….

  6. BZ, as I imagined, you’ve already said some of what I’d say (only better than I’d say it), so I’ll just respond to dcc’s reponse to your response (ha!).
    dcc, “incorporating traditions that have little or no meaning to a vast majority of people and are preformed with no thought to why it may or may not elevate an experience.”
    Give me a break! If the vast majority of people don’t like it, they won’t do it. No one forces a Reform Jew to do a ritual act (whether they want to force them to do it or not). And who are you to announce unilaterally that this change in ritual norms in the Reform world (which has by no means become universal in the Reform world as yet and I doubt it will) is done just for show “with no thought to why it may or may not elevate an experience.”
    Reform Jews have come to different conclusions at different times and in different places. As long as they reach said conclusions from a Reform thought process, God bless them. It is the conclusions my Reform ideology and thought process has led me to in recent years that have led me to leave the official, organized Reform world behind. But I’m still Reform.

  7. If anything these changes are coming from the next gen leaders so I am pretty sure that definition is wrong as well.
    When you disregard any sort of frame work that allows people understand the world in relation to other ideas then we have trouble figuring out how to describe issues outside of the way that you have “announce unilaterally” is the right way to understand our world. The frame work is there because it gives us reference points.
    You don’t have to agree with my opinion and if everyone would go back and read the original post you will see this post wasn’t about Reform Judaism. I was saying that progressive religious voices need to speak up about the world so that “religious voices” are heard in addition to the fundamentalist ones. The spectrum of religious voices need to be represented. And again I am sorry if I ignore you re-imagined frame work to describe a world in which a different frame work is accepted.

  8. If anything these changes are coming from the next gen leaders so I am pretty sure that definition is wrong as well.
    Maybe you can clarify who you’re talking about; I’m not aware of any Reform movement leaders who are suggesting making any particular ritual practice mandatory.
    So what definition of “conservative” do you mean? It’s not “preserving the status quo and opposing change” (since we both agree that the changes in Reform ritual practice are in fact changes), and it’s not “turning back the clock to an earlier time” (as I illustrated in my last comment).
    Bringing in some elements from earlier parts of our history does not constitute turning back the clock wholesale. The Classical Reformers emphasized many aspects of (earlier) biblical Judaism over (later) rabbinic Judaism, but this doesn’t mean that they were conservatives.
    When you disregard any sort of frame work that allows people understand the world in relation to other ideas then we have trouble figuring out how to describe issues outside of the way that you have “announce unilaterally” is the right way to understand our world. The frame work is there because it gives us reference points.
    You don’t have to agree with my opinion and if everyone would go back and read the original post you will see this post wasn’t about Reform Judaism. I was saying that progressive religious voices need to speak up about the world so that “religious voices” are heard in addition to the fundamentalist ones. The spectrum of religious voices need to be represented. And again I am sorry if I ignore you re-imagined frame work to describe a world in which a different frame work is accepted.

    What’s with the scare quotes around “announce unilaterally”?
    I’m not opposed to any and all comparisons between different things. But I’ve made the case for why this particular framework doesn’t make sense in this context; if you have a case for why it does, go ahead and make it.
    I’m aware that the post isn’t primarily about Reform Judaism – in fact, it’s not even primarily about Judaism, and that’s part of why the frame that maps ritual practice (independent of ideology) onto a left-right spectrum makes so little sense. Neither left-wing Christians nor right-wing Christians wrap tefillin; neither left-wing Muslims nor right-wing Muslims refrain from mixing milk and meat. Even if we look away from these specific Jewish practices and look at ritual in general, it is well-understood in regard to other religions that ritual and ideology can be orthogonal. For example, many would say that the Episcopal Church incorporates “more ritual” than the Baptist churches, AND that the Episcopal Church is “to the left” of the Baptist churches.
    There are plenty of meaningful ways to define ideological right-left spectra to compare different Jewish ideologies: belief in divine vs. human authorship of Torah; rabbinic authority vs. individual autonomy in making decisions; static vs. dynamic approaches to Jewish tradition; positions on various political and social issues associated with the left and the right; etc. And the Reform Jews who are incorporating changes in ritual practice are not “to the right” of earlier Reform generations on a single one of these spectra — in all cases, they are either to the left, in the same place, or there is no generalization to be made.
    The spectrum that places these contemporary Reform Jews on the “right” is a purely superficial one. It’s the equivalent of looking at West Bank settlers, seeing their long hair and their hippie fashions and their organic farms, and concluding that they are to the left of the clean-shaven buttoned-down Labor and Meretz MKs.
    Your post is, by implication, seriously maligning a whole group of people with the unfounded accusation that contemporary changes in Reform ritual practice are part of a trend that leads to the subjugation of women. This accusation is completely without evidence, and you seem to be making the case just through a chain of associations: “Orthodox (and/or predenominational) Judaism subjugates women; Orthodox (and/or predenominational) Jews keep kosher; some contemporary Reform Jews keep kosher; we report, you decide.” (Cf. “All men are mortal; Socrates is mortal; ergo, all men are Socrates.”) If you have any evidence to back up this accusation, please bring it forward. But the fact is that the current generation of Reform Jews is the most feminist in history (as was each preceding generation in its time). The people who complained about adding more Hebrew to the siddur are the same people who complained about adding the imahot and gender-neutral translations.

  9. …and if you’re looking for a trend in the non-Orthodox Jewish world that actually represents a “shift to the right”, I suggest looking at the large numbers of non-Orthodox Jews who have become Orthodox, particularly through haredi organizations such as Chabad and Aish.
    But the people making change within the liberal movements aren’t those people; they’re the people who have made the choice not to go that route, even though it would have been easier in some ways.

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