Anyone know how to import my comments back to the blogger format?
I've got this running so that new comments are in Blogger rather than Haloscan/Echo and I have my old comments from Haloscan backed up, but I don't know how to put them back into Blogger.
First, just want to thank everyone who left comments with ideas about feminist Orthodox weddings.
I've (obviously) been thinking a lot about the issue and here's what I've come to.
I had serious issues with the actual wedding part of the Orthodox wedding. What I mean by that: I don't really like a lot of the symbolic (unnecessary) rituals -- i.e., the bedekin, the walking around 7 times, etc. -- but my real problem with being the bride in an Orthodox wedding is that I don't agree with the actual dynamics of marriage within Orthodox Judaism.
Here's what I mean:
From the way I understand it, if I was the bride in an Orthodox ceremony, I would be "acquired" by my husband and would be promising to be faithful to him whereas he is not doing the same thing with me.
He says, "Harei at m'kudeshet li?" (Will you be consecrated unto me?) But I never say the same thing back to him because in Orthodox Judaism, a husband's faithfulness is not given the same weight as a wife's. I really, really don't like that and I don't think our relationship fits within that model.
Now I know that maybe I should just be able to swallow this for the sake of making my (and his) parents happy, but then again, I feel like this belief system that I have (and I recognize that it is a belief system) is just as central to the way I see the world as Orthodox Judaism is to the way my and his parents see the world.
A lot of my friends seem to think I'm being silly, but I really feel like taking part in such a ceremony is compromising myself.
I know Conservative Judaism has a much more egalitarian ceremony with a brit ben ahuvim, etc.. PLEASE tell me that something of the sort exists in Orthodox Judaism that I don't know about? Or that there's a way to change the above issues while staying within the confines of halacha?
My parents and my boyfriend's parents want us to have a Jewish (read: Orthodox) wedding. (We recently got legally married, so I guess he's technically not my boyfriend anymore, but whatever.)
I know it would mean a lot to them (and, in fact, I know they would never consider us married until we had one) but I really, really don't want one. I've written a lot about my issues with Orthodox weddings (in respect to myself; if someone else wants one and has one, I will gladly attend, and be happy for their happiness). See my older posts -- here, here, and here.
It just seems really anti-feminist to me and whenever I think of myself as the bride in an Orthodox wedding, I feel sick. But knowing how much it means to my parents, I feel bad not having one at all.
Anyone know of any ways to make an Orthodox wedding fit my feminist ideas while still keeping it Orthodox? PLEASE HELP!!
Above all, I have found that this is true:
When I am living in a city in which there are fewer Jews, I feel more connected to my Judaism. (And vice versa.)
My family, some of my friends, etc., always seem concerned about a lack of Orthodox Jewish life in places where I have lived. But time and again, I find myself feeling alienated when living in/near those big Orthodox communities. Whereas when there's an absence, I am constantly looking to be more connected.
Maybe I'm just a contrarian. Not sure. But it's a truth in my life nonetheless.
A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend of mine who recently became a baal tshuva. I've known this guy since we were in middle school and I've never known him to be religious. He was always very spiritual, mind you, but also always turned off by Orthodoxy as he understood it.
This latest move in his life was due to his encounter with a more spiritual, musical, joyous version of Orthodoxy, of which he now considers himself a part. (Won't specify, so as not to give away any identifiying information.)
Anyway, we ended up having this whole conversation about why he only found religion now, in his late 20s, after so many years of looking for something. From his perspective, much of the blame goes to the Jewish education system. To him, the approach our school took to Jewish education turned him away from Judaism.
On my part, I can't blame my school for my current status as an "off-the-derech" adult. The reasons I don't believe and don't practice in an Orthodox way have more to do with the fact that I have serious intellectual (and a few moral) issues with Orthodoxy.
That said, I see my friend's point. So many of my other OTD friends, it seems, were turned off by the approach their Jewish day schools took in teaching them Judaism. (I know someone who feels sick just stepping inside a black hat-type environment because it reminds him of being forced to learn gemarah till the late hours of the night.)
By the approach the schools take, I mean that they make Judaism into a dry, academic subject that really doesn't have much of a joyous component to it. The tests, the grades, the rote-memorization (After 15+ years, I can still recite the first Rashi in Tanach by heart! WHY?!), the lack of innovation in topics and/or approaches.
And the way I see it, it's completely unnecessary and illogical. People are different from each other, have different strengths, different interests, and different ways they learn. I see serious problems with the way the secular education system is run in our country on this level, as well. But secular education is mandated by the government; Jewish education is not. It can be approached however a school wants to approach it.
For example, why do Jewish schools force all their students to take Chumash, Navi, Gemarah, etc., for hours and hours each day? In theory, they could allow students to approach Judaism in whatever way inspires or interests them. There could be classes in Jewish music (playing, creating, or studying -- whatever appeals), in the Jewish arts (whether that means learning calligraphy in order to become a sofer, designing ketubahs, or just generic art), in practical and everyday Jewish trades (checking for shatnez, kashering/slaughtering, checking mezuzot, etc.), maybe even in Jewish mysticism (although many schools might have problems with this one...).
Orthodox Judaism is a religion whose rules, regulations, and culture permeate every aspect of its adherents' lives. Why are its schools so narrowly focused, so obsessed with making everyone a gemarah/Tanach expert? Not that those subjects shouldn't be studied. They should! And everyone should be taught the rudimentary skills for learning them. But does every single student need to be forced to learn these subjects for hours a day? I say no. Especially when it turns so many people off.
...it's that my life got insanely busy.
Oops.
More soon...
On my last post, Rambling Jew commented:
"what will you do when you have children of your own? How will you educate them?"
The question brings up a really complex set of issues which has weighed on me with growing intensity over the last few years.
Of course, I'm still not sure if I want to have children. I've rarely written about my personal (read: love) life here, just because I feel like said topic might reveal my identity to certain people. Suffice it to say that having children is a possibility for me over the next few years.
That road, of course, would open up a pretty messy can of worms. I live my life outside of the bounds of any real Jewish movement. I feel attached to many of the Orthodox rituals and yet find some of the values/philosophies that undergird these rituals problematic for my own worldview (not to mention that I find some of the rituals themselves to be misaligned with my values). At the same time, I am inspired by some of the non-Orthodox movements, but don't really feel comfortable aligning myself with them.
I've already watched this play out for some of my friends. Some have cast aside their own problems with Orthodoxy, embraced the culture as "Orthopraxers," and begun to raise their kids according to the Orthodox way without really bringing up the issue.
For others, the issue seems not as easily resolved. One of my friends, in particular, is currently struggling with whether she should continue to send her nursery-school aged children to day school. It doesn't make sense to her, she says, to spend all that money educating her kids about something she herself doesn't really believe. Still, she says, when she sees the kids that come out of the public schools, it seems (to her) that they don't have a strong value system. Or at least not one that she'd like her kids to have.
For me, the question brings up so many issues:
Of course, should I have kids, I also want them to have a strong system of values that resonate with my own. That's a really hard thing to accomplish, especially when you're bringing said children up in a world that doesn't necessarily agree with those values. Still, if it were only on this level, I don't think I'd have such a problem.
Sure, there are lots of people in the secular world who have values with which I strongly disagree; the same, however, could be said of the Orthodox world. In my nieces' and nephews' schools, for example, gender norms are steeped into every part of the curriculum -- and this is really not what I'd want my children to be taught. Of course, that's a more Ultra-Orthodox world, rather than a Modern Orthodox world. But even the MO world is full of people whose values I strongly disagree with. In my own MO education, some of my teachers espoused their racist, homophobic, and materialistic ideologies pretty consistently.
Mind you, that's not to say that racist/homophobic/materialistic people exist solely within a Modern Orthodox world. Of course not! They exist everywhere, in every corner of society. Nor are these ideologies intrinsic to Modern Orthodoxy. When you come down to the core of the values Judaism espouses, I agree almost all of the time. But at the same time, I see a lot of these values equally espoused in secular society. And, as I mentioned above, the same can be said of negative values.
In the end, I believe that if I choose a good community (i.e., town -- not necessarily Jewish community) with a good school district, and I practice the values that I preach, my children will grow up with a good and solid value system. The tens of thousands of dollars don't seem like a worthwhile investment if it's made for the sake of values alone.
Where the line does start to get murky for me is when I start to think about Jewish tradition. As my posts have reflected, I value my tradition strongly and I'd like to pass that along to any children I might have. But what happens when I don't agree with certain traditions? What happens when there's no school that mirrors what I believe? Do I shell out all those tuition dollars to send my kids to a school that doesn't really reflect my Jewish practices?
It gives me a headache to think about it.
This past Shabbat, I went to a Conservative shul (more on this later, of course!). That weekend, a girl was celebrating her bat mitzvah, was called up to the Torah, etc. There were a lot of positive things I took away from this experience, but one negative for me was seeing how uncomfortable the girl, her friends, and family (who were called up) seemed to be with the Hebrew.
That said, I'm very close friends with a Conservative family in the town to which I've recently moved, and while their kids may not be as comfortable with reading Hebrew as I was during my childhood, Judaism definitely pervades everything that goes on in their home. They do not have a strictly kosher kitchen, do not abide by Orthodox definitions of Shabbat, but they have Shabbat dinner & lunch every week, the holidays are intrinsic to their family life in the same way that they were to my family when I was a child.
Their daughter attended a Jewish school for a while, but is now in public school. That doesn't seem to make her any less excited about going to shul every week, saying brachot, making Sukkah decorations, shaking the lulav, etc..
It's nervewracking territory to venture out into bringing the Judaism you personally believe in into a house without a day school as a support network, but I think it's do-able. If I can bring to my house the enthusiasm that I feel for Jewish traditions and be honest about what I believe and don't believe, maybe that's enough? I'm not sure.
For 15 years (if you include nursery & kindergarten), I went to an MO day school that cost my parents tens of thousands of dollars. I did gain a valuable spectrum of knowledge about Judaism from this (though I'm not sure I can say the same for secular subjects; in high school, at least, the academics at my school were rather pathetic).
With all that education, though, the feelings and attachment I have toward Jewish traditions comes from my parents and my home. So many of the OTD/skeptic friends I have talk about the negativity they feel toward Orthodoxy because of what they experienced in their homes -- their parents screaming and panicking before Shabbos, their being forced to learn and go to/stay in shul in spite of their nature that would have them do otherwise, the emphasis their parents put on the "don't"s, the lack of any excitement in celebrations.
Maybe it was because they were Ba'al Teshuva, maybe it was because of their personalities, I don't know -- but in my house, the emphasis was always on the excitement -- the screaming and panics before Shabbos were minimal or non-existent. For me, growing up, my parents made Judaism feel like something beautiful, something fun, something I wanted to be a part of.
When I got older and became, for intellectual reasons, an agnostic, it was the memories of my parents' practices of Judaism that made me want to stay Jewish in any way at all. When you're dealing with religion and tradition, I really think it's what's in the home that counts more than anything.
I'm still not sure that means I won't send my kids to a Jewish day school. It's something I'll think about when I'm there. But I don't think it's the end-all-and-be-all.
Furthermore, I don't think that Orthodoxy in the home is the only way to raise kids who will feel something for (and continue) their tradition. In fact, if you're Orthodox and don't want to be, your home is more likely to look like the negative OJ home. A positive, inspired, finding-your-own-path Judaism seems like a better, more productive, and more sound way to go.
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