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Reply to Mike: Anger at Rabbis

On the UOJ blogsite my article on this website was criticized by Mike. First what I wrote, then Mike's comments.

DE wrote, "People are aroused and angry if a woman is pained in any way. But why are people not aroused and angry, and why are the women completely silent, when in the modern Orthodox world women must delay marriage so long, and men delay marriage so long, that inevitably, men use women the wrong way? Why are we silent at the Tephilin Dates? Is it not abuse when women must dishonor themselves?"

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Mike wrote: "Is this rabbi really suggesting that the Jewish outrage as a result of the consensual sex that takes place between two adults should be on par with the outrage when we find out that our leaders have been defending, covering up, and allowing a sex predator to roam our streets for 30 plus years?!?

If he does, no wonder the Jewish community is in such shambles. Let's examine our priorities and our leaders."

Mike, if I told you that Mr. X molested ten children ten times, you would be angry. If I told you Mr. Y molested one child once, you would be angry. If one is only angry at Mr. X and does not mention Mr. Y there is a flaw. Why is there no anger at such a heinous crime?

Today, we condone with our silence a system whereby young women are being damaged and destroyed. One of the ways is by our silence that condones men using women for their purposes, as Tephilin Dates. If our society would realize that the same Torah that forbids molesting children forbids consensual sex, and when we realize historically what sanctity a Jewish woman had, we would then realize the enormity of the crime that we are silent at the destruction of the virtue of so many women.

I have spent years studying gender issues, and my website www.gendercentral.com has many articles about the destruction of women in general in America. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times is only one of prominent women who are crying bitterly at their inability to have what their mothers and grandmothers did, a normal family, a husband, and a world where they are not expected to give and not take.

Our Torah world should be different. We must never ignore the needs of our children even if they are women! Have we really come to the point whereby someone cries out for help for desperate and even ruined women and somebody responds, "We have more important things to worry about!"?

Mike, why don't you ask around about the misery of modern women, and the suffering of modern Orthodox ladies. There are other issues affecting Haredi ladies, and these are also, in their way, atrocious. Let us keep up the anger, until no Jewish child is left behind, and nobody is thrust to the winds of shame and ignored.

 Right now it is fashionable to scream about child molesters, but it is not fashionable to scream about the demeaning life of Orthodox women. If everyone else will be silent, I will not be. I am not one who reads the paper and decides what to fight that day. If we want to follow the herd, we should be angry at ourselves, not our leaders.