The Evolving Jew

I rarely get angry about politics, but I am getting angry now. Yesterday, Barack Obama made a speech about race in America that was nuanced, treated the listeners like thinking people, and made important distinctions. But many in the Jewish community focused only on what Obama had to say about his former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Admittedly, some of the sound clips of Wright’s that have come to light in recent days are disturbing. But Obama isn’t Wright. He made that abundantly clear in his speech yesterday: “…the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies

On DovBear's blog , LadyKaye wrote a post on whether women can lain from the Torah in public and discussed the reason given in the Talmud against it, that of "Kavod HaTzibur" (respect to the congregation). She discusses the 2 explanations generally given for Kavod HaTzibur. One is that women were simply held in lower regard. The other was a convoluted apologetic that involved women's educational opportunities (see her post for a full explanation.) I thin there's no question that it's the lower regard for women that accounted for Kavod HaTzibur. Women were deemed inferior. That's OK, since most of the world deemed women inferior at the time the halachot were written & codified. (Mishna & Talmud.) Actually, Judaism was more respectful of women's rights and status than the surrounding society. They were deemed inferior, but not property. Since the episode of B'not Zelafchad in the Torah, Judaism has had a tradition of working within the hal

Emes Ve_emunah on reporting of child abuse in the Orthodox community: http://haemtza.blogspot.com/2008/03/dropping-ball-on-child-sex-abuse.html Important reading. I can't agree with Harry M more.