I'm Smiling at Sexism Again

I find myself smiling at sexism again...

This is not uncommon. My words happen to be very sexist, often. In the public sphere, for example, I have repeatedly made the claim that women, including myself are illiterate and should not be allowed to entertain the notion of thought as it only leads to trouble. There's a certain, tasty irony that accompanies these and even worse, gender and sexually discriminatory statements as they issue from a queer and feminist educated and practicing individual. However, I maintain the very serious issue that women cannot be exempt from sexism as there is no more true statement as: that no one can hate women more than women.

That being said let's move on to religion. Israel's current manifestation of the problem with I define as letting the ultra-Orthodox nutjobs run a secular country that they neither aid monetarily nor help to defend, is GENDER SEGREGATED BUSSES. The high court is finally smacking down on this coddling of the poor, defenseless Haredi, who want to impose their way of life on EVERY...Jew. I think they should be honored to bump heavily clothed elbows with the men AND WOMEN who work and soldier and basically keep Israel together while they live off of government stipends....paid by the less observant, practically-gentiles.

I might love Israel. There's a woman sitting in prison right now because she prayed at a segregated section of a really old wall and had the audacity to sing her love of adonai. Truly offensive. Frankly, I almost hopped the fence when I was there. And what is this wall of malcontent? Is this the wall of the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies? Is it the wall of the Temple where our people congregated thrice a year in giant picnics of worship? Nope. It's the Western, “wailing” Wall also known as a kind of fence, outter wall of the Temple, albeit the Western is the closest to all the important Arks and junk but I think if you pray at the Southern wall, there's a lot more room and shade (which might only be important to pastier Jews).

And why is the palace of the picnic so important? Did G-d give us Torah there? Did Abraham almost kill his son there? Actually, what a morbid holy site, the muslims can keep that one. Nah, King Dave might have wanted a sweeter digs....no, wait, that's the first tiny temple, which did NOT replace all of the worship sites, just kind of united the country a little, which was nice, but not Torah-biblical. Nope, this is the last of like three, standing, OUTER walls of the GIANT, osentatious palace that HEROD, of the roman-loving, politically savvy and ethically questionable, built because he wanted to look even awesomer.

So, here's why I love Israel and the Jews that cohabitate there: They're praying at a mildly, pointless archeological site where we killed animals instead of prayed anyway. They're doing it in a painfully sexist way, defined by the epic slackers and religiously intolerant who run the country which is defended by the hard-working, pluralistic and religiously indifferent. And the women uprising, only rising up on their designated side of course, can't even bus there in peace.

Oy Veh. Luckily for us, I think after this long, G-d understands that our tradition totally trumps anything He might have to say.