Men /Women
And what kind of relation they have to each other.

I came to Israel with some pretty solid feminist credentials. In lots of ways, I still claim them. But I have definitely developed a stronger sense of men and women as fundamentally different. Part of that comes from being married. Part of that comes from walking out of America, where the culture is so adamnant about calling a spade a spade. And a pick a spade. And a watermellon a spade.

I'm straying. What I mean to say is this. A synagogue, like a beit midrash, is not where Jewish life happens (in my opinion). My interpretation of talmud tora c'neged culam, usually explained that studying tora is weighed as greater than all other mitzvot together, is that when learning imbues everything elses, than you're living the real life.

But again we stumble up upon the difference between men and women. The Tora proposes that they have different spiritual needs. Women are more stable, more solid. More conservative too. It was men who were the first ones to shoot off into nevernever land and abandon Judaism a couple of generations ago. Now that society has "normalized" on that path, it is the women who adhere to it more vehemently , and the men who have been the first to do tshuva, to return.

Looking at a normal Jewish community, where people are raised jewish, (like, God willing, my children, and even more so my grandchildren ken yihye ratzon, women seem to be on a more natural spiritual line. I'm not sure at all that they need tefillin, and prayer three times a day, etc. Men are screw-ups, and have to be kept in line more. In today's generation, where everyone is a bit nuts, that is maybe less apparent, but I think it's fundamentally true.

Chaia put it this way once, and I think it's brilliant: Men by nature, both physical and spiritual, are straight lines, vectors. Natural tendency is to shoot off, oftimes unstably, in some direction which looked good at startup, but they could end up anywhere. Women, by nature are cyclical, round. Their tendency is to repeat things, to go over the same things, to repeat the familiar, and in doing so, to not make progress.

The most stable form in the world, for movement, is the spiral. It's DNA, it's the way you make a bullet go straight. It's how you put on tefillin. How do you make a spiral? You combine a vector with a circle. When men and women go it together, you have true movement. And, you have a double spiral/helix. Sound familiar? In a jewish society, women are not considered worthwhile only if they're similar to men (read: CEO's). They are respected for their own distinct souls, personalities, and strengths. Not only that, but I found that was not a new idea for the Jews, but rooted in the Tora, the Talmud, and jewish thought of all the generations. I think ultimately that's what 'pushed me over the edge,' and made me decide that I identify most deeply with myself as a Jew, and not as a Western Civilized Man. Different definitions of civilized.

My first twenty-five years I lived in a society where women were almost exclusively considered for their sexual merits, held up against a preposterous ideal. Hello Miss America. I now live in a society where women not only raise children and work in every imaginable profession, but are looked at as people, not imperfect 19-year-olds. A woman here is thought to get better with age, as she gets wiser. And I like it.

Don't think so? Do? Say . I'll be happy to hear from you.