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| Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef supports excluding female doctors |
Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest HMO, has revoked its sponsorship of a conference hosted by Dorot Institute – Center for Fertility, Medicine and Halacha after it was reported that the event scheduled for April 20 in Jerusalem would not include women speakers...
Dorot Institute is an ultra-Orthodox organization catering to couples from the sector struggling to conceive.
By now most readers know my feelings about the importance of Halacha is to be at least part of Israel’s identity - without it being forced upon that part of the population that is not observant. Forced observance will not advance the cause of Torah in the slightest. It will do the opposite - as these protests show.
The elimination of female doctors from a conference on fertility issues is the height of stupidy. Which in my mind borders on the concept of Chasid Shoteh.
This is not to say that male doctors who are experts in the field aren't capable of dealing with fertility issues. I’m sure they are.. But to eliminate women from that kind of conference is insulting in the extreme. Not to mention the fact that they bring to the table a perspective that men could not possibly have.
There is nothing in Halacha that forbids a woman from addressing a group of men on any subject. Much less on issues dealing with female health. I don’t blame anyone for boycotting a conference that bans female presenters.
Why is Dorot doing this? I think it stems from the same kind of attitude that prevents Charedi publications from publishing pictures of women. A practice that was well accepted by the non Chasidic Charedi world in the not too distant past. Agudah used to feature pictures of women on the cover of their now defunct magazine The Jewish Observer when the occasion called for it. Were they not Frum enough then?
The current phenomenon of erasing women from public participation in any and all circumstances; and never publishing women's pictures in their media is in my view nothing more than an exercise in one-upmanship. They may not be consciously aware of it, but I think they are just trying to show how ‘Frum’ they are compared to other ‘Frum’ people or organizations.
Guess what? Judaism is NOT about Frumkeit. It is about doing the will of God. And this ain’t it (in my humble opinion).
Who exactly is their ‘competition’ in this regard? The extremists that reject all worldliness as anti Torah. People that think speaking English well is Chukas HaGoy (emulating the evil ways of non Jews). People that think harassing even observant women in their neighborhood that are modestly dressed although not according to their standards. People that believe that men and women cannot walk on the same side of the street. People that see a reference to anything female in a public display to be so immodest that even the word 'woman' is blacked out on signs and posters. People that will harass a woman on a bus if she sits in the wrong seat in the front section of a bus. People that yell and scream ‘whore’ at a little girl who is not dressed modestly enough by their standards. I could go on. But I think I made my point.
These are the people that that the ‘Frumkeit crowd’ is trying to outdo. Do they really think that God somehow changed His mind in recent years to this brave new standard? What’s the matter with these people?
That female doctors addressing men on issues of fertility is considered immodest is absurd in the extreme. It makes a mockery of the very concept it purports to be supporting. In my view it is instead the epitome of ‘Falche (false) Frumkeit’.
If Charedim want to see a more observant Israel - this is one way to assure it will never happen!