Dear F,
Taken together, the following
opinion pieces (from today's WAPO) are stronger for being in opposition to
one another.
I have not been able to track Carl Jung's view that "Sex is eternally
problematic."
Even without proper attribution, I believe the same is true for gender.
Generally speaking, we prefer the company of our "own kind," and
it is difficult, albeit exquisitely attractive, to cross the chasm.
Traditionally, sex and gender
"solutions" have expressed themselves in the radical segregation of
patriarchy.
Extreme purity always presents itself as a
solution.
In practice, however, extreme purity
ends up as Hitler's Final Solution; Jim Crow/Apartheid oppression; the supercilious self-righteousness of the Haredim (and other sex/gender
purists); and -- to significant extent -- priestly pederasty.
At bottom, the muck
of life is the fertilizer of life - and "giving the devil his due" is
essential if we would keep the devil in bounds.
Merton: "The
terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be
put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories,
the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to
rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive
times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with
imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only
unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is
theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer
any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes
evil.” Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton
Pax on
both houses
Alan
PS "Gender" was Ivan Illich's only book that did not receive rave reviews. In fact,
members of his inner circle advised him not to publish it. In "Gender", Illich
(who counted many accomplished females as friends) argues that the traditional self-segregation of men and women is intrinsic to the pre-industrial psyche, and, as always, he argues (or implies) that the pre-industrial psyche was richer and more human than its sequel. I thought
"Gender" was a very good book.
Here's Illich's related
essay, "The Sad Loss of Gender." http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1990_loss_of_gender.html
The ultra-Orthodox tighten their grip in Israel
BEIT SHEMESH, Israel
By Ruth Marcus, Published: August 7, 2012
The rock hit Nili Philipp on the side of her helmet as she biked last year along the main road in this Jerusalem suburb. A few years earlier, the spitting had begun, as Philipp jogged on a road bordering an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. Men called her names: Shikseh, the derogatory term for a Gentile woman. Prutzah, whore.
But Philipp’s story is not one of conflict between the defiantly secular Israeli majority and an increasingly assertive ultra-Orthodox minority. She is an observant, modern Orthodox Jew, dressed, on the day we speak, as she is for her runs — a kerchief covering her red hair, a skirt that falls modestly below the knee. It speaks volumes about intolerance among the ultra-Orthodox that Philipp has become enraged, even radicalized, by the behavior of her neighbors.
“Whenever people tell me, respect their society — their society doesn’t respect me,” Philipp says, voice quivering as she describes a recent incident in which a woman with an infant was pelted with stones while shopping here. “We all see ourselves as vulnerable, and we’re all scared.” The latest skirmish involves signs instructing women here to stay off certain sidewalks so as not to brush up against men.
In a chilling parallel to the escalating fundamentalist tendencies within Islam, the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim, have adopted a version of Judaism that requires strict separation between men and women. The more they fear assimilation, the more extreme their practices have become. And, as their numbers mount, they have stepped up demands that society accommodate their religious needs.
On a day-to-day basis, the ultra-Orthodox, insular and detached, make little difference to the average Israeli. You can order a decidedly unkosher grilled calamari in Eilat or go clubbing in Tel Aviv even after Sabbath begins on Friday night.
Few secular Israelis experience the de facto segregated public buses that run through Haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem; men sit in the front, women in the back, despite court-ordered signs advising passengers that they can sit where they choose. When I rode the No. 56 from Ramat Shlomo to Mea Shearim with representatives from the New Israel Fund and the Israel Religious Action Center, no one said a word when I sat up front — even if ultra-Orthodox men chose to stand rather than occupy vacant seats nearby.
Instances of intimidation such as Philipp experienced are more episodic than constant, more localized than countrywide. When they hit the news, as with the spitting and yelling at Philipp’s daughter and other young girls heading to their religious school in Beit Shemesh last year, there tends to be public outcry and, at least briefly, official intervention.
One difficult set of questions in a country where religion and government are officially entangled is how much the state should accommodate the religious needs of the ultra-Orthodox — for example, the ultra-Orthodox public radio station that bleeps out the voices of female members of the national legislature, the Knesset, lest men suffer from “impure” thoughts on hearing women’s voices, or public health clinics with separate days for men and women. If higher education is key to integrating the ultra-Orthodox, should the state fund scholarships for gender-segregated classes?
Even more troubling are the mounting instances in which the ultra-Orthodox have insisted that their religious needs take precedence — for instance, demanding separate seating at public ceremonies or even, as happened last year, barring a female pediatrics professor from going on stage to accept an award from the ultra-Orthodox health minister.
With the country now debating how to integrate the ultra-Orthodox into the armed forces — the long-standing draft exemption has been declared unconstitutional — questions of gender equity will become even more pointed: Will conscription of the ultra-Orthodox come at the expense of women’s rights in an egalitarian military? Will ultra-Orthodox men take orders from women?
These clashes between the legitimate rights of a religious minority and the essential freedoms of the majority threaten to become ever more intense as the ultra-Orthodox population multiplies and its political clout grows. The ultra-Orthodox now constitute about 10 percent of Israel’s population, but the Central Bureau of Statistics estimates that the Haredi share of the population will reach 30 percent within 50 years.
“I moved to Israel and the rock that was thrown at me wasn’t from an Arab, which I was prepared for,” said Dov Lipman, a Beit Shemesh community activist who came here from Silver Spring, Md. “It was thrown by another Jew, which I wasn’t prepared for.”
No one should have to be.
- Richard Cohen
- Opinion Writer
A difference beyond question
By Richard Cohen, Published: August 6, 2012
Before the Jews of Hungary were emancipated in the 19th century, they were not permitted to own land. By the end of the century, they were on their way to owning fully one-fifth of Hungary’s large estates and were hugely successful in business and the arts. The Jews of Germany had a similar history. In the early 20th century, they comprised many if not most of the country’s lawyers, doctors, composers, playwrights and scientists, and were so astonishingly successful in business that while they were just 1 percent of the population, they were 31 percent of the richest families. What did it? Was it nature (Jews were smarter) or nurture (Jews had a certain culture)? Here’s my answer: I don’t know.
I do know, though, that if you eliminate what would certainly be condemned as a racist explanation — Jews as inherently smarter than non-Jews — then you are left with culture: There was something in the Jewish experience — 1,000 or so years of persecution and being shunted into dishonorable occupations such as money lending — that prepared Europe’s Jews for the onset of capitalism. Countless books have been written to explain this phenomenon, which continues to this day with Israel’s intellectual domination of its region. In his new book, “The Future of the Jews,” Stuart E. Eizenstat provides an example: “Between 1980 and 2000, 7,652 patents were registered by Israelis in the United States.” The figure for the entire Arab world? 367.
The cultural difference between Israel and its Arab neighbors is so striking that you would think it beyond question. But whenMitt Romney attributed the gap between Israel’s economic performance and the Palestinians’ — “Culture makes all the difference,” he said in Israel — the roof came down on him. PC police the world over raised a red card, giving him demerits for having the temerity to notice the obvious. Predictably, Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator and a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, denounced the statement as “racist.” It was, of course, just the opposite.
This is a complicated matter. It’s true that the West Bank is under Israeli occupation and parts of Gaza have been pounded into rubble. It is also true that for years the Palestinians benefited from jobs in Israel. It is true that a good many educated Palestinians live in the diaspora, but it is also true that the early diaspora consisted of Palestinian Christians fleeing Ottoman repression. (There are about 500,000 Palestinians in Chile.)
Still, for all the caveats, Arabs themselves recognize that they have a cultural problem. The Arab Human Development Report of 2002 singled out three “deficits” of Arab society that are “obstacles” to progress. One was the lack of political freedom; another was the narrow knowledge base; and the third the status of women. All of these vary across the region — Saudi Arabia’s women are forbidden to drive — but nowhere in the region are women as free as they are in the West or, for that matter, Israel. In all of vast Arabia, about half of the potential workforce is poorly educated.
This hubbub about culture may seem esoteric, but it is really very important. The tendency to hold the Arabs blameless for their own culture is part of the predilection to hold them harmless for the lack of peace agreement with Israel. The Israelis have much to account for, but they are not alone in this matter and they are not the ones who have over and over again rejected peace plans. The adamant refusal to hold the Arabs accountable infantilizes them — a neo-colonialist mentality that is, in the end, simply insulting.
The book that Romney cited for his views on Arab culture, David S. Landes’s “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” goes further than I would in blaming the Arabs for their own difficulties, and it was written long before the Arab Spring. But it is a vigorously written attack on the sort of thinking that blames the West for all that ails the East and for disregarding indigenous cultural problems. Landes is particularly tough on the Muslim societies of the Middle East for the plight of women — a cultural phenomenon that does not exist in Islamic Asia but does, just for the record, among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Romney could have been more diplomatic and eschewed a shorthand explanation of what ails Palestinian society — he might also have acknowledged Palestinian achievements — but he identified what are, indisputably, two problems. The first is that of culture. The second is the reluctance to discuss it.
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