This picture, pulled from an image file because my camera battery died, is of a sign that appears all over the Jerusalem neighborhood called Mea Shearim. The article I linked to here calls it a “living museum” but somehow to me it’s always been oppressive. I go to an Orthodox synagogue and am accustomed to some painful facts about the role of women in Orthodox Judaism but this is different. To me it feels so joyless and heavy – I feel it sitting on my chest. No one smiles. No one will exchange a nod or even a glance as you pass them on the street – not the men who technically aren’t allowed to look at women not their wives, not the women – I’m not sure why — or even the kids. They are as closed off from us as if we were on two sides of a glass.
Sure you can buy things but that’s it. And it seems so strange to me that their stores are tangles of goods — no displays, no efforts to make things attractive – just piles and jumbles. I keep telling myself that it’s because the material world is so irrelevant to them. Their lives – every moment – belong to God. And to many I know that’s laudable. In some ways it is… but — and I’m thinking out loud here — in my view God gave us the rest of the world — why shouldn’t we enjoy it, too?
I guess I’ll just have to continue to struggle. I never could stand not being able to connect with people. Maybe I just want the connection that I have no right to expect. My husband says that I’m looking at THEIR lives through MY eyes and I have to open my mind to the acceptable differences between us. But they transmit such disapproval and so clearly feel none of the commonality that I want to feel with others who choose to practice Judaism that it’s tough. I’m thinking as I’m typing that it’s my bad – that I have to simply accept without comment the lives of others and stop wanting them to love me. Wow. Maybe that’s the whole thing — that and what I feel about the women and their very constrained lives. More to come on this I suspect.
Spent the rest of the day wandering around Jerusalem. In the morning we took a two hour class on the story of the Rape of Dina in Genesis. Because it was particularly important to me to read, particularly as a woman, it was quite exciting to spend two hours on it and the views of the sages about it. I love the intellectual activity that is part of Jewish study. Questions — then answers… but always more than one — shared observations, shared theories and opinions. To me the idea that Judaism is not a destination but a journey informed by shared study is wonderful and among the best aspects of it. Just the opposite of what seems to be going on in Mea Shearim. Gotta keep thinking… but right now I’m just going to sleep. Signing off from the City of Gold.
Interestingly, I experienced similar feelings in the very Orthodox part of Antwerp. Noone would smile or even as much as acknowledge your presence. I found that buying from such stern-looking people made the very act of purchasing painful. What’s more I found it all the more disturbing as they are my fellow Jews but it did not feel that way.