Several of my last posts have dealt with Israel Shahak, the late Israeli human rights activist who, while not opposed to war always--it was war that liberated him from Bergen Belsen--opposed the Israeli invasion f Lebanon and a great many othe wars in the Middle East. He also advocated equal rights for women and gays. This friend of mine identifies herself as a Mizrachi Jew, meaning that her family came to Israel from Arab countries and not European ones. Her grandmother, in fact, spoke Arabic as her first language. My friend identifies herself as a non-Zionist, a feminist, and a lesbian. She first became aware of Shahak when she read a statement of his supporting equal rights for gays. In other words, she had a basic sympathy for him.
Yesterday, she called me because she wanted to discuss something in Shahak's book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. In the book, he wrote that Mizrachi Jews were unable to create a political party that was both viable and secular and that Mizrachi were less fully modern than other elements in Israeli society. She objected to this on both factual and moral grounds. There have been progressive Mizrachi groups. Beginning in the 1970s, there was the Black Panthers, which was named after the famous American group. The Israeli Black Panthers sought greater rights for Mizrachi Jews. There was also a progressive political movement called the Mizrachi Democratic Rainbow and a political party that, if I remember correctly, did manage to get some seats in the Knesset but is no longer in existence.
What upset her the most, though, was to have the community with which she identifies described as "less fully modern." As someone who loved Shahak dearly, I am tempted to say that this statement should be taken with a grain of salt. English was his third language, after Polish and Hebrew. He never quite mastered it and his English writings required heavy editing. It may be that his imperfect English and the heavy editing it required subtly changed his point. I recently did some work for someone who wanted to publish a book that she translated from Hebrew into English. My job was to polish the English. It was extraordinarily difficult and we spent hours on the phone (Thank goodness for Skype numbers!) trying to find phrases that expressed the original Hebrew accurately and sounded good in English. Even after months of work, I am sure that the writer, were he still alive would perhaps disagree with some of the choices he made.
On the other hand, my friend raised valid issues about his book. To say that a culture is not fully modern is to cast an implicit, negative light on it. It is tempting to blame a group with traditional religious values for the ills of society and blaming the Mizrachim for the faults in Israeli society is too much like blaming the Fundamentalists for all the faults in American society.
I am no longer Protestant--although I still love the individualism that is implicit in it-- because I believe that this religion has been taken over by the Fundamentalists and I refuse to believe that everyone with a different theology is going to hell. I also don't like their often extreme emphasis on the physical punishment of children and their high level of support for American military adventurism. On the other hand, most Fundamentalists in many ways lead lives that embrace better values than many in secular America. A number of years ago, I had a series of kidney infections with fairly high fevers. I missed a lot of work and, because I felt too exhausted to read, I watched a lot of TV. The next time you are home sick, try comparing daytime programming on secular networks with daytime programming on religious television. On religious television, there was a nutrition show urging viewers to avoid sugar and trans fats and eat whole grains and vegetables. There was also a Christian exercise show and another show about restoring troubled marriages. In contrast, secular daytime television was filled with Maury Povich and Jerry Springer. Povich likes to do those paternity test shows that exploit young women who are usually from very poor backgrounds--rural whites and inner-city minorities. These young women reveal their sexual indiscretions on the show in exchange for getting a paternity test and maybe a trip to a big city. These shows go into syndication and can haunt these young women for the rest of their lives. All they get in return is "a mess of pottage" while Povich makes millions of dollars. In spite of my disagreements with Fundamentalism, I prefer programming about nutrition, good marriages, and the Bible to shows that exploit vulnerable teenage girls.
The larger point is that whether we are talking about Mizrachi culture or Fundamentalist culture, it is very easy to compare the best in our own culture with the worst in other cultures. For example, we as Americans often see the cruelty in Afghani and Iraqi culture while ignoring their traditions of hospitality and generosity, for example. Or, we ignore our own history of displacing Native Americans, bombing civilians, and experimenting on people in Guatemala. Instead, we focus on our democracy, the building of an economy that until the recent economic collapse was one of the best in the world, and our high level of personal freedom.
My friend made another point about Shahak's views on Judaism's treatment of women. She said that many observant women do not feel oppressed at all and that their views should be taken seriously. I personally feel sorry for women who have ten children but perhaps the women love their children and are happy to have them in their lives. Is it really worse to spend one's life as a wife and mother than it is to spend one's life as a corporate executive? All major choices involve the sacrifice of other options. A life dedicated to family and a religious community does contain substantial satisifactions along with very great hardships. (On the other hand, in my heart I sympathize with Shahak. I was once in Jerusalem and had some interactions with Orthodox women. Their lives are hard! And maybe this is my non-Jewish bias showing, but I think that a lot of the rules imposed on women by ultraorthodox Judaism are degrading and humiliating. Maybe the women don't feel oppressed because they are so closed off from other waysof life that they can't imagine another way of living. Maybe they have, as the expession goes, internalized their oppression.By the way, many of the women in these cultures when speaking candidly do admit dissatisfaction with their way of life.)
Nevertheless, I share my friend's pain at having her culture described as not fully modern, a formulation that ignores that decades of progressive Mizrachi movements and ignores the great variation of opinion within the Mizrachi community.
For me, this was a reminder that even progressives can be mistaken in their views of other cultures and the fact that someone is a humanist or a human rights activist does not mean that all of his or her interpretations of other cultures are therefore valid.
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