My first blog post!

I have been interested in making my sermons and research musings more available to those who are actually interested in reading them, thus despite being somewhat technologically challenged, I am entering the world of blogging!

Below, see my response to the tragic killing of Dr. George Tiller on Shabbat Naso.

bamidbar – Apparently we are still in the wilderness – that a man can walk into a church and gun down a fellow human being because of a difference in opinion. Taking the life from a man who himself was serving his community by ushering his fellow congregants into worship, whose wife was helping elevate that divine worship with her voice, because of a difference in opinion – a strongly held opinion, for sure, but ultimately Dr. George Tiller lost his life because instead of finding a more appropriate path for his passionately held views, Scott Roeder was incited to express them through violence.
Already comment has been made in the media that the perpetrator of this heinous crime suffered from mental illness (and I don’t doubt that possibility), but I am not willing to let our society dismiss his actions and so quickly fail to take responsibility for such a violent expression of hate.
I make no secret of my passionately held opinion – for the record, I believe our country’s legal system must protect a woman’s right to be responsible for her own body and her freedom to find appropriate and safe medical care without fear of being harassed or attacked physically or verbally. And her doctors must not be limited in their capacity due to fear of such harassment. Any legislation that falls short of such comprehensive protection in my view is not only ‘anti-choice’ but ‘anti-life’ – no life is protected by forcing women into unsafe conditions which experience in our own country and elsewhere reminds us will result. And no life is protected by intimidating our medical professionals out of providing safe and appropriate care to those in need. However, those who hold to another point of view – those who label themselves as ‘pro-life’ have as much right to their opinion as I do to mine, and while I may think they are wrong, I respect the expression of those views in appropriate and peaceful venues. Sadly though, what our country seems to have allowed, in the name of free speech and the 1st amendment no less, is a monologue of hateful and manipulative language that not only instills fear in place of dialogue, but leads to physical and verbal abuse of women and the physicians trying to serve them, and can lead those less stable to acts of violence such as the killing of Dr. Tiller.

Parashat Naso outlines one of the least understood ancient rituals (see Numbers 5:11-30). Labelled by Rabbinic tradition as the ritual of the Sotah, it is unclear if this test of a woman’s innocence in the face of an accusation of adultery arose out of a primarily misogynistic or protectionist attitude towards women. Of course, we hope for the latter. Regardless, what the text underscores is the reality of the vulnerability of women in biblical society and the tenuous nature of their status. Even if the ritual was to serve as protection against an enraged and jealous husband, the woman – passive, perhaps even victimized, is placed in a position of having to prove innocence through a public and humiliating display. Our discomfort, embarrassment even, over this puzzling ritual is evident in the later literature. Early Rabbinic as well as modern commentators have struggled with the pshat, the plain meaning of the text many arguing that such a ritual rarely if ever was implemented, others maintaining the Talmudic principle: אין האיש מנוקה מעון ־ אין המים בודקין את אשתו, that the waters could only prove a wife guilty if the husband himself was above reproach (B. Sotah 47b). There has been no shortage of apologetic explanation of its place in the canon; yet, despite our discomfort, we rarely challenge the text outright. We don’t live in the Biblical period, and while explanations to place the ritual of the Sotah in the context of the Ancient Near East are compelling to me as a biblical historian, as a modern Jew seeking insight from our Biblical tradition, the text only stands as an example of how not to treat women.

Furthermore, it stands as a lesson we still need to learn. Too often we remain passive in the face of such treatment today accepting ‘the bitter waters’ as a reality of society rather than making the effort to confront the forces in society that seek to limit a women’s access to care and council without judgement and interference. How many women in our modern world are publicly humiliated for their choices or pressured out of fear to make choices not in their or their family’s best interest. Why is there an inherent assumption by so many that if women are allowed access to abortion, or birth control even, they will engage in reckless and wanton behavior? And if indeed the goal of the right is to “reduce unwanted pregnancies”, why is there not equal attention paid to developing and implementing quality educational programs that help both young men and women to do just that.

I fear, not only as a woman, but more importantly as a mother of daughters, that we as a modern society are not treating women much better than our biblical text. We must stop placing a woman’s destiny in the hands of others, others who may or may not know the full story of her situation, and instead trust her ability and desire to make good and appropriate choices for herself and society. To do otherwise greatly diminishes her’s and our humanity.