Recently, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau visited Winnipeg. CBC reported that his trip involved promoting the federal budget, meeting with students, trade workers, apprentices and the mayor. The visit included celebrating with members of the Jewish community for Passover, as it fell during the holiday. I was at home and jokingly looked around my living room \u2026 nope, Trudeau wasn\u2019t visiting our house! After he left the city, there was a photo published from the Simkin Centre, Winnipeg\u2019s Jewish care home, with Trudeau wearing a kippah and shaking hands with residents. If anybody gets the honour of a visit with the prime minster, it should be our elders. I was pleasantly surprised.<\/p>\n
However, the most interesting Winnipeg moment appeared on Twitter and in the news. In it, Trudeau speaks to an anti-abortion University of Manitoba student who says he\u2019s a People\u2019s Party of Canada supporter. Any educator trained in the Socratic method could recognize Trudeau\u2019s response. This student engaged the prime minister in discussion while Trudeau was greeting people and shaking hands. Trudeau responded just as a good high school teacher would. He took the student\u2019s comments seriously, carefully voiced them back and asked direct, probing questions to lead the student to the next step. They covered dental care, religious freedom, and then went on to women\u2019s health care. Trudeau\u2019s questions were things like \u201cDo you believe women should have the right to choose what happens to their own bodies?\u201d<\/p>\n
The student later responded, \u201cI think if they\u2019re sleeping around they shouldn\u2019t be allowed to abort the baby, personally.\u201d The student conceded, in a few more steps, that he hadn\u2019t quite decided whether a woman who had been raped should have access to abortion. Trudeau then encouraged him \u201cto do a little more thinking \u2013 and praying.\u201d<\/p>\n
This clip circulated quickly through social media and brought up many issues. The thing that stuck with me was the student\u2019s assumption that if a woman was pregnant and sought an abortion, it was because \u201cthey\u2019re sleeping around.\u201d Not something like the pregnancy might be a danger to the mother and, as such, needed to be terminated, or the fetus had grave abnormalities and wouldn\u2019t live. There are viable reasons to need an abortion. While it\u2019s not always simple, Judaism supports the mother\u2019s right to health and well-being above that of a fetus.<\/p>\n
Most surprising: the student failed to acknowledge facts he should have gotten in sex education. Facts like it takes two people to make a pregnancy happen. There was no assumption of any male responsibility.<\/p>\n
This parallels something I\u2019ve been studying while doing Daf Yomi (a page of Talmud a day) and am now reading about in Tractate Sotah. This tractate explores the Sotah ritual spelled out in the Torah, which identifies a woman accused of adultery by her husband. There\u2019s not a lot of evidence to show this ordeal was ever practised historically, which hopefully it wasn\u2019t. It involved a series of acts, including the priest at the Temple giving a meal-offering, taking down the woman\u2019s hair, making her swear she was faithful, and then writing the oath on a piece of parchment, erasing it in water mixed with dust from the Tabernacle, and making her drink it. These \u201cbitter waters\u201d theoretically would predict a woman\u2019s guilt. If she is guilty, she would be ill and infertile, or possibly die. A woman who was innocent would be fertile and not be harmed.<\/p>\n
From a modern perspective, of course, this sounds completely repugnant, particularly when examining the talmudic tractate. The rabbis debate a scenario in which a man warns his wife not to be alone with another man. If she\u2019s in a room alone with this other man for \u201csome length of time\u201d \u2013 this time varies but it could be very short, according to some rabbis \u2013 she\u2019s potentially guilty of adultery. Again, no assumption at all of any male responsibility.<\/p>\n
I feel eerie parallels between modern events and this talmudic exploration. In some U.S. states, increasingly restrictive access to abortion has brought about some convoluted laws to limit women\u2019s ability to control their bodies. A new law in Florida requires a woman to show proof of rape or incest to be allowed access to an abortion if they are more than six weeks pregnant. Proof of rape or incest means \u201cproviding a copy of a restraining order, police report, medical record or other court order or documentation proving her victim status.\u201d While the law is being challenged, if doctors violate the law, they can be charged with a felony.<\/p>\n
Today, we recognize that a religious ritual forced on a woman accused of adultery, including forced consumption of bitter waters, doesn\u2019t prove anything. Yet, the \u201clegislators\u201d of biblical and talmudic times felt this public shaming and ordeal proved a woman\u2019s guilt or innocence. It was, perhaps, the ancient equivalent of forcing a rape victim to go through the medical examinations, police reports and other documentation. Many accounts indicate that obtaining this \u201cproof\u201d is not easy.<\/p>\n
In Winnipeg, there are so few nurses available in the sexual assault unit to administer the rape kit that victims have been asked to go home and return later when a nurse is on duty, but to avoid showering. There are ample police reports where they assume a woman \u201casked for it,\u201d or that she deserved it because of what she wore, etc. Expecting compassion from a Temple priest or police officer seems unlikely for many.<\/p>\n
What to make of these inequities? To a 21st-century feminist, the Sotah ritual is abhorrent, but it\u2019s equally horrendous that a victim must prove her victimhood again and again to get access to necessary health care. It\u2019s compounded by hearing a Manitoba student assume that a woman slept around if she got pregnant, without any recognition of who else participated or what else might have happened. The Jewish historical tradition shows that, like other rigid biblical punishments \u2013 such as the ben sorer u\u2019moreh<\/em> (the rebellious son), who, in the Torah, is supposed to be stoned to death, but, in the Talmud, the rabbis give so many impossible parameters for the situation that it would be impossible to kill a rebellious son \u2013 our culture evolved and didn\u2019t continue these harmful actions, but the ramifications linger.<\/p>\n The hopeful thing in regards to some women\u2019s healthcare access is that our situation, at least in Canada, continues to evolve. Money talks: Trudeau\u2019s Liberal government pledged $3.5 million to improve Canadian abortion services. Yet, the prime minister\u2019s questioning of that student gave me more hope. No one could have predicted that conversation in advance. Our elected leader is \u201cwalking the walk\u201d when it could have proved awkward. There\u2019s something powerful about being trained in the (ancient) Socratic method. Unlike the ancient Sotah ritual, it works.<\/p>\n Joanne Seiff<\/strong> has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including <\/em>From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau visited Winnipeg. CBC reported that his trip involved promoting the federal budget, meeting with students, trade workers, apprentices and the mayor. The visit included celebrating with members of the Jewish community for Passover, as it fell during the holiday. I was at home and jokingly looked around my living room […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[6312,218,2231,2172,4092,3400],"class_list":["post-41261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-ed","tag-governance","tag-judaism","tag-talmud","tag-torah","tag-trudeau","tag-womens-rights"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}