women’s rights

Women try to right wrongs

Elizabeth Cady Stanton – suffragist, social activist, abolitionist. Susan B. Anthony – social reformer, women’s rights activist. Ernestine Rose – who?

Bonnie Anderson taught history and women’s studies for 30 years at Brooklyn College and at the Graduate Centre of City University of New York. She has written three books on women’s history, the latest being The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter (Oxford University Press, 2017).

When Anderson wrote Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830-1860, she learned about Rose, who was born in 1810 in Poland to an Orthodox rabbi and his wife. Her father taught her Hebrew and Torah but, by age 14, she had rejected Jewish beliefs and identified as an atheist. Betrothed at 15, she broke her engagement but her fiancé would not agree – he wanted her inheritance and brought a suit against her. At age 17, Rose went to the district court 65 miles away and presented her case personally, arguing that “she should not lose her property because of an engagement she did not want.” She won.

Moving to Berlin, Rose lived there two years before heading to Paris and then to London, where she embraced the belief system of Robert Owen, who had a utopian socialist vision; she became a disciple. Also in London, she met William Rose, a free-thinking atheist, jeweler and silversmith. They married when she was 20 and he was 23 and emigrated to the United States.

Rose became a pioneer for women’s equality and an accomplished lecturer, speaking to the public for the free-thought and the women’s rights movements.

“A good delivery, forcible voice, the most uncommon good sense, a delightful terseness of style and a rare talent for humour are the qualifications which so well fit this lady for a public speaker,” wrote a reporter in Ohio in 1852.

She lectured extensively, including against slavery, during her years in the United States, from 1836 to 1869, and became a U.S. citizen. She went back and forth to England between 1871 and 1874.

“She embodied female equality in both her everyday life and her political activism,” writes Anderson. “She was a true pioneer, working for the ideals of racial equality, feminism, free thought and internationalism.”

The book concludes with 44 pages of notes and eight pages of bibliography. Readers should find this biography of an “international feminist pioneer” a fascinating reading experience about an amazing woman.

***

In 2005, the movie Woman in Gold portrayed the story of a painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer I that was painted by Gustav Klimt in 1907 and owned by her and her husband. She died in 1925 and her husband fled Austria in 1938, ultimately dying in 1945. During the war, the Nazis seized the painting, which had ended up in a Vienna palace. The will of her husband designated Maria Altmann, niece, as heir and Altmann sued the Austrian government for the painting, and won the court battle. The painting was subsequently bought by Ronald Lauder and is now in the Neue Galerie in New York.

The novel The Fortunate Ones by Ellen Umansky (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2017) alternates between Vienna in the 1930s and England in the 1940s, as well as Los Angeles in 2005 and 2006 and New York in 2006.

Rose Zimmer, her older brother Gerhard and her parents, Charlotte and Wolfe, live in Vienna in 1938. Unable to escape, they send Rose and her brother on the Kindertransport to England. Rose, 12, lives with a childless Orthodox Jewish couple; her brother lives elsewhere. By the time the war is over, Rose is living with a girlfriend and working; her brother is in the service and their parents’ whereabouts are unknown. Rose goes to college, is supported by her brother and his wife, meets a young man, marries and moves to Los Angeles, where she teaches.

In the background is Rose’s quest for a Chaim Soutine painting that was important to her mother.

Alternating with this story is that of Lizzie, a 37-year-old lawyer whose sisters live in Los Angeles, where their father lived and died. She meets Rose at her father’s funeral and learns of the Soutine painting. The work had been bought by her father and had hung in their home when she was a teenager, until it was stolen during a party.

A friendship blooms between the two women and Lizzie learns Rose’s background, that her parents were sent to a concentration camp and their home, along with the painting, seized. The “fortunate ones” are the ones who survived the war, but at what cost?

Lizzie’s story is far less interesting. She grew up in Los Angeles, her mother died when she was 13. She became lawyer, lives in New York, then moves back to Los Angeles after her father dies, and starts the search for the painting.

Both women have issues with loss and forgiveness. The novel is emotional, sentimental and suspenseful, and engaging enough not to want to put it down and to keep reading.

As to whether Umansky was influenced by The Woman in Gold in writing this book, she said she had not read the story or seen the movie, “although I was certainly aware of them and interested in the true events that inspired them.”

As to why she wrote the novel, she said, “That’s a hard one to answer in a few sentences! The contemporary story of Lizzie has its roots in something that happened when I was growing up in Los Angeles: my family was friendly with an ophthalmologist who lived lavishly and had a prized art collection, the crown jewels of which were two paintings, a Picasso and a Monet. In the early 1990s, those canvases disappeared without a trace. I was fascinated by the incident and, later, when the stories of Nazi-pilfered art came into the news, I began to imagine a storyline that brought both of these threads together.”

Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, lecturer, book reviewer and food writer in Jerusalem. She created and leads the weekly English-language Shuk Walks in Machaneh Yehudah, she has compiled and edited nine kosher cookbooks, and is the author of Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman Journalist in Israel.

Jewish ethics and surrogacy

(Spikebrennan via Wikimedia Commons)

The subject of surrogacy has been examined by Jewish scholars, mainly rabbis, for thousands of years. The Jewish belief system of ethical values incorporates two independent and seemingly disparate thoughts. The first is the obligation to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth, and the second is the obligation to free the captives, to actively engage in the redemption of those who are enslaved. In modern context, to free the captives is the fight to end human trafficking, and surrogacy has been identified as a form of human trafficking. An examination of how these two elements of Jewish core beliefs, once given ethical attributes, interface can hopefully open discussion in the Jewish community.

Genesis 1:28 commands us be fertile and increase. Jewish tradition considers it to be the first of the 613 commandments of the Torah. Again, after the flood, Noah is enjoined, in Genesis 9:1, to be fruitful and multiply. In this context, it stands for regeneration of life after death-dealing disasters.

In biblical times, infertility or barrenness in women spoke to, among other things, the values and concerns of an agrarian society requiring manpower to work the land and tend to the flocks. The need to people the land and have heirs to inherit property was of great importance. Adoption and polygamy were acceptable practices. The Jewish matriarchs, Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel, all were infertile prior to God’s intercession. The significance of having a child was so valued that the Divine presence saw to the continuation of the lineage. Handmaids bore children, fathered by the patriarchs, when their wives suffered from infertility. The surrogates for the biblical matriarchs bore the children; however, as the Bible stories tell us, relational conflicts ensued.

Jewish tradition finds connection from one mitzvah to another, from one transgression to the next. How does this fit with the subject of surrogacy and how it is perceived today? Surrogacy can certainly be a dimension of human trafficking, a form of modern-day slavery where people profit from the control and exploitation of others. As defined by Canadian federal laws, victims of human trafficking include children involved in the sex trade, adults aged 18 or over who are coerced or deceived into commercial sex acts, and anyone forced into different forms of “labour or services,” such as domestic workers held in a home or farm workers forced to labour against their will. In many countries, the practice of commercial surrogacy can be indistinguishable from the buying and selling of children, and meets the criteria of human trafficking.

Altruistic or compassionate surrogacy is legal in Canada, but it is definitely illegal to pay a surrogate mother for her services. The Assisted Human Reproduction Act prohibits the provision or acceptance of financial consideration to a woman for acting as a surrogate. However, it is legal to reimburse a surrogate mother for her reasonable expenses incurred as a result of surrogacy. In the province of Quebec, the Quebec Civil Code has not allowed for surrogacy agreements. Recent case law has changed the rights for couples to engage in surrogacy agreements, paving the way for legislative change in the future.

Jewish law has been forced to evolve as reproductive technologies have impacted family, parent(s) and child(ren). Rabbinical authorities have had to apply halachic analysis and interpretation to modern technologies including reproductive technology. Since the 1970s, there has been discussion, starting with the subject of artificial insemination. Sperm donation, ovum donation and surrogacy are the three ways for an infertile couple to become parents. Legal contractual obligations are undertaken.

Opposition to surrogacy was raised by Rabbi Immanuel Jacovits, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1976 to 1991. In his 1975 publication Jewish Medical Ethics, he argued that to use another person as an incubator and then take from her the child that she carried and delivered for a fee is a revolting degradation of maternity and an affront to human dignity. It is not the technology that concerned him; rather, the social and ethical implications of the act of medical reproductive intervention.

In 1977, Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz acknowledged that ethical problems can arise with surrogacy when the offspring has no relationship with its birth mother. The status and rights of a surrogate vary among geographical localities based on the laws of the land which, increasingly, form the basis of rabbinical discourse.

The Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly provides guidance to the Conservative Jewish movement in matters of halachah. In 1984, Rabbi David Lincoln’s guidance was accepted, citing surrogacy as a “mitzvah-blessing so great that we should not deny couples of this opportunity.” By 1988, the committee concluded that the mitzvah of parenthood is so great that ovum surrogacy was permissible.

Rabbi Prof. Aaron Mackler offered his opinion that surrogacy could not be recommended, as he believed that maternal status is determined by gestation and birth, and that the danger of commodification of the child is real and present. His thoughts are echoed by Rabbi Prof. David Golinkin who, in a response published by the Schechter Institutes in 2012, redirected childless couples to adoption. He stated, “anyone who raises an orphan in his home, Scripture considers it as if he has given birth to that child.”

Many Jewish women in the latter part of the last century, in response to the Holocaust, felt an added incentive to be fruitful, like Noah’s kin in biblical times, in order to create a continuance of their ethnic identity. Therefore, Jewish women could be cast in the role of breeders whose purpose was the security of the Jewish ethnic identity. It is possible that the fear of annihilation created a psychological response that welcomed any safe method of family creation. It is also possible that this fear is now embedded in the Jewish community’s psyche as a modern response to fulfilling the biblical injunction. As such, there might be a greater willingness for women to look for alternative methods of family creation. Being fruitful so that your family will continue now speaks to procreation through natural family births, adoption and surrogacy.

It can seem problematic to apply the label of exploitation to any part of the surrogacy agreement. In commercial surrogacy, the birth mother receives a commission for her service, beyond her health-care, lodgings and clothing expenses and potential lost income. Is there any coercion for these mainly middle-class women to engage in surrogacy for financial rewards (not financial needs)? However, what needs recognition by Canadians is the state of surrogacy around the world. There is much cruelty and abuse resulting in significant pain and suffering of birth mothers. Baby-breeding farms do exist. International surrogacy agreements dissolve, leaving newborns stateless.

There is a body of literature that recognizes attachment issues for the gestational surrogate mother to her birth child. Developing an emotional bond with a baby during pregnancy, knowing that, after birth, all contact and rights will be relinquished can cause psychological distress. During the nine months of gestation, the birth mother bonds with and becomes emotionally attached to the baby growing inside her. This is a normative emotional response and it is in conflict with the rational understanding of the surrogacy process.

Jewish law recognizes the birth mother as the legal mother. Although this status can be waived and national laws allow for the transfer of newborn children through legal contractual vehicles, ethical and moral consideration should be given to the surrogate. It is fundamental, as a Jewish value, to care for those in need. If the surrogate has unresolved needs after giving birth, they should be acknowledged and resolved, as she is not only a production vessel. Is there a mechanism to ensure that the surrogate is not trapped or enslaved in a state of ongoing post-partum depression? Education for the new parents, as a component of the contract, on the surrogate’s needs beyond the physical could have value. Judaism recognizes women as equal to men in the eyes of God, according to the Torah. Valuing the birth mother will assure a fair process.

Addressing the subjects of infertility and parenthood in today’s context brings forward the changing demographics of families, their structure and roles. Indeed, the definitions of family, marriage, spouse, men’s and women’s rights and obligations within the family have made a paradigm shift. Now, same-sex Jewish couples and single people can choose surrogacy as a method of family development. Rabbis’ seeming silence on this issue is, to some, a problem, as they see the rabbis as having acquiesced to the law of the land in regards to the legitimacy of surrogacy.

Surrogacy in our North American context appears to be a mainly benign and favourable solution for those who want to create or enlarge their families. Still, caution must be taken when embarking on this process of family creation to ensure that there is no pressure from external interest bodies on any parties in the surrogacy relationship. Consideration of the potentially negative aspects of surrogacy needs to come into play in decision-making. Both those wanting a child and the surrogate need to be protected from undue influence and to be provided with appropriate supports.

Surrogacy has become an accepted form of reproductive technology in our modern Jewish life. Denial of its worth is not an option. The ethical values discussed by Maimonides, a great halachic scholar, philosopher and physician who lived in the 12th century, hold true today. He talks about behaviours that need modification, balance and examination for the individual to reach a virtuous state: “In truth, it is the middle way that should be praised.” His guidance is worthy of due consideration. Surrogacy, as a process for the creation of a Jewish family, must be undertaken with a full understanding that the path to be taken has ethical complexities that need to be considered before the journey starts.

Marni Besser is a consultant to National Council of Jewish Women of Canada, human trafficking file.

An equal, just society

Hannah Kehat (photo from New Israel Fund Canada)

A crowd of 100 people – mostly women – filled Temple Sholom’s sanctuary on Feb. 23 to hear Dr. Hannah Kehat, a prominent feminist religious activist in Israel.

Kehat’s Kolech, founded in 1998, was the first Orthodox Jewish feminist organization in Israel. The group’s aim is to create awareness around gender equality and women’s rights in the religious and public spheres, and advancing women’s engagement with Jewish and civic life in Israel.

In her address, which was moderated by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, Kehat underscored that Israeli women, religious and secular, face different challenges than women in North America.

One major difference, said Kehat, is the lack of separation between religion and state in Israel. All marriages, divorces, conversions and burials go through the rabbinate; their ultimate authority means you cannot have a non-regulated lifecycle event, no matter your level of religiosity. Women may have equality under the Declaration of Independence, she said, but this equality is aspirational in reality. The aim of religious Jewish feminists is to reframe women’s rights for the Orthodox community, but also to integrate the daily concerns of secular women into their fight for representation and legal-halachic equality.

The obstacles to full equality for Israeli women start with being seen and heard in public. In the last several years, women and girls have been systematically erased from advertisements, billboards, books, pamphlets and textbooks, and they have been subjected to segregated seating on buses, enforced modesty codes, street harassment and violence. Meanwhile, there are still people – women and men – who assume feminism and religion to be mutually exclusive.

“We’re tired of apologizing,” said Kehat. “We want to stay religious. Don’t ask us why are you still religious if you are a feminist, and don’t ask me why are you a feminist if you are religious. It was acceptable until maybe the last 20 years that it doesn’t work together, either you’re a feminist or you are Orthodox….

“We say in Israel, ‘gam v’gam.’ It’s very complicated. We know it’s very complicated. It’s hard to hold the both together. It’s very painful because you have all the time to fight and you have a lot of battles in the family, in the synagogue, in the community, but we don’t want to give up any part of our identity…. We knew in the beginning [of the movement] that it’s not halacha that is against feminism…. It’s social power. It’s political….

“We started from the place that we know Torah. We’re all lecturers, rebbetzins, we know Torah; we know the truth that it’s not the problem, that we can have an equal society, even if we’re religious.”

Kehat said that, today, Israeli women are raising their voices and claiming their space, and Israeli courts have been supporting legal challenges to the status quo. Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that it is illegal to harass women on buses or on the street, and those abuses have almost all but stopped, she said. Legal challenges have proved successful and are one major strategy to create institutional change, she added.

Kehat described growing up the daughter of a rabbi in the Jerusalem Charedi enclave of Meah Shearim, a world she consciously left as a young woman so that she could advance her education and follow her own path. She became modern Orthodox, got a PhD in Jewish philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, married a rabbi and had six children. She is a lecturer, an academic, a writer, an activist and a Torah scholar. And, while she started her movement from within the modern Orthodox world, she sees more and more Charedi women taking up the feminist mantle – progress that cannot come soon enough.

“Charedi women, I can use the example of myself. To grow up as a Charedi girl, I think it’s the lowest level in Israel. You’re silent, you don’t have any voice. You come to the world just to serve the man since you are very, very young. You can see it in Jerusalem, B’nai Brak, like me, girls, 6, 7, carrying their brothers and the babies and doing all the [house]work. Really, the aim, the mission of [a woman’s] life is to serve the man … the father, the husband. So, Charedi women are still really very depressed. They have a lot of pressure in their lives.

“When I started Kolech … I got a phone call from the minister of health…. He said, ‘I heard about you, the leader of the Orthodox feminist movement. Finally, I have an address to address my problem.’” He told her the alarming statistic that the death rate for Charedi women with breast cancer was 30 percent higher than for other Israeli women. Today, that statistic is even worse, Kehat said, and may be closer to 50 percent higher. The minister continued, “‘Do you know that the expectancy of life of Charedi women is the lowest, the worst in the country?’ It’s unbelievable,” Kehat said. “They did research in B’nai Brak. The Charedi men are in the second level of life expectancy, and the women are [at the bottom]…. Even though Kolech is not a Charedi group, [we] try to raise the consciousness of Charedi women to take responsibility for their health and educate them about resources.”

The main obstacle to women’s equality is the conflation of religion and politics with the rabbinate.

“In Israel, we have another problem – that the rabbinate is a political institution, part of the government. This is really unbelievable and it’s really an historical mistake. The rabbinate became such a political powerful part of government and it’s worse than the government because we are not choosing the rabbis, only the politicians choose the rabbis and we don’t have any influence over who is going to be the rabbi…. Everyone knows that the rabbinate and the chief rabbis are not really the ideal people that we’d like to be our religious leaders, they’re political rabbis, we know that. So, it’s not so hard for us to go out and say, ‘Something is wrong over there, something is corrupt and we have to change it.’”

The visibility of women’s rights activism is growing. “The feminist issues are on the agenda for the religious community all the time. Every seminar, every yeshiva, we have a lot of yeshivot for women … synagogues are much more open to egalitarian ideas. I think there are more than 20 synagogues that are egalitarian…. The last two years, there is a big change. Something is going on in the Charedi community. It’s very exciting.”

One of the bright spots is the number of women joining Facebook groups dedicated to women’s activism. There are groups like “Feminists under the wig” and the group wryly named “I’m also a religious feminist and I don’t have any sense of humor,” both of which have growing membership and provide an online space to share experiences, gain empowerment and strategize.

Kehat was brought to Vancouver by New Israel Fund Canada. NIF in Israel supports at least 800 nonprofit, government-certified organizations with priorities to “strengthen and safeguard civil and human rights, bridge social and economic gaps and foster tolerance and religious pluralism for all its citizens.”

NIFC’s national outreach associate, Atarah Derrick, spoke at the top of the program. “Thirty years ago, NIFC was established in Canada to address Canadians’ desire to address the needs of Israelis in a way that no other charity was doing,” she said. “Every year, Israelis have told us what it is that they need to create the kind of world that they’d want to live in, a place where all Israeli residents are equal, where they have the freedom and the voice to improve their status … regardless of race, gender or ethnicity.”

She added, “I work with New Israel Fund of Canada, with NIF, because I am passionate about making Israel an even better place than it already is and, in my work with New Israel Fund, I get to see firsthand the kind of change that we are able to make when we get together.”

Basya Laye is the former editor of the Jewish Independent.