An additional comment on the sexual abuse scandals in the news: This is a reason that I'm skeptical about the idea of replacing the criminal system with something like Restorative Justice.
Here's the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, advocating for a Restorative Justice approach: usccb.org/issues-and-act…
Do you trust United Conference of Catholic Bishops to be acting in good faith when they say "A Catholic approach leads us to encourage models of restorative justice that seek to address crime in terms of the harm done to victims and communities, not simply as a violation of law"?
If you attribute the abusiveness of Catholic priests to celibacy, you’re effectively saying that you expect Catholic women to protect children by absorbing sexual violence from men. Please don’t do that.
Because you know another thing that the Catholic Church knows about and has chosen to enable? Violent fathers and violent husbands. The problem isn’t celibacy, it’s patriarchy. And that’s not a uniquely Catholic problem.
Attributing the problem to celibacy allows non-Catholics to exoticize it. It gives people a way to say “our clergy aren’t celibate; we don’t have that problem”, instead of acknowledging the violent patriarchy problem that we absolutely do have.
An Elul challenge for Jewish women: Treat Jewish feminism as part of your teshuva. Think about the role that antisemitism and misogyny play in your life, how both might be barriers to being who you want to be in the world, and what you might be able to do about it.
Jewish women are taught to hate ourselves in all kinds of ways blatant and subtle. (If I had a dollar for every time I've been told that Israel is just like Nazi Germany or that women's ordination destroyed American Judaism, I'd have a lot less student debt.)
In mainstream English-speaking culture, it is rarely socially acceptable to talk about Judaism with the assumption that Judaism is valuable and that Jews can be happy and like being Jewish. Especially if you are a woman. What if we violated that taboo?
Deuteronomy starts "These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.". That means it's time for a thread about Moses' words and voice from a disability perspective.
When Moses was first appointed by God at the burning bush, he was reluctant, and expressed several objections, most of which boiled down to: "I am not someone who others will listen to." At the end of the encounter, Moses makes this very explicit:
Ex 4:10 But Moses said to YHVH , “Please, O Lord, I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
I normally never bring up Israel when people talk about antisemitism in other countries, but I’m going to make an exception and talk about what it’s like to be a Jewish woman who wears a yarmulke in public.
Specifically: I am a rabbi. I wear a yarmulke almost everywhere I go. This attracts both antisemitic and misogynistic harassment.
I often hear esteemed male leaders opine that it’s a tremendous relief to spend time in Israel, because it’s so socially comfortable to express their Judaism visibly.