Erasing Women (I)
Thank you for publishing Merri Ukraincik’s “The Invisible Jew” (op-ed, July 21).
As a member of the same community as Merri, I was surprised and disappointed when I received that invitation in the mail without the woman’s picture. Ironically, the woman they honored is a true role model for the entire community and not including her photo alienated a large swath of our neighborhood.
On some level I understand the desire to uphold a certain standard of modesty, but it comes at the price of failing to provide appropriate images of how to look, dress, act, etc. Photos create powerful afterimages that stay imprinted in the brain and since we are inundated with so many negative ones, it’s time to replace them with positive ones.
I once went to hear Rebbetzin Jungreis speak. I was struck by the way she looked, her beautiful silk purple top with matching eyeliner, and her regal bearing, which was an outward manifestation of her inner strength and beauty. After that, every time I would read her articles and see her picture in The Jewish Press I got chills down my spine remembering the powerful impact she made on me.
We are raising our daughters to have careers, whether to be the sole provider for a kollel family or just to be able to pay for tuition. Professional photos are de rigueur in many of these instances, so what kind of message is it that on a professional level our daughters are worthy of being photographed but in their religious life they are somehow unworthy?
Which brings us to the ubiquitous shidduch resume. Why is someone allowed to scrutinize and judge our daughters based on their appearance alone in this instance but in no other? I have a beautiful photo of my grandfather and his parents in prewar Europe – if I were to write an article about their life for certain publications, would they would bleep out my great-grandmother’s face?
I have no real answers, but as Merri beautifully articulates, we must not let ourselves be erased.
Dr. Chani Miller
Highland Park, NJ
Erasing Women (II)
Thank you for Rachel Bluth’s July 28 Life Chronicles column.
Sadly, this phenomenon is all too common in batei din and elsewhere in Jewish life. Tznius is more than covering up parts of a woman. It relates to behavior for both genders, as well as the type of homes we live in, the cars we drive, and the parties we make.
By censoring women and girls from publications and from speaking in public, and by focusing on covering them up more and more, they are objectified and diminished. This is not Torah.
The Torah is very clear: lo tosif v’lo tigra, do not add and do not take away. Do not add. Society should be mindful of that clear directive from the Almighty.
Susie Chovev
(Via E-Mail)
‘A Moment Now Passed’
Where is today’s poet to deftly decry the debacle of 2 Av? In removing newly-installed metal detectors from the Temple Mount, Israel’s government squandered the opportunity of a half-century to reverse, at least partially, Moshe Dayan’s decision to transfer control of that sacred space to the Muslim Waqf.
Only when it comes to Israel could such a sensible, near-universally employed security measure, intended to provide safety for all visitors to the Mount, provoke a major international crisis. In its wake, Israel’s enemies have been exceedingly emboldened, its defenders deeply demoralized.
In capitulating to Arab threats and international pressure, security officials evidently sought to avoid a Third Intifada but, judging from subsequent Arab Street triumphalism, they may well have actually accelerated one. Their fears eerily mirror those of the generation of the Exodus, self-deterred from seizing their patrimony. Three millennia, it seems, is insufficient time to recognize that historic error enough not to repeat it. (This time despite vastly more favorable conditions.)
What use, then, the tears of Tisha B’Av? A moment of promise has now passed and will likely not soon return. Once again our leaders have failed us.
Richard D. Wilkins
Syracuse, NY
Special Question, Special Reply
It’s been forty years now since I first read Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. A young cousin recently read the book, we discussed it, and I decided to have a second, if not more cogent, read.
Upon finishing the book, I submitted a question to Paul Gies, who is the administrator of the Miep Gies website (miepgies.nl). For those familiar with Miep, and those who are not, Miep Gies was an employee of Otto Frank who assisted the Frank family as they went into hiding in the secret annex located at 263 Prinsengracht Street, Amsterdam.
For her efforts, Miep was honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Museum. Miep was 100 when she passed away, and her son Paul maintains the living history of his mother’s deeds during that horrible time. A website featuring such a matter of historical importance, no doubt, surely is inundated with countless questions, yet I submitted my query hoping it would at least be read.
Not only was it received and read, but an e-mail from Paul Gies himself, answering my question, made the communication all the more poignant.
The back story to my question:
On July 5, 1942, Anne Frank’s sixteen-year-old sister Margot was summoned by the Dutch Gestapo for deportation. The very next day, July 6, 1942, the Frank family went into hiding – upstairs in the secret annex of the warehouse where Otto Frank and Miep Gies worked. Prior to this, Miep had been bringing essentials from the Frank home, storing foodstuff and clothes for the family’s eventual arrival. For two years the family shared the secret annex with six others in hiding.
On August 4, 1944, the Gestapo found the Franks’ hiding place. All eight individuals were arrested and taken to Gestapo headquarters in Amsterdam.
On Miep’s website, there’s a link called The Betrayal that offers commentary on whether it was a coincidence that the eight people were discovered and arrested or whether the unfortunates had been ratted on by one or more people.
The question I submitted to Paul Gies was this:
Dear Mr. Gies:
May I pose a question that I did not see among the list of questions asked and answered: Margot Frank received a summons from the Nazis. She never reported as requested. The next day, she and her family went into hiding. Since Margot never answered the summons, that could mean her father’s place of business was continually monitored day and night, correct? The official who sent Margo the summons, and anyone from that office who may have been ordered to monitor, could be among the possible betrayers. Do you think this is a worthy theory regarding the betrayal?
Paul Gies’s reply:
Dear Lauren:
The Nazis did not match to see if Otto Frank and Margot were from the same family; they counted a sheet of paper, not persons. So Otto Frank’s office was not monitored. They had simply no organization to do so. In August 1944 somebody had to point out to the Nazis that at the Prinsengracht Jews were in hiding, otherwise they might have made it till the end.
Regards,
Paul Gies
Lauren Charm Tenenbaum
Clifton, NJ