Head Of Reform Judaism Says Wearing Veil Should Be Respected (WTF Alert)

Townhall.com ^ | 09/11/2007 | Dennis Prager

[goldstategop]

No reader would be faulted for thinking that the title of this column is a spoof. After all, Reform Judaism, like liberal Christian denominations, is exquisitely sensitive to women's equality. Thus, Reform Judaism was the first major Jewish denomination to ordain women, and the first to have its seminaries discourage referring to God as "he."

One would think, then, that the last thing the head of a movement devoted to women's equality would endorse is the covering of women's faces with a veil. This is one of the most dehumanizing and degrading practices that has ever been foisted on women.

That is why it is noteworthy that Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of Reform Judaism, in a speech before hundreds of American Muslims at the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), said: "Why should anyone criticize the voluntary act of a woman who chooses to wear a headscarf or a veil? Surely the choice these women make deserves our respect, not to mention the full protection of the law."

In the long history of women's inequality, it is difficult to name almost anything more anti-woman, dehumanizing and degrading than the veil. We know people by their face. Without seeing a person's face, we feel that we do not know the person. When we read about someone in the news, whether known for good or ill, we immediately study the person's face. One can have one's entire body covered, and it means nothing in terms of whether we feel we know the person. But cover a person's face, and the person might as well be invisible.

Indeed, the veiled woman is intended to be invisible. That is precisely the goal of the veil.

In light of the veil's dehumanization of women, how could anyone, especially a rabbi on the left, say he respects a woman choosing to wear a veil?

The rabbi could offer only two possible responses.

One possibility is that he does not think the veil degrades women. But it is almost impossible to imagine any non-Muslim holding such a position. On the other hand, he did lump the veil along with headscarf, as if covering one's hair and covering one's face were in some way analogous. Still, it is hard to believe that the rabbi equates hiding one's face and hiding one's hair.

So the rabbi is left with one other explanation: that he used the word "voluntary." But that explanation indicts him as much as does the first explanation. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of fundamentalist Muslim culture -- whether in the Muslim world or in the West -- knows that, given the social, religious and familial pressures on women to wear a veil, the veil is not worn voluntarily in any meaningful sense of the word.

But while the rabbi respects Muslim women who choose to wear the veil, he had words of contempt for American women who choose to dress like Lindsay Lohan. Like others on the left, Rabbi Yoffie only has standards for Westerners, especially Americans, not for other cultures. It is the Left's soft bigotry of low expectations that has often been noted.

In the rabbi's desire to ingratiate himself with his audience, he engaged in the generations-old Left-wing practice of moral equivalence. Just as during the Cold War the left regularly equated America and the Soviet Union as "the two superpowers" -- which is why there was universal liberal condemnation of President Ronald Reagan's calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" -- much of the left today morally equates American fundamentalist Christians with fundamentalist Muslims.

So before a large Muslim audience, Rabbi Yoffie singled out two evangelical Christians, Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson, and a Jew -- me -- as anti-Muslim. He essentially identified us as the Christian and Jewish moral equivalents of Muslims who hate Jews and Christians. That moral equivalence was as immoral as Rabbi Yoffie's defense of the veil.

Now, as it happens, I have never uttered or written a bigoted word against Muslims, and so the rabbi did not actually quote me saying something anti-Muslim. Instead the rabbi distorted what I once wrote. He said, "How did it happen that when a Muslim congressman takes his oath of office while holding the Koran, Dennis Prager suggests that the congressman is more dangerous to America than the terrorists of 9/11?"

Here is what I actually wrote: "When all elected officials take their oaths of office with their hands on the very same book, they all affirm that some unifying value system underlies American civilization. If Keith Ellison is allowed to change that, he will be doing more damage to the unity of America and to the value system that has formed this country than the terrorists of 9/11."

I did not say that Keith Ellison is more dangerous to America than the 9/11 terrorists. I said that Ellison's replacing the Bible with another religious book for the first time in American history is more dangerous to American unity and to American values than the terrorists were. In fact, I feel that way about far more non-Muslim Americans, such as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Michael Moore. And I repeatedly noted in the same article that the issue had nothing to do with the Koran or Islam, that I would have said this about a congressman replacing the Bible with the Book of Mormon, or with "Dianetics" or any other text. The rabbi slandered me before a national and world Muslim audience.

Slander, morally equating fundamentalist Christians with fundamentalist Muslims, and respecting women who "voluntarily" wear veils: What the Left has done to liberal denominations within Christianity and Judaism is a moral and religious tragedy. For example, liberal churches that regard America and Israel as villains have inverted Judeo-Christian morality. But little exemplifies the moral decay of the Religious Left as does its replacing Judeo-Christian moral standards with multiculturalism and tolerance. It has led to one of its leading clergy announcing that the veil is worthy of respect.

[goldstategop]

I don't normally use WTF. But I felt an exception was warranted in this particular situation, since liberals are such big champions of women's rights. Except of course as it turns out, for Muslim women. They can be forced to wear a veil - there is nothing "voluntary" about a woman's having to hide her face from the world. So here we have a liberal rabbi declaring before a conference of Islamists such a reactionary practice is in his words, "worthy of respect." That's the meaning of the shift from traditional moral values to multiculturalism and tolerance - on the Religious Left, typified in the head of Reform Judaism's pandering to the enemies of our Judeo-Christian civilization.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Navy Patriot]

Rabbi Yoffie should have no objection to his daughter wearing a yellow star.

[Tamar1973]

In the long history of women's inequality, it is difficult to name almost anything more anti-woman, dehumanizing and degrading than the veil.

I can easily think of something more "anti-woman" and "dehumanizing" than the veil. Female Genital Mutilation aka female circumcision is far worse...and permanent.

[camerakid400]

There should be a law requiring the veil be removed for certain situations involving police, ID photos, etc etc, but I also think that if they want to walk around in public looking like Cousin It from the 7th century than let em.

[pawdoggie]

Head Of Reform Judaism Says Wearing Veil Should Be Respected

Hey, if there were no veils, how could you have a "Dance of the Seven Veils"?

[redpoll]

Well, speaking as someone of Jewish ancestry, this rabbi’s statements made the hair on the back of neck stand on end.

He is seeking dhimmitude. He is willing to live a second-class status as a second-class citizen. He is like the fools believing that they could quietly tiptoe around the czar. He is a metaphor for the German Jew climbing on the train that the Nazis promised would bring them to the Promised Land.

There is a Yiddish word for guys like this, too. The word is “schmuck.”

[rmlew]

Let’s be honest. Yoffie has far more in common with Islamists in destroying western civilization than with the most fundamentalist Jews, who only wish to be left alone. Where any of his female relatives to wear a scarf, as properly mandated in the Bible, he would flip.

[sheik yerbouty]

He would be very proud..

[rmlew]

There is a Yiddish word for guys like this, too. The word is “schmuck.”
That's not even on my list. Schlemiel (idiot who hurts others) is the nicest that comes to mind. Yoffie believes that the Crusades, Inquisition, Cossacks are comming. To forestall this, he tries to undermine Western Civilization both ethnically, religiously, and morally. (As a leftist, he also attacks Judaism from within.)
He now joins with Islamists who, at the very least, wish to impose dhimmitude on Jews. And this guy joins them.

Avraham Stern, the found of LeHI, was betrayed by other Zionist leaders in Israel for his continuing the war against the British during WW2. However, Stern, even in the midst of revanchist delusion, was never this mentally ill. He at least remained Jewish.

Yoffie is neither a western, nor a Jew. He deserves Stern's fate, but the remembrance of Quisling.

[Anti-Bubba182]

Reform Judaism is diluted near beer.

[Dov in Houston]

Whatttttt ??

[Gondring]

Whatever we do, we shouldn't respect a woman's right to wear a veil or whatever version of dressing modestly she chooses! It's so much more enlightened to look at women as victims who can't make up their own little minds over what to wear voluntarily.

Next thing you know, they'll be voluntarily wearing bras, hiding from their grooms on wedding days, holding back against their urges on the first date, etc.

I'm looking for the FReeper morality squads to start tearing off those oppressive veils at weddings! After all, such a thing can only be a horror!

This idea of respecting peoples' own decisions is dangerous. Someday, it might even be suggested that we let people make their own decision on whether they want their genetalia mutilated or not, rather than us just imposing it on infants!

And don't get me started on those women who choose to wear clothes at all! Sheesh, the whole idea of a woman voluntarily choosing to cover up her beautiful body...why the horror of it!

</sarc> (Obviously)

Amazing how straightforward anti-Islam urges turn supposed-conservatives into nanny do-gooders. While the rabbi does the Moral-equivalence Two-step--and that is rightfully criticized--the author does his own dance...the Twist. Is it inherently oppressive that Western women don't choose to run around topless like the images in National Geographic? Sheesh. Opression would be if they didn't have the choice.

[Biggirl]

Dennis Prager is right on this one. Unlike a devout RC woman who would wear a veil or hat to church or a nun, who made the choice, there is no freedom NOT to wear the veil. If my memory is correct, there is a YouTube video of a man beating a female family member in a Muslim family, forcing her to put on the veil. It is a form of oppressing of women in Islam.