Every one of us dreads public ridicule. Being put on the spot, stared at, teased. Many people will put in extreme effort so as not to be laughed at by their peers, not to be thought of as different, as weird. Unfortunately, in our society, feminism, on this front, puts us in a tricky position. Even though I live in quite a liberal community, and go to an open-minded school, I find that my feminist views, and more so actions, are often looked at as something
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| Gefen Lavee |
I remember the first time I told my classmates that I don tefillin. It wasn’t all of them -- I told only my few closest friends from school, one time when we were sitting at break and I was so excited that I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I had readied myself for the looks of shock on their faces, maybe for a few glimpses of disdain and hopefully a good discussion about obligation and women. I was not ready, however, for the laughter. This was followed by a rain of questions; “You do? Really?”, “Do you do it regularly?”, “Doesn’t it feel weird?”. Then one girl said “As open minded as I am with these things, I’m warning you that if I ever see you with tefillin, I’ll probably laugh.” More than this hurt me, it confused me. What is so ridiculous about donning tefillin? Most women don’t do it, but men do all the time, and no one laughs at them.
From a totally objective standpoint, however, if an outsider, someone who is not used to seeing men don tefillin daily, would go into a shul and see a bunch of men standing with black boxes strapped to their heads and a black leather cord wrapped around their arms, it would probably look quite ridiculous to them. These girls, my classmates, have grown up watching men don tefillin their whole lives; it is a very basic, very normal thing in their minds. However, they are not used to the concept of women doing so, and therefore this to them seems bizarre, ridiculous.
I do not blame or judge my classmates. It is human nature to be afraid of things they do not know or are not familiar with. It makes sense to do so -- from an evolutionary point of view, keeping wary and alert keeps you alive. However, nowadays, when our lives do not depend on it, we must teach ourselves to be more open, more thinking, examining our lives and what we do daily. It is the key to our society’s well being. If we learn more, if we think things through, we are more likely to both find the place fitting for us, and help our society progress.
The first step towards this life of constant thinking and learning is creating a different mindset, one that may not come easily. A way of looking at the world that isn’t black and white, good and bad, safe and scary. What we do, as educated humans, is constantly cross lines, explore new realms, go a little bit further every day. This takes courage. It requires that we not be scared to ask questions, to look further into things, to keep acquiring more knowledge. I believe that this mindset will also lead to more tolerance - as long as we do not have all the information about a person, information that as other people we can never access, can never fully understand, we cannot judge. We must not judge.
My classmates' bout of laughter came from ignorance, from a mindset so used to one thing that it found it hard to get accustomed to another. We must strive to change that mindset, to cut loose the boundaries made by society and by our own brains so as to be more open to different behavior, to other opinions. This will lead us to a more tolerant society, a better starting ground not only for feminism, but for every growing liberal movement. We must learn to put ourselves in other people’s shoes -- or maybe even other people’s tefillin.
Gefen Lavee is from Zichron Yaakov, Israel, and is a graduate of Pelech -- Zichron Yaakov and an alumna of Drisha's Dr. Beth Samuels High School Program. This year, she is studying at Midreshet Ein Hanatziv.
