“Women Who Are Jewish”
At the Jewish Women’s Workshop, Diane Balser (International Liberation Reference Person for Women] called us “women who are Jewish” instead of “Jewish women” to contradict how, because of women’s oppression, we tend not to prioritize being female.
We Jews have a two-thousand-year history of anti-Jewish oppression. Our Jewish men have internalized the oppression and are pulled to act it out on us as Jewish females. They have often hurt, oppressed, and dominated us. We usually can’t notice this in our daily lives or that it matters. We feel like we need to protect them. We can’t look at what they have done, or talk about it, because we see how they have been oppressed as Jews. Our role has been to take care of them, be subservient to them, and “erase” ourselves.
We’ve seen what happens to Jewish men when their distresses are made public. These men are not “bad” men. Their distresses are no worse than those of Gentile men. Their hurts are from the systemic oppression that every man experiences. But because they are Jews, they are targeted with hate, blame, disgust, vitriol.
I’ve cried about what happened to my dad, and this has helped me cry about how he hurt me.
USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of Jews
(Present Time 206, January 2022)