The Right Roles of Men and Women; neither superior nor inferior!
1 Nisan 5776
We live in a world where male and female roles have been reversed. Men want to be women and women want to be men. The Feminist movement actually did more harm to society with their brand of gender equality than they might realize. They may look at the teaching in Tazria and cry out that this is a putdown of women but they have completely misunderstood what our Creator was doing. In Tazria we read about the regulations that state when women have their menstruation they are considered unclean. This sounds horrible to women but when we stop to see what our Creator was trying to show us, we can see the amazing wisdom He had. In Biblical times, females were considered to have little or no value, even less than cattle and as such they could be bought and sold. There are societies in our world today where this is still a fact. In Middle Eastern cultures in this modern day “The female is considered unconsciously the contaminated object. (Article in JOL Apr 6, 2016, 6:25PM Rachel Avraham)1. In most ultra right religions, the female has been enslaved and oppressed. Men for most part are simple. If they were told to leave the woman alone during this time of month because her system was too delicate etc, he would have shrugged his shoulders and continued on to take what was rightfully his but if he were told that he would become unclean and not be allowed in the Temple, this was a different story. The Almighty gave them this regulation in order to protect the woman from the brutish husband whose needs surpassed her own.
Contrary to popular belief the Hebrew Scriptures speak very highly about women and upon closer examination of the Torah, we will find clues about where our Creator has placed the role of the woman. If we look at the woman in Genesis, she is the culmination of the Almighty’s creation and in the opinion of our sages, the highest in every aspect. They say that the female side of the androgynous Adam was separated from the male and Eve was born. Man is never truly complete without his “better” half by his side. Young women today have lost the understanding of their beauty as a woman. There is nothing more beautiful that a woman who honors her female role and nothing more special than a man who honors his role as a man. The man was always meant to be the protector and the head of the home which is why Adam failed when he knew he should have stopped Eve. The female is the nurturer, the caregiver and the backbone of the home. When these roles get reversed society as a whole suffers. It has nothing to do with equality or capability.
Historically speaking most civilizations that have been destroyed had two things in common. The first was the attitude against Israel and the other was debauchery, the loss of the sense of right and wrong, going totally against what our Creator told us; being libertine or orgiastic…total sexual immorality, the loss of roles, calling what is right wrong and what is wrong, right. The worst part is when we do take a stand and state that what society is doing is wrong, we are called a bigot and are condemned. Sooner or later these attitudes destroy civilization. This is what we are seeing in the world today.