 Today's views on feminism and the traditional Jewish family values - the mix can do often unexpected damage.
To be authentically Jewish means not only to take and learn from the broader universe but to serve as a corrective within the larger society. As Jews we need not buy the whole package of feminism. Rather, we must infuse our own ethic into a changing society and seek to check the excesses to which all revolutionary movements fall prey. The cosmic mission of the Jewish people throughout history - "a light unto the nations" - is no mere rhetorical flourish.
Thus, we must walk a very fine line, continually monitoring even those lparts of the new that we have integrated into our lives to see whether they adequately meet our own tests. All of this implies an instant readiness to scrap whatever is antithetical to essential Jewish values, whatever bodes ill for Jewish survival. Feminism, for all its potential for upgrading the status of Jewish women, indeed has elements that are destructive from a Jewish perspective.
One of the by-products of the feminist striving for equality has been an attac`k on the family, as expressed in such familiar litanies as "the family was the locus of abuse" and "the family kept women down, back, behind, inside." The real impact upon women of such unrefined messages is to have them throw out the baby with the bath water, to abandon the whole enterprise without a backward glance.
The women's movement thus can be said to have made a not inconsiderable contribution to the crushing assault that has been mounted on the family by contemporary society. Signs of erosion are everywhere. The Jewish family, too, is beginning to crumble, as witness the unprecedented rise in the divorce rate among Jews and the alienation of husbands from wives and parents from childdren, with all that this portends for the future of family life. Young Jewish women openly discuss their suspicions about and objections to marriage, their intent to have no children. This is in striking contrast to previous generations, where marriage and children were a young woman's whole future and where (taking the matter to its extreme) there was almost a feeling of famil;y deshonor if a young woman was not married off by the age of twenty-one.
Today we are wiser and acknowledge that not every woman can find happiness in marriage or in marriage alone. But given the prevailing pressures, we risk the danger of having the other option - a traditional marriage and family relationship - blocked altogether from consciousness and consideration.
All of this is particularly threatening to Judaism, for at the Jewish core is the family unit. The transmission of values - ethical, ritual, and philosophical - is effected largely through the family. The Jewish family has been the primary source of strength and support in coping with an often dangerous and hostile world. Today, particularly in America, this latter function of the Jewish family happily is underutilized, which should not mislead us into underestimating its other functions with respect to Jewish survival. In fact, new scientific research confirms what tradition has told us all along: the family is the most potent socializing and civilizing force available to us; it is also the single strongest determinant of religious commitment, values, and educational achievement.
A small clip taken from: On Women And Judaism A View From Tradition
by Blu Greenberg
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