Response to Marie Syrkin on
"Does Judaism Need Feminism?"
Daniel J. Elazar
Marie Syrkin's article, written by a woman who did not need the
women's liberation movement to open the doors for her great
accomplishments in life, has written a senstivie piece reflecting
the perplexities of women's liberation for a truly liberated woman
in the best sense. Perhaps some of the answers to the questions
she poses lie in her own statement.
In Marie Syrkin's case, as in the case of Golda Meir, her good
friend and classic example, Zionism, the Jewish national movement,
was, indeed, the source of their liberation, a true liberation,
not merely the pursuit of private gratifications, which are no
better when pursued by women for presumably ideological reasons
than when pursued by men for less noble ones. Meir and Syrkin
achieved because they were committed to Jewish national needs.
They had a cause to which they committed themselves and which
brought out their substantial talents.
Now that so many goals of the women's movement have been attained,
the time has come to clarify those goals, to separate out those
which are really demands for the right of self-indulgence and
those which are demands for the right of partnership and
achievement. Is there a conflict between feminism and the
national survival of the Jewish people? To the extent that
feminism pursues individual self-indulgence the answer is yes, but
that is as much true for every other form of individual
self-indulgence. All people, men and women, once they commit
themselves to a larger cause must give up some of their individual
desires. Not only women must assume responsibilities that they
may or may not have chosen had they been concerned only with their
own passions (for that is what we are talking about: passions,
not needs in any objective sense).
Thus, the feminist question is really a larger question as to
whether any national cause or, for that matter, any other cause
that requires collective effort is worth the sacrifice of
individual desires. Those of us who see Jewish national needs as
central to our lives know what the answer has to be, nor is that
simply a matter of personal preference, as the other side could
easily argue: "Fine, you choose to surbordinate your individual
desires to national needs, that is your choice. But if someone
chooses personal gratification, that is theirs." We would argue,
I believe quite accurately, that the pursuit of individual
passions ends up, in the last analysis, to be empty and
unsatisfying. It is only in commitment to something larger than
oneself that one fulfills one's real needs and achieves truly
human dimensions. It is sad, if not surprising, that the initial
thrust of American feminism has gotten the two confused. Sad,
because it leads away from fulfillment, but not surprising, given
the trend to radical individualism and paganism in contemporary
American society, which has emphasized the gratification of
individual passions, no matter what.
The real womens' libbers were the Zionist pioneers whom Prof.
Syrkin describes. They were not concerned with demanding the
right of self-indulgence, or even individual careerist
achievement, but the right to share in the same tasks of national
rebuilding as the men. What Prof. Syrkin describes as the result
of their experience, a "regression" to women's roles, should be
instructive to us all. Israel is, in many respects, a post-lib
society where the right to equality has long been established (the
day that the United States has the same percentage of women doc-
tors and lawyers as Israel is still a way off, I would guess).
Hence, Israeli women, certainly those from the groups that passed
through the women's lib stage, are appropriate models for learning
where biology does win out, not to speak of national need.
All the women in my circles in Israel pursue careers which they
have chosen (at least as much as it is possible to choose in
Israel, for men or women), ranging from traditional women's
careers in education to contractor (my wife), yet all have
children -- most, three or more -- and are not worried about
having to maintain households. Some, indeed, have chosen
home-making as a career, apparently without the hangups
confronting the recent generation of feminists in the United
States.
Since we are all religiously observant, all of us, men and women,
share a commitment to the limits which that observance imposes
upon us. I am confident that my women friends have made choices,
even hard choices, when it comes to questions of career and
family, but so have their husbands. Every one of them could live
outside of Israel, make far more money, rise to equal if not
greater eminence in even larger ponds than this one, and not have
such burdens as military reserve duty and super-heavy taxation.
Many of us who came from the diaspora gave up much of that.
Obviously, for those whose whole philosophy is summed up in such
phrases as "you only live once," we are all fools. On the other
hand, there are those of us who believe that precisely because you
only live once, one's life needs to be given real meaning and that
comes from linking with a cause larger than one's self.
It is certainly easier for American men and women to avoid
confronting this problem. American society is so big that one
hardly feels the same sense of urgency that the little Jewish
people and its even smaller segment in Israel must articulate,
particularly in the aftermath of the Holocaust, but the imperative
of limiting self-indulgence for the sake of national need is no
less in the United States. Indeed, it is a civilizational need
that is shared by the entire Western world.
It may not seem to the young American women deciding not to have
children that her decision has any effect on the future of
civilization. But in a world in which the West is a minority and
has now become a kind of decadent elite, declining demographically
as well as losing its will to survive, there are indeed barbarians
waiting in the wings to inherit us. Even the best of them offer a
way of life which is, in most respects, the antithesis of Western
values, including most of the values which the feminists espouse,
beyond those of feminine self-indulgence. For those of us who
have children and thus have made a commitment to the continuation
of our human race and our civilization, it is a frightening
prospect that the freedoms we cherish are likely to go under for
sheer demographic failure. This may not concern people who have
decided that their only obligation is to themselves and they have
to do nothing to continue the species. In my opinion there is no
justification whatsoever for that attitude, feminist or any
other.
Footnote: One word on Marie Syrkin's interpretation of the
celebrated "woman of valor" passage from the Book of Proverbs. A
husband sitting at the gates of the city with the elders of the
land is biblical idiom for engaging in governance. That may be
even more sexist than her understanding that he is sitting there
in idleness, or perhaps in study. But he is not being idle but
engaging in what the author of that passage may see as man's work,
although the Bible itself has at least exceptional women
participating in that work as well.
