Reply #36: A god who hates women?

[PumaJ]

That is not the concept of God that I was raised with in Reform Judaism. When I was growing up in Reform Judaism during the 50's & 60's the semantics of the English language used to describe God were very male gender based. The English semantics have now been updated and are gender neutral. In the Hebrew of Torah, God is neither female or male, but rather both and neither, and both omnipresent and transcendent.

In Reform Judaism there is a realization that Jews hold a variety of understandings of God’s reality. But the bottom line is the affirmation of the reality and oneness of God, that every human being is created in the image of God and thus sacred, that all of God's creation is held in reverence and we recognize our human responsibility for its preservation and protection, that we encounter God's presence in moments of awe and wonder, in acts of justice and compassion, in loving relationships and in the experiences of everyday life. Torah is the foundation of Jewish life and we bring Torah into the world when we strive to fulfill the the highest ethical mandates in our relationships with others and with all of God's creation. We are partners with God in tikkun olam, the repairing of the world, just as we are obligated to seek tzedek, justice and righteousness, to decrease the gap between affluent and poor, act against discrimination and oppression, to pursue peace, to welcome the stranger, redeem those in physical, economic and spiritual bondage. By doing these acts we affirm social action and social justice as a central prophetic focus of traditional Reform Jewish belief and practice.

No evidence of a God who hates women. No evidence of such a human point of view put onto God.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews, such as those who participate in and live under the rules of the Haredi or Hasidic movements, seem to have the requirement to follow the many more rules and laws reportedly present in the "oral" Torah and recorded in the Mishnah, discussed, interpreted and expanded in the Gemara which together are known as Talmud. That is somewhat different than the Torah unrolled and read in synagogues. But such ultra-Orthodox Jews are not God and it was they, not God, who stepped in to protest the praying of the Reform Jewish female Rabbis.

In contrast Reform Rabbis have been on the forefront of social change, or example: in 1861, Rabbi David Einhorn had to flee Baltimore due to his uncompromising stand against slavery; Rabbi Stephen S. Wise was a cofounder of the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union, in addition he championed the strike against U.S Steel Corp., and was among the first to warn the world against Nazism; Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld had his head split open protesting segregation in Mississippi; Rabbis Balfour Brickner and Eugene Borowitz were among the "Young Turks" who practiced civil disobedience; Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, the president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, carried a Sefer Torah, as together with many other rabbis he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Alabama, to protest and combat the indignities of racial inequalities; Rabbis Eugene Lipman and Richard Hirsch founded and established the Reform movement's Religious Action Center in Washington, D.C.; equal rights for women were high on the agenda of the Central Conference of American Rabbis; and currently Conference is engaged in efforts to secure the civil rights of gay people, pursuing the Torah's mandate to seek justice for all.

So, hooray for the women Rabbis of Reform Judaism who had the chutzpah to pray out loud at the Western Wall. For the Wall belongs to all Jews, not just the ultra-Orthodox.