Wednesday, May 31, 2006

The Invisible woman

For a variety of reasons, none of them very compelling, I subscribe to the weekly Yated Ne'eman and the daily Hamodia. I think there are many (OK, maybe that's an exaggeration) positive aspects to both of these papers but there are also quite a few things that bug me. For today, I want to discuss my wife's pet peeve.

WHERE ARE THE WOMEN???

I don't really have a great explanation for this phenomenon. I'm quite sure that halachah does not prohibit them from showing a relevant picture of a tzniyusdik'ly dressed woman. An obituary of a choshuva rebbitzin does not have to show only a picture of her husband. But what bothers me even more than that is that they include even little girls in this policy. My six year old daughter was looking through the Yated and asked me "Tatty, how come there are only boys in these pictures"? I don't want my girls to grow up thinking that they need to be hidden.

The idea that these pictures need to be excluded or that a woman's face (or a five year old girls face) needs to be blurred out doesn't speak well of Jewish men.

I remember a few years ago I was davening on Shabbos in a minyan that was held in a girls school. There was a drawing of a little girl hanging on the wall, with a word bubble coming out of her mouth, I think she was supposed to be singing something. A fellow came over and took the drawing off the wall so that people shouldn't look at it during davening. I was flabbergasted. It's a (bad) drawing of a young girl! I was tempted to tell him that he left the kol isha (the word bubble) on the wall. If such a thing causes people not be able to daven correctly, they should seek emergency therapy.