Through the Eyes of a Woman

As I write this, the Jewish world has just celebrated its New Year, Rosh ha-Shanah, when they eat pieces of apple dipped in honey, round challah, fish, and pomegranates, all of which have a symbolic meaning. The apple pieces represent sweetness in the new year and the round shape of the challah bread symbolizes the circle of the year and the wish for harmony and hope. The pomegranate calls for as many good deeds as the fruit has seeds. Of the fish, parts of the head are also eaten, so that they will be like the head and not the tail, because Rosh ha-Shanah means "head of the year". The first words of the Bible take us to the beginning of the history of the world. There we read "In the beginning God created."  Bereshit bara. The first word of the Bible is Bereshit, and the root of this term is the word Rosh ( ראש ), which means "head." On Rosh ha-Shanah, Judaism celebrates not only the New Year but also the beginning of the era when God created the wo

Yochi Rappeport’s blog in the Times of Israel on September 13 [1] about role models led me to think more about the influence of what we see and experience. Yochi writes about the influence that male teachers and rabbis had on her spiritual development as a teenager. If you only see men in leading roles, how can you imagine that women could also be leaders? If you are told to go and see the rabbi when you have a question, and you have only seen men in that role, how could you imagine that a rabbi could also be a woman? In our Christian churches, we too are affected by what we see. Why do our Christian female pastors often have a difficult time being accepted by their congregations? Could it be the same reason? Many churchgoers have never before seen a woman in a pastoral role. They cannot imagine that a woman could be a pastor. If you have always been surrounded by male leadership in your church, it can be difficult to accept that women can lead as well. Because the pastors who are ele

Who determines what is enough? How do we know when we are good enough? Enough means: sufficient for the need; sufficient for the purpose or to fulfill a desire. In her book, Enough, Tamyra Horst writes: "To be enough, then, means to fulfill the need and purpose for which we were created. Who determines our purpose and decides if we are enough?" [1]   She then goes on to discuss the people and things that affect our self-worth: Strangers on social media, classmates or colleagues, our appearance or degrees, bosses, preachers, co-workers, family and friends. But these are the very parameters by which we often measure ourselves and find that we are not enough. Of course, this is also due to the belittling that women have become accustomed to over the centuries. It is remarkable that the books about self-worth are mostly addressed to women. The male-centered patriarchal world that has stolen women's true worth is as pervasive as the air we breathe. We live in a misogy

  James Brown was right. The world is a man’s world. We have become so accustomed to gender injustice that we don’t even realize how pervasive patriarchy is. It surrounds us like the air we breathe. And this air is the air of a man’s world. "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" was written by James Brown and Betty Jean Newsome and recorded in 1966. It soon became a number one hit on the charts. The lyrics describe the man as the inventor of all the wonders of modern civilization like cars and trains, going back as far as Noah who by building the ark invented the first boat. Men concentrate on making money to buy toys for their babies but fail to see the importance of relationships until they realize that all this would “mean nothing without a woman or a girl”. It is still a man’s world and the song ends in a fadeout with the words, “He's lost in the wilderness / He's lost in bitterness, he's lost lost”… Patriarchy is a system that values men and t