_a.jpg "צילום: אלי אלגרט")
Shulamit Aloni
Photo: Eli Elgarat
Aloni: Rabbis hate insubordinate women
Former Meretz leader and staunch opponent of religious institutions in Israel says struggle against rabbinical courts should be led by religious women, 'whose knowledge is often superior to men's'
"It's unacceptable that a man, just because he studied such and such Gemara pages, will be able to doom you to be refused a divorce or make you slaves in your own home," former MK Shulamit Aloni told participants at the Kolech conference on women status and religion Sunday.
Referring to the plight of women who were refused a divorce, Aloni slammed the rabbinical courts in Israel and lauded the conference's organizers for their contribution to the struggle against the phenomenon.
According to the former Meretz MK, religious women were the most fitting to lead the struggle against the religious institutions, because "learned women have the means to deal with the rabbinical judges much more than heretics like myself. Some of them have knowledge superior to their male colleagues and the judges," she stated.
Aloni said that her long-standing fight against religious coercion failed because she was unsuccessful in enlisting the support of the religious public. She called for a joining of forces between secular and religious women's organizations, but stressed that such cooperation could never be complete: "I won't attend a prayer – neither with the women of the Western Wall, nor in one of your femininist minyanim."
When asked why she's being perceived as a hater of religion, Aloni reminded participants that her efforts to institutionalize civil marriage were only made after the religious authorities rejected halachic solutions she proposed. She stated that her demand to establish civil marriage came after she found out that "rabbis hate insubordinate women. The haredim have taken over the rabbinical courts and have made the situation there unbearable.
"The courts are plagued with corruption and indifference," she added.
Aloni also slammed the leader of the haredi Lithuanian stream, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elysahiv, who banned haredi women from studying for a BA. "No one should listen to this old rabbi who says that women shouldn't study for a degree, but should support the family instead," she said.
