Is There Room to Be a Strong, Outspoken Jewish Woman?

Hi, this is David Olowski with our question and answer series. Anonymous asks, "I'm getting mixed messages about what femininity means for a Jewish woman. Are we supposed to always be quiet and gentle? Is there room to still be a Jewish woman who is more strong and outspoken?" Wow, what a tough question. I refer you to my podcast which happens to be one of my most popular ones on the big lie at Sneas wherein this is the lie they say uh a woman should be attractive but not attracting and I say the problem is both of those words have the word attract in it. No, you're not supposed to be attracting or attractive. You're supposed to not have people looking at you. It is not a mile. We are not uh women are not supposed to be bandandying about. Now to be fair, Sneas applies to men too. It may take on different forms. It's it's unfortunate that sne is only defined by clothing. It's not. It's defined by an attitude towards life. And so therefore, the loud and uh obnoxious, what can I tell you? The scene that I see here in Eritell where there are seminary girls on the bus, you know, with a big bottle of water, drinking straight from the bottle going, "Shnie, Shnie, I'm over here. Shnie, you know." Yeah, I don't think I don't think that's appropriate behavior for Bas is full disclosure, I don't think it's appropriate for Ben Torra either. I think there's a way for us to be able to conduct ourselves with a sense of dignity. So having said that does that mean that a woman cannot be involved? Yes. But you have to define what the forum is. I had a girl in advisor in uh NCSY who was very fum and very smart and uh she used to talk to the girls and she was bubbly and effervescent [clears throat] and she was very effective and whenever a guy would come over she would just turn into the ice maiden look at the guy until he went away. [laughter] So the answer is in a woman's forum, yeah, I think it's very significant. But to put yourself out there um in that way to the general public, do I think uh that's correct? I don't think so. Uh I don't understand this. I've spoken about this in the past. Um there are women who are upset that publications will not put in pictures of women and they feel like uh this is a terrible thing. You know they want to they want to be in the publications so that people can look at them. Now if you're not attractive I'm not so opposed to it. If you're attractive I will let you in on a little secret. Men and boys will stare at your picture. It may lead to fantasy. It may lead to all kinds of other things. You don't get it because to you, you want to be out there and you want to be seen. But if you knew the people who are looking, you might not want to be seen. Yeah. I think the idea of not being bandied about is definitely a value. So within a context where I'm helping people and doing good things etc. you know working in women's camps, women's schools, things like that. Yeah, I think there's definitely a place for that. Um that doesn't mean that I want to be a public figure uh and to be drawing attention to myself in that way. So you're right. You have to thread the needle to be able to come up with the right approach. But uh that is uh ideally the approach I think that we have to try to achieve. I hope this is helpful. This is David Olowski with our question and answer series.