excerpt from the upcoming
book
OUR BODIES, OUR SOULS
CHAPTER THREE
~
POWER: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
The feminist movement
stemmed from women feeling disempowered. Men clearly controlled (and still
control) the reins of power in the political, financial, and judicial spheres,
which determine most of the obvious facets of personal and societal existence.
Thus, a primary goal of the women's movement has been to demand a share
in this power through equal pay and equal employment opportunities.
Power, in essence,
is the ability to effect change. If women have financial clout or high political
or business positions, it is thought, then they too can determine the changes
that will affect their lives and the lives of others.
But the feminist
crusade has failed to recognize another, more subtle, form of power: internal
power, the ability to affect other people's ethics and values. While external
power may procure a high corporate position, internal power will determine
whether that corporate executive will be honest or embezzle from the corporation.
Women's quest for
external power has left a frightening vacuum in Western society in the area
of moral training, where women formerly held sway. Rampant crime, child
abuse, kidnapping, and violence against women are symptoms of a society
gone amok, where many people have no concept of right and wrong, of honesty,
fairness, compassion, or self-control. Only a generation ago, American stores
did not have security devices or guards checking bags at every exit; the
prevalent sense of honesty made shoplifting a rare occurrence. Such basic
morality now seems as outdated as propeller planes or fishnet stockings.
Today's internal
decadence is eroding the quality of life in America as fast as external
political and technological advances are improving it. A pointed, tragic
example is the case of the "Central Park jogger," a woman who
had succeeded in the traditionally male field of stock brokerage and who
was earning a salary commensurate with her abilities. She was brutally beaten
and gang-raped by a group of teenagers who had no idea who she was. They
saw their actions not as a political or racial statement, but as a sport.
Violence against
women has risen dramatically in America in the last decade. After the 1999
Woodstock concert ended in flames, reports began to come in which found
that women were assaulted and raped. The official response, says NOW NYC
President Galen Sherwin, has been to deny that the rapes occurred, and to
dismiss their importance.
A report published in American College Health (Sept 1997) uncovered a shocking statistic. One out of fifteen young women surveyed reported they had been forced to have sexual intercourse. Clearly, the lot of women cannot be improved by political and financial progress if the inner dimension of society - its morals and compassion - is neglected by the very people who have traditionally been its custodians: women.
A typical male analysis
of such societal problems customarily blames them on external factors, e.g.,
low income families with many children in impoverished neighborhoods inevitably
leads to a high rate of violent crime, substance abuse, etc.
If this were true,
then Jerusalem's religious neighborhood of Meah Shearim, which has one of
the highest poverty rates in Israel and where families typically number
seven to ten children in a three-room flat, should be a hotbed of violent
crime. Instead, Meah Shearim has virtually no violent crime and very little
substance abuse, this despite the total absence of policemen on its streets.
A materialistic
society, one which recognizes only that which can be counted and measured
(income, titles, degrees, etc.), is bound to discount the imponderables
such as compassion, courage, and selflessness, which ultimately determine
the fiber of its citizens. Almost none of the heroic Gentiles who risked
their lives to hide Jews during the Holocaust were people of stature, wealth,
or academic achievement. Most of them were simple people whose mothers had
imbued them with lofty morality. Thus, typical answers to the question "Why
did you risk your life and the lives of your family to hide Jews?"
were: "My mother taught me to help people who are suffering,"
or "My parents taught me that no one should be persecuted for his religion."
Ultimately, the
persons who had the most significant effect on who you are today were not
the President of the United States and the Chief Executive Officer of Bank
of America, but your parents, teachers, and childhood role models - the
people who influenced your internal development. The wielding of internal
power, while rarely accompanied by impressive titles or salaries, has a
deeper, longer-lasting effect than the external power maneuvers of those
who dominate the nightly news.
Women are the most
proficient wielders of internal power because of their preponderance of
insight, the intellectual vehicle of entering the very heart, mind, and
soul of the other person. Insight accounts for mothers usually being able
to understand the differences in their children more readily than fathers;
for women historically being the pioneers in establishing orphanages, mental
hospitals, and homes for the retarded; and for the no doubt accurate feminist
claim that if women ran the world there would be fewer wars. The ability
to view events in terms of their human cost rather than their political
ramifications derives from insight.
The Bible is full
of accounts of great women whose exercise of internal power had decisive
effects on Jewish history.
Sarah understood
the negative moral impact of Ishmael's example on Isaac. She insisted that
he be sent out of the household, which Abraham could not bring himself to
do until God emphatically told him, "In all that Sarah says to you,
hearken unto her voice." Commentaries on this verse state that Sarah
was a greater prophet than Abraham, for she could see the long-range moral
corruption that could jeopardize future generations of the Jewish people
through exposure to a violent and ruthless example at a formative stage.
Rebecca also clearly
intuited the inner make-up of her twin sons, and took a decisive, even deceptive,
step to insure that her husband's blessing would go to the son more fit
to carry the mantle of the Patriarchs.
The sages of the
Talmud (that portion of Jewish law that was originally oral but is now written)
credited the redemption from Egypt to the merit of the "righteous women,"
who, against the judgment of their husbands, saw that they must continue
to procreate despite Pharaoh's death sentence on all Jewish male babies.
In all these delicate situations, the women's ability to perceive the reality
of a person or situation determined the course of Jewish history.
Thus, defined Judaically,
the issue is not whether women should or should not have power, but rather
on the kind of power on which they should concentrate, both for their individual
development as well as for the good of the whole society. This choice is
almost totally hidden from women in secular society. Little wonder that
those who aspire to grow in an externally directed culture should define
their success in terms of external roles and quantifiable achievements.
The challenge of excelling in an inner domain is not only unrewarded by
their society, but is virtually unrecognized as a possible pursuit. It is
not just that the inner race offers no prize money; it is not even listed
in the daily double.
