First of all, DY and PAA: thank you so much :). I really appreciate your good wishes.
PAA, you summed up what I was saying quite well. (I seem to have been repeating myself a lot without actually making myself clearer…)
DY, one of the things that I’ve been saying is that people assume that what’s going on is right just because it’s been going on. Perhaps it is, but it needs to stand up to sudden independent scrutiny even so. You make the point (or more precisely agree with PAA’s point) that the reasons not to allow it outweigh the reasons to allow it- but like I’ve been saying, those reasons still seem nebulous to me.
I read that article you mentioned, PAA, and I was not impressed. I think that her reasons why it’s a good idea are better than her reasons why it’s not. She makes the very good points that charedi women and their ideas and causes are underserved in the Israeli charedi community and then says things that she doesn’t back up and that I don’t understand- what makes a woman more spiritually vulnerable in the workplace than a man? (One of the sem teachers’ big pro-kollel arguments is predicated on the opposite idea…) What makes her think that the people who don’t want women in the Knesset want women in smaller community political offices or community organizations (beyond a gemach or chessed organization) anyway? How does she plan on getting women a voice- she’s not the first person who’s advocated for it…? She sounds like she’s forming all of her opinions to fit with her preexisting ideas and the status quo, which is just what has been frustrating me so much.
PAA, I can see issues with her arguments as far as why it wouldn’t davka require women to be in the Knesset, but otherwise I think that those points are sound. Yes, it’s true that women can theoretically get involved in other ways, but that’s not happening either. At the same time, the issues she mentions are important. And like I said, I wasn’t impressed with her rebuttal of these points.