Shani Boianjiu wrote an article in the New York Times about her experience serving in the IDF.
One of the reasons religious Jews claim they cannot serve in the I.D.F. has to do with the presence of women, who make up about 30 percent of the army. Last year, several religious soldiers walked out of a ceremony in which a woman sang. Evidently, this is one more thing women are not allowed to do. My encounter with ultra-religious men in the army was the first time I entered a world in which being myself meant existing in a universe where the rules for what I could or could not do rested primarily on my gender. As a female soldier, the so-called burden equality issue has a flip side: It would mean having to accept the burden of serving alongside thousands of individuals who see me as less than equal. For them, I could never be a soldier first; I would always be a woman, whose actions may spell danger to their most deeply held beliefs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/opinion/sunday/what-happens-when-the-two-israels-meet.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general
As the U.S. men's open tennis championships are being held in New York today, I would suggest that Ms. Boianjiu write about the lack of inclusion of women in the men's open, as well as their separation in Olympic sports. After all, if men and women are to be treated equally, why is there no protest of separate women's and men's finals?
Ms. Boianjiu, along with so many others, who seem to automatically presume that the separation of men and women in Jewish law is discrimnatory. It has nothing to do with 'equality'. There are different roles for the men and different ones for the women (which in reality has much to do with the laws of nature). The laws of Torah do not discriminate in the way the western mentality thinks; and observant women are only too happy to adhere to the laws from H'. Actually, in Judaism, the women are held on a higher plane spiritually than men. In Jewish marriages, the woman usually has the upper hand. So, I wish these uninformed, ignorant of Jewish law, people would stop with their assumptions that there is in any way, shape or form discrimination within Halacha towards women. Women are held in the very highest esteem and given honor, thus, the reason for modesty!
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