Kids Violent Because Mothers Work, Leading Israeli Rabbi Says

"People say that the youth has a problem of violence. The problem is that the mother works and it's hard for her to devote herself to her home." According to the rabbi, a woman pursuing a career – whether in a public office or a private one – is not doing the ideal thing as her job is to be a housewife.

Rabbi Lior: Youth violent because of moms' careers

Kiryat Arba rabbi says women should not be ashamed of being housewives, as 'it's a 24-hour job'

Kobi Nahshoni • Ynet

Kiryat Arba Rabbi Dov Lior believes violence among Israeli teenagers stems from their mothers' careers. "People say that the youth has a problem of violence," he said Wednesday. "The problem is that the mother works and it's hard for her to devote herself to her home."

According to the rabbi, a woman pursuing a career – whether in a public office or a private one – is not doing the ideal thing as her job is to be a housewife.

The remarks were made in a leaflet which will be distributed in synagogues on Saturdays, as part of his support for Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, who has prohibited female residents of the Elon Moreh settlement from running for the office of community secretary.

According to Rabbi Lior, who is considered one of the prominent rulers in Religious Zionism, when her husband's salary is not enough to provide for the family, a woman can go out to work in any position. "But saying that it's fitting in the first place, or that I encourage women to go out to work? I believe this is not the Torah's view. A woman has enough to do inside the house."

He clarified that "although being a community secretary is not really an appointment but more of a professional manner, and I don't wish to hurt or belittle a woman's abilities or respect, these things are inappropriate for women after all."

The rabbi based his remarks on Rabbi Kook, who had said that public positions are not suitable for women, and Maimonides, who ruled that men rather than women should be appointed for national assignments.

"When people ask me if I encourage women to go out to work, I say that they should not – not in a way of contempt, God forbid, but because I acknowledge the importance of a woman's role in the house," the rabbi concluded.

"Once, when I was a marriage registrar, one bride was ashamed to say that her mother was a housewife and not a clerk or something of the kind. I told her she had nothing to be ashamed of, as being a housewife is not an eight-hour job but a 24-hour job. It's important for each person to fill the role given to him by God."

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Comments

[Maskil]

Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, who has prohibited female residents of the Elon Moreh settlement from running for the office of community secretary.

There's the secular media at it again trying to slander even the most moderate voices in the non-secular public. He Levanon did not prohibit anything. He clarified a preexisting halachic prohibition in context to a specific question in a context of halachah as observed by the National Religious public. Even the Pope, or le-havdil, Yossi Sarid, would admit that this was the position of Rav Kook on the matter. It is akin to calling a recent responsum "issuing a prohibition against all Jews from cooking meat products with dairy products." What a crock!

[Shmarya]

Please.

When Rav Kook was a young married man – in fact, for most of his adult life – women could not vote in many countries, including America.

If someone today said women should not vote because they are the "weaker sex," we'd say that person is a fool or a misogynist, or both.

To use Rav Kook's position out of the context that it was issued in is very foolish and is disrespectful to both halakha and Rav Kook.

[Jonathan]

That's absolutely hilarious. You can't make this stuff up!

Maybe kids in Kiryat Arba are violent because they live isolated, armed to the teeth, and surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Arabs who want to murder them?!

[Maskil]

Rav Kook's position wasn't issued, it was taught. It involves his explanations regarding talmudic and post-talmudic halachic statement prohibiting women from being allowed to hold positions of power, judicial influence, or public office with what seems to be a significant history of such cases, like the prophetess Devorah. He discusses these seeming inconsistancies and cites sources preceeding him in resolving them. He probably addressed these issues as they became more and more relevant to his support for a democratic Jewish State. But the sources he cites, those that he accepts and those that he rejects, are from centuries earlier and their applications in modern day are the same. Again, put the Pope in a room to study the discussions of Rav Kook on the matter, put Gore Vidal in a room to study them, put Yossi Sarid in a room to study them, and put yourself in a room to study them. You'll find that you're the only one who will claim that Rav Kook's teachings as applied to the position in question is apt to change and is not a matter of clear fact. While the other's might not agree with Rav Kook, the Talmud, Rishonim and Aharonim, they would at least admit to the static nature of Rav Kook's teachings on this matter.

[Shmarya]

Not really.

You shouldn't strip a person from his context.

Past that, most halakhot of sniut are based on time and place. That's why 80 years ago, wives of Lithuanian roshei yeshiva did not cover their hair, or why women worse pants in Yemen.

To cite Rav Kook on issues of sniut and to remove the context he lived and worked in is simply foolish and ahalakhic.

[Mikal W. Grass]

Let me get this right: the men are supposed to study in yeshiva night and day, and the women are supposed to stay at home and raise the children?

This begs two questions: 1) what is the family supposed to do for money? Live on the dole forever? 2) Did it cross anyone's mind that the children are violent because the children miss their absentee fathers (just because you know where he is studying doesn't mean he isn't an absentee father)?

Times are different today. Kids, even the most insulated, are being buffeted by mixed messages unlike anytime in history. They need parental guidance from their fathers.

[jay]

Go back even further in time and women were leaders in the Israelite community, even prophets. So these prohibitions are yet another modern innovation by the Orthodox community

[Spherical Thinking]

Mary Eberstadt, in her book Home-Alone America:

"To browse the literature is to learn that many babies and toddlers in institutional care bite and bite a lot. They bite themselves, one another, and, of course, teachers and adults, too.

Why is this fact so remarkable? Because it doesn't happen elsewhere the way it does in day care.... And why does this difference matter? Because if randomly assembled children of the same ages do not spontaneously start using their teeth as weapons, whereas the same kinds of children assembled in a day care situation do, this strongly suggests that the institutionalized ones are biting at least in part because something about their situation has them especially agitated."

[R]

children in day care do not bite.
Have you been to a nursery recently?
Both my children went to nursery from being babies because i work and they don't bite. I do know a toddler who didn't go to nursery and stayed home with her mum all day and she bit alot.

Violence is not because the mother's work, violence is because parents don't parent and the school system is dysfunctional.
On top of that you get extra pressures from scoiety. Please don't blame the working mother for everyone's problems.
It seems in the charedi world they blame the woman because she isn't tzniut enough and in the more modern world they blame the woman because she works....do we see a pattern?

[R]

*Society (not scoiety)

[effie]

Siblings, who do not attend daycare, bite each other at home. The bittor often smiles and laughs. They think it's funny. The bittee - not so much.

All kids bite. They just have to be taught it's wrong.

[harold]

The problem is that the mother works and it's hard for her to devote herself to her home."

Damned if you do and damned if you don't!

[seymour]

Not really.

You shouldn't strip a person from his context.

Past that, most halakhot of sniut are based on time and place. That's why 80 years ago, wives of Lithuanian roshei yeshiva did not cover their hair, or why women worse pants in Yemen.

To cite Rav Kook on issues of sniut and to remove the context he lived and worked in is simply foolish and ahalakhic.

Posted by: Shmarya | May 27, 2010 at 06:45 AM

Past that, most halakhot of sniut are based on time and place.

true, but the orthodox will never admit that. If they do it would turn their whole world upside down. Like mosser

[Bill]

The next thing they are going to say is that "tatty" ("daddy") molests little boys at the mikvah because mommy goes to work....

These people are pathetic.

[suzanne]

I think each family is its own little civilization. At the end of the day each one must take constant inventory of what works best for them. For instance, there are families where both parents can work alot and everyone is doing fine and other families where this arrangement would be extremely destructive. It just depends on a million different factors. All kids need their parent's love and protection - their needs (whether academic, social, health or other) must always come first. Everyone understands that the cost of living is very high and working for this reason is understandable but outright materialism is no reason to neglect one's children as there is no substitute for a parent's love.

[DOV]

MATZAV POSTED TODAY THAT RAV WOSNER AND RAV KARELITZ FORBADE all yeshiva bochurim from taking part of any protests in israel that these protests are arranged by unsculpurous individuals and that taking part in these protests and hafganos are damaging to a persons neshama/soul instead of protesting these rabbonim said you should daven to Hashem to stop any desecration of jewish remains

[david]

Er... Dov Lior thinks that kids are violent because their mothers are working?

Perhaps some of them are violent because they have heard or read his speeches legitimizing the killing of non-Jews and praising Baruch Goldstein as a saint and martyr. Or his ruling that "a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail". Or that captured Arab terrorists could be used to conduct medical experiments or that it is forbidden by Jewish law to employ or rent homes to Arabs.

Dov Lior is a disgusting, repulsive bigot who advocates violence. His Torah has been replaced with nationalist extremism and racism, masquerading as Torah. He is one of the "little pishers," as they are called, who think they have the authority to rule over matters of life and death, but whose rulings are based on their extreme Right-Wing political views and not on Torah.

[david]

BTW, to those making comments about hareidim (like Bill and Mikal Grass), Lior is not a hareidi rabbi. He's one of the most prominent leaders of so-called Religious Zionism.

[Chicago Sam]

Lior is bad news.

[Yosef ben Matitya]

BTW, to those making comments about hareidim (like Bill and Mikal Grass), Lior is not a hareidi rabbi. He's one of the most prominent leaders of so-called Religious Zionism.

David
philosophically he is habad though not part of them.

[david]

Philosophically he is more like Adolf Hitler.