So, okay, you’ve got Hera, who annually had three festivals, one where she grew her hymen back and renewed her virginity, one where she married Zeus, one where she left Zeus and went off to live alone as a crone.

But you’ve also got lots of other goddesses who do nothing of the kind. Including triple goddesses. The Morrigan, for example, who has three aspects, all warriors.

But we are all reproductive beings, because we are all the product of reproduction. We were born. And we survive by reproduction; eating animals that were born or hatched, plants that sprouted. Life and death, these are core spiritual experiences.

I’m going to continue to assert that if people are practicing something they call “Wicca” that prevents women from leading, they are using the wrong name. If they are going to the lumber yard and buying wood and building houses with that wood and calling them “stone houses” I am going to assert they are using the wrong name. There is such a thing as “Wicca” that has boundaries of what it is, and is not, and just because assholes misappropriate the name doesn’t mean I haven’t the right to say they’re fucking wrong.

And really, I can stand on my expertise and my reputation, but I don’t have to. I can stand comfortably with my brain and personal experience and basic knowledge and it comes to the same thing. Maybe that means I’m saying I’m smarter than some sexist assholes who call themselves “Wiccan” and therefore I’m elitist, but I’d way rather be elitist than put up with sexist assholes.

I hardly think it’s ‘1984′ or the Taliban to accommodate the religious observance of Jews in a Jewish state.

If it were just accommodation, that would be one thing. But you have women who don’t belong to their sect and are not bound by their rules getting harassed for walking down the street and not conforming to their rules. This in a modern democracy.

Do you not see a problem with that?

The Reform Jews attempted to discard the symbols of “otherness” and minimize the differences between themselves and their neighbors. To this end, they traditionally eschew beards, sidelocks as well as Jewish headwear and prayer shawls, and their places of worship are more likely to resemble churches. Additionally, they call their places of worship “temples” instead of synagogues which is a very political difference; Orthodox and Conservative Jews believe that the Temple must be built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, in the time of the Messiah. The Reform movement abandoned the messianic theology and the idea of a Jewish national identity to make a better political claim in their homelands where they had historically been disenfranchised.

Hasidism is more about insularity and self sufficiency and withdrawing from a hostile mainstream society. Their fundamental theology, like their beards and wool suits, is a shield they use to separate themselves from an outside world they viewed as hostile. This is why they live in tight enclaves and rarely move outside of them.

The Haredi are not necessarily Hasidim, but they share an ultra-orthodox theology and a belief that the Torah Law is the perfect Law of God and must be followed to the extent possible. This is an extremely detailed set of religious stipulations, which has been elaborated on by centuries of learned rabbinical commentators. This isn’t a faith obsessed with homosexuality or abortion or whatever else Christian fundamentalists fixate on. This is a very detailed and regimented set of rules that governs everyday life to a very severe degree. Instead of ten commandments, they have over 600. Their God is concerned not only with what you fuck, but with what you eat and how you slaughter animals, how you wipe your ass, and the ritual you perform when you wash your hands afterwards.

These people keep separate sets of dishes for meat and for those containing milk. They will not wash these dishes in the same sink. There are specific religious standard undergarments for men. There are detailed and extensive daily prayer rituals.

The degree to which they follow 5000 year old rules necessarily separates them from ordinary lifestyles, which is, based on the historical political context, part of the reason for participating in the religious movement, and one of those rituals governs association between unrelated men and women, which must be very limited. Men and women sit separately during prayer at all

Orthodox synagogues, and Orthodox synagogues do not permit women to become rabbis or read from the Torah scrolls. The ultra-orthodox, like the Hasidim and the Haredi forbid unrelated men and women from touching each other. That’s why they have the separate bus seating.

Generally, institutions that wish to serve orthodox Jews have to conform to the special needs of their religious observance, whether that means offering a kosher kitchen or offering a sex-segregated bus. If there were not such a bus, the ultra-orthodox would not be able to use the public transportation.

I hardly think it’s ’1984′ or the Taliban to accommodate the religious observance of Jews in a Jewish state.

Janis – Spot on.

Sorry for the thread-jacking. (Alix sheepishly goes back to lurking.)

you might want to watch their heads explode when you point out to them the many asexual and celibate-by-choice deities.

Yeah, mythology/religion’s what I study, and I have an especial love of asexual and non-sexual deities (nonsexual as in we don’t know what the hell they were/are). Not that anyone listens to me. :P

And I think I like your tradition’s idea.

“It’s just a metaphor! It doesn’t mean anything!”

“Then why do you use that exact image?”

“Because the uterus is the fundamental organ of the female body, it symbolizes everything about Woman, it is the universal symbol of — blah blah, followed by a 50-page long screed that configures the pussy as the only female organ that matters for anything.”

“So you think the uterus is the most important female organ, worthy of 50 pages of description, so central to the definition of womanhood that it is used as the central iconic image?”

“I NEVER SAID THAT!” Despite the fact that they just took 50 pages up saying … precisely that.

This nonsense about how it’s just an image and doesn’t mean anything is crap. If that’s the case, then I can say the exact same thing to every liberal I’ve ever met who protests against portrayals of black people, gay people, transgender folks, and others in television. The next time I see a TV show or movie that paints Witches as devil-worshipping spawn of Satan, I can say, “It’s just a metaphor! Why are you getting so worked up? They didn’t mean anything by it! It’s just a metaphor.”

Some “just.”

then why the hell have a separate triad for women and men in the first damned place?! This is not rocket science. I am NOT a reproductive being. I do not want to have babies. I feel much more like a warrior than a damned mother, and I’m not going to apologize for that or say, “Oh but I’m sure that blah blah blah … ”

Why have two different ones? And the old saw about how I can feel perfectly free to identify with either one just doesn’t hold water. Why the hell is that division even there — when the hell do I see a model for my own fripping behavior in Paganism that doesn’t pretend I have a different body?

Nothing to do with a woman’s reproductive status my backside. That’s like having a white god as the good guy and a black one as the bad guy and then saying that it has nothing to do with skin color. BS. It has everything to do with reproductive status, or else why would the metaphor even be used.

Deborah, do you even realize that these two statements are not equivalent?

I have seen it. Period. Full stop.

But, if in fact, Israel’s catering to the ultra-Orthodox is driving people away from the practice of Judaism, what good is that then?

As to “New York and New Jersey are much kinder places to the Jews than the Middle East”, any true Zionist would tell you that no matter how kind New York and New Jersey seem to Jews, in the Goluth, there is always the risk that the Goyim will turn against us. How this is any different than the siege mentality from which some in Israel understandably suffer, I don’t know … what does that say about the futility of the Zionist project, I don’t know …