According to Bechadrei Charedim, the Edah Charedit denies being behind the newest posters I reported on earlier.. Actually the posters were not so new. They are six years old, and some of the signatories have passed on.
Update: According to comments on the Kikar Shabbat website, the date of the posters recommending shawls for all wmoen is from six years ago. Someone must have reprinted and posted them.
The Edah Haredit claims they are not behind the current poster. They claim to have considered prohibiting “shalim” altogether, but in the end did not go that far.
Th
e other day I wrote that husbands of women who cover their faces requested that the Edah haredit rule against the practice. Miriam Shaviv from the Jewish Chronicle reports that it will soon. But in the meantime, a poster went up with a ruling that all women should wear shalim (redidim). But it was six years old.
Background on cloaks/shawls: Thee custom of wearing cloaks to obscure the contour of a woman’s body began in the Toldot Aharon community in Jerusalem when its leader recommended them to his granddaughter, as she was unable to get pregnant. Her relatives wore the cloaks, known as shalim in Hebrew, to show solidarity with her. After the baby was born, and other women began experiencing good fortune, the trend caught on and extended to communities of returning Orthodox Jews, especially Breslav. (Source: article in Mekor Rishon by researcher Sima Zaltzberg).
Bruria Keren, a mother of 10 from Beit Shemesh, attracted national attention when she adopted the cloak, multiple layers of clothes, and other extreme behaviors including covering her face. I am not sure if she was the first to cover her face, but she was the best-known.
In Elad, near where I live, you can see many women in cloaks. The number of women who cover their faces is still small, but growing.
Related:
Interview with a Former Kannai
I had hoped that with the arrest of Bruria Keren, the trend of face-covering among Jewish women would die out. But according to the website Hadrei Haredim, a growing group of women consider face-covering to be halacha (Jewish law) and convince others to follow. These women can be found in Beit Shemesh, Jerusalem and Elad.
Hadrei Haredim also reported that the religious court of the Edah Charedit in Jerusalem has received several requests by husbands to rule against the veils, which the wives wear without their approval.
It appears that at least some of the husbands support their wives on this issue, because twenty families in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet have threatened to pull their children out of the cheder (charedi boys’ elementary yeshiva) because the wives of the rebbes (rabbi-teachers) do not wear veils and presumably set a bad example.
There are reports of girls not able to attend high school because they are harassed over the veils, and of very young girls with their faces covered.
Hat tip: Rafi of Life in Israel.
Related:
Hyper-Tzniut Fashions for Young Girls
Haredi Women Advised to Sit Separately from the Less Modestly Dressed
It’s time for Part X in a series on dating and marriage in the religious Zionist community.
Last week’s edition of Torah Tidbits contained an article entitled “Diabetics and Shidduchim” by the Puah Institute for Fertility and Gynecology in Halacha. The article strongly discourages marriage to a person with diabetes. [Edited to add: As Rabbi Weitzman points out, the article doesn't say what to do. However, I read the article as strongly discouraging such a marriage.]
After pointing out the difficulties of living with someone who has a serious chronic illness, the author continues:
“. . . one of the risk factors for getting diabetes is that it is hereditary. Therefore someone who has diabetes is likely to pass it on to at least some of his offspring.”
The friend who sent me the article has a child with diabetes. She felt that the attitude in the article could destroy her daughter’s chances of finding a shidduch.
And the author is wrong about the risks. Passing on diabetes to your children is not “likely” at all.
The rest of the article explains how difficult it is for a children to live with diabetes, and for the entire family. The implication is that marrying someone with diabetes will cause suffering for your future children.
But what are the facts? According to Genetics of Diabetes from the American Diabetes Association website:
. . . . In general, if you are a man with type 1 diabetes, the odds of your child getting diabetes are 1 in 17. If you are a woman with type 1 diabetes and your child was born before you were 25, your child’s risk is 1 in 25; if your child was born after you turned 25, your child’s risk is 1 in 100.
Your child’s risk is doubled if you developed diabetes before age 11. If both you and your partner have type 1 diabetes, the risk is between 1 in 10 and 1 in 4.
There is an exception to these numbers. About 1 in every 7 people with type 1 diabetes has a condition called type 2 polyglandular autoimmune syndrome.
In addition to having diabetes, these people also have thyroid disease and a poorly working adrenal gland. Some also have other immune system disorders. If you have this syndrome, your child’s risk of getting the syndrome including type 1 diabetes is 1 in 2.
The article also notes, “In most cases of type 1 diabetes, people need to inherit risk factors from both parents.” The gene is recessive, so one can carry the gene without being sick.
Type 2 diabetes runs in families. In part, this tendency is due to children learning bad habits eating a poor diet, not exercising–from their parents. But there is also a genetic basis.
In general, if you have type 2 diabetes, the risk of your child getting diabetes is 1 in 7 if you were diagnosed before age 50 and 1 in 13 if you were diagnosed after age 50.
Some scientists believe that a child’s risk is greater when the parent with type 2 diabetes is the mother. If both you and your partner have type 2 diabetes, your child’s risk is about 1 in 2.
The Torah Tidbits article doesn’t distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2, although most cases of Type 2 are diagnosed after a woman is past child-bearing age. It might be an issue for younger women dating older men. The significant risk factor for passing on Type I, polyglandular autoimmune syndrome, is also not mentioned.
It’s legitimate to consider medical history when choosing a marriage partner. But exaggerating risks is unethical and counter-productive. Just as with Tay-Sachs, the worst thing is when diabetics can only marry each other, seriously increasing the risk of passing on the illness to their children.
You may also enjoy:
Abortion in the Religious Zionist Community
“Nurse Yachne” shared the following in response to the post on Tipat Chalav: What Parents Need to Know.
Tipat Chalav (well-baby clinic) policies are often imposed top-down. About twelve years ago when I was a school nurse, we all held meetings together with the Tipat Chalav nurses. A decision had been made for the Tipat Chalav gynecologists to push the low-estrogen dose birth control pills, which incidentally cause a high rate of intermediate spotting. All of the Tipat Halav nurses happened to be religiously observant and they pointed this problem out to the staff physicians, who happened to be secular Russians. The doctors in question literally snickered and remarked that this was not a medical problem, and that the health ministry had made policy to push the low-estrogen pills as a preferred birth control method, so that was that.
The moral of the story, for me, anyway, was not to get birth control advice from a secular doctor, but to seek out OB-GYNs who are both knowledgeable about Jewish marital laws and sympathetic to our concerns.
As regards baby care and follow-up that my classmates and I observed in our clinical hours in nursing school, the mothers among us were pleasantly shocked to observe the tremendously sympathetic attitudes of the Tipat Chalav nurses in the deprived neighborhoods where we did our work.
I participated in a home visit to a mother of a baby with potential developmental problems. The nurse could not have been more encouraging and positive, reinforcing the good before offering constructive suggestions. After we left the home, she admitted, “Actually, I AM worried about this baby. But if I make the mother feel bad about herself, then she won’t come back to us, and I want us to stay in touch.”
My classmates participated in a clinic visit by a mother who had been a heroin addict at the time she became pregnant. The nurse was very encouraging that the mother had gotten off heroin (“Do you miss it? Kol hakavod (kudos) to you, you must really care about your baby! Any time you have any questions or problems, please do get in touch with us, we’re here for you.”).
The mothers among us reflected that it would have been nice to have gotten that kind of positive supportive contact when we brought our babies in, and that in many cases WE had been made to feel that we were suspect heroin addicts! That was 20 years ago. I don’t know how it is elsewhere, but my personal experience with subsequent babies was that they had made a major policy decision to be supportive and positive. They are certainly very pro- breastfeeding, and knowledgeable in this regard. The place is obviously low-budget, but it is very determinedly cheery and pleasant to visit nowadays.
It’s not perfect, but they are working on it. Also, no mother is turned away for an inability to pay the fees, though they would prefer that people ask for help in payment, which is evidently always forthcoming if there is a need.
Any large institution has good and bad sides. But large institutions can accomplish things that the individual could not. At its best, Tipat Chalav can be very empowering, all those client moms and nurse moms sharing info and wisdom and positive vibes. At its worst, they can be intimidating, scary, and closed-minded, but that, as I said, is changing, and the people in charge WANT things to change.
You may also enjoy:
Tipat Chalav: What Parents Need to Know
Screaming Babies Ignored in Maternity Ward
Breastfeeding Late Preterm Babies
Posts on Parenting at “A Mother in Israel”
Twitter links powered by Tweet This v1.7.1, a WordPress plugin for Twitter.
