Tel-Chai Nation

Some thuggish sources in the Haredi community have led to a woman withdrawing her candidacy:

Chairwoman Racheli Ivenboim of the Meir Panim-Co'ah Latet food charities, a member of the Gur hareidi-religious community, has withdrawn her candidacy for the Jerusalem city council on the Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) list following threats, according to a Tuesday report by the Yediot Aharonot daily.

Ivenboim told the newspaper, "They simply took all the threats they can make against a hareidi person and directed them at me. They threatened to kick my children out of educational institutions immediately and to cast my family out of our synagogue and community. They told me everything hung in the balance and made it clear to me that my whole life was in question if I fulfilled my basic obligation to vote and be elected."

Ivenboim's candidacy had been the first of its kind, not only because she was a hassidic Jewish woman running for public office, but because she chose to do so with the religious-Zionist Jewish Home party. What's more, she claimed she initially received significant backing from the hassidic leadership.

[...] Speaking to the hareidi-religious Kikar Hashabat website, Ivenboim clarified that it was not hassidic leaders who put an end to her candidacy, but rather local activists.

“Those who worked to block my candidacy were ultimately low-level askanim [hareidi political activists] who felt threatened by the fact that there was a hareidi woman planning to serve the public with honest intentions, not for personal benefit,” she accused.

She later warned, “The [hareidi] community needs to decide if we’re going to go according to the personal interests of some askanim, or if we prefer to listen to halakhah [Jewish law] and to the rabbis.”

Relating the story on her Facebook page, Jewish Home Member of Knesset Ayelet Shaked said, "Until now, hareidi politicians have claimed that there are no hareidi women in politics because they don't want to be. So here is one who wanted to be and they wouldn't let her."

This is atrocious but not unexpected. Those "askanim" might just as well have been acting under the influence of bad rabbis within the community. That aside, I honestly think that, if they're going to ostracize Ivenboim, she shouldn't stick around them and should move her family to live, learn, work and pray in a better community and neighborhood. What's the use of living in a society that disrespects your right to think for yourself?

It's more than just the Haredi society needing to choose whom they'll let run their lives. They should decide whether this is a healthy belief system they're running, and whether they should keep going by it anymore.

Labels: haredi corruption, Israel, Jerusalem, misogyny, Moonbattery