Ban by a Town’s Rabbis Against Women Attending Funerals Evokes Outrage

Israeli women are outraged by a ban imposed by the rabbis of Migdal Ha’emek against women attending funerals on grounds that they may be “unclean” and therefore responsible for the abnormally high number of deaths in that town recently.

Women attending a funeral there last week were ordered by officials of the burial society to “stay back.” The two chief rabbis of the town, Avraham Menahem and Yitzhak David Grossman, ruled that women must leave after eulogies are delivered for the deceased and before burial.

Burial society officials, all Orthodox Jews, said the failure of many women to observe the laws of family purity made them unclean and their presence at funerals together with men was therefore undesirable. They were allowed to visit the grave only after the men had left. These included not only friends but the daughters, granddaughters and sisters of the deceased woman.

Tova Lichtenstein, adviser on women’s affairs to the Minister of Religion, protested the ban. “Men and women were created in the image of God and should be treated equally,” she argued. Rabbi Pinhas Peli, a professor of Jewish studies at Ben Gurion University, in an Haaretz interview Tuesday, accused the Migdal Haemek rabbis of “a primitive and paganist approach.”

According to the rabbis, they were responding to the large number of deaths recently. “The public demanded that we do something about all these disasters, and since it is written in the Zohar that women’s attendance at funerals can cause disasters, we decided this was the best course of action,” Grossman said.

The Zohar, a 13th century mystical work, is the principal book of the Cabala.

Masha Lubelsky, Secretary General of Na’amat, the Labor Zionist women’s organization, wrote to Religious Affairs Minister Zevulun Hammer Monday demanding an end to this “new fanatical norm.” Knesset member Shulamit Aloni of the Citizens Rights Movement called for the dismissal of the Migdal Ha’emek rabbis.