Our shared home, our shared responsibility |
This week I became increasingly uncomfortable reading the news. In just a few days, I came across several stories: border police officers jailed for barbecuing on base over Shabbat, accused of “harming religion”; female soldiers court-martialed and fined for arriving at their discharge in shorts and tank tops; and women in the IDF required to wear long pants during the Jerusalem Marathon, in the middle of a heat wave, while men were allowed to wear shorts.
Now, to be clear, I am Jewish and relatively observant. So this is not sour grapes. I keep Shabbat and wouldn’t barbecue on a Friday night. I don’t keep the laws of modesty, but I can understand the point and my daughter is required to wear a skirt to school. I could have chosen to send her to a secular school, where no such rules would apply, because there is (still) freedom of choice and variety of levels of religious observance in our country. However, it seems like some groups are trying to change that. And what is the other side of the coin?
My husband recently finished another round of miluim which resulted in me single-parenting for nearly three months. This, after two and a half years of war and several other rounds of miluim. And I am not even close........