According to this logic, segregated schools do not constitute an infringement of rights. The US Supreme Court, in Brown v Board of Education, seemed to think otherwise.

Anything that would make "separate but equal" black schools unequal to white schools, could happen just as well in exclusively female military units. Plus, in a sexist army, do you really expect to see identical units, even in the unlikely event that they would be blueprinted as such?

I hope this is a joke.

When religious education is at stake, at least there is *some* justification for the separation (though obviously the segregation does more for men than for women: see the Ayal article about the sad realities of female religious education in Israel, its academic inferiority and modest objectives). Jewish Orthodoxy is, in itself, a very gendered and segregated perspective, and therefore segretaging education is not an alien concept to it. Naturally, when the tipic of segregation is not religion itself, there are no grounds for the separation of genders. Surely you would not expect Bar Ilan University - a Jewish, religion-positive institution - to hold separate classes in math, political science, history and law, for men and women. Even the university of Tehran, in the height of the Muslim revolution, held co-ed classes.

The same rationale holds for military service. In a state which at least declares itself to exercise separation from religion - and an army IS a secular institution - then, contrary to the religious education example, there really is no grounds for separation. Would you expect all public transportation in Israel to be segregated? All universities? All workplaces?

Actually, I think the army goes a long way in accomodating the small minority f Ultra-Orthodox soldiers by creating special units for them; even without considering the dubious justification for such practice, it is unrealistic to expect an army, whose units are supposed to reflect functionality rather than individual comfort, to proclaime half its units exclusively male, exclusively Jewish, exclusively Ashkenazi, or excluxively red-headed units. Considering the inequalities and social stratification the army promotes and allows, religious males are actually one of the only groups which it happens to treat exceedingly well.

By the way, you'll probably find it interesting that the IDF practice of creating "Druze units" and populating them with exclusively Druze soldiers - was found unconstitutional.

And on a more personal note: I am saddened to read that the mere presence of women would preclude someone from being a 'good Jew'. How little, apparently, it takes to make people stray from their path.

I can't speak for others, but the reason I find it hard to respond to a post like yours is not merely "ignoring" something inconvenient; the reason is that what you and I respectively define as "family strength" "children education" and "strength of society" are entirely opposite things. While for you, prescribed gender roles are a key to a healthy family, for me a healthy family is one where there is realy partnership and sharing, while respecting the full potential of both parties. The kind of education you want to give to your kids, which might encourage faith and tradition, though not without its advantages (more obedience, less friction), does not encompass what would empower my children: a freedom to define who they are and what they want to be regardless of their gender or ethnicity. What you perceive as a source of social strength (uniformity) I perceive as an unhealthy source of stagnation. The "enemy" you anticipate is, for me, a million and a half of hungry, beaten colonists, who have been bred to hate during years of occupation.

So, you see, it's not out of ignoring; it's out of just feeling there's not much common ground to start from, that me (and perhaps others) are hesitant to respond.

Why drag socialism into this again is beyond me. Haven't we already done this elsewhere?

Thank you for illustrating, Ya'akov.

I'm afraid I don't have a counter-paradigm to offer, because I don't think any one individual or lifestyle holds "the key" to a happy life. There are happy and unhappy families among religious and non-religious people alike; I do agree that the research suggests a lesser divorce rate among religious people, but being a non-orthodox person, I don't think that living with a single person for your entire life is an absolute recipe for happiness (it works for me and it works for you, but it doesn't work for everyone I know). I do agree with you, though, that for people who do choose monogamy as their lifestyle, unfaithfulness is a source of unhappiness, and that religious and secular people alike would benefit from working on their relationships and investing in them. I just don't think that prescribed roles and an artificially-prescribed lesser social contact with other women would lead to such investment, or necessarily to increased happiness. Moreover, while such a lifestyle is a great solution for people with Orthodox, exclusivist beliefs - people who think that the lifestyle described in the Torah is the only way to go - those of us who do not share this belief, and therefore do not have a religious incentive to limit their opportunities and potentials for a more constrained and perhaps secure marital life - will have to search for other ways to be happy.

Eventually it boils down to the headline you put on this "ptil": everything has a price. We are different people, and we believe different things, so our cost-benefit analysis is different.

The same goes as to the correlation you made between divorce rates/unhappy children (shaky as it is) and national "strength". Naturally, in a homogenous society (what Durkheim would call a 'mechanical solidarity society') with prescribed roles and authoritative leadership, the collective consciousness is stronger; but for a heterogenous society, where people have a pluralist set of ideals and values, perhaps a unified, collective consciousness is not the way to go. Again, it's a cost-benefit analysis. I'd rather have pluralism and listening to the "others" in lieu of the national strength you describe, which, to be frank, scares me more than a bit.

This is a good post. Lots of things in it merit a careful answer.

1. I don't think it's essentially "better" for children to grow in one way or another in terms of family structure. It is *best* for children to grow where they are loved, reassured and appreciated, and where their health and well being is a concern for the adults involved. Anything beyond that, I think, can be negotiated (this is, by the way, why I so dislike the yuppy parenting fads, with the books that state that unless you play Mozart to your kid and hold them in a certain way, they will grow deprived and traumatized).

That said, I think that caring for children is a huge responsibility for one adult to take, and it is easier if more people are involved - a partner (of whatever gender), extended family, friends, a supportive community. "It takes a village" and all that.

2. Indeed, if one chooses monogamy as their model, unfaithfulness can be disastrous. It can be avoided, as you suggest, by not contacting alternative potential partners, or, as I suggest, by maintaining a diverse net of social contacts, but a strong inner discipline, and reminding yourself why you committed yourself to the other person and why you should work on preserving your relationship. There are advantages and disadvantages in both paths.

3. The last thing I meant was to imply that religious people are not humans. Please, do not read that into what I said! I never said or meant to say anything of the sort! Yes, you are right. Rules of human decency don't have to stem from religion, and, YES, secular people as well as religious ones would do good to treat women - their own wives as well as any woman or girl they meet - with the utmost respect. For you, this may be grounded in biblical terms as well as moral ones (or it's one and the same). For me, it will be because all humans have a spark of the divine in them and need to be treated accordingly. For someone else, it will be secular humanistic ethics.

That said, there is a big difference between spending time with other people and cheating on your partner. I guess I don't see the "slippery slope" in your footnote as being so unavoidable. For me, one person - fantastic and close as he may be - does not entirely satisfy my social needs. While there are many activities I enjoy with my partner, there are other activities I pursue with other friends, regardless of their gender. I don't see any of these people as an alternative source of sexual or romantic partnership. They enrich my life in other ways.

4. True: people who grow up in an atmosphere of hatred and spite probably don't enjoy the harmony they are entitled to. Again, this spite and hatred can exist in families where people remain married, sometimes to a greater extent. I refuse to draw social rules about how everyone's life should be run. Some people are better off together, and some are better off apart. I would be very cautious making such generalizations.

5. I don't know what you base these opinions on. I'm a sociologist and can present you with counterexamples, Neolithic or modern. I think it all depends on how people perceive relationship, and in any case, again, would be cautious about drawing generalizations.

6. Thank you for acknowledging the difficulties in drawing limits in life; I absolutely agree. Life is an ethically tricky thing for everyone, no matter what we choose.

And hey, thanks again for this great post. It's been a pleasure to read it and I learned a lot.

Your language illustrates precisely what I wanted to say:

See, if you drop the "value" language of your perspective (for me social contact and equal opportunities is a *must*, not a *sin*), you're absolutely right. I'm not going for the external "divorce prevention" mechanism you offer (staying at home and excluding myself from the company of men who are not my partner in my social life and in the workplace) and prefer to work on "internal" ones - investing in my relationship and avoiding cheating because of love and commitnent - because yes, there are social and professional opportunities that I don't want to give up. For me they are not "sin", but a necessary means to my happiness as a person and as a partner in a loving relationship.

And as someone who knows about minority rights, you probably know that even those have limits. And the limits are where the constraints upon who grants the rights make it impossible to accomodate them, or when they conflict with a greater infringement of another groups' right or with the function of the organization involved, in this case the army. .

Listen, I think none of us can boast having the perfect solution to the problem, nor can others who have dealt with it far more professionally. Will Kymlicka, Jeremy Walrdon, Bhikhu Parekh, and recently, Alison Dundes Renteln, are all trying to come up with solutions for such dilemmas, and worse ones, which make our little argument pale by comparison. I think no one really holds the golden key to a door that will resolve everything to everyone's satisfaction. So the solution is to talk about these things and understand them better, and try to get along.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that your neat suggestion, according to which no woman is limited but none of your religious senstivities is offended, doesn't really translate itself to the realities of running a large scale military organization. We both understand (I hope) why it is impossible to expect the army to have duplicate units in each and every regiment, one which is 'men-only' and one which will theoretically be 'mixed'. This would be a tremendous waste from a logistics perspective, and would also have consequences similar to the ones in the workplace. Based on research about employment prestige in many other fields, I find it very likely that within a few months, the male units will enjoy a more lucrative reputation and will therefore attract even men who have no Halachical reservation to serve with women. The end result: segregation, and women who can't 'serve in any role and place'.

The other extreme is having one or two units which would be 'men-only' and the rest would be mixed, as far as numbers go. This means even less than what you're getting now. It doesn't give you much choice about your service place according to your abilities, nor does it give the army much choice to make the most out of you.

So far it seems that you're really getting it 'your way' more than the women are, particularly in certain social sectors, but even if this will some day not be the case, it doesn't mean things will be abysmal for you: The key to living together in a multicultural society - and that includes a closed military base - is respect and cooperation. Same as you'll be expected to "put up" with the female presence that is so threatening and problematic to your religious values, the women will have to respect you, refrain from touching you during their period (if you inadvertently brush against a woman in the street who is menstruating and don't know that, does it count as an offense? Eeeeeh, ok), respect your requirements to prayer, and perhaps use milder language with you, in the same way that the majority of the army, including non-Jewish soldiers, respects your Kosher food choices despite their different culinary preferences.

Because if we REALLY want to know what multiculturalism is about - beyond having separate groups in cultural ghettos yelling 'I have rights, I have rights' - it means learning more about each other and making it work, in the real life, through communication.

You know, while you would see serving with me as a liability, I would consider it an opportunity to learn about your world and your values, get acquainted with the people behind the kippot and perhaps the black clothes, and forge a friendship that goes beyond what we look like and come from, into who we are as people. If anything can forge a friendship like that it would be a "brothers-in-arms" situation. Is it naive of me to hope that someone on the other side wants to know what a secular woman thinks, what she reads, listen to some of her music or childhood stories? Your post seems to indicate that it isn't.