Can we find a way for both the cacophony of anger and the victims' silence to make way for a more humane world? Maybe by quieting the extraneous noise so only their voices can be heard.
For me the common denominator for ALL of this heinous abuse is MEN.
Men are the problem—Call it what it is. Rape culture is insidious. Until men take responsibility and learn that true masculinity is not violence and not weak, we will continue to see this dominator sickness enacted over and over.
Yes, men suck. But Judaism presents a different model for manhood. The mensch.
I wrote this in my book, Mensch marks:
Leo Rosten, who wrote “The Joy of Yiddish,” defines mensch as “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character.”
Saul Levine wrote in Psychology Today: The admirable traits included under the rubric of mensch read like a compendium of what Saints or the Dalai Lama represent to many, or others whom you might think merit that kind of respect. These personality characteristics include decency, wisdom, kindness, honesty, trustworthiness, respect, benevolence, compassion, and altruism.
But one does not need to be a saint just to be a decent, thoughtful person. To be a morally evolved human being means in fact to be fallible and imperfect, but always striving to do better. It means to seek justice but never at the expense of compassion. It means to connect, to family, to one’s people and one’s home. It means to seek transcendence, to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, to love unconditionally, to serve a higher cause and live a life of dignity and integrity.”
In other words, to be a man is to be the opposite of what MAGA promotes. In truth, to be a real man is to be the opposite of Donald Trump.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Just so you know, I do not think all men suck. I never have and never will, however I do have anger at men that behave with toxic masculinity that leads to rape culture, wars, and the destruction of our planet. Yes, there are many organizations for men that support men to become decent thoughtful people, and I commend and support these organizations. Somehow it’s not enough. Toxic masculinity fills social media and is dramatically attractive to young men. As you know silence is complicity. More healthy men need to speak out. Maybe teaching men how to embody and speak out…We have to do better.
I can not read these stories. I had a high school classmate who was raped and murdered by her teacher. He had a record starting when he was 21 for attempted rape, and the school district hired him anyway. When her body was found floating in a pond, which was near the teacher's family farm, the police investigated but came to no conclusions and did not even question the teacher. Two years after the murder, he was still teaching at my high school! He was convicted and spent many years in jail, and died from COVID, but the police did not find the evidence to convict him. The victim's mother hired a private detective who traced the welding wire that she was bound with to the teacher's farm near the pond! My point is, and I agree with you, that sexual crimes should all be taken seriously, but they are not. Not just in the US but around the world! I feel strongly about this, not just because of my friend's murder but because of the injustice around the world for the mostly female victims who extreme right religions treat women as inferior to men!
It is hard to face this reality that has been implanted into our evolutionary brains - the reality of it is that we are humanoids who share almost all genes with our ape cousins. We can see this behavior in "tribes" of apes (with the exception of bonobos who who literally "make love, not war" ... ) who, when having conquered the other tribe, pair (their version of rape) as soon as possible with all the females of the conquered tribe in order to spread their own genes (of course they don´t know this "why," not anymore than the male humans who rape "conquered" females). The difference is, humans have morality which the other species don´t, who only have their instincts to follow. Morality implies choice, and this is most probably the origin of religion or even earlier moral codes. Trying to "rein in" our instincts. A soldier who is confronted with this choice - to rape or not to rape - and decides not to, has made a moral choice, just as the one who does. These men on either side who commit such atrocities against their fellow men and women blank out their religious upbringing, the generations of upholding the moral treasure of their families, be they Jews, Christians or Moslems. Very old women I have known who experienced WW2 in Germany tell of how they - when the war had ended -had deadly fear of Russian soldiers who were guilty of widespread rape, and how they feared the US soldiers (especially black soldiers as they´d never seen a black person), as "conquerers" at the beginning of the occupation. There were hardly any incidents reported of our soldiers taking advantage of the situation. On the contrary, I heard many stories of how kind and helpful many were, regardless of color.
For me the common denominator for ALL of this heinous abuse is MEN.
Men are the problem—Call it what it is. Rape culture is insidious. Until men take responsibility and learn that true masculinity is not violence and not weak, we will continue to see this dominator sickness enacted over and over.
Yes, men suck. But Judaism presents a different model for manhood. The mensch.
I wrote this in my book, Mensch marks:
Leo Rosten, who wrote “The Joy of Yiddish,” defines mensch as “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character.”
Saul Levine wrote in Psychology Today: The admirable traits included under the rubric of mensch read like a compendium of what Saints or the Dalai Lama represent to many, or others whom you might think merit that kind of respect. These personality characteristics include decency, wisdom, kindness, honesty, trustworthiness, respect, benevolence, compassion, and altruism.
But one does not need to be a saint just to be a decent, thoughtful person. To be a morally evolved human being means in fact to be fallible and imperfect, but always striving to do better. It means to seek justice but never at the expense of compassion. It means to connect, to family, to one’s people and one’s home. It means to seek transcendence, to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, to love unconditionally, to serve a higher cause and live a life of dignity and integrity.”
In other words, to be a man is to be the opposite of what MAGA promotes. In truth, to be a real man is to be the opposite of Donald Trump.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Just so you know, I do not think all men suck. I never have and never will, however I do have anger at men that behave with toxic masculinity that leads to rape culture, wars, and the destruction of our planet. Yes, there are many organizations for men that support men to become decent thoughtful people, and I commend and support these organizations. Somehow it’s not enough. Toxic masculinity fills social media and is dramatically attractive to young men. As you know silence is complicity. More healthy men need to speak out. Maybe teaching men how to embody and speak out…We have to do better.
Beautiful words, Rabbi Hammerman, I read this after writing my comment ;). Wonderful to have a Mensch like you sharing thoughts with us regularly!
I can not read these stories. I had a high school classmate who was raped and murdered by her teacher. He had a record starting when he was 21 for attempted rape, and the school district hired him anyway. When her body was found floating in a pond, which was near the teacher's family farm, the police investigated but came to no conclusions and did not even question the teacher. Two years after the murder, he was still teaching at my high school! He was convicted and spent many years in jail, and died from COVID, but the police did not find the evidence to convict him. The victim's mother hired a private detective who traced the welding wire that she was bound with to the teacher's farm near the pond! My point is, and I agree with you, that sexual crimes should all be taken seriously, but they are not. Not just in the US but around the world! I feel strongly about this, not just because of my friend's murder but because of the injustice around the world for the mostly female victims who extreme right religions treat women as inferior to men!
Let me, for a moment, speak as a bio-centrist:
It is hard to face this reality that has been implanted into our evolutionary brains - the reality of it is that we are humanoids who share almost all genes with our ape cousins. We can see this behavior in "tribes" of apes (with the exception of bonobos who who literally "make love, not war" ... ) who, when having conquered the other tribe, pair (their version of rape) as soon as possible with all the females of the conquered tribe in order to spread their own genes (of course they don´t know this "why," not anymore than the male humans who rape "conquered" females). The difference is, humans have morality which the other species don´t, who only have their instincts to follow. Morality implies choice, and this is most probably the origin of religion or even earlier moral codes. Trying to "rein in" our instincts. A soldier who is confronted with this choice - to rape or not to rape - and decides not to, has made a moral choice, just as the one who does. These men on either side who commit such atrocities against their fellow men and women blank out their religious upbringing, the generations of upholding the moral treasure of their families, be they Jews, Christians or Moslems. Very old women I have known who experienced WW2 in Germany tell of how they - when the war had ended -had deadly fear of Russian soldiers who were guilty of widespread rape, and how they feared the US soldiers (especially black soldiers as they´d never seen a black person), as "conquerers" at the beginning of the occupation. There were hardly any incidents reported of our soldiers taking advantage of the situation. On the contrary, I heard many stories of how kind and helpful many were, regardless of color.
I´m proud of that 🇺🇲 as an ex-pat.