by Elan Burman
It was with great interest that I read the thought-provoking article by Shannon Sarna and Ruthie Warshenbrot. Simply, the results of the Jewish Community Heroes competition are startling.
There can be no argument that the role of women in shaping every facet of today’s Jewish tapestry is both monumental and profound. Similarly, it is self-evident that women who have chosen to make the Jewish community their professional arena have not been immune to the glass ceilings and inequitable pay scales that have plagued society as a whole. Too many of our community’s brightest minds have languished in junior roles, simply because of their gender. I am truly sensitive to the massive hurdles encountered by many who have worked so tirelessly to further the ends of our communal infrastructure and the varied expressions of Jewish life.
At the same time though, I find myself at a loss on how to tackle this inequality without perpetuating the very distinctions and injustices on which it is based.
I am reminded of the arguments made by Professor David Benatar, of the University of Cape Town, in his article, “Affirmative Action Not the Way to Tackle Injustice.” In his assessment of whether affirmative action is an appropriate mechanism to address the injustices of Apartheid, Benatar writes, “Official state classification or a standard objective classificatory norm would be far too reminiscent of apartheid.”
The question thus begs asking – were JFNA to have exercised any hand in ensuring women numbered amongst the finalists, would they not be pandering to the very distinction that proponents of equality wish to obliterate?
I am not denying that something is amiss here and there is a lot to investigate. Why did the community vote disproportionately for men? Were the majority of nominees men? Were females generally less aggressive in marketing themselves than their male counterparts? Do men continue to benefit unjustly from greater prominence in their respective communities?
That being said, I believe any suggestion whether overt or implied that JFNA should have intervened in the voting is misguided. In order to demolish the gender divide we have to stop appealing to entities to favour any one party based on a factor arbitrary to the specific situation, like gender.
The results are peculiar and simultaneously fascinating, but a remedy that is both ethical and in the long term interest of justice is illusive.
Elan Burman completed his MA in Jewish Communal Service at Brandeis University. He currently resides in Cape Town, South Africa where he raises funds for Jewish institutions.
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Elan misunderstands the “heroes” process. JFNA does intervene in the process that weeds the 20 semi-finalists (top vote-getters) down to 5 finalists. They do this by utilizing judges rather than place on the list for this part of the selection. True, there were more male than female semi-finalists but still, are they arguing that not even one of the women was worthy of being a finalist? I find that hard to believe. They certainly weed by other criteria. For example, age and religious affiliation. A high percentage of semi-finalists are Chabad because they are a well organized block of voters. (and more power to them for their organizational skills) The judges obviously took care both last year and this year not to have three or four of the finalists be from Chabad. Surely they checked to make sure that at least one person under 35 became a finalist. Judging always takes a variety of criteria into account. All of the semi-finalists were worthy of acclaim, and yet, decisions were made. Perhaps something was amiss in the choice of judges, perhaps in the list of criteria they were given for choosing, but this was not a random process. And, given that there were at least five women semi-finalists there is not excuse for leaving out over half of the Jewish people. And, by the way, there is nothing wrong with affirmative action – I personally thought that it was no longer necessary in the Jewish world but this decision and the continual derth of women in top professional position in the Jewish organizational and communal world (see Jane Eisner’s editorial in this week’s Forward) demonstrate that, disappointing as it seems, we still have a long way to go.