B"H

Chevraya:

As background to this post please see the following descriptions of
the place of the woman in the society of the Isi'im as attributed to
Yoseph ben Matityahu (Josephus) and Philo:

"Wars of the Jews", Chapter VIII, Sections 2 and 13 which can be
found on:

www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/5210/josesn2.htm

and

"The Hypothetica", Paragraphs 14-17 as translated and presented,
which can be found on:

www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/5210/filoesen.htm

These sites are the labor (no doubt of love, as all labors are) of
Ian Hutchesson.


At the outset let me say that I agree with everything that is said
concerning women by the Essenes.

Let it also be said that I am acquainted with two other people who
are gilgulim (reincarnations, manifestations) of the Essenes in the
'present' - the three of us, are all women. Anyone who reads my
suggestion to the U.N. to apply heavy sanctions to all countries
which discriminate spiritually against women (that would include
Israel as a matter of course) knows that I am in no wise anti-female.
The suggestion appears on the net. A blatant contradiction? Not at
all, as I shall clarify, with your kind indulgence, presently.

My husband and I are former kibbutznikim. My husband devoted the
best 26 years of his life to the Kibbutz Movement. I made aliyah
(literally 'to ascend', also meaning to emigrate from the Diaspora to
Israel) for the express purose of building my life on kibbutz; even
then a vision of a collective way of life, which seemed the most
perfect and happy, drove me to Israel to reconstruct it. I was on
kibbutz for five years. I married and had both of my children during
those years. I passed out of girlhood into young womanhood on the
kibbutz. In heartbroken disappoinment my husband and I reluctantly
left the kibbutz almost fifteen years ago. The disappoinment never
goes away. We speak about kibbutz often and discuss what happened
that made the "experiment that hasn't failed yet" fail.

Months before reading Philo's descripton of the account of the
characteristics of women and their unfitness for communal life as
attributed to the Isi'im, my husband and I discussed this exact
issue. It was the vanity, the narrowmindedness, the selfishness, the
pettyness and the downright cattyness of the the young mothers which
drove the men on the kibbutz to mire the Kibbutz Movement in
impossible debts in order to satisfy the ever-growing, insatiable
desires for competely unnecessary luxury items of their wives. It
was the desire of the women to be full-time mothers and work as
little as possible after giving birth that made the kibbutz dependent
upon volunteers. It was the young women, who, in in their creating a
*cult* of motherhood drove the men into a frenzy of materialism. If
a young women wanted a *vacation* from work, she would become
pregnant. If she wishedd to out-do her neighbor, she would become
pregnant- yet again. The strength of the members on kibbutz came to
be based on the size of the families they belonged too, so the women
were pressured into having babies - primitive tribalism. It was the
young mothers who destroyed the kibbutz, because they could not
tolerate equality for themselves or for their children. This ocurred
and is still ocurring on secular as well as religious kibbutzim which
follow Rabbinic Judaism.

Let it be known that the mitzvah (commandment) to be fruitful and
multiply means that it is incumbent on the *male* Jew to bring one
girl child and onle boy child into the World of Phenomena [the Talmud
(extant body of Oral Law) teaches us how to practically ensure this
result]. It does not mean to have so many children that one cannot
possibly free one's mind, heart and body for Talmud Torah (study of
Torah) and the common welfare. It most certainly does not mean to
arrive at the condition of the 'old woman who lived in a shoe' at the
economic and social expense of the commmunity and the generalized
misery of the children.

A female child, just as a male child, needs to be encouraged to
develop her spiritual potential from the time she is an embryo (There
is an ancient tradition among wise Orthodox Jewish women to learn
Torah aloud and go to houses of worship when pregnant so that the
embryo may already hear Torah). In so doing the very same feminine
characteristics which, if left untrained are so destructive, are
purified and rarified into traits which nuture the welfare of the
whole. Such a woman is quite naturally modest and will miniimize her
beauty so as not to distract the men from learning Torah. Such a
woman so urgently desires union with HaShem that her natural sexual
desires are sublimated into desire for learning and meditation, so
too her desire to have children is diminished because she wishes only
to allow for the male fulfillment of the commandment of be fruitful
and multiply, buy does not want to be distracted herself from her
life of Torah and good deeds as prescribed in the Torah. Taking this
further still - such a woman relates to the original ideas concerning
Torah which arise in her mind as to children in every respect. She
is fiercely protective of them, ambitious for them to grow and to
themselves become progenitors of new ideas.

It was and is, therefore, the resonsibilty of the mature men and
women alike in Jewish society for have prepared the female, as well
as the male, children for a life of pure holiness. The Essenes'
account of the behaviour of the women in their time is proof that
this responsibility was generally neglected, in their society as
well.

Note however, that the Essenes did not shirk the responsibilty of
raising chidren, even those who were themselves celibate, with all
raising children entails, as every parent is familiar with.

We read in Yoseph ben Matitiyahu that some of the Essenes maried. We
know nothing of the comportment of those women. We do read however,
that the women amongst the Therapeutae were every bit as ascetic and
devoted to HaShem as the men. [There is ground to accept the
possibility that the Therapeutae were a more severe 'take' on the
Isi'im. With HaShem's help I will explain on what I base this
possibility on in another posting].

We know from the Laws of Gilgulim (reincarnation, transmigration of
Souls) that the very thing that one disdains to be, the very thing
that one hates and fears is exactly what one must become in order to
recify the negative emotions and all that go along with them. It is
for this reason that those self-same Isi'im of 'two thousand years
ago' who were afraid of feminie wiles, are 'now' themselves female.
We had to have the experience of being female in order to recfify our
negativity based on our ignorance. In so doing, we have had the
experience of being every bit as devoted to the Torah as we were
'when' we were men, and additionally, have had the opportunity to
deepen and fine-tine our understanding of Torah based on our being
female with the benefit of the intuition and emotions that accompany
the female phase of being. Additionally, now being female, we are in
the position of having to imagine and recreate the collective society
we once knew *improved* so as to admit the female as a full-fledged
member and be able to contribute the uniquely female understanding to
the Torah. The Hebrew word for 'brain' is mo'ach - mem, chet. The
Hebrew word for 'womb' is rechem - reish, chet, mem. The word rechem
contains the two letters mem and chet which comprise the word mo'ach
(brain). The perfect Jewish woman conceives manifestations of HaShem
both with her brain and with her womb. Both the conceptions of her
learning and of her sexual activity are equally important. The
conceptions of her brain are more prolific by nature and must not be
limited by the conceptions of her womb and the care they require,
while the conceptions of her womb cannot suffer neglect as a result
of their mother's learning. It is for this reson that the society of
the Isi'im has to be fine-tuned to admit of *all* of the needs of the
Jewish female and *all* of her offspring. This is what the male
Isi'im who transmigrated as women are 'now' learning to do.


With blessings,
Doreen Dotan