Ashamed to Admit
Are you ashamed to admit you're not across the big issues and events affecting Jews in Australia, Israel and around the Jewish world?
In this new podcast from online publication The Jewish Independent, Your Third Cousin Tami Sussman and TJI's Dashiel Lawrence tackle the week's 'Chewiest and Jewiest' topics.
Ashamed to Admit
Episode #26 What is the Orthodox Jewish stance on reproductive rights? With Nomi Kaltmann
With women's reproductive rights in the United States looking more precarious in the wake of the Trump re-election, Tami and Dash explore Orthodoxy's stance on abortion, family planning, and IVF. Who better to turn to than Melbourne lawyer, Orthodox feminist, an ordained rabbi and mother of four (and soon to be five) Nomi Kaltmann. In this episode, Nomi introduces us to two seminal rabbinic figures Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, and she takes us on a journey through the intersection of Jewish law, modern technology, and women’s autonomy. In doing so, Nomi challenges cultural taboos and reveals the surprisingly nuanced and pragmatic approaches that Orthodoxy and the law in Israel has taken to reproduction.
Relevant articles:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/orthodox-law-sends-surprising-messages-about-reproductive-rights
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/kosher-ivf-how-orthodox-couples-manage-fertility-treatment
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/my-path-to-becoming-an-orthodox-woman-rabbi
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Are you interested in issues affecting Jews in Queensland, Jerusalem and New York City? But a little bit ashamed that you're barely keeping up to date, that you just don't have enough prerequisite knowledge to hold your own at family dinners.
Speaker 2:Well, you've come to the right place. I'm Dash Lawrence and, in this podcast series, your third cousin, tammy Sussman, and I call on experts and each other to address all the ignorant questions that you might be too ashamed to ask.
Speaker 1:Join us as we have a go at cutting through some seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Jewish Independent Podcast. A shame to admit. Hello everyone, I'm Dash Lawrence, executive Director at the Jewish Independent.
Speaker 1:And I'm Tammy definitely closed for business Sussman. Uh-huh, my uterus is closed for business. Okay, in case you were wondering.
Speaker 2:Is that an advertisement to the world?
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's an age thing or a life stage thing, but I guess that's common in an ethnic community or close-knit. You kind of feel like you can ask each other. You know the consistency of your stool sample and whether or not you're going to have more children. So that's it, yeah, two I get it as well do you? Yeah, of course, and how do you respond to that question? I don't know do you? You never know Do you feel like oh, you never know.
Speaker 2:You never know, but also no, you know I know, I know. It's a tricky one, isn't it? Because people that don't have kids get asked are you thinking about having kids, would you like to have kids? And that's also opening up something that's potentially uncomfortable for people, or it's a conversation that they would rather not be having.
Speaker 1:It's a sensitive topic for some and actually this is an idea that was raised in our friend of the pod Marina Kamenev's book Kin. When childless or child-free couples are asked are you going to start a family, it suggests that the couple, the partnership they're in, is not a family and really undermines the concept of a family at all. We're talking about these topics because the theme for today's episode is reproductive rights Dash. I know that this topic can be a little bit uncomfortable for people, so I just wanted to warm you up a little bit, ease you into the content for today's show.
Speaker 1:So, I'll just ask you a really unintense question. It's light, it's fun. Dash Lawrence, executive Director of the Jewish Independent, my friend but foremost my boss, have you ever had an abortion?
Speaker 2:I've never had an abortion, tammy, no, tammy Sussman, have you ever had an abortion?
Speaker 1:I have not had an abortion and I know that it's not necessarily a funny topic, but I do have a funny story now because enough time has passed. When I was in high school year 12, vice captain just remember that vice captain of my high school I had a boyfriend and we were stopping, okay, and there was an occasion where my period was late. Now we were using condoms because sex education was pretty bad back in the noughties, but it was good enough. Mr Weiss, if you're listening, did get out that banana and we did practice putting a condom on that banana.
Speaker 2:Hey, respect Mr Weiss. That was more sex education than I had in the 90s, I believe.
Speaker 1:So we were using condoms, but there was that urban legend that there could be like a pinprick in the condom and that they might not work. So my period was late and I had the kind of relationship with my mum where I could tell her anything. So I said to my mum Mum, like my period's a bit late. And her reaction went like this Tammy, oh my God, you just can't tell anyone about this because you are going to lose your vice-captaincy. If anyone finds out, your badge will be stripped from you. And looking back, it is so bloody funny that her reaction was not oh, Tammy, this is really hard. I'm like we'll get through this. Not, you know how this is going to affect your future or your studies. She was extremely worried about me losing my vice-captaincy. Dash is like. I can't really describe the look on your face right now. Are you contemplating whether or not we leave this in the podcast episode?
Speaker 2:I'm also just contemplating how I have this conversation with your mother the next time I'm up in Sydney, when we're talking about Tammy's early life and talking about how the two of you navigated her, maybe being pregnant yeah, I wasn't. By the way, I wasn't pregnant, you weren't okay.
Speaker 1:I was just 17. That's quite normal for your period to be late every so often, but it is a glimpse into being brought up in a tight-knit, modern Orthodox Jewish community where it is so taboo to be sexually active. In high school it was very hush-hush. I didn't really tell many of my close friends until the end of the year. I think one other person knew and they were also the other person in the grade who was also doing it.
Speaker 1:Basically, there were a whole lot of virgins floating around Mariah College in the 90s weren't there In the noughties and this might become as a shock to you because you grew up in the slutty suburbs of Adelaide but in modern Orthodox Jewish schools in the noughties it was either hidden extremely well or it was very, very unusual.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:There was a lot of taboo surrounding it. There was a lot of shame, maybe potentially more with the girls the person I was with was not the type of person that would have gloated about it but with the boys you'd gain more social status but, with the girls it was much more hush hush and I know that I'm leaving gender diverse people out of this discussion, but during my time in high school in the noughties that hadn't yet entered the conversation so good warm up.
Speaker 2:Great warm up. Okay, Tammy, I know that it is your job on the pod to keep things light and funny, but I don't want to undermine the seriousness of today's conversation.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more, dash. I'm definitely using humour to help me broach this subject, because today's topic has been on my mind for quite a while, ever since June 2022, when Roe versus Wade was overturned in the American Supreme Court and I started reading about the Jewish organizations who were opposed to the decision on religious grounds. I recall reading something around the time on NPR. They reported that, while some have celebrated striking down Roe v Wade as a win for religious freedom, some religious Jews say prohibitions on abortion violate their religious beliefs and, of course, interpretations vary across Judaism. But some religious Jews believe that a fetus is part of the parent's body and that a baby is only considered a person once it takes its first breath. According to the Women's Rabbinic Network, forcing someone to carry a pregnancy that they do not want or that endangers their life is a violation of Jewish law, because it prioritises a fetus over the living adult who is pregnant.
Speaker 2:It seems to me that, in the wake of Roe v Wade, you were wanting to understand what the Jewish position was on the ruling Tammy, and were you surprised with what you were learning about how Jewish law may have seen abortion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was surprised and I kind of filed it away in the back of my mind. And then these questions started coming up again when I read about Robbie Katter, leader of Katter's Australian Party and son of Bob Catter, who pledged to introduce legislation aimed at reversing or amending Queensland's abortion laws. So in October this year he stated that KAP Catter's Australian Party would quote quick as you like put a repeal bill back into the Queensland Parliament on those abortion laws. So I kind of became really interested in abortion laws within Australia and also on Judaism's stance on abortion.
Speaker 2:Tammy, whenever you've got a question about what does Judaism think about a difficult moral, ethical question, you take it to your rabbi, don't you?
Speaker 1:I'm supposed to take it to my rabbi, but usually these days I take it to Rabbi ChatGPT I wonder if the rabbis are feeling a little bit threatened by ChatGPT these days. Whenever I have those kinds of questions, I selfishly put them to you, my non-Jewish work colleague, friend and my boss. I am no expert on the halakhic laws of your religion, Tammy I know Well, I bring them to you so that I can get permission or approval from you to then make an episode about it.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Happy to endorse this one.
Speaker 1:So this week we brought in Nomi Koltzman, who is a Melbourne lawyer, who writes regularly on Jewish life and culture and who is also the founder and inaugural president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance Australia, or JOFA.
Speaker 2:Nomi is among a small group of women in orthodoxy who have been ordained as rabbis. This year she completed an advanced halakhic Jewish law fellowship through the Yeshiva Maharat in New York, focusing on fertility, ivf, miscarriage, abortion and anything related to women's reproductive rights.
Speaker 1:Personally, I think this is a must-listen-to conversation. I got so much out of it and I hope you do too. And if you're a man who's about to switch off because you think this doesn't relate to you, yeah to all the bros out there, this is one you should be listening to as Ira.
Speaker 1:Glass, from another top-rated podcast, would say this doesn't relate to you. Yeah, to all the bros out there, this is one you should be listening to. Azaira Glass, from another top rated podcast, would say stay with us. Nomi Koltman, thank you so much for joining us on A Shame to Admit.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. So, Nomi, we've got you on the pod this week to talk about Judaism and its stance on reproductive rights for women. Before we get into that area, I wanted to get just a few biographical details first. Besides your lived experience as a woman, can you tell us about how you've come to thinking about Judaism and reproductive rights?
Speaker 3:So I am born into a Hasidic Jewish family in Melbourne. I'm one of seven kids. We're all born in eight years and sometimes I ask my mom like how did you have so many kids in so many years? It's amazing. I have four children myself and I'm actually due to give birth to my fifth baby in January, so very imminently. So I'm right in the thick of it, thinking about fertility, women's reproductive rights, having children.
Speaker 3:I think what's interesting about Judaism, which perhaps people don't realize, is that it's actually relatively progressive in relation to reproductive rights for women and in general lots of the sort of taboo around sexuality, around abortion. A lot of that is crossover from our Christian cousins which has sort of seeped into maybe some Jewish thought. But historically Judaism wants people to reproduce, so have many babies. But there's always been like a nuanced consideration of if you are pregnant and as a mother-to-be you're mentally unwell or physically unwell. Your life always comes first before the baby is born and that results in really permissive expressions of reproductive care for women and that extends across the most orthodox to the least affiliated. You'll get a pretty consistent answer if you go to a rabbi and ask for advice on this matter.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:As a young woman in the part of the community where you grew up in, you'll get a pretty consistent answer if you go to a rabbi and ask for advice on this matter as a young woman in the part of the community where you grew up in how were these conversations among you and other women?
Speaker 3:Well, it's interesting because I went to a Hasidic girls' school girls' only school until eighth grade and then year nine to 12, I went a modern orthodox jewish day school and I'm 32 now, so I graduated 2010 and my friends and I will sometimes go for dinner. We have a girls group and we'll be like we didn't have sex education at school in any of the schools we went to and the modern orthodox jewish day school that I went to boys and girls together pretty normal place to go to school and I was like why didn't we have sex education? Maybe they're doing better now, but definitely in like the mid 2000s, late 2010s, I don't think they did a really great job at it at school. And then, when you're part of an Orthodox community topics like this you don't talk about it so much openly.
Speaker 1:So we mentioned in your biography that you've completed this fellowship and you wrote a wonderful piece for the Jewish Independent earlier this year titled Orthodox Law Sends Surprising Messages About Reproductive Rights, and I read this piece and I had so many questions that I wanted to ask you. So having you on this show is really it's a bit selfish. It's because I want some questions answered, but I also feel like our listeners would really benefit from unpacking that article that you wrote. What I'm curious to know is, in your fellowship, what has surprised you the most about the approach of Jewish law to contemporary reproductive rights and, in particular, abortion?
Speaker 3:The one that you read in the Jewish Independent had built on like a sort of interest that I had a growing interest in the area. When I saw there was a fellowship offered through Shabbat Maharat, I was thrilled because I was like excellent, I get to learn more about a topic. So my original interest was sparked in fertility law and Jewish law when one of my friends, who was single, decided to freeze her ex and I thought, hey, that's really interesting. What does Jewish, orthodox Jewish law say about this? So I don't know if you know this, but Sydney actually has one of the foremost experts in the world in fertility and reproductive rights and orthodox Jewish law. I did not know that Ayaan, the judge and the head of the Sydney Beth Din Rabbi, yehoram Ullman, is the world leading expert. So people will come from all over the world to consult with him, and he was one of the rabbis who decided to write a protocol in relation to freezing egg freezing. So there's no problem from a Jewish law perspective to freeze your eggs. And I guess the questions become well, if historically this wasn't something you could do, how do you manage it within a Jewish law framework? Some people in Israel? It becomes more contentious because there's a push sometimes not to involve the rabbinate wherever possible because of the complexities around having a state which is funding the rabbinate and then applying rules to people. Where there are religious laws entrenched in the system have to have supervision when eggs are being extracted.
Speaker 3:But within orthodox jewish law, rabbi ullman, together with one of his rabbinic counterparts, wrote a like a very comprehensive protocol about mashki hot, which means like supervisors. So if a woman is having her eggs taken out, there will be someone there at the lab who is keeps kosher, keeps shabbat and is orthodox, to just sort of you know, supervise to make sure that, like they're not going to be in there for the actual extraction but like once the eggs are out they'll seal them with like a sticker of sorts that is a tamper-proof seal, so that belongs to that couple and every time those eggs or if you're going to create embryos, anything like that, each time it's a tamper-proof seal. And Rabbi Ullman went to great lengths to describe to me how in Australia we're relatively lucky because our labs are up to standard, we have really good controls in place to make sure there's no accidental or nefarious mix-ups. But there's like a relative. It's not a huge percentage, but you know, five percent, six percent of labs will like make mistakes, that kind of thing and you're dealing with genetic material, people's potential children, that's like quite high. So this protocol was developed and I thought that was fascinating because it was only came out in the 90s. So my friend who had her eggs frozen had a mashkiach, somebody present who was sealing the vials where they're kept and any time they'll come out that mashkiach will come back. That supervisor will come back to make sure that anytime it's transferred it hasn't been tampered with, opened. And if you do need to open it because you're creating embryos or something like that, a new seal with rabbi ullman's signature will be on it with the date. So I thought that was fascinating and that led me down.
Speaker 3:Uh, I guess a a bigger rabbit hole, because I wrote this piece up for a non-Jewish magazine and I thought, oh, what did the Christians say about IVF? I'd been involved in interfaith and I had enough contacts where I just kept going up the chain until I ended up speaking to some very senior Christian leaders within I think it was Melbourne and they had been involved. The Pope had led like a declaration. I could get you the exact name. I have to look it up, but like a declaration on Christianity's perspective.
Speaker 3:And so I approached this conversation in a very Jewish way where I said how do you view IVF?
Speaker 3:If you're a Christian, you want to use IVF, how do you do it? And they said, no, you're not allowed. So, like I used a Jewish cop, I was like, no, no, no, no, like I'm talking about like, if you need it because, like you have fertility problems. I'm not talking about like you know, anything potentially spicy. Like you know, you're a couple who want to have a baby, no, and he goes, no, no, you can't. You can only have natural conception. I said, wow, that is so different to the Jewish point of view, which is like we want people to have children at whatever you know, technology, and technology harnesses God's innovation and what an amazing thing that we can help people in Christianity. He explained to me a nuance, the Christian leader I spoke to, where he basically said, after prayerful consideration, if you decided that you were still going to go ahead with it, it's a sin. But they have a little bit of like empathy for you in committing this sin and using IVF. But I was gobsmacked to find that out?
Speaker 1:Wow, does this all fall under the umbrella of a term you mentioned in your article and sorry if I'm not pronouncing this correctly Piskei Halacha?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the way Jewish law develops is really interesting. Historically you had you know the Torah and then you have the oral tradition which is extrapolating the laws from the Torah. If you look at, like the words in the Torah about koshe, it's lotavashel gediba chalevimor, like you can't cook a goat in its mother's milk. And the entire Talmud spends ages defining what does it actually mean? It's milk and meat, and how separate you know. But once the Talmud finishes, and hundreds of years of discourse within this very complex, dense Aramaic commentary, how does Jewish law develop?
Speaker 3:We have modern questions and the usual way is something through it's piskei, halacha, which means like giving a ruling on Halacha, jewish, orthodox Jewish law, and it's usually done through questions and answers. It's called Shailas and Shubas, so that's the Hebrew term for questions and answers. So you're a person and you want to know can I freeze my eggs? So you will write the question and you will send it to someone. Like you know, rabbi Ullman, he has a book of Shilas and Chubas on reproductive law about Australia, and you will ask am I allowed to? I'm not married and I want to freeze my eggs because I haven't yet found a partner. So the rabbi will be of a certain stature and they can be anywhere in the world. So you know they're very interesting to study, stature and they can be anywhere in the world. So you know they're very interesting to study. There will be a letter from Melbourne to the rabbis in London because we're always under the Commonwealth asking very niche questions about our community and you know a specific question about Shabbat or Kashrut or fertility, and the rabbi will sit and consider it. Look at the corpus of Jewish law, look at any other questions that have existed on this topic and draw out the sources in a tshuva, in an answer, and you study these answers and people build off these answers.
Speaker 3:So the way today Orthodox Jewish law will develop is you'll go to one of the rabbis with the stature, with the knowledge, with the understanding of the issue and the expertise and you'll ask a question and they will work out what is the Jewish law position and sometimes it's not settled, like the classic things that people are talking about today will be lab-grown meat. Is it meat? Is it a vegetable? There's actually two different approaches. But drawing on all of this corpus of letters, the Talmud halakha, so like the Shulchan Aruch, all these things, the books of our history.
Speaker 3:The rabbis will come to a discussion. Sometimes it will be. You can disagree with the rabbi's response, but you build on it and there's a system of sort of hierarchical honour. If it's a rabbi who's already dead and you are going to refute their argument, you have to show respect and you have to acknowledge their greatness and you have to acknowledge that. You accept that they had the position that they thought was correct and here's why you're refuting that.
Speaker 3:So when you're getting into the weeds of what is the answer, it's often complicated. It's not necessarily easy for a lay person to just go into the weeds in the background because it's written in Hebrew. Sometimes, if it's really old, it'll be in Aramaic and then it will have all these acronyms and you've got to have great familiarity with heaps of different texts to understand what they're writing about. So that is how Jewish law developed and fertility in general, because the technologies are relatively new.
Speaker 3:In Melbourne there was the first IVF successful pregnancy in the 70s, right at Monash IVF. And what are we talking about? 40, 50 years. So all of them would be modern responsa it's called responsa in English, but it would be based on historic sources and it would be drawing on any other incidents where there was infertility, let's say in the Bible, or discussions of fertility, or case studies in the Talmud, any sort of halakhic response and literature that would have existed. You know from the Rambam, he's prolific in the 12th century writing about all this stuff. So it's someone who really has good knowledge that will be able to draw out all these sources to work out what's the modern position.
Speaker 1:Just a practical question In order to get a question answered or to get a response off. Can a lay person ask a question?
Speaker 3:Anyone can ask a question, but it has to get before the right person.
Speaker 1:Do you have to like Venmo or PayPal them, or is it free? No, it's free.
Speaker 3:If you call up Rabbi Ullman today with a question, he could probably just answer it to you on the phone. But if you had, like, a really complex question where you need to set it out in writing and all of the details and all of the really minute considerations need to be thought out, you would set that out in writing. Historically they would have been set out in rabbinic Hebrew, so you'd have a rabbi who's really competent who would set it out for you to send it up the chain to the right rabbi.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, so you mentioned Rambam, who's a 12th century commentator.
Speaker 3:He was everything. He was a doctor, a commentator. He wrote heaps of Jewish law. He was a doctor, a commentator. He wrote heaps of Jewish law.
Speaker 1:He was a doctor yeah, he was a doctor, what a catch. And then in your article you reference two perspectives on abortion and birth control and reproductive rights. There's Rav Moshe Feinstein yeah, rav Moshe and Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he goes by the pen name, that sits Eliezer. But yes, Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. So when you were describing Rav Moshe's rulings, do you think that his rulings on birth control and abortion seem a little bit strict?
Speaker 3:Well, rav Moshe was one of the greatest posseks like arbiters of Jewish law in the 20th century. There are so few people who have the knowledge, the expertise and the brilliance to write the kind of answers to questions. So a lot of modern practice today and dealing with modern technology comes straight from Rav Moshe. He was born in Belarus and moved to New York and most of the time his answers to people's questions from conversion to can I have cosmetic surgeries to can I smoke cigarettes were brilliant. They were very thoughtful, very, very compassionate. He really took everybody's needs into account male, female, what your background was, and he was just very, very like. He really understood Jewish law in a way that so few people within his generation did and it's like a luminary of a generation. The kind of his corpus of writings are phenomenal. People study them because they're so brilliant and I think, when you understand his context, he's a Belarusian living in New York and he's getting questions within a framework where all these changes are happening literally outside his window.
Speaker 3:The sexual revolution is taking place, the women's liberation movement is coming, coming and for Rav Moshe it appears and I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but it appears historically Jewish law looked at abortion and said well, the fetus isn't considered yet a person. So if you were to abort a baby, for whatever reason, it would be a lower level of sin. It would be like wounding, which means you're not considered a murderer. Now I know this is all very technical, but that's historically the Jewish approach. You could have an abortion. It's obviously not ideal and the proper considerations should be taken into account.
Speaker 3:But Rav Moshe comes in and he writes a tshuva to somebody's question on abortion in 19, I think it's 1986, and says if you have an abortion, he upgrades the category, which wasn't historically what it was in Jewish law, seen as Jewish law, and says it's murder. And so I think that for him it was very hard to separate the sexual revolution which is taking place outside his literal, you know, living room in New York to this question that's coming forward to him and he's worried in some way that if he was to permit abortion it's a slippery slope of sorts. If I can be so disrespectful as to disagree with Ralph Mosher and say I think that he misunderstands the question and takes it as a question about sexuality as opposed to reproductive rights. So he doesn't understand the difference between them and instead upgrades abortion to murder.
Speaker 3:So you have this period where you know, in 20 years, 15 years, whatever it is, because Rav Moshe was such an exceptional arbiter of Jewish law and because he was known for his brilliance and his just incredible breadth of knowledge, you have a void. Because if Rav Moshe comes out and he's writing the most brilliant and clear answers to so many modern questions, if he says it's abortion, who are you to disagree with him? And because there's a pecking order when you write responsa and you have to have the stature, there are very few people who could actually have the knowledge to disagree with him, even though historically, when we look at this answer, it seems to be more of an aberration when you're looking at all the responsa. Today, he's hardened the position. And then you have the Tzitz Eliezer, rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, sitting in Jerusalem. I mean, it's not New York, you have, you know women's rights, but it's not a sexual revolution going on in Jerusalem.
Speaker 3:Jerusalem's always been a bit more of a conservative place and he is also one of the greatest Cossacks, one of the greatest arbiters of Jewish halakhic law and Jewish law. At the same time, just a little bit after, like, they do overlap and they deal with modern halakhic issues, but Rav Moshe dies. I'd have to double check. I think it's the late 80s and then the Tzitzel Yezer is. They overlap for a period and he dies, I think, 2005. So when a question comes to him in, like you know, 20 years after Rav Moshe's position that abortion is murder, he reverses course and says no, I don't agree with that, and reverses back to what historically the position was. Is that it's wounding?
Speaker 3:and so probably not ideal, but then you're not a murderer and for women it's less severe if you're going to go through with an abortion, okay sorry, that was very technical.
Speaker 1:No, that's good, that's what we wanted.
Speaker 2:I'm curious about the effects of those two rulings, Nomi what happened in the wake of Feinstein's response, and likewise how Rabbi Waldinger's views on this may have changed things in Israel or among other Orthodox communities.
Speaker 3:So it's interesting because there is a difference between a public and a private response.
Speaker 3:So this is a public response. Anyone can download it, so to speak. In the 80s, 90s, 2000s it's publicised widely. But if you were an individual person who wanted an individual response, it's possible that you could have got a favorable response in relation to an abortion. But officially the public position was no, it's murder, you're not allowed to. And I think that has a chilling effect because sometimes people will police themselves and be stricter than the law. If you've ever gone to a rabbi to ask a question, I know I'm often surprised when I ask a question and it's much more permissive than I would have been on myself. So if you didn't know to ask for an individual ruling and your individual circumstances weren't taken into account, I think it was stigmatizing, I think it was really hard for women and I think it's just a shame on some level, not because I'm advocating for widespread abortions, but because I want women to have choice. And if you're a woman in a position where you really didn't feel like you could have this child, who wants that kind of guilt that you're a murderer to carry around when it feels terrible enough to have to end a pregnancy? But beyond that, I do wonder about Israel. Israel is interesting, right?
Speaker 3:I've written about abortion previously in addition to this piece, and I spoke with a few rabbis who told me that in Israel it's one of the most permissive abortion cultures they had ever encountered. I said what do you mean what? And they were like oh well, it's a few things. Number one women will have many, many children and they will bear children for years. So if you're starting at 21 but you're ending at 47, 45, even some women the rabbi who I met with and discussed this, who said it's very common that you would preemptively, you understand, at 45 your eggs might not be in the best shape. So before you got pregnant, you would say to the rabbi I want more children. Children are such a blessing. It's my ninth, tenth, seventh, sixth child.
Speaker 3:If I was to have a child that had a disability, a chromosomal abnormality, I don't think I could manage it. But I want to make sure that if I didn't have a child that was healthy, I want to abort that child. And before they get pregnant they'll ask the rabbi for retroactive permission to abort a child that wasn't healthy. And I thought, oh, I never thought about that. That's interesting.
Speaker 3:But beyond that, anecdotally, I've had friends who have carried children with Down syndrome to term and in Israel they will ask at every appointment, like in Australia, you do your chromosomal abnormality test at around 12 weeks and then apparently it's something like 95% of people will abort. It's very, very high with a chromosomal abnormality. But in Israel my friend decided to carry this pregnancy and at every single like well into the pregnancy, like 30 weeks, 28 weeks, are you sure you don't want an abortion? So I think on some level, very pragmatic, very hard for the family. People in Israel have large families. If you don't want this child, there is no judgment, they will provide an abortion. I think maybe with children who don't have a disability maybe they would be perhaps more reluctant, but any sort of reason that they could see they were very happy to offer an abortion. There was no problem, no stigma, nothing.
Speaker 2:Which is so interesting, isn't it, nomi? Because the impression that people get and you're the expert when it comes to the place of your religion, so I'm not going to speak for it but the impression that people are certainly looking from afar at Israel is that women's rights are increasingly being infringed and increasingly being attacked. And yet you're giving an example here of instances where women are able to have abortions much later than they would in the United States, for instance.
Speaker 3:Because I think in the United States you have that Christian flavor to everything where evangelicals think that embryos are humans and that's not the Jewish approach. But also in Israel you have a pronatalist approach. They really want you to have big families. I think out of most Western countries, israel's the only one that's gone way up in terms of birth rate. They'll give lesbian and gay couples access to IVF. Women who have secondary infertility you could have four children at home. If you have secondary infertility, they'll fund you IVF. They love children over there and the whole society is set up around that and it infantility they'll fund you IVF.
Speaker 1:They love children over there and the whole society is set up around that and it's probably a bit of Jewish guilt, a bit of holocaust trauma.
Speaker 3:Wanting to repopulate, yeah, popular. So if you're going to be pronatalist, you also have to have reasonable policies that protect women if you want them to keep having babies they don't want the baby.
Speaker 3:You can't force them because then they're not going to want the babies. But then I don't think that detracts from the fact that there's highly problematic cultural problems in Israel, where there is no sort of separation between religious and civil law, which doesn't historically protect women. And then beyond that you have problems with women's representation. There's no women in the war cabinet, there's bro culture, where women are locked out of a lot of rooms of power. So that's a whole separate discussion. I think to the pro-natalist positions that are happening in israel, which is repopulate have as many jewish babies as possible nomi.
Speaker 1:We've spoken about rambam. We've spoken about rav moshe and rabbi eliezer. I've forgotten his pen name, but it's eliezer, rabbi eliezer waldenberg. And something that I've noticed all of these people have in common is their men.
Speaker 3:Well, just addressing the elephant in the room I think if you have a patriarchal religion that's been around for one. How long has Judaism been around? Three and a half thousand years, whatever it is. Look, we're pretty progressive in Australia, or at least we like to think so. But how long have we had the vote here? 1905, something like that. 100 years.
Speaker 3:So you know, I would like you to overlay that perspective when New Zealand is the first country in the world to give women the right to vote in parliament, and it's 1896 or something like that. So you know less than 150 years. And I want you to take an ancient religion like judaism, where historically the idea of the ketubah, the marriage contract, protected women, was progressive for its time, or the laws we have around being ethical to slaves and things like that, very progressive for its time. So, yes, I can sit and I can complain that there are no women on the shelves of any of these halachic responsa and they haven't had the access. But I'm 32.
Speaker 3:My grandmother is like 85. I have had a substantially better Jewish education in those 60 years between when she was born and I was born. She didn't get to go to a Jewish school. There was no Jewish school for girls. The first one only opens in. I think it's 1917 in Poland, so 108 years ago, 107 years ago, and so I I would say, yes, they're all men, but look what we've been able to achieve in 100 years, and the difference between women born even at the beginning of this century to the end of this century is going to be immense, and we are making progress. So I choose to take the positive perspective of how amazing is it that, sitting in Australia, I could do an advanced halachic fellowship with women from around the world, because we have had the training and the knowledge to be able to immerse ourselves in Jewish text, read text, have access to it and have been taught it in a way that never historically did any Jewish woman.
Speaker 1:I choose to be positive. I appreciate that. I'm so inspired by your optimism, but be real with me for a second. It should really be you and not Rabbi Ullman right that people go to like you're after his job.
Speaker 3:I'm a writer, I like writing and I don't have nearly the amount of knowledge he has. There are women in Israel who write halachic responsa. There are women in the United States who writeic Responsa. There are women in the United States who write it. I don't think there's anyone in Australia who does, but if any woman needed to be put in touch with someone to get some advice, go for it. I can even judge.
Speaker 1:Okay, you could be his ghost writer. No, no, no, not that kind of vibe.
Speaker 3:He's got it and I appreciate him very much Anytime I had a question or wanted advice from him or any sort of just comment for any of my articles, always very generous with his time and very, very, very good at what he does.
Speaker 2:Some of our listeners will have never heard of Jofer. You started the Australian arm of Joofa Australia a few years ago. Help us understand what Jofa is and its place within orthodoxy, and how its members view some of the issues we've been discussing today.
Speaker 3:So Jofa is a Jewish Orthodox feminist alliance in Australia. We're part of a global network of sister organizations in the United States, england and sort of affiliated groups in Israel, and it's dedicated to the promotion of women within Orthodox Jewish life, within the boundaries of halakha, within Jewish law. I started in Australia because I really wanted more opportunities for women and it was interesting because I thought surely this Australia, australia, we're like, we're a great community, we've got everything we need over here. So I thought you know, I've got little kids, I work full-time. I don't think I'm the person that should be bringing this here, but if there was a need we would have already had it because, you know, joffa opened up 30 years ago in the United States. But if I open, it'll be small and niche and it will be, you know, just my friends, maybe people from like my immediate one degree separated sort of network, and it was much more successful than I could have ever imagined. I remember the launch was during COVID and at the time you could have 100 people in your house and I thought, yeah, nah, 100 people, it doesn't matter, we wouldn't get 100. There was a wait list. We got more than 100. And people are really excited for it men, women and since that time we've offered lots of opportunities for women across Australia to advance their Jewish knowledge. So partnering with overseas providers to provide skills and training courses teaching women how to do, you know, dealing with mental health, writing an op-ed for a newspaper, how to express themselves. It's been really successful in that regard. Women from across the country, from I think it's five or six states and territories, have participated, so it's been really good and donors have been really excited to fund it and help us promote it across Australia. We had our conference last year, which was great.
Speaker 3:Um and, I think, the idea of an orthodox feminist organization. Some people criticize it. They think if you're orthodox you can't really be feminist because you're a patriarchal society. But I was born orthodox, I am orthodox, I'm raising my children orthodox, I consider myself my home to. You know, be kosher.
Speaker 3:We keep shabbat, we do all the normal orthodox things, we daven, we're part of an orthodox synagogue and I am comfortable in these spaces. So why should I have to leave if I want it to be more progressive? And you have to be a little bit nuts to be able to say look, I'm orthodox and I'm feminist and I'm progressive, but I never feel lonely. There's always women and men who are allies, who are excited by what we're offering, and I think it's just really good to get the ball rolling and, like most Jewish things or some people to the right of us will set up something that's a little bit more orthodox, saying that we don't want to be affiliated with you or to the left of us. You're too patriarchal, you're too much in the orthodox. But I say, I don't care if you set up another organisation or opportunity to the right or the left of Topper. I am just so happy that things are happening for women in this country.
Speaker 1:finally, that's in this country. What about in the US? It's a whole different kettle of fish.
Speaker 2:Where the return of Donald Trump has got reproductive rights campaigners really freaking out at the moment, with the possibility that there might be even more of a narrowing of reproductive rights at the state level. So, yeah, tell us about how your US counterparts in Jofa and others that you know how they're viewing his return.
Speaker 3:I think that it's a really tricky place for Americans right now because in 2016,. Perhaps you could have said that Trump's election was an aberration. It wasn't the usual. He didn't win the popular vote. It was highly unexpected. People were shocked, but if you look at what the numbers are, this time Donald Trump has decisively won the election. He won the popular vote.
Speaker 3:Americans knew that reproductive care was on the ballot and still voted for him in droves. It's interesting because I was listening to some commentary from the US saying they voted for Donald Trump in droves, yet in lots of states they voted to protect reproductive rights. So there is some sort of tension there amongst certain Americans. Jaffa in America, I think that it's a more complicated spot to be advocating for reproductive rights, because it really is on the ballot ever since Roe v Wade got overturned. They deal with different problems to what we deal with in Australia or even in somewhere like Israel, where, in Alabama, it's a six-week abortion ban. Past six weeks, you cannot get an abortion If you haven't been pregnant. Most women don't know they're pregnant even at six weeks, or maybe they just know. So very tough set of circumstances, but you do have to balance that against the fact that a majority of Americans, by an overwhelming majority, chose to vote for the president.
Speaker 3:I ran for parliament in 2022 in Victoria as a Teal, an independent. It didn't win my race, but one of the principles that I really learned from that is you have to respect the will of the people. That's who a majority of people have voted for. And, look, I certainly wouldn't have chosen to vote for Donald Trump if I was American, but if that is what the majority of people are voting for, he has a clear mandate to fulfil his vision. And, look, I hope that some of the more regressive policies don't come to Australia, because we do get a little bit of an overflow from America. But you have to respect that's what a majority of Americans wanted and voted for.
Speaker 2:No, I mean correct me if I'm wrong that there would have been Orthodox women that may have voted for Trump, knowing full well of his position on reproductive rights. I'm sure. Or perhaps his lack of a commitment to protections? Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. Or perhaps his lack of a commitment to protections.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure they voted for them. Look, I think it's complicated in the US because since October 7th, jewish people have been quite upset with the Democratic Party. So if you were voting along, who you think is going to do a better job at combating anti-Semitism? I think that perhaps you may have chosen Trump over Kamala. Whether that's fair or not is open to interpretation, but I really think it depends on what the considerations of the voter were.
Speaker 3:Kamala's whole campaign was effectively framed around we will preserve reproductive rights and abortion but it didn't resonate with the majority of people in America, and why that was. I think that'll be the subject of lots of analysis over the next few years. But I listened to an episode of the Daily, the New York Times Daily podcast, today, and they interviewed a whole range of women asking you know, in 2016, when Trump was last elected, you organize these massive women's marches and there was a whole movement of people just furious that Donald Trump had been elected. And this time they don't have the the wind in their sails. They don't have the same energy because he won the popular vote. So I think it'll be an interesting four years. I do feel sorry for American women who will be forced to carry pregnancies they don't want, and I will have a lot of empathy for people who get stuck in a position because of these policies. But I also absolutely respect people's right to choose and vote how they want, and that's the democratic system.
Speaker 1:My final question before we wrap this up relates to you mentioned earlier the position of moshkiah in IVF clinics and I'm just curious to know, because we're all suffering through a cost of living crisis and I know lots of people in Sydney are looking to supplement their incomes Do you think that if I kept kosher and Shabbat, that I could be a moshkiach in an IVF clinic? Yeah, if you want to adopt an orthodox, put my little signature on a label. What do you think?
Speaker 3:I think that if you want to be orthodox, I'm sure they'll accept you, but I don't want to burst your bubble. Most of them are volunteers, so I'm not sure it's going to help with your cost of living crisis.
Speaker 3:All right, well, what you want to do is a hetero not published, of course, just privately you want to give out hetero, hetero, my exemption, so if someone goes off, I don't want to fart, like, for example, I um, I was pregnant at Yom Kippur. I don't want to fast, like, for example, I was pregnant at Yom Kippur so I didn't want to fast. So I went to the mat and I got a hetero, which meant this year I got an exemption from fasting and every 10 minutes I could have like a little bit of water or like a cracker. So that's what you want to do, because that's currency. People want to be exempt from doing hard things.
Speaker 1:That I can do, that is for sure. I am highly qualified to give out exemptions.
Speaker 2:That is my dog barking, so that must be the sign that it's time to thank you for coming into the studio, Naomi Keltman. I think this is not going to be the last time we have you in the studio to answer our questions about the intricacies of modern orthodoxy. So thanks for joining us today and we look forward to having you back soon.
Speaker 3:Thank you, it was a real pleasure.
Speaker 1:That's it for another week. You've been listening to A Shame to Admit, with me Tammy Sussman and Executive Director of TJI, Dr Dashiell Lawrence.
Speaker 2:This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King, with theme music by Donovan Jenks.
Speaker 1:If you like the podcast, leave a positive review, tell your people or encourage your third cousin's cousin to sponsor an episode.
Speaker 2:You can tell us what you're ashamed to admit, or what you're not ashamed to admit.
Speaker 1:But let's be honest, you really should be.
Speaker 2:Via the contact form on the Jewish Independent website or by emailing ashamed at the jewish independentcomau as always.
Speaker 1:Thanks for your support. Wear a condom and look out for us next week. Dash is shaking his head. Please can I leave that in.
Speaker 2:Yep Cover up, Hang on. Well, actually that kind of goes against what Nomi's just been talking about.
Speaker 1:As always, thanks for your support. Keep shtooping or don't, it's your choice, and look out for us next week. I don't think many people even listen to that far into the show or out of the show, right?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Nah, they've switched off by then.