The element of this essay that I found to be fscinating is the conflict. The conflict between how “Haredi Judaism is caught between the perceived purity of a child-centered nuclear family, which encourages female domesticity, and the practical economic need for women to work to support the system of male Torah study” (299) and how there is belief of “an ideology that insists that women need to move from living with their fathers to living with their husbands, without any role moratorium in between stands at the center of Haredi attempts to keep women within the domestic sphere and prevent them from being drafted into the Israeli army and even into National Service. This ideology conceptualizes women who leave the domestic sphere as being in danger” (295). There is tension and two sides of the coin that is created. One side sees the necessity for women to leave the domestic sphere and to work. The other side believes in an inherent danger if the former were to occur. I found this intriguing. The most intriguing part is how Haredi culture is so conscious and self aware of these points. The essay describes a huge part of this as a “push-pull”.

I also found it interesting how the element of separate but equal plays into all of this. This calls attention to how blurry the lines between various gender structures really are. The home is considered to be “wholesome”, “private”, “protected from the dangers of the outside world”, and public spaces are described as being “contaminated” and how men would need to retreat to their homes for “privacy”, “comfort” and “personal refueling”. In a similar vain femininity is described as “weakness”, “purity”, and “domesticity” while masculinity is described as “strength”, “physicality”, and “worldliness”. In this way femininity and the home seem to go hand and hand, and public spaces seem to go hand and hand with masculinity because based off of these descriptions how could “purity” go with something that is “contaminated”? The overwhelming theme seems to be the need for “safety” for the woman.

However, despite what was previously stated the essay goes on to say that “gentile culture has viewed women as second-class citizens. But Judaism never required a feminist movement because Jewish women have always been viewed as equal to men” (293). This seems contradictory. Despite this equality everything within in the public sphere is separate and different when comparing men vs women, despite the air of “equality” which is where the idea of “separate but equal” comes in. However, the essay makes a point of noting that this is not always the reality. The essay notes how female income is often what keeps families afloat, which does not allow or the separate but equal lifestyle because then women would not be able to be the primary breadwinners. The place where the separate but equal notion arrises is the treatment of men vs women when they entered into each other’s spheres. Men are not condemned for entering the domestic sphere but women are have restrictions for participating in Talmud study and political authority. I found this element interesting because it differs with the ideas many people are raised with.