ABSTRACT
Like many religions, Judaism is often very negative in its comments on those it sees as the other. Sometimes the Other are non-Jews, but often they are Jews but nonmales or nonheterosexuals. There is no doubt but that the Bible and the major Jewish commentaries are very critical of homosexuality, and also place women in an entirely different role in Jewish society than men. In traditional Judaism there is a horror, for example, regarding menstruation and the fact that women periodically bleed is taken to be a good reason for excluding them from a wide range of public religious tasks and responsibilities. Women’s religious role is taken to be primarily domestic, so that if she spends most of her time bringing up the children and looking after the home and husband, she has done what she ought to do. This does not mean that she need not pray, but these prayers can be abbreviated as compared with those said by men and can be based in the home since she has no obligation to go to the synagogue. And of course it goes without saying that women have not participated on the whole in running Jewish organizations in the past like synagogues, yeshivas (colleges), and religious courts (the beth din which exists in most parts of the Jewish world and adjudicates on issues of halakhah or Jewish law).
