At a conference devoted to the influences of the
Old Testament on Hebrew literature, a speaker discussed Lot’s wife (Genesis 19,
26) as a source of poetic inspiration. In Hebrew that dramatic story is summed
up in 6 short words: “But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became
a pillar of salt.”
I have been so used to these words that their actual meaning
was almost lost. But re-examining the sentence I thought about the danger of
curiosity and the high price of the desire to learn.
We learnt in school
that Lot’s wife was punished because she disobeyed God. Yet, in Genesis 19, 17
God says to Lot: “Escape for thy life; look not behind thee.” There is nothing
in the text about Lot's responsibility
to warn his family not to ldo so as well. Moreover, although God talks only to
Lot, he is not held accountable for the actions of his wife, and she is the
only one who is punished.
It is intriguing that the Bible states that the wife (who
remains nameless) looks "behind him,” and not behind her. It seems that
Lot is very much part of the action.
Curious, eager to learn, and independent: those have always
been the qualities of women in pursuit of knowledge and education. They fought
to advance themselves in their societies and strived to contribute to their
communities. But those were also the exact reasons why Paternalistic societies
have regarded education as dangerous.
Only yesterday I suddenly saw the source of and the
justification for the zeal and conviction of those men who made sure that
education would not be available to women. From the account of the Fall we
understand that knowledge is synonymous with disobedience. But in the case of
Adam and Eve they were both punished. I never before had traced the beginning
of male oppression to the unjust act of God, who punished a woman for a
non-sin, in Genesis 19.
Until fairly recently women
in Europe and in the US were denied education, in the introduction to
Equality for Some: The Story of Girls’ Education, Barry Turner states: “The
female intellect is a recent educational discovery. Traditionally Western
civilization has distrusted and discouraged clever women, initially because
they were regarded as a threat to the spiritual well-being of the
community”
It wasn’t thank to God of Genesis 19 that Western women won
their battle for education, they did it all on their own.
But in other parts of the world, women and girls are not so
fortunate, a good example is the Saudi
Arabian film Wadjda. It tells the story of
a bright girl who is determined to win money to buy a bicycle she’s
forbidden to ride. She hopes to accomplish this feat by winning a Koran
competition. Learning, she trusts, would bring about independence and freedom
of mobility. But when she honestly and naively admits that she intends to do
with the money, she doesn't get the prize.
Riding a bicycle has been a feminist symbol of self reliance
since Victorian time: at that time the safety bicycle became available for
skirted women. While bicycle gave them physical independence, education had
given them some measure of mental independence and self control.
Wadjda is not different from the hundreds of school girls
who were kidnapped on April 14th from the Girls Secondary School in Nigeria. In
the name of God, His male executors on earth have taken upon themselves the
mission to eradicate education from their country.
In the Biblical story Lot moved on leaving his wife behind,
we could no longer afford to do so.
PS And of course I
should not forget Malala Yusafzai.
No comments:
Post a Comment