Trying To Have it Both Ways

I absolutely cannot believe this new ruling:

A committee of rabbis formulating the education policy in the ultra-Orthodox community has prohibited women's continuing education programs and severely restricted other study courses, thus blocking the advancement and development of haredi women's careers.

This is a devastating economic and professional blow to thousands of women teachers, who are the primary breadwinners in the ultra-Orthodox community. It is also a drastic regression in haredi women's ongoing process of moving ahead in their studies and career and in improving their economic situation.

The repercussions on the teachers and the ultra-Orthodox education system are tantamount to an earthquake, as the haredi newspaper Yated Neeman called it. The issues at the heart of the ultra-Orthodox society are at stake - the limits of education, the norm requiring women to be the breadwinners while their husbands study and, above all, the authority of the rabbis and functionaries to foist restrictions on the increasingly frustrated public.

...Since the beginning of the year, all the teaching instructors and women in continuing education programs stayed home, waiting for the decision of the rabbi education panel, which only came in December. The decision banned women's studies for academic degrees and imposed severe restrictions on other women's studies.

...The education revolution in the ultra-Orthodox community has gathered enormous momentum in the past decade. Academic institutions and centers for professional training have opened in many fields, for both men and women. At first, the revolution was approved by the rabbis, headed by haredi leader Rabbi Yehuda Leib Steinman. But Steinman revoked his approval when the conservative groups expressed outrage at this development.

In recent years, the reforms in the continuing education programs have not pleased the rabbis, who object to women's "academic" studies. The conservatives warned of women's "career ambitions," fearing they would now be able to break out of the "teaching ghetto" and find other jobs than teaching. Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv was quoted in Yated Neeman objecting to teachers' enrolling in "all kinds of other education programs without any supervision of rabbis on every detail".

He warned that without close supervision and determining the content, "all manner of heresy can creep into those programs."

The rabbis were mostly infuriated by the psychological subjects in the teaching programs. Freud and Western psychology had always been a red rag to them.

The absence of ultra-Orthodox lecturers with academic degrees in diagnostics and consulting required bringing in lecturers from "outside" the community. Yated Neeman's women's supplement, Bayit Neeman, blasted the trend of bringing in lecturers from the "Sephardi faction" and even "completely secular" ones, warning of the women students' defilement.

...The new decrees issued by the rabbis are most injurious to women teachers and seminar students, who have spent years studying and have invested thousands of shekels to obtain the equivalent of a B.A. Those who have graduated already have not only wasted their efforts, they may even be harmed by their education. Elyashiv has ordered not to give them priority in high school positions, where there is already a surplus of teachers. The decrees have also put several lecturers in the training centers out of a job.

I'm not even sure what to say. The Charedi leadership seems to want to have it both ways. They want to encourage every young married man in the community to spend the rest of his life learning full time in Kollel, thus taking a pass on financially supporting their usually very large families, and yet they are putting up roadblocks that will prevent the wives of these men, usually the sole breadwinners in their households, from adequately supporting their families. How in the world are these women supposed to keep their heads above water when their earning capabilities are so severely curtailed?

How much sacrifice is just too much to abide? For many Charedi women (and I have heard this first hand) it breaks their heart to leave their children every day to go out into the workplace. But that is part and parcel of the constant financial battle that having a husband who is not a significant contributor to the family finances means. Now the expectation is that these women will continue to wrench themselves away from the care of their young children every day, in order to feed their families - but with all avenues for reaching a higher pay scale cut off?

How can that be?

Important Side point:
This emetic phrase from the article makes me ill on an entirely different level:

The absence of ultra-Orthodox lecturers with academic degrees in diagnostics and consulting required bringing in lecturers from "outside" the community. Yated Neeman's women's supplement, Bayit Neeman, blasted the trend of bringing in lecturers from the "Sephardi faction" and even "completely secular" ones, warning of the women students' defilement.

The trend of allowing Sephardi lecturers may add to the "defilement" of these women? Good God, what has the Charedi world come to that something like that can actually make into one of their most popular publications?

Hat tip: Krum, with his own satire on the subject here.