Patriarchs had established the institution of marriage before the keeping of historical records began. Giving each man his own fiefdom, marriage divided the world into two spheres -- women lived out their lives in the private realm under the absolute control of their husbands/fathers while the public arena was reserved for men. Marriage was intended to guarantee to the husband that any children born of the union were his. It may also have been a way of avoiding fighting by the men over women.
Certainly the three major religions have found that this institution has been useful in providing the structure that allows the faith to maintain order, flourish, and grow, strengthening the power of their particular doctrines. Women's oppression within these religions is presented as having been ordained by the powerful but invisible male deity. God, himself, for example, created woman with a womb, dooming her to the biology-is-destiny premise that child-bearing is her only reason for being.
For centuries, the trick has been to prevent women from examining religious texts like the Bible or the Torah or the Koran. In Feldman's case, community leaders, known as rebbes, promulgate additional rules based on their own interpretations. In other situations, popes, priests, ministers, rabbis, imams, and lay leaders carry on this work, explaining the meaning to their male followers whose obligation is to hand it on to their wives/daughters.
It is no accident that through the ages women have had to fight to obtain an education for themselves and their daughters. This struggle is by no means behind us as millions of women throughout the world remain illiterate, having either a minimal education or none at all.
This exclusion of women from religious study led to the following resolution in the July 19th statement in 1848 by the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York:
"Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her." (http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/seneca.html)
In the Satmar community, young men spend their days studying the Torah and Talmud, debating the meanings and implications while learning the rules about gender relationships. They are discouraged from "fraternizing" with girls; talking with them is seen as a waste of time. [P.64]
The rise of the patriarchy occurred when groups of people began to settle down more or less permanently in areas like the Middle East's fertile crescent. Men came to recognize that women's reproductive capacity was as valuable an asset to them as that of their newly-domesticated animals. The victors in tribal wars killed the defeated males but captured the women, integrating them into their own tribes. Women became chattel to be bargained for, sold, captured in war, placed into prostitution, or given away.
In some areas of the world, for instance, a wannabe-husband can still obtain a wife through payment of a goat or a cow to the bride-to-be's father. In other societies, patriarchal custom dictates that the bride's family pay a dowry to the groom's. The custom in the western world of a suitor asking a father for his daughter's hand in marriage has pretty much disappeared. "Who gives this woman to this man?" is also disappearing from wedding rites. Little thought, however, is given to the symbolism of the father and daughter marching down the aisle to the altar where the groom waits to receive her.
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