Jewish women demanding polygamy to solve the spinsterhood problem, including demographic conflict problem with Arabs

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - A group of "Jewish women" called for allowing polygamy legally in the Zionist entity in order to reduce the high rate of spinsterhood, and to consider polygamy the ideal Jewish solution for a variety of social problems, including the demographic conflict problem with the Arabs.This call was supported by a few Jewish clergy men, since polygamy by the Zionist law is a crime punishable by law, although not prohibited by the Torah.The invitations to allow polygamy led to a split among religious Jews between supporters and opposers, particularly among the senior clerics and their different schools of through, between Eastern and Western and between the radical and the less radical.Rabbi Dov Shtein sees that polygamy is acceptable within the religious aspect, although he himself is married to one woman only.Rabbi Shtein says that "according to the Torah, the Prophet Yaacoub, the father of the Jewish people, married four women, and his grandfather Abraham married two and his grandson David married eighteen women."Rabbi Shtein adds that "the real reason behind the ban on polygamy is a threat from the European Church to the Jews a thousand years ago to prevent the spread of this habit in Europe."He answered the question about the importance of polygamy in his opinion, and said "the Jewish people are a small people and need to increase the birth rate among them, the Torah considers it not just a duty but as the first duty and therefore we support polygamy, which will accomplish the task of increasing the number of born Jews."Rabbi Shtein believes that the solution to many social problems such as spinsterhood, adultery, and sexual diseases lie in polygamy which will contribute to increasing the number of Jews in the world, which is one of the pillars of religion, as he said.But this idea has not lived up to Rabbi Shlomo Avineri, the Rabbi of Beit Eil, who is said to be radical, since he sees that the Jewish religion respects women and that going into this issue would complicate matters and that there are other ways to solve the problem of spinsterhood.Shlomo Avineri defends the decision of the rabbis who met a thousand years ago and admitted to the prevention and prohibition of polygamy and said that, " polygamy was rare and only in exceptional cases, and we want a man that respects and loves his wife, if he marries more than one, this is a source of tension and hatred that we do not want."About a thousand years have passed since the Jewish religious leadership acknowledged in Europe the prohibition of polygamy, after writing the Torah and the Talmud and other books of the religious legislature. But the major religious school in the entity still forbids this practice, which may satisfy Jewish scholars while the debate continues within the religious schools according to the different understandings of religion and its law./129