Worn-Out Traditions...

The traditions which say that woman's function is the management of the house, the raising of children, and the sewing of clothes carry in them the destruction of humanity and a violation of the sanctity of social justice.

These household tasks are ordinary tasks that the simplest of servant girls can perform.

Woman creates in man genius and sound taste; she is his cultural and social library, and the strong spirit that breathes hopes and inspiration into his heart.

I do not understand the wisdom of making married homes into hotels for men and a kindergarten for children?!

We do not ask men to prepare food and mend clothes, but we do demand that woman be taken out of the ranks of servants.

The world has advanced, and gone is the time when the husband earned and the wife spent.

Why, then, do we not transform these traditions into homes in which woman's personality stands forth, in which man's tenderness shines, and in which the child's happiness can be seen?!

Because of men's obstinacy and their pride in their own arrogance, wives have come to live in perpetual misery; indeed, the wife who in past ages lived in huts was happier than the wife of today, who dwells in palaces and rides in airplanes.

Her life today has become hollow...

The wife will accept slavery, but she will not accept obedience.

And in my opinion the slavery of a reckless husband weighs less heavily than obedience to a husband with his worn-out traditions, inherited from his forefathers, which he wants to apply to his present. We are today in an active renaissance — why have you not taken your share of it?

My sister: to you I write, and of you I think. For you are the highest example of the overcoming of hardships.

The days and the months and the years have passed, and you have walked on toward your destiny in this existence with energy, with steadiness of nerve, and with a breadth of spirit in whose spaciousness pains and hardships dissolve — and with a strength of will that no weakness can confront and no force can weaken.

You have known life with its calamities, and you have tasted horrors, and still you tread injustice underfoot with a firm step that does not slip, and with a heart that beats with the greatest dream.

My sister: the daughters of your sex in the West are subduing worn-out traditions with a keen resolve that grows with every glimmer of dawn and glows with every ray of the eternal sun.

So, my sister, arise and work; your work will be crowned with success, and your voice will fill the valleys and the plains.

Then you will stand, your breast filled with the intoxication of victory, gazing up toward the heights, and you will see in the vault of heaven letters of fire traced by your great hand — the hand that will work to raise your standing; and we shall braid for you a crown of liberty and equality.

Happy shall you be on the day you walk clothed in your longed-for happiness, and on the day you regain your stolen freedom.