This story highlights a classic example of how leftist feminist ideology attacks straw men by unabashedly distorting the facts. An article was recently published in The Forward and provocatively titled, “The First Story in the Bible Was the First Case of #MeToo.” Written by Tamara Kolton, who identifies herself as a “47-year-old rabbi and psychologist,” she asserts that God perpetrated “the first sexual assault of a woman.” She writes, “The founding myth of Judeo-Christian religion, the story of Eve, granted generations of men permission to violate women. It teaches us that women are liars and sinners. Even if ‘She’ is telling the truth, she deserved it. God told her not to eat that apple, or wear that skirt, or go out after dark, or be pretty, or desirous, or in that bar or on that street or in that car or born a girl.”

There are numerous obvious flaws in Kolton’s argument, not the least of which is her demonstrably false rendering of the Biblical story of the Fall. For example Kolton claims that the reason God punished Eve was for being hungry and “following her instincts, trusting herself, and nourishing her body.” No mention of God’s commandment not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, nor of the serpent tempting Eve, nor the fact that Adam and Eve were living in the Garden of Eden filled with all kinds of various fruits that God had given them complete freedom to eat of. Kolton distorts even the most basic plain language reading of what the book of Genesis communicates. But she must do this in order to create her straw man.

And her reason for creating this Biblically foreign straw man? In order to attack the Bible as being the source of Western culture’s misogynistic abuse. She writes, “It is time to restore the world. It is time to tell stories that are healing, empowering and truthful. Let misogynistic mythology be seen for what it is, even if it comes to us from our most sanctified text. We all deserve so much better, women, men and especially God.” So here’s the game: Make up out of whole cloth what the Bible supposedly teaches; blast it for teaching sexism and “rape culture”; and then label all who would take the Bible seriously and follow its teachings as guilty of promoting inequality and oppression.

Ironically, Kolton actually undermines the very movement she is seeking to promote. By her factually wrong story rendering and absurd interpretation she makes her argument a fundamentally senseless condemnation of men in general. All women are victims of abuse by all men, including God, who is merely a construction of the patriarchy. What utter rubbish.