And as I said to begin with the whole concept is Rabbinic based on fears related to Christians at that time. There is no where in the Tanach that it says anything near to the sense that it is forbidden to keep the Shabbos nor do I see any Rabbi bring biblical proof to this fact unless I missed something here. To satisfy the Rabbi's you can turn one light on or drive or whatever but still to take one day easier then the rest of the week and not devote it to work but to other ideas at least in my opinion I can't see what the problem is.
Finally sad to say Lubab that some Rabbi's do seem to try to create rifts between different people (men and women, jew and nonjew) becuase of their own insecurities. I have had a lot of HORRIFIC EXPERIENCES WITH RABBI'S. I was dating a women who converted about 9 month ago. Her father was Jewish her mothers wasn't. Anyway the Rabbi's asked her WHY RABBI"S RULE THAT HAVING CHILDREN IS THE MAN'S MITZVAH. Which of course they wanted her to say because men don't care about having children and woman do want children. They want her to think men are terrible. Why do they focus on a Rabbinic thing like that our of all issues. Would they focus on a Rabbinic saying that was negative on women? Why focus on this out of all things. It doesn't really matter anyway. I didn't even know this until a few years ago. Why do the Rabbi's focus on something as minor as this. I think it is just to bash the men and teach women to hate men so they can run to the Rabbi's? They are frightened by other men. As I said in the end it's academic anyway because it requires a man and a woman to have a child anyway and if women don't want children men can't have children and if g-d asks the man why he didn't have a child and he tried and woman he dated didn't want children I would think the women are going to be held responsible for that for. If you prevent someone for fulfilling a command you are responsible for that. Of course if Rabbi's are brainwashing the women they will also be held responsible. I also did mention the fact below on menstration why women are considered impure during the time of menstration and the reasoning seems very consistant with other biblical principles in interpreting the Torah.
I'm afraid I'm not equipped to deal with all of these issues you bring up. But I sense that you have doubts about following "the Rabbis" and question their motivations. I would just remind you that following the legal rulings of the Rabbis is BIBLICALLY mandated (Deuteronomy 17:11) and we must not veer from them "left or right". Now, we can talk about who is truly a "Rabbi", but that is another discussion. If it is true Rabbi, the Bible commands we must listen and G-d will actually defer the way He feels the law should be and says the law will be like the Rabbi said, not like Me. Their ruling becomes the right one, no matter what because G-d gave it over to them to decide.
This is the way G-d wants the Torah to operate, and I think He knows what he's doing. So in this sense, true Rabbis have Biblical authority to what they say and G-d Himself vouches for their rulings. I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but in Judaism isn't not up to us, the Torah decides what's right and wrong and the Torah gave it over to the Rabbis. If you don't like it, you're going to have to complain to G-d about it.
