As explained in a previous post, one of the most powerful tools of the Yetzer Hara is "New!"

Some of the most harmful ideologies have used this.

Nazism promoted itself as a new solution to old problems. Combining nationalism with socialism was presented as the best way to achieve equality in society -- at least for those deemed Aryan, anyway. 

New cars! New vacation opportunities! New laws for factory works!

In reality, Nazism derived much of its ideology from pagan occult traditions. Even its infamous swastika is just the old Buddhist symbol for death and decline.

And its hatred of Jews was nothing new either.

Communism also touted itself as a new solution to old problems. But it turned totalitarian fairly quickly. "Rob from the rich and give to the poor" is not a new concept, nor is the idea that the government owns your stuff and can parcel it out according to whim.

The problem comes when new gets mixed with old. 

For example, in the above example of Nazism, the VW bugs produced in Germany were indeed a new kind of car. (Cars in general were newer to the scene.) And the idea of parceling out cars to citizens was technically a new idea.

But the foundation for Nazi ideology was pretty old. And the idea of catering to a chosen populace over another populace is also pretty old and overdone.

Thus, the means for carrying out these ideologies and methods were new, but the ideologies and methods themselves were not new.

Likewise, feminism presented itself as "New!"

They peppered their propaganda with persuasive words related to "new": "Remarkable! Revolutionary! Discover! The New Woman!"

("Self-discovery" was and still is a big hit with them.)

Yet much of what they presented as new wasn't actually so new. It was old with a new twist.

Women & Housework
For example, the idea of "freeing" women from domestic chores? Women who could afford it have been doing that since time immemorial.

The modern twist was that rather than being born or marrying into such financial capability, feminists wanted women themselves to earn it.

Women & Paid Work
Likewise, there have always been working women. There have even been women were the main breadwinners, either because they were widows or for some Jewish women of yore, because they wanted their husbands to learn Torah full-time.

The modern twist was that feminists wanted this for all women.

Women & Respected Professions
Throughout the ages, you can find women who fulfilled professional jobs of authority. There were ruling queens, doctors, lawyers, sailors, soldiers, storekeepers, printers, teachers, and more.

Massachusetts midwife Martha Ballard would be called a "healer" in today's lingo, but back then, her ability to also treat disease was simply part of what a midwife did -- and something she did quite successfully. According to what she writes in her diary during the years 1785-1812, she was clearly considered a respected medical professional & colleague by the male doctors who knew her. 

And the modern twist?

Feminists wanted access for all women to any profession they desired -- and this included access to the education necessary for the desired profession.

This coincided with increased opportunities for males, BTW. Unless they hailed from the "right" class, many males throughout the ages never managed to achieve professions, education, prestige, or other opportunities outside their limited station. 

So the expansion of opportunities for women actually coincided with expanding opportunities for men, and wasn't just a feminist thing nor just a feminist accomplishment.

Women & Childcare
And since time immemorial, women who could afford to hired others to care for their children. Yes, the mothers and caretakers and children remained on the same property, often in the same building together. But wet-nurses, nursemaids, nannies, and governesses often fulfilled the roles that mothers otherwise fill. Even today, many women who can afford it do hire a nanny or two.

In Dov B. Lederman's remarkable book, These Children are Mine: A Story of Survival and Rescue, Lederman remembers his childhood governess and their walks to the park. He also remembers kindergarten as a "newfangled invention," recalling that children generally started school at the age of 7.

In fact, Lederman recalls overhearing his mother speaking to someone about "the horror of taking a child away from his parents and sending him to kindergarten at a tender age." 

(But please note that even as Lederman's mother opposed kindergarten, the responsibility for her child did not rest on her alone 24/7; she hired a governess to lighten that responsibility.)

And that's the modern twist.

Many working women couldn't (and still can't) afford to hire a nanny to their home. So they searched outside the home for babysitting and daycares and preschools (which didn't exist in the quantities and quality they do now). Nowadays, these are popular options in modern society. But having your child physically far away from you -- even an hour's traveling time between mother and child -- is the norm. No longer under the same roof, the child is part of a group and hopefully receives the necessary care and attention as one of several.

​So none of the above is "new" as in "Never before seen!" or "Unprecedented!" or "Revolutionary!" or "Breakthrough!"-- which is how the above is presented to society.

What's new is the following:

• Breadth (widespread; the above is embraced by most women in modern society)
• Acceptability (Female lawyers, for example, are no longer an oddity.)
• Opportunity (Women - and men, for that matter - can access opportunities previously available only to upper-class white men.)

Acceptability & Opportunity also mean that discrimination is down. It's down for everyone at this point (except for white males). In fact, some companies and departments actively seek out female students and employees.

• Long-distance separation between mothers & children (although even this occurred in some areas during certain eras, such as British colonists in India sending young children to boarding schools in England or widowed parents placing their children in orphanages to meet the children's physical and educational needs, even if the parents made regular visits)
• Group care (although, again, children in boarding schools or orphanages received group care)

Therefore, certain attitudes and methods common today are different, but the actual ideas (women investing time and energy in something other than domestic responsibilities or hiring another person to carry out specific maternal responsibilities) aren't new at all.

The problem for frum Jews in all this is that when something is presented as completely new, it appears that there isn't any precedence for it.

Therefore, it gives the impression of not being covered by Chazal or halacha or mussar.

And if it appears to not be addressed by Torah sources, then where does the frum Yid feel he or she should look to for guidance?

To psychologists. Consultants. Researchers. Teachers.

Secular professionals, in other words. (Or frum professionals taught secular theories.)

​This is a problem, though it doesn't look like one at first.

The more something is "new," the less likely it is to be found in Torah sources...because it's new, right? It wasn't around during the composition of the Shulchan Aruch. It's not there, so we just have to come up with stuff on our own!

But as stated in a previous post, Chazal do discuss working mothers and this idea is even mentioned in Mishlei/Proverbs.

It's very important to hold out against the flood of "New!"

It's not good (or even true) when we think we're outside or above Torah.

I heard of a chassidish family in the Sixties who lived in an area in which feminists demanded the right to become firemen. The chassidish teens watched in fascination as these feminists raced around town in shiny red fire trucks.

The news outlets raved about it and it all seemed very exciting.

So the kids ran home and enthused about it to their old chassidish grandmother, who'd lived through 2 world wars and survived a death camp before finding refuge in America.

She'd seen all the "modern" movements come and go and she knew just how to handle them. (She also knew first-hand how extremely destructive these things tend to be.)

So Bubby said, "Well, I don't know about female fire fighters. So let's go look it up in the Shulchan Aruch."

That immediately set things into an interesting perspective. What could the Shulchan Aruch have to say about female fire fighters? After all, this was new!

At the same time, that immediately took some air out of the feminist sails. Maybe it wasn't actually so new?

Let's go see!

So Bubby opened the book and read the appropriate passages, then said, "You know, all I see here is that if there's a fire, then anyone who can needs to help put it out. It doesn't matter if you're male or female. If there's a fire and you can extinguish it, then you're obligated to do so."

Oh.

Well then...it's just another halachic obligation. 

Put into that perspective, then the modern twist is NOT the idea of a female fire fighter, but the idea of a fire-fighting force at all. In fact, the trucks and sirens themselves are suddenly "new"! (They weren't around in the time of the Shulchan Aruch either.)

Except that they aren't so new because the kids had been born into the existence of a fire department and indeed, horse-drawn fire engines had preceded trucks by decades.

Meh.

Then Bubby commented that she didn't see the point of racing around town in fire trucks with the sirens blaring if you're anyway obligated to put out a fire if you can.

And maybe there was concern whether these women had the physical strength to deal with the high-pressure fire hose, climb the ladder wearing cumbersome equipment, drag heavy people or more than one person at a time to safety.

There was possibly even concern about the danger to life and property if a fire emergency occurred while the trucks were already occupied with these feministy non-fire-emergency purposes (which also makes the trucks low on gas, etc.).

And that just took the wind of out the sails completely.

It's not new, it's not that big a deal, so...who cares? What's all the hype?

So instead of seeing them as remarkable or glorious, the chassidish kids were able to see these fire-truck feminists for what they actually were: useless show-offs wasting time and vital community resources. 

So when something is promoted as "New!" (or any synonym thereof), it's a good idea to look behind the hype and discover whether it's merely the same old Yetzer Hara trussed up in a new disguise.

Related Posts:
The True History of Women's Work
New-Age Nazis

After everyone came from Morocco to Eretz Yisrael, my mother-in-law's widowed mother resided in an apartment in Afula to be near her son and his family.

My mother-in-law, her brother and his wife all took turns caring for the pious elderly lady.

For example, she was strict not to utter one word before netilat yadayim in the morning. Even when she had something urgent to say, she held back until her hands were washed.

Once, she woke up agitated and gestured for my mother-in-law (whose turn it was to care for her in the Afula apartment) to quickly prepare the netilat yadayim because she had something urgent to say.

My mother-in-law washed her hands, then her elderly mother said, "Your mother-in-law just passed away."

My husband's paternal grandmother had been living with my mother-in-law and father-in-law since their marriage (because the paternal grandmother's own husband had passed away a few months before their marriage -- actually, they'd been living with her; it the home of the paternal grandparents home that my mother-in-law moved into after the wedding).

"What?" said my mother-in-law. "How do you know?"

"I was just told in a dream," her elderly mother answered.

And my mother-in-law soon discovered that it was true. My husband's paternal grandmother had passed away early that morning.

Family lore has it that my mother-in-law's parents had been so wealthy that her mother never wore the same dress twice. I don't know if that is literally true. (It could be that she was in robes much of the time and only wore an actual dress for going out. Because otherwise, how you could you have hundreds of dresses you only wear once?)

But after wearing a dress once, she gave it away to the other women in the area. In this way, even the poorest woman from the most struggling family was always beautifully dressed.

But after a profound trauma caused by the Yishmaelites that killed her husband, the double-trauma of sudden widowhood preceded by the initial trauma thrust her into a deep depression. Amid the chaos and confusion, the the family lost all their money. My mother-in-law was only 6 and pulled out of school, never to return and receive an education. ​Her older brothers were sent to family in Algeria.

But back to the apartment in Afula...

One day, my mother-in-law noticed her mother staring out the widow and frowning. Then her mother called to her and asked my mother-in-law to quickly prepare 6 tomato-and-margarine sandwiches.

(That was all they had back then in Israel's immigrant neighborhoods in the early 1970s. My husband took such sandwiches to school every day. Butter and even the current staple of spreadable white cheese on bread was too expensive for the average immigrant in those times.) 

"Now take the sandwiches down to that Arab sweeping the streets," her elderly mother said.

Perplexed yet dutiful, my mother-in-law did so. The Arab streetsweeper responded with joyful surprise and heartfelt thanks, then my mother-in-law went back upstairs to her mother.

When my mother-in-law asked her mother why she needed to do that, her mother answered, "Don't you know that I always keep a lookout for signs of hunger in any living creature? And if I see they're hungry, I feed them. And when I give them food, I always pray that Hashem should behave with my descendants in the same way: Just as I show compassion and feed all who are hungry, so too should the Creator make sure that my descendants are never hungry."

In Morocco, if she passed by even a donkey that looked hungry, she would feed it.

I must admit that sometimes I entertain myself by trying to imagine this extremely refined beautifully dressed pious Jewish lady standing on a dusty road in Tafilalet and putting food in the mouth of a snappish, grumpy donkey. (Don't they bite? Aren't they kind of bad-tempered?) 

Anyway, this is clearly the ideal grandmother. Talk about looking out for your offspring!

Moreover, her method seems to have worked.

Looking at our own family and the offspring of her other sons and my mother-in-law, even if people aren't rich, they also don't suffer any serious lack. In fact, one of my husband's sisters married someone whose family had won the lottery and there are other grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are doing quite well financially.

Her natural Jewish concern for others, whether it was making sure the women in her area felt good about themselves by providing them with beautiful clothing, an act which prevented envy and ensured that even the poorest & most nebbuchy woman still looked beautiful for her husband or actively seeking out signs of hunger in all Hashem's creations in order to nourish them, this woman embodied a good Jewish heart.

(Also, I must commend her that in sharing her own clothing with everyone, it meant that she never stood out as the best-dressed because everyone was dressed like her, which shows an admirable resistence to showing-off.)

My mother-in-law's mother was tried with both the nisayon of wealth and the nisayon of financial struggle, and she dealt with both admirably by holding on to her empathy and compassion no matter what.

One of the many unique aspects of Torah is the increasingly deeper level of meaning inherent in even the most seemingly mundane verse.

For example, the story of Avraham Avinu and Sara Imeinu isn't only about the actions and interactions of our first Jews. It also represents the actions and interactions of the Sefirot in a completely different dimension. In addition, there are many more layers of meaning to every word of their story inscribed in the Torah.

In other words, the Torah is not only true, but it's truer in more profound ways than we could ever imagine.

For example, the Kav Hayashar Chapter 42. He refers to a well-known section of the Chumash that seems to "only" discuss an aspect of Jewish Law. Yet the Kav Hayashar gleans from the Zohar an underlying lesson for which the halachic description is pure metaphor:

וּבַת כֹּהֵן כִּי תִהְיֶה אַלְמָנָה וּגְרוּשָׁה וְזֶרַע אֵין לָהּ, וְשָׁבָה אֶל בֵּית אָבִיהָ כִּנְעוּרֶיהָ, בִּתְרוּמַת הַקֳּדָשִׁים לֹא תֹאכֵל וְכוּ

מִקְרָא זֶה נִדְרָשׁ בַּזֹּהַר, דִּמְרַמֵּז עַל הַנְּשָׁמָה, שֶׁנִּבְרֵאת לֵילֵךְ לְהַגּוּף לְתַקְּנָהּ וּלְקַשְּׁטָהּ בְּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים; וּכְשֶׁהָאָדָם עוֹשֶׂה עֲבֵרָה וּפוֹגֵם אֶת נִשְׁמָתוֹ — אָז הַנְּשָׁמָה צוֹעֶקֶת אֶל ה' וְאוֹמֶרֶת: נְתָנַנִי ה' בִּידֵי לֹא אוּכַל קוּם! וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא שׁוֹמֵעַ צַעֲקָתָהּ וְאוֹמֵר לָהּ: נְשָׁמָה, בִּתִּי הַחֲבִיבָה, מְגֻדֶּלֶת אַתְּ הָיִית בְּאוֹר הַכָּבוֹד תַּחַת כִּסֵּא כְּבוֹדִי וְנִקְרֵאת "בַּת חֲבִיבָה", וְהוֹרַדְתִּיךְ אֲנִי לְגוּף הָאָדָם, וְהָיִיתִי סוֹבֵר לְהַעֲלוֹתֵךְ לְמַעֲלוֹת מַעְלָה מַעְלָה בְּמַעֲשֵׂה הָאָדָם הַטּוֹב; וְעַכְשָׁו שֶׁחָטָא הָאָדָם, הִיא יְרִידָה לְךָ, שֶׁיָּרַדְתָּ מֵאִגְרָא רָמָא לְבִירָא עֲמִיקְתָּא, לְגוּף הָאָדָם, וְנִקְרָא הַנְּשָׁמָה עַכְשָׁו 'גְּרוּשָׁה', כִּי הַנְּשָׁמָה נִתְגָּרְשָׁה מִמְּקוֹמָהּ בְּעַל כָּרְחָהּ. וַה' יִתְבָּרַךְ שׁוֹמֵעַ צַעֲקָתָהּ וְנוֹטֵל הַנְּשָׁמָה מֵהַגּוּף וּמְצָרְפָהּ עַל יְדֵי דִּינִים. וְאַחַר כְּלוֹת הַצֵּרוּף וְהַדִּינִים הִיא מִתְעַנֶּגֶת וְאוֹכֶלֶת מֵעֹנֶג אָבִיהָ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמַיִם 

See?

So yes, this scenario as written in the Torah provides us with guiding laws and insights.

But there is also the whole other hidden meaning described above, which seems unrelated to the straightfoward meaning, yet has everything to do with it.

And this still isn't even the whole meaning behind these verses. There's much more, but this is enough to make the point.

The above is just one of many reasons why rationalist arguments regarding the Torah fall short. The Torah and all it encompasses is far, far more than the 3 dimensions we perceive.

In the frum world, people like to romanticize the Yiddishe mama who enjoyed nothing more than tending to her mikdash me'at, her home and family.

And this was true about some women, but for others it was a mix of ups and downs with regard to how they felt.

Since time immemorial, women based their identity on their roles as mothers and wives. (Case in point: In the not-so-distant past, American wives registered themselves as Mrs. Wayne Johnson, and so on.)

Marriage and parenthood were important goals in both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds for both men and women.

In the Jewish world, unmarried women and childless women were pitied (as were unmarried men and childless men, for that matter) and they themselves experienced deep anguish from their lack of spouse or lack of children. Anything that interfered with an upcoming wedding (such as a missing dowry, etc) caused a crisis. Jews invested copious prayers and blessings from tzaddikim to change an unmarried or childless state.

Yet things changed in the last couple of generations. 

And no matter how hard they've tried, many frum Jewish women end up feeling frustrated at not being able to recapture and fulfill the romanticized image erected on the pedestal of pa'am (the olden golden days of yore).

When frum women turn for guidance, they're often told "things have changed" and "today's women just can't be satisfied being housewives."

And with that, women are encouraged toward careers and all sorts of pastimes (there's a chug for every inclination!), all the while being reminded to "put family first."

Yet this never made sense to me.

If a women's innate nature has always found joy and satisfaction in being elbow-deep in scrubbing soiled cloth diapers against a washboard or cooking over coals or dealing with all her family in a home of just one or two rooms and finding fulfillment in dealing with toddlers all day, then why can't we recapture that?

After all, it's innate NATURE. 

Could it be that innate nature changed so much?

But after talking to people who actually lived in such times, reading memoirs and autobiographical anecdotes, and looking into Chazal, I realized that nature hasn't changed.

Focus has changed. Values have changed.

​But maternal nature actually hasn't.

Whenever given the choice and the financial capability, women almost always chose to delegate their responsibilities to hired help.

True, sometimes a woman performed a chore herself IF she felt the hired help wouldn't do it properly. But barring that, women delegated their responsibilities to others.

​Wealthy women even delegated feeding to wet nurses.

So if the above are true (and they are), then what of the airbrushed picture of the frum Jewish housewife living in poverty, her heart brimming with joy in her duties?

First of all, if you grew up as 1 of 8 kids in a hut in 19th-Century Poland, then that was normal life for you. In fact, your initial years of marriage (with just you, hubby, and the first couple of babies) may even have felt like a break after having grown up crammed with so many other people in such a small space and all the work that entailed.

You may have sometimes dreamed of a nicer home with servants, but that wasn't so realistic, so you just made do with what you had -- which is exactly what you were used to anyway AND exactly how everyone around you lived.

So you did what you were raised to do and what everyone around you did, and you tried to do it with a good attitude.

Although not everyone managed to keep a smile on their face.

​In her autobiography, Gutta: Memoirs of a Vanished World, Gutta recalls sympathetically the impoverished Jewish woman who lived in cramped airless conditions with little light and extracted little with which to nurture their children.

In fact, a major part of Gutta's work as a Beis Yaakov teacher was to provide her more impoverished students with the nurturing, affection, and attention they lacked at home.

Another autobiography hinted at how a constant state of hunger challenged the middot of an otherwise loving mother, noting that when the family's economic standing improved, the mother was much calmer and more pleasant.

But either way, this is radically different than today's world.

In Western society today, people don't necessarily grow up with children around them. Four children is already considered a big family by many people today. Some girls babysit, but a lot don't. 

I didn't say that people don't grow up with babies or small children at all, but it's certainly not how it used to be.

Today, you don't spend your life with there always being a baby or toddler around. And even if your immediate family didn't have a baby or toddler around, your extended family members and your older married siblings did.

Particularly coming from the secular world, many new mothers need to be taught numerous tasks that you see preteen girls performing for their younger siblings in the frum world.

Another difference is attitude. 

Many women feel that the chores, the cooking, and the demands of their children are demeaning somehow.

​Yes, women of yore also felt exhausted and frustrated by it all. They may have wished they could afford a cook, a nanny, and a housekeeper. But they didn't feel like they should be doing something "better." Particularly for frum women, what was better or more important than your home and family?

If you've grown up with just one or two siblings (and each of you in your own room, naturally), and everyone occupied in various ways with toys and gadgets and videos, and without any cultural emphasis or appreciation of housework and child care, then entering into marriage and motherhood presents quite a challenge.

It's nothing you're used to.

Adding to that is that American society is not a child-oriented society. For all its safety regulations for children and promotion of the health and happiness of children, it's really not child-oriented. I only noticed this once I'd entered the frum community in America and then when I came to Israel, which is a very child-oriented society. After seeing this difference, I realized that America really isn't into children and doesn't really know how to relate to them or to mothers. Of course, there are some exceptions, but in general, America is not child-oriented. (Also in contrast to American society, I think Russians are child-oriented, culturally speaking. Maybe in a different way than Israelis are child-oriented, but Russians still have more of a child-orientation than most Americans.)

Anyway, I'm not even sure "child-oriented" is the exact term to describe what I mean, but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

Of particular concern are today's teens who spend so much time on their phones in their rooms. Studies show that today's teens are less likely to go out to even traditional fun events for teens, like shopping, getting a drivers license, partying, and more. Because of diminished physical interaction, homicide is down among teens -- but suicide is up.

After spending a good chunk of your life on your phone in virtual relationships, how will it feel to get up at night for a child or to read books together or deal with potty-training and spoon-feeding or driving to pick up groceries, buy baby clothes, or take a child to the park? How will it feel to have to coordinate life with a spouse?

Because of this drastic change in cultural norms, many women find housework and motherhood overwhelming.

​They simply aren't used to it.

It doesn't feel right.

​On the contrary, it may even feel all wrong.

Surprising truth: There have always been working women, including working mothers.

No, not in droves as they do today. And not with the variety of employment opportunities women enjoy today. (Men, for that matter, also enjoy a far wider variety of employment opportunities than ever before.)

But there have ALWAYS been women who earned money and engaged in work outside their family responsibilities.​

In Caddie Woodlawn, Caddie's mother raised turkeys to sell every November, usually making a nice profit from that.

Almanzo Wilder's mother turned a nice profit by selling her butter.

As a married woman herself, Laura Ingalls Wilder attempted to supplement the family income by selling her own butter and eggs. Later, she wrote articles for a local farm publication and then her bestselling books.

Women worked as nurses, midwives, seamstresses, laundresses, helped their husband run the family store, taught school (as long as they weren't married), babysat, helped their husband with his business (sometimes as a full and very successful partner, including successfully taking over the business if the husband died or was incapacitated), and more.

In addition, working women are mentioned in Chazal.

In the famous section of Mishlei, Eishet Chayil (A Woman of Valor), Shlomo Hamelech describes a woman who makes a sheet and sells it in Mishlei 31:29.

Metzudat David explains it to mean a woman who makes sheets for her own needs, then sells the surplus.

​Ralbag describes a woman who made sheet, which she then passes on to a merchant to sell on her behalf in order for her to acquire capital buy "all that her soul desires."

Malbim explains that she wove both a sheet and a belt, which she then sold to a merchant. Then she distributed her earnings to the poor, creating for herself spiritual garments to don when she eventually leaves her physical garments, enabling her to indeed be "clothed in oz and hadar and laugh on her last day." (Nice peirush, eh?)

The Ben Ish Chai also recommends that women who earn their own money use it to ease the financial burden of her husband (by buying her own cosmetics and personal needs) and distribute money to the poor.

Prior to that verse, 31:16 describes a woman who examines a field and purchases it. Metzudat David, Ibn Ezra, Ralbag, and Malbim all explain this to mean an intelligent business woman, and interpret the following verses as proof of her financial acumen and success (i.e., the yield of the field is good, and which enables her to acquire a vineyard, etc.), which allows her to ease things for her husband and provide for the poor of her community.

​Both the Malbim in 31:18 explains that she works for her actual needs, without making a career out of it. Malbim says: "Gam lo tiyached mischara rak b'avor ha'arev v'hamo'eel l'tzorech atzmah" -- She won't make the business something special and stand-out (tiyached is like meyuchad), just what is pleasant and useful for her specific needs.

Metzudat David 31:19 explains that even as she puts her mind to business, mikol makom lo zazah mimalechet nashim -- nonetheless, she doesn't move on from women's work; she still tends to her domestic duties.

Interestingly, the Sages advise/assume that a married woman's earnings go toward her own needs (so that she can ease her husband's burden) and toward tzedakah & gemilut chasedim.

This apparently is their ideal for the working wife & mother of valor.

In Colonial America, Massachusetts midwife Martha Ballard kept a diary during the years 1785-1812.

Martha only started midwifery after her own childbearing years were long past and she could rely on her young adult daughters to run the home while she was at a delivery. After those daughters married, Martha relied on hired help, which was not nearly as reliable as her daughters.

Based on what she describes in her diary, Martha prefers gardening and delivering babies to housework.

This is clearly not an influence from the feminist movement or modern mores, but an innate personal preference.

​In fact, many modern women can relate to her description upon returning home in 1796 from her 612th delivery:

"Up in arms" paints an image of a house weaponized against its owner. One pictures Martha arriving at home only to encounter unfolded laundry aiming a shot gun or dust bunnies armed with tomahawks. 

Two years later, she again wrote of coming home at 10 a.m.:

Yet another time, she was called for a delivery in the middle of butchering a calf. She came back a day later to find the kitchen still a bloody mess with the calf head lying where she left it. Neither her husband nor her 2 sons still living at home had tended to things in her working absence.

Due to the strenuous journeys Martha sometimes needed to make to arrive at a delivery on time, she noted that she arrived at work "almost fatigued to death."

The above are probably familiar sentiments for some working wives or mothers.

Yet while Martha found domestic duties a burden, she still felt they were important.

Another example:
​One of my relatives, born in the South at the beginning of America's Civil War, wrote a long poem in 1934 about her struggle to face the daily question of "What's for dinner?"

Here are 3 excerpts from that poem (the original contains a stanza for each day of the week):

​She preceded feminism and even WWII's Rosie the Riveter. So she wasn't affected by feminist thought or attitudes. Like a lot of us, she finds dinner a challenge, made even more challenging by the more labor-intensive preparation necessary before modern appliances became common.

However, she didn't find it demeaning or unfair. She just didn't feel up to all the time, especially as she aged -- and especially on days packed with other labor-intensive demands, like laundry day.

​So the modern working woman who doesn't feel like putting together dinner after a hard day's work isn't so different than this old-time Southern woman who also didn't feel like putting together dinner after a hard day's work.

What's the point of reading all this?

Well, I feel like women today can end up feeling second-rate.

Why?

Not because of the new and worse value system or emphasis or focus.

Focus and values CAN be changed. It takes some work, depending on your personality and background influences, but they can be changed.

But many frum women feel second-rate because of their actual feelings.

There's a fairy tale that women performed all their domestic duties with a song in their heart and a dance in their step, with Jewish women practically swooning from the uplifting holiness of working in their mikdash me'at.

Yes, women experienced fulfillment.

Yes, there were aspects they enjoyed.

And yes, their domestic responsibilities were important to them.

But again, that doesn't mean that they never felt overwhelmed, exhausted, fed up, or frustrated similar to how you feel sometimes.

They did!

And whenever possible, they usually hired someone else to fulfill these duties.

(Although it's important to note that even when a mother hired a nanny or a wet-nurse, the mother was around. She was able to oversee both her child and her child's caretaker. Passing one's very young child into another's care - especially into a group situation - AND being far from them is a modern construct.)

You're not second-rate or "not good enough" because you struggle to feel the holiness of mopping your floors or because you're desperate to hire someone else to clean the bathrooms or because you send your 2-year-old out to gan.

You're not second-rate or "not good enough" because you prefer reading a book to making dinner.

You're not second-rate or "not good enough" because you feel the need for a paying job in addition to your domestic responsibilities. ("Zamama sadeh v'tikachehu..." 31:18)

Like I said, FEELINGS haven't changed much over time.

I think that because women are taught that their feelings make them second-rate, it's part of why it is so hard for some women to invest in their families and homes.

They think that "things have changed" and are impossible to resolve. 

So why even bother trying?

Therefore, this post is here to VALIDATE your feelings.

​You're actually not so different than the women of yore.

​Nor are you hopeless.

​Don't despair.

So to sum up:

• A woman's main focus was on her home. THAT'S what's changed.
• But women's feelings toward domestic responsibilities haven't changed so much.
• Whenever possible, women generally tried to delegate ALL her domestic responsibilities to others.
• A frum women prized both her housework and a good attitude...
• ...but depending on her situation, she didn't always succeed in doing so.
• Many women weren't content with housework and childcare alone; they needed more.
• You're not second-rate or not good enough if you don't enjoy housework or childcare.
• Girls raised to value domestic responsibilities find them easier to bear as women.
• Societal mores create difficult struggles and despair for women today.
• It's okay and even natural if you don't find housework & childcare so enthralling.
• Don't despair of yourself. You're not nearly as bad/hopeless/meh as you may have been led to believe.

Finally, there is a world of difference between feeling like you want servants or nannies because you're tired, overwhelmed, and don't enjoy the work...and feeling like you want servants or nannies because the job just "isn't for you" or it's beneath you and you should be doing something "better" and "more important."

Do you see the difference?

Modern feminism inserted the "more important" bug into women's brains.

THAT'S the attitude that's changed.

Have you ever noticed how Jewish women never try to take on the mitzvah of a beard?

Despite the powerful segulot of an untrimmed in beard described in Torah literature, women do nothing to try to grow a beard. They do nothing to even sport a fake beard.

In fact, many women invest money and time in efforts to eradicate any facial hair!

Furthermore, when perusing literature that glorifies a Jewish beard, you never hear a peep from women, like the following:

• "But what about us? Don't we matter?"
• "If Judaism prizes a bushy bristly face over a smooth-skinned one, then that innately discriminates against women."
• "As a woman, what can I do to compensate for a lack of beard? What are MY mitzvot?"
• "I feel bad every time I come across yet another Chazal praising the deep kabbalistic importance of growing a beard. It makes me feel like I'm worth less than a man."
• "In Judaism, the beard symbolizes the 13 Attributes of Mercy. Also, I read a Chabad article that emphasized how the beard represents the flow of ideals and philosophies of our minds to our everyday lifestyle. As a woman, how can I access all this too?"

In fact, I don't see that women focus on the beard issue at all or wrangle with it in any way.

What woman discusses her struggles to accept her beardless self the way it is or to internalize that a smooth-skinned face is a desirable part of sheh asani k'rtzono - that her lack of hairy jaw is simply Hashem's Will in His creation of women?

I've never a seen a woman give a class on how covering her hair or raising children or getting ready for Shabbat is on par with growing a beard.

Women don't seem to dwell on the whole beard issue at all; they just go on with their lives and their avodah.

It's also interesting to note that women don't fight for the right to have payos (a Torah commandment). In fact, when some married women try to make arguments for not covering their hair, they never bring up the issue of displaying payos. Everyone just seems to accept the fact that the mitzvah of payos is for men.

Nor is there any feminist movement for brit milah, despite the incredible benefits (both medical and spiritual) Jewish men received from this mitzvah.

(And don't say it's because women lack the necessary appendage; both the Yishmaelite and African cultures found a way around that obstacle, horrifically enough.)

I'm not trying to make fun of women who struggle with certain attitudes within in Torah Judaism. I struggled with several myself.

And BTW: If you do happen to struggle with your biological inability to grow a beard or fulfill brit milah, then you need to deal with that head-on just as any of us need to deal with any issue that Torah attitudes and Laws bring up within us.

I just thought that the beard attitude might shed some perspective on where women are coming from when a particular halacha or tradition makes them feel excluded or diminished.

It's often worthwhile pondering why you feel one way about one issue, but a totally different way regarding a similar issue.

In my penchant for finding proofs to support my belief that American culture is cult-like and that the mainstream media is backed by evil people and bad agendas that cannot be relied upon, I decided to look up the actual numbers, statistics, and percentages of a popular race issues to see what they reveal.

This post starts off by describing and summarizing issues, then delves into listing the actual numbers. (If you just want the hard-core numbers, then feel free to scroll down to "A Look at the Real Numbers.")

And just for knowing, LOCD stands for "leading cause of death."

Note to Europeans: This blog uses "Asian" in the American way, which refers to people from the Pacific and the Far East (like Japan, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc). I never refer to Indians, Pakistanis, or Nepalis as "Asian."

Okay, here we go...

So let's just look at one subject of lies and distortions propounded in America, and that's the claim that America is a racist society where women and minorities are being limited by discrimination and oppression, and that white males are "privileged."

Just to be clear: I'm not arguing whether racism exists; it does exist, unfortunately.

My problem is that it doesn't seem to be as a big a problem or as debilitating an obstacle as the mainstream media likes to promote.

So if you imbibe the mainstream media, you might start to think that white cops are one of the most prominent threats to non-white communities, especially to black communities.

You might think that racism in general and the "microaggressions" of white people are debilitating obstacles for the non-white communities.

However, as even the mainstream media admits (although it tries not to discuss it), the top killer for black males between the ages of 15-34 is another black male of the same age group.

This means that despite the Left's mantra of racism in America, a black male would actually be safest if you put him in an all-white neighborhood.

In fact, this statistic implies that if you would put every young black male in a solely white neighborhood, you would immediately halve the death rate of young black males.

And despite the attention spotlighting Black Lives Matter, an organization screaming against the racism (of which there is very little) of white police officers, the actual numbers are as follows:

• 1 in every 65 deaths of a young black male is caused by a police officer
• Around 60 out of every 65 deaths of a young black male is caused by another black male

Hm. 1 versus around 60.

Oh yeah, I would definitely focus on the 1 killer, not the other 60.

Especially since the cop was mostly likely defending himself or someone else, and not killing for revenge or anger or while drunk or high, I would definitely focus on that 1 cop.

Yeah, sure. That totally makes sense.

I can tell that the BLM adherents really care about black lives because they focus on the 1 black life ended by a cop as opposed to the other 60 black lives ended by non-cops.

Yeah, I totally believe that BLM cares about black lives. This totally proves it.

[sarc]

A lesser known but more alarming statistic is that homicide is the second leading cause of death for black children aged 1-4 (representing 15% of male deaths and 12% of female deaths) after unintentional injuries, which is the leading cause of death for this age group.

In contrast, the homicide rate for white children in that age group is half that for black children, while the homicide rate for Asian children aged 1-4 ranks as the sixth LOCD for males (2.7% of all deaths) and the fifth LOCD for Asian females (4.1%).

We all might want to analyze the Asian community to see how they manage to protect their little ones from homicide so much better than every one else.

Oh, wait, no. Instead, let's just keep analyzing why they're so good in math! Yeah, that's so much more important than preventing the murder of small children!

Interestingly, if a black male can make it to the age of 45, he's highly unlikely (or not likely at all) to be murdered or to kill himself. In fact, suicide doesn't rank at all for black men over age 45.

Yet that isn't true for other groups.

For example, there is a suicide rate (albeit a low one) for white males aged 45-64 and for Native American & Hispanic males aged 45-54 and for white woman aged 35-64, and for Native American women & Hispanic women aged 35-54.

In contrast, neither homicide nor suicide ranks at all for black females above the age of 45.

So if white males are so privileged, why are they killing themselves more than black males or black females?

Why are they so unhappy and so despairing despite the "privileged" color of their skin and their "privileged" gender?

And did you know that the second leading cause of death for male Native Americans aged 10-34 is suicide. Age 10?! Do you think that might be preventable? Maybe someone should create an organization to deal with that.

I also think that someone should take a look at the high percentage of death by homicide against Native American girls aged 1-4 (15% of all deaths, as high as for black males in that age group). Combine that with suicide as the #1 leading cause of death for teenage Native American girls (almost 40% of all their deaths result from suicide!!!).

But no, let's just fuss about how to refer to Native Americans (by their individual tribe? American-Indians? Native Americans? First Nations? Not Redskins, for sure!). Proper nouns are for sure more important the murdered babies or suicidal girls...

Right, mainstream media?

Let's look at Hispanics:

• The leading cause of death among Hispanic males aged 1-44 is "unintentional injuries."
• The second leading cause of death among Hispanic males aged 14-34 is homicide.
• The third leading cause of death among Hispanic males aged 15-34 is suicide. 

WHO exactly is killing and depressing all these Hispanic males?

And are you wondering about the statistics for the much accused privileged white males? 
Well,

• the leading cause of death for white males aged 1-44 is "unintentional injuries."
• Yet the second leading cause of death for white males aged 10-34 is suicide.
• Homicide is the third leading cause of death for white males aged 15-24.

Who is murdering or depressing these young men? White cops?

It's shocking that homicide and suicide rank above cancer, heart disease, and most illnesses. We hear so much about cancer-prevention and helping children suffering from diseases or disabilities, but the statistics show we should be equally concerned about children of all races and ethnicities either being murdered or murdering themselves.

It seems that America is a nation of misplaced priorities, and it's those misplaced priorities are being set by Leftists and civil rights groups under the guise of being oh-so passionately compassionate and concerned.

In contrast, the second leading cause of death (after unintentional injuries) for white females aged 15-24 is suicide. Homicide comes in far after white males, with it being the 4th leading cause of death for white females aged 1-9 and 15-24, while it's the 5th leading cause of death for white females aged 10-14.

For black females aged 1-34, the leading cause of death is again, "unintentional injuries." (For black females above the age of 35, it's either cancer or heart disease.)

Disturbingly, homicide is the second leading cause of death among black females aged 1-4 and aged 14-24, a more common cause of death than disease, birth defects, or suicide.

As stated above, for Native American females, suicide is the #1 leading cause of death between the ages of 10-19.

• Suicide comprises 30.3% of deaths of Native American girls aged 10-14
• Suicide comprises 39.4% of deaths of Native American girls aged 15-19

Meaning, Native American teenage girls are more likely to die by their own hand than by disease, accidents, or anything else.

Does that bother you at all?

It bothers me.

Yet when do you hear people talking about this?

Then suicide decreases to the 2nd leading cause of death (16%, after unintentional injuries) for Native American females aged 20-24 and then ties for 2nd place with chronic liver disease for Native American females aged 25-34 with 8.7% of deaths resulting from either one. (The ranking of chronic liver disease is unique to Native Americans compared with all the other groups.)

In contrast to the other groups, cancer makes an appearance as a leading cause of death for Hispanic females, which it doesn't for other races or genders. Hispanic females aged 10-14 or 35-44 are most likely to die of cancer, and not than unintentional injuries or anything else. Suicide becomes the second leading cause of death for Hispanic females aged 15-24 and the 3rd leading cause for the ages 10-14 and 25-34.

What does that mean? I don't know.

Furthermore, despite the hype about white privileged males, the above statistics show that young white males are killing themselves as much as or even more than reputedly disadvantaged groups of the same age, like black or Hispanic females.

Why is that? What's going on? And why is no one talking about that either?

It's been said several times on this blog that American culture is basically a cult nowadays. If you just rely on mainstream media, you will think that black males are in urgent danger of being killed by white cops.

And yes, you may also hear that the leading cause of death for a young black male is murder by another young black male. At least they get that priority right.

You will also hear lots of stuff on racism and worry about the self-esteem of teenage girls, their body image, general self-image, depression, rights, and eating disorders.

You will also be under the impression that white males are "privileged" as if they live on Easy Street and can be dismissed or ignored. Even more, media propaganda gives the impression that white males need to make way for less advantaged groups -- like females and all non-white groups (in other words, literally everyone else in the country).

In other words, we don't need to worry about white guys.

But do you ever hear that the second leading cause of death in young white males is themselves?

There is a lot of propaganda going on and a lot of distraction to keep us from looking at real problems.

So for example, if I wanted to look at the lives of American teenagers and how to help them, I would start by looking at the 4 LOCD (leading causes of death) within genders and racial/ethnic groups.

The following is based on a much more extensive breakdown along genders, ages, races & ethnicities, which you can see at this link:
https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/index.htm

And the initial breakdown looks like this:

So just looking at the ranking, I'm concerned that suicide is one of the top 3 leading causes of death in all groups, and even the top 2 or the leading cause of death in the case of Native American females.

Why on earth are young people in one of the best places to live killing themselves?

And because the 2nd and 3rd leading cause of death among white males is suicide and homicide (the same ranking, though not the same percentage, as for the truly underprivileged male Native Americans), I would immediately remove the classification of "privileged."

Unless, of course, you think it is a privilege to hate and despair of yourself and your future so much that you end your own life or you think it's a privilege to be murdered.

I'm also wondering what "unintentional injuries" are?

It's the leading cause or 2nd leading cause of death in all groups.

Does it mean that teenagers are clumsy? Living with irresponsible people? Driving badly or living in areas where people drive badly? Are they swimming irresponsibly? Engaging in daredevil activities? Sports? Eating spoiled food? Accidentally drinking bleach that someone stored in a water bottle?

Let's see what "unintentional injuries" kill teenagers in the USA...

You can read the full article on this subject and see all the graphs here:
https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/unintentional-injuries

Unintentional Killer #1: Vehicles
It was a bit difficult to get details on exactly what kind and how much of "unintentional injuries" kill teenagers, but motor vehicle accidents are the leading death by "unintentional injuries" in this age group. Now, motor vehicle deaths have gone down quite a lot for children and teenagers (perhaps due to safety features and improved medical treatment), but this still remains the highest cause of death for this age group.

Unintentional Killer #2: Poisoning
"Poisoning." It's not what you might think.

The 2012 statistic shows that 85% of "unintentional injury" of teens through "poisoning" is from drug overdose or alcohol poisoning (which I'm assuming means that the alcohol didn't poison them like drinking a bit of hemlock would, but that they drank too much alcohol at one time).

Now, you might think that drug or alcohol overdose is suicide (after all, it's self-inflicted and easily controllable), but it's only considered suicide if the person meant to commit suicide. If he or she only meant to get high or drunk, then the resulting death is an "unintentional injury."

Death by "poisoning" has actually increased in teenagers.

Because so much of it has to do with alcohol or drugs, it's a wholly preventable death.

And since there is no need to drink or take drugs (while there is a need to use motor vehicles), one wonders why teens are engaging in such self-destructive behavior.

I would also look at this "unintentional injury" in conjunction with the suicide rate and wonder why American teenagers are feeling so unhappy and so hopeless.

Unintentional Killer #3: Drowning
Knowing American teens as I do, I can't help wondering how many of these unintentional drowning deaths are alcohol-related.

Unintentional Killer #4: Other
What does this comprise? I'm not sure. Yet it ranks out above unintentional death by fire, suffocation, and other transportation (planes, trains, etc).

Cancer & Disease
I'm also concerned about the ranking of cancer in teenagers. While no one is sure about the exact causes of cancer, there are interesting theories.

Many studies show a correlation between cancer and lifestyle & diet.

Yet newer and more probing theories suggest a correlation between cancer and one's inner world. People who eat themselves up with envy, resentment, bitterness, and hatred (of themselves or others) can find the cancer eating up their own body.

Just off the top of my head,  I can think of at least 2 people I knew who died of cancer that seemed to come from rage and helplessness. One repressed her negative feelings, but one admitted not long before she died that she "knew" her illness came from an maddening situation that seemed to have no end or resolution in sight.

Even seemingly cheerful or serene people can repress such emotions while these negative traits eat them up inside without them realizing the existence of these feelings.

And heart disease in such young people? What's going on?

Pregnancy Complications
I'm also concerned about death from pregnancy complications.

The percentage of teenage deaths resulting from pregnancy complications are as follows:

• Native American: 3%
• Black: 3%
• Hispanic: 1.1%
• White: 1%
• Asian: Doesn't even make the ranking

I'm assuming most of these girls aren't married and that these are irresponsibly conceived pregnancies.

And I'd look to Asian teens to see what they're doing, to learn why they don't die of pregnancy complications. Maybe discovering that can help the girls in other groups.

Homicide
What percentage of teen deaths result from murder?:

• Black males: 49.5%
• Hispanic males: 20.2%
• Black females: 17.9%
• Native American males: 14.2%
• White males: 8.6%
• Hispanic females: 8.5%
• Asian males: 6.6%
• White females: 4.9%
• Asian female: 2%
• Native American females: 1.5%

Oh, gosh.

This means that half the time you're looking at a dead teenage black boy, you're looking at a murder.

With Hispanic males and black females, around one out of every 5 or 6 teen deaths is a murder.

Who is killing these kids?

We know that young black men are the prime killers of other young black men, but who is killing all these black females and Native American males?

Do anyone really believe it's white cops or President Trump's rhetoric?

(It's not.)

Also, while the percentage of male Native American deaths via murder is high, the percentage for female Native Americans is lowest. But why? Is the reason reassuring or disturbing? For example, is it because Native American teenage girls are killing themselves before anyone else can?

It's all extremely disturbing and I don't understand why it's not being discussed more widely and frequently.

Also, please note that a larger percentage of white male death results from murder than Hispanic, Asian, White, and Native American females and Asian males.

Also, a white teenage male is twice as likely to be killed by a cop than an Asian teenage male.

What a tremendous privilege!

(Question: If white cops are racist, then why are they more likely to kill a white guy than, say, a Chinese guy?)

Suicide
What percentage of teen deaths result from suicide?:

• Native American females: 39.4%
• Native American males: 33%
• Asian males: 27.3%
• White males: 25.5%
• Asian female: 21.8%
• White females: 18.7%
• Hispanic males: 16.1%
• Hispanic females: 15.7%
• Black females: 9.2%
• Black males: 8.8%

This is so bizarre and disturbing.

This also leaves a lot of questions.

For example, is the percentage of black male suicide the lowest because black teenage boys are happier and more hopeful than everyone else or because other black youth kill them before they can kill themselves?

It also looks like, despite their "privileged" skin color and gender, white males are more deeply unhappy and despairing of themselves than white females, Asian females, Hispanics, and blacks -- some of the very groups generally considered underprivileged and disadvantaged.

Why is that? Why isn't their much-lauded white male privilege working for them?

It's all very disturbing with a lot of unknowns. (Unknown to me, at least. Likely, someone else knows.)

After reviewing all this, it's impossible not to be extremely concerned about Native American teenage girls.

As shown above, nearly 40% of Native American teen female deaths result from suicide. (And don't forget that the following cause of death is "unintentional injury," which includes a lot of self-inflicted drug and alcohol overdose.) The suicide rate for preteen Native American females is also whoppingly high at 30% and the homicide ranking for Native American females aged 1-4 is one of the highest (around 15%, the same as for black males aged 1-4).

Yet we don't see anyone blaring: "Native American Girl Lives Matter!" even though I really think that someone needs to tell Native American girls that their lives actually matter a lot because they don't seem to be realizing this on their own.

The Asian male suicide rate is also alarming, especially taking into account that the next Asian male age group of 20-24 ranks suicide as the #1 leading cause of death, making up 34.6% of the deaths in that age group, which is not so different than Native American female teens.

Why is that?

Perhaps we need to approach Asian males on college campuses and hand them a "Your Life Matters" sticker.

Anyway, someone might want to look into that.

But I think none of this information will gain any mileage because it doesn't fit the agenda of the people disseminating the propaganda.

I don't think they care about anyone's lives.

Okay, you know how Mark Twain said, "There are...lies, damn lies, and statistics"?

All the above represent percentage of deaths, but another important indicator is percentage of population. And that's missing from all the above.

For example, if black male teen death was super low, then the fact that half result from murder means something different than if black male teen death in general is very high.

Also, within that abstract and varied category of "unintentional injuries," it matters a lot what percentage of the fatal injuries resulted from motor vehicle accidents caused by the other driver and also what percentage were drug- and alcohol-related.

So the above numbers tell a lot and are very disturbing, but they are far from being the whole story. A lot of information is still missing.

Also, there is a lot of background information missing.

Cultural background plays a huge part in the above statistics.

For example, Native Americans endure an exceptional status in America and many live on reservation where they are given the impression of self-governance, yet are really at the mercy of non-Native American bureaucrats. Many reservations endure dismal conditions and offer dismal futures.

Because they're nations living within a nation, they experience differences in lifestyle, identity, and status compared to other American minorities. For example, many tribes attempt some form of self-governance on their reservation. (The strength and success of this attempt varies from place to place.) And there are hundreds of treaties made by the American government with different tribes, which are still considered in force today (even though they've all been violated at least once, usually by the American government).

As another example, the Kickapoo tribe was able to travel back and forth over the Mexican-US border using their official tribal enrollment card instead of an American passport like every other American citizen. In 2011, Pascua Yaqui & Kootenai tribes issued Enhanced Travel Cards that can be used between the Mexican-US border and on US domestic flights. In fact, the Iroquis/Haudenosaunee tribe has their own passport (but this is not honored globally). Many feel like they possess dual citizenship with their tribal nation and the USA and lack trust toward the American government (even as many are reliant of US government programs).

Finally, different tribes don't necessarily like each other, so it's difficult to create "the" best plan for Native Americans as a whole. Just like Native Americans have a history of war and broken treaties with the US government, they also have a history of wars and atrocities between different tribes. To this day, for example, there is animosity between the Lakota Sioux tribe and the Crow tribe.

Other background factors are that some Asian cultures view suicide as the acceptable or even honorable option in certain situations, so that may impact the high suicide rate among Asians.

Those are just 2 examples.

I can think of a lot more questions and possible contraindications and contradictions by looking at the above, but this post is long & convoluted enough as is.

But anyway, it seems to me that people fed by the media will continue to badly misunderstand and misprioritize the real problems in America and will assume that the problems can be solved by shouting slogans, wearing nonsensical symbols, ignoring facts, focusing on their own group while ignoring the hardships of other groups who may be suffering a lot more, protesting against Ben Shapiro speeches, and heaping blame on President Trump & white cops.

Anyway, we see that the issues of concern in society are complex and take a lot of research, and are horribly misrepresented or underrepresented in the media.

But it's clear that white cops are not a major problem in these issues.

Neither are President Trump's tweets or Ben Shapiro's presence on college campuses.

And black people are not the only people deserving of our care and attention.

So why all the distraction from real problems and their roots?

Also, it seems that racism is not the core of today's worst problems, but self-hatred is, along with a lack of hope or meaning in life, a lack of respect & appreciation for oneself and for others.

It seems that this is a result of an increasingly Godless society, where values such as realizing that everyone (including yourself) is made in God's Image, and that Godly values like compassion, forbearance, humility, perseverance, and emuna are considered naive, superstitious, or inapplicable.

Related Post:
Why No One Needs BLM; We Just Need God

Another major lesson learned from the Pele Yoetz is to avoid pressuring people to bite off more than they can chew.

And many times, we don't know the limits or the capabilities of others.

Sometimes we have a good idea of another's limits or capabilities.

But other times, we just project ourselves onto the other person -- a form of arrogance for us and a discouragement to the other person.

So yeah, sometimes, we pressure others from from our own ego.

Other times, we're so enthused about a certain mitzvah and the way it's working for us, that we forget that the other person may not have the capability to do that mitzvah in the special way that we do.

(And if you find yourself faced with a high-octane enthusiast, I think it's usually best to just go along with them, tell them how great they're doing -- because you get reward for encouraging others & making them feel good about their mitzvot, mezakeh harabim, etc. -- and leave your own personal failings out of it. Just be happy for them as much as you can. Speaking from personal experience on both sides of this scenario... ;)

Anyway, we learn from the Pele Yoetz the importance of encouraging people that even the tiniest act counts for a lot.

For example, regarding Torah study, the Pele Yoetz repeatedly states the following throughout his book:

The Pele Yoetz does not mean that you shouldn't learn more than that verse if you're able -- on the contrary, he exhorts men to learn as much as they can, including Zohar!

But when a guy finds himself with even the smallest amount of free time ("even the short time it takes for a swallow of saliva"), he should say "v'achot Lotan Timna" (Beresheit 36:22) and earn overwhelming reward.

(That's pretty positive and encouraging, isn't it?)

The Pele Yoetz also stresses this regarding men who aren't learned or who barely know how to read; he encourages them with the above.

(And just for knowing, the Pele Yoetz also felt very strongly about the need teach women and girls how to both read and write: "And how good it would be if women were to learn the skill of writing, for then they could easily learn everything!" He also exhorts the women of his time to go to the women's section of a synagogue in order to hear the Torah lectures given there, quoting Shir Hashirim 2:9 as proof.)
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So this is very important:

• Don't overload or overwhelm people.

 

• Don't make people feel like if they can't keep up the pace or perform grand gestures, then their efforts are meaningless or worthless.

Encourage people by reassuring them that even the smallest & briefest mitzvah they carry out can reap unimaginable reward and make a significant difference -- as long as they mean to do it for Hashem.

Start out small -- start out miniscule and weak, if that's where you're holding -- then keep on going throughout your failures and successes, sure in the fact that even the tiniest briefest mitzvah reaps great reward and holds mind-boggling significance.

This is straight from Rav Eliezer Papo, a tremendous self-sacrificing tzaddik.

One of the obstacles for women to reading original sources is their discussion of women. And at some point, the Sage will mention women's daat kalah.

I think a lot of women don't know quite how to respond in their own mind to this, and I think there is trepidation or a lack of skills in looking it up. So a lot of people (including men) fall back on apologetics or trying to pretend it's not there or trying to understand it superficially (with all the negativity that implies).

But first, here's an explanation of daat (or daas, if you prefer):
Daat is very hard to translate because it means different things in different contexts. In some contexts, daat means “knowledge” or “mind,” but neither of those definitions relate to daat in this context.

In Kiddushin 80b, Rashi explains daat kalah as being more "easily swayed/influenced/seduced” by subjective factors.

So there you go.

And yes, men are also swayed by subjective factors, like their physical needs (which is why some men can "forget" really important things or behave irresponsibly and selfishly when they are tired or hungry or worse), but an observant person will see that it's still different than the way in which women are swayed and influenced.

For example, it's easier to convince women to act against their own interests or values or integrity or knowledge than it is for men IF the women are not firmly anchored in emuna.

This is why history is replete with out-of-wedlock conceptions and women functioning as "ladies of the evening" and more recently, the feminist movement and the female pro-abortion stance and joining military combat units. It's immoral men and immoral women taking advantage of such women's daat kalah for their own evil agendas.

In contrast, Chazal heaps praises on women's steadfast emuna and loyalty to Hashem, praising women for keeping the halachot they know more faithfully than men.

So steadfast emuna counteracts any downside to daat kalah.

The prime daat source—Chazal—imbues every person with a center of spiritual gravity to hold him or her securely in place. The more one learns AND internalizes Torah, the more daat he or she has.

Women don't completely lack daat, we are just daat-lite. Men have both daat and binah, but women are lighter than men on daat and heavier than men on binah, baruch Hashem.

And here is the truth with which many modern women understandably struggle when reading Chazal:
If you are female, you are innately light on daat.

Yes, you are.

But it doesn't mean that you can't achieve personal greatness.

Sara Imeinu was a higher-level prophet than her husband, yet she still had daat kalah.

Beruria was a screaming genius and a baalat emuna, yet she still had daat kalah.

Chana merited to birth Shmuel and is the prototype for tefillah, but she still had daat kalah.

Hashem set things up like this for everyone's benefit. Men are supposed to provide women with daat. It's part of the innate giver role with which Hashem imbued men.

A lot of men refuse to access their own daat, let alone let it overflow onto others, which is one of the major reasons why things have gotten so wonky in the frum world.

If women are lucky, they have fathers or husbands who are a healthy source of daat. This is a significant part of the male role in family and society. Unfortunately, many men don't know to fulfill this role properly and many women don't understand the importance of being receptive to this male contribution.

If you are a woman and you don't have the appropriate men in your life, or the men you do have are either amei haaretz or namby-pamby misers about providing you with your rightful quantities of daat, then you can turn to learning mussar on your own, learning a halacha a day, consulting with a rav (if he's right for you), or just turn straight to the Source Himself: Hashem (which is exactly what smart Jewish women have done for millennia, actually.)

But it's vitally important to note what daat kalah is NOT.

Daat kalah is NOT synonymous with being:

• stupid
• pathetic
• hysterical
• unworthy
• deserving of disrespect
• blindly obedient
• inconsequential
• an excuse to denigrate women (including a self-denigrating woman)

It CAN be the root of or exacerbate the above negative qualities, but it doesn't NEED to.

And again, this can't be said enough:
Daat in this context has nothing to do with intellectual IQ.

You (ladies) can have skipped 2 grades in elementary school, achieve early entrance to Harvard medical school, and graduate at the top of your class...and still be controlled by your daat kalah. (Yep. I've seen it, and it ain't pretty.)

On the other hand, you can be a regular student and get married out of high school and balance keeping house while sitting pregnant at your part-time desk job...and be wise beyond your years, a fountain of good middot, wisdom, and brilliantly applied binah. (I've seen this too and believe me, it's something to aim for.)

Please remember that in the same breath (or quill) that Chazal mention a woman's daat kalah, they also mention her extra binah, an ishah chachamah (a wise woman), an ishah maskilah (an intelligent woman), female prophetesses, along with the great emuna, fidelity, mesirut nefesh possible in women.

The Torah itself is compared to a Woman of Valor (Eishet Chayil), and other exalted holy female characterizations are:

• the holy Jewish neshamah
• the Shechinah
• Eretz Yisrael
• the Jewish people
• the Sabbath (Shabbat Kallah/Bride)

So in a nutshell, you can have daat kalah and still become:

• a prophetess
• a woman of great wisdom
• a woman of profound intelligence
• a holy woman
• a tzadekes (a completely righteous woman)
• the best adviser to your husband (so says Bava Metzia 59a)

On the other hand, a man has normal amounts of daat, but he can still be an evil pig.

So to sum it all up:

Women who allow their innate negatives to control them are a pain in the neck and damage society.

Men who allow their innate negatives to control them are a pain in the neck and damage society.

Women who use properly what Hashem gives them become a merit for the world (as the Kli Yakar says in Chayei Sara, that righteous women are as vital to the world as the rotation of the Sun).

Men who use properly what Hashem gives them become a merit for the world (like the 36 tzaddikim in whose merit Hashem allows the world to exist) 

So everything depends on what you do with it.

Chazal doesn't denigrate women, it states a fact for the benefit of both men and women. (And really, since they mostly expected men to read their words, they mostly wanted men to understand this IN ORDER for men to take proper responsibility.)

Well, if this was your issue (as it was mine at one time), I hope this helped.
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Related post:
Halacha: The Best Boost for Daat Kalah

May we all complete our tikkun in this lifetime without trials or tribulations.

A favorite excuse nowadays is to dismiss the works of holy Sages as being applicable "back then, but not for our times." Or to ascribe the Sage as being "on such a high level," "normal people" are incapable of emulating his example or following his advice "especially in modern times." Even frum people can err in these utterances and unnecessarily lower their own standards.

In fact, the Pele Yoetz was well-aware of this tendency to dismiss Sagely directives as "too hard" or "not for our times." So in his chapter called "Hatred," he discusses the commandment to love one's fellow to himself and states:

This concept is from the Gemara, actually, and Rav Papo is only one of many to repeat this point.

Yet how can we dismiss the words of a tzaddik on the level of Rav Eliezer Papo, who died for the sins of his people to save his city from the effects of a devastating plague?

Rav Papo was very close to Hashem and knew he exactly what he was talking about and who he was speaking to.

The other way people like to dismiss Sagely words is by attributing attitudes and insights to "those times" and "that culture."

Certainly, times have changed, technologically speaking, and women's opportunities have changed. So if the Sage is speaking purely from the standpoint of primitive methods (i.e. needing to arise early to toil at lighting a coal stove rather than flipping an electric switch or assuming that the vast majority of women are completely illiterate, if they were in his time), then you can dismiss the literal intention of his words without dismissing the wisdom.

But it's not something to be done automatically, either. We still need to scrutinize what he says so we don't accidentally throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Another big difference between then and now is the concept of a "minyan factory" or "shteiblach."

In some communities today, you can find minyanim all day long. Do you need to daven neitz at 4:08 AM? Do you need the latest Shacharit or the earliest Mincha? Do you need to daven Maariv at 3:15 AM? You've got a minyan!

As far as I know, even big cities of yore with thriving Jewish communities didn't have minyanim 'round the clock. All the more so, smaller communities that davened together at set times.

So a Sage from a century ago understood that if you didn't get up or out at a certain time, you missed your chance of davening in a minyan at all, which may not be true today if you're living in Jerusalem or Lakewood.

Yet we can still take to heart their basic encouragement to develop passion and alacrity for davening on time.

Dismissing the Sage due to cultural influence is also a mistake. Yes, Sages addressed the problems and issues of their times. But great people have the ability to rise above their times and be influenced by Torah values, not cultural values.

Case in point: Rav Papo lived in the Balkans under the Muslim rule of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Yet his admonitions toward every husband to treat his wife with great love and sensitivity and his blanket opposition to any kind of verbal or physical abuse toward the wife (even if the wife herself was wicked or abusive) certainly flew in the face of Balkan and Muslim values. Even today, neither religious Muslim attitudes nor the modernized Bosnian and Bulgarian attitudes toward women are up to the stipulations of Rav Papo.

As he advises husbands:

And regarding a really bad wife, he reminds the husband of what is written in Eruvin 41b:

Oh, and then there's this:

(He means that if women knew how to read and write, then they could learn everything they needed to know of halacha and mussar on their own.)

In 19th-Century Bulgaria & Bosnia under Muslim rule, where else could Rav Papo be getting such ideas...except from the Torah?

Clearly, there is no "cultural influence" happening here.

Just for knowing, Rav Papo also insists on very high standards for wives, but not as high as the standards he sets for husbands. Plus, he comes off as more sympathetic toward women with difficult or abusive husbands and offers them more practical advice than he does for men, including having a beit din stop the abusive husband with "a strong arm" and advises others to help the woman to get divorced if she wants, calling any divorce assistance "a great mitzvah" in such a situation.

As far as I could tell, the only advice he offers suffering men is to be really kind, sweet, loving, pleasant, and patient no matter how awful the wife is -- no strong-arming the wife or offering the husband divorce as an option.

(Perhaps men can insist on a "men's studies" curriculum in college where they can rant against this blatant double standard in Judaism, a clear result of this patriarchal religion dominated by dead white men.)

An example of the Pele Yoetz speaking to "the times" in which he lived is when he advises that one who doesn't understand Hebrew go to a sage to have the sage write out the entire work (I think it was the Pesach Haggadah) in Bulgarian so that the person can fulfill the mitzvah properly.

Needless to say, we don't need to pester our local rabbis to write out the entire Haggadah in Bulgarian. We have Artscroll English translations instead.

However, the spirit of the Pele Yoetz's instruction still stands: If you don't know Hebrew, you need to make sure you have a Haggadah in the language of your choice.

There are many other examples of exhortations and teachings that seem time- or culture-bound or far beyond our abilities, but really aren't.

Women in particular may have a difficult time with certain assumptions expressed in Chazal. One of the biggest changes between the olden days and now is women's education. Women today are fully literate and in the USA, women even comprise a larger percentage of college graduates than men.

Yet scholastic achievement doesn't affect a woman's daat compared to a man's daat. (Daat and IQ/education are not synonymous; a woman can be a top-level genius in, say, mathematical physics and still have daat kalah.) And women still have not (and will not) achieved equal representation in left-brained fields until Mashiach comes.

Furthermore, whether a woman uses her extra binah in a positive constructive way or in a negative destructive way depends on her character and knowledge of halacha and mussar, and not her academic knowledge or IQ.

Female readers struggle with certain statements of Torah Sages, and rather than trying to understand them in context, they often either dismiss them as a result of the times when women were illiterate (and sometimes, this is an appropriate dismissal, but not always) or they sink into self-denigration (even women with feminist tendencies can do this, ironically) and castigate themselves and their gender as truly not being intelligent enough or good enough or rational enough or whatever.

Yet rather than being superficially dismissive or superficially presumptive, it's best to try to just delve into understanding what a Sage really meant when you come across something that rubs you wrong.

I mean, if the same Sage mentions women as being chalushat haseichel (of weak intellect) and remarks on the downfalls of daat kalah as per Chava and the Nachash, yet goes on to praise women copiously throughout the rest of his early 17th-century work (yes, I'm talking about the Kli Yakar), and in fact praises women's loyalty to God, their emuna, their modesty and marital fidelity, their generosity, and their love of Eretz Yisrael as far surpassing that of men, and even declares that righteous women (nashim tzidkaniyot) -- specifically righteous women even in the face of righteous men -- are as essential to the world as the Sun itself...well, it's disingenuous to dismiss him or condemn him with the usual feminist blather and ranting.
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Related Posts:
Why We Need to Let the Pele Yoetz (and Any Old-Time Mussar) Penetrate Our Modern Life & How to Do It (the great saintliness of Rav Eliezer Papo and why we need to take his words to heart even in our days)
Halacha: The Best Boost for Daat Kalah
Kli Yakar on Parshat Chayei Sara (righteous women as the Sun; scroll down to the end)
Kli Yakar on Parshat Pinchas (women's love for Eretz Yisrael and other positive attributes)
Kli Yakar on Parshat V'Zoht Habracha (real and welcome equality after Mashiach comes)
You can find more by the Kli Yakar by clicking on: WOMEN
(Then keep going back to the earlier posts.)

Perhaps it's a good idea to talk a bit about women's real standing in Judaism.

As usual with anything that is authentic Judaism, it's not superficial. It's more complex and contains paradox.

So with that...

There's a very interesting incident described on page 101 in Rav Yehudah Petiya's book Minchat Yehudah (written around 1933) in the chapter on Parshat Ekev. This incident occurred while the rav was still living in Baghdad.

An elderly Jewish woman came to him with the following story:

She owned millstones and had been sifting wheat during in the morning hours when she found a date among the wheat. With the purest of intentions, she made the wrong blessing (she said borei pri ha'adamah instead of borei pri ha'etz) and ate the date.

When she returned to her sifting, she suddenly dozed off and saw an old man standing before her.

"Chen, chen lach, ishah tovah!" he greeted her.

(Chen is often translated as beauty, charm, favor, or grace and the phrase "Chen, chen lah" is found in Zechariah 4:7. So this old man used a beautiful expression of gratitude by saying, "Chen, chen to you, good woman!")

And this old man continued:
"And I give you thanks because you rescued me from the suffering I was enduring, even though you did not rescue me completely."

Then he disappeared.

So Rav Petiyah explained that the soul of this old man had been reincarnated into a date. And just by this simple yet pious woman eating the date, the old man ascended two levels together. As a date, he was at the level of tzomech (plant), skipped the level of chai (animal), and went straight to chai medaber (human).

Rav Petiyah states:

(Borei pri ha'adamah blesses the "fruit of the ground" -- usually vegetables. "Borei pri ha'etz blesses the fruit of the tree.)

It's very interesting that this sincere albeit simple & unlearned elderly woman possessed the ability to completely rectify a lost soul, and even her incorrect blessing still managed to achieve near-rectification. Rectifying souls is what kabbalists on the level of Rav Petiyah do. There are famous stories of tzaddikim rectifying souls by focusing on the special profound kavanot of a blessing before biting into a fruit.

But a simple elderly lady who doesn't even know the correct blessing?

Rav Petiyah offers an astounding reason for this:

The spiritual physics here are intriguing.

Men can rectify souls only after lots of learning, mind-focus, and inner purification.

But women can rectify souls just by making a sincere blessing (even if it's the wrong one).

Even more intriguingly, the brief description in the book indicates a particularly simple old woman, a woman who owns millstones and sifts wheat, rather than crochets or embroiders or cooks and bakes like other ladies her age. She's a woman so illiterate and ignorant, she doesn't even know the correct blessing even when the blessing is obvious. (Some blessings are more complicated, like needing to say "ha'adamah" over a banana rather than "ha'etz," but a date blessing is fairly straightforward.)

Furthermore, there's also a chance that she didn't really know Hebrew. Iraqi Jews spoke a form of Judeo-Arabic, which utilized many Hebrew terms (in much the way Yiddish utilizes many Hebrew terms), but she still may not have understood the literal meaning of the all-Hebrew blessing -- which, if true, means that she couldn't have said it with basic kavanah of the literal meaning, which makes it even more incredible that just her sincerity and purity counted for so much.

Finally, unlike the tzaddikim who made specially focused blessings over food, knowing the food often possessed souls in need of rectification, this elderly Jewess had no idea about this possibility.

Yet she was a sincere and pious Jewish lady, so Hashem gave her the merit to achieve a powerful kabbalistic accomplishment without her even realizing it.

But as implied by Rav Petiyah's words above, an illiterate ignorant man could never have achieved the same thing.

Yet there are even deeper and more enlightening implications in this story.

For around a century, there has been increasing back-and-forth about women's role in Judaism, the variations of it, in comparison to men's role, how a woman's role adjusts to modern times, and so on.

Likewise, there are Jewish laws purely based on gender that either forbid or permit men or woman to do or not do certain things.

And grounded knowledgeable frum women pleasantly explain that they don't feel the need to engage in men's mitzvot, and that they're even happy they don't bear the same yoke men do. (And men presumably prefer going to a minyan 3 times a day & learning the Daf Yomi to enduring monthly cycles, pregnancy, birth, and menopause.)

Yet it's even deeper than that, according to Rav Petiyah.

For example, because women are mostly forbidden to wear tefillin, this means that women don't NEED to wear tefillin in order to achieve whatever men achieve by wearing tefillin.

In other words, WOMEN CAN ACHIEVE what men achieve WITHOUT specifically male mitzvot.

When I took a tznius class years ago, the speaker explained that a married woman covering her hair is equal to a man donning tefillin shel rosh. Covering your elbows is equal to tefillin shel yad.

Unfortunately, due to the spirit of the times, whenever people talk like this, it sounds like apologetics and patronizing appeasement, like how you try to get a child to do a "biiiiiiig mitzvah!".

(This is despite the fact that specialized photo technology has revealed special changes in the auras of women before and after covering their hair and in the auras of men before and after donning tefillin -- link at the end of the post.)

That's why I like to take sources from before these modern movements. The above story may have been published in 1930s Jerusalem, but it occurred in Baghdad much earlier. Needless to say, turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Iraq was not a bastion of feminism, so we need not suspect that Rav Petiyah was just trying to bulk up women's egos. It's also clear that he wrote the book expecting men to read it, not women.

So we can take his words to heart in the innocence, sincerity, and wisdom with which they were intended.

There's another point here that often gets lost in the crowd.

Judaism is not a dry, intellectual collection of scholarship.

The entire point of halacha is for the SOUL.

The soul is eternal. This World is a narrow, finite, dim world of only 3-dimensions.

The real world beyond this consists of several different levels and many different dimensions imperceptible and unimaginable to us in our current state.

Our life in this world is finite, 120 years at most.

Beyond that, there is eternity.

This is why the focus needs to go deeper than feel-good or feel-contemporary academic-based arguments, even though a genuine and deeper focus becomes impossible when faced with an opposition that is agnostic at best, and immature, petty, superficial, and glory-seeking.

I want to point out that Sara Imeinu did not don tefillin nor did she undergo bris milah, wear a kippah...yet she achieved a higher level of prophecy than Avraham Avinu and merited to speak directly to angels.

Chana was never and could never be counted in a minyan or lead prayers as chazzan, yet she merited to be the model of prayer for all generations and produced Shmuel Hanavi, who was only second to Moshe Rabbeinu (H/T to informed reader Bracha), achieving more than her illustrious husband, Elkanah. Also, it's interesting to point out that Chana initially achieved the level she did without performing the traditional women's mitzvot connected to giving birth, nursing, and Jewish child-rearing.

Furthermore, holy women achieve their holiness despite regularly entering into a state a spiritual tumah called niddah.

Yes, there are mitzvot traditionally considered in the male realm (like learning Chumash with commentaries), but that women are not only permitted to do, and even receive Heavenly reward for this. (As Rav Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg explained, a woman receives the reward for one who is not obligated in the mitzvah while a man receives the reward for one who is obligated in that mitzvah.)

But as stated above, there are also gender-based prohibitions for both men and women. Those who transgress these prohibitions aren't doing themselves or the Jewish community any good.

Each person has been given the tools he or she needs in order to reach his or her maximum potential.

No one wants a surgeon performing surgery with an electric chainsaw and no one wants logs cut with a scalpel.

You need the tools meant for YOU.

And you'll find your personal tools within your gender, personality, innate character traits, state of health, life situation, culture, and much more.

Hashem is Perfectly Just and has the spiritual physics set up exactly right for each person, regardless of gender, to achieve whatever potential Hashem has set for him or her.

It's not about women "settling" for second place or being second-best.

It's about women resisting the pressure to expend the time, mental gymnastics, money, and sweat to go digging for gold among rocks in a distant place when she has a field sown with diamonds in her own backyard.

Rav Yehudah Petiyah (also spelled Fatiyah) was born in Bagdad in 1859 and passed away in Jerusalem in 1942. He was humble and deeply compassionate Jew of tremendous spiritual stature and abilities. To learn more about him and his book Minchat Yehudah, please start here:
Minchat Yehudah Part I: Teshuvah & What Happens After You Die

For a good explanation and photos of the auras of Jewish men before and after tefillin and Jewish women before and after hair-covering, please see:
The Human Aura (may it be a zechut & an ilui neshama for Menachem ben Reuven -- formerly, I had him identified by his mother's name as per Sefardi minhag, but thank you to Neshama who reminded me that Ashkenazi minhag is different, and thank you to Stella for going out of her way to supply his father's name)

Please click on WOMEN to read more about the holy Jewish women mentioned above.
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P.S. Regarding the feminist tides against Torah Judaism: There is a lot more to say, like how some of the leading feminist rabble rebelling against Jewish tradition don't even believe in God, so what do they care about Torah and mitzvot and where women pray and how? They are obviously disreputable hypocrites and rapacious autocrats, may Hashem have mercy and atone for us all.