Category: Women

The Lady in White

6/7/2017

One Shabbat, I was walking outside when I saw a young married woman dressed entirely in white gliding toward a nearby stairway.

Captivated, I watched her as she ascended the stone steps.

Dressed in pure white, from her headscarf to her long flowing dress to her shoes, she looked wonderfully Biblical and Shabbosy.

The epitome of tsniut, every part of the outfit was loose and long l’mehadrin without looking shlumpy or nebby. And against the bright sunlight, it wasn’t remotely see-thru. How’d she manage that? I wondered admiringly.

She even held herself like a refined princess, with a quiet self-assurance.

The problem was…staring is incredibly rude. And I’d been doing it.

I first realized my faux pas when she started gliding more slowly and glancing at me out of the corner of her eye.

Inside, I panicked. She probably thinks I’m sneering at her! But I’m not! I’m thinking that she’s doing exactly the right thing by dressing in white on Shabbat and that I wish I had the guts to do that too!

But something in her sidelong glance told me she hadn’t made up her mind about me yet.

“Shabbat shalom,” she said carefully, then waited for my response.

Relieved and grateful for the chance to redeem my rudeness, I said, “Shabbat shalom! And—you look really nice!”

Now her face relaxed into a smile. “Thanks!” she called back, then continued to glide up the stairs.

I learned a lot from my kabbalistically dressed sister that day.

It would have been easy for her to presume that I was some judgmental, sneering stick-in-the-mud who didn’t even have the decency not to rudely stare at her. Instead, she gave me a chance to reveal that au contraire; I was an appreciative, admiring sister who was well-aware of the real halachot of tsniut and also of what the mekubalim said you should actually be wearing on Shabbat—who didn’t have the self-awareness not to rudely stare at her.

The truth is, if she’d said something to put me in my place, I wouldn’t have resented her for it. I’d have understood how discomfiting my unintentional staring was.
(Although I might have also thought that sarcasm or snarliness doesn’t really go with the Biblical Shabbat outfit of snow-white spiritual purity.)

But baruch Hashem, she was a kabbalistic princess inside and out, and someone to emulate.

And she demonstrated how nice it is to give people the chance to show who they really are before deciding that they’re probably just some big uptight wart.

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The REAL Meaning Behind "A Kosher Wife Performs the Will of Her Husband"

4/6/2017

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Unfortunately, the idea of “Ishah kashera osah ratzon baalah—A kosher wife does the will of her husband” has been used as a stick with which to club Jewish women over the head.

Twisting legitimate Jewish sources out of context is also a really good way to catapult people off the derech. If God comes off as so unfair and uncompassionate, and if Judaism really does hate and demean women, then it must all be neither true nor good, chas v'shalom.

Furthermore, any fool can see that merely following your husband blindly never guarantees blessing and marital harmony.

How many times have you seen submissive wives end up being browbeaten by their ungrateful husbands for their rest of their lives—despite their kowtowing to all his demands?
How many times have you seen women go along with their husband’s poor decisions under the impression that being an ishah kasherah will make everything work out in the end, only to find themselves in impossible situations, like children going off the derech and a whole slew of other problems that could have easily been prevented by NOT following the wishes of the misguided husband?
How many families do you know in which the children resent or outright reject their mother BECAUSE she catered to and supported their dysfunctional father under the impression that presenting a united front and blindly following his will (just like a good little kosher wifey!) would bring her blessing, no matter how dysfunctional and warped the family’s situation?

Finally, nearly all the great women featured in Tanach did NOT follow their husbands blindly.

Some even opposed their husband outright (like Sara Imeinu) or went behind his back (like Rivka Imeinu)—and all for the sake of Heaven, and not their own egos.

Others took a proactive approach to guide their husband on the right path (like Devorah as the wife of Lapidot) and still others acted in a combination of the above (like the wife of On ben Pelet).

The most seemingly submissive of the Torah's exemplary women was Queen Esther who followed Mordechai's every directive, but she did so not as his wife, but as a Jew following the wisdom of the gadol hador. Furthermore, she did question his judgement at one point, but quickly acquiesced - not out of blind obedience, but because she realized he was right.

Only Naomi blindly followed her husband (following him out of Eretz Yisrael to Moav) and the Sages criticize her for doing so!
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Anyway, most people who quote this verse have no idea of its context.

Perhaps they simply feel pious and helpful when they spew platitudes.

Anyway, there are two sources for this verse:

Tanna D’bei Eliyahu Rabbah 10
Gemara Nedarim 66b

The Kosher Wife of Tanna D’bei Eliyahu Rabbah 10

In Tanna D’bei Eliyahu Rabbah 10, the verse comes at the end of a series of verses that discuss the reasons for the greatness of different Torah personalities.

And it starts off with...Devorah Hanaviah:

ודבורה אשה נביאה (שופטים ד-ד) וכי מה טיבה של דבורה שהיא שפטה את ישראל ומתנבאת עליהם,הלא פנחס בן אלעזר עומד? מעיד אני עלי את השמים ואת הארץ,בין גוי ובין ישראל,בין איש ובין אשה,בין עבד בין שפחה הכל לפי מעשה שעושה-כך רוח הקודש שורה עליו

Devorah was a woman prophetess (Judges 4:4): And what was the winning quality of Devorah in that she judged Yisrael and was prophesying over them? Didn’t Pinchas ben Elazar exist?

I bring the heavens and earth as witnesses to my testimony, whether a goy or a Jew, whether a man or a woman, whether a male slave or a female slave:

Everything goes according to how one performs a deed—in this way, ruach hakodesh rests upon him.

Meaning, it doesn’t matter who or what you are, but how good you are.
You are defined by your deeds, not your status or gender or religion.

So far, so good, right?

Later on that same page, it says:

ומה נשתנו זבולון ונפתלי מכל השבטים כולם שבאתה תשועה גדולה לישראל על ידיהן?אמרו,נפתלי-שימש את יעקב אבינו ומצא הימנו קורת רוח. זבולון-ששימש את יששכר ועשה לו אכסנייה: ועל שבטח ברק באלוקי ישראל והאמין בנביאותה של דבורה,חלקו לו בשירה עמה, שנאמר: ותשר דבורה וברק בן אבינועם (שם ה פס׳ א) ויאמר אליה ברק אם תלכי עמי וגו׳ ותאמר הלוך אלך עמך וגו׳ שם ד פס׳ ח וט׳

And how were Zevulun and Naftali different from all the other Tribes for whom a great salvation was wrought to Yisrael through them? They said Naftali served Yaakov Avinu and found satisfaction. Zevulun served Yissachar and made for him a place of lodging. And because Barak trusted in the God of Yisrael and believed in the prophecy of Devorah, his portion is in song with her…

So because Barak listened to Devorah, he merited a place in her song, Shirat Devorah.

(Is this sounding misogynist yet? Didn’t think so.)

Immediately following this, the "infamous" verse finally appears:

ומה נשתנת אשת חבר הקיני מכל הנשים כולן שבאתה תשועה לישראל על ידיה? אמרו,אשה כשרה הייתה,ועושה רצון בעלה הייתה. מכאן אמרו: אין אשה כשרה אלא העושה רצון בעלה

And how was the wife of Chever the Kinite [Yael] different than all the other women for whom a great salvation was wrought to Yisrael through her? They said: She was a kosher woman and she would do her husband’s will. And from here they said: There is no wife as kosher as one who does her husband’s will.

On the heels of this, a discussion among Sages follows in which the importance and necessity of having a wife is emphasized (“a helpmate to stand him on his feet and a helpmate to illuminate his eyes”) and enumerate a myriad of favors wives do for their husbands.

The Rebbe of Lubavitch wrote the following in Likutei Sichot regarding the above:

"איזוהי אשה כשרה? כל שעושה רצון בעלה" תנא דבי אליהו רבא פ"ט.
שני פירושים למאמר זה.
א. הבעל ברובו של היום אינו בבית, צריכה איפוא האשה "לעשות" את רצון בעלה - להוריד את הרצון לידי עשיה בפועל. לבעל יש רצונות טובים בעניני חינוך הילדים, הכנסת אורחים, נתינת צדקה וכדומה; אך ההוצאה לפועל של רצונות אלו תלויה באשה.
ב. לפעמים, צריכה האשה "לעשות" - ליצור - את רצון בעלה. כשהבעל טרוד מאד וחסר לו הרצון לעשות את הראוי, חייבת האשה, בדרכי נועם ובדרכי שלום, לעשות ולגלות את רצונו הפנימי של הבעל, שהרי כל יהודי רוצה לעשות רצון קונו...
(משיחת ש"פ בלק תשכ"ב - לקו"ש ד עמ' 1069)

English Translation (emphases mine-MR):

Every Jewish home is a world of its own in which is manifest all the Ten Sefiros.[296] Just as within the supernal Sefiros and within the powers of our soul, there is an advantage to Binah over Chochmah (despite the fact that Binah receives influence from Chochmah), so too, within the Jewish home, there is a dimension of supremacy to the woman's position.
And the woman's position in the home reflects the functioning of these Sefiros. The Sefirah of Binah receives influence from Chochmah, and conveys that influence to the emotional attributes. So too, a woman receives direction from her husband, as indicated by our Sages' statement:[297] "Who is a proper wife? One that fulfills her husband's will." Nevertheless, the actual functioning of the home including the education of the children, hospitality to guests, generous gifts to tzedakah and the like are all the women's province.
A man is not at home during the major part of the day. He is busy with Torah study and prayer, or earning a livelihood. For his will to be "fulfilled," manifest in actual life, he must rely on his "proper wife."
Moreover, the Hebrew word translated as "fulfilled" osah also means "make." At times, a "proper wife" "makes her husband's will."[298] For there are times when the pressures and difficulties he faces drain him, and hinder him from desiring the correct things. At that time, "his proper wife" should in a gentle and pleasant manner mold her husband's will, coaxing to the surface the desire to fulfill G-d's will that lies within the heart of every Jew.[299]
"When a husband and wife are worthy, the Divine Presence rests among them."[300] When a Jewish home is conducted as "a Sanctuary in microcosm,"[301] the Divine Presence rests within. And since the "Divine Presence rests within," "no evil will dwell among you."[302] On the contrary, He will grant only good, overt and apparent good, as manifest in abundant blessings for children, health, and prosperity.

So the word "osah" can mean do, perform, manifest, or make. It depends.

Regardless, we see nothing here commanding a woman to be a blind, subservient slave to her husband’s every whim.

Now, let’s go on to the Gemara Nedarim 66b.

The Kosher Wife of Gemara Nedarim 66b

Here's the story so many women secretly and mistakenly hate:

בר בבל דסליק לארעא דישראל נסיב איתתא אמר לה בשילי לי תרי טלפי בשילה ליה תרי טלפי רתח עלה למחר אמר לה בשילי לי גריוא בשילה ליה גריוא אמר לה זילי אייתי לי תרי בוציני אזלת ואייתי ליה תרי שרגי אמר לה זילי תברי יתהון על רישא דבבא הוה יתיב בבא בן בוטא אבבא וקא דאין דינא אזלת ותברת יתהון על רישיה אמר לה מה הדין דעבדת אמרה ליה כך ציוני בעלי אמר את עשית רצון בעליך המקום יוציא ממך שני בנים כבבא בן בוטא
[נדרים, סו ב].

A Babylonian [Jew] went up to Eretz Yisrael.
He married a woman.
He said to her, "Cook for me 2 lentils" [meaning, a small amount of lentils].
She cooked for him 2 lentils [literally].
He got hotly angry at her.
The next day, he said to her, “Cook for me a large amount.”
She cooked for him a large amount [an enormous amount that one person could not possibly eat all of]
He said to her, “Go, bring me 2 בוציני/watermelons/squash/zucchinis.”
[This was the meaning of בוציני in Babylonian Aramaic.]
She went and brought him 2 candles/lamps. [Which is what בוציני meant in Eretz Yisrael’s Aramaic]
[At this point, he gets very frustrated and lashes out in sarcasm.] “Go break them on the head of the gate!”
Baba ben Buta was sitting at the gate and he was judging Jewish law and she broke them on his head.
He said, “What is this you have done?”
She said to him, “My husband commanded me thus.”
He said, “You have done the will of your husband. May God bring out from you 2 sons like Baba ben Buta.” [Meaning that he blessed her to merit to 2 sons like this tremendous Sage.]

Now, aside from the fact that English translations of the Gemara always come out as highly amusing, a superficial reading of the above makes it sound like you can sin however you want as long as you are sinning on the command of your husband.

But that’s not so.

(After all, that excuse didn’t let Naomi off the hook, did it?)

If you look at this story within the context of the rest of the daf, you’ll see that it is merely one in a series of stories demonstrating the self-nullification and humility of the Sages, especially for the sake of others’ shalom bayit/marital harmony.

Meaning, the focus and point of this story is to show how far an other people should go to facilitate harmony between a husband and wife. It is also a lesson in Azamra, as with the other stories in this daf, of the act of finding a merit within otherwise appalling behavior or an otherwise repellent person.

And in response to her abusive, degrading behavior, he blessed her!
(Which is exactly what true tzaddikim do, not because they are suckers, but because they realize that a knucklehead is merely an agent of God, and not acting completely on his or her own.)

In fact, the Ran comments:

שני בנים כבבא - כנגד תרין שרגי ואייתי הכא האי עובדא לאשמועינן חסידותיה דבבא בן בוטא כי היכי דאייתי הכא עובדא דרבן שמעון בן גמליאל ודרבי ישמעאל

Two sons like Baba: Like two lights and it brings here this story to teach of of the piety of Baba ben Buta, as was with the story of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel and Rebbi Yishmael [the other two Sages on this same daf who also displayed humility and goodness regarding the shalom bayit of others].

So again, its main lesson is about the spiritual greatness of the Sages.

For example, if some lady just came up and hit me on the head with two candles (or lamps, as the case may be) for no apparent reason as I was trying to teach fellow Jews halacha, I can’t imagine I would just ask her why she has done that. On the contrary, I imagine myself grabbing the candles out of her hand and breaking them, or yelling at her, or calling for help, or bursting into tears. I certainly wouldn’t respond with equanimity and then find a merit in her behavior.

See? That's why we follow the Sages' example and not mine.

Needless to say, there are still many questions on this story.

Was the woman genuinely unintelligent or was she passive-aggressive?
Did she really think her husband wanted her to knock one of the gadolei hador on the head?
Did she honestly think such a thing was permissible? (I mean, I cannot imagine myself going up to Rav Kanievsky and whacking him on the head with the excuse, “Well, my husband said I really should.”
It's mortifying for the husband for his wife to publicly assault a Sage and then state that her husband told her do so...THAT couldn't possibly have been his will!

The other commentators, like Tosfot and Rashi simply explain that the husband spoke out of anger and the wife understood him to mean something different than he actually meant (meaning that she was acting out of misunderstanding, not craftiness).

Really, the way the mefarshim describe it, it sounds more like a lesson to husbands not to say sarcastic things to their wives in the heat of anger.

The Pele Yoetz and Others on This Verse

To be completely upfront, the Pele Yoetz does bring this verse as a guide to women, and other rabbis also do. Yet the Pele Yoetz also uses it within the context of presenting a whole variety of options to women throughout his book. He doesn’t call upon wives to follow their husbands blindly, and he certainly doesn’t permit a wife to sin at the behest of her husband. On the contrary, he encourages women to defend their own rights in a nurturing and tactful way, and not merely capitulate to the whims of their husband, both for her own convenience and especially for his spiritual benefit, like to save him from Gehinnom.

Final Lessons from the Sages about a Wife & Her Husband's Will

So to sum up how a woman should understand the concept of "A kosher woman performs the will of her husband":

It depends.

Sometimes a woman needs to influence her husband against the will of his seichel and emotions to fulfill the deeper will of his soul.
Sometimes a woman needs to nurture and fulfill her husband's wishes when he can't.
Sometimes a woman needs to follow his opinion in opposition to her own.

A woman needs to use her chachmah and binah, her wisdom and insight, to decide upon the best course of action in regard to her husband.

Blind subservience has no place in a Jewish marriage; Chazal is clear about this.

Involving God via lots of prayer and heart-to-heart talks help the most with developing proper chachmah and binah.
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And please don't forget the other big lesson from this Gemara:
Forgo your own kavod for the sake of another couple's shalom bayit!
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And the final lesson?

For the love of God, PLEASE STOP WARPING THE WORDS OF THE SAGES AND THE TORAH TO SERVE AS A BATTERING RAM FOR YOUR OWN AGENDA AND EGO!

Actually, dear reader - no offense to you personally. YOU are probably not the one warping things around...

In Closing...

Well, I hope this clarifies things. My Aramaic is pretty poor, but I did the best I could and my husband generously helped me when he was available to do so. (He learns full-time and works almost full-time, so his time at home is understandably limited.)

It would’ve been much better if someone genuinely qualified to understand Gemara would have taken this on, but I just never saw that anyone did.
(And yes, I asked a couple of people about this.)
If you're qualified to know, then please hop aboard and correct or add onto anything written here.
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And the next time someone tries to use this wonderful concept to shame you or confuse you or demean you or make God and Judaism look bad, you’ll know how they’re wrong and why.

May we all merit true understanding of the words of our Torah and our Sages.

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How to REALLY Daven for Your Husband

30/5/2017

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One thing I found very frustrating when listening to perturbed wives was that therapists or advisers often labeled these tormented wives as “self-serving” or told these long-suffering women that “you only care about yourself” because of the wife’s insistence that her husband change behaviors that were causing her a lot of pain.

“You only want him to change for you,” these wives were told. “You don’t really care about him.”

The thing is, it’s almost impossible to separate one’s personal interest from the bad behavior of one’s spouse. If a husband’s behavior is causing enormous distress to the wife, then how can she filter out her own self-interest from her desire for him to change?

Furthermore, maybe she really doesn’t care about him so much at this point. If he’s been consistently distressing her, maybe she just wants him to knock it off and let her live in peace. Maybe she’s concerned about how his behavior is affecting the kids. Maybe she wouldn’t mind getting divorced, but doesn’t feel like the hassle is worth it.

What then?

The thing is, I understand what these well-meaning-yet-pretentious advisers mean. And technically, they’re right: Ideally, we should be focused on what’s good for the other person, and not just what’s more comfortable or pleasant for us.

Why Even the Most Caring Nagging Doesn't Work

Additionally, you can sense if a person is encouraging you to change because it’s better for you or because it’s better for them. And believe me, if a person is asking you to change for their own convenience, you feel like they’re just cramming you in a box and don’t care about you at all.

This makes you dig in your heels even more.

For example, picture a smoker being nagged by his wife about how bad his smoking smells and how much it bothers her and makes her cough. When that doesn’t work, she explains the damage smoking causes him (as if he didn’t know), which just sounds manipulative to him. He knows that it’s her own discomfort she cares about. Later on, she tells him how smoking can harm their children.

“Nu,” he says, “so I won’t smoke near their bedrooms. Anyway, all the pollution from the cars and factories outside is worse than a couple of cigarettes in the home. Maximum, I’ll open a window or bring home one of those air-cleaner things. What’s the big deal?”

Even if the wife in the above example starts off with the damage smoking causes him, rather than the discomfort it causes her, he can still sense that she’s bothered by the way his smoking affects her, and not just bothered by his potential suffering.

Finally, the wife in the above example is absolutely right: Her husband should stop smoking!

But he won’t.

The Benefit of Compassion...for You

And the above is just one example. There are husbands who really could be learning more, eat too much of the wrong thing, irresponsible and immature husbands, husbands who do drugs, are involved in criminal activities, fly into rages, neglect their wife and children, laze around like a good-for-nothing, constantly kvetch and whine like second-graders, suffer from mental illness and refuse to get help, act like helpless pansies, flirt (if not worse) with other women, spend their free time looking at things they shouldn’t, are critical and demanding, are addicted to something, and a whole variety of behaviors, whether minor or major.

And the wife is absolutely right to demand that a husband change in any of the above areas—both for hers and children’s sake and for his.

Many times, a wife gets someone else to talk to the husband, but this often bears mixed results.

For such a difficult husband, the Pele Yoetz recommends that she try talking to him herself:

…at an eit ratzon [a favorable time] in a pleasant manner, with charm and kindness, this certainly bears more fruits because in truth, they said, “A soft tongue will break a bone.” (Mishlei/Proverbs 25:16)

(Note: Rashi interprets “soft tongue” as “with prayer and supplications” and “bone” as “the severity of a decree.” So according to Rashi, the verse reads: “Prayer and supplication will break the severity of a decree.”)

Yet it’s rare that any of the above types change their behavior just because their wife says it’s hurting her.

Similarly, the Pele Yoetz makes no promises and it’s clear that the above is just a suggestion that is likely to be more effective (“certainly bears more fruits”) than other actions the wife can take, yet the Pele Yoetz ultimately encourages a wife to turn to Hashem as the most effective action:

Included in the love of a woman for her husband is that she should pray for him before God. Since the prayer of a woman emanates from her tender heart and her tears are near, if she calls out to God from the innermost walls of her heart, certainly her prayers will bear fruits.

A woman must also pray for her children because in the well-being of her husband and children, she will find peace and well-being.

And who will have pity on them more than she?

(Note: The word translated here as “pity” is “l’chus” or לחוס, which doesn’t have an ideal English equivalent, but it’s more empathetic and less pathetic than “pity” implies.)

But how can a wife actually filter out a chunk of her own self-interest in order daven for her husband’s well-being? How can she pray for her husband’s well-being from a place of pity and compassion for him?

First of all, the Pele Yoetz assumes a wife feels profound love and compassion for her husband, even though not all wives do today, especially if a wife has been struggling with consistently hurtful behavior from her husband.

And frankly, I don’t know how to tell a wife to feel this way if the feelings just aren’t there. (And like I said, those tender feelings of love and compassion simply may not be there through no fault of her own.)

Judaism is a lot about action and being proactive, whether spiritually or practically. So I think this is a situation where explaining things isn’t very helpful. On the contrary, it’s smarter and more effective to just start doing it, and then you’ll see how it works and how your inner feelings and attitude change.

Needless to say, it’s easier to make this transition if your husband is basically a decent guy, but just has some annoying traits that are holding him back from being his best. If your husband is a real ogre, you may not be able to cultivate these lofty feelings, but the davening can still be very helpful for you to achieve a better outcome, whether that outcome is shalom bayit or divorce or something else.

Like I said in a previous article How to be a REALLY Good Wife, we don’t know all the tikkunim for which God put us here. And it’s certainly difficult to know what other people need to rectify and how. So all this is meant to be helpful, but even the Pele Yoetz himself doesn’t guarantee a desired outcome.

He merely says that davening is often extremely effective and that he expects it to be effective within marriage too, but some people do suffer here a lot despite their best spiritual efforts and that’s impossible to deny.

Tips on Davening for Your Husband’s Sake

Start off with something that benefits him, but has no connection to you.
It doesn't matter how ridiculous or insignificant it seems.

Here are some suggestions:

He should have clear traffic any time he travels
Green lights at every intersection
A geshmak learning session
Any elevator should always arrive for him immediately
Finding favor in the eyes of everyone he meets
No technical malfunctions
Not getting caught in the rain
His shoes should be really comfortable
He should always be in a shady spot (whether cloud-cover or a tree) when outside in the sun
Your own idea

Now, if your husband is the kind of guy who takes out his frustration with traffic on you or the kids, then of course you do have personal interest in the above going well for him. That’s also fine.

Spiritual efforts tend to be about what you can do, and not pretending to be on a level or in a situation where you aren’t.

The point is to just start taking even the smallest steps in the ideal direction.

In addition to the davening, when doing the above, you’ll usually notice a change in yourself, however slight. You’ll start to feel more altruistic toward your husband in some way and this is good.

Even if your husband is genuinely a big problem, it’s much healthier and maintains your personal equilibrium to feel pained on his behalf (especially if he is too sunk in his own bad middot to be pained on his own behalf) and go in emuna with Hashem rather than:
“I hate this big, stupid jerk. Why can’t God have married me to a normal person?” or “Men stink.”

The Pele Yoetz also recommends maintaining the awareness that your husband's problems or bad middot aren't your problem, per se, and therefore, his badness doesn't reflect on you personally.

I want to emphasize that self-interest isn’t necessarily bad. The Pele Yoetz certainly acknowledges that a wife can and should also daven for her own self-interest.

A Summary of Principles

Looking around and listening, there does seem to be a lack of genuine compassion in a lot of marriages and a lack of real heartfelt davening—which is actually a problem in every aspect of a Jew’s life today, not just marriage.

Also, I don’t know who I’m talking to. In such a wide audience, you’re going to have a variety of situations.

For example, I’ve personally encountered:

wives married to decent husbands who don’t appreciate their husband's decency.
wives married to really good men with much better middot than the wife and the wife doesn’t see it at all (and thus treats him like dirt)
Problematic wives married to problematic husbands (but she thinks she’s basically fine and that he is the only real problem)
wives who know they need to and genuinely try to improve their general character married to duds, jerks, or ogres
wives with exemplary character married to ogres

…and much more.

So the above advice is based on classic Torah sources and personal observations and experiences, but may need to be tweaked to fit your individual circumstance.

What works for one person will not necessarily work for you and vice versa.

In other words, this post offers general principles based on Chazal and not modern psychology, which frees you to adjust any advice therein to suit your own tikkunim and current spiritual level and to keep growing at the pace set for you by God.

The main thing is that you merit to do whatever is the right thing for your personal situation.

To paraphrase a nice prayer appearing in many siddurim:
May Hashem help us all to complete our rectifications in this lifetime without trials or disgrace.

Photo courtesy of Mark Lord Photography

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How to REALLY be a Good Wife

28/5/2017

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When I was first getting married, I happily took in lots of advice.

I wanted to be as close to achieving the perfect frum wifely ideal as possible!

And all the advice sounded very good.

And I was very idealistic.

But it didn’t always work out well. In fact, like with some of the parenting advice I received later, some of the marital advice seemed to backfire.

When I young and newly married, one rebbetzin insisted that good communication demanded that I force my husband to parrot back everything I tell him (well, not everything…just the stuff I felt necessary for him to understand and remember). I was really uncomfortable with this because it seemed very condescending. When I tentatively shared my hesitancy with the rebbetzin, she seemed confounded.

“Whyyyy?” she said in that creepy, utterly perplexed, vowel-dragging intonation some rabbis and rebbetzins adopt when being questioned.

So I very hesitantly explained, asking her if maybe it could be interpreted as condescending?

She looked dumbstruck. “Whyyyy would he ever consider such a thing con-de-sceeeending?” she asked.

Suddenly, the implication seemed to be that there was something wrong with my husband, not with the method. I felt really bad that I’d inadvertently engaged in a form of lashon hara about my own husband.

Intimidated by her and disoriented by the sudden turn in the conversation, I tried to stammer out my thoughts on the matter, but I didn’t want to offend her. After all, she was a very chashuv person and she was taking the time to help out little ol’ me.

She replied by saying, “Well, I can’t think of what could possibly be condescending about asking a person to do that!” She paused, then said, “Ohhhh…maybe for a Sephardi man, you feel it’s condescending? Because his kavod is very important to him?”
Oh, this was just getting worse. No, that’s not what I was thinking at all! Now this conversation was turning into lashon hara about a whole group!

“No,” I said. “No, it’s not that at all.”

My mind rushed to find a good explanation. The truth is that I couldn’t imagine my 3rd-generation American liberal Ashkenazi father responding well to my mother telling him to parrot back whatever she just said, as if he was some kind of errant kindergartener or something. But I didn’t want to have my words twisted into lashon hara about my father—it was bad enough that it happened regarding my husband. Anyway, why was this suddenly turning into a cultural issue?

I took a deep breath and gave it my best shot:
“The truth is, I don’t think…um…I’m not sure if I would like to be talked to like that either… I mean, if someone would want to make sure I understood them, I…I’m not sure if I’d understand why they’d need me to do it like that. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say…”

Not terribly coherent, of course, but I was trying my best. By using myself as the example, I meant to convey that this wasn’t a gender or cultural issue. See, Ms. Rebbetzin? Even an Ashkenazi female might find it condescending.

Yet now the rebbetzin turned her beady eye on me. “Ohhhhh,” she said, knowingly—and distastefully. “Well.”

I squirmed. Apparently, I must be a gaavadik piece of dirt to consider something so innocuous to be so condescending.

(Now I know better, but that was then.)

Anyway, after some more melodramatic vowel-dragging, she convinced me that the method was just fine, if only I’d just get over my own (gaavah-based) reservations.

My perceptions were wrong, hers were right.

She was the big important FFB rebbetzin married to a chashuv rav and I was just a young stupid baal teshuvah girl from America.

She didn’t say that outright, but the message was clear. (And it was a common message I heard repeatedly from all different rabbis and rebbetzins in different versions throughout the years.)

So next time my husband and I needed to sort some things out, I took a deep breath and asked him to repeat back to me what I just said.

And guess what? There really is no nice and uncondescending way to do exactly this.

And guess what? He was offended! And he didn’t know what I wanted from him.

Finally, I apologized and explained where I got it from and he just sighed and grumbled something about interfering rebbetzins.

In the end, he wasn't upset with me, he was upset with her.

Newsflash! Rabbis are For Chickens

My husband never was into this whole running to a rav or rebbetzin for every little thing. He didn’t grow up with it and he never saw anyone doing it in his Moroccan community. People went to the graves of tzaddikim to pray or to the tzaddikim themselves to receive blessings and get advice for truly complex halachic issues—but not day-to-day stuff.

As his mother once told me, “In Morocco, we (she meant Jewish women) didn’t go ask rabbis and rebbetzins all the time—we already knew stuff by ourselves!”

She also meant that women turned to other women who intimately knew and cared about them for advice and even halachic direction.

(Just as an aside, my mother-in-law was also perplexed that women needed official sessions with a certified instructor to learn about taharat hamishpacha. You do need proper instruction for the actual halacha of it, but the hashkafic aspects of these classes can be problematic…)

Several Ashkenazi Yerushalmi women told me, “We have a saying: ‘Rabbis are for chickens!’ "

What??!!!

They explained:
"If you have a specific question about Jewish law (like a question about the kashrus of a chicken you’re preparing to eat), you ask a rabbi. But advice? How can he know what you—especially a woman!—is supposed to do? Is he in your situation? Is he in your head? Does he know what you experience? How can he really know what you need to do?”

But I’d been indoctrinated that consulting with rabbis and rebbetzins for advice (not halacha, but mere advice) is the age-old Jewish tradition (it’s not) and that something terrible will happen if I don't consult with someone greater and wiser than I (not true).

So it was hard to let go of.

Anyway, I went back to the rebbetzin and as tactfully as I could, explained what happened. She was nonplussed to hear that her method was indeed found insulting.

“Ahhhh,” she said sagely. “I guess it’s because he’s Sephaaaardi. Noooow, I understand. Okay. Everything’s clear. This just won’t work with Sephardi men; they can’t handle it. Okay, fine. I just learned something new.”

It’s seems so ridiculous that I fell for her garbage back then.
It’s such obviously passive-aggressive sniping and sinat chinam.

We're the Chosen People, Not the Cloned People

Another problem is all the “advice” and “shitahs” (methods) and taking verses out of context and misapplying Gemaras and blah, blah, blah.

It really messes with your head.

ESPECIALLY the verses and Gemaras taken out of context and skewed to fit the speaker’s agenda. Many, if not most, of the people quoting stuff supposedly about and for women have not actually looked into how the mefarshim themselves interpret these sources.

In addition, for a lot of things, but especially for child-rearing and marriage, two people cannot apply the same whole chunk of advice or shitah.

Yes, many people offering courses and classes and advice really do want to help. And yes, you can definitely pick up some good stuff in what they have to offer.

But you’ll also get some head-wrecking stuff in the mix.

And depending on you, your spouse, your child(ren), and your specific situation (health, finances, community, or anything else), the stuff that worked wonders for someone else may slam you into an abyss that is very hard to scrape out of.

We’re all too different and even more essentially, we all have different tikkunim to rectify via our relationships and roles in life.

In a nutshell, you aren't necessarily supposed to be doing what your neighbor is doing and she's not necessarily supposed to be doing what you're supposed to be doing.

Don't Trust Agendas...Trust God!

But I learned with time.

At this point, I’m very, very picky about shiurim and what I read. It’s very hard to be a rabbi or rebbetzin and I know because I’ve actually been a rebbetzin for a blessedly short time. And, to put it politely, it’s extremely challenging to maintain your spiritual equilibrium in such a position. (I’m not talking about gadolei hador, but regular rabbis and rebbetzins of a community, pulpit, or kiruv.)

Baruch Hashem, God made many of these people so unbearable that I ended up turning directly to Him and to classic Torah sources (like Duties of the Heart and so on) in way I wouldn't have otherwise.

And because Western society has become increasingly agenda-driven, it’s hard for people from such societies to keep their agendas off their hashkafah.
(Getting agenda-free takes a lot of emuna and self-awareness. Ask me how I know...)

And the following is very important to realize:
The classic Torah books and commentaries were written by tzaddikim.
Your rabbi or rebbetzin may be a good person (or maybe not...), but it is VERY unlikely that he or she is a tzaddik.

So who is actually going to impart to you true wisdom?

The tzaddik?
Or the guy with a certificate that only proves he's got good academic skills...and his wife?

So, with a few exceptions, I try to stick to stuff that was written a couple of centuries or more ago. And I’m much happier now!

Anyway...what are wives supposed to be doing?

Davening! Praying! Tefillah!

When I read original sources written by tzaddikim a century or more ago, this is what they emphasize for women: tefillah.

Yes, they also talk about actual behavioral things, like nurturing, honoring, and forgiving your husband, and treating him with patience.

(And their standards for how husbands should treat their wives are even higher their standards are for wives. But we’re talking about the wifely role right now.)

At the same time, the Sages were also very aware that there are difficult, temperamental, and even abusive husbands.

(For example, the Pele Yoetz states that in the case of a very abusive husband, it is “fitting for whoever has the authority to punish [the abusive husband] to the best of their ability” and that it is important to help an abused wife get divorced if that’s what she wants because it is “a great mitzvah” to “save the oppressed from the hand of their oppressors.”)

Regardless of how good or successful he is or isn't, the Sages emphasize davening for your husband.
Rav Eliezer Papo in particular expounds on this in Pele Yoetz:

She should pour out her soul before God day after day. Perhaps God will be gracious and her prayers will bear fruits to return her husband to the good path. Then she too will find menucha/rest.

Included in the love of a woman for her husband is that she should pray for him before God. Since the prayer of a woman emanates from her tender heart and her tears are near, if she calls out to God from the innermost walls of her heart, certainly her prayers will bear fruits.

A woman must also pray for her children because in the well-being of her husband and children, she will find peace and well-being.

And who will have pity on them more than she?

(And in a later book, he composed special prayers for wives to pray for their husbands.)

Rav Papo's words are very moving.

It doesn’t matter whether your husband is best thing that ever happened to you or if he’s just a heavy millstone around your neck or anything in between.

A wife’s tefillah for her husband is so incredibly powerful.

Even if you're very happy in your marriage and couldn't ask for more, you should still daven for the welfare of your husband in his life and health.

Notice that the Pele Yoetz assumes that no one can feel more compassion for a woman’s husband and children than she.

Not her husband’s rav, not his siblings, not his best friends, not his rosh yeshivah, and not even his own parents--HER.

This isn't always true, of course, but it often is true.

So if your husband is doing well, you can talk to Hashem about him succeeding even more. And if your husband is faltering in some area—whether it’s his livelihood, his physical health, his mental health, his character, his Torah learning, his spirituality, or anything else—you can have some heart-to-heart talks with Hashem about that.

You both benefit.

Now, it needs to be acknowledged: We don’t know what our tikkunim are exactly.

Oftentimes, pouring out your heart to Hashem leads to improved circumstances in your marriage, but sometimes it results in a divorce with a happy second marriage later on.
But then again, some people don’t seem to get a break.
There are no guarantees.

But looking around, I do see that turning to Hashem on behalf of your husband is much more effective in every way than all these books and classes and “experts.”

May Hashem grant feelings of true love and unity throughout the entire Jewish Nation.

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Breaking Out of the Big Lie about Motherhood

22/5/2017

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Girls in my generation were encouraged to push off marriage and child-bearing because that particular institution was considered “limiting.”

The path was set thusly:

Thou shalt graduate high school.
Thou shalt enter college and pick a major.
Thou shalt graduate college.
If necessary, thou shalt continue college to get an even higher degree.
Thou shalt fly/backpack around to different places in between semesters.
Heavy-duty partying on the weekends is another college requirement, but just don't let on to your parents exactly how much you're abusing & debasing yourself.
Thou shalt get a serious boyfriend at some point.
Thou shalt shack up together to see if marriage is a possibility OR because it’s more convenient.
Thou shalt get married ONLY AFTER dating/shacking up together for a couple of years.
Thou shalt continue to work and prevent conception after the wedding to save up for the one or two children you plan to have AND to solidify your marriage AND really make sure your relationship has staying power BEFORE you have children (because, for some reason, the 2-7 years you were already together wasn’t enough to ascertain all this).
After a couple of years (or more) of marriage, you can finally have a child or two—IF you want and REALLY feel ready for it.

(Anyone who veered from this set path was looked down on as “impulsive” or “making a big mistake” or “making poor choices” or “can’t settle down” or has psychological issues or whatever.)

And a lot of women got pregnant at that late age with no problem.
On the other hand, it’s well-known that after age 35, fertility problems increase.

Free to be You, But Not to be Me

Personally, I ended up living a life that I didn’t really want to live under the guise of being “free to choose” and having no gender-imposed “limitations.”

But if you look at the path set for girls, it’s a very narrow path that tramples over years of your life and ultimately trips you into the very serious limitation of finding a spouse and having children only when you see age 40 up ahead.

Of course we all know that people can start looking for a spouse and having children at age 20, and yet they still suffer years of singlehood or infertility. People can also get married young and then get divorced or widowed.

Nothing’s guaranteed.

But it is a well-known social and biological fact that the earlier you start in the domestic part of the game, the easier it goes—barring some exceptions, as already stated.

I remember my orthodontist, whom I was very fond of, telling me that she and her husband put off having a baby until they were close to 40 because “I wanted to make sure that if I couldn’t just go out to dinner or the theater, I wouldn’t be resentful.”

I heard that kind of thing ALL THE TIME.

So as a teenage girl, it sounded mature. And people I liked and respected said it.

But in the back of mind, it bothered me.

Yet I wasn’t really allowed to think about it in a negative way.

Finding fault in that mentality was anti-feminist.

And being anti-feminist was the same as being a bad, backwards, abusive person.

The Great Big Lie

So the Great Big Lie is that your life “ends” when you have children.

Okay, yes...children are limiting.

But "limiting" is not "life-ending."

You may not be able to go out to dinner that night or even that week because you’re too exhausted, because the baby’s teething or sick, or because there isn’t a babysitter available for that particular night or week.

Yeah, that’s the reality.

But it’s so weird that NO ONE puts off college, or a medical internship, or ANYTHING else because it’s “limiting.” And exams, internships, job interviews, work hours, job demands, office politics, etc, are all incredibly limiting and stressful!

So what was the gagged thought bothering me in the back of my mind?

It’s the fact that your own child isn’t worth it.

Your baby isn’t worth missing dinner or a movie for.

Everything else—college, academic degrees, internships, work, travel—is worth doing NOW. Despite costs, time, and inconvenience, it’s all worth doing and doing early on.

Only your child isn’t worth it.

So where am I leading up to?

Bliss and Betrayal

I became frum and then got married at 23, and had my first child at 24 (which is normal to late, depending what frum community you ask, but REALLY EARLY in secular society).

And one of my first thoughts during my son's first day of life was:
“This is so great! I wish I’d done this sooner! Why didn’t anybody ever say how great this was?”

And I felt kind of betrayed, like I’d been lied to my whole life (which, indeed, I had been).

And I felt so lucky that Hashem plucked me out of that world of lies and agendas to bring me to a place where I could experience this true happiness.

Now I want to be very clear: Things did not go smoothly.

The labor and birth was a nightmare and the recovery wasn’t much better.

The nursing was so painful for so long and, after expecting to love nursing, I was so disappointed at how unpleasant and wearying it actually was.

Yet despite all that, I was overjoyed with my son and deeply convinced that he was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

And I genuinely felt that everything else I’d ever done was meaningless compared to him.

Now, people told me in response, “Okay, you wish you’d done this sooner, but were you ready before now?”

And I wavered on the answer. Because the answer is, “Kind of…but kind of not.”

The reason why I might not have been ready at, say, eighteen is because I was conditioned my whole life NOT to be ready for children before thirty.

I was actively conditioned NOT to be ready.

And so were most of the other girls in my generation.

We were always given the message that being a mother is SO HARD and SO LIMITING and SO EXHAUSTING.

And thankless.
(Of course, the "thankless" aspect was only hinted at or joked about. People still gave lip-service to the idea of gratitude for their children.)

And because of that, you need to put it off as late as possible so that you can be “really ready” and only then, will you have a chance of doing it “right.”

And that was the Big Whitewash:
Children are sooo important that you need to delay having them until you are “really ready” because raising children is sooo important, it needs to be “done right.”

Wow, it sounds like people really value children, right?

But they don’t.

Raising Children with "Esav Dearest"

Like everything else in the big fake culture of Esav, it’s tinted to look good and sound good. Really, the main reason people either put off childbearing or don’t have children at all is because they’re afraid of the limitations and work that comes with all the rewards.

After all, how many "afterschool specials" did I see on TV in which someone screamed at a pregnant teenage girl:
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO RUSH TO THE HOSPITAL AT FOUR IN THE MORNING BECAUSE YOUR BABY HAS A HIGH FEVER??!!! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE UP ALL NIGHT WITH A CRYING BABY? AND THE ENDLESS DIAPERS—UGH! FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!”

(The show always ended with her happily giving the baby up for adoption, no second thoughts or regrets.)

But the thing is, no TV show ever had someone screaming:
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE AT THE HOSPITAL FOR YOUR INTERNSHIP AND MAKE LIFE-ENDANGERING DECISIONS AT FOUR IN THE MORNING? DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE UP ALL NIGHT AT A COLLEGE PARTY TAKING CARE OF A VOMITING OR UNCONSCIOUS FRIEND WHO DRANK WAY TOO MUCH??!! AND THE ENDLESS COLLEGE DEBT—UGH! FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!”

Also, you see couples in real life who actually discuss (or even argue) whose turn it is to change the baby’s diaper each time, making it seem like it’s this crushing chore, like cleaning out an elephant stall or something.

And that’s not to mention all the shows in which a parent always responded to a crying baby by bursting into tears herself and fighting an overwhelming urge to kill her baby.

So I went into motherhood nervous about diapers and I also wondered whether my baby’s cries would turn me into a homicidal monster.

So I was surprised to see that with a few exceptions, changing little baby disposable diapers wasn’t onerous, I never need to rush a baby to the hospital for any reason (older kids who fell on their lip or collarbone—yes; newborn babies—no), and that colicky crying babies aren’t something that MUST happen (and even if they do, both the baby and the mother almost always survive the experience).

And I say this all with a big, heartfelt BARUCH HASHEM. (Bli ayin hara!)

Why? Because these things can happen. And they do happen.

But my point is that they aren’t a given.

Yes, I have friends who were so traumatized by their baby’s unending colic that they put off having more children for a few years. (Completely understandable, BTW.) I also have friends who rushed a baby to the hospital at four in the morning for a high fever. In fact, I have friends whose babies were born with problems and needed to be rushed to the hospital many, many times, may Hashem have mercy.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And yes, I sometimes get sick of changing diapers, especially if it’s in the middle of the night or if the child has tummy troubles.

But in the culture I grew up, we were indoctrinated that regarding babies, the WORST was SURE to happen.

That’s my point.

The Thankful Privilege, Not the Thankless Chore

Furthermore, having hard days or grueling weeks doesn’t mean that motherhood stinks and isn’t worth it.

Just because you'll sometimes want a break from it all doesn't mean it's something to be dreaded.

Just because you'll sometimes be exasperated, bored, frustrated, or disappointed doesn't mean that your life is “over.”

(Especially in the frum community, look at how many mothers of all ages and at all stages are working and taking classes and getting degrees. Sometimes, they even overdo it, if you ask me. But you get my drift.)

If I’d been smart enough and brave enough after high school, I’d have gone straight to a baal teshuvah seminary for two years to shore up my frumkeit, and then gotten married and ended up having kids a couple of years earlier than I actually did.

And I wish I had.

How often do you hear someone say that nowadays?

You’re not allowed to say it.

But that’s how I honestly feel.

(Anyway, it would’ve been better for my husband too. He’d been on shidduchim for almost 7 years by the time we met. Knocking off a couple of years of that aggravation would’ve been nicer for him too, eh?)

And that’s it.

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When a Woman's "Right" is a Moral Wrong

10/5/2017

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When I was in college in America, there was a girl in our daily seminar whom I'll call “Toni.” She was a petite brunette with a gutsy, exuberant personality that bordered on obnoxious.
But she was so good-natured that everyone liked (or at least tolerated) her anyway.

She was also passionately and fanatically liberal.

Raised by a rabidly feminist single mother, Toni threw herself into battle for the liberal side in every class discussion.

Abortion is obviously the pet cause of every feminist extremist, and Toni’s mother had been no exception.

Except that her mother's abortion history was exceptional, even for the craziest fanatic.

One day in class, we were debating abortion and, as can be expected, the discussion went nuclear. Toni thrashed out all the standard talking points in favor of abortion, including the “right” to abortion for any reason and at any stage of the pregnancy.

Due to Toni’s increasing vehemence, people started quieting out of the debate. While nearly everyone present supported a "right" to abortion, most people also felt that having an abortion for what they considered a weak reason (like gender selection) or past a certain point pushed certain moral boundaries.

I seem to remember Toni up on a chair, shouting, and thrusting her finger at a male classmate who was calmly and somewhat anxiously trying to reason with her, validating her feelings, but just pleading for a fair hearing of the different angles of abortion.

But Toni only grew louder and more forceful about her position.

Finally, Toni shouted something like, “Abortion is a woman’s inalienable right that NO ONE has any right to take away! AND I KNOW ALL ABOUT ABORTION BECAUSE MY MOTHER HAD THIRTY* ABORTIONS AND I TOTALLY DEFEND HER RIGHT TO EACH AND EVERY ONE EVEN THOUGH I—I…”

Her voice cracked.

The room went silent as everyone just stared at Toni, who crumpled back down onto her chair, trying to hold back the tears that started streaming down her face.

Then she said, “Even though I always wondered why I wasn’t aborted too. When I was five or six, I asked my mom why she didn’t abort me, like she had and continued to do with her other pregnancies. ‘Is it because you knew it was me?’ I asked. But of course she didn’t know it was me. I was just lucky. And I don't know why. It was all so random.”

She looked around helplessly at us. “I’ve always gone through life with this feeling like I just missed the knife. But really, I should have been aborted too. I shouldn’t even be here. But I am. And who knows why?” She paused, then forced a smile through her pain. “And I always wondered about my siblings and who they would’ve been?”

“It sounds kinda like you have survivor’s guilt,” someone said gently.

“Yeah,” Toni said with a vigorous nod and a rueful laugh as she rubbed off her tears with the back of her hand. “I’ve always had this major survivor’s guilt. How was I the only one to escape the knife? Or whatever it was…”

That same day, two maternal girls named Julie and Nancy took Toni under their wing. They didn’t look like the maternal, nurturing type with their jeans and plaid flannel shirts (and Nancy enjoying a good day at the shooting range), but they both saw that vulnerable little Toni desperately needed some nurturing.

Women's Liberation as Ego Liberation

Unfortunately, radical feminists usually make terrible mothers. (Actually, even mainstream feminists often make terrible mothers.) They’re incredibly self-centered, resentful, and demanding. And what happens is that their children must validate their mother’s every action and view—even if it hurts the child—or lose that mother’s love completely.

This is why you have children of non-nurturing career-obsessed materialistic women who proclaim their undying admiration of their mother and insist they loved how she raised them (though she just shunted them out of her way).

If the children don’t do this, their mother wholly rejects and despises them.
(This is exactly what happened to Rebecca Walker, daughter of feminist icon Alice Walker, who wrote the celebrated The Color of Purple.)

In Toni’s case, Toni even needed to defend the killing of her unborn siblings and the theoretical annihilation of her own existence in utero in order to keep her mother’s love. Especially with no father around, young Toni would have subconsciously realized as a child that she was wholly dependent on this heartless woman for her bare existence.

And that’s pretty terrifying.

Baruch Hashem, the survival-driven façade of defending her mother’s “right” to commit heart-breaking depravity simply crumbled.

That day, Julie and Nancy headed over to Toni’s apartment to spend the night there, making sure Toni was okay.

The rest of the year, they made a cute threesome, with Julie and Nancy affectionately calling Toni “Li’l Ton-Ton” and stuff like that. They weren’t overbearing; they were gentle, supportive, and honest and just what Toni needed. And while Toni kept her outgoing, high-spirited nature, she lost the blaring coarse behavior she used to sometimes engage in.

The Freedom to be a Slave - How Liberating!

But it was true that in the encroaching Leftist environment of the Nineties, Toni wasn’t allowed to have her say until it just came gushing out by mistake. You really weren’t allowed to have normal feelings or even basic morality. (Sort of like the Nazi era or the Communist era.) A lot of people, especially girls, were in a lot of pain, but they weren't allowed to acknowledge the real reason why because that would've demanded healthy accountability from the adults of either gender.

Despite all the liberal propaganda, you weren't really allowed a choice and there was no real freedom.

You were just a slave to the agenda of the most degenerate, selfish people who were running things, whether it was government, social programs, schools, the media, and all the regular people influenced by them.

And that’s why I left it all behind.
_____________________________
*While I’m writing this to the best of my memory, it still happened over 20 years ago, so maybe some details are off. Even if Toni's mother didn’t have 30 abortions, it was still some shockingly high number that left even the most degenerate Leftist wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

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Creating a Victim Mentality: A How-To Guide

28/4/2017

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How is the victim culture or victim mentality created?

By insisting that people are victims even when they’re not
By excusing all bad behavior with the perpetrator’s story of suffering (which is likely real, but not an excuse)
By insist on doing both the above regarding all your pet issues, even when you need to turn into a total hypocrite and contradict your own values.

Today, we’re just going to focus on the first:

Insisting that people are victims even when they’re not.

When I was in high school, a teacher wanted to discuss in class discrimination against pregnant girls.

She wanted to highlight how pregnant girls were treated unequally compared to the guys who got them pregnant.

Now, my high school had a high rate of pregnant girls and none of us saw any discrimination or inequality.

But she insisted there was anyway.

So the teacher brought out the time-honored example:
“If a girl gets pregnant, she’s kicked off the cheerleading team. But the boy who got her pregnant can still play football.”

We all looked at each other. We’d heard this one a thousand times already, but only on forums impossible to confront—like TV programs.
(This was before you could tweet TV shows and stuff.)

Finally, one brave girl ventured to say what we were all thinking:
“Well, um, isn’t it dangerous for the girl and the baby to perform stuff like, you know, human pyramids and cartwheels, while pregnant?”

Ah! At last! At last someone asked that question! We'd always wondered, but could never ask. It was like the story in which a little boy finally pointed out that the emperor had no clothes.

Our brave classmate, Charlene, continued: “I mean, the guy isn’t pregnant, so he can play football. If he was pregnant, then being tackled and stuff would be dangerous and he’d get kicked off the team, too…right?” Hunched-shouldered, she looked around at us hopefully. We nodded and smiled reassuringly at her. That’s right, Charlene! You go, girl!

Then we looked expectantly at the teacher.

She looked startled for a moment, but quickly recovered and smiled superciliously. “But she’s not kicked off the team for health reasons,” said the teacher, “but because she’s pregnant.”

We looked at each other in confusion. Right! Because she’s pregnant! What’s wrong with that?

The teacher smirked at our seeming obtuseness. “It’s because they don’t want a pregnant girl on the team representing the school,” she explained. “It looks bad.”

“But you don’t even show at the beginning of pregnancy,” attempted another girl. “There’s no reason to kick a girl off the team because of how it looks because, um, you don't look pregnant.”

“Right!” said the teacher. “She’s only kicked off because she is pregnant, even though she’s not showing. The girl is penalized—but the boy is not.”

Now we were confused again.

“Well, that’s what I meant,” said that second girl. “I think it’s not healthy to be on the team when pregnant, like also at the beginning of pregnancy. Cheerleading is pretty strenuous and stuff. And maybe—maybe she could lose the baby.”

Then our hero, Charlene, said, “Also, do you even want to be doing backflips when you’re pregnant? I mean, don’t you get nauseous and stuff when you’re pregnant?”

“I think you’re tired a lot, too,” said another girl. “I think maybe you don’t feel like jumping up and down and waving pom-poms and stuff when you’re pregnant.”

“Okay,” said the teacher. “But she can just stand there. She doesn’t have to move.”

We all started exchanging Am I the only one who’s not getting this? glances again.

“So then what’s the point of being a cheerleader,” said Charlene, “if you can’t cheer or do any of the routines?”

The teacher gave another supercilious smile and said, “But the boy isn’t penalized at all. He still gets to continue his life as usual.”

“Because he’s not the one who’s pregnant,” said Charlene.

“Exactly,” said the teacher. “Society penalizes girls for getting pregnant. The girls are doing the same thing as boys, but the boys are never penalized.”

Huh?????

And then she went on with the class.

But the damage was already done.

"Liberating" American Youth from Morality and Common Sense!

She was one of the most popular teachers in school and these wacky condescending brainwashing episodes didn’t happen every day.

And while the first time, you might question the presumption, you stop questioning when it happens a lot—especially when it comes from someone you both like and respect.

When an idea is presented in a You’re-So-Stupid-If-You-Don’t-Get-This manner, only either a dim-witted or very gutsy and thoroughly informed person will challenge the idea.

She didn’t even address the issue of choice or healthy accountability.

Despite copious media propaganda to the contrary, EVERYONE in my generation knew since elementary school HOW babies are made AND how to PREVENT conception. All and any myths about preventing pregnancy were also addressed ad naseum. You couldn’t escape it. It was in school, in every teen magazine, on TV, and so on. The media and Leftist pundits wanted us all well-informed and we were.

So girls who got pregnant either did it on purpose or suffered from cognitive dissonance (i.e. “Yikes! But I never thought it would happen to ME!”).

The boys either cared or they didn’t. One even made it his goal to get one girl pregnant from every school in our district. And he succeeded.
(Thank you, Liberals and Feminists, for liberating jerks like him!)

But are cheerleaders somehow a special class of “girl”?
Are they somehow incapable of not preventing pregnancy?

As a side note, only girls can pretend to use birth control and then not actually use it.

This has happened countless times throughout history that a female has gotten pregnant on purpose after having promised her partner that she wouldn’t.

So maybe you have high school athletes who are being lied to by their girlfriends.

How about that, Ms. Lefty? So why should they male athletes be kicked off the team? Maybe she needs to advocate for an inquiry every time a cheerleader gets pregnant, to see whether the boyfriend was duped or not. After all, we don’t want boys getting kicked off the football team (or the chess team!) for no reason.
_________________________
Anyway, this is how the victim mentality develops.

The Leftists decide who the victim is and ignore straight-forward facts (like how somersaults and human pyramids are not recommended during pregnancy) and possible extenuating circumstances (like how it doesn’t always take two to tango).

Epilogue

At the beginning of 12th grade, a classmate informed me that Jaime was pregnant.

At first, I didn’t believe my classmate. I’d known Jaime since her nerdy junior high days. She was a straight-A student who’d been on honor roll since kindergarten. She’d played on the girls soccer team before becoming a cheerleader and was known to be intelligent, responsible, and mature. And she didn’t even date that much. In fact, I hadn’t known she had a boyfriend.

The classmate laughed at my disbelief. “Oh, you don’t really know Jaime,” she said. “When she was five, her mother came home with a new baby and Jaime said, ‘Okay, Mom, that last baby was yours. But this one’s mine!’”

That didn’t sound like something a five-year-old would say, but Jaime was always pretty advanced.

“Jaime has always wanted to have a baby,” said my classmate. “And she finally got the chance. She set out to do it and now she’s done it. Man, she is so happy and proud of herself.”

“What’s with the guy?” I asked. “Did he agree to this? Are they getting married?”

My classmate shrugged. “I don’t know if he knew she’d get pregnant. She doesn’t want to get married, she just wants a baby.”

Later, every time I saw Jaime in the hallway, she had a very smug look on her face. Why was she so pleased with herself? I don't know. After all, for most girls, acing calculus is much harder than getting pregnant.

Anyway, it’s hard to imagine Jaime doing this prior to the Liberation movements. I mean, she would’ve at least gotten married first.

(Thanks so much, Liberals and Feminists, for liberating girls like Jaime!)

And I can’t remember what Jaime did regarding her cheerleading. Ms. Lefty became the cheerleading coach and I seem to remember Jaime cheerfully sitting on off to the side with her pom-poms, but she dropped cheerleading after that—and why wouldn’t she? I mean, I've been pregnant several times and believe me, cheerleading is the last thing I'd want to do. Heck, just getting up off the sofa seems hard enough at times.

Okay, that's all I wanted to say for now.

Who do you think is really the victim here?

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Halacha: The Best Boost for Daat Kalah

28/3/2017

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The topic of daat kalah (light daat*) and binah yetera (or binah yeseira, if you please, i.e. extra insight) with regard to women is a post of its own (and one I’m working on).

But suffice to say, daat kalah doesn’t imply an innate lack of intelligence and binah yetera doesn’t imply an innate surplus of wisdom.

Binah in a nutshell is the art of jumping to conclusions. A wise woman’s binah enables her to jump to correct and useful conclusions while a lesser woman’s binah drives her toward incorrect and harmful conclusions.

Furthermore, daat kalah does not mean that women possess no daat at all; it just means that female daat comprises a lighter dose compared to that of men. Likewise, women’s possession of binah yetera does not mean that men don’t possess any binah, it just means that they don’t have as much binah as women.

And being light on daat (or da’as, if you prefer) doesn’t mean you are stupid or unworthy of an opinion. It does mean, however, that you need to make sure you are holding firmly onto a brimming source of daat as you make your way through life. Traditionally, husbands and fathers provided (and are STILL supposed to provide, regardless of the high intelligence and textual skills of their wives and daughters) their wives and daughters with daat, which the husbands and fathers are supposed to receive from their rav/rebbe and their own Torah learning.

Binah and daat are supposed to work together, both within a person and within a family.

Unfortunately, there are female orphans and widows, women from secular backgrounds, unlearned men, and men who are emotionally neglectful or abusive jerks (not to mention problematic wives who refuse to accept daat from her perfectly decent and available husbandly source)—all of which can leave a woman without her traditional source of daat.

Fortunately, women today are and have been literate for generations in the Western world, which gives us direct access to THE prime source of daat: halacha (Jewish Law).

Here’s how this works:

**How to Reel in Extra Daat When You’re Daat-Lite: A True Story**

Years ago, I found myself in a state of nuclear fury after a conversation with an extremely manipulative person who was the wife and daughter of some powerful rabbis. (Not real rabbis, but academically intelligent and shrewd snakes.)

I’d dealt with this family before, dealt with people who’d dealt with this family, and it all came crashing down on me: their hypocrisy, their self-indulgence, their fake piety, and the brash unfairness of them getting away with so much just because they’ve been given so much authority and leeway by their unwitting leader and the general religious populace, which is reluctant to criticize or even open their eyes when these types rise to the top.

I was absolutely enraged.

And there wasn’t much room to give the benefit of the doubt because I saw things too clearly. These were not good people who were making a mistake. These were hypocrites taking advantage of their position and I was being treated badly for not being a sycophantic suck-up (although I was behaving toward her with the same courtesy I behave toward everyone, but these types expect lots of fawning, and not the mere courtesy that is okay for “lesser” mortals, and also they don’t like you making any demands on them—even if these demands are framed in the nicest way and are simply holding them up to the halachic regulations that THEY THEMSELVES either enacted or supported within the community) and for very nicely asking them to stop letting a mentally ill off-the-derech alcoholic with violent tendencies live in THEIR apartment, a situation which was causing problems for those who lived nearby, the secular music blasting out of open windows at all hours of the night being only one of the problems with that situation.
And such a person was NOT supposed to be living in the middle of a religious neighborhood full of families with small children—according to the stipulations for that community of that same “rebbetzin” and her oh-so pious husband and father (who was the owner of that apartment), thank you very much.

Anyway, I was consumed with wrath.

And then…I thought of a GREAT plan of revenge!

Ooh, it was delicious. Yummmmmm—slurp!

But somewhere in the back of my raging brain, I remembered there is this well-known prohibition:
Thou Shalt Not Take Revenge. (Vayikra 19:18)

Yeah, it’s right there in plain Torah text, making it even harder to brush off with the usual beloved pseudo-platitudes: “Oh, that? It’s only for people on a really high level—like tzaddikim” or “It doesn’t apply to us nowadays. Yeridas hadoros, ya know.”

But I resisted my Yetzer Tov with: “No - this time, revenge is okay! These are really awful people! In fact, it’s probably even a big mitzvah to perform a particularly delicious act of revenge on them! L'shem Shamayim!”

But my Yetzer Tov kept quietly standing firm: “No. Halacha—especially an outright Torah command—applies even if you’re consumed with righteous indignation. In fact, halacha applies EVEN MORE when you’re consumed with righteous indignation.”

My husband was in another country, my father wasn’t frum, and there was no rabbi or rebbetzin I felt I could call in such a state.

Fortunately, I have a book in English called Journey to Virtue: The Laws of Interpersonal Relationships-Practical Applications in Business, Home, and Society by Rabbi Avroham Ehrman, which is all about hilchot bein adam l’chavero (the laws of interpersonal relationships). I figured something about revenge must be in there.
(After all, it's a pretty thick and comprehensive book.)

So I opened it up and started scanning the contents. But initially, I became even more frustrated and infuriated because it seemed like revenge wasn’t covered!

But really, I was in such a state of wrath that I just couldn’t find it right away and needed to go over the entire Table of Contents thrice before I found it.

Seriously. Picture a wild predatory animal that has been wounded and is crazed with pain. Yeah, that was me.

Anyway, I found it--Chapter 7: Reproof, Vengeance, and Grudges—and guess what? According to some opinions, revenge is actually permissible in some situations!
(Page 62!)

Yes!

So of course, I hummingly skimmed over passages referencing solid sources like Mesillat Yesharim: “Here a Jew is required by Torah law to rise above his low earthly inclinations and emulate the angels,” deciding that requirement must only be for tzaddikim (it’s not) and doesn’t apply to me (it does). Instead, rubbing my hands together gleefully, I focused on the part that describes how revenge might be permissible:

Was I humiliated? Check! (At least, I felt humiliated. It wasn’t public, but heck, why get bogged down in the details?)

Was I humiliated to the point of feeling hurt from the insult? Check!

Was the humiliation actively inflicted? Check! (At least from my point of view, it was actively and intentionally committed. It was certainly intentional. Even in hindsight years later, I am completely sure it was intentional.)

But then I ran into some “problems”:

“[S]ome opinions only permit passive revenge (as explained in paragraph 11) but not active revenge.” (Page 62)

Ooh. Bummer. My plot was definitely active revenge.

But maybe that’s just the author’s interpretation?

Nope, it’s footnoted: Shaarei Teshuvah 3:38 and Kodesh Yisrael Chapter 18.

Well, can’t argue with Rabbeinu Yonah.

Then I read: “…it is only permitted to take revenge according to the amount of ‘pain’ suffered. If the avenger oversteps that boundary even slightly, he violates the prohibition of revenge.”

Thus says Rashi (among others) in Gemara Yoma 23a.

Uh-oh.

I could feel my delicious plan for revenge starting to splutter. No, I tried lying to myself. I’m suffering a LOT of pain! Of course, my revenge wouldn’t overstep the amount of pain I’m suffering! (Also, I enjoyed being referred to as "the avenger.")

How can you measure that—exactly? asked my Yetzer Tov. Just one teeny-tiny step over that boundary and you have got a serious Torah prohibition stamped into your Heavenly account. Is it worth it? After all, it’s not like your account has been squeaky clean until now—can you afford this?

It also occurred to me that intentionally ignoring halacha is intellectually dishonest.
It's like saying: Oh, yeah, I’m oh-so frum—unless, of course, someone really ticks me off. Then it’s okay to indulge my lesser self and toss the usual halacha as if there is some form of wacky pikuach nefesh at stake.
Yeah, right.

Basically, if I see myself as someone for whom halacha comes first, then it has to come first all the time, and not just when it’s convenient and emotionally satisfying. I mean, it’s bad enough that I accidentally trample halacha sometimes. But purposely tromping all over it? Inexcusable.

So there I was, stuck. Once again, the Great Ones—Rashi, Rabbeinu Yonah, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzatto, the Sages of the Gemara—were interfering with the gripping desires of my voracious nefesh habeheimah (animal soul).

Anyway, as you guessed, my passion for revenge fizzled out completely and I ultimately didn’t do anything—except beg Hashem to prevent these people from cause any more harm. Which is the best and most effective response anyway. (Unless, of course, there is a clear and present danger, like if they're child abusers or committing some other type of actual crime.)

And this is how daat works.

(Needless to say, if men don’t also hold firmly to halacha with constant review and sincerity, then their own innate level of daat is worthless.)
___________________

*Daat is very hard to translate because it means different things in different contexts. In other contexts, daat means “knowledge” or “mind,” but neither of those definitions relate to daat in this context. Here (Kiddushin 80b), Rashi explains daat kalah as being more "easily swayed/influenced/seduced” by subjective factors. The prime daat source—halacha—imbues every person with a center of spiritual gravity to hold him or her securely in place.

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Scaling that Steep Mountain

21/3/2017

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Note: This post contains spoilers regarding the true story, A Daughter of Two Mothers.

However, all the spoilers take place by page 65 out of a 540-page book that has so much more going on in it, I don’t think it will ruin the experience if you’ll be reading it for the first time.

But some people resent spoilers of any kind, so here's your fair warning: Spoilers ahoy, matey!
____________________

In my favorite book, A Daughter of Two Mothers, Sheina Ruchel Fruchter describes how she felt when her baby daughter was first kidnapped from her by a woman named Mrs. Goldman.

“I threw myself down, put my head on the floor and shouted: ‘Leichu, my Leichu, come back to me! Dovid, my dear husband up in Heaven, I implore you: Help me to bring my daughter back from the evil people who stole her from me…!”

Sheina Ruchel had been widowed twice, lost most of one arm to a life-saving amputation and lived in poverty in a remote village near the Carpathian Mountains of Hungary. Three children had distanced themselves from both her and Judaism. All she had in the world was her baby daughter.

And the people who'd volunteered to babysit her daughter had sold her daughter to a wealthy childless couple.

And every time Sheina Ruchel retold that part of the story, she would raise her remaining hand to Heaven and declare, “Ribbono shel Olam, Father of orphans and Judge of widows, repay this woman for the years of pain and anguish she caused me!”

Later, Sheina Ruchel often mused, “If I'd been a violent or hot-headed person…I might have even killed Mrs. Goldman that day.”

Yet at one point, she was able to give the benefit of the doubt to all the people involved:
“[T]hey felt they were doing the right thing—they felt that a ‘poor, disabled and widowed woman’ simply couldn’t bring up a child.”

But what about the large amount of money involved?
What about the people who acted as the go-between didn’t act merely out of a warped sense of compassion?
The amount of financial compensation they received was so large, they never told Sheina Ruchel where her daughter was, no matter how much she nor how much some rabbis begged over the years.
Regarding this issue, Sheina Ruchel explained sadly, “They could not resist the temptation they faced; a large sum of money is a very difficult temptation indeed...But it is not up to you or I to judge them.”

When Sheina Ruchel’s best friend, Rivka Klar was told of Sheina Ruchel’s refusal to judge these hard-hearted people, and also hears the conclusion that Sheina Ruchel must be a tzadekes (a perfectly righteous woman), Rivka Klar doesn’t respond right away.

(Rivka Klar herself was an incredibly good and kind person. You can read a little bit about her and her husband in How the Worst Turned Out for the Best: A True Story.)

After mulling it over, Rivka Klar maintains,
“That is the correct way to look at this whole situation…I do not know if that makes her a tzadekes; she is simply acting as a person should, and as she always does, with honesty and uprightness.”

We often hear about great people and the great acts they performed.
We repeatedly hear about the correct and heroic choices they made.

Yet we rarely hear about their starting point.

It just seems like they always made the right choices.

Sure, a really good biography may describes the righteous person’s dilemma, but in the end, the righteous person always makes the right choice (and never the natural, all-to-human choice).

And it’s obvious to me from reading the book that Sheina Ruchel truly was a tzadekes. She proved this so many times, making a particularly heroic choice in the end, which saved a life.

Yet when the initial abduction occurred, she was understandably wild with rage and grief. She did not thank God for the good along with the bad, nor automatically accept it as Hashem’s Will, nor any other lofty ideal—nope.

She literally wanted to kill the person who’d given her baby up for adoption.

And then she asked God to curse that person. In fact, it sounds like, over the course of many years, she repeatedly demanded that God “repay” that person for the pitiless and greedy act.

And who can blame Sheina Ruchel? Of course the people who knowingly participated in the unethical adoption behaved with great cruelty. Their lack of remorse or any attempt at rectification in the face of Sheina Ruchel’s pain—even years later—is truly incomprehensible.

Yet an emuna mindset knows that even this heart-breaking ordeal is from Hashem, that even this is somehow for the best in ways that seem unfathomable. We can’t know most of the ins and outs in this world (although growing up in the adopted family enabled the kidnapped girl to make connections that later saved her life), but we can at least claw our way toward the intellectual acceptance of everything as Hashem’s Will.

I do not know exactly how Sheina Ruchel crossed the wide gulf between her completely justified and understandable fury and finding a small speck of merit in those heartless people, even going as far as to refuse to judge their merciless greed.

Sheina Ruchel lived in poverty incomparable to those who buckled under temptation of immorally obtained money, while she herself never would have submitted to that temptation. So how could someone like her not judge someone like them?

Yet it’s clear in the book that she dealt with the issue spiritually. She frequently recited Tehillim, asked for blessings from Rebbes, and constantly poured out her heart to Hashem, speaking to Him in her own words as she would her own father.

And it sounds like she wobbled on that point. It’s not entirely clear from the book, but it seems that while sometimes, she was able to rise above her natural feelings and see it all with perfect emuna, even to the point of refusing to judge the people who’d hurt her so badly, yet other times showed her as demanding Heavenly retribution against Mrs. Goldman.

The point is, she needed to work up to that lofty level.

And indeed, she became a very great person.

I think part of the secret is in the words of Rivka Klar:
“That is the correct way to look at this whole situation…she is simply acting as a person should.”

Our Sages tell us repeatedly in so many books and so many ways what the right mindset is. Even if we can’t bring ourselves to look and act as they say, we at least know that is our goal. We know what the “correct way” is and we also know how to act “as a person should.”

And even if we can’t maintain the ideal state for more than a moment, the mere act of trying is still worth more than we can imagine and affects us in profound ways (even if we don't always perceive them).

Furthermore, it’s perfectly natural to wobble between a lofty state of emuna and a very human and understandable state of fury and resentment.
And it's perfectly natural to wobble like this for years.

Sheina Ruchel was truly wronged. There is no justifying what those people did.
And so, she spent years trusting Hashem, leaning on Him, praying to Him, clinging to Torah and mitzvot—while at the same time, hating and cursing those people and demanding revenge.

Yet eventually, she made it to the top (spiritually speaking).

And without being thrust into such a traumatic and excruciating challenge, she never would’ve been able to become the exalted person she eventually became.

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The Stunning Greatness of a "Regular" Jew: Gitty

2/2/2017

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As a young mother, I was sitting on the bench outside our apartment building with another young mother who’d grown up in the Karliner Chassidic community in Jerusalem.

(I’m from a somewhat traditional secular home and became Orthodox later, so Gitty and I come from extremely different backgrounds.)

I was telling her how much I admired my son’s ganenet, Mindel, a warm and quiet woman whom Gitty had known her whole life.

At a pause in the conversation, Gitty very quietly asked, “Tell me, do you think she’s better than you?”

I did, actually. But the question caught me off-guard, so I just remained silent.

“Well?" said Gitty. "Do you think that she’s better than you?”

I still didn’t answer. Was Gitty insulting me or complimenting me? Anyway, I thought about Mindel’s warm and reassuring approach toward other mothers and her gentle caring way with the children, and I wanted to answer, Yes, I think she’s better than me.

“Tell me,” said Gitty. “Do you think she’s wiser than you? Smarter?”

“Uhhh…” I faltered. The questions were only getting weirder. Anyway, how does one compare intelligence? There’s different kinds, with emotional intelligence being the most important and exactly what Mindel possessed an abundance of.

“She’s not,” Gitty said.

“What?”

She gave a refined giggle. “You’re smarter than her.”

Did she mean my college education (that I had never finished)? Who cares about that?

“No, Mindel’s really wonderful,” I blustered. “She’s such a nice person and so great with the kids…”

“Yes,” said Gitty. “Mindel is wonderful. I've known her a long time. She’s great. But she was brought up to be that way. She didn’t have to build herself up with her own ten fingers—like you.”

I sat in stunned silence. Why was Gitty saying this? She hardly knew me.

She went on to explain, “Mindel’s mother is a quiet, gentle person. Her father lovingly invested years of his life as a rebbi for small children. Mindel was raised well, she saw good frum chinuch methods her whole life...baruch Hashem, she doesn’t know any other way to be.”

After a moment of contemplation, Gitty continued,
“Tell me, if your mother fries an egg a certain way and you fry it the same way—does that mean anything? If you always see how your mother folds towels, and you fold them the same way, does that mean you’re a towel-folding genius? No. Because you’re just copying what you always saw at home. Do you understand?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Do you? Do you really understand? Because it’s like this: There are a lot of successful people out there. But they usually have a secret to their success. They have money, or a really helpful husband, or family support, or they were raised to be a certain way. For example, I have a cousin with 18 kids. And things look great. And things are great! The kids are turning out well. People always look at her with admiration and go, ‘Ooh-ah-wow!’”

“Yeah,” I said. "Wow!"

“No,” Gitty said. “She also grew up in a large, well-adjusted family, so she automatically knows how to manage a large family. When she got married, she moved in to a place just down the street from her parents' home and her mother came early every morning to help her get the kids dressed and fed—ever since they were little babies. She has loads of sisters and nieces nearby to help her whenever she needs.

"Her husband runs an entire school system, which brings in a lot of money, allowing her to cut corners with easier and more expensive ready-made food, plus cleaning help three times a week. Being very chinuch- and child-oriented, her husband was also always very involved with the kids in a positive way. In fact, he used to come home and spend 2 hours every evening giving the kids supper and getting them bathed and into bed while she either rested or tidied up. What's more, her innate nature is to stay home and deal with the kids. She honestly doesn’t feel the need to go out and do anything else. So you see? She has tremendous resources, both from within her and from the environment surrounding her. So regarding people like her, we say, ‘Thank God—baruch Hashem.’ We say, ‘Good for her--kol hakavod.’ But to become breathless with admiration and gasp, ‘Ooh-ah-wow’?” Gitty shook her head. “No. She is just doing what she was brought up to do and what she feels naturally inclined to do. And she does it well. Baruch Hashem.”

Then Gitty’s gaze grew intense. “Yes, a woman struggling with, for example, three kids and barely managing will look at a woman managing beautifully with 18 kids, and say, ‘Ooh-ah-wow.’ But maybe the woman with three kids has three really hard kids, and her husband doesn’t help, and she has no money, and she doesn’t have family support...”

Gitty cocked her head to one side. “So who’s more precious in Hashem’s eyes? Who do you think? I’m telling you that the regular woman struggling with the three kids is more precious to Hashem.”

I mulled that over.

Gitty nodded and declared, “The people who are successful and built themselves from scratch--they’re rare. They deserve the ‘Ooh-ah-wow' reaction, and not my cousin.”

She went on to describe her own home. She was the first girl born after five boys, and more boys and girls followed:
“In my mother’s home, there was balagan [mess]. Food was in abundance—simple food, but healthy food. Not junk. Every day, there was a huge pot of chicken wings or chicken necks or meat with potatoes or whatever—and balagan. In my house, there was noise, there was mess, there was drum-banging, there was gravel being dragged in, and there was dirt. And believe me, that’s the best way to raise emotionally healthy children.”

Gitty gave a sheepish smile. “But I’m not on my mother’s level. My house is always clean because I get embarrassed if my neighbors stop by and it’s not presentable. But it’s not right to be like me. My mother was right.” She added, “My brothers also knew how to bake, cook, and sew. And that’s right.”
____________________________

And I never forgot this lesson from Gitty: Try to see things through Hashem’s Eyes.

It’s easy to get caught up in comparing yourself (or others) to others, but in reality, the wide variation of different people’s resources and skills and opportunities make comparisons a meaningless exercise.

Gitty herself seemed like just this typical young chassidiste raised in the Old-World atmosphere of Geula. But she was a special person herself and wise beyond her years.

And I'm far from being the only person on whom Gitty pours forth her wisdom.

Using Gitty’s method of viewing other people taught me to admire people I otherwise wouldn’t have looked up to. I learned to appreciate people unappreciated by others and to see them as Hashem likely sees them.

The Gemara says that This World is an upside-down world.

And that’s the Truth.

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The Lady in White

The REAL Meaning Behind "A Kosher Wife Performs the Will of Her Husband"

The Kosher Wife of Tanna D’bei Eliyahu Rabbah 10

The Kosher Wife of Gemara Nedarim 66b

The Pele Yoetz and Others on This Verse

Final Lessons from the Sages about a Wife & Her Husband's Will

In Closing...

How to REALLY Daven for Your Husband

Why Even the Most Caring Nagging Doesn't Work

The Benefit of Compassion...for You

Tips on Davening for Your Husband’s Sake

A Summary of Principles

How to REALLY be a Good Wife

Newsflash! Rabbis are For Chickens

We're the Chosen People, Not the Cloned People

Don't Trust Agendas...Trust God!

Davening! Praying! Tefillah!

Breaking Out of the Big Lie about Motherhood

Free to be You, But Not to be Me

The Great Big Lie

Bliss and Betrayal

Raising Children with "Esav Dearest"

The Thankful Privilege, Not the Thankless Chore

When a Woman's "Right" is a Moral Wrong

Women's Liberation as Ego Liberation

The Freedom to be a Slave - How Liberating!

Creating a Victim Mentality: A How-To Guide

"Liberating" American Youth from Morality and Common Sense!

Epilogue

Halacha: The Best Boost for Daat Kalah

**How to Reel in Extra Daat When You’re Daat-Lite: A True Story**

Scaling that Steep Mountain

The Stunning Greatness of a "Regular" Jew: Gitty

Myrtle Rising

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