Write To Life     by Elana Horwitz

Respecting Her Role

Elana Horwitz

originally published in Kollel Kaleidoscope


People who are out of touch with themselves resort to gripes, insults and violence to get through the day.

People at their best motivate themselves to live an accomplished life through actualizing their ideals and dreams. 

There's so much that people want to do in their short lives, and no way to "finish the melacha". It's the rare person who will actually find a cure for cancer, perform countless helpful surgeries, become an expert in Chinese hieroglyphics, travel to the space station "and" get eight hours of sleep a night. It makes more sense to choose quality over quantity.

An important step is deciding on a few priorities. What really grabs my neshama? That's "me".

Our answers may surprise us, seeming trite and stereotyped. With our expanded education and sophistication, it can strike us as mundane, even humdrum, to realize that our most powerful and most enduring desires - those that define us - are for intimacy, for giving and for meaningful relationships. Yet we access a liberating feeling, recognition of fulfillment and purpose, in admitting to ourselves who we really are.

These voices are often camouflaged by society’s norms. Our inner voices may subtly be advising us women to invest our maximum energies into our seemingly straightforward roles of Jewish wife and mother. When we treat these voices with the respect that they deserve, and not with a condescending attitude, we see and portray ourselves in a more honest light.  If we can devote ourselves to these callings, then we can really accomplish something of value - being the best of who we are. In whatever additional contexts we see ourselves -businessperson, doctor, teacher or writer - we assess ourselves more clearly when we regard our most fundamental voices.

Rabbi Berel Wein, in a shiur on tznius, points out that an inner sense of privacy is praiseworthy for everyone, but especially for women. What has been the historical success of the Jewish woman? Her greatness is measured in the devotion and ingenuity she invests in maintaining the vibrancy and intensity of her marriage. It’s appraised in her unstoppable tears expressing her fight for the purity of her children’s character development. The great Jewish women of the past and present never put their families second in their souls. Truth to who we are requires us to focus the most promising of our energies on our immediate worlds. To take for granted the maintenance of the most personal relationships, those of wife and mother, for which we are responsible, is to risk the disappearance of a sense of wholeness with our nation, and with our selves.

Dr. Rivkah Blau, a well-known Orthodox Jewish educator , spoke on the topic of “Getting Past Misconceptions About Recent Jewish History”. An article in the New Jersey Jewish News says that Dr. Blau concentrated on areas in which women's opportunities and accomplishments have been misunderstood by their descendants. She states that it is a misconception to believe that the large numbers of young women involved in Judaic studies today are direct beneficiaries of the feminist revolution. Rather, women who study Judaism today are following the example of “a small elite number” of women who were learning these subjects more than 50 years ago in the United States, and in Europe even before the Bais Yaakov movement began.

"Girls' learning in those days was regarded as very important, not because of political correctness but because they had to know about their religion," said Dr. Blau. She pointed out that "It's important to know the past accurately in order to know where we are now, where we are headed in the future. If we don't, then we can't take the right lessons from it, and we can't look to the future correctly."

Dr. Blau’s observation teaches us about remaining respectful of our roles. If  the importance of women’s learning Torah is because we have to know about our religion, then in principle, a woman’s attending a shiur or religious event should not interfere with her husband’s obligation of attending a shiur or davening with a minyan. It also should not cause her to neglect her children’s needs. (When circumstances point to a need for special considerations concerning the traditional family dynamic, a Rabbi should be consulted.)

Our agenda is not to strictly equalize opportunities, but rather to expand our deepest selves through fulfilling our obligations to Hashem. This focus, in turn, has the potential to bring us true happiness and fulfillment. May we find these within ourselves, natural byproducts of the respect we accord to our roles of Jewish wives and mothers.