I understand you, but the game is not fair when you compare frum mothers with not frum mothers. In the frum world, life is more stressful, bigger families, Shabbos, Yomim Tovim, keeping halachos of kashrus, tznius etc. make life more hectic. A lot of frum people won't let their kids watch videos, go to the beach, etc.
That's such a negative view .
And IME, not accurate.
Frum families aren't always bigger, even if they are frum SAHMs usually aren't home with more children than their non-frum counterparts, people who aren't Jewish have holidays too, people who aren't Jewish have to cook and clean on Saturdays, and I have no idea why keeping kashrut or tzniut would make life more difficult, practically speaking (emotionally, sure, if you're used to tank tops it might be an adjustment - but those extra few inches of fabric don't make the shirt any more expensive or difficult to put on).
But they do make it harder to find them. When you can't just go into any shop and pull some stuff off the rack for your kids, it makes clothing them much more stressful and time-consuming.
I understand you, but the game is not fair when you compare frum mothers with not frum mothers. In the frum world, life is more stressful, bigger families, Shabbos, Yomim Tovim, keeping halachos of kashrus, tznius etc. make life more hectic. A lot of frum people won't let their kids watch videos, go to the beach, etc.
That's such a negative view .
And IME, not accurate.
Frum families aren't always bigger, even if they are frum SAHMs usually aren't home with more children than their non-frum counterparts, people who aren't Jewish have holidays too, people who aren't Jewish have to cook and clean on Saturdays, and I have no idea why keeping kashrut or tzniut would make life more difficult, practically speaking (emotionally, sure, if you're used to tank tops it might be an adjustment - but those extra few inches of fabric don't make the shirt any more expensive or difficult to put on).
I'm not trying to belittle the work people do in order to keep Torah and mitzvot, but it's not like life doesn't get hard for the rest of the world too.
I really didn't want to come across as negative. I was trying to defend the accusation that frum mothers are more spoiled and whiney than non - Jewish mothers.
In that case, my apologies.
I definitely agree that frum mothers are no more spoiled than non-Jewish mothers.
I just have a knee-jerk reaction to "life is so easy if you're not Jewish" posts, or anything that sounds it to me. My bad.
I don't have a cleaning lady. I don't get manicures. I can't say we never go out or have takeout, but we're not doing it all the time.
But I sent to half-day preschool when she was 3.5, because she was an only child and I thought it would be good for her. Now she's off school, and she asks when she can go back (which she'll do for 4 weeks), because she is lonely--and no matter how much I try to entertain her, it's not the same.
Maybe in some communities, sending is just about peer pressure, but it isn't always.
We don't take tzedaka, this is just something we had to budget for, but I do resent the "why can't you take care of your kid all summer; you wanted to be a SAHM" logic. If I had no choice, I could. But day camp for a preschooler is not such a terrible expense that I can't budget a little and make both of us happier.
I don't think anyone's saying that a SAHM who sends her kids out to camp is spoiled. At least that's not what I'm saying. Camp is great for kids, and parents (also SAHMs) could use the break, esp if it's just a day camp.
We're just saying it's spoiled to expect others to subsidize camp for SAHMs, when they could have made a million other lifestyle choices along the way to allow themselves to pay for their own camp.
So basically the only children worthy enough of tzedaka to go to camp are children in israel. Those families have no choice in where they live but families that live in NY have a choice and should move somewhere else.
American mothers in NY are often lazy and need to grow up (not all but only the ones with alot of kids that live in NYC). If you live in a highly suburban american area with basically a playground for a backyard then you are a tzedekas for being able to handle you children all day.
I am getting this right?
Yes, you did. I was going to say it, but what's the point?
Only people in Brooklyn have a choice to move. Not people in war zones. Love the logic.
Of course people in war zones can move....hello....
FS was just saying she believes they are doing Israel and the Jewish nation a favor by living there, and she wants to support them in their enterprise by subsidizing camp (for kids who often spend half the summer in a bomb shelter).
I don't think anyone can claim that living in Brooklyn is doing the Jewish nation a favor.
So basically the only children worthy enough of tzedaka to go to camp are children in israel. Those families have no choice in where they live but families that live in NY have a choice and should move somewhere else.
American mothers in NY are often lazy and need to grow up (not all but only the ones with alot of kids that live in NYC). If you live in a highly suburban american area with basically a playground for a backyard then you are a tzedekas for being able to handle you children all day.
I am getting this right?
No one is a tzedekas for handling her own normal children all day (severe special needs is another issue). That's just life, that's nature, that's what's expected - whether you live in a two room walk-up in Brooklyn or a huge sprawling ranch in Texas.
Who said American mothers in NY are lazy? I don't recall that. What is lazy is choosing a certain path and not taking responsiblity for it to the end.
As for having a choice where to live....it's been discussed on this thread already. It doesn't apply only to NY. We mentioned families living in upscale cities in Israel, and many have said that they don't deserve to have camp subsidized because they chose to live there. There are cheap yeshuvim and cities in Israel too, and no one is chained to living in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. You choose to live there, realize you won't have money left over for other stuff.
So basically the only children worthy enough of tzedaka to go to camp are children in israel. Those families have no choice in where they live but families that live in NY have a choice and should move somewhere else.
American mothers in NY are often lazy and need to grow up (not all but only the ones with alot of kids that live in NYC). If you live in a highly suburban american area with basically a playground for a backyard then you are a tzedekas for being able to handle you children all day.
I am getting this right?
Yes, you did. I was going to say it, but what's the point?
Only people in Brooklyn have a choice to move. Not people in war zones. Love the logic.
Of course people in war zones can move....hello....
FS was just saying she believes they are doing Israel and the Jewish nation a favor by living there, and she wants to support them in their enterprise by subsidizing camp (for kids who often spend half the summer in a bomb shelter).
I don't think anyone can claim that living in Brooklyn is doing the Jewish nation a favor.
Hello, yes. So she has an ideal that she thinks is extremely important. That overrides all of what she regularly feels about most people in the world.
Guess what? So do I have an ideal and others too. Just because you don't share it, doesn't mean it isn't real.
I don't think it should be so hard to look outside of oneself and empathize with another Jewish mother, even though you don't share the same ideal.
So basically the only children worthy enough of tzedaka to go to camp are children in israel. Those families have no choice in where they live but families that live in NY have a choice and should move somewhere else.
American mothers in NY are often lazy and need to grow up (not all but only the ones with alot of kids that live in NYC). If you live in a highly suburban american area with basically a playground for a backyard then you are a tzedekas for being able to handle you children all day.
I am getting this right?
Yes, you did. I was going to say it, but what's the point?
Only people in Brooklyn have a choice to move. Not people in war zones. Love the logic.
Of course people in war zones can move....hello....
FS was just saying she believes they are doing Israel and the Jewish nation a favor by living there, and she wants to support them in their enterprise by subsidizing camp (for kids who often spend half the summer in a bomb shelter).
I don't think anyone can claim that living in Brooklyn is doing the Jewish nation a favor.
Hello, yes. So she has an ideal that she thinks is extremely important. That overrides all of what she regularly feels about most people in the world.
Guess what? So do I have an ideal and others too. Just because you don't share it, doesn't mean it isn't real.
I don't think it should be so hard to look outside of oneself and empathize with another Jewish mother, even though you don't share the same ideal.
I empathize. I really do. I just wouldn't dream of donating to the cases brought up here, SAHMs living in one of the most expensive areas of the US. There is a big difference between asking for empathy and asking for tzeddeka.
Gryp are you looking for sympathy? Why? Do you really feel that your life is so hard? Did you choose such a life or was it foisted on you (seriously) by your community, your mechanchos who taught you that this is the way a good Jewish girl lives, by your husband who wants something you don't or by any other person?
I really don't get your animosity towards yidden who are keeping the borders of medinas yisroel (yes!) safe by living where they live. What's your answer? Not to live anywhere getting bombed here in EY? Maybe not living in EY at all...but how wonderful was your brooklyn before there was an EY? You are definitely too young to remember, even I am, but my mother and mother in law remember brooklyn including Crown Heights quite well before 1948. And let me tell you, you couldn't compare Jewish life today to what went on then. Yidden walking around outside in chassidic clothing? You never knew when you would be lynched by antisemites. It is the existence of the State of Israel which has given Jews, frum and frei, charedim and non, throughout the world the possibility of walking outside like Jews. Of having frum stores that don't have to hide they are frum. Just go and find some 75 year olds in your kehilla and ask them what it used to be like. So yes, even if you don't believe ideologically in the "medineh" there are advantages to all yidden everywhere in the world for its existence. And without the people living in the border areas getting shelled this medineh would slowly but surely disappear. Because by your logic everyone would leave.
So I don't get your point. Are you saying that your life is hard, no one over the age of 40 understands you and what you are going through and that you have an ideal? What exactly is that ideal? I am yet to hear what it is? That everyone should have lots of kids be a SAHM and have a zedoko subsidized camp for their kids? Is that your ideal? That everyone should live in Brooklyn? Explain please?
This thread has been a real eye-opener for me. I had no idea just how many parents feel unable to care for their own children for more than an hour or two at a time.
That's such a negative view .
And IME, not accurate.
Frum families aren't always bigger, even if they are frum SAHMs usually aren't home with more children than their non-frum counterparts, people who aren't Jewish have holidays too, people who aren't Jewish have to cook and clean on Saturdays, and I have no idea why keeping kashrut or tzniut would make life more difficult, practically speaking (emotionally, sure, if you're used to tank tops it might be an adjustment - but those extra few inches of fabric don't make the shirt any more expensive or difficult to put on).
But they do make it harder to find them. When you can't just go into any shop and pull some stuff off the rack for your kids, it makes clothing them much more stressful and time-consuming.
Can we all agree that if we're at the point where we're complaining about the backbreaking, time consuming hassle of shopping for clothes, we have extraordinarily privileged and cosseted lives?
Gryp are you looking for sympathy? Why? Do you really feel that your life is so hard? Did you choose such a life or was it foisted on you (seriously) by your community, your mechanchos who taught you that this is the way a good Jewish girl lives, by your husband who wants something you don't or by any other person?
Please, gryp is the last person looking for sympathy, especially from the wrong crowd.
FS wrote:
What's your answer? Not to live anywhere getting bombed here in EY? Maybe not living in EY at all...but how wonderful was your brooklyn before there was an EY?
as written before, gryp and I subscribe to an ideology called Chassidus. Our Rebbe advised many times, as his predecessor the Tzemach Tzedek (the third Lubavitcher Rebbe) who told a chossid "mach doh eretz Yisroel", Eretz Yisroel being not (limited to) a biologic, or geologic, physical location, but a state of existence and concept in the spiritual realm. Crown Heights is our Eretz Yisroel, as I imagine Mama Bear's is Williamsburg. Every place on earth in which the G-dly sparks are elevated and thereby transform the spiritual status of that place to a "dwelling place for Hashem", an environment of Yirah Shleimah (the neutrikon of Yerushalayim) in which Hashem's sovereignty prevails - that place is Eretz Yisroel.
In the same sense that Vilna was once called the Yerushalayim of Lita, the Chassidim of Lubavitch, in the times of the Tzemach Tzedek said "Lubavitch is our Yerushalayim, the Rebbe's holy chamber is like the Beis Hamikdash, and the Rebbe is the Aron in the Holy of Holies, in which reside the Luchos, and upon which rests the Shechinah"*.
We live here for this reason. It's not something which we would change for anything in the world, except to do our Rebbe's shlichus. (*and that is going to be the new signature I'm coming back with!)
Quote:
but how wonderful was your brooklyn before there was an EY?
this is what Brooklyn now is. It doesn't much matter what it was before, just as it didn't matter that Har Sinai was just another mountain, before the Torah was given there. and just a small correction - you obviously mean there was a medinah, because EY has always been there throughout our history.
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Crown Heights is our Eretz Yisroel, as I imagine Mama Bear's is Williamsburg. Every place on earth in which the G-dly sparks are elevated and thereby transform the spiritual status of that place to a "dwelling place for Hashem", an environment of Yirah Shleimah (the neutrikon of Yerushalayim) in which Hashem's sovereignty prevails - that place is Eretz Yisroel.
In the same sense that Vilna was once called the Yerushalayim of Lita, the Chassidim of Lubavitch, in the times of the Tzemach Tzedek said "Lubavitch is our Yerushalayim, the Rebbe's holy chamber is like the Beis Hamikdash, and the Rebbe is the Aron in the Holy of Holies, in which reside the Luchos, and upon which rests the Shechinah"*.
We live here for this reason. It's not something which we would change for anything in the world, except to do our Rebbe's shlichus.
Tell me if I should take this to another thread, but I find this interesting, and a bit confusing. Satmar and Lubavitch were originally located in very different places. Obviously these communities didn't so much choose to relocate to NY as much as they fled or tried to rebuild there, but I know some chassidic groups have either relocated in Eretz Yisrael or have "outposts" there. I certainly understand the sentiment that it is the actions and culture of the people that create sanctity, not the geographic space, but is it inconceivable that a chassidic group might relocate, for reasons other than fleeing war, either to EY or elsewhere?
Very curious, not criticizing at all. If there's a website or book to recommend, I'll read it.
I can't speak for Satmar, but indeed Lubavitch did relocate several times, during WWI, during the Communist regime and again during WWII. However, it was always the Rebbe who made that decision. The Previous Rebbe, the Rebbe R. Yosef Yitzchok came to America, and lived here. The Rebbe continued to live here and proclaimed that he would not leave the place of his father-in-law, the Rebbe.
many times, he was asked why he did not relocate to Eretz Yisroel, and he always replied that he would, when Moshiach would come!
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TR you misread me. I didn't say that all yiden have to live in EY. But with all due respect to the Tzemach Tzedek whose teachings I have also learned, I don't think that anyone ever interpreted it to mean that where a yid lives, outside of eretz yisroel, is EXACTLY the same as being in EY., No way he would have ever said that. He was saying as I learned it, to try and imbue the place that you are living in golus with something from the holiness of EY. That is all fine but there is absolutely no connection between that and the "ideal" that we are talking about on this thread.
Are you seriously saying that gryp is claiming that her ideal is living in Crown Heights? And that she puts it exactly on the same kedusha as living in EY? And what in the world does that have to do with her kids going or not going to camp? Are the conditions in Crown Heights such that children are being shelled and bombed and sleeping in bomb shelters as kids do in Sderot and other places here in EY? Do you think that anyone here in EY would have started funds for these kids from war zones to get away for a few weeks to a "camp" so that they could get a full night's sleep outside a bomb shelter, had they not been living in a war zone? After all, no one is making such free (yes they are free as they are fully covered by donations plus a bit of government funding) camps for kids living, let's say, in Hatzor haglilit, a poor frum area....or in Netivot...also frum...or in Givatayim...not frum and not poor...
If Mexico was shelling Texas and kids living on the boarder were the kids of families defending the country and strenghtening the American borders, and someone got the idea of starting a free summer camp for these kids out of the battle zone covered by donations, it would - at least for Americans - be exactly the same thing...and I would expect that any american who knows the value of the united states of america - and I write this on the fourth of july - would be happy to contribute even a few cents if they had them, to a fund to pay for camp for such kids...no one would say "they don't have to live there" because they would know that they can sit peacefully in Witchita Kansas or in Chicago or in New York, among other reasons, simply because of the parents of those kids, who are keeping the american southern border secure from the enemies in Mexico who want to kill all Americans. And I assume that frum americans would feel the same way as they are reaping the benefits of the existing of the united States of America.
That's what I'm talking about. Now you are telling me that Gryp and your ideal of chassidus also entitles one who chooses the chassidish lifestyle, to someone else paying for your kids' summer camp? Why?
That's what I'm talking about. Now you are telling me that Gryp and your ideal of chassidus also entitles one who chooses the chassidish lifestyle, to someone else paying for your kids' summer camp? Why?
No, I'm replying to those who are suggesting that everything could be solved if Brooklynites would stop being so unreasonable and just up and leave their (dispensable) environments and at least move out to some suburban patches of greenery.
Our community is our life, it doesn't have to do with physical comfort or convenience.
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I have come to the realization that this thread is the epitome of POINTLESS.
Us brooklynites - dedicated, good mothers, who do everything we can to give our children a good time, but are REALISTIC TO OUR LIMITATIONS AND THE LIMITATIONS OF WHERE WE LIVE, can talk and argue til we're blue in the face and we will still be told what terrible mothers we are and how we should do such and such and bla and bla. It wont help.
You wanna hear the results of your 'experiment'??? So I went to a LOCAL park, Barbara. Yep. With ONE child. One. I went into a store to buy swimming trunks, rash guard shirt, and bathrobe. I went to the next store to buy crocs. I went to the third store to buy something for the upsherin peklech. (Didnt find it).
My kid screamed the entire time. In all three stores. He took off his shoes and socks. He tried to unlatch himself from the stroller. He tried to tip himself over.
After these three stores I finally went into a fourth store to buy myself something to eat. I havent eaten today. I was too busy with my kids BH.
I finally made it to the park. Where I proceeded to be the good mother and change him into his swim things so he could run in the sprinkler. He had a blast.
For exactly five minutes.
Then he wanted to go into the swings. I put him into the swings. He wanted to get out of the swings. He ran around the park. I had to keep pushing people out of my way so I could keep an eye on him.
The sandwich remained uneaten in my bag.
AFter about 45 minutes of this he began to run..... run... to the exit of the park. I couldnt chase him down fast enough. He was already outside the park, almost going down on the street where the cars are. I grabbed him and tried to put him into the stroller.
No dice. He arched his back and screamed. I had to nearly break his ribs to push him into the stroller and strap him in. the screaming continued. It took every ounce of physical energy to dry him off and change him back to his regular clothes. Then I sat and tried to feed him part of my sandwich. which he spit out.
meanwhile the sun was beating down on my back and I was sweating rivulets. I dragged my exhausted body and 40 pound toddler to another store to find something for the upshern peklech. They didnt have it either. I went to a third store to buy yet another item for the peklech. They didnt have it either. I got him an ice cream so he would stop screaming. he ate it and smeared it into his clothes and hair.
I arrived home at 4:00..... starved, exhausted, drained, soaked to the skin, with painful, itchy heat rashes and a shaitel that has turned into a mop. I dragged that stroller up a flight of stairs, locked the downstairs door and dragged myself up 2 more flights of stairs.
There is no hint of supper. the house is a mess. My todo lists are screaming at me. My laundry is thundering at me.
And all I did was take ONE child to a LOCAL park. And it KILLED me.
So you know what?..... I really really dont care what the rest of you say. I do not go by the creed that a mother has to kill herself for her kids. Kids dont need a wrung out mother who has no koach for them and resents their constant presence in the house. Every woman knows her own limitations and knows if she can physically and emotionally manage to be a 24/7 SAHM and run Mommy camps. And ANY OF YOU who dare say otherwise - well, you can go fly long, decorative kites. Your experiment has failed, and that is the end of my involvement in this debate, bli neder.
Tomororw morning, IYH I take my almost-3 yr old to a full day therapy program. My almost-6 yr old will go to summer cheder and even their after-school activity program. And I will IYH start ripping through that to-do list with aplomb; do all my errands, get that upshern together, get that move taken care of, get my little one's services lined up, and just close my eyes to the holier-than-though armchair psychologists on this thread.
Mama Bear nobody thinks Brooklynites are bad mothers. I think (assuming I haven't missed something in the past 29 pages) that some are accusing some Brooklynites of being bad financial planners, but not bad mothers.
friedasima, gryp's already explained herself. She's happy, she isn't in the situation under discussion (SAHM needing tzedaka for camp), she's just sympathetic to those who are and is trying to explain their POV.
.
- you obviously mean there was a medinah, because EY has always been there throughout our history.
