In many countries, Europe, Arabic... even the poorest lady had an even poorer maid. Of course with one, sometimes two, maids you do not need any housework help from the husband!
Do you know how hard those women worked? Even if they had a maid? They got up at dawn on Fridays and had to go to the shochet, get the chickens shechted, kasher them, clean and pluck the feathers - all that before they even started cooking. Go and buy the fish fresh - no fridge or freezer. Make lokshen themselves to make a kugel.
Of course those who were wealthy had lots of maids and could relax, but I'm talking about the type you mean - the poor woman in Poland with an even poorer Polish girl living in. The girl would probably be working hard meanwhile to get the fire started so they could cook anything at all.
My grandmother a"h was born in England 110 years ago and they had no help at all and she would tell me how hard they worked - and believe me all the men in town would go and learn every evening. Go and read about America and EY and England where there were no maids, and just as much work. But where they cared - the wives willingly sent their husbands to learn.
Just to add ... no food processor. No clothes washer or dryer. No vacuum cleaner. Go back a bit further, and no hot running water, or even indoor plumbing. (We all complain about the piles of laundry, but when you have to boil the water, wash by hand, run it through a wringer ... it really was an all day job.) Taking care of the home really was a full time job in those days. Maybe husbands didn't help, but it wasn't because there wasn't more than enough to do.
100 years ago there were already many non frum men, many "just shomer mitsvos" men, and many men who did not have a high level of kodesh at all while being very frum. Also many OTD kids even in the best families, and lots of frum men "needing" to work on shabbes... nothing to idealize there...
Training makes one strong (or sick/dead), so yes they were stronger than us. Same for lack medicine, only the strongest made it to adulthood (non disabled).
Shalhevet I am not Chasidish but I live in a Chasidishe neighbourhood and I can tell you that majority of the men here are in Kolel full time. My next door neighbour leaves his house before 6am and returns at midnight, he only comes home for a half hour in the evening. I know that he is more extreme but he isn't the only one like that. My other neighbours are out from 8-7 with a breakfast break I think and for sure an hour lunch break which is the norm. Even the ones who work make it a point of going to Shul in the evening hours.
I should have clarified this before - I know plenty of chassidim who learn - some have a shiur every day after working, some are in kolel. I didn't mean to imply ch"v that all chassidim don't learn or think learning Torah is a luxury - I was specifically addressing Pickle Lady's comment - and I don't even remember which chassidus she is, or know if it is representative of it, but I know other chassidus' don't hold like this.
You mentioned before to Kitov that you wonder how long after they are married do the Chasidim learn. So I was replying to that. I live in a very mixed neighbourhood where you have every breed of Chasidus imaginable and I am saying that majority of them are in Kollel. I was also surprised as I thought it was more of a Litvish thing to be in full time Kollel but over here that isn't the case.
Halacha- women after birth are considered a sick person for 30 days. Their family obligations are adjusted due to her status.
SAHM was stated not by me to be a luxury previously in this thread.
Its just shocking to me that women are so obsessed with thier husbands learning but not the many other obligations that she and him also have.
I'm sorry but that is not true a woman is only a choleh for 3 days after birth - after that she would have to fast like any other woman?
not resting full time after birth is not dangerous. my docs actually say walking a bit every (for exercise after the first week) is healthy for you.
how is sahm not a luxury? where does it say a woman must stay home all day
I think learning torah is just as important as eating kosher. I dont equate sahm with eating kosher or resting after a baby... not sure I understand you
No way do women have to fast in Israel 4 days after giving birth. I got a heter for Tisha B'Av within 30 days - the rav said that if I felt unwell enough to ask, I shouldn't fast. Even nursing within 24 months - or NOT nursing but giving birth fewer than 24 months earlier - can get a woman a kula.
In Israel the poskim are very strict - about preserving a mother's health.
DS age 17 came home from America. A few of us went to the airport. I wasn't crazy about the no tzitzis, but okay, he was resting in the plane. Then he mentioned how all his tzitzis ripped, and he wants to go buy new ones - the kind you tie on by yourself.
Nobody has posted here for four hours???
I've been in meetings - where have YOU all been?
Wow I expected a lot more rotten tomatoes, either most of you ladies are tired or you don't have what to say.
A few comments to the comments.
How much torah should one learn? Hey ladies, don't you daven in the mornings? "Elu devarim sh'ein lahem shiur, hapeah vehabikurim vehareayon, ugemilus chasodim, vesalmud torah..."
So that's one answer. As much as one can, more and more and more.
As Shal said. No one is talking about kollel but Jewish girls who get a good Jewish education are supposed to encourage their husbands to learn as much as possible AFTER work and not to expect some kind of feminist equality that husbands will do sponja along with them or instead of them if they are perfectly healthy women. Gee, even in our plain ordinary MO/DL school we were taught that a true Eishes Chayil, even if she works full time, takes on the household things and the small children when she gets home to enable her husband when HE gets home, to go and learn and not have to deal with the domestic.
In an MO school we were taught that.
If you women weren't, I think that our MO education was a lot frummer than some of your CHAREDI education if you weren't taught that...
Isramom, kol hakavod to your son about the tzitzis. and yeah, I don't remember any frum women I know fasting four days after giving birth, or even fourteen days...
And traditionally chassidish men worked, they learned for two years after marriage in Europe and then were expected to work...and learn in the evening. So what happened to the "learn in the evening"? And if the overwhelming majority of chassidish men are full time in Kollel - WHO THE HECK ARE THOSE GUYS WITH PAYES AND THEIR SOCKS TUCKED INTO THEIR PANTS ON 47th street and selling at B and H etc?
Ruchel you keep talking about the poorest Jewish women in Eastern Europe had maids. Boy are you incorrect. You are talking about Poland, Galicia and Rumania. BUT the majority of Jews were living...in the Pale of Settlement in Russia 150, 130 and even 120 years ago. And very few of those poverty stricken families had a maid, had a "shiksa", had a "serving girl" or anything like that. In fact close to none. So...you are NOT talking about the majority of Ashkenazi Jews and that's without even mentioning England and the USA, but rather the areas with the numerical majority of Jews in the 19th century - RUSSIA, WHITE RUSSIA, UKRAINE, etc. NO maids for most.
Gryp - I hope that those men you talk about who TODAY go out at 5 AM and come home from work at 11 PM are earning a heck of a lot of money for being out of the house working 18 hours a day. What in the world are they working at? Yes a man who is working 18 hours a day needs to sleep and should be potur during the week from limud torah unless he can do it as someone said, commuting or on a lunch break if he gets one....so is my son in law the doctor potur from limud torah when he does a 30 hour toranut (rotation) and leaves the house at 6 AM and comes back the next day around noon to review cases, fall asleep and get up to go back to the hospital that night - he can learn on shabbos (if he is off at all...) but is that the norm?
I think that the idea is clear. Women work hard. Men work hard. Women have their jobs to do, men have theirs. Men se sachar for limud torah, women do not. I like the old Sefardi (Mizrahi you would say Ruchel) ladies who used to say to me - "our limud torah is cleaning the house and caring for the kids - when we are scrubbing something to get it clean so that our families will be healthy we are doing our limud torah".
That's not to say that women shouldn't learn. They need to know the dinnim that women need to know, they need to know household, nidda, shabbos, yuntif dinnim. They need kashrus in and out. If they are so inclined to expand their minds they can learn mussar, Jewish thought, philosophy, parshanut, whatever they want. Wonderful! But should that come in place of taking care of their family if it is not part of their parnosseh? (I am not talking about a woman teacher who teaches these things and needs to know them) And it is wonderful for a man to do things together with his wife. But don't we strive to be neshos chayil? And therefore if we have a choice, shouldn't we encourage our husbands to learn - or even to rest a bit so that they will have koyach for getting up early for minyan, for learning etc - instead of doing household chores with us?
ARE WE SO WEAK that we are giving up their and our olam habo for some help with sponja? Maybe if you are tired go lie down and send your husband to learn and the blasted floor will stay dirty a few more hours????
First, many ladies do mode ani and shema in the morning and that's it.
It's davka not about equality. You don't get it. It's about help. If a woman is just as strong as her husband she can do as much as him. In my world, most are not.
Applying your learning to reality is a mitsva. "The domestic" is holy. Marriage, children, holy.
I never claimed to be familiar with Russia.
Quote:
But don't we strive to be neshos chayil? And therefore if we have a choice, shouldn't we encourage our husbands to learn - or even to rest a bit so that they will have koyach for getting up early for minyan, for learning etc - instead of doing household chores with us?
Helping others is a mitsva, as is treating your wife better than yourself. Derech erech kadma latorah. I would rather my husband learns "only" what he needs, than be burned out in 10 years. Giving a free shiur? Charity begins at home.
I personally will not give up olam haba for not exhausting myself. Maybe your rav requires it, not mine, not quite.
In all honesty, I wouldn't be on Imamother if I thought I had to have a schedule like some describe, because I would not have started shidduchim. Or because I would have gotten married and end up in a loony bin or divorced. At least when you're divorced you have no help but there is one less person in the house.
If one is a healthy person and has a normal job one gets up and gets the kids up and while one's husband is at minyan you get the kids dressed and sometimes even fed, one gets oneself up and davened and fed and then everyone leaves for school or work or if you have babies either you bring them to a creche or you have a childminder who comes to the house.
Then everyone leaves for work/school/etc. You do your work and you come home let's say at 5 if you are lucky. You pick up your child from the creche or if they are home with the childminder you go straight home, and meanwhile on the way home with the kid or kids if you had to pick them up sometimes you go via the supermarket and shop. The kids learn very fast not to be vilde chayes in the market and can be lots of fun. Meanwhile you can talk to them about the day.
You get home and immediately daven mincha, then take the laundry off the line and fold and put away. Takes ten minutes maximum. The food that one defrosts in the morning is ready for dinner, you make a fresh salad and maybe cook fresh pasta but the meat and soup is ready, meanwhile your kids are sitting around and doing homework and you are helping them while you get things ready and set the table. If you are lucky your husband comes home by seven, and you serve dinner and sit and talk with him and with the kids over dinner, If not and he only comes home later you feed him later and leave food warm for him that you can serve him when he gets home. After the meal you clean up, if your husband is home by then he plays a bit with the kids and maybe goes over with them what they learned in school, especially kodesh, and then you have finished cleaning the kitchen and washing the dishes and it's 7:30 PM and he goes out to mincha-maariv in the summer (in the winter he chaps a minyan for mincha at work and does maariv at 9 with the extra minyan).
Meanwhile you wash the kids and get them ready for bed (we never had a bedtime so it wasn't a problem but they had to be washed and pj'd) and it's 8:30 and the older ones stay up with you and the little ones go to sleep and meanwhile for the next hour while your husband is learning after davening either in a shiur or with a chavrusa at home you do the following after you put up a wash of dirty clothing.
1) one night clean while cakes are baking in the oven 2) one night cook up for shabbos and for the week in bluk and freeze 3) one night sew and do mending 4) one night sit and read and relax 5) one night play computer games or crossword puzzles. Note that this doesn't include Friday nite and Motzai shabbos which is devoted completely to family.
While you do these things from 8:30 to 10 part of the time your older kids will be with you, just for closeness while they do their own things, part of the time if they are busy or asleep already you can talk to your friends on the phone and catch up while their husbands are learning as well or at Maariv. That's the time you can call your mother and catch up with her too for a few minutes, or your sisters or sisters in law. You don't need long calls, just a few minutes to touch base morning and evening. Same for answering emails. Ten minutes max to answer if you don't have time for more.
10 PM - husband comes home from shiur and davening or his chavrusa goes home and you spend an hour with him catching up - couple time. Part of that time you hang laundry and he can talk to you. If you want "togetherness at housework" he can hand you the laundry if it is the right time of the month. Believe me, it can be a nice prelude hanging laundry in the darkness while talking to something very nice later. If it's the wrong time of the month he can make you a cup of tea while you are hanging laundry and then you sit together and talk. How long does it take to hang the laundry? Ten minutes out of the hour? What's the big deal?
11 PM each of your showers and then you go to bed. I didn't necessarily say to go to sleep.
So...look at the day. Both of you worked, both of you spent some time with the kids, him less, you more. He got to daven and learn for two to two and a half hours. You cooked, cleaned up and washed dishes, helped kids with homework, washed and pjd them and put the little ones to bed.
I know that I didn't put in nursing a baby. If you have to do that, in terms of time, half the time one ends up nursing during dinner, covered (if you nurse in front of your kids) or for a short time when you get home and then again after dinner before washing the other kids...and you give up "your time" meaning no time to read, play computer games or talk with friends. Same if you work from home at night, like I used to, taking clients two nights a week.
But when you are just raising kids with no baby, and after a while you don't have nursing babies at home full time, note that this is just a normal day (week) and you manage to spend an hour a day with your husband, "connecting" with no kids around and NOT while you are doing housework or anything else, just sitting and talking.
And you have time to help your kids, to be with them, to clean the house (usually one can do it nicely in 90 minutes if you know how to be efficient), to sew and knit and mend and crochet, and...most important...to have "you time" talking with friends, playing computer games or crosswords, and just reading a novel or reading something worthwhile or learning something.
And you go to bed after having spent an hour with the person you hopefully love the most in the world. Doing nothing but talking to him and listening to him. What could be a lovelier way than that to go to sleep?
And...if you are lucky and can sleep from 11:30 to 6:30, you just got 7 hours of straight sleep and if you are a healthy normal woman, you wake up refreshed and happy for another day.
You may ask, how much of this is real? It is very real. Believe me. When I wasn't working in another city and had to commute or when I could finally work on only one job, except for the fact that by then my kids were not at a creche and came home alone and that I had to stop at my mothers every day after work to see how she was and care for her for a while, this was pretty close to my life. Only after the kids were older and I didn't have to help them with homework etc. did I have time to sit on a computer...and of course when I started taking work home my dh would go to sleep at 11 while I would get up and work some more, until 1 or 2 and then go to sleep.
But it was worth it. And still is. And I am far from being a superwoman. Nor are my friends.
As Shal said. No one is talking about kollel but Jewish girls who get a good Jewish education are supposed to encourage their husbands to learn as much as possible AFTER work and not to expect some kind of feminist equality that husbands will do sponja along with them or instead of them if they are perfectly healthy women. Gee, even in our plain ordinary MO/DL school we were taught that a true Eishes Chayil, even if she works full time, takes on the household things and the small children when she gets home to enable her husband when HE gets home, to go and learn and not have to deal with the domestic.
I have not watched this thread for about 100 pages (yup, maybe on page 5 or so I gave up) but I come back every now and then to just see what is being written about and this caught my eye.
Really FS? You learned this in a MO school? I have to be honest with you. I never learned anything about being a wife, let alone an eishet chayil. I learned history, math and english literature. We did not get any such mussar and frankly, I would never think of sending my daughter to a school where such mussar was taught.
I have to say that this whole learning thing also upsets me. My entire life my father has had a chavruta, and they learn together for two hours almost every sunday. That is it. That is the amount of time that they are both able to give in terms of their busy lives. Why in the world should a woman have to be superwoman, taking on all of the household chores, so that her husband can go learn? I never learned such a thing. Ever. Let the tomatoes fly
Shabbat - you BETCHA I learned this in an MO school, and also at home. I saw my father come home from work sometimes at 10 PM and take out a gemoro night after night and learn, sometimes falling asleep over it. I saw him learn shabbos, and when he retired I saw him learn all the time. I was with him full time round the clock for the two weeks before he was niftar and it was the most incredible zechus of my life - I saw his aide (we had someone a few hours a day, no filipinos in those days yet) help him wash and dress and put on tallis and tefilin, and my father would daven. Then, weighing maybe 80 lbs and dying of yenner machla he would totter at age 89 to his big chair at the desk and open the gemoros and rambam he kept on there and he would try to learn. I would come in after an hour and he was asleep in the chair, his head down and the sforim open, when I would try to wake him up he would immediately open his eyes and start reciting the sugya that he had been learning when he either slept or it was a small loss of consciousness.
His last words to me when he was dying and in a coma and opened his eyes were "bring me tallis and tefillin" to daven. And his best friend who died as he did, of yenner machla and worked all day and would learn every night until chatzos...when he was niftar in a different country his son told us that these were his father's last words as well in the hospital.
What a zechus to be raised by such fathers!!
And yes, I remember my teachers both in elementary school in NY and in high school teaching us just what I wrote. And my high school years were during the feminist revolution mind you!! Early 1970s.
And this is what I teach my girls as well. I see my oldest daughter, the married one, doing it. Her husband is saving lives, and he learns when he can but she takes over everything. Her son, now 9 months pregnant as well, working, the house, food, shopping, everything. Not superwoman. Just normal Jewish women. THAT is why our husbands sing Eishes chayil to us. Because we deserve it.
When my dh sings it to me friday nite I count off how many of those things I really do. Well I don't have a field or a vineyard but I do grow spices and mini rimonim and hadasim in my windowboxes...
friedasima, your sample day involves having no baby, apparently no toddler either, and no kids who want or need more than an hour or two of your time every day.
I also don't see where you have time in that day to sponga the floors, dust the trissim, or any one of the many cleaning tasks you mentioned. Unless you meant "1) one night clean... " to cover everything involved in keeping the entire home of a family with children clean for the week?
You also talk about getting home, doing the shopping with kids in tow, davening mincha, folding and putting away the laundry, cooking dinner, helping kids with homework, eating a family dinner, doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen in - 2.5 hours. That sounds very unrealistic to me, with the possible exception of cases where your youngest is 10, or you have 1-2 children.
Now, I only really shop once a week, so that I'll go ahead and cut from the daily schedule. But really, laundry for 6+ people should take only 10 minutes? Really, helping several children with homework can easily be done while preparing dinner?
Freidasima, nothing is hard per se, but it all adds up.
Somztimes in a couple one is not a morning/night person.
In some families I have seen bedtime, shopping, meals... Being horrible!
Many people do not happen to work near a shul or have a choice of several minians.
No bedtime? Not in this house. No sewing either, it is a thing from the past mainly here. As is baking cakes regularly esp as a working mom. I am not from a culture to give up me time, or have one hour with DH some of it when I'm occupied with laundry anyway. You can bet after such a day nothing will happen before during or after laundry lol. That is without taking into account that DH would be very annoyed too.
Many women mind their back, esp if you want several kids. I didnt do bathtime when DD had to be lifted. Like many of my friends. As a tall girl I am constantly told to avoid it, too.
I also find it funny that one MO woman (shabbatiscoming), one dati leumi woman (me!), one european-style just plain frum woman (Ruchel) (am I getting that right?), and one chassidic woman (PickleLady) all said something about reasons why sometimes men should help out with the housework, and somehow that got turned into chassidim not valuing learning.
If there's a difference here it's generational, not hashkafic. (Although it may not be generational either, it could have more to do with physical stamina, number and relative ages of children, income, or any one of several other things.)
It sounds like a fairytale. Actually this sounds a lot like my dream day. I wish... however, after being woken by the baby about 3 (lost count) times between 12 am and 6 am it is very hard to make a day like that happen. (Plus everything else that "happens" in life!)
BTW as for sewing and knitting and the like, it's just not much of a savings anymore. That's also a generational thing. Many of the older families I've seen around here have sewing machines, but for younger women, with clothes available that are relatively cheap, it doesn't really pay (unless you have no income - but for someone earning, say, 35 shekels an hour it already doesn't pay to go to a store and buy fabric and thread, get home, set up the machine, sew a skirt yourself, etc, rather than just paying 50-60 shekels for the same thing premade in a store).
But then again, I dont hear of non single parents going through this.
Eshet chail in my world is not more for me than lecha dodi or shalom alechem. No, I dont identify LOL.
I will make sure DD is set straight if they do the shmatte brainwashing at school... Oy oy. BH I think she will just see at home?
My mom, grandmom, also did not go through all of this...
Now if we had zero money I would sew and bake but would also have DH home to help since not working! Totally different!
And while I dont believe in helping with homework regularly, I put my kids bf all this housework, and my dh is also interested in not being a passing person in the kid(s) day.
