How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household

by Blu Greenberg

  All this diversity, however, is not a symbol of religious anarchy, but rather a sign of the vitality and dynamism of Orthodoxy. The fact that there are no neatly drawn lines is a sign of health and not of disorder. Within certain parameters, there is room for everyone....

  This book, then, attempts to describe the way a modern Orthodox Jewish household functions. I hope its content will satisfy the interests of four different groups of readers:

  For those who are experienced faithful practitioners, the book offers some reminders of the meaning behind the rituals we perform.

  For the growing number of ba’alei teshuva—“born again” Jews who are in the process of recovering tradition in their lives and are creating their own Jewish households—the text contains step-by-step descriptions of how things are done.

  For those who are simply curious about the interior space of this exotic species, this work offers some glimpses into the inner workings of family and community.

  Finally, for the large segment of American Jews who are reopening questions of their own Jewish identity, their Jewish feelings, or their ties to tradition, I hope this book will enlarge their sense of the unlimited Jewish possibilities that do exist.

  So as to make the work of practical value, each chapter has been formulated as an independent entity, requiring only occasional reference to the Glossary for terms that were explained in an earlier chapter. So as to parallel the normal flow of life, I have begun with daily life experience and have moved gradually through the text to celebration of special events in history. The reader, however, may start anywhere.

  One caveat: this book happens to be about traditional practices and rituals. It happens not to be focused on the larger subject of the ethics of being a Jew. I am aware of the great danger in this approach, for I know that some people mistakenly define an Orthodox Jew by ritual criteria alone. Sometimes, even Orthodox Jews make the same mistake—as if ritual behavior can be separated from ethical behavior.

  But that is as far from the truth as is the notion that one can approach God through ethics alone. The essence of Judaism is that all of life is rooted in the divine; we are commanded by God to live in a special way. The commandment not to steal is as central to Judaism—indeed, more central—as the commandment not to eat pork. What comes out of one’s mouth (that is, speech and words) is as stringently regulated in Jewish law as what goes into it (kosher food). The Rabbis point out that half of the Ten Commandments deal with ethical laws—behavior between one human being and another—and half deal with behavior between human beings and God.

  The essential Orthodox Jew, then, must be honest, ethical, respectful of other human beings, responsible in relationships, reliable in their word. Are all Orthodox Jews this way? Of course not. They are only human, and no system—even a divine one—can guarantee absolutely correct, perfect, human behavior. By the same token, the misbehavior of any individual Jew, then, does not prove anything about the validity or viability of this system of Jewish law. It simply demonstrates the failure of an individual to internalize the entire set of obligations. An observant Jew who wears a kepah and who cheats his customers does not represent a breakdown of the apparatus; he represents a breakdown in human conscience. If an Orthodox Jew violates the ethical laws, he has violated a part of the Torah he was pledged to keep in its entirety.

  Thus, although I have taken liberties in narrowing the focus, I hope the reader will understand its limits. Further, I hope the reader will fill in the large gaps and search within every description of halachic minutiae for their ethical interface. That, and not only what I have written below, is what the essential Orthodox Jew is all about.

  I was very grateful to have had the opportunity to work on this topic, for I learned many things. Most of us, I daresay, have neither the time nor impetus to examine the meaning of our acts, to reflect in a moment’s repose on our habits, to put the pieces of our lives into some coherent whole. While I cannot claim to have achieved such grandiose ends, this work has generously afforded me the first steps.

  I have also learned to articulate something which I, as a Jewish woman highly involved in process and preparation, had always sensed but have never before expressed: that process and preparation are part of the spiritual payoff. It is not only the celebration of the Passover Seder itself; it is also the prior experience of vacuuming out pretzel crumbs from the keyholes, products of the silly game of a three- and a five-year-old the week before. It is not only going to shul on Shabbat morning with my family; it is my fifteen-year-old daughter borrowing my cashmere sweater for shul, which she knows she cannot borrow on an ordinary school day. In preparing for this book, I became much more sensitive to the thousand and one little actions—often mundane and barely noticeable—that create the ambiance of an Orthodox Jewish household. As is probably true of most things in life, the lines between preparation and celebration are often blurred. Or, more accurately, preparation is also celebration—of life, of spirit, of family, of community, even of the holy.

  Third, I have come to realize, too, how much of a transition woman I am. I live not only in two worlds—Orthodoxy and modernity—I live also in the world of feminist values, which sometimes do not sit well with the former. It would have been much easier for me to write this book ten years ago, before feminism challenged me to come out of so many of my comfortable parochial hiding places. Nevertheless, I do want to tell about Orthodoxy as it is, so in most instances I describe how something has always been done in a traditional home, and in some I add how it might be done incorporating new values for women.

  And finally, I have learned that one need not apologize for mixing the unmixable—devotion and humor, piety and irreverence, spirituality and a bit of spoof, faith and lapses, fidelity to practice and backsliding in intent. There are some who can invest every act with ultimate meaning; but there are others, like myself, who cannot help but engage a critical eye and a loving heart at one and the same time. Somehow, we can be deadly serious about our commitment, yet not take ourselves so seriously at every given moment. Human beings live with all kinds of contradictions and inconsistencies, and the perfect faith is no more free of these than the perfect world view or the ultimate in ideologies.

  Still, I hope I will not offend the spiritual sensibilities of others with the occasional humor, irreverent anecdote, or personal impious reflection. Instead I hope what will come through, as I have felt it in this writing and as I have lived it all my life, are a great faith in this system, a love of its community, an awe and fear of its Creator, and a profound appreciation for the traditional Jewish way of life. Poking fun, at myself so to speak, is part of that love and appreciation. It is even part of the awe.

  But how, the reader might ask, can one perform ritual without perfect and pure intent? Is it not a sham? The answer might be, “Once more, with feeling.” Even so, should ritual or rite happen to be devoid of inner spirit at a given moment, it does not imply that it is devoid of meaning. Sometimes, in ritual, we simply feel part of the community, and that is enough. Sometimes, ritual serves but to generate a sense of self, and that is enough. Sometimes, it strengthens the family unit, and that is enough. And sometimes, it connects us to the Divine, and that is enough.

  PART ONE

  The Jewish Way

  One of the most remarkable qualities of the Jewish religion is its ability to sanctify everyday life—the routine, the mundane, the necessary bits and pieces of daily existence. This is achieved through the guidelines of halacha, the body of Jewish law and ethics that defines the Jewish way through life. What Judaism says in effect is this: Yes, commemorating a unique event in history is a holy experience, but so is the experience of waking up alive each morning, or eating to nourish the body, or having sex with one’s mate; so is the act of establishing clear demarcations between work and rest or investing everyday speech and dress with a measure of sanctity. Judaism takes the physical realities of life and imposes on them a set of rules or rituals. By doing so, it transforms thi
s reality or that basic necessity of life into something beyond itself. That is the heart of the Jewish Way.

  CHAPTER · 1

  SHABBAT*

  THE SEVENTH DAY

  Time. Jews have an amazing way with time. We create islands of time. Rope it off. Isolate it. Put it on another plane. In doing so, we create within that time a special aura around our everyday existence. Carving out special segments of holy time suits the human psyche perfectly, for ordinary human beings cannot live constantly at the peak of emotion. Thus, Shabbat, holy time, gives us an opportunity to experience that emotional peak, to feel something extraordinary in an otherwise ordinary span of time.

  You would not think of time as having texture, yet in a traditional Jewish household it becomes almost palpable. On Shabbat, I can almost feel the difference in the air I breathe, in the way the incandescent lamps give off light in my living room, in the way the children’s skins glow, or the way the trees sway. Immediately after I light my candles, it is as if I flicked a switch that turned Shabbat on in the world, even though I know very well the world is not turned on to Shabbat. Remarkable as this experience is, even more remarkable is that it happens every seventh day of my life.

  How does it happen? There will always be an element of mystery in transforming time from ordinary to extraordinary, but the human part of the process is not mysterious at all. It is not one great big leap or one awesome encounter with the Holy, but rather just so many small steps, like parts of a pattern pieced together.

  Why do I or any other Orthodox Jew take these steps, week after week, month after month, year after year, with never a slipup? The first answer falls hard on untrained ears. I observe Shabbat the way I do because I am so commanded. Somewhere in that breathtaking desert, east of Egypt and south of Israel, Moses and the Jewish people received the Torah, including the commandment to observe Shabbat. Since I am a descendant of those people, my soul, too, was present at Sinai, encountered God, and accepted the commandments.

  Now, I don’t for a moment believe that God said at Sinai, “Do not carry money in your pockets on Shabbat,” or, “Do not mow thy front lawn,” or even, “Go to synagogue to pray,” but the cumulative experience of Revelation, plus the way that experience was defined and redefined in History for a hundred generations of my ancestors, carries great weight with me.

  The Biblical commandment to observe Shabbat has two reference points: God’s creation of the world, and the Exodus/freedom from slavery. True, these are events in history, yet, linked as they both are to Shabbat, they also suggest something else about the human condition: that there is a tension between the poles of one’s life, mastery at the one end and enslavement at the other; mastery in drive, energy, creativity—and enslavement to the pressures and seduction of the hurly-burly world.

  To some extent, Shabbat achieves what the song title suggests: “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.” Let me paraphrase the Biblical injunction, as it speaks to me, a contemporary person:

  Six days shall you be a workaholic; on the seventh day, shall you join the serene company of human beings.

  Six days shall you take orders from your boss; on the seventh day, shall you be master/mistress of your own life.

  Six days shall you toil in the market; on the seventh day, shall you detach from money matters.

  Six days shall you create, drive, create, invent, push, drive; on the seventh day, shall you reflect.

  Six days shall you be the perfect success; on the seventh day, shall you remember that not everything is in your power.

  Six days shall you be a miserable failure; on the seventh day, shall you be on top of the world.

  Six days shall you enjoy the blessings of work; on the seventh day, shall you understand that being is as important as doing.

  A friend has this bumper sticker affixed to the front of her refrigerator: HANG IN THERE, SHABBOS IS COMING. There definitely are weeks in my life when I feel that I will barely make it, but the prize of Shabbat carries me through.

  It doesn’t always work this way. There are times on Friday night that my best ideas come to me. I feel the urge to take pen in hand and write my magnum opus, but I am not allowed to write. There are those weeks when I am just not in the mood for a big Friday-night family dinner. There have been some Shabbat mornings when it might have been more fun on the tennis court than in shul, and there were some Saturday afternoons when I had to miss what I was sure was the world’s best auction.

  Happily, the negative moods are the exception and the positive ones the rule. (Were it otherwise, commanded or not, I might have walked away as most modern Jews have done—without, I am well aware, being struck down.) But more important is the fact that I never have to think about picking and choosing. I am committed to traditional Judaism. It has chosen me and I have chosen it back. And just as I am commanded to observe the laws on a Shabbat that rewards, pleases, heals, or nurtures me, so I am commanded on a Shabbat when it doesn’t strike my fancy. So when that auction rolls around each year, I don’t really suffer serious pangs of temptation. I go to shul, which might even happen to be tedious that particular Shabbat, but which offers me that which I could not buy for a bid of a hundred million dollars anywhere—community, family, faith, history, and a strong sense of myself.

  There is something, too, about the power of habit and routine, regimentation and fixed parameters—stodgy old words—that I increasingly have come to appreciate. There are some things that spontaneity simply cannot offer—a steadiness and stability which, at its very least, has the emotional reward of familiarity and, at best, creates the possibility of investing time with special meaning, experience with special value, and life with a moment of transcendence.

  And that goes for feelings, too. Those occasional Shabbat dinners when I am just not in the mood? When I don’t feel like blessing anyone? Simply, I must be there. Involuntarily, almost against my will, a better mood overtakes me.

  I find it fascinating that the Rabbis * of the Talmud speak of kavannah as the emotion that should accompany performance of ritual. Kavannah means intent, or directed purposefulness, rather than spirituality. Even in those more God-oriented times, the Rabbis knew you couldn’t always drum up feeling. Try, they said, but it’s all right, too, if it doesn’t come. Often, meaning and feeling will come after the fact, and not as a motivating force.

  While it may sound sacrilegious, one can experience a beautiful Shabbat without thinking a great deal about God. Peak for a Jew does not always mean holy or having holy thoughts. Rather ordinary experiences often become sublime because of the special aura created by Shabbat.

  On a recent Shabbat, in shul, my peak experience had nothing to do with prayers, God, Shabbat, or the Torah. As we all stood to sing a prayer toward the end of the service, my eye caught sight of Henri V. holding his two-year-old granddaughter Jordana in his arms. In that same line of vision, twenty rows ahead, I saw Lou B., whose wife was just recovering from surgery, holding his two-year-old grandson Jeremy in his arms. For a few seconds I felt a surge of spirit, a misting of the eyes, a moment of joy in the heart. For me that was Shabbat.

  My peak experience the week before (and I don’t have them every week) was even more “unholy.” Three of our children had friends for Shabbat lunch. After zemirot and before the closing Grace, Moshe and two of his yeshiva high-school friends reviewed their terrible pranks of yesteryear. For an hour at the Shabbat table we all laughed over their antics. It wasn’t very “Shabbosdik,” but neither could it have happened at any other time—the warmth, the closeness, the leisure...

  No system that engages a variety of human beings can be absolutely perfect. But, to the average Orthodox Jew, Shabbat comes very close to perfection. It is a day of release and of reenergizing; a day of family and of community; of spirit and of physical well-being. It is a day of prayer and of study; of synagogue and of home; a day of rest and self-indulgence; of compassion and of self-esteem. It is ancient, yet contemporary; a day for all seasons. A gift and a responsib
ility. Without it I could not live.

  Activities Proscribed on Shabbat

  The Shabbat laws we observe today are a fine example of how Jews have remained tied to the Torah even as we have enlarged its literal mandates. The Torah enjoins us to set aside a day of rest, to remember both divine creation of the world and the Exodus. But it gives us very few cues as to what shape the day takes. In fact, the Torah explicitly forbids activities in three broad categories: leaving one’s place (EXOD. 16:29); kindling fire (EXOD. 35:2-3); and engaging in work (EXOD. 20:10; DEUT. 5:14). But what does leaving one’s place mean? And what is work?

  The ancient Rabbis, in setting down the oral tradition of generations before them, have defined the day for us. Work is understood to be all those activities that were associated with building the sanctuary in the desert, and include the following categories:

  I. Growing and preparing food

  1. Plowing

  2. Sowing

  3. Reaping

  4. Stacking sheaves

  5. Threshing

  6. Winnowing

  7. Selecting out (as, for example, the chaff)

  8. Sifting

  9. Grinding

  10. Kneading

  11. Baking (cooking)

  II. Making clothing

  12. Sheep shearing

  13. Bleaching (washing)

  14. Combining raw materials

  15. Dyeing

  16. Spinning

  17. Threading a loom

  18. Weaving

  19. Removing a finished article

  20. Separating threads

  21. Tying knots

  22. Untying knots

  23. Sewing

  24. Tearing

  III. Leatherwork and writing

  25. Trapping an animal

  26. Slaughtering