How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household

by Blu Greenberg

  Still, when all is said and done, teaching children Torah lies in the hands of the parents. To the extent that a parent sets this as a priority, a child will follow suit. Beyond finding the best schools and the best teachers, there is the experience of parent teaching child Torah, one on one. “And you shall teach these things to your children” (DEUT. 6:7) was taken with great literal-ness. The Talmud adds, “He who teaches his grandchild Torah it is regarded as if the child had received it direct from Sinai.” Our children study regularly with their grandfather and they take it quite for granted, but Yitz and I don’t; and in later years, the children, too, will realize what a treasured thing learning with their grandfather is.

  For most of our past, the singular emphasis was on father teaching son. But that is changing as young Jewish women increasingly are becoming better educated and fathers and mothers are equally able to teach their sons and daughters Torah. There are still large imbalances in the educational system as regards Talmudic studies, particularly in the intensity and length of years of study. But gradually these imbalances are being righted.

  The image of parent learning Torah with child is one of the loveliest visions I can summon up. Many Orthodox parents set aside time every Shabbat to study with their children, and some also learn regularly during the week, too. Whenever I walk past Yitz studying with one of the children, as he frequently does, often into the midnight hours, I say silently, That’s one of the reasons I married you....

  The story is told of Reb Chaim Brisker, the great Talmudist of the early twentieth century, who sent his son away for two years to learn in a famous yeshiva in another city. There was much excitement in the household on the day of the boy’s return. The carriage pulled up, the young man stepped out. His father embraced him and said, “Come. Let us learn.” For several hours, the father and son immersed themselves in the sea of Talmud. When they closed the large black volumes, they embraced again, and the father said, “Now, my son, how are you? Tell me …”

  That is not how it happens in most ordinary families. Still, even in an ordinary Orthodox home the love of learning and the love of children are interwoven in remarkable fashion.

  Another story: Both my father-in-law, of blessed memory, and my father can be characterized as Talmedei Chachamim, scholars of Torah and Talmud. Both spent their lives in daily study of Talmud. Both completed the entire Shas (sixty-three tractates of the Talmud). One July 1, some years ago, we were about to leave for summer vacation with our five children, ages one through six. My father arose early that morning, took a subway from Far Rockaway at 6:30 A.M. SO as to reach Riverdale by 8:30 to have a chance to say a last good-bye to his beloved grandchildren. He then had to travel back to Manhattan for a ten o’clock appointment. Three hours of traveling, just to get an extra hug from a small grandchild. My in-laws, too, were going to miss the children for two months, but they were not up to traveling, so we called them and said we’d come to Brooklyn before leaving for Massachusetts. My father-in-law, who loved each child more than his own life, said to Yitz, “Maybe you’ll come alone, so we can learn a little.” My father-in-law’s passion for his grandchildren was no less than my father’s; it was simply a different style of love, and peaks of emotion were often shared in puzzling through or mastering a piece of Gemara.

  The obligations of a Jewish parent to a child are considerable: teaching respect, passing on ritual and tradition, preparing a child to be honorably self-sufficient, teaching Torah and ethics. All of that takes a lot of time, teaching, energy, contact, supervision, involvement, interference—and money. In the past, much of this was done by the Jewish mother. It was she who was responsible, for the most part, for the daily training and teaching; she who created an environment in which this learning and growing could take place; she who was generally available to pick up the pieces as Jewish children rushed through life, taking it all in, double time. Even day-school schedules, often eight hours plus, meant that the support systems had to be working well. Clean clothes, decent meals, a car pool to a distant school, a place to do homework and a parent to supervise and help, teachers to visit: all of these usually fell to the Jewish mother. An underlying premise of the yeshiva system is one of reciprocity: that a parent is able to supplement the schoolwork just as the school supplements the parent’s task of teaching Torah.

  A radical change is taking place in society today, with mothers no longer available on an open-ended basis. These social changes have affected the traditional community less than its more secular counterparts, but things are changing here, too. Orthodox Jewish women are still having children, but they also march to a different beat than did their mothers. By the time their children are in high school, most mothers have returned to school or to work. Even at the elementary level, 50 to 70 percent of the children in modern Orthodox day schools have working mothers. The only real difference seems to be at the preschool level, where most of the traditional mothers are still having babies and doing full-time mothering. But even there, and certainly for elementary and high school, administrators now consider the special needs of children with two working parents: there is no parent available for a class trip or a sukkah-hopping program, or a special school performance, or an assist with a tough homework assignment. We have only begun to estimate the impact upon children of coming home to an empty house or of trying to get the attention of a preoccupied mother. Jewish mothers helped a good deal in the past. Only now that a vacuum has been created is there recognition of how much went into the Jewish mother’s role. It remains to be seen what toll this takes on the young, on the size and spacing of families; what compensations families will come up with and to what extent will Orthodox Jewish fathers pick up some of the slack. Perhaps the pendulum wiill swing back, as it did at the turn of the century, to full-time mothering for women who could afford it.

  To return for a moment to kibbud av v’em: the lesson must be taught well, for it has to last a lifetime, through the life of middle-aged children. No one denies that there are at times large dilemmas and forced choices. There are many pulls on middle-aged children: their own spouses and children, the demands of career, community, the needs of self, and the needs of parents growing older day by day. Still, the tradition insists that we balance the claims of our parents upon us, even as we become adults and greatly independent of them. That is why the fifth commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” addresses the human being as “child” rather than “parent,” even though the initial responsibility of teaching respect falls to the parent. We remain the children of our parents all our lives, and the commandment to honor them is binding all that while.

  The majority of Orthodox Jews I know have surpassed their parents in education, achievement, and status. Yet they do not consider themselves to have surpassed their parents as human beings. They have not forgotten the merit of their parents, the acts of loving-kindness in their youth, the love that builds and mellows over a lifetime. That is not to say that one cannot separate fully, even at times to confront parents, and certainly to become independent. But unlike contemporary culture, where oftentimes parents are cast off as children become adults, Judaism says you don’t have to be exactly like your parents, but you must maintain a lifelong respect for them.

  The Talmud has numerous stories of how adult children honor their parents. My children know the story of Dama by heart: whenever they wake me up from an afternoon’s nap without due cause, I repeat the story of Dama to them. Dama and his father, Netina, were dealers in precious jewels. One afternoon a buyer came to purchase a stone that would have netted Dama a huge profit, six hundred thousand gold coins. But Dama passed up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Out of respect for his father, he refused to remove the key to the safe that was under his father’s pillow, for risk of waking his father. For that act of extreme honor and sensitivity, Dama was rewarded. The Rabbis say the following year the calf that was to be used for the red heifer in the Temple ceremony was chosen and purchased from Dama’s flock....


  The story of Rabbi Tarfon is another case in point. Rabbi Tarfon would crouch on the floor and make himself into a footstool so that his mother could reach her bed, which was otherwise too high for her. The law doesn’t require such extreme acts of love and honor: it is merely suggesting a model of respect for parents that was given by those who were themselves esteemed and rich and famous.

  Financial support and responsibility for elderly parents are clearly spelled out in the Talmud and in later codes of Jewish law. There are no two ways about it. One should feed, clothe, warm, and lead his/her parents in and out, and it must all be done with love, and not grudgingly. In general, halacha is an ecologically sound system, and that goes for a recycling of the nurturing process as well.

  Orthodox Jewish couples—both partners—accept it as a given. Rarely, if ever, does one hear of an argument between husband and wife over the support of the spouses’ parents. Middle-aged children will often take their parents into their own homes, or have them live nearby. Or, if elderly parents go into nursing homes, they will not be abandoned there. When I see women in the community taking their mothers to luncheons which they themselves would not otherwise go to, or men taking their fathers to the morning minyan, it always gives me pause for thought.

  HEBREW ETHICAL WILLS

  Today, most people write wills to leave their worldly goods. No responsible parent would leave the matter to the state. But worldly goods are not the most important possession we can leave behind us. Jewish tradition recognized that moral example and personal values are a more significant legacy and, therefore, the custom of writing Hebrew ethical wills developed.

  Not a single one among us can be sure we will have an opportunity to say to our children all that we wish to say. When a child reaches Bar or Bat Mitzvah or marries and the parent’s heart is full of emotion and pride, and we understand our priorities in life with a special clarity, that seems as good a time as any to write an ethical will. Once you have done it, you will revise it many times, hopefully over the next sixty to eighty years. To some extent, changes in circumstance—yours and your children’s—will affect the content and emphases of your legacy.

  There is no standard form to a Hebrew ethical will, and thus there is great personal leeway. Though entitled “Hebrew,” an ethical will can be written in any language. In it, you should discuss those things that are closest to your heart, as well as what you have learned about the eternal values of life. Try to think of what would make you proud of your children as mature adults and as members of the Jewish community. You should mention whatever virtues are important to you, and not be worried that you are imposing impossible demands on your children. This is, after all, a legacy and not a commandment. It serves as a direction for their lives, not an order. Nor should you be worried that something that is important to you is objectively trivial and therefore not of sufficient weight to be included in a will of this nature. In some of the classical Hebrew ethical wills of the medieval period, we find that parents admonished their children to be strict about personal cleanliness or to be impeccable about their sexual behavior or not to gossip.

  A man I knew wrote an ethical will to his children after his second daughter had married. He died some fifty years after he wrote the first will, and he changed it a few times, leaving three or four older versions in his safe-deposit box. His children commented that four things had never changed: “If I die before Mama, call her every day, and visit her once a week. She always took care of you. …” “Give one tenth of your earnings to tze-dakah. This will be more of a hardship to you the wealthier you become, but you’ll manage. …” “Observe Shabbos, and teach your own children to do the same. This is what kept our family so close. …” “Try to give other people the benefit of the doubt. …”

  Writing an ethical will is not an easy thing to do, in part because it forces you to confront and understand your own values in life. However, you should not be intimidated at putting it all down on paper. The most important ethical legacy is the living example you have given them all your life. This will only serve to confirm.

  Earlier, I said being a traditional Jewish parent is both the hardest and the easiest thing in the world. But I didn’t say this: it also is the best.

  CHAPTER · 6

  DRESS

  All his life, Shloime Mazel was a good Jew—devout, learned, careful of every little detail of the law, and more serious about it than most.

  As he neared sixty-five, he began to realize that life would not go on forever. “Before I go,” he said to his pious wife, “let me have a taste of this world—for just one week.” So he took his money out of the shochtim pension fund, shaved his beard for the interim, discarded his long, black frock-coat in favor of a dapper sports jacket, tilted a fedora over his black velvet yarmulke, packed a suitcase of kosher salamis, and, feeling much like a stranger in his own skin, flew off to Las Vegas.

  Alas, on his very first day there, in pursuit of ‘this-worldliness,’ he stepped off a curb and was hit by a car. Lying there in pain in the Las Vegas gutter, Shloime cried out, “Ribono Shel Olam, Master of the universe, what have I done that is so terrible? All my life I have served You faithfully, never neglecting any of Your mitzvot. All I wanted was one week in Las Vegas, one week to see what the world is like. Why have You punished me?” Suddenly, a Voice boomed overhead: “OH, MY HEAVENS! Shloime, IS IT YOU? I AM SO SORRY! I DIDN’T RECOGNIZE YOU!” *

  By and large, a modern Orthodox Jew can physically blend into the general community, in Las Vegas as in New York as in Dallas. The men are generally clean-shaven and do not wear earlocks. (However, they use only electric razors; Leviticus 21:5 prohibits applying a razor directly to the face.) They wear three-piece suits and sports clothes quite like other American men. The women are up to the latest in fashion. But there are differences—among Orthodox Jews and also between the most liberal Orthodox Jews and the non-Orthodox. The differences lie in the virtue of modesty.

  Modesty is, of course, relative. Still, I would characterize Orthodox Jewish dress as modern but modest. For example, modern Orthodox teenagers, both male and female, wear the universal uniform—jeans—but not skintight ones, and not to their yeshiva schools. Young women will wear bathing suits, but not the teeniest bikinis; generally, a woman will head for the one-piece rack. When skirts were mini, Orthodox women wore them, but not the shortest ones. In fact, hemline inches could be significantly correlated to identity positions along the Orthodox continuum. At a fashionable Orthodox wedding, you won’t find strapless or décolleté dresses except on an unknowing outsider. Some Orthodox women wear slacks, but others consider it “male gender attire” and would not wear such. Those women who do wear pants would never wear them to shul. Many modern Orthodox women wear sleeveless clothes, but never to shul; and some would never wear anything cut above their elbows. A woman from the Chasidic or right-wing sectarian community would never wear a short-sleeved dress, but she might wear a modest one-piece bathing suit at a Catskill hotel. An American Orthodox woman would not think of entering the shul without stockings, even in the summer heat, but her right-wing counterpart in Israel wouldn’t hesitate to come to prayer in sandal-shod bare feet.

  So the lines are drawn like a crazy quilt. Perhaps in no other area is there as much diversity among Orthodox Jews. The same holds true for married women covering their hair. Some women wear wigs; some, hats; some, scarves; some, nothing at all, except for when they light candles or go to shul. There are some families where the mother doesn’t cover her hair and the married daughter does. There are differences even among those who wear hats or scarves. Some wear them all the time, some only when they go out of their own homes.

  In my community, the Modern Orthodox, most of the women of my generation do not cover their hair. But it is also true that the numbers of younger women who cover their hair at marriage has increased over the past generation.

  There are two associations with regard to women’s head covering. One is that it is a sign of dignity;
the other, that exposed hair is a sign of licentiousness. Each of these associations reflects the difference in rabbinic understanding of the Biblical law of the unfaithful wife. A married woman, charged with infidelity, was required to undergo an ordeal of bitter waters, during which the priest uncovered the woman’s head.

  From this law, and from other sources, it was commonly understood that proper Jewish women of the past went about with their hair covered, most likely with shawls or head veils. By the sixteenth century, Jewish women had begun to wear wigs, although not without a good deal of halachic controversy over the matter. In late medieval times, the custom arose in certain Chasidic communities for brides to shave their heads before covering them with a tichel, a head scarf. In the nineteenth century, as traditional Jews moved out of the ghetto, many of them began to follow general practice of leaving the hair uncovered. Others continued to wear wigs as an alternate way of maintaining modesty, yet look attractive.

  Which brings us to a third commonly held understanding of why women cover the hair—that a married woman should not make herself attractive to anyone other than her husband. The assumption is that a wig is less attractive than one’s own sensuous locks. But the wigs today are so beautiful that the “dowdy theory” is more rhetoric than real. Everyone knew this, which is why the majority of rabbis opposed wigs from the start. But happily asceticism is not a formidable characteristic of Judaism, so the women won out.

  A little insider gossip. On the right are those who criticize the bareheaded married woman as being impious, errant. On the left are those who say that wigs are more attractive than most natural heads of hair and therefore the spirit of the law is being violated even as its letter is being kept. In my community, the modern Orthodox, most of the women of my generation do not cover their hair except for shul and candlelighting. For my part, it does not bother me in the least to hear a beautiful wig-coiffed woman explain to me that a Jewish woman covers her hair so that she be less attractive to other men. A little inconsistency never hurt anyone; a little vanity is a sign of health; and there are occasions when the letter of the law, as one interprets law, is more appropriate to the human condition than the spirit of the law.