What makes the job of the man and woman equal is her being a help-mate. God has freed her from numerous mitzvot so that she can be a helper to the man. It would be impossible for both individually to keep all then men's mitzvot. With the woman helping the man, the man can satisfy his responsibilities. If the woman fails to be a helpmate, then she's going through life with a light load and not achieving her potential. "I will make for him a helpmate." God tells us his intention in creating Eve. Feminism by trying to destroy the whole concept, took women away from their purpose. If I may phrase it mathematically: a woman's mitzvot plus the role of dedicated helpmate equal a man's mitzvot. Their overall job is equal in difficulty only when she strives to be a helpmate.
None of this means that the man does not help the woman. By providing spiritual leadership and supporting her financially, by protecting her from the world, the help he provides is lifesaving. When you drive through the NJ Meadowlands, keep in mind that the roads we take for granted were built on a swamp. Some man, likely Irish, trudged through that swamp in the dead of winter to build that road so that he could earn a few pennies to support his family. He was not getting career fulfillment in there. He was providing "help" if you want to minimize it by calling it that to his wife and kids. All the feminists who charge men with keeping the glamorous careers to themselves should go trudge through a swamp sometime. The feminists in their career envy are addressing of course the ruling class and project that on to all of society. Most men were workers in factories and farms. They had no career. And did the ruling class women have it bad? I would say not. They had a pretty sweet life actually even if they couldn't become Senators or Novelists. They also weren't called off for war. Let us note that a Kennedy boy was killed in World War II and Jack Kennedy was nearly killed. The girl Kennedy's slept safely in their beds in Boston.
God built an interlocking system for husband and life. He helps her through assorted mitzvot. She helps him by being a helpmate. The help he provides is often indirect. At work, he focuses on making his company money and for that they pay him. He gives the money to his wife who spends it. He studies Torah via intellectual contemplation of halahka and mitzvot and she shares in the merit. He praises Hashem in his tefilla and the family benefits. She just flat out helps him. It's much more direct but no greater in the quantity of help.
Some are deceived by the indirectness of his efforts. They think he goes out every day to enjoy his fulfilling career when in reality he is being torn to pieces daily by screaming customers. Women over the last century have come to reject the notion of helper due to its apparent unfairness. This is an act of ingratitude to men who were sacrificing their whole lives for women, literally in many cases. Even today, 92% of workplace fatalities happen to men. That's 40,000 people a year in the USA. Add to that the ones who die from stress induced illness.
The women who scream about not being counted in minyanim should consider that minyan is a burden. It's 6 AM in the Winter in Poland or Minnesota. Who is required to trudge out into the cold to daven in a minyan?
If the wife is focused on getting the husband to "help with the kids" before and/or after his minyan then she is turning him into the helpmate. This is not to say that there aren't occasions where requesting help is justified. But that should be a matter of too much going on at once (two kids screaming) rather than trying to address some twisted notion that she has the bigger job because the hours are longer. The hours actually are not longer if you add in working, commuting, working at home, davening. learning, and everything else a man does. And minute per minute, his work is much more demanding. This is why she needs to maintain her identity of helpmate to him so that their tasks in life are equal.
This extends to the sexual realm as well. He needs lots of help there, especially in this day and age where he is getting titillated constantly. This new notion of a woman sleeping with her husband only when she's "in the mood" runs counter to the ideal of helpmate. Men's need for sex is way higher than a woman's. It isn't even close. And the halahka limits his recourse to marriage. This is not the case for gentiles. So while the gentiles have turned the world into a soft porno film, gentile men have varied outlets. The Jewish man has only one - his wife. He is utterly dependent on her.
I never hear this concept mentioned when people pine on about the shiduch crisis. We hear all about the poor girls and how they suffer. Try to imagine the suffering of a 25 year old single man who has been aching for sex since he was 15 and struggling to restrain himself lest he engage in sin punishable by death.
One comes to see through all this the toxicity of feminism. It's demonic. I realize I'm not giving a full picture here of all the issues. There's a woman's side to the story. But you really don't need to hear it from me. You hear it every day. What you don't hear is a man's perspective and you don't hear anyone stress the essential nature of 'ezer c'negdo', being a helpmate. Without it, the whole system falls apart. Without it, the woman becomes corrupt, she becomes the government worker who performs minimal work as the pension builds. She becomes the cop who stands idly at the construction site. She's doing a little but not a full job. She becomes a taker as so many women are today. Feminism relieved her of her work load and her purpose.
When contemplating this subject, I often think of the Bob Dylan song "Like A Rolling Stone." He sang:
"You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.
How does it feel?"That's feminism. It seems so liberating and glamorous and clever. But it's really taking everything it can steal. The feminists, like many demagogues, make a living screwing with your head. They get positions in women's studies departments. They write books and give lectures. They get the thrill of undermining all of society and history. For an intellectual, there is no greater thrill. But they need an audience. And that is all of us, who sit there buying their nonsense, unraveling our families and our destinies.
4 comments:
Are you married and do you have kids?
"Putting on a modest dress is nowhere nearly as difficult as reigning in relentless sexual desire. The former is a single choice made early in the day, the latter goes on all darn day long and nights too. Even modest deportment, while not easy, is not as hard as that. Neither is taking care of kids, while difficult, as hard as earning a living in the big, bad world. Kids are a whole lot cuter than bosses and customers. "
Reigning in relentless sexual desire... if that is so you should talk to a therapist.
A woman is not only "putting on a modest dress" and that's it. She also has to daven, a minimum at least, if she is trudos she has less davening obligations but still. Also she wants in most of the cases, because she grew up with. Also a woman still wants to learn, it doesn't stop with falling out of sem. Then kids - yes, they ARE cute, but cuteness doesn't last for ever, and in the first place it is an awful lot of work, especially if you have more of them than only one, and then it also depends how many years are between each single kid. If you have 3 toddlers in a row, 1, 2 and a half and 4 years old, you never get rest. It is alone physically a really tough job. Not that you can't manage that and you will, but it is very far away from putting on a modest dress in the morning... in many haredi families the husband is helping out as much as he can. Plus: there is the issue of chinuch. As a mother you have a lot to deal with that and not only in the early years of childhood. When your kids enter puberty you also have to be there, mentally and physically and help your kids grow. You con't leave that to school, yeshiva or sem.
Best,
Rose
Wow, somebody is reading my blog? Awesome.
I hope I made it clear that when a woman is doing her job fully then it is a very challenging job. I'm objecting to the notion that it's harder than a man's job and therefore he should help her. I think it's the opposite and she should help him. I know a lot of women, not my wife, who do half a job and call it a job and a half. I'm talking about American women not Indian or Japanese, not traditional women but the new fangled type.
Most men, even married, struggle with sexual desires. You don't understand that because you are a woman. And men and women are different even though feminism tries to downplay that fact. Men's sexual needs are a fact that is inconvenient for feminism. They try to make it out to be a sickness as you have done. It is very difficult for frum men because the world is full of titillation today but frum men are denied the kinds of releases that nonreligious men utilize. It's not a matter for therapy. It's a problem characteristic of the end of days. And I'm not necessarily speaking for myself, I'm speaking for many men that I have spoken to. People don't want to address this topic in part perhaps because it's immodest. But it's a huge issue. The halahka recognizes the challenges very well. That's why there are rules all over the place concerning men's desires. Modesty rules, harkacha rules, rules on how to sleep, how to walk down the street. It's all about dealing with men's desires. You might as well tell the Shulchan Aruch to go to a therapist. Tell Yehuda for going to a prostitute. Or David for wanting to sleep with Bathsheva after seeing her bathe on a roof. Or R' Akiva climbing up a tree to either (can't remember) get away from a woman he lusted after or chasing one. Or Joseph lusting after the wife of Potiphar and losing the chance to have all the tribes come through him.
We live in a very strange era that has unleashed all the sexuality in the world and even enhanced it with technology but Jewish men are under the same rules they have always been. Our men are in a terrible position and the community needs to try to help them or at least have sympathy.
One way to show sympathy is to have marriages at younger ages.
If you are NOT married i understand your argument. But if you are married I don't understand it. Asking my husband he very strongly holds again the notion that men have a so much stronger sexual desire than women and therefor women have to be banned from many areas. As Torah people we are able to control our drives, isn't it?
I really believe that you are not able to jugde if the job of a woman is harder than that of a man if you havent yet experienced it. To have kids and to run a household plus to even help to increase the family income like many of us frum women do nowadays... this is something.
And yes I am 100% convinced that early shidduchim make very much sense!
Rose
Your husband can speak for himself but the halakha clearly makes a distinction between men and women in that regard. She can listen to men sing. He cannot listen to women. She can follow a man up the stairs. He cannot follow a woman. She can eat off his plate during niddah, he cannot eat off of hers. Why is that?
Of course, I don't know for sure whose job is harder, but I have been around long enough and done both jobs. Also he simply has more mitzvot. I am saying that the jobs start to get equal when she fully does hers and not try to pass it off on him.
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