[Avodah] Tzeni'us and gender roles

[Chana Luntz]

RTK writes:

> I don't know what spiritual supports were available to 
> Grandma that are not available to women today, except 
> husbands, of course.  But most husbands aren't very good at 
> that sort of thing.  In many homes the wife is the stronger 
> partner, spiritually speaking, and it has ever been thus.  

As I have indicated, I think there were a lot of spiritual and emotional
supports available to grandmother that are not so easily available today.
One I spoke about at the beginning was the extended community, centered on
the chazer of the home, with multiple families of different generations.  I
suggested that this was most closely replicated in the appartment blocks
found (particularly) within charedi circles in Israel, where the families
are in and out of each others's appartments, the children of all ages play
together etc.

In a more atomised society, the nuclear family takes on a more primary role
than it ever did, which forces husbands to play a much greater part in
providing what used to be provided by the community.  I agree that husbands
often wilt under the level of obligation that that places, but they are
unquestionably better than nothing, and without them, a girl is clearly
completely and utterly on their own.

>  
> You have spoken of "asei lecha rav" before and I recall you 
> connected that idea with the phenomenon of girls in seminary 
> developing crushes on their teachers.  It seems that you see 
> the relationship with a rav as having a strong emotional 
> component, a level of emotional intimacy, that is not very 
> appropriate between a man and a woman outside of marriage.  
> In this case I don't know what difference it makes whether a 
> woman is married or single.

The difference is, not that I am expecting the husband to be the Rav, but
that the husband will have access to a Rav, and that he will operate as a
form of mediator.  I certainly think this has always been the way that
married families have interacted with a Rav.  While women of the family may
sometimes ask and speak to the Rav directly, it is always as a part of the
family unit.  I personally think that any man would quite correctly feel
somewhat cut out of things (and it is probably a sign of things not going so
well within the marriage) if his wife had a direct relationship with a Rav
to which he was not really privy.  To my mind, almost the only scenario I
can see where this would happen would be if there are marital problems, and
the Rav is in fact acting as a form of marital counsellor.  I am not saying
that is not a valuable role for a Rav to have - but what it demonstrates is
that the family unit is already not functioning as it should, and the role
of the Rav is, ideally, to bring the two of them to a state where it is not
necessary. 


  But I disagree with your 
> premise.  Many single young women (and of course many married 
> women) used to talk to my father about their problems and 
> questions, halachic or hashkafic.  My mother might come in 
> and offer tea and cookies, she would usually be somewhere 
> around.  Sometimes the young woman would confide in my mother 
> rather than in my father, not unusual for a sympathetic rebetzen.  
>  
> "Asei lecha rav" can be anything from asking shailos about 
> your pots and pans to discussing serious life-goal issues.  

Well, the asking shialos about your pots and pans can, at a pinch, be done
to anybody and various anybodies (I did that in my single days, whoever
happened to be around with smicha who was known to answer these kind of
shialas would do, but I wouldn't call any of the people I asked these
questions to my rav).  If you want to develop real spiritual growth of the
type that RMB is keen on, however, it is generally considered ideal to find
somebody who is better able to help guide you with the haskafic type issues
as well - and the pots and pans questions come up in the course of that
wider relationship.

> It is not the case that for the typical married woman, her 
> husband is her rav, as you seem to think.  I am having 
> trouble wrapping my head around your understanding of "aseh 
> lecha rav" that would make it inappropriate for a woman to 
> have a male rav, or that would make any distinction between a 
> single and a married woman in her relationship with a rav. 

As I mentioned, I am not at all assuming that her husband is her rav.  But I
would also see a marriage as somewhat disfunctional if a woman was having
serious life goal or hashkafic issues that her husband was completely cut
out of, and she was running off to a rav and discussing them at length with
him, without the husband's knowledge, awareness or involvement.  My
assumption is that with a marriage that is working, the husband would be on
some level involved in the conversations with the rav - there would be three
parties to the conversation, not two, and so, despite the fact that the
issues might relate to her life goals or her haskafic issues, they would
fundamentally be about the life goals or hashkafic issues of the family unit
as a whole, even if felt more strongly by one part of it.  And I would
therefore expect the rav would relate to the questions on that basis. 

For a single girl, there is (obviously) no husband involved - and so except
for the case where the girl is trying to work out whether somebody is the
right person to marry, the relationship is direct, and there is not third
leg to the triangle.  That makes the dynamics of the relationship very very
different.  I am not saying that some people do not manage to correctly
negotiate that relationship, but that it is, has to be, very different.
 
> (PS On a personal note I must confess that the phenomenon of 
> a girl having a crush on her teacher is not unknown to me, 
> and it certainly adds a delightful piquancy to one's 
> schooldays, but I don't see the "crush" as having anything to 
> do with choosing a rav.  Well I guess if a girl does have a 
> crush on a teacher, it would be prudent to choose a different 
> person as her rav.)

Part of what fuels that crush, IMHO, along with the pure attraction is the
heady mixture of idealism and hashkafic attractiveness.   The girl is drawn
to the rav precisely because his world view is so attractive - making aseh
l'cha rav to somebody else rather difficult.  I am not talking about asking
pots and pans shialas, but about life goal and hashkafic questions.  That is
precisely the kind of thing the girl desperately wants to ask this
particular rav.  I am not saying he is wrong to answer her (it is probably a
fair assumption that there is nobody else - and mostly she will grow up and
move on to a real husband, not a fantasy one), but there is something quite
problematic about the dynamic - and I wanted to point out that it is a new
dynamic, a product of modernity, not something that Tosphos or the gemora
would necessarily have ever encountered.

>  
> --Toby Katz

Regards

Chana