[Avodah] Gra on men taking care of babies

[T613K at aol.com]

From: "kennethgmiller at juno.com" _kennethgmiller at juno.com_ 
(mailto:kennethgmiller at juno.com) 

>>  In the thread titled "biography of R. Elyashiv", R' Zev Sero quoted a 
post which  R' Ben Waxman posted on Areivim:

> The Gra writes in his perush on  Pirke Avot that if someone hears
> his baby cry at night, he should ignore  him and let his wife take
> care of the baby. Either the man is learning  or sleeping in order
> to learn. Either way, the baby's problems are not  his concern.

I am SHOCKED by this. If the Gra (or anyone else) would say  such a thing, 
surely they would point out that it only refers to people who  never 
interrupt their learning for any other mitzva.

And even if so, to  say that "the baby's problems are not his concern" 
seems absurd. Maybe his  learning takes priority over his child's pain, but to 
say that he should not be  concerned seems cruel. <<



Akiva Miller

 
 
 
>>>>
It is only "cruel" if you think that the baby's cries may go  unheeded.  If 
you assume, OTOH, that it is only a question of WHO should  take care of 
the baby -- the father or the mother -- then I don't find it  shocking at all 
to answer, "The mother should get up and take care of the baby,  and make 
sure that her husband is able to learn undisturbed or able to sleep  
undisturbed so that he can learn well tomorrow."
 
I am certain that the Gra would also say that if the mother is  unavailable 
-- she is ill, for example, or she is in the hospital after the  birth of 
the next baby -- that the father should take care of the baby, as it  then 
quickly becomes a case of pikuach nefesh to leave a baby unfed and  wallowing 
in its own waste.
 
I do agree with RAM that the GRA's statement ("The baby is not your  
concern") applies (or should apply) only to the rare man who is on such a  high 
level that he never, ever interrupts his Torah learning for anything  else -- 
never picks up a newspaper, never goes on the internet, never  even goes to 
Avodah.  Anyone who can take time off his Torah learning  to read Avodah 
should also take time off his learning to take care of his baby  once in a 
while. (That means /you/ whoever you are -- reading this right  now. :- )  ) 
This is a chessed to his child and also to his  wife.
 
Please note that I do consider it the primary obligation of the mother to  
care for the baby, which is why I say it is a chessed to her (rather  than 
an obligation) if the father pitches in and shares the load.
 
Going off on what may be somewhat of a tangent, I also think that if the  
mother is not a stay-at-home mom and has no possibility of catching up on her 
 missed sleep later -- ESPECIALLY if she is working in order to enable her  
husband to stay in kollel -- that the father then has an OBLIGATION to 
share the  load and sometimes care for the crying baby in the middle of the 
night.  In  such a case, both the father's sleep and the mother's sleep are 
equally  important, in order to enable him to continue learning Torah.  (But I 
must  add that I'm very conflicted about "Kollel feminism" because mothers  
working and dumping their babies in daycare is far from ideal --  there is no 
substitute for a mother.)
 

--Toby  Katz
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