Published by Targum Press, reviewed by Judith Weil
Marriage is a seesaw: win some, wince some, reminiscent of
the Haman/Mordechai swing. A book review with a little of a
Purim aftermath taste
"Marriage," goes the adage, "is a partnership between two
people, one of whom can't sleep with the window open, and one
who can't sleep with it closed."
Or is the real situation, if truth be told, that neither
husband or wife, left to themselves, would be bothered one
way or the other. However, one set of in-laws believes that
fresh air is an essential, while the other has a horror of
draughts?
And then there's the couple; one half comes from a family in
whose distant past someone suffered severe food poisoning,
while the other descends from Holocaust survivors. In the one
background, it is totally obvious that leftovers must be put
directly into the garbage pail, while in the other, there is
hardly a greater sin than wasting even the tiniest scrap of
food. Each side has a halachic principle to back up its
views. The one states that eating unhealthy food is a sin; a
contravention of the injunction of guarding one's life, while
according to the other, wastage is forbidden, based on the
baal tashchis prohibition! And what if the in-laws
turn up unexpectedly and see food in the bin - or yesterday's
food [or worse, cholent] on the table again today?
In "Our Family, Our Strength," Rabbi and Mrs. Abramov bring
common-sense directives on how to run a harmonious household,
one where everyone works together for the common good -
parents, children, and the grandparents in the background, a
home which is run in accordance with the highest principles
of Yiddishkeit. There are humorous anecdotes, and if we laugh
at the stories, maybe we can learn to laugh at the parallel
stories in our own lives. There are also basic halachic
guidelines.
Some years ago, a large Israeli Bais Yaakov seminary
celebrated its fiftieth birthday. Tens of thousands of girls
had passed through its doors and it was an occasion for great
rejoicing. As a free-lance writer and an occasional
contributor to a certain Israeli journal, I discussed with
its editor the possibility of doing a feature about that
seminary. "What are the alumni doing now?" the editor wanted
to know. I replied without thinking, "They're mostly wives
and mothers, I suppose." She said she wasn't interested.
In fact, I decided later on reflection, that the majority of
them were probably working outside the home. The reality of
life in Israel is that this is usually necessary. It was just
that I knew that whatever else they did, Bais Yaakov
graduates would see homemaking [and motherhood] as their
primary task. Sadly, not everyone views it that way.
Outside religious circles, the family has never had it so
bad. In the past, the majority of Jewish children grew up in
a situation where both birth parents were present in the
household where they lived and both were halachically Jewish.
Nowadays, outside of Israel, this is very much the exception
rather than the rule. Although the situation is not as
serious among observant families as it is elsewhere, it is
important for us to stop the infection from spreading.
"Our Family, Our Strength" has much to offer chareidi
families. Every family is subject to strains of one type or
another at one time or another, and most would gain from tips
on how to prevent them, preferably, or solve them, if
prevention failed. The book is, however, written primarily
for the wider public, giving, for example, an instance of a
mother who is a senior medical practitioner. As such, it does
a valuable service for that public itself, of course, but for
the chareidi community, too. There is a danger that in
terms of transience in relationships, the non-Jewish
standards that have already spread to wider Jewish circles
could contaminate the edges of our circles, too. We must care
for people outside our own immediate circle for their own
sakes, and we must also care for them for our own sakes. From
our own egoentric point of view, if we want to keep ourselves
healthy, we must ensure the health of our neighbors.
