No Babies: until I’m good and ready. And any rabbi who disagrees can stick it where the sun don’t shine
There has been a lot of talk recently about women in the Jewish community feeling bullied into having kids. Here at Jewcy Izzy noted that a lot of the desperation and frustration that comes out of JDate is a result of communal expectations that good Jewish girls will have lots of kids to help populate Israel and stick it to Hitler. Much as I love Israel and hate Hitler, those are not good enough reasons for me to want to bear children. If I have kids, it should be because I feel able and ready to take care of someone else, provide for them, and love them unconditionally. And anyway, it’s not like women make babies all on our own—there are men involved, and it’s ridiculous that they don’t seem to be getting the same pressure as women.
Some of the best analysis of the push towards baby-making in observant Jewish communities is over at JSpot, where Hannah Farber has a post titled “I’m Going to Count to Three, and Then All Rabbis Need To Get Out Of My Uterus.” She writes:
I say: if the rabbis are so committed to making this a communal issue, the rabbis should raise the children. In fact, given their comfortable salaries and high communal status, they have no excuse: they should be adopting and converting children by the dozen. Given the impressive recent developments in medicine that prolong human life, I wouldn’t excuse any rabbi under sixty from performing this mitzvah. Wouldn’t that make a fine statement of commitment to the Jewish future?
And even when men are included in the directives for having kids, I’m still offended when a bunch of rabbis want to tell me how many times I have to grow a person and then push that person out of my vagina. Did you know the Conservative Movement’s law committee (the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards) recently published a position paper that says any couple capable of raising more than two children, should do so, and Conservative rabbis should all be pushing this on their congregants? The extra children should be called “Mitzvah children” because they’ll ensure a Jewish community well into the future.
Rabbi Jason Miller notes on his blog that he’s heard Rabbi Elliot Dorff tell young people they should get married and start having kids in their early twenties, and they should have more than two kids. (I’ve heard Dorff say we should have a minimum of four kids, so I guess he was being a softy when he spoke to Jason’s class.) All of this when day schools are rising well above $15,000 a year for tuition, not to mention the inevitable college costs, and all of the other expenses of being an observant Jew. And what about those of who hadn’t found our soulmates in our early twenties? In the past year I’ve dated an obnoxious Israeli guy, an incredibly self-righteous administrative assistant at a Jewish political organization, a boring hedge fund manager, and a med student who didn’t have time for me. Should I have just picked one to marry so as not to waste any valuable time on my biological clock? Something tells me that would not have been a good plan.
I love babies, and I bet I’ll have one someday. But if my rabbi mentioned to me that it was high time I got hitched and knocked up, I’m pretty sure I’d stop going to shul.
First of all, I am appalled at the disrespect shown to rabbis. The following is not a Torah concept: "And any rabbi who disagrees can stick it where the sun don’t shine."
This is not how an Orthodox Jew speaks. The ways of Torah are ways of pleasantness.
Tamar writes about women feeling like they were "bullied into having kids."
How exactly is this bullying taking place? Gang rapes? No. A few rabbis gave sermons.
Big deal. I was getting all ready to enjoy the 2003 Iraq war when I heard a rabbinic sermon enjoining us from enjoying the fight.
I let it go in one ear and out the other and rocked out to the shock and awe. It was better than video games.
How come Jewish men don’t complain about being bullied to go to minyan? Because men don’t complain as much as women.
I would like to spend my life studying sacred text and banging chix but my religious community proscribes half of this behavior. Therefore I don’t study Torah.
If it wasn’t for Jewish law, I’d be ravishing a hundred beautiful women a year, but I don’t because the rabbis say not to.
Let’s talk tachlis. Does the Jewish community need more hyper-verbal women with PhDs or more babies?
We need more babies, and even if we didn’t, grad school too frequently encourages traits in the Jewess that would be better discouraged.
Example A: Tamar Fox.
If she had some babies, she wouldn’t have time to write blog posts telling rabbis to stick their sacred teachings where the sun don’t shine.
Let’s say Tamar Fox does have babies one day. How will they ever find a mate when their mom runs around blogging kefirah?
You don’t find me whining on my blog that my Orthodox community expects me to stop blogging on porn and to start tying on black leather straps every morning.
As for this: "Izzy noted that a lot of the desperation and frustration that comes out of JDate is a result of communal expectations that good Jewish girls will have lots of kids to help populate Israel and stick it to Hitler."
Desperation and frustration on JDate is equally shared between men and women on JDate and has little to do with Hitler and everything to do with the human condition. It’s desperately frustrating to find a mate whether you are Jewish or goyish, secular or religious.
It’s called reality. It’s not the fault of Rabbi Elliot Dorff.
It’s women like Tamar Fox who make me see the wisdom in rabbis prohibiting secular tertiary education.
Tamar writes: "If I have kids, it should be because I feel able and ready to take care of someone else, provide for them, and love them unconditionally."
The way you get ready to have kids is to have kids. You don’t get ready to have kids by securing a PhD.
If you replace "have kids" with any other mitzva, then you’ll see the fatuousness of Fox’s blog post. Judaism is a religion of obligation. Perhaps Tamar would be happier with Christianity, the religion of love.
Tamar writes that "it’s ridiculous that [men] don’t seem to be getting the same pressure as women."
Again, it is reality that Tamar objects to. Short of rape, women decide who they will have sex with (most men are happy to have sex with any woman who is not a harpy) and it is primarily her decision whether or not she will get pregnant from that sex.
If women closed their legs and said, "You’re not getting any until you do X," then most men will try to do X.
There’s almost nothing that I would not do for the woman I want.
If men zipped their pants and told women, "You’re not getting any until you do X," only women with high testosterone and chest hair would feel much compulsion to do X.
Tamar writes: "I’m still offended when a bunch of rabbis want to tell me how many times I have to grow a person and then push that person out of my vagina."
Is she offended when rabbis tell her what she can put in her mouth, how she can spend her money, what she can watch on TV, what she can say to friends, what she can allow into her nether regions?
If Tamar is truly offended by rabbis pushing Jewish women to get married and have babies, then she is offended by normative Judaism. If you want to do your own thing without obligation and restriction, then the Orthodox Jewish community (or any community) is not for you. Just keep leading your selfish life and die alone surrounded by your PhD theses.
Tamar writes: "And what about those of who hadn’t found our soulmates in our early twenties? In the past year I’ve dated an obnoxious Israeli guy, an incredibly self-righteous administrative assistant at a Jewish political organization, a boring hedge fund manager, and a med student who didn’t have time for me. Should I have just picked one to marry so as not to waste any valuable time on my biological clock? Something tells me that would not have been a good plan."
I’d like to read what these guys think of Tamar.
Methinks Fox should study Lori Gottlieb’s essay on settling in the latest issue of the Atlantic before its too late.
This all makes me very sad, so sad in fact that I’m going to fly to Nashville and rescue Tamar from bitter spinsterhood.
Hold on tight, Tammy, Your Moral Leader is coming!
Mr. Gadol writes on Jewcy:
Somewhere along the way the Jewess forgot what her mother’s bubby knew. Women who wait too long end up alone and without issue; living, breathing, genetic corpses fated to spend the final forty years of their lives as the dead branches of a family tree that extends back to the dawn of time. Why? Partly because of their bad taste in men, and partly because they are just too damn picky. This idea that you, Tamar, are special to the point that you need never "settle" is simply unrealistic. Everyone except the extremely lucky few must settle in the market, whether looking to buy a house, accept a job, or to find a mate. Somewhere along the line otherwise educated Jewish women (and others, but we are discussing Jewish women here) seem to have made everything so theoretical that they have forgotten the basics of life, and that includes the need to settle before it gets too late. And it does get too late – men want to marry fertile women, which is to say young women, because young women are far more likely to bear healthy children using their own eggs and without heroic medical procedures than are older women pushing forty. This preference is encoded into male genes, and no amount of hectoring by busy-bodies can change it. The task of the YOUNG Jewish woman, then, is to use her charms to find an acceptable match while she still has charms to use. And note I said "acceptable," not "perfect", not "soul-mate" material, and not even someone you might convince yourself you will want to be having sex with in twenty years.
And don’t give me this "but I live on the Upper West Side" excuse. I too, live in Manhattan, and if you can’t find a mate here where there are so many choices, then there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Smarten up, before it is too late, and it is later than you think.
David N. Friedman posts:
The gripe in this case seems to be that there are communal expectations.
I am quick to suggest that yes, it is fine that there are communal expectations and those expectations are on all Jews and not simply on Tamar’s ovaries. There are expectations to be married and stay married, to be financially stable, to give tzedakah, to have children, to daven, to know Torah, to love and support Israel, to be a pillar in society, to demonstrate good character–is any of this a problem or a controversy?
To internalize a communal expectation as laden with pressure and conflict is no poor reflection on the communal expectation itself any more than a school should be punished if a student feels overwhelmed or pressured to succeed academically. This is a matter of personal responsibility.
We will all give tzedakah, support Israel, stay married–etc. with the HELP of those communal expectations. The belief that the expectations are driving people to crazed dimensions is a tad hysterical, to say the least.
…Modern feminism has downgraded the standing of women and harmed their power in a dating scenario. Now, women are here to complain that men seem to have more options and more power when women have been complicit in ceding control.
Women have more skill in navigating relationships and an elevated ability to gauge prospective husbands. I never dated a woman who was a loser and Avigail— I never said that Tamar’s experience is not valid. However, if you want to ask me, I will say that if some woman is chronically picking less than desirable men, she might want to look at her thinking when choosing her prospects.
There are plenty of great young Jewish men out there to find and the suggestion that men are some how defective is not fair-minded and there is no reason to look outside the community to find a good man.
My father proposed marriage to my mother on the first date and this was not uncommon in a previous day and age. Today, it is not uncommon for women to endure a protracted dating scene and today’s standards regarding dress and sexual behavior have greatly harmed women’s interests. Instead of defending hanky-panky, women would do far better to take control of their sexuality, defend more modest conduct and take the lead in bringing men to pay up or shut up. This will make a stronger market for husbands instead of boys.
…Tamar, why can’t I judge? I have a son and I am in the community. I see dozens of available young men on a regular basis and I have seen them up close–they are great guys.
It is a bit of a joke that you can with one broad brush demean an entire segment of the community with such total chutzpah, having met so few, to claim that something is obviously true and then accuse me of saying "obviously." Huh?
I have met great young men all over this country and I repeat, perhaps you are looking in the wrong places, perhaps you have unreliable antennae–I do not know you well enough to speculate. What is clear is that to suggest young Jewish men are across the board defective is an unfair generalization.
One suggestion: I met the most incredible young Jewish couple the other day. Even though both are "model" people great looks, excellent character, yiddishchiet, etc. I asked how they found each other since I know this is difficult for men and women alike. She told me they employed a matchmaker out of New Jersey who takes only Orthodox. Both were told not to date anyone and wait for her phone call. They waited a few months and then were asked to meet each other.
It was perfect.
…[E]ven young Jewish people with everything just right about them may have trouble finding what they consider an ideal match and they might rely on introductions from others or even a matchmaker. The wisdom here is clear: success is a model and not failure. Kissing a lot of boys in the hopes of finding a prince is not a winning strategy. This is why even the women on "Sex in the City" correctly questioned why the unmarried and chronically frustrated Carrie is an inappropriate model to give advice to marriage minded women. If single women would have a habit of asking successfully married women about their success, this would reduce some of the poor strategies which lead to slaps against men, instead of corrective strategies and personal responsibility by the women–and vica versa since the same applies for men who might do the same thing in their frustration.
This is my basic complaint–the blog should lead with the story of success and allow women to learn from the experience. Instead, this blog finds problems with so many things Jewish, now leads with the allegation that Rabbis are boxing the ears of young women.
Concerning Tamar’s broadbrush against the quality of young Jewish men, this is patently unfair and concerning my observation that Dov is incorrect that halachic opinion is mixed when EVERY halachic authority agrees with a prohibition would be called a tautology–or, if you will, an *obvious* fact.
Our community offers help to young people in search of marriage partners. For example, speed dating is a concept which allows for many introductions for Jewish singles. The community is much more interested in excellent matches that last than pushing women or men into fast commitments.
