We asked JOFA Board members, Pam Scheininger and Idana Goldberg to answer a number of questions about how they strive to balance feminism and motherhood on Shabbat. Both are busy professionals. Pam, who is also on the Journal editorial committee, is an attorney. She and her husband, members of the Netivot Shalom congregation in Teaneck, New Jersey, have three children, ages 7, 5 and 3. Idana is a foundation professional at the Jewish Funders Network and is a faculty member of Me’ah. She, her husband, and their children, ages 7, 4½ and 1, live in White Plains, New York and daven at the Hebrew Institute of White Plains.
Their responses reflect their individual experiences and do not aim to provide a template for all mothers. Clearly, every mother’s situation is different and depends upon her family structure, the ages of her children, the community she lives in and many other factors. Special needs children present their own challenges for a family on Shabbat. Additionally, not all families live within an eruv, that allows parents with very young children to take them to shul or to other people’s homes on Shabbat, and we know that not every shul provides the sort of childcare support that Pam’s and Idana’s do.
Nevertheless, we trust that parents will find the following helpful in working out their own ways to balance different responsibilities on Shabbat and in suggesting how their shuls can be encouraged to be supportive in this regard.
The household chores involved in getting ready for Shabbat can be quite burdensome. How do you convey the joy of Shabbat while managing the reality of the chores required?
PAM: I try to be efficient about how I prepare for Shabbat. I don’t work on Thursdays so I shop while my children are at school and I prepare during the afternoon as they are getting home. Although Shabbat preparations certainly take time and energy, I like to think that my children have come to know that the preparations are a part of how we get ready for Shabbat. When I start preparing, my children know that Shabbat is coming and they are excited about that.
IDANA: I believe that it’s critical to have reasonable expectations for Shabbat. My reality as a full-time working parent with a fulltime working spouse is very different from that of earlier generations of Jewish women. While making sure that our home is ready for Shabbat and having special and delicious food prepared to honor Shabbat is important to me and my husband, I also know that we have to do our best not to let the burdens of preparation take over the joy. We share the cooking, cleaning, and food preparation as best we can. I am lucky to work from home on Fridays, which lets me do some food shopping in the morning or get food in the oven before I sit down at my home office for the day’s work.
How do you balance having guests with the need for family time and less labor-intensive Shabbat preparations?
PAM: I like having guests and I think that it is important for hakhnasat orkhim to be a central part of my family’s Shabbat experience. Because my children are still young and have early bedtimes, we only have guests for Shabbat lunch. Also, because of the time involved in preparing for guests (as well as the expense), we aim for a schedule of lunch guests every three to four weeks. We do, however, have my children’s friends over for lunch on a regular basis.
IDANA: We also love to have guests for Shabbat, and like Pam, we tend to entertain or go out only for lunch as our kids are also young. I think the balancing act also has to do with setting expectations for ourselves. Having guests does take more time and effort than simply cooking for our family, but even entertaining guests can be maximalist or minimalist. To me, having guests is about connecting with friends or family or getting to know new people. While I take pleasure in experimenting with new and different recipes, I also try to remember that Shabbat should be about the company and not about how many side dishes one makes or how many courses one serves.
Many of us strive to attend shul on time. Even with the best youth activities, however, keeping kids in shul for the full span of services is difficult. How do you manage to balance child care responsibilities and shul attendance? How do you divide such responsibilities with your spouse?
PAM: My husband and I try our best to stick to a schedule on Shabbat mornings. My husband takes my two daughters to shul shortly after shul begins. My daughters have snack bags to keep them busy and they sit with my husband until 9:45 a.m., when youth groups begin. My husband, who is a gabbai at our shul, is usually on the bima at 9:45 a.m., so if things are running smoothly that day, my older daughter takes her sister to her group. I bring my son to shul about an hour after services begin and he goes to youth groups. Happily, our shul has great groups and my children generally stay there until the end of shul without incident.
IDANA: We’re not quite as scheduled as Pam! We all strive to get to shul as soon as we can in the morning and usually all together. I am often one of the first women with young children in shul, although since our youngest was born a year ago, sometimes I’m not as early as I’d like to be. We’re lucky that, as a matter of principle, our shul has baby/child care that begins when shul does. The summer we moved into our community we had a nine-month old and were used to a shul in Manhattan where there was infant child care. We mentioned this to our rabbi and by the end of the summer, the new program was in place. One challenge is that, even with this child care, many parents are still unable to leave their toddlers. We try to “train” our kids to go to groups from infancy, so that now as a one year old, our youngest will happily stay and play with the babysitter even without us there. Recently, some parents started a terrific program within the baby/child care that includes Shabbat songs so that even the youngest kids have a Shabbat experience.
Do you have congregational responsibilities on Shabbat? If so, how do you balance your children’s needs with the needs of the community?
PAM: This is a really challenging area for us as I am the president of our shul and my husband is the Gabbai Sheini. When my son was slightly younger and not yet comfortable in groups, balancing our responsibilities and child care was very difficult. Often I had to wait outside shul with my son until my husband finished his gabbai duties; then my husband would run out and take my son (who was usually screaming at this point) so that I could run into shul and make announcements. Also, on several occasions, my daughters have needed my husband’s attention just as he was supposed to begin his tasks on the bima, and he has had to scramble to find a replacement. Fortunately, now that my children are a bit older, they all go to youth groups and usually my husband and I can fulfill our responsibilities.
IDANA: I’m a lay person as far as Shabbat goes, though my husband, like Pam’s, is also Gabbai Sheini. Our shul is pretty easy-going and he has on occasion had one of our kids next to him on the bima. Overall, though, we haven’t found any conflict between our kids and communal responsibilities.
How do you structure the time spent at the Shabbat table? Are there particular areas of frustration or satisfaction?
PAM: At this point, my children are at an age when most of our energies at the Shabbat table are geared toward ensuring that they eat their food without major incident. On Friday nights, when Shabbat is early, the children sing Shalom Aleichem and Eshet Hayil with us, and then my husband and I “bentch” each of the children (this has actually turned into a family activity with my children participating in “bentching” one another). We do try to have songs at the Shabbat table (Shabbat-related songs if not actual zemirot), and we sing birkat hamazon together. I say hamotzi during each Shabbat meal, and my children take this as a given, which is nice. That being said, at this point, I don’t find the Shabbat table to be a particularly spiritually satisfying element of Shabbat – it’s more about actually being able to sit down and have a meal together for one of the only times during the week.
IDANA: I was really relieved recently when I confided to a friend that our house is a total baal ha’gan on Friday nights, and she laughed and said, “of course it is, so is mine; what do you expect?” With three small children at the end of a long school and work week, Friday nights can be a real challenge, but we attempt to convey to our kids that Shabbat is special. It’s important to us that our children don’t think that Mommy makes Shabbat special through cooking and Daddy does so by davening. My husband and I alternate kiddush and hamotzi each week so that our kids see us both as ritual actors. Luckily in our community, many women make either kiddush or hamotzi so this is not unusual for them. Our kids love to talk about the parasha so we always make sure to talk to them about what they learned or share with them a midrash that we think they’ll like.
What steps can shuls and communities take to create a more inclusive and/or feminist Shabbat experience?
PAM:
- Shuls can be child-friendly. While I believe that children should not be allowed to disrupt tefilla and that a parent should take children out of shul if they are interfering with the tefilla of others, shuls should accept children’s presence in the sanctuary.
- Groups for children should be available during most, if not all, of tefilla. They should be well run, well supervised, and meaningful. In my opinion, this is a budgetary priority for shuls wishing to include both men and women. If possible, groups for younger children should be in close proximity to the sanctuary to allow parents to be able to check on their children without spending time running up and down stairs.
- Babysitting should be available during all shiurim. This provision should be automatic, whether the shiurim are on Shabbat or during the week.
- The shul itself should be simple to navigate with clear sight lines between the women’s and men’s sections. While the halakhic issues relating to mehitza should be observed, mothers and fathers should be able to find one another and get one another’s attention during tefilla so that they may facilitate child care needs.
- Tefilla for children should include roles for girls, from young to old. If there is a teen minyan, to the extent possible, girls should have an active role in that minyan.
- Shuls should aim to be as participatory as halakhically possible. Women should be invited to give divrei torah and shiurim and run for shul office. The bima should be accessible to both men and women. This is important for the women and men themselves and also important in terms of the models available to the children. Children should grow up seeing their mothers as well as their fathers teaching and speaking in shuls. To the extent possible, young men and women should also be encouraged to take an active role in the shul.
- There should be a room available for nursing women.
IDANA: I think that all of Pam’s suggestions are really great ones, and shuls must get on board with making the shul a space for both men and women. What I find most frustrating about Shabbat, however, has almost nothing to do with figuring out who’s cooking or cleaning or how we find the time to entertain. My husband and I work these out the way we work out most things in our marriage; a fair division of responsibility and some compromise. Instead I struggle to figure out how to give my children a picture of Shabbat and, by extension, Jewish life that matches my own religious and feminist inclinations. The shul we attend has already made great strides in this department. We have a monthly Women’s Tefilla and annual Megillat Esther reading; recently the shul decided to have a woman carry the Sefer Torah through the women’s section on the Torah’s return to the aron; and our shul has a female Congregational Intern who teaches shiurim and introduces the Torah reading from the women’s section. Many Bat Mitzvah girls choose to participate in the Women’s Tefilla and even those who do not do so give a d’var Torah from the bima in shul. Our shul has a Women’s Focus Officer, and the rabbi and the board take women’s concerns seriously.
Yet for me it’s not enough. I want my children to see a shul of both men and women who come to shul on time and participate in the tefilla; I want them to see a community where women are engaged spiritually and participate to the fullest extent possible within halakha. Yet my children still see a main minyan where men are in the center, men lead tefilla, and only men read Torah and have aliyot. When women and girls speak from the bima in shul, they must do so at the end of davening, while male speakers – Bar Mitzvah boys included – speak at the usual time before Musaf. There is still an annual youth Shabbat, which has accommodated girls by having one give a d’var Torah in shul, but as in most Orthodox shuls, the youth who participate are still boys.
The shul experience for me encapsulates the Orthodox feminist struggle. Bound by halakha, I attend an Orthodox shul. As an Orthodox Jew, this is my community. But I continue to try to figure out how to help my children understand my own inner conflict as I continue to try and find my own meaning in what remains for me an imperfect tefilla each Shabbat.