Serving Your Husband Before Your Father

Joseph,

This should never be an issue in your home since one of your other wives can serve you while the one whose father is visiting can attend to him, right?

The reason is because the Torah considers Sholom Bayis to be of the highest importance. Hashem allows his own name to be erased to restore Sholom Bayis. Hashem created men & women & the emotional needs of each one for the relationship to last. A man needs to feel that he’s number one in his wife’s eyes when it comes to honor while a woman’s nature can tolerate foregoing her honor for her father in law. A man primarily needs honor from his wife, a wife primarily needs love from her husband.

A son in law is certainly urged to forgo his honor for the honor of his father in law but ultimately he comes first.

Here are the words of Rambam Perek 15:19/20 hilchos Ishus:

Similarly, our Sages commanded that a man honor his wife more than his own person, and love her as he loves his own person. If he has financial resources, he should offer her benefits in accordance with his resources. He should not cast a superfluous measure of fear over her. He should talk with her gently, being neither sad nor angry.

“And similarly, they commanded a woman to honor her husband exceedingly and to be in awe of him. She should carry out all her deeds according to his directives, considering him to be an officer or a king. She should follow the desires of his heart and shun everything that he disdains.
This is the custom of holy and pure Jewish women and men in their marriages. And these ways will make their marriage pleasant and praiseworthy.”
.

So you answered and solved the question yourself in your last paragraph when you wrote the honest halacha that a wife is required min Hatorah to serve her husband her entire life while her father she is not required to but if she does it’s a merit for long life.

In regards to this topic it’s important when a wife has her husband and father together to serve at the same time. For the father to see the respect his daughter gives to her husband his son in law and he will not be hurt or insulted for keeping him waiting but proud that his daughter takes care of her husband so devoted full time

Dovid, that suggests that SIL can (should?) respect FIL. See Yoreh Deah 240:24 for details.

“Dovid, that suggests that SIL can (should?) respect FIL.”

But how does that relate to the topic, “Serving Your Husband Before Your Father”?

The Kol Bo says that a woman is exempt from time dependent mitzvos because she is responsible to her husband. Also a Yisraeles can eat teruma when married to a kohen.

AAQ, Where did you get this idea from of osek etc.?

Interesting…

a publication from Ner Le’Elef (*) touches on the idea of osek b’mitzvah, and does not find it fully convincing as a halachic instrument. I frankly did not mean it as a strict halachic argument, just a sentiment that they seem to find at least reasonable.
WOMEN’S ISSUES BOOK TWO Women in Mitzvos, p. 32-34
In a sense, a woman is considered to be continuously עוסק במצוה , and we have a principle that Osek BeMitzvah Patur Min HaMitzvah. Indeed, there are some Rishonim who hold that even if one has a lost object in his house it is considered sufficient to exempt him from doing another Mitzvah like giving Tzedaka (even though he could actually manage to do both mitzvos simultaneously) However, most Rishonim disagree with this approach. They hold that the definition of an עוסק במצוה is quite stringent. As the Meiri (. ברכות יא ) …. “one who is engaged in one Mitzvah is exempt from a second Mitzvah, [they only intended this to apply] so long as he is still actually involved in the first Mitzvah, and the second Mitzvah can only be done at the expense of the first.” … We would then question why a single woman or a widow whose children are all grown up etc. would have these exemptions at all. Perhaps these Rishonim would say that a woman is exempt from time-based מצוות because her entire approach to serving G-d is one of constant readiness to respond to changing realities. For example, although one can easily provide for children’s physical needs according to certain schedules, if one is really going to allow children to develop as unique personalities, fulfil their creative faculties and fine-tune their moral sensitivities and values, it requires constant alertness, availability and engagement. Under such circumstances, even when one is not actually busy with the Mitzvah one would be
exempt [Sukkah 25]. In addition, one may ask why women should only be exempt from Zeman Gramas. According to this approach, a woman is considered permanantly Osek BeMitzvah and should therefore be exempt from all other positive mitzvos as well

This is answered by saying that it is true that a woman is not always considered Osek BeMitzvah. However, her situation is such that she can never know when she is going to be Osek BeMitzvah. Therefore, it was specially time-based Mitzvos, which require a woman to free her schedule at a particular time, from which she was exempt. And even though many time-based mitzvos can be done for a whole day, a woman can easily be busy the whole day. The Torah did not want her to have to figure out just when she is Osek BeMitzvah and when not since even Tirda Demitzva is enough to exempt one ( סוכה כה ). However, this is difficult. For we do know that the Torah, for whatever reasons, did obligate a woman in some time-based Mitzvos. Now, although a woman does not have a general exemption form these mitzvos, why can she not exempt herself from them whenever she is busy with her family? And the same goes for any other mitzva with which a women is obligated. Perhaps we can modify our original logic by saying that, although a women isn’t truly Osek BeMitzva when she takes care of her family, but the Torah wanted her to get the message of how important this is, and regarded her, with respect to time-based mitvahs, as if she is an osek bemitzvah. This might also explain why all women are exempt from this category, because it isn’t because of the actual business with her family that causes the exemption, it is the message of how important taking care of her family is, which is the source of the exemption.

Right, so if takes upon herself to serve her father first, the husband can stop that 😉

We don’t know the reason, so we cannot make up any new rules.

Reb eliezer,

The mishnayos say that they go out of the רשות אב and go to the רשות הבעל

Have you learned משניות or גמרא נדרים?