Women Entering the Workforce and the Calamitous Declining Fertility Rate Effect

Always_Ask_Questions,

“I am not inclined to give any of these factions an opportunity for nonsensical debates.”

On behalf of the Jewish people, I apologize. We’ll try to do better. With that off my chest, I do feel the need to mention that the true “halachic debates” are not taking place here in the CR, nor on the streets, nor even the shul kiddush.

Dear Ujm,

It is getting hard for me to decipher your opinion. My statement was that mothers in the olden days were not always okay with having so many pregnancies. But once it was brought up, the gemara in yevomos 12 discusses contraceptives In a somewhat positive way. It is said that this was the only time the Rav would skip a gemara of his blatt shiur. And for this very reason.

@ujm There’s a Gemara in Nashim (I think Kesuvos or Gittin) regarding an amah m’shuchreres (freed maidservant). The Gemara asks about how she can get married right after receiving her shtar shichrur (freedom) when if she would become pregnant immediately it would be unclear if the baby was her husbands or one of the men she was with when she was allowed to as an amah. The Gemara answers that if she knew she would be free, she would use contraception.

That’s one place. I don’t recall anywhere where Chazal criticize goyim for choosing not to have a lot of children.

Yserbius123,

“You need to look at population growth rates. And I believe that the population growth rate is growing.”

I believe you are mistaken. The global population is growing, but the rate of growth has been slowing since the 1960s peak, and is projected to continue tapering off through the rest of the century. Thus the population increase has more of a linear trajectory now than an exponential one.

Dear Avram,

I doubt that the debates as you frame them, ever really exist. Either pointless information gets slowly filtered out, or the halacha is based on a distortion. There is never a purely theoretical discussion. And this thread is full of the silliness that AAQ mentioned.

How so? (This thread has been winding and unfocused. I admit I am a bit confused. But if I followed through, I stand behind my post.)

AAQ – I will leave it to Avrum to formulate a real reply as he can do that so much better than I can. I am only chiming in because I was one of the people who did what you are speaking of.
I have to say that there were several comments you made that I had pointed out as being disrespectful to torah or mesorah or hashkofa and in explaining it I would get the written equivalent of a blank face. You would either dissmiss it or ignore it completely and then proceed to try to make your point with more of the same type of comments.

I usually try to explain something three times before accepting that the listener is not up for the information (for whatever reasons) and then I just drop it. That is why I have refrained from commenting on the more recent disrespectful (? perhaps flippant is a better word?) remarks where you seem to make odd correlations between actual Torah thoughts and something in your life that you would like to connect it to. I don’t know if you are aware of what you are doing, it seems to be a blind spot, so I refrain from responding at the risk of you thinking it was actually okay that you said it.

I appreciate the effort you make to bring yourself closer to Torah and understanding Torah and I believe that in time you will see how it works to put yourself second to Hashem and His Teachings.

AAQ – I absolutely do not try to find the worst interpretation of your words. As I said in the past, I believe you are missing the essence of what it means to negate your agenda for Hashem’s Agenda and in that lack of understanding, you use terms that are flippant. For example, my young daughter would never put an empty cup down on top of a chumash. But if she puts it down on my English version of “a lesson a day”, it displays an unintentional disrespect that comes from her not understanding that the book has kedusha. (please don’t get side tracked on the details of my example)

If I decide that medical doctors are all powerful but medical doctors who work in research are just couch potatoes, sitting at desks and tables all day, that is a disrespect that comes from a lack of understanding of the importance of the research. But if I don’t know that, I will freely say it not knowing how wrong it is. (again, please don’t get caught on the example. I am not saying you called anyone couch potatoes, I am trying to make an illustration using familiar roles)

So what happens next is this: now when I refer to researchers I don’t say researchers, I say bench warmers or couch potatoes. And then using this false premise, I quote you halacha that forbids being idle and ask you why it’s okay to be a researcher when they are just being idle. and you wonder how to even approach a question that is asked using a false premise. That is what happens with some of your questions that are going unanswered. You are asking a question that doesn’t exist, because the question involves things that aren’t really there.

Dear Ujm,

Maybe some places. Like maybe one or two. Probably more like zero. First, it meant getting married around fifteen. Second it meant both spouses living another twenty years or so. Also, the marriage rate would be much lower. As one who was not ready to be a mother, was not considered marriageable.

Even in the places where a higher marriage and birth rate was maintained, it does not back your point. Women then did not really have a choice. For a variety of social and physical factors.

Overall, you are still ignoring that infertility as a personal condition, is way more common today.

n0mesorah,

If you really think that way, can you explain why you relate to Orthodox Judaism at all?

“And this thread is full of the silliness that AAQ mentioned.”

So what? Better to skip a silly thread than to insult all of the participants, declare yourself above the fray, and then wade into it anyway.

>> simply look at the prewar size of our own families.

how many survived into adulthood?
in certain time windows and places: killed by Russians or Germans? intermarried?

another issue: a right question on the mother MIA from home when she needs to work. But we also now have children MIA from home at schools. how is it beneficial for mother to be at home when (most of) the kids are off? that she can clean the house and cook dinner? kids should be able to do this themselves

Dear Avram,

Please clarify. I will clear my end. The major halachic debates, center around a new dilemma or a new doubt. Neither one is possible to have real doubt unless there is some novel circumstances to debate over. Now what are the exact circumstances? They cannot be obvious to all, because then what would be in doubt? Since the scenario is wellknown, how would there not be a precedent?

Once we are debating unknown circumstances, we must get to bottom of what is real and what is clouding our understanding of it. Either we successfully weed out all the pointless information, or the novelty remains confusing and the outcome is founded on a distortion. Now, what were you saying?

One of the main reasons I blog is to be shown when my opinions completely miss the debate. It is a way to grow that is not available [to me, at least] in real life.

R Feinstein was 19 when Great War started and lived under Russian civil war and Soviets, hardly a normal “Europe”. So, you need to look further at the background of the responsa. Maybe, for example, the wife became pro-communist and influenced by those ideas, rather than a mother of 10 who decided to take time off.

>> he views the entire halachic process of arriving at a psak as tainted by politics, and thus unreliable.
I am saying that we should strive for the opposite.

>> many of those types of shailos are very personal, and the psak very much depends on the circumstances of the one asking

exactly. I am learning a sefer now on interpersonal behaviors and after multiple footnotes with sources, it often ends with – depends on who is saying, about whom, and to whom [for example, will the person interpret information to the worse, will he get offended, etc]. The fact that mitzvot bein adam l’havero depend on the person means it calls for psak and for more learning.

I do not propose people revealing personal information here, but surely there is a lot can be learned from specific cases, carefully described. We will probably learn better if we focus that halakha, or just an advice, will be different for different people. Whether father should let his son to listen to Ben Shapiro will surely depend on the Av, on the Ben, and on the Ben Shapiro.

An old example is of Rav Salanter visiting Konigsberg merchants. He refused to speak first. Later, he spoke and suggested that he understands that ship are arriving on Shabbos, but couuld they at least not write it down? Later – could they unload but at least not load new merchandise, etc. Why did he refuse to speak the first time around? Because there was an observant Litvishe yid in shul, and Rav did not want this guy to hear these ideas.

Dear Avram,

I meant any halachic discussion to clarify a new doubt. Especially among the great poskim. Think of one of the classical debates. Or one of the recent halachah headlines. There is an undeniable element of controversy to them.

I liked the quote from Rav Solovietchik. It means that halachah as both a process and a system leaves no room for strong political or fundamentalist thinking to play a role. Halachah has to rise above whatever we want the outcome to be. If this topic is not halachah per se, it still has a lot to impart on what we think of the halachah.

n0mesorah and Always_Ask_Questions,

Rereading the thread after a week, I discovered that I misinterpreted the post that kicked off this side discussion (see: https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/women-entering-the-workforce-and-the-calamitous-declining-fertility-rate-effect#post-1976610). Since there were no quotation marks or other markers, I did not realize that AAQ’s second paragraph was entirely a quote from Rabbi Soloveitchik and not his own words. So I apologize to AAQ for saying he was simultaneously declaring himself to be above the debate while engaging in it anyway, which prompted my tongue-in-cheek apology from the entire Jewish people.

That said, I do take issue with AAQ’s categorizing Rabbi Soloveitchik as directing that quote towards the halachic “process”. It was clearly directed at things like the CR. And I think I am still making a distinction that n0mesorah is not between the halachic “process” (e.g., what we see in the Igros Moshe and other poskim), and the debates about halacha that we see here on the CR and on the street or in other similar places. I wouldn’t even categorize this particular thread as a debate about halacha, much less a part of the halachic process, as if poskim are weighing various issues on a complicated shaila and coming here for guidance.

Avram, no problem, I am glad you are feeling better with the position when stated by R Soloveitchik than by an AAQ. To clarify – in that letter, he is refusing to make a halakhic decision as he is not told that something practical will come out of it, and he will get into a controversy with other halakhists, not CR. At least this is how I understood it. Look it up and see if you understand it differently. He eventually ruled on the issues when it became practical.

Always_Ask_Questions,

“I am glad you are feeling better with the position when stated by R Soloveitchik than by an AAQ.”

I don’t believe your “position” is quite the same as that stated by Rabbi Soloveitchik.

“To clarify – in that letter, he is refusing to make a halakhic decision as he is not told that something practical will come out of it, and he will get into a controversy with other halakhists, not CR.”

Who asked him the shaila? It seems to me that he was refusing to make a broad statement on a mostly hashkafic issue, but if there was a specific and real shaila with actual details he would have answered.And my guess is that he didn’t really fear getting into controversy with other poskim, but being dragged into a culture war waged mostly by laypeople (though certainly citing poskim). As the rav said to me years ago, “what are you trying to do?”

ujm, I’ve only met one Orthodox Jewish woman, but I’m familiar with the early Jewish writings (the Torah?). I studied anthropology in college and learned some basics about Orthodox Judaism in one of my religion classes. I’ve also spent a fair amount of time in South Asia and the Middle East, traditional cultures that share a lot of values with Orthodox Judaism. I told someone once that if I were Jewish I would most likely be Orthodox, because I wouldn’t belong to a religion if I didn’t believe in the teachings and want to follow them. (And, I also watched Shtisel!)

The thing is that fewer children and working outside the home coincide, but I would not necessarily say that one is to blame for the other. It might seem that way; but if you consider that women can just as easily stay at home and still decide to have no children, it becomes clearer that the root of the change is more about self-determination and individualism. In my opinion people don’t want to be “open to life”, as we say in Catholic circles, because they want to control their lifestyle, how their money is spent, and their time. Many women do have children and still work outside of the home, partly because costs have risen so much. I don’t have an issue with women getting higher education and working, but I think family and community need to be prioritized more. Women should be able to care for children or parents and not feel like they are “wasting their talents”.
This came up in a conversation I had about abortion. I said that abortion was selfish, taking the life of another person because it’s not convenient for us that they are alive. I got many enlightening responses, such as “I’m not going to sacrifice my lifestyle for a child,” or “Fetuses are parasites. They ruin women’s health. It’s not a child until it’s born.” — and that one was from a mother with two kids. You are right, Avram, many people now see their own offspring as a curse instead of a blessing. 😢
I haven’t needed to make decisions about family size because I’m single; at this point it’s not very likely that I’ll have children of my own. I would like to provide foster care in the future if possible. I live a chaste life and would never use birth control to prevent having children. Catholic teaching permits Natural Family Planning if necessary (no artificial contraception).

> Who asked him the shaila?
here it is in full, judge for yourself whether it is about halakha or not

January 12th, 1953

Dear Rabbi Rosenfeld, I acknowledge receipt of your letter. In my answer to your precious inquiry concerning the permissibility of instruction of girls in Talmud I stressed that unless I am assured in advance by the school administration that my recommendations will be followed I would not take the trouble to investigate the matter. Since such an official assurance has been withheld(your letter did not contain any such commitment) I must decline to consider the problem. The reason for my reluctance to engage in this controversial issue is the unique stand taken by many of our Jews on matters of Law and tradition. We have reached a stage at which party lines and political ideologies influence our halakhic thinking to the extent that people cannot rise above partisan issues to the level of Halakhah-objectivity. Some are in a perennial quest for “liberalization” of the Law and its subordination to the majority opinion of a political legislative body, while others would like to see the Halakhah fossilized and completely shout out of life. I am not inclined to give any of these factions an opportunity for nonsensical debates.

Sincerely yours,
Joseph Soloveitchik

Always_Ask_Questions,

“there was no negativity. My friend & teacher was definitely right to drag us an hour away to ask this shailah.”

No negativity. Next sentence “drag us an hour away”? Um… yeah.

“He just did not expect that the lesson will be directed to him. I was there and we talked about it, not something that I observed on the street, so I am pretty much sure of what happened,”

I have a hard time believing that a Rosh Yeshiva would “give a lesson” to a father and teacher in front of his son and a talmid. Every rav I’ve interacted with is very careful regarding the father’s honor in front of the children. Maybe your friend made this interpretation independently and confided it to you, but from the answer the RY gave, the issue that he was answering seemed to be the kid davening on the field vs not davening at all. In other words, the RY interpreted the root of the shaila as the father wanting the kid to daven mincha, and thus suggested davening on the field as the kid in his present state would likely balk at leaving his friends to go to shul. That does not mean that a quick Shabbos mincha on the side of a soccer field is an ideal.

I understand your concern, Avram, and I know that the Torah is inspired. Most people say “Christian writings”, “Buddhist writings” and so on to refer to the foundational writings of a religion.

Yes, it is both men and women. The outlook I described applies to both genders, and sometimes it is men who pressure women to have an abortion or not to have more children. Another point I’d like to add is that there are many women who would prefer not to work, and to stay home with their kids, but because of financial pressures don’t feel like that is an option. (My cousin who wrote the article for Ms. magazine is one of them. They recently renovated and expanded their house and her income is needed to fund that. However she was able to get a new job where she can work from home and not travel overseas.) Part of that is the changed economic situation, where it is hard now to make a living from one income, but also expectations are higher in general and people feel deprived if they can’t have a roomy house or take nice and regular vacations. Not to mention all the gadgets one has to buy to keep up with the modern lifestyle.

I’ve gotten the impression that in Orthodox communities, people are more willing to sacrifice travel, living space, and so on to raise a large family. Is that right?

Re: Rav Soloveichik.
>> is the unique stand taken by many of our Jews on matters of Law and tradition. We have reached a stage at which party lines and political ideologies influence our halakhic thinking

I see how you read “our Jews”. At the same time, next sentence mentions “halakhic thinking”. It can be read in a different ways. I also agree that 50s might have been a hotter time than now, but it did last quite some time. So that you get a taste of the tension, here is a quote from a notorious letter in 1984:
With this we are publicly protesting against those who call themselves ‘‘great sages’’ and ‘‘heads of yeshivas’’ in the United States, who give obsequious praise to the known ‘‘uprooter of Israel,’’ the tyrant from Boston, product of the cursed Berlin Haskalah, and poisoner of the hearts of the Children of Israel through his venomous and ugly opinions, as is well known. That the aforementioned (sages) issued their letters of mischief on the occasion of the eightieth birthday of the Boston Sadducee borne on the pages of the ‘‘sledgehammer’’ that carries the title ‘‘honorable Rabbi.’’

This was directed to Rav Feinstein, Rav Gifter, Rav Ruderman writing things like this:
I come with this to send my blessing to the editors of this festschrift that the students of the great genius, our master Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik shlit”a arranged in his honor, as he reaches the age of strength [eighty]. And also to offer my prayer that God lengthen the days and years of my dear, great friend, in old age, full of sap and richness [Ps. 92:15], and that he continue to spread Torah in public and to engage in public matters, in honor of God and His Torah, and as an honor to our families. With friendship and appreciation, Moshe Feinstein

I hate to say this, but things are not as simple as presented. In Jewish society, the rabbi’s word has a huge amount of power. People are forced to do what the rabbi says is religiously required to do. Even if the rabbi made a mistake in understanding the issue at hand (and yes, we’re all human, but some refuse to admit we tend to make mistakes,) or is corrupt by his position of power.