Gender roles in Orthodoxy: Anatomy is destiny?

Start here, and follow the links, especially the one to "Who's on first: On raising a Jew."

Now to take up Miami Al's challenge concerning my question here about women leading Ashrei:

Miami Al said...

Shira,

. . .

Two issues. Is the prayer an obligation of men in the minyan, if so, it needs to be led by someone obligated, a man having obtained his majority.

If the prayer is not obligated, there is flexibility in the issue.

To suggest that boys have "higher status" than women is just a meaningless statement, there isn't a status involved. Boys will grow up to be men, and therefore have the obligations. So certain parts of the service get used as an opportunity to teach the boys to be used to communal prayer.

Nothing magically happens on one's 13th birthday. Using the time before that to train [boys] is not treating women as children, it's accepting that we as a community have an obligation to teach the next generation [of prayer leaders].

While Partnership Minyanim can do all the adult self indulgence they want within the bounds of Halacha, there is a reason that they appeal to the single and DINK [dual-income, no-kids] families in NYC only, they simply aren't of practical interest to families with children.

Or, bluntly, for completely practical reasons, it is more important for the Jewish world to cultivate an interest in a 10 year old boy wanting to be an active involved Jewish adult than there is in appeasing your interest in filling your empty nestor days with an interest in learning this stuff.

Impractical Halachot have a short lifespan, practical ones last a long time. Practical/Impractical in this case is based on it's ability to transmit itself, so people have to get enough out of it to maintain it AND

it can't interfere in retention rates or birth rates.

Wed Sep 15, 01:36:00 AM 2010

I've talked about a number of aspects of parenting a young child and of parenting a young child with special needs, but not even in this post did I talk about the social isolation of parenting a baby, then a toddler, then a young child. Maybe my experience was atypical, since our son was borderline hyperactive and "blessed" with delays in developing age-appropriate social skills. But I find it impossible to believe that I'm the only mother who's ever been in this position.

[ ¶ ]

We moved to our current neighborhood when our son was just over a year and a half old, which probably didn't help--perhaps my experience would have been better if the other mothers in the neighborhood had known us and our son from birth. But, that said, it isn't every mother who sits on a park bench with other mothers for hours almost every good-weather day for over a year and somehow never manages to become a part of the "gang." My son and I were almost never invited to other toddler's homes for "playdates," nor were any other toddler's mothers interested in visiting us. Once my son developed enough "seichel" (common sense) not to run into the street or get his head clobbered by a swing, I started to bring a book to the park, because it seemed a waste of time for me to try to socialize with women who were clearly intent on excluding me from their circle of friends.

[ ¶ ]

My son and I were even politely "disinvited" from returning to a Jewish playgroup after our first visit because he persisted in running into the host's kitchen and opening her refrigerator. Even then, I couldn't blame the other mothers from banning us, but that certainly didn't make me feel any better.

Now picture me in an Orthodox community in the same predicament.
Our neighborhood has no eruv, which is true of some other smaller Jewish communities, as well, and therefore, we wouldn't have been allowed to carry anything or to push a stroller in a public place on Shabbat/Sabbath. (There are also Orthodox communities in which the very idea of an eruv is rejected--the rules against carrying anything or pushing a stroller in a public place on Shabbat applies in those communities, too.) So, while my husband disappeared every Shabbat for several hours to attend morning and afternoon/evening services at synagogue, I would have had to stay home alone with a hard-to-handle heck-raiser. After all, how long can one leave a house with a two-year-old without a diaper pack? That same problem would have limited whom I could have visited and who could have visited me.
In the dead of winter, even when my kid was old enough to walk there and didn't need diapers anymore, we couldn't have gone to the local fast-food restaurant with the indoor playground.
In the heat of summer, even when my kid didn't need diapers anymore, he would not have been allowed to push or pull any of his toys or ride any of his "riding toys" or his tricycle to the playground and/or back.
So I would have spent hours of Shabbat home alone with a "high-maintenance" kid who was far too young to participate in a discussion of the Parshat HaShavuah/Torah reading of the week.
Here's my challenge to you, Miami Al, and to all of my readers: How high a price should women be expected to pay in social isolation to ensure the survival of Judaism? Aren't we, too, entitled to some adult company and conversation? When do we mothers get a Shabbat?