Who Is A Success?

One of the popular religious magazines had a feature article on a Beis Yaakov graduate who has reached a very prominent position in the American government. She is able to balance a completely religious lifestyle, being a wife and raising her two children with an extremely demanding job. She is mekadesh sheim shomayim bi-rabbim and for that we have the greatest amount of respect for her. WOWEE! That was the thrust of the article.

I agree with everything. However, the message of the article was a subversive and pernicious one [without intending it to be as such]. The highest level of achievement a Jewish woman can reach is to privately raise a family and to serve Hashem away from the spotlight. כל כבודה בת מלך פנימה - The true honor of a woman is when she is inside. This is not a popular idea in today's post-modern world. Today, only if you are a success in the outside world, are you valued. But if a woman raises 12 chidren with love and care, makes her husband the happiest and most content man on earth, does chesed for people in the community and finds a little spare time for tfillah and tehillim - then she is considered nothing special. No articles in glossy religious magazines. But if she has 2.1 children and is a lawyer in a high powered law firm but still wears a sheitel and leaves court early for Shabbos - then she is a heroine.

Don't get me wrong. If a woman needs to work for finanacial reasons or because of her personal needs and inclinations or due to other considerations then she should by all means and should not feel that she is doing anything wrong. If she manages to maintain her religious standards in the outside world and is mekadesh shem shomayim then she is very special and should be encouraged.

But truth be told - a price is paid. When one's wife and mother are not avialable much of the time then the husband and children suffer. For us Jews - FAMILY COMES FIRST.

Another price we pay is that involvement in the outside world also exerts an influence over our value system. May innocent Beis Yaakov type girls start working to make some money and end up bringing the goyishe world back to their homes in Flatbush and Monsey ה' ישמרנו. Of course, this concern exists when men work as well but is compounded when women work because they don't have the regimen of three daily minyanim and constant limmud ha-torah to keep them spiritually afloat as men do [or should].

So again - don't get me wrong. Kol Hakavod to all of the women who are successful in the outside world but let us not think for a moment that a "stay at home" mother is in any way inferior. On the contrary. In many ways she is superior and her modesty and devotion to her family put her on the highest pedestal.