{"id":2641,"date":"2017-11-27T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/2017\/11\/27\/happy-to-skip-eishet-chayil-a-modern-feminist-critique"},"modified":"2018-06-11T15:09:37","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T12:09:37","slug":"happy-to-skip-eishet-chayil-a-modern-feminist-critique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/2017\/11\/27\/happy-to-skip-eishet-chayil-a-modern-feminist-critique\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy to Skip Eishet Chayil: A Modern Feminist Critique"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this personal critique<\/a>, Lauren Kramer<\/a> challenges the traditional custom of singing Eishet Chayil to the woman of the house on Friday night. She claims that the words are outdated and that they present an unrealistic and absurd portrayal of the ideal woman, to whom she does not relate. Kramer, a professional writer, writes a monthly column titled “Married with Kids” for the Canadian Jewish News<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Happy to Skip Eshet Chayil<\/h2>\n

At my friend\u2019s Shabbat dinner table a few weeks ago, her husband broke into a solo version of\u00a0Eshet Chayil<\/em>\u00a0(Woman of Valour<\/em>, Proverbs, Chapter 31). Not sure where to look, I kept my eyes downcast, sharing a conspiratorial smile with my spouse.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t recall ever having been serenaded, but were I able to choose,\u00a0Eshet Chayil\u00a0<\/em>wouldn\u2019t be my first choice of song. This is a proverb that gets my back up each time I hear it. It\u2019s the nuances of the song that bother me, or rather, its direct translation.\u00a0Eshet Chayil<\/em>\u00a0just makes no sense to me. It paints the portrait of a woman who does not exist, who possibly never has. The woman described in\u00a0Eshet Chayil<\/em>\u00a0is a selfless slave. One hand on the distaff, the other on the spindle, the tasks she performs are utterly outdated and have no meaning in the context of our present day reality.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, they border on the ridiculous. Our\u00a0Eshet Chayil<\/em>\u00a0plants a vineyard and rations her maids. Since when is maid rationing an action to be lauded? She buys a field, makes and sells her own clothes and \u201cgirds her loins,\u201d roughly translated as preparing herself for a task requiring endurance. That task can only be the lifestyle described in the song.<\/p>\n

Our\u00a0Eshet Chayil<\/em>\u00a0is never allowed to rest. Instead she must make her own bedspreads, deliver a belt to the pedlar and clothe her family. While her husband can sit with the elders (the emphatic word here being \u201csit\u201d<\/em>), the woman this proverb describes may never \u201ceat the bread of idleness\u201d or spend time and effort on making herself feel beautiful. Nope, that would be vain, and anyway, she has too much to do between anticipating household needs, decking herself out in purple wool and linen, helping the poor and destitute and burning the midnight oil. Even sleep she denies herself!<\/p>\n

So here are my questions \u2013 Why do we sing about this phantom woman? How does this song celebrate modern couples today and their distribution of labour, and if it doesn\u2019t, why are folks still singing it?<\/p>\n

Rabbinical scholars argue that it\u2019s not to be taken literally, that the\u00a0Eshet Chayil<\/em>\u00a0represents the feminine presence of God. Others argue that its meaning must be taken in context of the Masoretic text, the traditional Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible, preceded by instructions the mother of King Lemuel gives to her son. Maybe the proverb was Lemuel\u2019s eulogy to his mother. Still, that doesn\u2019t help me understand why it\u2019s sung at contemporary Shabbat tables and what meaning it holds for today\u2019s Jewish women.<\/p>\n

Praise I\u2019m okay with. I think women get way less of that than they deserve. And particularly on a Friday night, before the family feasts on a three-course dinner, a little praise is a good thing. But the words of praise are just as important as the praise itself and\u00a0Eshet Chayil<\/em>\u00a0feels prehistoric and by today\u2019s standards, simply absurd.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019ll be no renditions of\u00a0Eshet Chayil<\/em>\u00a0at my table. You\u2019ll say I\u2019m too literal, but I believe the woman of valour described in this proverb doesn\u2019t describe me or anyone else I know, nor does it present a realistic set of goals for anyone to aspire to. Until a more meaningful Shabbat song is composed to describe a contemporary woman of valour, I\u2019m quite comfortable to go un-serenaded.<\/p>\n

Even if that means forfeiting praise completely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this personal critique, Lauren Kramer challenges the traditional custom of singing Eishet Chayil to the woman of the house on Friday night. She claims that the words are outdated and that they present an unrealistic and absurd portrayal of the ideal woman, to whom she does not relate. Kramer, a professional writer, writes a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[527],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post\/"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4\/"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments\/?post=2641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions\/"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2642\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/?parent=2641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/?post=2641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/?post=2641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}