Jewish Orthodox Mum Part II AMA

[mirah2]

I'm probably letting myself in for it, but here goes...

New AMA to mop up any questions that didn't get answered on the first (full) thread. If you're sure (after reading all of that thread) that your question wasn't answered, or have a new question, please post.

I probably won't have time to reply until after dinner and kids' bedtime.

I am NOT the OP of the original thread. My frame of reference - Modern Orthodox, British (living in UK), convert, mixed race heritage.

Fellow Orthodox Jews of Mumsnet - feel free to crowd share answers, but please remember:

• this is not the shul kiddush. This is a public internet forum anyone can read
• please be sensitive and think about how others (Jewish and not Jewish) might interpret what you say. We sometimes have different working definitions of words within our bubbles so be mindful of that.

Go forth and post!

As a midwife I've delivered lots of Jewish women and noticed that some husbands face the other way when they're in the delivery room.
Is this to avoid looking at their wives, or to avoid looking at me (as another unrelated woman)?

There are no rules here, its very much a personal choice.

I breastfed my first for 6 months, and my second for 4 months. There's no right or wrong here.
Same with toilet training, totally personal choice, my son was trained just before his third birthday, he wasn't interested before then.
Co-sleeping as much as anywhere else, some do it, some don't.

The reason the men look the other way, and are often behind the curtain during the actual delivery is because his wife is considered a Nidda from the point that she sees a significant amount of blood or her cervix is dialated fully. From then until she goes to mikva post birth, he can't see her unclothed so he'd turn away.

Do pregnant women generally avoid having antenatal testing for fetal abnormalities?
I recognize that this is a sensitive subject.
Muslim women, for example, usually decline any tests and scans, as they would not choose to have an abortion.

@samG76 her husband was already at the synagogue so she couldn't phone him. I was surprised that the rabbi didn't excuse her from complete fasting once she started bleeding, he said she could only have small amounts of water every few hours. I assumed the m/c would be viewed as illness.
Can you change your rabbi if you aren't keen on him? Does he know that he is' yours'? Is there anything you have to do or pledge allegiance or something to him?

Some communities do and some don't do the antenatal testing for fetal abnormalities. Since abortions are not allowed unless there is risk to mothers life often the test for down syndrome (I don't know what its called) is not usually done unless the mother wants it done for whatever reason.
Regular scans and growth checks throughout the pregnancy are very much done.

For me it would be really hard not to have a hug/handhold from my DH during labour or postpartum for up to 6 weeks. I know doulas are common, but surely it's not the same? Do women struggle with this or is it very much accepted as the way it is?

Ah, thank you!
I delivered a woman having her ninth baby.
She was already 8 cm dilated when she arrived and the baby was born about fifteen minutes later.
I remember that she got a massive box of chocolates out of her case and gave it to me, to thank me.
I've never forgotten her because she arrived on foot with her husband and didn't look like she was in any pain at all.
When she told me how many babies she'd had I took her straight to delivery - I figured she'd had enough experience to know if she was in labour or not.
It was a lovely delivery.

Actually @jewishorthomum this is the one place I have felt you haven't quite given correct information. An adopted child who is not Jewish is converted by the Beit Din as a child - pretty much at the time of the adoption if the adopting parents are frum (ie Orthodox). The Beit Din will generally only consider it if the child will be brought up in an environment in which they will be keeping the mitzvot (commandments), but they do it not infrequently. We know (or know of) several people who have adopted. At the time they turn 12 or 13 the child has the option of rejecting the conversion - but if they go on to act as a Jew, they are considered fully converted. Usually these days they get the child to make an acceptance statement at 12 or 13, just to make sure it is quite clear, although that is not strictly necessary - it is more if the child at that time of bar/bat mitzvah declares that they don't want to be Jewish, the conversion is considered null and void.

I hate the way the patriarchal system has so much control over women and their bodies.
I thought the Catholic church in Ireland in the past was bad.

Yes I don't expect to be considered as Jewish and I don't consider myself Jewish - I would say I have Jewish heritage and Jewish family but not that I'm actually Jewish myself. Plus I'm not remotely religious anyway!

Would you say that is disrespectful treatment though? Or would it be the same in other families and is just to be expected, that an illegitimate non-Jewish child could not be seen as family by the more religious relatives? How would you or your parents react if, say, your sibling had a child in similar circumstances? I mean would you accept the child as family or keep a distance? My grandparents always made such an effort to make me feel welcome and included, and to maintain a good relationship with my mother too even though she and my father rarely even spoke as I got older. As an adult I realise maybe they went against other family members expectations/wishes in doing so, but they're not here to ask about it now - I wish I'd thought to talk to them about it before it was too late. Obviously as I'm in my late 40s this was in the 70s/80s so attitudes to unmarried mothers are different across the whole of society now as well, perhaps it was to some degree just reflecting the stigma that was more widely prevalent at the time.

It is really hard not to be able to touch my husband during the birth. That's why we have a doula with us. She gives the physical support during the birth.
I think its that kiss, once the baby is born, that I'd like to have.
During the postpartum period I'm more then happy with the distance. I need space, my body is all leaky and sore and I really don't want any closeness.
But yes, the nidda laws are some of the most challenging laws to keep. They can be really hard and take a lot of self control on both of our parts.

I think it is both a struggle and a relief. Sometimes you really feel like a hug/hand hold. But to be honest, I am really glad that there was no pressure to have sex for really quite a while after a baby, so I could devote myself to me and the baby without feeling like I was neglecting DH. It takes the pressure off when one just can't, it is not you saying no I don't feel like it, it is the system. And because of the counting and the build up to mikvah, and the fact that you couldn't before, I think it helps prepare and get one more back into the mood.
I don't know about other couples, but we used to use words (we rather borrowed the Teletubbies "Big Hug" sort of idea), ie saying I really would like to give a hug, or hold your hand. Do note though, that as one goes through menopause - the need for this stops - although certain aspects seem to linger even when not necessary, like sometimes using words first before actions. I think all the women I know have had mixed feelings about not needing to go to mikvah anymore, and having lost this rhythm, although of course you adjust.

I have to agree with PP that I'm not happy when men appear on threads and start laying down the law.

A good deal of the subject matter of this thread in particular is in relation to very sensitive issues which only affect women.

You choose your own Rabbi, your own path and you are not tied into them and you can switch. You also might consult with different ones for different things. In the UK I message my old Shul Rabbi for nida and kashrus questions, but if I wanted insight into how to navigate something that is not about 'law' but more personal, there were two I would speak to. He would advise, but I didn't have to do what he said. I really appreciated the chance to talk things through and gain insight. It's an option I could choose to take up or not. Most of the time, my husband and I don't go for advice, but the times we have, it has been extremely helpful. Also basic questions about halacha I usually know what to do or can look up in a sefer.

In an emergency I would ask anyone competent, and sometimes a Rabbi will send you to someone more knowledgable or qualified. So for one question we had last year, the Rabbi said I don't have enough knowledge in this area, so here is a number for x who is a specialist in this area and can help you better. I guess it's a little like GPs, and specialists.

The only fast that it is possible that this happened on is Yom Kippur. Any other fast, there is no question she should have broken the fast and had food and drink as normal. Even on Yom Kippur, life comes first. I assume she was asking the question because she wasn't sure if she was in the category of it being life saving (the parameters for life saving are fairly wide, so a diabetic will eat and drink, just in a very specific way, they wouldn't risk not eating and getting sick). Because breaking Yom Kippur fast is such a huge deal to orthodox Jews, she may have wanted confirmation before she broke it.

My guess - and it's just a guess - is that she wasn't in any danger. Illness in itself isn't reason to break the Yom Kippur fast, only such illness that is exacerbated by fasting.

And even then it depends on the circumstances. In mild cases the person would be guided to eat/drink very small amounts every 10 minutes or so, while in severe cases they would need to eat properly.

Note, this level of severity is only for the Yom Kippur fast. For most other fasts all pregnant or nursing women wouldn't fast at all, and for the 9th of Av fast, it would depend on their stage in pregnancy or post partum.

@amcha you're right, I didn't know this. Thanks for correcting me.

I appreciate I may not get an answer now until after Sabbath, I have two separate questions:

1. regarding women who need specialist advice about fertility (it was mentioned on the first thread that the couple could see specialists within the community who could advise on fertility problems) - I have a 23 day cycle and I bleed for the first 12 days, probably more if I had to check internally. So I basically wouldn't be able to be clean (I can't remember the Hebrew word for non-niddah, if it has been mentioned, I do realise that "clean" is a loaded term and that we're talking ritual not moral or bodily cleanliness) ever or maybe for a very short time each month. In practice, what would a Jewish fertility specialist say to someone like me who was Jewish? Would they be advised not to marry if they knew about it before marriage? Would the authorities give an exception to the niddah rules - and if so would it be seen as breaking a commandment to fulfil a greater commandment (to be fruitful) or would they try to say that it wasn't breaking a commandment at all because of XYZ? I'm just interested how the fertility experts can actually help.
2. Regarding the Torah, what is the Orthodox understanding of how it came to be written? Do Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox accept modern scholarship that it was composed by multiple authors from different traditions over a long period of time, or is it seen as having been personally written by Moses? Is this something which differs within different Jewish communities?

Agreed.

And I think it's also astonishingly entitled for someone to be told by a variety of women independently that their contributions and tone are making them uncomfortable, and continue to exhibit the same behaviours seemingly with no concern or regard for how their presence and approach impacts others.

It is an attitude that I'm sure many of us recognise from (not all) some men who believe their voices hold more value and weight than women's by default.

And that if women disagree with them, they are misunderstanding rather than simply disagreeing.

I can't imagine being told I'm making people feel uncomfortable and reacting with such entitlement. I think it's alien to many of us, including other Jewish folk on the thread, who have also expressed their discomfort.

Actually the views on abortion in halacha are really quite broad - and one of the things I find frustrating about England is that we generally only hear the view of Rav Moshe Feinstein (a very prominent American rabbi) - which is a legitimate view, but it is not the only view. The views of many Israeli rabbis, such as the Tzitz Eliezer, Rav Ovadiah Yosef, and many more - are much, much more lenient on abortion than this. My DD in her school came home with the abortion is murder view from her halacha teacher - which lead me to do up a whole set of sources for her and her friends which gave her an idea of the spectrum of opinion on this. Nobody says abortion on demand, but if you follow the Tzitz Eliezer, there is no reason not to do antenatal testing - and every support to abort if there are serious concerns. It is one of the areas of diversity within rabbinic opinion - but (in my view unfortunately) not as widely taught as I believe it should be.

"It's something you might not like to hear, but that in itself doesn't make it rude or condescending"

Oh wow.

In terms of Judaism, these people are 'bad Jews', ie they don't keep Judaic law, but Jews nonetheless

@JeweyJew I find that so insulting, and a really negative message on what is a very positive and informative thread. My family are not bad Jews

Or, maybe I am a bad Jew to you@JeweyJew , but not to me! And that is enough for me!