Dear Friends,
A very bad chauvinistic joke says that a woman’s point of view is from the kitchen window, amongst the pots.
During the past few decades there has been a lot of discussion about the woman’s place, and especially the place of the religious and ultra-Orthodox woman in Jewish life in the modern world. People claim that the woman is locked up in the kitchen, and is not allowed the freedom to express the qualities and talents that the Creator invested her with. Her fate is to be at home all day; her range of interests is supposed to run between a good recipe for apple pie, and the best baby cream. There is something to all that, but not in Chabad, for, like in many other matters, while others talk and discuss, the Lubavitcher Rebbe is already implementing his thought-out system.
Already in 1953 (5713), two years after the Rebbe accepted upon himself the leadership of Chabad, he established the Neshei Chabad organization, and with it he paved the way for the Chabad woman, pointing her towards Jewish activity while using all her talents. At the same time he established the Shlichut framework, which is, as is well known, a husband-and-wife enterprise. The Rebbe never sent a Shaliach; he always sent out a husband-and-wife combination as Shluchim. And so, without the use of much philosophy, the Rebbe removed the woman from behind the pots only, and moved her to the forefront of female activity. Anyone who has ever been in any Chabad House has noticed that it has two Shluchim – husband and wife – working together as equals.
And yet, amazingly enough, the Chabad woman’s point of view in her work for the Jewish People is actually located expressly at her kitchen window; because what a fresh Challah, baked with love, does to a Jewish heart, no sermon or lecture can do.
The Rebbe, in his own special way, did not wish to change the nature of women, but rather to make use of it, in particular, for the good of all.
These days the World Conference of Shluchot is taking place in Brooklyn. It would be no exaggeration to say that that is the largest convention of female Jewish leaders since the Creation of the World.
One more point: I mentioned earlier that the husband-and-wife team work together as equals, but in the Trump era one has to say the truth as it is, and I say this in the name of my fellow Shluchim: It’s not really as equals. The women – the Shluchot – do much more than the Shluchim, and besides that they are, as is known, the best Yiddishe Mamas in the world.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski