A Woman of Valor (proverbs 31:10-30)

[one_in_progress]

I've been thinking about Eishet Hayil this weekend - I was at a shabbat dinner for grad students where an attempt was made to sing it. It wasn't very successful and it just seemed kind of absurd! Here we are, all equals, few of us romantically connected with each other, male and female alike we're mostly there because we're pursuing similar

Comments

[feygele]

Seriously, all the guys sang it to the girls? Ugh. I mean... ugh. In addition to the feminist arguments you touch on, there's the ever-present heterocentricity of the "community" too.

I'm glad I wasn't there.

[one_in_progress]

No, the guys didn't really sing it to the girls... a bunch of people who are used to singing it tried to start it after Shalom Aleichem, and it didn't really get very far because too many people weren't paying attention But I think the *idea* is that it's sung *to* the women, even though at a lot of places I've been where it's sung, the women sing it too.

[marlowe1]

Or it's sung as practice for when the men are married to wives. Blu Greenberg had a very interesting chapter on what it meant to be an Orthodox Jewish feminist and have this song sung to her every Shabbos.

And I don't really know any woman (or man for that matter) that can really do everyting in that song. There's a lot of business related things that those sexist Orthodox men think women should be doing too.

[marlowe1]

That's because women just don't appreciate men.