Judaistik.se

I en tidigare blogg skrev jag om att allt fler judar väntar allt längre med att gifta sig, och att detta uppfattades som ett problem i ortodoxa kretsar. I gårdagens Yediot Aharonot publicerades ett läsvärt debattinlägg, som ytterligare exemplifierar problematiken, där en ung ortodox kvinna under pseudonymen Yael berättar om hur hon träffade sin man, deras tidiga äktenskap och hur hon efter några månader som gift kvinna »vaknade upp»:

»And suddenly it hit me: All of us around the table are the same. We are all lonely. We are all children playing at being parents. I don’t know my husband. He doesn’t know what I want and like, aside from two sugars in my coffee.

...

My husband is a truly good guy, but it appears that he just doesn’t know what to do. He never learned how to conduct himself with a woman. We, at the all-female school, had a class about intimacy and family. I’m not sure that this will make a difference, as ultimately we mostly beat around the bush. The lessons were mostly irrelevant for us at that stage of our life. But at least we had something, which is much more than nothing.

How can we expect a guy who never held a conversation that was more than a minute long with a girl to enter a life of marriage without proper preparation? How can we expect him to build bridges that he never learned to build? Don’t the rabbis see the distress faced by their students, and especially by their students’ wives?»

Det råd hon vill ge till andra kvinnor är att vänta med att gifta sig, att inte gifta sig unga bara för att man förväntas göra det. I dagens Yediot Aharonot svarar R Shmuel Eliyahu på hennes »öppna brev» med bland annat följande ord:

»Don't blame the age of marriage. We all know dozens of couples who got married when they were about 20 years of age and are truly successful. Not everyone who gets married at that age is a »failure» and not everyone who gets married later is »successful.» Statistics teach us exactly the opposite. The older one gets married, the lower the chance of loyalty and success. The reasons for this are clear.

Everything a person has done in life is carried with him. It is not always visible from the outside, but it's there. A person's past sometimes sticks around even after the wedding. Couples who get married at a later age bring their entire past into the marriage. At times, the past does not contribute to a clean and pure marriage.»

Denna brevväxling i Yedirot Aharonot löser inte frågan om när äktenskap skall ingås, men tydligt är att här finns en växande klyfta mellan vad »traditionen» säger och vad dagens unga ortodoxa kvinnor vill.

_{Läs mer:}

• _{Marriage can wait}
• _{Teachers, listen to Yael}
• _{Rabbis support early marriages}