Insights into how we can happily follow our husband without losing ourselves

My friend was distraught.

It was time to choose a school for her oldest daughter — no easy feat in a city with 40-odd schools, mostly too full to grant you an interview — and she and her husband didn’t agree on the choice. She had some very serious reservations about the school he wanted to apply to.

“I was listening to Rebbetzin Goldberg,*” she confided, “and she said that an ishah kesheirah doesn’t just go along with what her husband wants — she actively supports it.”

Was she wrong to voice her concerns?

The international bestseller The Surrendered Wife, principles of which have been adopted and adapted by numerous frum teachers, encourages women to say, “Whatever you think,” to all their husbands’ suggestions, no matter how harebrained.

Is the role of a Jewish wife to be a yes-man (woman?), agreeing to anything her husband proposes? (A casual reading of carefully cherry-picked maamarei Chazal could definitely leave someone with that impression.) Or is she meant to be an equal partner in running the home and rearing the children?

“This is a false dichotomy,” argues Mrs. Dina Schoonmaker, a veteran seminary teacher who also runs an interactive mussar vaad via teleconference focused on self-development. If you look at the Torah sources, she says, it’s true that the husband is the head of the household. But the wife’s role is not minimal. She also has an important spiritual role, far greater than just keeping house and acquiescing to whatever her husband suggests.

“In Gan Eden, there was no cooking or laundry,” notes Mrs. Schoonmaker. “There’s something more that the wife brings to the table. The Maharal says Chavah was created from a hidden organ, and is therefore the master of the hidden reality. She can read between the lines.”

When a child complains of a stomachache, the stereotypical male response might be a visit to the GI; it’s the woman’s binah yeseirah that can sniff out the child’s anxiety over a social issue in school.

None of the animals could be a partner to Adam — he needed someone with thought and speech. Though Hashem could have matched Adam with a gazelle or water buffalo, He knew that Adam needed a helpmate who could impart valuable insight into his decisions — but in a decidedly feminine way.

At the same time, she says, a woman is meant to be a mekabel of her husband’s shefa, not simply a mirror image. In the Torah, we also see more than one way of being a supportive wife. We have the example of Sarah, who told Avraham what she felt was right for Yitzchak’s chinuch, and was backed by Hashem, but we also have Rivkah Imeinu and Devorah Haneviah, who guided events behind the scenes without direct intervention in their husbands’ decisions.

Can we empower our girls with a healthy sense of self, teaching them when to defer graciously, and when to bring their unique strengths to bear in the relationship?