A recap on Harav Arush on women doing an hour of personal prayer , translated and summarized from Chochmat Nashim (in Hebrew), called Women's Wisdom in English:
He says the best time for hitbodedut is while it is still dark, and that a woman should work hard to go to bed early and wake up early, in order to do hitbodedut while it is even still dark, and that the praise in Eshet Chayil (she is awake while it is still night) is brought down by the Ben Ish Chai refers to all the work in the house before everyone else is awake to prepare the house for them, and kal v’chomer for shaa hitbodedut.
By doing hitbodedut first thing in the morning, she has a lot of seata dishmaya in her day and has a totally different day because of it. She also sweetens all the dinim and therefore doesn’t encounter the problems, difficulties and confusions in her work. Literally, a day with hitbodedut is a completely different day than a day without it, and you pre-empt everything by waking up early for it.
If a woman cannot wake up before the children wake up to do hitbodedut because her crying baby kept her up late (I'm not writing this, he said that) or other reasons, then she should “grab her hour” FIRST THING she possibly can, for instance after she has sent the children to school. It doesn’t matter if the house is completely turned upside-down, if the laundry is up to the ceiling, and she doesn’t feel that she can manage with the house in its present state – DO HITBODEDUT FIRST (again the examples are NOT mine). First and foremost is hitbodedut, and he guarantees that the work done after the hour of hitbodedut will be done easily and quickly, for the same reasons stated above – she will have no judgments and a settled mind to work quickly and efficiently.
He ends the section by noting that it is very important to read “In Forest Fields” his book on hitbodedut, which contains a lot of practical advice and details at length, as well of chizuk on doing hitbodedut.
EMUNAGAL COMMENTS: Needless to say, Rabbi Arush does NOT say that women are exempt from personal prayer ! Every man, woman and child should be doing a full hour, every single day. Nor does he exempt women for being “too busy.” That being said, although hitbodedut is best done totally alone and no one else is supposed to be able to hear it, I do believe that having a baby or very small child around, if this is the absolute only way to do hitbodedut, is OK, but preferably at a time when the child is sleeping or not going to be interrupting your train of thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment