The Human Spirit: What do religious women want?

By Barbara Sofer

There is no way to undercut the devotion it takes to bring up 10 children, as is common for haredim.

I’m listening to the radio talk show discussion of the new proposal that nursery school will be free from age three. You’d think this might be a rare moment of national unity. Any parent who has been paying steep preschool fees, and any grandparent who remembers that nursery school used to cost as much as university, should be happy about this decision.

It is a substantive response to the summer protests’ demand for improved conditions for working couples. But every Knesset speaker who gets on the airwaves in the morning is griping. Each glorifies his or her sector and complains about the others. Listening in traffic, I had the fantasy that each speaker would say something positive about those in a different sector. Are we so busy defending our lifestyles for secular grandparents to admit that they would love to have 50 grandchildren like their haredi counterparts? Would haredi parents really mind if their gifted sons and daughters had the educational tools to become oncologists like their secular counterparts?

Instead of making lists of what’s wrong with each other, here are a few examples of what we might appreciate. Please excuse the generalizations. My apologies in advance for stereotyping and for not including the Arab sector in this column....