Elana Sztokman

My husband went to a month of reserve duty, miluim, and now I’m back to doing laundry. Oh, of course there are other things that I miss about Jacob not being here, but laundry has given him a special presence in my life.

It all started around a year or two ago when I was experiencing what I have come to describe as death by laundry. I’m sure it’s familiar to many of you: the sense that laundry is taking over your house, your life, growing in mountains, never going away, never stopping, taking on an increasingly ominous personality, like the “Feed me, Seymour!” plant. I thought at one point, if I saw one more person sift through a pile of socks to find a pair and then walk off without bothering to sort the rest, I might just ignite a sock bonfire and let them all go sockless forever, smelly sneakers be damned.

It was around this time of my “No more laundry” fantasies that Jacob stepped in, put his arms on my shoulders and said, “Don’t you worry. From now on, I’m in charge of laundry. You’re never going to do laundry again.” I didn’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity of the idea or cry at the knowledge that such an eventuality was about as close to reality as my becoming a 39-year old acrobat and running away with the circus. “No, really,” he insisted. “I’m doing laundry. You don’t have to do any more laundry.”

Well, true to his word, Jacob did it. He saved me from laundry hell and just took over. He still does it. He sorts, rinses, hangs, folds, and does all the accompanying nagging and chart-making to get the kids to do their parts. Really. And we don’t have an American 10 kg Maytag either and our dryer isn’t so terrific, but he just does it, without complaining. I’m waiting for it, you know, the day when he comes to me and finally explodes, complaining to me about death from laundry and handing me the bucket and pins and white flag and saying, “You’re right, it’s hell. Your turn to take over.” But it hasn’t happened. Jacob smiles, and continues to insist that this is his domain and not mine. Actually, I think he is really, really proud of himself. Not for doing the laundry (as many a cynic would say, “Hey, he figured out how to sort colors from whites?” Chuckle, chuckle guffaw guffaw, as if this is rocket science or that men are somehow lacking “the laundry gene”.). No, I think Jacob is really proud of himself and genuinely content to be this kind of man, a man who really knows how to love his wife. That’s Jacob.

I think about Jacob’s model of spouse-hood, or masculinity perhaps. He would never talk like that of course. He doesn’t claim to have a “model”, and is not working off any kind of academic theory, and is certainly not about to preach masculinity to men. I’m the one with all the books on feminism and men, but he couldn’t care less about my library. All he has to do is look at a book with a title like, “The Cultural Construction of Nineteenth Century Adolescence,” and he’s snoring before you get to page one. I blog and preach and lecture and fight and make lots of noise. And Jacob quietly and happily changes the world, one little family at a time, one moment at a time. He just does his thing, contentedly and calmly, as if all is well in the universe. He is a man who loves to love his family, who would quit his job in a minute if he had the opportunity to stay at home and play in the garden all day with his kids, who jumps into the kiddie pool not out of obligation but because it is truly fun for him to splash around and make his kids laugh. He absolutely lives for the laughter of his family members. And so for Jacob, sharing jobs and trying to make my life better is not about living out some grand academic ideology. It’s just about living with care and love.

As surprising as this is to people who haven’t known me so long, I really was not a feminist when Jacob and I got married. Actually, I was a naive, pollyanna-ish, head-covering, floor-sweeping, wide-eyed Orthodox spokeswoman yeshivah girl. I had no career ambitions, my life revolved around being a good mother and was shrouded in Republican misogynistic backlash about how feminists ruin the world — we were all of 21 when we got married, and I was a mother by the age of 23. Jacob was an eclectic combination of Chabad devotee and die-hard Zionist Bnai Akivanik. We made aliyah straight out of college, four-month old baby in hand, with the firm belief that everything would be okay. Happy, naive idealists we were. Feminism? That wasn’t Torah. We were really quite Orthodox.

The amazing thing to me is not how much I’ve changed since then, but that Jacob and I have been able to change together. That’s not so easy. It’s not so simple for a Chabad/Bnai Akiva-nik to become a feminist. But Jacob did just that.

Jacob says that feminism is not about women per se, but about kindness and compassion. He likes to tell the story about how, early on in our marriage, he sat down one Friday afternoon to watch television as I went to the kitchen to cook. “I thought to myself,” he tells people, “why should Elana be working so hard while I sit here and do nothing? That’s not nice.” So he got up, and we cooked together. And we’ve been doing pretty much everything together ever since.

That’s Jacob’s feminism. It’s about being nice to one’s spouse because she is a human being. It’s that simple. He didn’t get up to cook because he had read about feminism somewhere. He simply looked at me, thought to himself, I love this woman and I want to care for her well-being. That’s it. That’s Jacob’s feminism. I think it may be my feminism too.

So this is what Jacob has taught me. It’s not about academics, politics or ideology. It’s not a feminism looking for a fight. It’s feminism of care.

I think sometimes about all the ways that Jacob and I are different. I think a lot of our friends wonder about this. We have such different personalities. He is quiet and easygoing, likes to joke around and hates taking things too seriously. His deadpan delivery shocks people until they get to know him and realize they cannot take a single thing he says seriously. If he does decide to talk about politics and religion (”serious” topics), he is likely to be right of center while I’m left of center, and more defensive of rabbis who I am more likely to reject. On paper, one might say we are a pretty odd match.

I thought about this one Shabbat when I watched a couple we know playing Scrabble. I love Scrabble, but Jacob hates it. I thought, here’s a couple that has a lot in common — they are both academic and share an entire ideology and world view. There was only one little issue with this couple, and that is that he is not so nice to her. He yells at her in public (and in private), is often cold, and overall is not exactly what you would call a warm and fuzzy type.

So I think to myself, if a person has to choose between sharing a life with someone who has the same ideology but not so much love, versus a person whose politics and religion are different from yours but who is loving and caring, there is no doubt in my mind which one a person should choose. I think I’m going to tell that to my kids one day, when the time comes.

When you’re looking for someone to share a life with, find the one who knows how to love. How do you know who that is? Tell him you hate doing laundry — or cooking, or driving, or any other thankless chore — and just see how he or she reacts. If they put their hands on your shoulders and do a Jacob, you know everything is alright.