{"id":47824,"date":"2025-10-24T01:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=47824"},"modified":"2025-10-23T17:21:55","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T00:21:55","slug":"cheshvan-a-great-month-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2025\/10\/24\/cheshvan-a-great-month-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheshvan a great month, too"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hebrew month of Cheshvan, or \u201cMar Cheshvan,\u201d is the second month on the calendar after Tishrei. It comes right after all the fall holidays end. The rabbis called it \u201cmar,\u201d<\/i> or bitter, because it doesn\u2019t have any holidays or special mitzvot (commandments). This mom has an entirely different take. I\u2019m very tired \u2026 and relieved.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t take away from any of the meaning, pomp or special parts of the fall Jewish holidays, which are all fantastic. I\u2019m still holding one moment as dear: sitting in my sukkah, I could see the clear sky, with a few clouds floating past, see and hear the migrating birds, smell and see the fall leaves, and embrace the chill in the air. It was a fabulous family meal moment, only topped by the solitary lunch I ate on the back porch, in the sukkah sunshine. I had the newspaper, along with a big plate of food. I was warm. There were no wasps. A true triumph, considering it often rains or snows in Winnipeg during this harvest holiday.<\/p>\n

Yet, I\u2019m also worn out, and not just from two years of worry about the war. If you live outside big Jewish population centres and you want celebratory holiday meals, the options are limited. In Winnipeg, if you want kosher food, there\u2019s only catering from two or three places. If you\u2019re OK with kosher-style food, there are more options, but, for instance, a beautiful big challah is not always easy to procure at the last moment. Even if you\u2019re not strictly traditional, purchasing and putting together a holiday meal can be expensive and time consuming, even if you don\u2019t cook it.<\/p>\n

Challah is a good example. If you want a buy a single challah, it costs somewhere between $6 and $12 in Winnipeg. I like to cook and bake. From what we\u2019ve observed, my recipe is richer and has a higher food cost than these commercially produced challahs. In the past, I used to make one batch (about three pounds) using my bread machine and produce three loaves. One would go into the freezer for a future Shabbat or holiday. Two would go out on the table and last the weekend. I now have twin teenage boys. All three challahs might last through Sunday lunch. Doubling the recipe and doing it all by hand results in more loaves to freeze for another day, but I receive grumbling from the peanut gallery because it doesn\u2019t taste the same.<\/p>\n

The person in charge of food prep in your household is well-aware of the grocery planning and food preparation time needed. They\u2019ll even know the time it takes to set a holiday table and get everything out onto it before a holiday starts. Yes, it\u2019s sometimes easier if others help, but sometimes it results in bellyaching and goes slower than if the most efficient person does it all\u00a0<\/span>by themselves.<\/p>\n

In recent years, this effort has been given a few names: mental load is one. I\u2019ve carefully tried not to gender this task. However, just as women\u2019s pay rates in Canada still don\u2019t equal men\u2019s, it\u2019s also true that women tend to shoulder much of this unpaid burden. Yes, there are exceptions, absolutely. There are women who\u2019ve never left the workforce to have children, haven\u2019t married or compromised in any way for a man\u2019s career, and never been a caretaker. These women might make an equal wage for their work, and that\u2019s great. It\u2019s also true that there are men who shoulder most household tasks. Just like the example of Golda Meir as Israel\u2019s prime minister, simply because an exceptional woman has achieved equity or high office doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re \u201cthere\u201d yet in terms of equality and equity for everybody.<\/p>\n

I recently pitched a class for Limmud (an international program offering Jewish learning, where everyone pays to attend and shares the cost) about positive tips for raising Jewish kids. Many of the tips I thought of relate to this situation: special foods or cooking together, holiday celebrations, Jewish stories, activities or events, and Jewish learning and home life. Again, many of these tasks often fall to women, even though there\u2019s no essentialist reason why they should. If a mom wants to do some quiet quitting and pull back to regain some time for herself, her work life or other pursuits, it doesn\u2019t always follow that the other partner will jump into action to fill the void.<\/p>\n

While mainstream Jewish organizations bemoan the cost of Jewish life, it\u2019s rare that the supports exist to make this kind of unpaid labour easier. One exceptional example is when Jewish preschools provide parents with a way to order challah for Shabbat. Every Friday or holiday when school was in session, we were able to bring home challah affordably. It made a huge difference.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t, of course, a new phenomenon. I recently read about the requirements of the priests\u2019 clothing in the Babylonian talmudic tractate Zevachim. Essentially, in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem, if the priests\u2019 clothing wasn\u2019t appropriate, it could make a person\u2019s animal sacrifice invalid. To do a sacrifice, a person incurred a lot of costs: raising or purchasing an animal, getting to Jerusalem, and more. An invalid sacrifice could result in a horrible outcome for the person and their family, the priest and the community. Yet, no one discussed in this section how the priests got the clothing in the first place. Other information indicates that predominantly women spun all this yarn (on spindles, by hand) and wove the fabric and likely sewed it all together for the priestly garb. This effort was thousands of hours of unpaid work behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m looking forward to a hopefully peaceful and easier Cheshvan ahead. It\u2019s a time that some may find bitter, but, like a bitter coffee served with dessert, sometimes a little less hoopla might be a nice, restful contrast. It also might give families time to reflect on who provides all that planning and labour to make your home celebrations special and your holidays a reality \u2013 there are many ways to alleviate that burden. Further, we should stop using examples of truly exceptional cases \u2013 that woman with nine kids who works full time and makes all the meals \u2013 to shame everyone else. A better outcome would be more equitable distribution of these Jewish tasks \u2013 to increase holiday or Shabbat joy in every household.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Joanne Seiff<\/b> has written regularly for the <\/i>Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including <\/i>From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner<\/a> or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hebrew month of Cheshvan, or \u201cMar Cheshvan,\u201d is the second month on the calendar after Tishrei. It comes right after all the fall holidays end. The rabbis called it \u201cmar,\u201d or bitter, because it doesn\u2019t have any holidays or special mitzvot (commandments). This mom has an entirely different take. I\u2019m very tired \u2026 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[20311,1802,218,8302,2231,24421],"class_list":["post-47824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-ed","tag-equity","tag-high-holidays","tag-judaism","tag-lifestyle","tag-talmud","tag-unpaid-labour"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}