by Rachel Cohen (Philadelphia, PA)
Recently, a woman in our community gave me a gift of esrog jelly. She felt that this gift would be a catalyst for me to become pregnant and have a child. She also offered frequent Shabbos invitations to my husband and me, perhaps because she felt bad for us that we were alone.
I was very hurt and frustrated by this as I felt that she had crossed personal boundaries and made an assumption that I was having difficulty conceiving. Based on this assumption, she gave us a gift that we did not want. I felt that she was treating us as a charity.
I could have told her that there are many reasons why couples do not have children for extended periods of time, and that these reasons are exclusively the concern of the husband and wife and only the husband and wife. But I didn’t feel comfortable confronting her. It isn’t this woman’s place to pry into our personal life, even if she thinks she has noble intentions.
I’m not the only one in our community who feels that some people pry too far. Once an expecting mother remarked to me: “Last year I miscarried a child. My husband was in a bakery when I was giving birth to the miscarriage. A person in the bakery would not stop questioning my husband about my pregnancy. My husband refused to answer but the man kept nagging. Eventually, my husband explained that I was having a miscarriage in the hospital. The man in the bakery gasped.”
The question that I’d like to pose to my community is this: why are people so insensitive to the feelings of others and feel a need to pry into a sensitive part of other people’s lives that is not for them to know about? Does a person have to experience such an embarrassing moment like the man in the bakery to realize that he is crossing boundaries?
I’m sure there are many people who are simply not thinking when they pry. Some of my peers tell me, “I mean it for the best,” or “I thought it was acceptable to ask,” or the best one, “Because we are all one nation and have to watch out for each other.”
But, truth be told, I feel there are very few reasons to rationalize crossing such private and personal boundaries and embarrassing a person. So again I ask: why do people do this? And more importantly, why should people stop crossing personal boundaries?
The answer, I believe, is rooted in one of Judaism’s most significant attributes, which sets the Jewish people apart from all other nations.
The Jewish people received the Torah as a guide for how to live and how to treat other people. The great Talmudic Sage Hillel tells us how we should treat others. When summarizing the entire Torah to a prospective convert, he says, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah…the rest is the explanation of this – go and study it!”
Perhaps if others took a moment to think about how they would feel if the situation was reversed and they themselves were being asked about their most private, personal matters, they would think twice before prying.
In the Torah we also received laws about modesty. Tznius is more than just what one wears. Rabbi Maurice Lamm, z”l, writes, “Tznius means discreet habits, quiet speech, and affections privately expressed…This is not merely a series of behavioral niceties, a sort of Bible’s guide to etiquette, but a philosophy of life.”
Questioning someone’s pregnancy status, then, is not acting in a tznius manner. Taking time before speaking or even averting one’s gaze from a woman’s swelling belly could save someone potential harm and hurt feelings.
I know that, personally, I don’t want to be that person who questions everything about others. I don’t want to be the person who embarrasses others in order to get a juicy detail about their private life because I believe that asking is so called “caring.”
Please keep your esrog jelly (and your assumptions) to yourself. Pray, please pray for others. But, please, don’t tell the person who you may hurt that you are praying for them. My stomach is my stomach. I may have gained some weight, but please stop staring.
Rachel Cohen is a cardiac Intensive Care nurse who loves Philadelphia, PA. When she is not at work, she enjoys freelance writing and poetry. She is currently in graduate school and working on a memoir.
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