Woman's World - 010 Heart of the Jewish Woman

A Woman’s Torah is with her Heart

Baruch Hashem, Shavuos is upon us – the time when the Torah was given. At the giving of the Torah, we all were there. The women were also there. Men, women, and children all received Torah.

We know that men received the mitzvah to learn the Torah, but what did the women receive at Har Sinai?

Women are exempt from learning Torah (they only have to learn what is relevant to them), so what did they receive at Har Sinai? What inner gift did the women receive at the giving of the Torah, if they didn’t receive the mitzvah to learn the Torah?

Every person has a brain (which has in it seichel) and a heart. The men received the mitzvah to learn Torah with their minds – but the women received the mitzvah to learn Torah through their hearts. Women do not learn Torah with their minds – they learn it with their hearts. Why? It is because a woman learns Torah with her heart. The heart of a woman is the tool to receive the light of the Torah – this is the gift that women received at Har Sinai. Ever since then, Torah by women has always been in their hearts, while men learn Torah using their minds.

The Role Of A Woman’s Heart – Spiritual Yearning

In a marriage, husband and wife can merit to receive the Shechinah – if they are worthy.^[1] The husband must bring Torah into the house for this to happen – and so must a woman. But the woman’s Torah is different than a man’s. She brings the Torah into the house through her heart. If only one of them has Torah, the home cannot survive. Both husband and wife need Torah – the husband with his mind, and the woman with her heart.

Let us try to understand what this “Torah of the heart” is that women have.

The Sages say that one should have a “libo lashamayim” – a heart directed toward the heavens. Some people’s hearts are directed toward materialism, but others’ hearts are directed toward the heavens – toward spirituality. This is when one uses his heart to search for an inner kind of life – a life that contains spirituality, with less focus on materialism. This is for one to have a yearning for spiritual matters – a life with inner vitality contained in it, and not a life of external vitality.

A “heart toward the heavens” is the true heart to have. When the Jewish people stood at Sinai, everyone received their share in Torah. Women received Torah with their hearts, the gift of a heart that can be directed toward heaven – a heart that longs for spirituality.

Women Have An Easier Time Connecting To The Inner World

A woman’s power lies in her heart – her ability to have feelings and to recognize spiritual matters. A clear example of this is that the Sages say that a wife can recognize the spiritual level of her guests more than her husband can.

A woman can connect much more easily to the inner world of spirituality than a man can. A man has to strain his mind and work hard to enter this inner world of spirituality – by learning Torah, in addition to avoiding materialism. But a woman can enter spirituality easily, because her heart is more opened to begin with. For this reason, women understand spiritual matters more readily than men can.

This is the gift which women received at Har Sinai, and it is their eternal gift.

If a woman’s heart isn’t open and doesn’t feel this inner world, and she is instead attached only to materialism – for example, to have a nice house, nice clothing and more money – then she is giving up her gift that she received at Har Sinai! She is giving up her inner kind of life. She has a gift of reaching a spiritual kind of life just with her heart alone, and she doesn’t need to arrive at this using her mind; and she is giving up this gift, if she doesn’t want to be open to this spiritual world.

Women therefore do not have to aspire for great intellectual accomplishments.  The gift of women is to be open to heart matters – and this is what women should aspire for in their life.

Accessing The Heart

If a woman wants to improve, her heart should first be used in order for her to reach her own self.

After a person reaches her own essence, she can then use her heart to deepen her relationship with her husband, and then, toward her children -- and after this, she can use it to deepen all of her friendships.

First, a woman needs to make sure she is using her heart for her own self. This doesn’t mean that a person needs to use her heart to cry more and become more sensitive to pain. It means to use her heart to be more attached to a more inner kind of life.

Our eyes, nose and ears only hear physical sounds. But our heart can sense an inner world going on. This is the world of our neshamah (soul) – and it can be heard and felt through one’s heart. It is the heart of a person which hears the depth of everything – it feels an inner world going on.

As long as a person lives a materialistic kind of life, he cannot use his heart to be in tune to inner matters, because her heart is affected by the physicality of the body. When a person develops sensitivity to inner matters – by yearning for it – the heart then becomes opened to hear spiritual matters.

A woman has the choice to either use her heart to be attached either to materialism – or to spirituality.

Making Time Every Day for “Heart Time”

The heart feels sensitive, inner matters. But most people don’t have the time to listen to their heart. When we don’t listen to our heart, it shrivels up. Just like a person who stops using his CD player will find that it doesn’t work anymore, so does a person’s heart fail to hear spirituality when we don’t make time to listen to it and use it.

A person has to set aside time every day and have “heart time.” Just as we need to sleep and eat and do other things to survive, so must we have time every day in which we use our heart. This does not have to be for an hour a day; just setting aside some time every day for this will suffice.

Without making heart time every day, we will live life unaware of the depth in life.

“Heart time” every day means that we are setting aside time every day to listen to what’s going on in our heart. This is the root of uncovering our very essence.

If a person takes a course on cooking, does the person attend it just as an idea? No, it is not just an idea to him. He plans on using what he has learned to become a good cook.

The same is true for having heart time; it’s not just an “idea”. It is very necessary for all of us, and there are no exceptions to this! Anyone who doesn’t make time every day for this heart time is definitely bogged down from the busyness of life, and he has no time for his internal self.

We are all busy; there is no person who is not busy from life. We are all bogged down. But we must find time, every day, to set aside time every day to listen to our heart, to be able to get to know ourselves.

If we want to have a better relationship with our spouse and with our children, and if we want to have a better relationship with Hashem, then we must have heart time with ourselves.

What To Do During Heart Time

What indeed should a person do during this time when she listens to her heart?

Firstly, one should sit down and just have calm and quiet. Choose a quiet place and put on some relaxing, quiet music to help calm down your surroundings.

Most of the time we don’t have any peace and quiet, but we need this calmness and quietness in our life. So the first thing to do is to sit down calmly, and do absolutely nothing.

There are people who think this is a waste of time. But the truth is that every person needs time of the day in which he does nothing, just like we all need to sleep every night. Going to sleep at night is not a waste of time, even though we do nothing as we sleep. In the same vein, heart time is not a waste of time, even though we do nothing during this time. It is an absolute necessity.

Heart time is a soul experience. A person should sit calmly and let himself experience pleasure from the silence. This will take a person out of the materialistic world and help him enter the inner world.

After we reach the calmness, we can then begin to think deeply about things. But before we begin to think deeply, first we need to make sure that we are utterly calm.

All we have to do for this is to simply concentrate – don’t do anything at all, and just concentrate on this one thing. Also, don’t do two things at once. When you are in the right calm place, now you can silence your thoughts (listening to light, calming music can help for this).

Once we have this silence, we must think about what this silence is. This is a soul experience! Silence is not just a thought – nor is it “meditation.” It is something our soul experiences. It is a silence which our very soul enjoys.

Only after we have this inner silence can we begin to really think about what’s going in our heart. If we try to think into ourselves before we have this silence, it will not work. Why? It’s like a person who is tired and tries to do more than he can do than when he is energetic. A person can’t think straight when he is distracted.

This kind of silence is not another part of our heart – it is rather something new we realize about our own heart. It is when we realize that our life is full of connections, that there is more depth to the life we see.

Thinking Into Our Heart Helps Us Improve Our Relationships

When we begin to think deeply, this is what we should think about: our relationships.

Think about your spouse, your children, your parents, and your friends. Think about your connection as well as to Hashem and to Torah.

Ask yourself: Am I connecting to others out of a deep place in my soul? Do I realize the depths of my relationships with others? Or am I only connecting to others in a superficial way?

This is what we begin to think about as we enter our heart.

This is how a person can connect to himself\herself and feel his\her own essence. Once a person connects to herself and feels her actual existence, she will be able to truly connect with others. This is only once a person succeeds in knowing how to have real silence and to silence her thoughts.^[2]

If a person doesn’t reach her actual self, her relationships with others are only superficial. The situation in the home will be negatively affected. Even her relationships with her children will be external, because she isn’t extending her true self to them, since she hasn’t yet reached her own self.

In many marriages, there are fights going on. The husband blames it on his wife, and the wife blames it on him. However, there is an inner reason behind all these fights.

Really, the problems in their marriage are because they aren’t really connected to each other – only superficially. And this is because they aren’t even connected to themselves in the first place. If a husband is truly connected to himself, he can then connect to his wife, and if a wife is connected to herself, she can connect to her husband.

The fact that both husband and wife can’t pinpoint the root of their problems shows that they aren’t really connected with each other. They aren’t really connected with each other in a deep way, because they haven’t begun to connect to their own selves yet.

In Conclusion

I really hope that you don’t think that the words here are just nice “ideas”. They are not either an “opinion”. I hope that the words here will really strengthen your relationships. It is so hard and painful to watch the lack of relationships going on in families in our times.

I hope that the words here will affect you in a very practical way in your life. Reach your inner silence, and from there, you can come to reach yourself and become connected to yourself. After this, you will be able to connect to others in a truer and deeper way.

May we be zoche to truly connect with our spouse and children, and from that, may we come to have a true connection with Hashem.

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Questions And Answers With The Rav

QUESTION: How much quiet for this is necessary?

ANSWER: It might not be possible to find total quiet, but there should be as much quiet as possible.

QUESTION: How can a person daven from her heart?

ANSWER: This quiet can give us the proper frame of mind as well to daven. We cannot just pull ourselves away from this world and start davening – we need to first obtain a certain quietness, and from this quietness we can daven to Hashem properly.

QUESTION: Do women also need to learn Torah in addition to “heart time”?

ANSWER: Men need to learn Torah properly and in-depth, in addition to this heart time, in order to become connected to themselves. Without Torah study, heart time will not help a man. But women are able to become connected to themselves just by having heart time, and they don’t need to learn Torah for this.