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If a husband is a ba’al teshuva and less religious than his wife and becomes more religious, does he take on her minhagim in areas where he did not yet get to before they were together?
Thanks
This is a question you can ask your Rabbi, not everything is black and white and the answer might surprise you
I don’t think so. If someone doesn’t have their own Mesorah, they are permitted (for the better part) to choose their own “minhagim”. (This is limited to certain cases, some things have a default in Halachah unless you have a Mesorah differently)
I don’t see why the wife wouldn’t have to follow the husband like any other wife.
And I definitely don’t see why her minhagim should be the trendsetter.
My father was a BT but knew the minhagim of his parents house. However, if he did not have a definite minhag he did accept the minhag of my mothers family (e.g. Hallel both nights of Pesach in shul with a Brocha).
Of course you’d follow the wife.
A wife following the husbands minhagim isn’t as halacha lemoshe misinai as people think. It’s a relatively recent question. R’ Moshe says it’s like she’s moving to his locale so she adopts his minhagim. If he doesn’t have minhagim there is no reason he can’t adopt hers.
(Some minhagim are older and more defining of segments of jewry and perhaps this wouldn’t apply , for example kitnitos which even if an Ashkenazi doesn’t know his minhag, we do)
yekke2:
I definitely don’t see why her minhagim should be the trendsetter.I don’t either see any real reason for a wife’s minhagim to be adopted by her becoming-more-religious husband, but I can understand how that might become the default option.
Wife’s Minhagim? Her’s are nullified to her husbands and therefore considered as if they do not exist. If he does not have minhagim, he can either:
1) Found the minhagim from his father’s father’s hometown.
2) Follow the minhagim from his Yeshiva
3) Follow the minhagim from his Rebbe.I’m confused by this conversation
So a guy who didn’t grow up with a seder.
His wife used potato for Karla
His Rosh yeshiva uses cellar.
His father’s father’s home town used onion
His yeshiva uses parsley.So he can use any of the above so long as it isn’t potato?
Where did you get this strange notion from that the wife’s minhagim ate nullified by the husbands even if they don’t exist?I think ZD’s answer is the most accurate.
Most of the others seem to be assuming that the answer is either a clear-cut yes or no, and I am not sure that either is accurate.
Regarding a husband taking on his wife’s minhagim, my impression is (as Ubiquitin pointed out) that it is not so clear-cut that the husband is not ALLOWED to take on his wife’s minhagim if HE wants to.
However, I am not sure about this, and in case, a sheilah should certainly be asked, as ZD recommended.
Minhagim aren’t pick-n-choose. And a man cannot change his minhagim because he wants to.
“I don’t see why the wife wouldn’t have to follow the husband like any other wife.”
She has to follow him, but maybe he wants to or agrees to take on her minhagim.
“And I definitely don’t see why her minhagim should be the trendsetter.”
Why not if he doesn’t have a mesorah? As you wrote, if he has no mesorah, he can choose his minhagim, so wouldn’t the next best (to following his own mesorah) be following his wife’s (who does have a mesorah)? I don’t think that he has to if he doesn’t want to, but wouldn’t that be the logical choice?
After all, why should the wife have to change her mesora for no reason?
It’s one thing in an ordinary case where she is changing her mesora in order to take on her husband’s, and even that can be very difficult for some girls. But at least then there is a very good reason for it. But here where he has no mesora anyhow, why shouldn’t her husband allow her to keep hers? (unless of course he has a particular problem with her minhagim).
LB – I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I’ll repeat it here. I know an Ashkenazi man who married a Sephardi woman. He wanted to take on her minhagim, so he asked Rav Ovadiah zatsal who said that he is allowed to do so. In that case, it seems to have been because Rav Ovadiah zatsal supposedly held that really everyone in Eretz Yisrael is supposed to be following Sephardi minhagim. (although l’maaseh, in his piskei halacha, he does posken that Ashkenazim can follow the Ashknazi psakim, so it doesn’t sound like he literally thought that every Ashkenazi in E”Y MUST become Sephardi).
please note: I wrote the word “supposedly” because it is second-hand information from one person, so I can not verify the accuracy of the statement.
“And I definitely don’t see why her minhagim should be the trendsetter.”
Why not if he doesn’t have a mesorah? As you wrote, if he has no mesorah, he can choose his minhagim, so wouldn’t the next best (to following his own mesorah) be following his wife’s (who does have a mesorah)? I don’t think that he has to if he doesn’t want to, but wouldn’t that be the logical choice?
You’re right that the most ideal choice for him to choose would probably be his
wifes Minhagim. But it isn’t that her minhagim bind him in a case where he has no mesorah; he may choose his own “derech” and she would still be bound to follow him. It may be convenient, considerate and accommodating of him to allow her to keep her own Mesorah, but it doesn’t become the default [halachically] when he doesn’t have his own.If we are talking about personal preference, my point is obviously moot, as is yours in the most case. If we are talking about Halachic precedence, her minhagim would have no more relevance than the next door neighbours.
The is JMO and not Halacha La’Maalaseh but its not so far off what Rav Yosef and Rabbi Horowitz said
In the more charedi world people tend to marry people of similar backround ie Belzer Chasidim marry other Belzer Chassidim (or someone from a group related to Belzer) or yeshivish marry other yeshivish, you wont see many Belzer chasidim marrying Yeshivish people (not saying it doesnt happen, its just rare)
However in the more modern communities people will marry people from other groups. An Ashkanez will marry a Sephard or a Litvak will marry a Yekke and the lines between these groups are being erased as ties to the Alter Heim is being forgotten and erased. I mean really how many people really consider themselves Galizianers anymore.
When people from differnet backrounds marry, you sort of have to compromise top make it work, especially since nowadays people will spend more time with the in-laws than they did in previous genarations. In previous genrations many times the woman left the town where she was from to move to the husbands town and rarely saw her parents again, today spending Shabbos and Yom tov with the womans parents is normal
Yekke – true, but I hadn’t understood her question the way you apparently did. I thought that she was talking about a case in which the guy was willing to follow her minhagim, and she wanted to know if that’s okay. It sounds like she is talking about a guy who is not so religious and presumably not so knowledgeable and is happy to follow his wife.
It sounds like you thought she was asking if he HAS to follow her minhagim.
Which did you mean, LB?
I also just realized that she may have meant something different by “minhagim” than what I thought. She may have been referring to Ashkenazi/Sephardi, in which case, it would not be as simple for him to take on her minhagim.
I thought she was referring to areas in which there are different minhagim/opinions within the same “group”, and a lot of people go by what they learned and not necessarily by their parents anyhow. But I just realized I may have been wrong about what she meant.
I’m also not sure if she is talking about someone who has no minhagim or just hasn’t started keeping them yet.
I dont know for certain, but I am pretty sure that the last Lubavicher Rebbe took at least some of his Minhagim from the Fredericher Rebbe , who was his Father-in-law not his father
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