Can a husband bring down his wife (take her farther from Hashem)?

Lightbrite:

I found your question humorous, and I first wondered whether you were being serious or sarcastic.

In reality, adults are responsible for themselves, not each other, not anyone else. If someone goes downward, or falls in madraigo, it is their own bechira involved in responding to the challenges of the environment, which may involve others’ behavior. But I found several statements equally appalling, and am serious in questioning whether a real Rav said these things.

“Rabbonim speak of how a wife can bring down a husband’s Yiddishkeit and closeness to Hashem.” Really? Who are these rabbonim, and how did they say this? How can anyone kidnap someone away from closeness to Hashem?

“If a man is struggling in Yiddishkeit, is it always the wife’s fault?” Are you joking? So who says viduy on Yom Kippur – only married women, but not their husbands? What ever happened to bechira?

“Recently, I had a Rav talk to me about how a wife is responsible for her husband’s mitzvah observance. ” So all men’s aveiros are attributable to women? When they divorce, do the women recite “Boruch Sheptorani”? This statement cannot possibly come from anyone who deserves a leadership position in Klal Yisroel who is purportedly a talmid chochom. Are women supposed to be mashgichim over their husbands’ davening with minyan, kviyas ittim, and shmiras einayim? That’s utterly insane, and found nowhere in the Torah. If you can find something relevant in any Torah source, please share it, with citation instead of anonymity. No one says that there is no influence by a spouse, but this never did or will usurp the bechira and responsibility of any Jew anywhere.

Posing such a question might not be disrespectful if asked innocently. But I would personally be embarrassed to ask a question based on a premise that tests the limits of absurdity.

I think you have to be careful how you define a “Rav”. A lot of people have thoughts on Torah subjects, but you must know from whom you are getting your information.

A woman is not responsible for her husband’s mitzvah observance, not the positives or the negatives, unless she is serving him something with bugs in it, but then he is onus (did it without wanting to) and she is at fault.

A marital advisor I heard speak said that the wife is not supposed to get involved with what minyan her husband goes to (or whether he goes to minyan at all), whether he sits and learns, etc. All she can do is daven that he want to do the mitzvahs and come closer to Hashem. She can create an environment of wanting to grow and going to learn, showing a desire to change, but she is not responsible for him. As stated above, a person is only responsible for him/herself, no one else.

This is one of the reasons why it is very important for a person in shidduchim to make sure that the person they are dating has similar values of growth and general mitzvah observance as they do. It is not so easy to change these things after marriage.

redleg said it well.
What I think is getting muddled is the combining of two issues. To say a woman is responsible for her husband’s growth is NOT the same as saying the end results are her doing. We are expected/obligated to foster spiritual growth in our household. We are also capable of setting an environment for either growth or decline. Examples of these would be:
If a husband has a long day of work and wants to set up a night chavrusa his wife can say, “that would be so wonderful. And I am impressed that you have that energy at the end of a work day” or she can say, “Oh…. is this going to mean I have to wait til 9 to eat supper with you or am I gonna be eating a lone every night”

These situations come up CONSTANTLY in a marriage. And if going out to learn, taking on new things, being closer to Hashem, sharing struggles is met up with pride, encouragement and respect then it fosters growth. If those attempts are met with grumbling, sighs, resentment etc then it can either cause friction or outright discourage the behavior.( Just think of the teenager who decides to become frum in a hostile home. )

Now if you encouraged learning and created an atmosphere for growth and shouldered some of the inconveniences (like forgoing walks with your husband on the beach even tho you would love to), then that was your part in it, your responsibility. But that does not mean you are the bearer of the burden of the result. You can be credited for his growth, but it is still his growth. And if he does not grow in the environment even tho you did right, then he fell despite you, not because of you.

This isn’t a new concept and it is true for raising children as well. We set a tone in the house, we build up our husbands and chose what to give them positive or negative feedback for and decide what corners we are willing to cut for the sake of his growth. And these things can often determine whether or not he grows more, or whether his growth has to be a point of friction between you.

The mashal I heard, which might not work for those unfamiliar with the business world, is the following:
When a supervisor/manager has employees under him or her doing the grunt work, the manager receives some form of credit for the team’s accomplishments (even though they were done by the subordinates) and some form of backlash for when a team member makes mistakes (even though it wasn’t the manager’s own mistake).

If you make a mistake, it’s nobody’s fault but your’s, yet it still reflects on your manager. You see the difference between fault and responsibility?

By the way, I don’t say this in an attempt to start an argument, but the shittah Nechomah heard that a woman should not encourage her husband to make minyan/learn is absolutely not standard in any community I’ve ever heard of. While the OP is representing the rabbi’s talk in somewhat of a controversial way, he is much more in line with the standard approach to marriage. I really can’t imagine a kallah teacher telling a girl “your husband’s observance is none of your business,” or vice versa.

Someone, almost forty years ago, told me there is a gemara that says that a man married a woman tzadekes, and she turned him into a tzaddik. Some time later he lost his wife and remarried, and married a rashanta, who turned him evil.

But I have never seen it inside, and I don’t know where this alleged gemara is.

I know of a few cases where the wife was falling religiously and brought her husband down with her.

“I understand lightbrite’s original question as “we all know a woman can change a man but can a man make a woman less Frum or more Frum”

Of course it goes both ways. When a man and woman live together, they are probably sharing ideas on a regular basis and they influence each other.

A person is only responsible for his/ her own actions, but the surroundings (especially spouses) do have a major effect.