Some thoughts on marriage and culture

I’ve been reading up on the complexities of marriage in the Jewish culture. How women are expected to behave after their husband is killed, incapacitated, or missing. The word ”unchaining” is certainly telling. It does seem like denying a woman a certain degree of agency, a psychological prison sentence of being stuck in the past, indeed, chained to the past.

It’s unrealistic to think a woman’s not going to find herself on the radar of some other man, if you will. Especially if she has no ring. Is she cheating? If her husband is missing in action, or dead, I don’t see how. These are sensitive issues and I’m a bit surprised that words like ”chained” are actually used to describe them. Sadly, there are men who are beaming with joy when the woman’s husband is out of the picture. It’s like a divine blessing for them. And yes, I mean your friends, too. You’d be surprised how many of them are actually hoping for another chance. They say that, if you want to know who’s a psychopath, watch out for men who unapologetically flirt with widows right there at their husband’s funeral, when everyone is in tears. To be fair, female psychopaths aren’t much better, but they are conditioned by culture to be more subtle and cloak-and-daggery.

Assyrian curse aimed at the defeated/traitors/and so on is quite something. Paraphrasing, ”Impress femininity upon them.” To me, it sounds like eliminating competition and, by extension, their bloodline, and, worse yet for the defeated, making them extend the bloodline of the victor. Doesn’t get worse than that. Well, unless you’re the victor, of course.

It’s amazing how many marriage customs we have in the world. Some are rather perplexing, such as bridenapping, matchmakers for Chinese billionaires, and marriage markets, such as the one in Shanghai (but this one is a good idea, actually). If my understanding is correct, Korean women don’t change their last names upon marriage. In Poland, there’s still a lot of pressure on women to change their last name upon marriage, but, of course, it’s ultimately their decision and hyphenated last names are always an option. I see how it’s seen by some as taking away a part of a woman’s identity.

Some men are threatened by a smart woman and quickly resort to mansplaining in order to defend their fragile masculine egos. Here, women adopt different strategies – the one you’ll find in The Great Gatsby (I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool), or the opposite – unapologetically showing off smarts, in which case she’s risking being labeled a bitch. Such is this strange world we live in. I’m surprised more women don’t go crazy when they meander between contradictory expectations. When someone tells you to smile, it’s nothing, but when you hear that comment twenty times a day, and makeup comments (you look tired) twenty times a day, I see how it can get annoying as heck. At the same time, it’s a classic mechanism of social control. You can brainwash someone by isolating them, or by bombarding them with endless comments from seemingly random people (you look tired, don’t be so sad/mad, and so on).

Seems to me that even if a nuke was flying in the background, some people would still expect women to smile.

In Poland, the hand-kissing custom is likely the most Polish and the most idiosyncratic there is. I know someone who can’t pass up an opportunity to kiss a woman’s hand, much to their chagrin and eye-rolling. A Polish woman more or less expects her hands to be lifted up by some so-called honorable gentleman (oh God) at some point but some Poles really ought to tone it down. Foreign women don’t always respond well to such practices. What can you do, some Poles are incorrigible and hand-kissing is all they care to know. It isn’t nearly as popular as it was, but it’s definitely still there. I believe that custom goes all the way back to the glorious past of the Polish nobility (szlachta, there was a time in the Kremlin when Polish customs and clothes were very much desirable). High-ranking members of the clergy like when you kiss their ring, too.

Overall, though, there are universal themes: the pomposity, the ritual, the dresses, the shoes, the Mendelssohn’s Wedding March (congrats on that, it’s likely the most famous melody in the history of the world).

Our cultures play vital roles. I can imagine a scene here in Poland where a Jewish guest (in a yarmulke) walks into a classroom to talk about the Jewish culture. Some of the Polish students would find it really hard to hide their laughter. And if the Jewish guest told the Polish students to ask any questions they want – well, they’d be like sharks smelling blood. Polish students love asking questions and not always politically correct questions. If you think you can win an argument with them, think again. They will eat you for breakfast. Anyway.

”Why are you wearing that funny thing on your head?” I can see one of the students asking. It isn’t antisemitism, chill out, it’s just our cultural frame of reference. Most Polish students don’t see people in yarmulkas. It’s rare here. Even extremely rare. We are used to Catholic priests here (or as we sometimes call them sukienkowi – dress wearers, but don’t tell them I told you). Think of it this way. Aren’t high heels kind of stupid when you think about it? Yet, they are so present in our culture, we barely notice them, we take them for granted. And kids don’t have our adult filter, their reactions are often genuine.

Then again, you’d have some students who are very much familiar with Israel, but mostly as a tourist destination. I was in Jerusalem when I was ten.

Polish, like Hebrew, is a phonetic language. Polish students are really annoyed by the irregular English spelling and tend to understand American English better (where r is usually pronounced, minus some accents here and there).