Q:
Should a Jewish girl become a dentist?
A:
And the answer is no. And no. A Jewish girl shouldn’t shove her hand into the mouth of a man.
Now sometimes as you’re sitting in the bench, you have an unpleasant experience. The dentist has an assistant, a woman and she shoves her hand into your mouth to hold your mouth open while the dentist is putting in, let’s say, a filling or something else. Well you’re a prisoner, what can you do? You didn’t ask her to become a dentist’s assistant.
But a Jewish girl should find a better profession. It’s recommended she should shove spoons of porridge into the mouths of little babies. Ah! That’s a glorious profession. That’s a career girl. A career girl, standing in the kitchen and she’s shoving spoons in the mouth of the babies. Or nursing them, it makes no difference. Feeding babies is a career. She’s raising tzaddikim. She’s raising avdei Hashem. She’s raising melachim.
You know to get a job raising a future king, that’s a very big job. Frederick the Great was raised by a count, a famous German count was the man who raised him. The count used to whip him with sticks and later when Frederick became the King of Prussia, he called in the count who used to beat him and he gave him medals. He gave him medals for hitting him.
So if you raise up a king, כל ישראל בני מלכים הם, you’re raising up princes when you raise up Jewish sons and daughters, and that’s the greatest of all kinds of reward for a person, that’s the most rewarding career.
(March 1983)
