Q:
If women get reward in Torah for urging their husbands and children to learn, what if the husband and children don’t accomplish as much as her urging? Will she get more reward in proportion to what she encouraged or what they accomplished?
A:
Here is a case as follows. A woman is urging her husband to learn so he goes to the beis hamedrash because she sent him. When he gets there, he falls asleep over the Gemara. But it’s not her fault. Does she lose out? No.
Now, it could be she loses out because she chose the wrong husband. But suppose she did her best. Everybody told her he is a good man, a good learner, and then he turned out later he didn’t succeed as much as he should have, so she gets reward according to her desires for him. She is rewarded according to her bechirah for him, her free will. The fact that he didn’t measure up, that’s something else.
I’ll give you a mashal. Suppose you heard there’s a sick man in the hospital. So you took a basket and you bought all kinds of delicacies for him and you went to the hospital and they said “We checked him out today. He got well already.” You get reward anyhow. חישב לעשות מצוה – If you intended to do a mitzvah, ונאנס ולא עשה – and then something happened and you couldn’t do the mitzvah, you get reward (Brachos 6a ). So the woman who intended her husband should be a learner, she gets reward.
She should push him as much as possible though. Of course not to make fights about it but she should push him.
And he is going to get it. Hakadosh Baruch Hu will give it to him: “You got a woman who wanted to put so much into you and you made nothing out of yourself!” He’ll be punished for it. No question about it. He’ll be punished. He’ll have to pay and pay.
(September 1988)
