A home reflects the personalities who live within its walls, but it is the homemaker who shapes the atmosphere by virtue of the influences she allows through its doors, the books and magazines she selects, the thoughts and ideas she expresses, the guests she welcomes, the kind of food she prepares, the family activities she encourages and discourages, the behavior she accepts and rejects in her children, and how she decorates and runs the house, schedules herself and her family, and conducts herself spiritually and emotionally. She determines the flavor and feeling of the world she creates for her family.

The homemaker does all this in the course of her day. She knows that she is not merely a cleaning lady or a nanny; she knows that she cannot be replaced by the help she hires. Such people may lighten her load but they cannot make her home. As she works, as she cares for her loved ones, she is weaving a tapestry of family life, creating the fabric of a Jewish home. Her love for her family and her devotion to God color all her activities.

Because the Jewish homemaker's task is a holy one, it is much more involved than that of an ordinary homemaker. But the extra challenges of running a Jewish household offer extra rewards in terms of personal satisfaction, accomplishment, and fulfillment.

What is so unique about a Jewish household, and what are its inherent challenges? To begin with, Jewish couples aspire to have, with God's help, large families... Tending to the individual needs of family members (one is getting married, one requires a school placement, one is preparing for bar mitzvah, one needs braces, one is just starting kindergarten, one is being toilet-trained) also takes plenty of time, attention, and physical and emotional energy. And women who must fit car pools into their busy day may not even have time to wonder how they will get everything done.

Apart from family size, the Jewish calendar places holidays at regular intervals -- times for prayer, rejoicing, and feasting. Of course, each Yom Tov is also preceded by prayer ("Help!") and intensive bursts of menu planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Even when a homemaker is pregnant, due, or has just delivered, the preparations must still get done.

In addition, Shabbos demands weekly planning and preparation and imposes a recurrent deadline... To beautify and sanctify the day, many women bake their own challah and prepare other homemade delicacies as well (e.g., gefilte fish, kneidlach, special salads and desserts). In fact, no one knows better than a homemaker that "the entire week revolves around Shabbos!" (Talmud - Beitzah 16a)

Another distinctive feature of Jewish family life is kashrut. Since the Jewish dietary laws maintain the purity of the Jewish soul -- even in infants, who are not yet obligated in mitzvot -- the Jewish homemaker is actually responsible for her family's spiritual health. As such, she becomes a careful and conscientious kosher consumer...

While every housewife is occupied with meal preparation and family demands, the Jewish woman is often busy with community demands as well -- organizing and/or participating in events or fundraising and tzedakah campaigns; cooking for new neighbors, new mothers, or people who are ill; looking after other people's children; helping the needy; and opening her house to guests...

Of course, the demanding nature of Jewish homemaking is precisely what makes it so satisfying and fulfilling. It is also flexible enough that it lends itself to the various abilities and inclinations of individual homemakers. For example, those with a creative bent can apply it to enhancing the home atmosphere, particularly on Yom Tov. Those who enjoy organizing will certainly find plenty to coordinate in a large, busy Jewish household. And those with an intellectual disposition can learn Torah and share their learning with their families at the Shabbos table and at every other opportunity.

A woman can truly reach her potential in her home, exercising her skills and talents, developing latent abilities, meeting challenges. Some will do so automatically while others may have to learn how to find this satisfaction. Yet the learning process, too, is part of achieving one's potential and coming closer to the ideal Torah personality.

Of course, some women claim to be thoroughly undomestic -- they just "hate" homemaking. Baking cookies or washing their kitchen floors for Shabbos gives them virtually no satisfaction. "I'd rather hire someone to do it any day!" they say. But where does this attitude come from? Are cooking, cleaning, and childcare inherently terrible, beneath one's intelligence, better suited to household servants and slaves -- or have we absorbed this idea from the surrounding culture? The secular world certainly denigrates homemaking. "The mother who stays at home needs an ego of Kryptonite because her self-esteem will suffer..." writes Marni Jackson in Saturday Night magazine. Why will her self-esteem suffer? Because homemaking obviously lacks status. Any "capable" woman would never be caught doing something so beneath her!

...Although she may make the same bed for 25 years, the Jewish homemaker and her entire family metamorphasize during that period. She learns, grows, changes, improves -- her babies become adults, a Jewish family is raised. There is no dullness in this experience; on the contrary, it is a life's work, a spiritual journey, a constant challenge to complacency.

By watching over her home, the Jewish woman hallows both herself and her people. Women are the "House of Jacob" -- as they make their homes, they make the House of Israel.