As mentioned in a previous post, I really wonder how much of the kind of male chauvinism occurring in American society prior to the feminist movement was actually a result of advertising and Hollywood projection, rather than innate male tendencies or traditional societal attitudes.

The feminists leading their way in the Seventies would've grown up in the Forties and Fifties -- right smack in the middle of Hollywood's ever-growing movie list and also when TV was becoming popular. By 1955, half of American homes possessed a TV.

That's a pretty powerful influence.

To compound things, this Forties/Fifties generation was raised by America's first film-going generation. In the 1920s, most Americans went to movie theaters on a weekly basis, with all the Hollywood influence and cultural impact this implies.

(Just as a quick example: The heavy makeup, shorter skirts, and suggestive dance moves popular in the films had an immediate impact on the fashion and dancing of the average girl in the 1920s. The movies also influenced women toward smoking, drinking, and public displays of affection, acts that were unacceptable before.)

Because women were portrayed so badly in film and TV -- and because men were also  portrayed negatively when interacting with women -- it seems that decades of showing abusive men and exploited women as good or normal might have influenced general society, no?

The earlier black-and-white films touted as "innocent" by many today (including some frum people who should know better) were actually worse in some ways than modern films. Yes, the violence wasn't as graphic and the male-female interactions weren't as explicit and the language wasn't as crass, but the disdain for women was extremely obvious and so bad that a smidgen of it was no longer acceptable by the Seventies (even as all other aspects worsened, as mentioned).

For example, it was common in older movies for a woman to become hysterical (often with good reason, but still exaggerated compared to how normal women behave in the same circumstance). At that point, her husband or boyfriend would give her a ringing slap in the face. This was portrayed as good or necessary. (This kind of scene was no longer acceptable by around the Seventies.)

Now, in real life, how many times do you see women literally becoming hysterical? Rarely, right? Yet this was common in the movies. What further confused and disturbed me as a little girl was how, logically speaking, the woman seemed to have good reason for her hysteria: She felt genuinely frightened or threatened, sometimes she was being lied to and manipulated by the very guy who hit her for her own supposed good, and so on.

Even worse, the slapper was often portrayed as a good guy. So you had the "good" guy slapping a woman who was rightly upset.

Hmm...

In another old black 'n' white film (lauded as "progressive" for its predominantly black cast), a woman slouches on the sidewalk pining for her rogue boyfriend to take her back. Just then, he walks by with his new girl on his arm. When the lovelorn woman throws herself at his feet and hangs onto his arm, he smacks her back down onto the pavement. The girl on his arm just sniffs and they continue on with their stroll. The pining woman continues to sing of her grief over the scumbag's rejection.

Now, I ask you: Is the above scenario normal?

Yes, I know there are dysfunctional people like this. But I'm asking if it's normal.

After all, would a normal woman still want a man who just whammed her to the pavement? (And do normal woman yearn for cold-hearted abusive men who cheat on them?) And from the replacement girl's side of things, wouldn't you be unnerved if your man smacked down his distraught pitiful ex right in front of you? Wouldn't that imply something disturbing about his character?

Also, again, the women's distress was justified. All she wanted was for him to marry her, a very decent and wholesome desire. She was willing to give him everything in return, yet he rejected her. And when she showed rightful distress over this, he attacked her as if she was a disgusting bug. And rather than realizing that he was a violent miscreant whom she was better off without, she continued to warble piteously about his rejection.

The messaging there is pretty awful, yet we are supposed to accept it as normal.

Ben Shapiro has often explained Hollywood's methodology:
Hollywood creates a likeable or sympathetic character, then makes that likeable sympathetic character do something the viewer would normally find repugnant.

And that is how Hollywood changes society's values.

This is the problem in a nutshell.

On the old TV shows and movies, I also remember a couple of times when a woman was spanked, like by her husband. Again, the husband was a popular character on the series. So again, you have someone you like doing something demeaning and abusive. Even worse, it's presented as comic and the audience is laughing uproariously. So not only is abuse okay, it's also funny and entertaining.

Another confusing scenario that occurred often in the old reels was how the female lead would be pursued by the ideal guy: good-looking, responsible, steady, and treats her respectfully. However, there was also a cad in the film who was handsome but without any other redeeming qualities. Yet the female lead would always fall for the cad and reject the attractive decent guy who very much wants her and wants to marry her!

I remember finding this very disconcerting as a child.

It was so blatantly disturbing and irrational that Gloria Steinem capitalized on this exact experience in her books. Tapping into this experience garnered her a following of women who remembered being disconcerted girls watching the kind of roguish man she should avoid being portrayed as the hero while the heroine makes a terrible life choice by choosing him over the truly good guy -- and this was portrayed as a happy ending.

And again, Hollywood was not portraying normal life. Traditionally, girls were brought up to AVOID this exact scenario. Since the 1700s, literature (both fiction and non) and caring relatives warned girls against falling for cads. The stable good guy in pursuit of marriage was the desirable one.

But not in Hollywood.

Both the men and women in Hollywood tended to find marriage suffocating. They found exciting and physically attractive people far more alluring than good-looking people of good character. The Hollywood stars and staff valued negative emotional drama over fulfilling life dramas, such as weddings, childbirth, family dinners and holiday gatherings, etc.

And they brought this warped attitude into their art, which they then projected onto the entire world.

As a teenager going into the 1990s, reading Gloria Steinem's description of this experience suddenly brought back forgotten memories of these films and the confused, disconcerted little girl I was while watching them.

All the more so, for women who'd grown up in the Forties and Fifties, for whom these types of films were the only fare.

Harassment and unwanted touching also appeared commonly in older films. And again, it was often the hero or the likable character indulging in it. Furthermore, it was also portrayed as funny, and not as threatening and traumatizing as it would be in real life.

For example, I was a huge fan of the Marx Brothers movies. I loved them as a child and watched them repeatedly. At the same time, it bothered me how Groucho Marx was always stringing along that older wealthy lady for her money. It was portrayed as amusing and acceptable to reject a woman merely because of her looks (even though Groucho Marx was extremely unattractive himself) and to use her just for her money and connections.

This reflects the real Hollywood moguls until today. In the latest present-day scandal, for example, you saw the repulsive-looking mogul exploiting beautiful young women who would otherwise never come near him if he hadn't been wealthy and influential.

Hollywood bigwigs have often been ugly immature creepy men who viewed women in a disturbing manner. And that's also what they portrayed in their movies.

Hitchcock, for example, described actors of either gender as "cattle" and was just plain gross with women off-set.

Hollywood screenwriters and producers were always pointing the cameras at themselves, so to speak, justifying their own immoral behavior and deplorable values.

In another scene, Groucho Marx starts mauling the cabin maid whose come to arrange the linens in his ship cabin. She looks obviously unhappy about it, but he doesn't give a hoot. I remember feeling shocked that she seemed totally resigned to his gaggle-eyed, grinning groping. She didn't seem surprised or horrified and did nothing to defend herself, didn't try to move out of the way, leave, push his hand, slap him, complain, delicately fend him off, nothing. She didn't even freeze up; it was all business as usual.

Again, the scripted behavior did not reflect a real-life response.

Note: I'm not saying that her response would never have happened, I'm saying that it wasn't a normal response to a man mauling a woman as she's carrying out her job. Many women would be shocked and freeze up, or some other kind of traumatic reaction.

Furthermore, she was his subordinate. There was an implication that as the maid, she had no power and that putting up with his mauling was part of her job.

And it was really creepy that he was so enthusiastically enjoying himself when she so obviously was not.

Yet the film portrayed it as funny. We were supposed to laugh at this and think it was cute, like an endearing little boy who caught with his pudgy little hand in the cookie jar.

Mauling a helpless maid isn't endearing or funny -- unless you are a degenerate.

But again, as the audience, you liked the Marx Brothers. Everyone did! Yet they committed immoral acts as part of the fun. And that's exactly what breaks down the viewer's inner defenses.

Children's movies didn't escape this either. I remember in Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang looking on with horror as a cackling man poured wine down the front of a protesting woman's low-cut dress. It seemed scary to the little girl I was because I wouldn't want someone doing that to me. Yet again, this was portrayed as comic and not as vulgar or appalling.

In the The Little Princess (1939), Shirley Temple recites this whole sonnet (completely unrelated to the plot) about a guy smooching a girl who doesn't want it at all, but it's presented as funny and acceptable. I also found that very disturbing as a child. For girls, it's scary to think that someone can just grab you or force himself on you in some way.

So when you have an entire generation (or more) of boys growing up watching this behavior (which was traditionally considered appalling) as merely funny and cute (something a woman will definitely tolerate), how does than affect males and their own behavior toward women?

Seriously. If you read earlier memoirs and the like, grabbing at women just wasn't considered appropriate. (It was more something that drunks did, and drinking & drunken behavior also used to be looked down on.) Novels and moral literature abounded with cautions to girls about such men and men weren't supposed to behave improperly around women.

(Remember how men used to watch their language around women, remove their hats, and say "Ma'am"?)

Of course, abuses and exploitation occurred in society prior to Hollywood.

No one can deny that.

My point is that in a society founded on the principles expressed in Mishlei/Proverbs (as America once was), all the above was not acceptable and considered very inappropriate until Hollywood came along and said that it's actually not bad at all; it's not only acceptable but it's even funny and something all the cool guys do.

In a 1940s movie, the hero was a handsome young college student fighting a Nazi spy. Yet in one moment completely out context, a demurely dressed blonde student quickly passed by the hero and his group of friends. In response, they craned their necks to make demeaning catcalls at her before turning back to a very serious conversation of national security.

And again, her facial expression (and did the speed with which she passed by them) showed that the attention was completely unwanted.

So you have the likable attractive hero suddenly harassing an innocent young woman who's obviously very unhappy with his treatment. It also indicates that it doesn't matter whether the woman intensely dislikes such treatment. It's okay anyway! Her feelings are totally irrelevant.

This kind of portrayal stamps approval on such behavior.

Another popular classic movie from 1954 had the hero leering at a dancer who lived in an apartment across the street from him and had no idea she was being spied on by the creep.

And in one of the first scenes, his girlfriend played by a particularly beautiful actress came to visit. She had everything: beauty, wealth, good manners, and high social standing. Yet she sat there knitting while he treated her with utter disdain. At one point, she showed disappointment about being kept on his string instead of him committing by marrying her.

He waved his hand at her and told her, "Aw, shut up." (This would've been considered appalling manners in the 1950s.) And in response, she just pouted, but didn't leave or even get huffy with him. Instead, she kept on sewing. (Message: Even if you have nothing to offer, you can treat super desirable women like flies, and they'll totally accept it.)

Now at this point in America, it was completely acceptable and even laudable to marry your serious girlfriend. The vast majority of American men in the 1950s married between the ages of 22-23.

And this was not just considered a good thing, it was considered the manly thing to do.

Getting married demonstrated highly regarded traits like responsibility, maturity, and the ability to shoulder weighty duties like holding down a job and making enough money to support a family. Remaining faithful was also expected and respected.

But to the men of Hollywood, marriage was like a prison. Populated by men who valued immorality and considered women playthings, their leading men had to be crass creepy cads because that's what they were too.

The other problem with this scenario was treating an extremely desirable woman like dirt. This is a common theme in older movies. The female stars of Hollywood consisted of some of the most beautiful women in the world. Most men of that time would be thrilled if such a woman wanted them and would marry them in a second.

Yet in the movies, the leading men repeatedly treated these most desirable women with appalling disdain.

Again, this is not how normal men instinctively relate to women who are beautiful, rich, refined socialites. But in Hollywood, this was considered appropriate and normal behavior because the men running Hollywood were (and continue to be) abnormal jerks.

Even when the script implied that the young beauty was breaking all social mores by giving him whatever he wanted, he still treated her like dirt. Again, this was confusing as a youngster because it seemed like these men were unpleasable. Even when she gave him everything he wanted, he still didn't like her. Yet he was the good guy?!

And as always, such behavior was portrayed as amusing and totally acceptable.

Unlike feminists, I don't believe in letting guilty people off the hook just because of their gender. This means that Hollywood actresses also share the blame. Yes, these women were usually exploited. But in their private lives, they also behaved with unrepentant immorality.

They were sort of like the Hollywood women today who complain of harassment, but did and do nothing about the child abuse rampant in Hollywood, and continue to star in roles that demean women.

Unfaithful to their own husbands and cheating with married men and producing a baby from that adulterous union, neglecting or abusing their own children, and in general behaving like horrible narcissists, the beautiful stars known as "America's sweethearts" bolstered Hollywood's lack of morals.

Even in their old age, they showed no remorse. You can find interviews with these elderly stars in which they applaud today's lack of morality, complaining that "back in those days," they needed to hide their infidelities so as not to harm their popularity. One former star said the reason she kept getting divorced and married was because in "those days," it wasn't acceptable to live with a man, so you had to marry him.

They were often awful mothers too.

So again, you had women who held no respect for real women's roles (like that of a faithful wife or nurturing mother) acting out her own decrepit value system. And rather than striving for a truly fulfilling role in real life, like becoming a doctor or a teacher, these actresses played out their real selves backstage, by using men and being used by them.

This next example has nothing to do with women, but it shows how far back Hollywood was comprised of corrupt people and was already warping traditional values.

Let's take a 1928 Laurel 'n' Hardy film. It starts off with an escaped criminal followed in hot pursuit by a comically furious policeman.

So immediately, the film encourages you to sympathize with the law-breaking criminal against the law-upholding cop. Then something heavy falls on the cop, and it's supposed to be funny and good, because the cop (who is behaving with courage and justice) gets punished and the criminal gets away.

Later, Laurel 'n' Hardy end up with hermit crabs up their trousers. Most of the movie consists of this joke, that these grown men are getting "nipped" on their rump specifically by the crabs, and keep thinking the other man is the one who's pinching him there.

Not only is the humor preschoolish, but it portrays bizarre assumptions and behavior. What grown man would "nip" another grown man in normal society? Can you imagine the men of Little House on the Prairie or Caddie Woodlawn behaving in such a manner -- even as a joke?

Who would think up this kind of scenario? (Hint: A creepy perv.)

Then Laurel 'n' Hardy needed to adjust their pants in the alley way, and when they come out together zipping up their pants, they accidentally do so in front of shocked passers-by.

This is vulgar however you look at it. If you're an innocent, you'll see it as, "Goodness, two men were caught looking like they'd been relieving themselves in a public alleyway!" But if you've grown up in modern American society, you'll see that the implication of two men coming together out of an empty alley way while zipping up their pants as...?

You tell me what the script was hinting at.

My point is that even way back in the Twenties, Hollywood was already really gross and projecting their degeneracy and vulgarity and immaturity onto the silver screen.

And it used humor, which is the best way to break down defenses.

Because then they can claim they're only kidding. I mean, what's wrong with you? Can't you take a joke?

Or they can accuse of you of having the dirty mind. I mean, sheesh, is that what YOU really think when you see two men coming out of the alley way? Get your mind out of the gutter, you family-values hypocrite.

See what I mean?

One of Hollywood's slogans is that they're merely portraying real life.

Yet again, all the above were against social norms.

The "real life" Hollywood likes to portray is its own degenerate narcissistic meaningless life.

However:

• Catcalling and harassing women was considered unacceptable in normal society, especially when the women's dress and behavior reflected ladylike propriety.
• Not wanting to marry (and especially not wanting to marry a highly desirable woman with every asset in the book) wasn't considered normal or desirable.
• Touching women inappropriately or forcing yourself on women was also not acceptable.

And this list goes on.

This doesn't mean that such things never happened--tragically, of course they did! But as long as such behaviors were frowned upon, they were limited.

Yet once Hollywood portrayed these behaviors as innocent, amusing, and even idealized, that portrayal affected the moviegoers and TV audience.

How could it not?

I remember as a teen that we spoke like the characters we watched on TV. Our slang, inflection, and attitude were all copied from our entertainment media. And we certainly absorbed their values, especially since outside of religious communities, the only values we ever encountered were the ones epitomized in our TV, movies, and magazines.

Is it too much of a stretch to imagine that a young man who has spent his life watching leading men and heroes harassing and disrespecting and even hitting women as comic relief or as a necessity or uncontrollable act might absorb this attitude?

And what about their effect on the girls and young women watching them?

Remember, these movies went on for decades.

Going to the movies was considered an innocent American pastime, like picnics and white picket fences. There was little social criticism of the content.

Sure, film and TV faced a censorship board, but they didn't censor everything and anyway, Hollywood considered it a badge of honor to do everything it could to circumvent these censors.

How must it have been for the girls who were suffering from an abusive father, a father who slapped their mother, or who were harassed or touched/kissed inappropriately by someone, to see their trauma and violation displayed on the big screen -- and portrayed as funny, endearing, or justified?

That sounds pretty traumatic to me.

So I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the leading feminists and passionate proponents evolved from dysfunctional backgrounds:

• Gloria Steinem lost her mother at very young age and her father wasn't able to be the kind of parent Gloria needed
• Germaine Greer's mother likely suffered Aspergers, which drove Germaine from the home by age 18
• Betty Friedan's mother was an unhappy housewife who mourned her loss of career
• Simone de Beauvoir's high intelligence was complimented by her father as, "Simone thinks like a man!" -- implying that high intelligence cannot be a feminine trait.
• Several suffered from philandering fathers
• Many impassioned feminists suffered abuse from men when they were young girls

Other feminists don't seem to have grown up in a dysfunctional family, but their adult behavior is so dysfunctional, it makes you wonder.

For example, the extremely popular feminist Alice Walker reports positively on both her parents and her teachers, even as she grew up in impoverished segregation and a brother accidentally shot her in the eye with a BB gun. Yet she was an appallingly neglectful and insensitive mother to her own daughter. At one point, Alice even informed her daughter that she had "chosen" to love her (implying that her daughter wasn't innately loveable, but rather someone that Alice needed to force herself to love). This deeply hurt her daughter.

Just as bad, Alice Walker published a famous poem in which she compares her daughter's birth to other "calamities" in her life.

How would YOU feel if your celebrity mother described your existence in her life as a "calamity" AND announced this to the entire world?

When her daughter asked for an apology for the years of pain caused by Alice, Alice refused and insisted she was no longer interested in the job of mother.

There is something clearly wrong with a lot of these "womyn."

(If you missed it, this previous post explains why a woman who is supposedly pro-woman & fights for women's "rights" can still be so cruel to other women, including her own female child.)

And like I said, Gloria Steinem used the disturbing Hollywood portrayals to touch women and bring them to her side. But once she had innocent women in her grasp of pseudo-empathy, she offered destructive solutions framed in pretty pictures.

Sociopaths are shockingly skilled at feigning empathy (in the short-term; over the long-term they start to sound weird because they're just faking it). They know which buttons to press and how to play the victim.

(Remember, Nazism started and continued on the fuel of a victimhood mentality. This is the way fascist movements gain and keep momentum. Communism did the same.)

In summation:

• Any chauvinistic attitudes or oppression that already existed in society was enthusiastically fanned by Hollywood and glorified as normal or desirable or funny.

 

• Rather than assuming that society was always rife with awful misogyny and that a man's natural inclination is to oppress women unless he has a feminist around to make him behave, it makes more sense to take a look at the role Hollywood played in glorifying the mistreatment of women.

 

• Hollywood embraced certain mores and behaviors generally considered immoral or unacceptable, and presented them as funny, acceptable, or even ideal.

 

• Hollywood productions were never innocent and clean. In the world of films and TV, there are no genuine "good ol' days" to return to.

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Note: Radio, which both preceded and paralleled film, was also a problem, as was Vaudeville, on which the first films were based. Furthermore, while this post focused on American film and TV, the film/TV industry in other countries was similarly problematic.

Note: If you choose to comment, please use coded language or purposely misspelled words to mention topics that, say, you wouldn't discuss around children because my filter is fickle and can block me from seeing my own post if it picks up on certain words. Sorry for the inconvenience!
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For a long time, I also held the view that many frum women hold: that while feminism brought a lot of bad stuff, it also served as a conduit for some good things too.

They claim when that there were real problems within society that needed to be fixed, and we've all benefited from those positive changes that came along with feminism.

The problem is that while yes, there were real problems that needed to be fixed, it isn't actually true that feminism was the answer, and that the positive changes since the feminist movement resulted purely from the feminist movement.

The misogynist or limited aspects of society were already changing even before feminism officially bombarded the scene.

In an interesting book called Let Them Journey: Uniting the Past with the Future, we meet the British daughter of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, Etta bat Shlomo HaLevi (her last name wasn't mentioned), who qualified as a barrister (a common-law lawyer) in 1944 while she was a married woman with 3 young children.

(She wasn't the first female barrister, but she was one of a tiny minority of female barristers.)

She was the only woman in her class and yes, she did have to put up with a snipey comment from her lecturer and active obstruction later from another barrister to whom she was apprenticed. (This type of barrister is known as "a barrister principal.")

Yet rather than indulging in flamboyant protests and slogan-chanting, she simply put her nose to the grindstone to prove her professional worth.

And it worked!

Through Etta's intelligence and competence, she turned her barrister principal around & he ended up sending her work out as his own, assuring her a place in the barristers' chambers. (Yes, I know that copping her work as his own is far from ideal, but it could be that this was the common practice with their male apprentices too, and not only acceptable, but even complimentary. It's not clear to me either way from the context.)

Anyway, as a working barrister, she argued her cases with intelligence, grace, and tenacious patience before male judges against other male barristers, winning the judges to her side.

She also developed a method for dealing with juries, which consisted of repeating her point 6 times, a method which persuaded them to vote in favor of her clients.

So as a lone woman working in a male-dominated profession, she not only became a barrister, but a highly successful barrister -- without feminism or employing feminist tactics of social change.

She became successful because she possessed innate talent and because she worked very hard, both mentally and practically.

Meanwhile, back in America: The woman feminists love to hate, Phyllis Schlafly, worked her way through a prestigious university and earned such high marks and so impressed her professors with her intellectual brilliance that Harvard Law School was willing to accept her around 1944 even though at that time, Harvard Law School was not accepting female students. (Officially, Harvard Law School did not start admitting women until the 1950s.)

Phyllis didn't know this. She assumed that Harvard Law School had suddenly started accepting women prior to her admittance, and had no idea they'd made an exception specifically for her based on her intellectual qualifications and remarkable analytical abilities. (Nonetheless, she decided to go work in Washington D.C. instead.)

Again, this exception was made for Phyllis based on her phenomenal competency, and not via the feminist movement, which hadn't even revved up yet.

In fact, opportunities and expectations for women had been changing since the 1920s.

On the other hand, even prior to official advancements for women, American women enjoyed many freedoms and rights. 19th-Century pioneer women, for example, had the right to own their own land and proved up both land claims and tree claims, same as men. They carried pistols and rifles and worked in stores and newspaper presses, among other jobs.

At the same time, no one can deny the social and official limitations women faced when trying to engage in traditionally male activities and professions. In addition, the way women were portrayed in movies, TV, and ads really was a problem, such as floor wax ads featuring a women in full makeup, set hair, an insipid smile, and heels while waxing a kitchen floor. (And those were just the more innocent portrayals of women in advertising.)

Many movie & TV portrayals of women were just awful, making light of women being groped, harassed, or disdained by one of the male leads or women being exploited or physically abused in a way Hollywood portrayed as justified or funny.

Because Hollywood had been projecting their trash and corruption since at least the 1920s, it's hard to say whether the legitimate feminist complaints were a product of society or whether such deplorable male behaviors and attitudes were inculcated into society by Hollywood.

Who was around to remember society before Hollywood? And those who were old enough to remember, did they have any way of expressing themselves?

(The post after this one will detail Hollywood's role in the mistreatment of women.)

Another friend of mine remembers female police officers (in uniformed skirts) in the 1950s. She explained that female officers were necessary for arresting female offenders because it wasn't thought appropriate for men to deal with a female offender the way they dealt with male offenders (i.e. patting them down, touching or wrestling with her in the process of putting on handcuffs and getting the female perp into a police car).

The truth is, women's journeys through traditionally male professions initially mirrored the Jewish journey of upward mobility in America. Schools of higher education placed quotas against Jews and many upscale clubs while companies rejected Jewish membership and participation.

In fact, when the intermarried Groucho Marx wanted to use a beach associated with an upscale club that did not allow Jews, he pleaded with them by quipping, "My kids are only half Jewish. Can't they at least go in the water up to their knees?"

(Ironically, his children weren't Jewish at all according to halacha and should've been allowed entrance as full-fledged non-Jews. But try reasoning with antisemites about such things...anyway, such discrimination was the wake-up call Groucho got for spitting on Torah Law.)

The point is that Jews and other minorities faced discrimination by putting their nose to the grindstone and working their way to the top. They proved themselves, first by "working twice as hard to be considered just as good," and then making a name for themselves to the point that, for example, Jews and Chinese are stereotyped as hard-working, good in school, smart, and successful. Yes, Chinese people must face down the stereotype of "being good at math," a stereotype that dogs them at every step.

What's so awful about that?

And why couldn't women have done the same?

(In fact, Yetta bat Shlomo HaLevi did so for herself. A male barrister who lost to her after a hard fight in court told another barrister, "I was Yettaed."

I realize that many women who've been traumatized by the chauvinism of yore cannot see that things were already changing and would continue to change without the official blitzkrieg of the feminist movement.

(If you've been traumatized, you want things to change YESTERDAY. The pain is unbearable and you feel like you can't bear it for another moment.)

Many also couldn't see that the chauvinism was incited and encouraged by more modern influences, like Hollywood. (Yeah, feminists criticized Hollywood, but couldn't see that men themselves weren't the innate problem, but that Hollywood was.)

The rejection and discrimination many women experienced caused profound trauma, which is why no matter how much they see their daughters and grand-daughters facing traumas of their own brought on by feminism, such as premarital wantonness, abortion, much increased violence & abuse against women & girls, a sharp upturn in brutal female violence, low self-esteem, confusion, eating disorders, marital difficulties, suicide, depression, and much more, they continue with their mantra of:

"But when I was a girl, we were told we could only be teachers and nurses rather than doctors & lawyers!"

This is despite the fact that most of them -- and most men, for that matter -- don't aim to become and indeed don't become lawyers or doctors.

But it's the principle that bothers them.

Disturbingly, this principle bothers them more than the killing of unborn babies and the effect that has on the aborting mother, or the rampant wanton behavior popular among young girls for decades now, the increased violence and violation against females and children in general, with its higher incidence of low self-esteem and depression and self-destructive behaviors among females, and the savage assaults girls commit in growing numbers.

In fact, these feminist sympathizers seem to feel that being discouraged from being a doctor (which again, most of them didn't want to be in the first place) is worse than actual hands-on abuse or violation of girls, which became much more common in the wake of feminist advancement.

(BTW, I don't deny that if you really yearn for a certain calling and you were born with the abilities to excel at the calling, that it's not devastating to be blocked from your heart's yearning simply because of your gender and societal expectations. It IS devastating! But that still doesn't justify all the abuses and harmful ideas that came along with the freedom to fulfill your own calling.)

Isn't it ironic that feminism came under the guise of wanting to stop the abuse of women and girls, and ended up at the forefront of facilitating such abuse?

Yet if you confront feminists with this, they'll merely make 2 points:

• (1) No, there is EXACTLY the same amount of abuse going on, but just that back then, it was rarely reported.

It's true that sxual abuse was vastly underreported. (It's still underreported today, BTW.) But there is nothing to show that levels back then were even close to today's levels. Furthermore, there are social realities that facilitate abuse, which weren't as common back then. Also, assault on dates happens often enough today. Are you trying to tell me that in the 1950s, "date assault" was also common? (I'm not arguing whether it happened at all, I'm asking whether it was common.) Feminists also claim there is an epidemic of male students violating female students on college campuses. Did this same alleged epidemic exist also in the 1950s?

(Yes, I realize there were far fewer women on campus back then than there are now. But were the women who were on co-ed campuses being taken advantage of while drunk and assaulted in the numbers they are today?)

And what about some serious brutal assaults and murders committed by teenage girls, something almost unheard of prior to the feminist movement? Female violence has risen 250% since 1973. Is that progress?

• (2) At least today, we have resources to treat victims -- and that's a feminist accomplishment.

This is true that today there are more official resources. Yet it seems that the plethora of resources developed due to an ever-rising need for them. (Meaning, an increase in abuse led to an increase in the need for organizations to handle it. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these resources is questionable. Some therapists do wonderful work with victims, some don't. Ditto with organizations.)

And how well did those trained professionals and resources work out for, say, the 16-year ordeal of the Rotherham girls? Or for abused Muslim women and children in these "progressive" Western countries when courts or social services side with Sharia law?

As another example: Look at how feminists scream assault about acts that sometimes aren't even actually assault, yet ignore the thousands of cases of very real and horrific exploitation and assaults on vulnerable young girls from Rotherham, England to Yazidi girls in the Middle East?

In the Rotherham case, we see that having women in professional positions doesn't automatically help females. (That was one of the big claims of the feminist movement.) This is because we need good professionals, regardless of gender. Mothers, female social workers, female councilwomen, female staff in care homes, female directors, female cops, etc. did little to nothing to protect female victims.

Yes, Rotherham was exposed and prosecuted by several female professionals (along with their male colleagues) and several mothers also took action, but the mere act of having females in traditionally male professions or having females involved at all did not automatically prevent or help the abuse and exploitation of females. Having GOOD women (and men!) in professional positions is what ultimately helped.

(In fact, even after all the facts came to light, a female MP and Jeremy Corbyn supporter, Naz Shah, retweeted and liked the following post in 2017: "Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.")
_________
Most notable case-in-point: In response to the poisoning of a Russian double-agent, England's female Prime Minister:

• IMMEDIATELY launched investigations
• expelled 23 diplomats
• is taking measures against an entire COUNTRY

Yet her initial response to the Rotherham horror?

• Accused authorities of "dereliction of duty"
• Blamed several factors
• Promised to appoint a chair to investigate

And that was only after the whole thing went very public. Remember, the initial abuses went on for 16 years.

(And yes, I realize Theresa May was "only" Home Secretary at the initial expose of the crimes, but my point is that she still had the power to do more and could also take Prime Ministerly action now. Yet from then until now, her response toward the crimes against the girls has been weak in comparison to what she's apparently capable of.)

Let's hear it for grrrl power! [sarc]

In short, many women mistakenly credit feminism with the progress we like when that progress was already happening anyway. And as for the very disturbing casualties of the feminist movement? Well, they seem to just think it's an unavoidable pity.

And anyway, we see that the mere act of having a woman in a position of authority does nothing to help victimized women or stop the victimization of women and children, unless she happens to be a GOOD PERSON.

Just like with men.

The more I learn, the more I realize that emphasizing the "good" aspects of feminism while minimizing the bad aspects is like doing so for any fascist movement.

I know that sounds extreme, but I hope you'll read yesterday's post to understand why one might feel this way: The Only "ism" You'll Ever Need.

Likewise, I was already seeing the ravages of feminism as a pre-teen, but I was brainwashed into thinking that it was either good or that the 1950s (and all time prior) were even worse. And I can't help noticing a steady decline in female well-being since my own girlhood. The problem is that women and girls are still being fed the same slop I was, and cultishly insist that their suffering is either good or at least still better than the pre-Sixties upheaval. And like with me and the girls in my generation, they're continuously conditioned to believe that the genuine problems that did exist could only be solved by feminism, and any worsening of society is simply a necessary and unavoidable evil.

The fact that the bad stuff was already improving and the role that Hollywood actively played in increasing the mistreatment of women from the early 20th Century is ignored and even denied.

But the truth is that we've benefited from feminism the way that Germans benefited from Nazism or Communists benefited from Communism (i.e. free health care, free education, housing, and some initially poor revolutionaries achieved high status, leadership, and wealth).

NOT because opportunities for women is a bad thing (they aren't), but because those opportunities were already opening up and presumably would've continued to do so had not feminism come along to slash things open like a mega-monster jeep on spiked wheels.
____________
For specific examples of Hollywood's role in corrupting society's attitude toward women, and in polluting society in general, please see:
How Hollywood Corrupted America.

Related links:
The Relationship Between Multiple Partners & Anxiety, Depression, Substance Abuse Disorders: A Cohort Study (You can scroll down to the end for the tables and results.)
How Childhood Abuse Leads to Wanton Behavior
More Statistics on Child Abuse, Or, Why Single Moms Should Probably Stay That Way
(Clarification: I definitely think divorce is the best solution is some situations and I also have known of several superb stepfathers. HOWEVER, from a purely statistical point of view, introducing strange men into one's home -- whether it's a boyfriend or a new husband -- statistically raises the chance of abuse of one's children, and increased child abuse has been one result of the increased divorce rate -- even though practically speaking, it's not always true. In secular society, divorces often (not always, but often) occur unnecessarily or without taking the child's well-being into consideration. The increased secular divorce rate and the not-dire reasons for this increased divorce rate are a direct result of feminism.)

Myrtle Rising related links:
"America's Scary New Direction" series (for specific correlations to Nazism, please see Part III and onwards)
Breaking Out of the Big Lie about Motherhood
When a Woman's Right is a Moral Wrong
Creating the Victim Mentality: A How-To Guide

The only "ism" you need is Judaism.

(And even if you aren't Jewish, Judaism still provides you with the value system you need to be an upstanding non-Jew.)

With all the other "isms" available today, it's easy to get caught up in other philosophies that seem to provide what Judaism appears to not provide.

So people turn to Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, feminism, nationalism, atheism, polytheism, humanism, environmentalism, materialism, and so on.

But if you delve into the original Jewish sources or receive Torah from people who are in touch with authentic Judaism, then you enable yourself to receive everything you need from one source: Judaism.

I can't deny that looking into the original Torah sources takes some adjustment if you haven't studied them before.

And even Jews born into the religious community and who attended religious schools can face a similar adjustment if they've been very influenced by the attitudes of non-Jewish society and/or received their education from people who've been unconsciously influenced by surrounding attitudes and outlooks or by authority figures who simply didn't have the capability to pass on and explain the authentic Torah mindset.

Like everything else, understanding what's already been laid out for you by Chazal (the Torah Sages) is a process.

Your mind needs to adjust to a new (and better) way of thinking and perceiving yourself and the world around you, and perceiving God.

Fine! That's exactly what God put us here to accomplish.

Before Communism, countries like China and Russia were run by imperialists. Regular folk were at the mercy of royals and landholders.

No matter how hard you worked or how talented and brilliant you were, there was no way for you to get ahead. You were stuck in miserable grinding poverty, no matter what you did or what potential you possessed.

Furthermore, if someone from the gentry class decided to beat you, whether because you didn't fill your quota on the field or simply because the bigwig wanted an outlet for his sadism, then you had no recourse. If your superior chose to shove you in an underground prison to slowly starve to death, that was his prerogative. If he felt like assaulting and violating your wife or daughter, then again, there was no recourse and nothing to do to prevent it or heal from it later.

And we all know how Russian superiors and Cossacks treated the Jews, regardless of any Jew's position.

So when Communism came along proclaiming both social and economic equality for all, that was irresistible to your average peasant.

And even those who believed in God didn't mind the spiritual "equality" part and parcel of Communist belief. Ultimately, Communist leaders didn't want ANY superior above them -- not even God.

Some of the only people who could see the cruel fascism underneath the veneer of Communism were Orthodox Jews (but even then, not all of them). 

So Communism came to correct some very real and tragically widespread human rights abuses. It came to remedy very real and genuinely unjust oppression.

But because it wasn't based on the right value system (the core idea of saying that your work and accomplishments don't belong to you and can't benefit you is in itself a huge problem), it was doomed to failure and ended up oppressing and abusing people far more than imperialism.

Communism was predicated on despair.

The reason why impoverished people agreed to such equality is because they didn't feel they could have a much better life anyway. Let everyone have their basic needs met -- a decent roof over their heads, enough to eat, basic medical care, etc. -- and that's enough! At least they wouldn't have to see the rich enjoying what the poor couldn't. Let everyone be kind of poor (but not too poor).

(Revenge played a part in this too, of course. Let's punish the rich!)

Likewise, Nazism initially came under the guise of compassion for the underdog.

The period after WWI consisted of hopeless suffering and impoverishment for the German people. Disenchanted youth abounded (including former soldiers), who discarded respect for rank and age. Communism's promise of equality and an end to poverty exerted a magnetic pull on many German youth.

But even after the initial phase of poverty eased prior to the victory of the Nazi party, many German working class still suffered.

Factories exposed workers to dangerous conditions without compensation. Transportation and journeys to the countryside were for the rich who had cars and could afford to pay for vacation resorts.

In fact, class discrimination in pre-WWII Germany was so severe that in school, the child of blue collar workers could receive a lower grade (no matter how high he actually scored) just to keep him beneath the children of doctors and professors. So the idea of making everybody equal (except the Jews) with equal opportunities solely on the basis of merit (i.e. loyalty to the Nazi party and its leader) was a very big deal back then.

(Incidentally, Hitler [yemach shemo - may his name be erased] barely mentioned the Jews in speeches between 1932-1933, making the Jew-hatred endemic in Nazi dogma less obvious.)

And to be sure, YM"SH (yemach shemo - may his name be erased) temporarily produced exciting progress for Nazi society.

Under the Nazi party, Germany nearly eradicated unemployment (for Aryans), broke down class barriers and enabled new and much-needed opportunities for the poor (especially the children), it greatly improved working conditions in formerly dangerous factory environments that sometimes injured or even killed workers, and Germany expanded workers rights in general, significantly improved the quality of life for working-class Germans (they could now afford cars via the German-made VW bug and vacations at newly built affordable resorts), and more.

Furthermore, the Nazi party instituted great strides in environmentalism, animal rights, organic foods, and anti-smoking attitudes. They also fought Communism (not because they opposed Communist principles -- Nazism and Communism proclaim similar ideals -- but because they didn't want to share power). They also made society safer by sending habitual criminals and sx offenders to concentration camps. (Yes, the first victims of concentration camps tended not to be Jews, but non-Jews considered asocial, criminal, or politically incorrect.)

The above is why some people say that had YM"SH dropped dead in 1938, he'd have been hailed a hero (despite the cruel anti-Jewish legislation he'd already enacted by March 1933 and onwards because in the end, economic comfort and ego-stroking trump Jewish suffering in the eyes of many).

And some Germans still privately believe that Nazism had its positive side.

The implication is that the initial Jewish suffering, torture, and eventual genocide was just a lamentable side effect of German progression.

People (particularly the youth) are always trying to re-invent the wheel.

The same problems crop up generation after generation (inequalities, discrimination, unfortunates who fall through the cracks, etc.) and the wheel turns, somersaulting those once on the bottom to the top, while those on top plunge to the bottom.

In trying to analyze how the German people could've turned into such a barbaric killing machine that even treated babies and toddlers with ruthless sadism, the prelude to that genocidal era is rarely discussed. Ditto with Communism and many other isms.

The human rights abuses were very real.

The pain and trauma that catapulted people into their respective "isms" was very real and justified.

However, you see that all these people actually cared nothing for others.

All the cries for equality and compassion and "rights for all!" were mere slogans that secretly meant: "Compassion for me, equality (which actually meant superiority) for me, rights for me."

And the movements continue to snake their way through society, replacing the prefix of their chosen "ism" with another prefix ad nauseam.

And it's always done under the battle-cry of compassion and fairness...

...when all they really care about is rights for oneself and everyone else be damned.

Except for Judaism.

Whatever good exists in another movement already exists within Judaism.

And anything that Judaism rejects or forbids cannot be justified within the good points of another movement.

We've already seen too many times what happens when people believe otherwise.
_____
Related post:
How Ingratitude Leads to Genocide

As a not-spectacular newcomer to Torah Judaism, I think it's sometimes intimidating to see all the very special and talented baalei teshuvah and converts. Sometimes, it seems like everybody was an upwardly mobile wildly successful professional before they became frum, then they merely transposed all that onto their new frum self in a Torahdik way.

It's also definitely inspiring. And it's certainly fun to read about!

Furthermore, as a fellow college-dropout BT said to me, "I don't think I deserve credit for becoming frum. I didn't have anything else in life anyway. But those people who had fully built successful lives and then left it all? THAT'S impressive! THAT'S real mesirut nefesh (self-sacrifice)!"

And I have to agree.

Particularly those who came from careers that are impossible to duplicate in their former full secular glory within the frum community (i.e. female singers, dancers and actors of either gender, models, etc.) They do have an outlet within the frum community, but it's not at all the same.

So they deserve enormous credit for making such a life-upending decision -- all because Hashem said so. And because of that, they also bring a hefty zechut (merit) to the Heavenly Scales for all of us.

But there's another side to it that gets ignored.

If one was a top-notch speaker/guru/dancer/singer/emcee/event-planner/missionary/performer/politician/journalist/whatever, it's good to take a break from that -- and not just to figure out how to upload the kosher version of your formerly secular role, but to really internalize Torah values so that it imbues the heart and mind, regenerating the art or role as a natural outflow from a truly Jewish conduit.

I've seen people go back into their art or profession before they're spiritually ready.

And depending on the expression demanded in that art form or profession, they end up doing a "kashered" version of their former role -- with all ego, lack of tsnius, compromised integrity, and invented loopholes this sometimes entails.

For example, I once observed a person who'd become frum via their spouse, but still had a lot of issues with certain aspects of Judaism. Not yet comfortable with even very nice people in the frum community, the person still sought out secular colleagues, associates, and clients who wouldn't spot the religious inconsistencies in this person's behavior and attitude. The problem was this person's form of self-expression and profession kept this person firmly in the limelight and the world of eye-catching self-promotion and competition.

The kashered version of the profession did do some good, but as far as I could tell, the person and the person's family were paying a price.

Leaping out as a role model or representative of Torah spirituality is a problem when one is not internally there yet.

This doesn't (and can't) mean inner perfection.

But if your profession or art keeps you in the public eye and/or within an anti-Torah framework, then it's good to take a long stride back from it if at all possible.

What's meant by "anti-Torah framework"?

Every art form today is soaked with heresy, Eastern mysticism, immoral idealization, and a road to success that is paved with halachically forbidden or problematic "musts" -- and not because of the art itself, but because of the culture that has grown around it and the methods or equipment deemed necessary to express this art on a professional and award-winning level.

And lot of other roles and careers suffer the same kind of corruption.

Therefore, rather than genuine soul-expression, a lot of frum expression seeks to imitate the secular expression with a kosher version of the secular embodiment.

This is a process, of course. And one needn't wait one's whole life before feeling ready to do re-engage. But at the same time, it's also good to take a break (IF possible) from external expression. Meaning, one can write or paint or sing for oneself until one is solidly ready to present to the public.

Obviously, performance-oriented expression demands an audience, and this becomes more complicated when taking a break from it all to regroup oneself. (I honestly wouldn't know what to suggest for, say, actors or emcees or speakers.)

Also, if your sole source of livelihood derives from this profession, then that throws another wrench into things.

If a person risks impoverishment by taking a break, then that has to be handled differently than a person whose art serves as non-parnassa self-expression.

I don't feel I can say "Do this" or "Do that."

The individual situations vary so much in their details and consequences that I don't see where hardline advice fits in.

But I do feel that IF possible (IF!!!), it's good to take a LONG break in order to get in touch with your genuine soul needs and expression.

And if you find that break imposed on you by external circumstances, you can feel good about it and feel the blessing in it (even if you also feel frustrated too).

(That's kind of what happened to me.)

Yes, it might look like missed opportunities or failures, but it's really an opportunity to regroup your inner self. Other people might also pressure you to get back into things in a superficially kosher way or you might feel a little lost as you grope around to adjust to the new and deeper you.

That's normal.

But I can't help what I've observed.

I have seen people jump back in too soon and it doesn't seem so healthy, spiritually speaking.

You don't want to be a superficially kosher imitation of secular art or non-Jewish roles.

You want your soul to have nourishment and expression for its real essence.

(But at the same time, please remember that no one can be perfect about this and it is a process with all the ups and downs of any spiritual process.)

First of all, the REAL short-cut and most painless path to teshuvah is demonstrated in Rav Shalom Arush's book The Garden of Miracles: Say "Thank You" and See Miracles. (You wouldn't believe what kind of miracles people experienced purely by thanking God without doing anything else.)

Basically, you stand there (or sit) and just thank Hashem for every single thing you can think of for as long and as much as you can.

You can experience salvation from just that alone.

But there is another "short-cut," and that involves focusing on enjoying yourself and side-stepping your yetzer hara in that way.

Also, I want to point out that you can achieve true teshuvah this way, but not necessarily complete teshuvah -- although never having made complete and perfect teshuvah, I cannot say for sure.

Anyway, your goal is to fill yourself up with good acts and good thoughts and good middot (qualities) until there is no room left for anything bad.

In a sense, it's really doing sur m'ra v'aseh tov (turn from evil and do good) backwards with the intention of turning from evil as you go along.

(If you ignore sur m'ra completely, you end up like those people who just pick and choose or who constantly seek out loopholes for their weaker points.)

I'll give you an example.

When I first started keeping Shabbat, way back in the USA, I encountered 3-day holidays and extremely late sunsets. As all you chutznikim know, some years bring a 3-day fiesta with every chag. And depending on where you live, a summer Shabbat can end long after bedtime.

Friends and spending Shabbat with enjoyable hosts still made this all enjoyable, but you can still end up with a lot of free time, especially if you get stuck in a non-religious environment on your own.

So I read a lot. But I wasn't picky about what I read and anyway, I didn't immediately know the importance of Shabbat-compatible reading material.

(This gets further compounded if you see your otherwise fine frum host reading the newspaper or news magazine with his bowl of cereal before heading off to his 9 AM davening, which was what it was like in many communities in America at that time.)

Even more challenging, there wasn't a whole lot of frum reading material at that time. Frummies barely even had magazines! (And now you've got a dozen.)

Then I learned that you were supposed to confine your reading material to "the spirit of Shabbat." I confess that I initially ignored it. How could I spend hours reading something like a formal English commentary on the Parsha? Or an English translation of a mussar book. Yes, read them of course. Of course! But to spend the entire afternoon and evening doing so? EVERY Shabbat? And what about those 3-day yantivs, eh?

But then some very riveting and inspiring frum Holocaust memoirs starting appearing, so I joined lots of women in reading those. But depending on the content, they're not exactly within the spirit of Shabbat if you consider that Shabbat is supposed to be a joyful time.

So I tried to concentrate on whatever I deemed "kosher" novels and books and magazines for Shabbat. And I kept this up for quite a while.

Occasionally, I made a stab at reading purely Torah, Shabbat-spirited material ONLY, but found such restriction too much of a strain.

But the more I delved into Torah Judaism and put into practice and learned, the more I changed on the inside without even realizing it.

At one point, I found that even a "kosher" secular book or article took me out of Shabbat. 

This was a good sign because it meant that I'd finally become sensitized to the sanctity of Shabbat.

So it started off with mild disorientation, but I still wanted to be entertained in the conventional way.

Then it kept getting stronger. I started to feel a kind of yuck when I'd get up from my non-Shabbosy Shabbos reading.

Once, as a guest in someone's empty apartment, I discovered a whole array of American news magazines out in the open on a magazine stand. And what tantalizing topics! That Shabbat, I kept reading them until I made my soul sick. The contrast was so tangible and so unpleasant this time, I instinctively resolved to stick to only frum books from now on.

(This still included Holocaust memoirs, BTW.)

As time went on, I even had a couple of Harry Potter novels on the end table which I kept glancing at throughout Shabbat, but didn't pick up. (Even though I knew better, I was still a big Harry Potter fan at one point.) And it wasn't a wrenching challenge because my refusal was emotional and not intellectual.

As time went on and I kept progressing in my mitzvah observance (with the normal set-backs that accompany any spiritual advancement) and connecting to the spirit of Shabbat, my reading material kept narrowing down, but for emotional reasons, not intellectual ones.

Meaning, I didn't need to struggle with resisting the temptation to read this or that. The temptation was either barely there or not there at all.

So I wasn't feeling deprived or in a constant battle with the yetzer hara.

And to be perfectly upfront, I still occasionally peruse something that's not completely within the spirit of Shabbat, but that occurs maybe once a year or every two years.

At the same time, I don't want to put down the value of gritting your teeth and going head to head with your yetzer hara. People do it and do so successfully.

But the thing is that those types who tend to succeed in this manner also become kind of hard and judgmental. You see them marching along with a set jaw and a hard or determined look in their eyes. But they get a certain gratification from knowing that they are fighting the good fight and see their misery as a sign that they're in the trenches, which means they're doing the right thing. And they do a lot of good things. They end up running things or being the go-to person for certain tasks or say yes whenever asked to do a mitzvah like visiting the sick or hosting guests, etc.

At the same time, because they're weighted down and acting out of self-compulsion rather than simcha shel mitzvah, they don't always do these mitzvot graciously. They can be tough hosts or inflexible administrators of whatever task they've taken on.

And they tend to believe that whatever iron-clad behavior they engage in is good for the recipient and will explain exactly why their limitations benefit the recipient (who may not sense the benefit).

Having said that, there are some traits you do just need to grit your teeth and get down to work on them directly because you can't just ignore them while you focus on pumping up their positive opposites. You just can't allow certain behaviors to get out of hand.

And it goes without saying that you are supposed to do a daily cheshbon hanefesh.

But for myself, I realized pretty quickly that I can't function in a constant state of miserable grit. I'm not very good at suffering. Life feels very ugly and overwhelming in that state, and I don't feel any sense of satisfaction of a job well-done in that state, which the above people obviously do feel. Also, I can't just brush off the unbending cold interactions with people that this state often ends up producing. I feel bad if I can't host guests with warmth, etc. For me, just the bare fact of "doing it" feels way below par unless I'm doing it "right."

So if you're like me (maybe a bit too hedonistic to "enjoy" maintaining a stiff upper lip, a clenched jaw, and general emotional suffering), then focusing on strengthening the good points and gathering insights into the deeper meanings and spiritual aspects of different mitzvot might be the way to go (while still gritting your teeth in certain other areas of your personality when necessary).

This post used Shabbat reading material as an example, but you can apply the principle to anything.

Let's say you tend to get resentful and envious and covetous of others. The minute you start to feel that encroaching sense of bitterness or resentment, what can you do?

You have at least 3 options:

1) You can just catch yourself WITHOUT identifying the feelings as "the evil trait of envy" or "the strict Torah prohibition of covetousness as stated in the Ten Commandments" and immediately start blessing the other person. You can murmur the blessing or think it in your head silently. If someone has exactly the car you want, you can say, "I wish for this person to be able to afford an even nicer car -- or to receive more cars just like this one! Hashem, may you bless this person that this car never breaks down and that this person never experience any hardship from this car."

2) You can also say, "Thank You, Hashem, that I don't have such a car. Even though I really want one, I realize that my not having it means that having my junky car (or not having a car at all) is what's best for me because everything You do is for my very best. So thanks, God!"

3) Or you can just ignore everything and dive straight into counting your own blessings: "Thank You, Hashem, for giving me a good working refrigerator, I have indoor plumbing, I have comfortable shoes, I've got a real comfy pillow, etc."

Whatever makes you happy.

Having said that, you may be gritting your teeth at first as you do it. But usually, you'll start to feel some good pretty quickly.

But wait! Didn't I just say that you need to avoid teeth-gritting? Yes! So depending on what you're working on and how you decide to go about it, you may need some grit to get you over the initial hurdle. But then you get to feeling good. Also, when you bless others and wish the best for them (however much you manage to work up in your heart at any given moment), Hashem sends blessing to you.

So when you do that, it starts feeling good and you have that to look forward to next time it hits you. It's not like you're saying, "I must not feel envy. Envy signifies a serious lack of emuna. I must control my mind and my heart to prevent any envy from entering." That's pretty heavy. And like I said, some people can manage this way. But I'm not one of them.

With Shabbat reading, I didn't even try to limit myself. I just kept on going with enhancing Shabbat and the reading material adjusted on its own. (BTW, talking to Hashem regularly really helps with this because it gives you something really beneficial and enjoyable to do on Shabbat, if you can find that private moment.)

But with envy or hatred, I find I need to side-step it more proactively.

So it depends.

And it is a process. At first, maybe you don't want to try at all. Then you kind of bounce back and forth before finally being catapulted up to the next level.

Okay, so the point here is that you work according to your own personality and do what feels good with the intention of self-improvement, but without focusing overly much on "I'm firmly engaged in an intense program of self-improvement!" (unless of course, that makes you feel good and happy).

Related posts:

• How to Use Joy for Self-Improvement
• How to Live the Good Life? Request It for Others
• When Mussar & Self-Improvement Don't Work
• The Most Effective Way to Fix Your Flaws

When you first become frum (Orthodox/Torah-observant), the prohibitions can hit pretty hard.

For example, you enjoy Shabbat and love hearing all the inspiring gems that go along with it.

At the same time, you also get tangled up in all the minutiae of everything that's forbidden on Shabbat.

And this is true with every other aspect of frum life.

But at some point, you start to fall into the rhythm of things and eventually, you start to experience the liberation that the prohibitions actually provided you all along.

Having said that, this doesn't mean that you never again ram into a prohibition. Because no one is perfect except God, you can knock into or chafe against certain prohibitions again and again.

You've got your Divinely imbued flaws and weak spots and there's no free ride out of their grasp except to just get down to work, spiritually speaking.

And that work is the journey of a lifetime.

But how can prohibitions be liberating?

Well, it's as if you've lived your life on the monotonous rocky Moon. The ever-black sky is full of stars and the blue-marbled Earth looks so cool up above.

And you've got your super-cool perfectly pressurized spacesuit, and your moon-rover that bounces all over the bland surface.

And you can jump thrillingly high!

Inside your theoretical moonbase, you float around, catch airborn food with your tongue, and have a great time while doing all your other stuff.

Then you get back to Earth and your body feels heavy and you can't bounce around like you used to.

At first, everything feels "off," and you can barely eat a hamburger. You're overwhelmed by all the color and light after the Moon's black-and-grayish environment.

But...you have oxygen.

You can BREATHE. You've got a beautiful azure sky around you (which is also sometimes gray or purple or dark blue or black or -- when the sun is setting -- a canvas of azure, lavender, peach, crimson, and pink!) and you've got day (DAY!!!) and night, and trees, and flowers, and countless other goodies.

But in the beginning, you mourn your lack of bounciness. You miss floating. You get irritable over feeling too cold or too hot after that nice temperature-controlled environment you used to enjoy. You fret over the lack of colorful interesting objects in your new nighttime sky.

Okay, to be honest...when you were on the moon, it's not like there were TONS of colorful spheres -- just the one marbled-blue Earth.

But still! Now all heavenly bodies are just plain white (except for Mars, which sometimes looks the color of pale rust).

And driving just isn't the same on Earth.

But eventually, your body adjusts to Earth and you realize how great it is to walk around without being confined within in a bulky pressurized suit, and you start to experience all the advantages available on Earth.

And sure, maybe you sometimes miss being able to jump thrillingly high or being able to bounce-drive however you want without being hemmed in by nuisances like street lanes, speed limits, traffic lights, and oncoming traffic.

And maybe all the color and light still overwhelms you from time to time and you miss your old place with its stark simple contrast of grayish rock (sometimes BRILLIANTLY grayish, when the Sun hits it just right) and its star-and-Earth-studded black sky.

Nonetheless, you're still profoundly grateful and appreciative for the very limitations of gravity and atmosphere, which are precisely what enable you to do all that which you enjoy on Earth, but remain impossible on the Moon.

UPDATE: This post was accidentally posted in rough-draft form when it was only one-third finished. Please read on for the entire completed post...
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They say that history is written by the winners.

But what if the battle isn't quite over yet?

Then the history is controlled by whoever has the most control.

Growing up, I was taught to be proud of the State of Israel and its army. I was taught that the modern State of Israel was brought about by kibbutznikim and the Haganah. Needless to say, kibbutznikim and many regular (not rabidly anti-Torah Leftist) Jews in the Haganah did indeed fight on behalf of the Jewish people for the State of Israel.

There are even unnamed graves of Jews who survived the Holocaust only to die fighting for the Jewish people after smuggling themselves straight to Israel and not fully recovered from the death camps. They hadn't been in the country or their military unit long enough for anyone to know them and all their family members had been murdered. Consequently, when their lifeless body was found on the battlefield, no one knew exactly who they were. Yet they received an honorable burial and until today, grateful and humbled Jews visit their graves to pay homage to their anonymous sacrifice.

Yet throughout all this, Torah observant Jews never made an appearance.

That's right -- not even the dati-leumi, Religious Zionist Jews.

The settling, rebuilding, battling, and establishment of the Jewish country was portrayed as a completely secular enterprise. Orthodox Jews only made an appearance as pesky interferers but never as contributors.

Yet contrary to the establishment history, Orthodox Jews -- even ultra-Orthodox Jews -- were the first settlers and the first fighters in modern Eretz Yisrael. And they worked and sacrificed despite interference, sabotage, and other forms of discrimination set against them by the anti-religious reps in charge (not to mention the discrimination by the Turks and later the Brits).

Without any relief in sight, these people went up against malnutrition, disease, unimaginable poverty, harsh living conditions, oppression, and Arab attacks -- all to create a Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, fulfill the mitzvah of settling the Land, and pave the way for their fellow Jews suffering from pogroms.

The first Jewish defense force was actually established by the strictly Orthodox students of the Vilna Gaon and the Baal Shem Tov in response to the lack of protection from Turkish authorities. The aliyah of the Vilna Gaon's students took place in 1809, decades before the word "Zionism" was even coined, and an armed Jewish defense force formed shortly after their arrival.

This Jewish Guard even had headquarters (in the Old City of Jerusalem) and was commanded by some of the most outstanding students of the Vilna Gaon along with other rabbinic leaders.

Yes, that's right: The very first weaponized Jewish defenders in Eretz Yisrael were also armed with Gemaras.

(Sorry for the unpleasant shock, Torah-hating Leftists.)

Many members of the Sefardi community also joined with their Ashkenazi brethren to protect their fellow Jews from marauders.

Unfortunately, the brilliant talmid chacham, Rav Yosef Shick was slain in the line of duty. Rav Menachem Mendel of Shklov was also seriously wounded and blinded in one eye.

But you'll probably never hear about them on Yom Hazikaron (or any other time). These kinds of warriors aren't considered part of the "cool" crowd.

The Jewish Guard succeeded in collecting the necessary weapons for self-defense: clubs, knives, pistols, and rifles.

Because two Jewish Guard leaders were both named Shmerel (short for "Shmaryahu") and because the two Shmerels dedicated themselves to making sure every Jewish Guard member owned a pistol, pistols became popularly known as "shmerelach."

In addition to guarding the homes and families, circumstances also forced the Jewish Guard to accompany travelers and stand watch over storehouses of building materials and food.

As Jewish settlement expanded outside the walled city of Jerusalem, new and more dangerous positions needed to be put into place by the Jewish Guard. These men stood guard day and night to protect the innocent Jews, taking a shift of guard duty and then a shift of Torah study throughout this time.

Before he could even make it to Shacharis one morning in 1820, Rav Hillel Rivlin (the head of the Ashkenazi community and the head of the Ashkenazi beit din) received word that a group of newly arrived Jewish immigrants had been kidnapped by Arabs, who demanded the ransom of 1000 gold napoleons.

After consultation between the leaders of the community and the Jewish Guard, they all formed a plan. Pretending to have the ransom in a bag, two Jewish Guard men would set out with the kidnappers' representative.

In the meantime, all the members of the Jewish Guard stole after them along winding routes to near where is now Bnei Brak.

(While all this was going on, the Jerusalem community fasted and prayed for their success.)

At that point, the Jewish Guard launched a surprise attack which freed the prisoners, demolished the camp, and killed the leader along with many other bandits.

Who's the Israeli Superman now, eh?

(You probably have never heard of this stunning Raid on the Outskirts of Bnei Brak. You likely will not hear about it on Yom HaAtzmaut either, nor will a movie ever be made about it. But I am profoundly grateful to Jews like this who first enabled Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael, from which I personally benefit today.)

The years 1820-1822 saw the Jews of the Jerusalem area terrorized by ruthless bandits led by their sheik. Via meticulous intelligence-gathering, the Jewish Guard discovered the hideout of the terrorists and launched a surprise assault one night, slaying the chief and putting an end to the terror.

Later in 1873, Bedouin terrorists attacked Jewish homes nearly every night.

Turkish police proved unhelpful.

At a gathering the home of Jerusalem's chief rabbi, Rav Meir Auerbach, another surprise attack was planned.

The night before the attack, Jewish inhabitants filled the synagogues and study halls to recite Tehillim/Psalms and pray for the success of the Jewish Guard.

At midnight, the Jewish Guard launched a 3-prong assault on the hideout in the mountains.

The attack was so unexpected that the stronghold was demolished within 30 minutes with 150 dead on the enemy side.

The Jews no longer suffered from this group.

In the incredible book Rebels in the Holy Land by Sam Finkel, you can meet the strictly Orthodox Yaakov Laskovsky, a "Litvish cowboy" from Russia who settled in Ekron in the 1880s. Whenever he encountered groups of Yishmaeli bandits, he would give chase until he caught them, then beat the living daylights out of them. (He was a one-man anti-terror unit.) Moshe Raab is pictured in the book sporting a full beard, black hat, and an enormous shotgun. Raab was one of the guards who protected Petach Tikvah from Yishmael attacks in the late 1800s.

Much later, the tzaddik of Jerusalem Rabbi Aryeh Levin smuggled dozens (or maybe hundreds) of messages in his coat for the Haganah fighters imprisoned by the British, whom he visited frequently.

In her searing Holocaust memoir, From the Depths I Call, Lea Fuchs-Chayen was a strictly religious teenage survivor who regularly allowed the Jewish Underground to store weapons in her easy chair, despite the risk if she was caught and despite the danger of explosives in her furniture.

And there are many more to tell of, but that's enough for now.

You won't be hearing these stories during the ceremonies, celebrations, programs, and speeches of Yom Hazikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut. Mainstream history books have deleted these courageous and devoted Jews with their pistols and their payos from existence.

But they did exist.

And we in Eretz Yisrael are here today in their merit.

Please remember the first Jewish Guard and all the others.

Just because they were what today would be called ultra-Orthodox doesn't mean their contributions don't count.

They do.

A recent event brought home how far we need to go to give the benefit of the doubt, especially when the doubt is cast by the news media.

My husband was personally involved in this recent situation:

Years ago, a man whom we'll call "Pinny" opened a felafel restaurant with high-level kashrut certification.

The organization certifying Pinny's kashrut was surprised to learn that he'd falsely maligned the kashurt organization on a standard Israeli news channel. They checked it out and there he was, standing in his store next to their kashrut certificate with PINNY'S FELAFEL featured prominently on the certificate and reporting on their supervision as a substandard money-making racket.

Case closed, right?

Wrong.

Recently, Pinny contacted the same kashrut organization requesting certification for his new pizza restaurant.

The chutzpah of it all! How dare he turn to them for approval when he gave a false report on TV against this same organization?

They turned him down.

To make the "truth" even more evident, he demanded certification 2 days before Pesach, which is cutting things pretty close and puts a lot of pressure on the supervision. What kind of a person does that?

When his calls weren't returned, he texted mussar to the mashgichim (kashurt supervisors) like: Derech eretz kadmah l'Torah -- good manners precede Torah, etc.

At the same time, a couple of guys in the organization felt uncomfortable with the stonewalling. Sure, he'd maligned them on TV, but maybe he'd done teshuvah in the meantime? And yeah, the mussar texts and the demand for kashrut certification the day before Bedikat Chametz didn't show great derech eretz, but nonetheless...something seemed "off." Something just didn't add up.

Finally, the Pinny's rabbi called the kashrut organization. He'd known Pinny personally for years and found him to be a sincere and trustworthy individual. Why wouldn't they even speak to Pinny? Why were they limiting Pinny's only means of livelihood?

"Pinny falsely slandered us on TV," they told the rabbi.

"Impossible," said the rabbi and decided to check things out.

He called them back after Pesach. "Gentlemen," he said. "You've got the wrong man."

What had happened?

Pinny sold his restaurant to another fellow BEFORE the televised interview. THAT fellow stood next to the kashrut certificate which stated PINNY'S FELAFEL as he maligned the organization -- when it was no longer Pinny's felafel joint, but someone else's.
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It's important to air things out and get the facts before committing to a certain narrative.

Yes, it's very difficult to so when the "evidence" blares itself from a TV screen in front of your face.

But it's a major reason why you shouldn't automatically believe anything you see on the "news."

Some people cop an attitude when insulted, i.e. "How dare that person talk that way to ME!"

Many people go on and on about why they didn't deserve to be treated a certain way (as if it would be okay to maltreat them had they indeed put a toe out of line).

But there's a difference between saying something just plain hurts in contrast to acting like it's only wrong because you don't think you did anything to deserve disrespect or offense.

But who deserves disrespect or offense? When is that halachically acceptable?

Whether we're Jewish or not, we're all made in God's Image.

And among Jews, there are firm laws about treating your brothers and sisters with generosity and compassion (even when you also need to treat them with din).

The truth is that even when we do something wrong, that doesn't permit the other person to respond past the boundaries of halacha.

To be exact, the other person isn't allow to be behave badly at all.

Sure, you may not like being called to a court trial or informed that your behavior was hurtful or wrong. But if the other person is correct, they aren't behaving badly by calling your attention to what you've done wrong and, when necessary, asking for compensation (like if you stole from them or something).

There's an implication that it's okay to hurt people who are wrong (whether purposefully or unintentionally) when actually, it's NOT okay.

Self-protection? Permissible.

Retaliation and open game with bad middot? Forbidden.

Of course, there are extenuating circumstances.

For example, anger is considered avodah zara and disrespectful language is generally forbidden. Yet it's understandable when a person lashes out at someone who has repeatedly and unrepentantly mistreated them in some way. Decent people strive to respond with dignity to difficult situations, but even a very good person still has a breaking point.

The big indication in that kind of scenario is whether the person who lashes out feels ashamed or regretful at having lost control, even if the offender really deserved it.

Despite the decent person's recognition that the one who mistreated them is the real offender and that the mistreatment shoved them into a very strenuous nisayon, the decent person still wishes to have handled the situation with more dignity, better middot, and more emuna.

Until we accept that fact that pain is pain and allow ourselves to sympathize with the actual pain (rather than looking to see if it was deserved or not), we will have a hard time being truly compassionate people.

Of course, it's important to point out the obligation to scrutinize one's deeds in a such a situation. The pain is from Hashem, Who uses the offender as an agent of that pain. You ask Hashem why it happened.

If indeed, you mistreated someone to the breaking point, inciting a decent person to lash out at you, then that should come through as you analyze the situation with God. But many times, you'll discover another message Hashem wants to impart to you.

When someone confides their pain to you, it's important to sympathize, even if you see a reason for their particular challenge. Why? Because it still just plain hurts that person and it's possible to sympathize with that pain and confusion.

We don't always need to look behind the person for the reason.

We can just let go and be compassionate.

Several times throughout his 1824 mussar masterpiece, Pele Yoetz, Rabbi Eliezer Papo emphasizes that the main mitzvah of honoring one's parents and in-laws is AFTER they pass on (may we all live in good health until 120!).

He notes that even if one's parents or in-laws were extremely pious people and everyone left behind is confident they're doing great in the Afterlife, one can never really know for sure. Therefore, it's best to go beyond the yearly kaddish and other traditions of honoring our dearly departed. He notes that it's not enough to do all the important things one does during the 12 months following a parent's death. No one can rest assured regarding one's fate after death, and so children and children-in-law should continue to pray and perform good deeds (like giving charity) on behalf of their parents for the rest of their lives.

In fact, he even goes so far as to say:

Lest this all sound frightening and gloomy, Rav Papo reassures us that we'll receive tremendous blessing for showing departed parents so much care and compassion. Their departed souls will bless our living souls and God will also be very Happy about our concern and compassion for people who are no longer able to help themselves.

So providing merits for departed loved ones is an all-around win-win situation for everyone involved.

To this means, Rav Papo composed a short prayer to say, and he recommends that it be said at the beginning of each day.

Where it says "etc," you can apparently fill in whatever person you choose. You can also apparently say this for a grandparent or anyone else for whom you wish to provide merit in the Afterlife.

You should also feel free to change the Hebrew possessive in the last line to feminine form or plural, if necessary, i.e. instead of nafsho, you can say nafsha for a woman or nafsham for several people.

Here is the prayer in Hebrew, English, and transliteration:

יהי רצון מלפניך ה אלוקינו ואלוקי אבותינו שתקבל ברחמים וברצון כל מעשה הטוב אשר אני עושה בין במחשבה בין בדיבור בין במעשה ויהיה הכל בזכות ובמנוחת ולעלוי נפש רוח ונשמה של אבי ואמי וחמי וחמתי וכו'. יהי רצון שתהא נפשו צרורה בצרור החיים

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May it be favorable before You, O God, our God and God of our fathers, that You shall accept with compassion and favor every good deed that I perform, whether it's in thought, in speech, or in deed, and may it all be considered as a merit and respite and elevation of the life-force [nefesh], spirit [ruach], and soul [neshamah] of my father and my mother and my father-in-law and my mother-in-law, etc. May it be Your Will that his [or "her" or "their"] soul shall be bound in the bond of [eternal] life.

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Yehi ratzon Hashem Elokeinu v'Elokei Avoteinu sheh tekabel b'rachamim uv'ratzon kol ma'aseh hatov asher ani oseh/osah bein b'machshavah bein b'dibur bein b'ma'aseh v'yiyeh hakol l'zchut v'l'menuchat ul'ilui nefesh, ruach, uneshamah shel avi v'imi v'chami v'chamoti, vechuleh. Yehi ratzon sheh tahei nafsho tzrurah b'tzror hachaim.

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May we all succeed in completing our full rectification in this lifetime without tribulations or disgrace.