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Rav Avigdor Miller Explains Why the Jews Needed to Lock Their Doors in Parshat Bo

31/1/2020

We learn some sharp yet vital lessons in Rav Avigdor Miller's dvar Torah on Parshat Bo: Night of the Locked Doors.

Rav Miller notes the irony of telling the Jews to stay inside while the Mashchit (Destroyer) was out carrying out the Plague Against the Firstborn.

The Mashchit is a very powerful spiritual entity. It's not like locks or mud walls can stop it from entering.

So why did the Jews need to lock themselves inside when the Mashchit was out?

What Happens When Jews Yearn for the Very Culture that Enslaves Them

On pages 5-7, Rav Miller starts off with an enlightening discussion of free choice and why an unleashed Mashchit is not allowed to differentiate between tzaddik and rasha.

Then he explains the real Mashchit: the outside anti-Torah influences.

(Yearning after these influences is what actualizes the active Mashchit in the end, chas v'shalom.)

Of course, says Rav Miller, we must show our appreciation for America. We must be law-abiding, grateful citizens. We should hang out a flag on July 4th and vote for policies & politicians that benefit America.

But aside from that, we must lock our doors.

We must live ethically and appreciatively in American society without being influenced by American society – which, as Rav Miller says, is filled with apikorsus, ta’avos, shtus, avodah zarah.

Like Nazi Germany and Nazi-conquered Hungary, Egypt had advanced science and technology. It had culture.

It was the most technologically advanced society in its time.

Egyptians excelled in all the available sciences.

They had fashion, cosmetics, culture, literature, music, powerful New Age spirituality...and they were the best in all these things.

And some Jews, even while enslaved, yearned for those aspects even as they were enslaved by these very aspects.

(In other words, the Egyptians used occult techniques to imprison the Jews and it was the Jews who built Egyptian industry, just like the Jewish slave labor built BMW and others.)

No Such Thing as Neutral

On page 12, Rav Miller uses his characteristic wit to explain:

There were interesting things to do, to see in Egypt.

They had things there – they could go bowling in Egypt. They could go rollerskating in Egypt. Maybe there were art museums in Egypt; Egyptian buildings they could visit.

“Nothing wrong,” you say. “I’m a pious Jew, it’s just interesting. It’s fun!”

No, it’s very wrong!

Because it’s not enough that you’re forsaking Mitzrayim. You have to understand that Mitzrayim should not deserve your attention or your admiration at all.

And that’s always a difficult test.

You might live in a wealthy and modern city with gardens and trees and nice homes. Maybe you like the way the people dress. Maybe some of them have good manners in the streets. It’s hard not to be impressed by them!

Rav Miller exhorts us that Hashem is not happy when we let unholy ideas and messages into our holy homes.

So Hashem uses extreme measures to stop us from being anything less than fabulously Jewish.

The Views of a Frum Anti-Zionist on Gentile Anti-Zionism

Despite Rav Miller's strong stance against Tziyonut, he also comments on the well-known phenomenon of hating Medinat Yisrael in order to disguise the Jew-hatred underneath.

Here is what Rav Miller said in 1990 about carving up Medinat Yisrael (page 13-14):

We'll take an example – I might be wrong, but I'm almost sure that I'm right.

What's taking place today (1990), with everybody ganging up on Medinas Yisroel, is nothing but a hatred of the Am Yisroel.

Now, I'm not a big patriot of Medinas Yisroel; far from it – and yet it's as clear as day what their intention is.

Only it's not polite to say it openly – maybe some Arabs will say it but the diplomats in Washington or the UN can’t say it outright.

So they are saying 'Rights to the Palestinians”, “Self-determination”, other phrases they use.

But it’s only because of appearances sake that they don't come out openly.

What they want is to destroy Medinas Yisroel, there is no question about it at all — nobody should have a moment of hesitation in his mind.

And this next bit is VERY apropos to EXACTLY what is happening RIGHT NOW (emphasis mine):

Now, I'm not going to be an analyst of politics, but if they would yield and give the PLO that wedge of land that they're demanding in the heart of Eretz Yisroel, that's not going to be the end – there'll be demands after that.

Yerushalayim, certainly.

Certainly they want to get the whole Yerushalayim, not only the Old city.

And little by little they want everything until nothing remains.

That's all they want, there shouldn't be any Medinas Yisroel.

But it's not Medinas Yisroel they're against; [b'chol dor v'dor omdim aleinu l'chaloteinu] it’s another form of hatred of the Jewish nation.

Rav Miller advises diplomacy and using seichel to deal with the political issues, but he also warns against assuming that infringing on the boundaries of the Medinah and Yerushalayim is anything but plain old-fashioned Jew-hatred.

Increase the Light

Many people like to run in circles around the issue of Jew-hatred, but Chazal simplifies it for us: Be Jewish.

ENJOY Judaism.

I think that Rav Miller says one of his most controversial ideas when explains that there's no such thing as a bad non-Jew or a good non-Jew – it all depends on us.

Yet this very idea is presented throughout millennia of Torah scholarship.

It's both inspiring and frightening at the same time.

It's true, as Rav Miller says, that nothing compares to what we have.

I've seen for myself (and I'll never be a Talmudist) that I lost interest in many subjects in the non-Jewish world after continuously indulging in Torah material. It had happened naturally. For example, after reading the Pele Yoetz or Rashi on Mishlei, what can the latest best-selling self-help book tell me?

Can any mainstream book or inspirational speaker explain how to both prevent and rise out of depression better than the Pele Yoetz or Rebbe Nachman of Breslov?

You'll see that the more you start filling your life and mind with Torah material, the less appealing the non-Torah stuff becomes. You'll be reading it and then get fed up with how often the words, This is so stupid, I can't believe they're saying this or Oh gosh, they got this all so backwards! or What stupid kefirah is that? or just plain YUCK. Is this what the world is really coming to?

You can throw everything out in one go, which is a fine thing to do as long as you're sure it won't rebound on you.

But increasing light naturally decreases darkness.

So whether you're ready to take the big plunge or you prefer to do it in increments, increasing your intake of material from Torah-true sources is the way to go.

All material & quotes within this post exist in the zechus of Toras Avigdor.

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Why Did the Majority of Jews NOT Want to Leave Mitzrayim? And What Does that Mean for Us Today?

30/1/2020

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One of the concepts I always struggled to understand was how the majority of Jews (fourth-fifths) did NOT want to leave Mitzrayim (Egypt).

After all, they endured brutal conditions in addition to their merciless slavery.

Much of what they endured in the worst phases of Egyptian slavery resembled what Jews endured in the Nazi camps during the Holocaust.

And like the Nazis, the Egyptians sought to break the Jews psychologically.

One way they did so was to force the men to do women's work and women to do men's work. And while you might think that men got off easier than the women (as the men's work was physically crushing for the women), Jewish men doing laundry in the Nile risked coming up against a horde of territorial crocodiles.

In contrast, you saw that Jews desperately wished to escape the Nazi camps. And before that, they yearned to escape the ghettos.

Only they couldn't.

Trapped by concrete walls and barbed wire, the threat of execution, starving or freezing to death in the forests, or being betrayed by the local population – all this made escape terrifyingly risky, if not completely impossible.

So who were these Jews – a large majority – who chose to stay in Mitzrayim, a decision which resulted in their death the the Plague of Darkness?

How Can You Cast Out All That is Detestable?

In Shemot 12:41 of Parshat Shemot, we have the Kli Yakar explain that within the 430 years of Egyptian servitude, the last 30 years were added because of their sins – bachata'am.

"...because Yisrael in Egypt was bad and sinful...and I said to them 'What is detestable in a man's eyes – cast away' " (Yechezkel 20:7)

shikutzei einav – detestable in his eyes.

This is one of those verses that is hard to translate while giving the full meaning. Shikutz is something yucky and it also implies idols used for occult worship.

shikutzei einav literally means "the detestable things of his eyes," but it can also mean something that is sitting before your eyes or it can mean an opinion, like how something appears "in your eyes" (i.e. in your mind).

But before you can even think of casting away the detestable things, what must you do FIRST?

You first must see it as detestable.

If you think your idol is really cool, then it's not detestable in your eyes, and you won't chuck it.

The Kli Yakar then goes on to say that this 30-year addition came to them because "rabim hemah amei ha'aretz asher lo ratzu latzeit klal miMitzrayim – many of them were amei ha'aretz (ignorant) who did not want to go out at all from Egypt."

WHAT?!

Not at all? Not even a little bit? With all they suffered, how could they not want to leave?

How can that be?

And what does their level of Jewish knowledge have to do with anything?

Why Stay in Mitzrayim?

I think I found a partial answer in Lea Fuchs Chayen's memoir Out of the Depths, which recalls her time from deportation from the Hungarian ghetto to Auschwitz to her liberation & rehabilitation, and then her eventual journey to England (though she and her family ultimately ended up in Eretz Yisrael).

(And Rav Avigdor Miller also gives an example of this in Parshat Bo: Night of the Locked Doors on page 12.)

When Lea arrived in the Gehinnom of Aushwitz, the death machine was full and she and many other girls were transferred to a waiting area, then she was later absorbed into the camp.

As we all know, the conditions were unimaginable.

The constant smell of human waste and burning bodies permeated the camp. (Lea even said the smell alone and everything it implied was driving her crazy.) The starvation and harsh slavery. The constant threat of being hit with metal sticks, whips, or being shot or having a dog set on a person. The flames against the night sky of entire Jewish communities being cremated. The sound & sights of your fellow Jews being attacked and burned.

Yet when Lea encouraged a former gymnastics teacher from Budapest to join a transport leaving Auschwitz for a German factory with better conditions (appalling conditions, but still better), the former gymnastics teacher demurred.

"Imagine," she said, "what a tattooed arm would look like in an elegant evening dress."

Okay.

I always feel like a bit of hypocrite when speaking about the Holocaust.

I hope Hashem saves all of us from ever being in such a situation, and none of us can say for sure how we would respond, chas v'shalom.

I think it's also easy to understand how otherwise good people lost their minds or their integrity in such a horrific situation.

And you can also make a good case for the gymnastics teacher that her mind had simply blown away due to the brutal trauma.

Yet it does mean something when she's willing to remain among the smell and sight of burning Jews, of fellow Jews being tortured and killed in horrible ways, toddlers being thrown alive into fire pits – all because she wants to look good in an evening gown.

And this also reveals her background prior to the Holocaust. She didn't miss Shabbos or her family (a longing many other victims expressed); she missed the secular non-Jewish events that called for an evening gown.

And that can only be because she didn't have Shabbos (or much of Shabbos). She was immersed in the evening-gown lifestyle.

That's all she really knew.

(You can read more about it HERE.)

And again, without judging such a person in such a situation, it does fit in with what the Kli Yakar wrote about the four-fifths who did not leave Mitzrayim because they were amei ha'aretz who did not WANT to leave.

It wasn't a matter of whether they COULD leave Mitzrayim.

They couldn't.

It all came down to: Did they WANT to leave Mitzrayim?

Even more, the question was whether they wanted to be REDEEMED?

Because remember, they didn't go to Eretz Yisrael right away.

Yes, Eretz Yisrael was their ultimate destination and has always remained our ultimate destination.

However, all the Jewish men who'd been slaves in Mitzrayim died before reaching Eretz Yisrael.

So it's not about going some place physical.

It's all about whether you WANT to be close to Hashem, to be Hashem's Bride, His Sister, His Child.

Do you want to be a servant of Hashem or a servant of Mitzrayim? Because it's either one or the other. There's no such thing as complete liberation.

You're always serving something, whether it's your own yetzer hara or Hashem.

Do you WANT the real wonderful Eternity of the World to Come promised to a committed Yisrael?

Let's go back to the Kli Yakar and complete the above commentary:

...many of them were amei ha'aretz who did not want to go out at all from Egypt.

Because of this, four-fifths died in the 3 days of Heavy Darkness.

How Your Biggest Yetzer Hara Can Reveal Your Biggest Virtue

How does this apply to us right now?

It's VERY applicable, especially with all the increasing attacks on Jews and against Judaism throughout the world.

And Chazal says what the Kli Yakar says above:
Persecutions come from not being Jewish enough.

They come from absorbing anti-Torah values.

They come because, in the words of the Kli Yakar, the holy Jews wanted "to be residents of Egypt" (and everything that implied) and "not leave from there."

As far as I know, the one-fifth that left Mitzrayim were not tzaddikim.

You don't need to be a tzaddik to be redeemed (although it sure helps).

Remember, all the Jews (except some very special individuals, like Moshe Rabbeinu, Shevet Levi, etc.) were crushed under Egyptian bondage and on the 49th level of tumah (spiritual impurity).

Tumah comes from the root "blockage." "Tum" is something sealed.

They squatted down in one of the lowest levels of spiritual blockage – a state to which many people can unfortunately relate today.

For example, many people find it difficult to daven with kavanah today.

You can go a whole day saying brachot – and not one with kavanah.

People feel torn between what they want and what Hashem wants.

Many people have a love-hate relationship with the Internet or their phones.

Their brain loves the kick it gets from the carefully manipulated social media or surfing, but their yetzer tov hates being constantly pulled in the wrong direction and wish they could be more disciplined.

Many people have a love-hate relationship with food for the same reasons.

Feeling Hashem as a loving Father who is right there with you at all times?

Well, many people feel this state is impossible to achieve.

(Yet not so many generations ago, your average Jew – including illiterate grandmothers – felt this state without even trying. Their challenges lay in other areas.)

People express anger, then feel so defeated because they know they failed the nisayon of not getting angry...again.

Some people feel like they're going through the motions of mitzvot. Despite all the mussar and chizuk they've received, they still find it so hard to serve Hashem b'simcha. They feel drained, like they're keeping Torah with their last ebbs of emotional koach.

They feel bad when you tell them about emunah & serving Hashem b'simcha, and saying gam zeh l'tovah, and so on. They feel bad because they try and they try and they try, and they just can't do it.

(Or they can't do it consistently. Maybe they manage it for a few minutes or hours or days...until everything comes crashing around them again.)

And you should know this is actually a very big maaleh - virtue!

Why?

What's Really Good about You at the 49th Level of Tumah

The Jews who were redeemed were at the end of their rope.

They weren't like Moshe Rabbeinu or Miriam Haneviah.

49th level of tumah. That's pretty bad.

According to various midrashim and mefarshim, they were emotionally and physically exhausted.

Yet they at least WANTED the Geula.

They couldn't escape Mitzrayim.

They couldn't go on anymore, yet they couldn't get a break either.

And they couldn't bring about the Redemption.

They could not even redeem themselves, even one person for himself.

But they could WANT it.

On the other hand, there are people who can't daven with kavanah and DON'T WANT TO.

They hope there's a way for them to skip shul without anyone noticing.

Or if they're women, they find justifications why they can only say morning brachot as fast as they can and nothing else. (BTW, some women really DON'T have time to say Shemoneh Esrei. I'm not talking about them.)

There are people who wish they didn't have to keep Shabbos.

They don't wish that Shabbos was more enjoyable or wish that there was some magic button they could press to make them really enjoy it...they don't want Shabbos AT ALL.

Some people don't feel guilty about viewing unwholesome images or indulging in unwholesome fantasies or entertaining forbidden attractions – they only feel bad that they need to hide it. (And some eventually stop doing even that, dumping everything out and proclaiming how "liberated" they feel as they are embraced by the surrounding completely degenerate & destructive society.)

Some people don't feel guilty about investing so much of their mind & time in social media and the Internet. They don't feel torn. They don't wish they could be better or more spiritual.

Instead, they wish that the rabbanim would just stop forbidding things "all the time."

Also, and this sounds bizarre, but I have personally met a small minority of people who feel no compunctions about expressing anger. I mean frum people (both FFB and BT). They will hit and/or yell at their kids, or yell at their spouse, and they feel no remorse whatsoever!

This occurs despite how often Judaism condemns anger. Heck, both Orchot Tzaddikim and Pele Yoetz dedicate entire chapters to overcoming this middah. The Rambam holds it's like worshiping idols.

Years ago, I even had another frum woman ask me one time why I felt so bad about ever getting angry my kids and why I felt it was so important to never get angry, no matter what.

Seriously.

I didn't even know where to start answering. It's like if a fellow frummie asked you, "Why do you feel it's so important to keep Shabbat with all the halachot?"

It'd be like, "Umm...because it's one of the Ten Commandments? And why are YOU asking me this? You're already supposed to know!"

Yes, it was only a handful of people, but it still showed me how disconnected people can be from the obvious basics. If you're NOT disconnected, but strive and know when you've fallen, then that's a very big maaleh!

Some people honestly do not feel bad about hurting others. They either think they're cute/funny or they think the other person had it coming to them.

Some people think it's hard to be a Jew...and therefore, wish they didn't have to be one. (Not good.)

Some people think it's hard to be a Jew...in Golus. And they desperately wish for Mashiach to come so they can enjoy Judaism in all its glory. (Very good.)

So if you feel like, "Gosh, I'm so crushed and dead inside. I simply cannot go on any longer. But I wish I wasn't like this. I wish things could be better. I wish I could be better. But mostly, I wish Mashiach would just COME already! Because I sure as heck cannot go on like this any longer."

In that case, you WANT to leave Mitzrayim.

And that's really good!

You can read more about the Kli Yakar regarding this dynamic HERE. Please scroll down to: Uncharacteristically Harsh Words from the Kli Yakar.

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Some Chizuk for Those with Paltry Inner Resources Who Still Try to Serve Hashem

28/1/2020

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I'm constantly awed by people who suffer so much, both physically and emotionally, yet wrestle through their pain and their despair to reach Hashem.

Today, we see people with no personal resources strive to live a Torah life.

They simply lack keilim, both within and without.

There is nothing in their upbringing, their cultural background (especially with all the filth and drivel of today), or their their own personal mindset that supports living a Torah life & thinking in a Torah way.

Just as an aside: This is not meant as a dismissal of FFBs who face challenges from a dysfunctional upbringing or schooling.

As I've written here before, I think that in some ways, giving frumkeit a second chance, being willing to look at it with fresh eyes & rebuild yourself anew after having been burned, is more challenging than coming to frumkeit from a totally non-frum world.

However, I've met FFBs off the derech and some of the basic values, some of the basic derech eretz is still there. At the very least, a minimal appreciation of certain basic middot are still innate to them.

As the generations go by, the values change for the worse in the non-Jewish world now. For example, values upheld in my parents' generation were already mocked and cast aside in my generation.

And by values, I also mean middot.

Behaviors considered good middot in the not-so-distant past are now considered dysfunctional, unhealthy, pathetic, unnecessary, or silly.

And things keep disintegrating.

It's very, very difficult to completely renovate your mind right down to your unconscious instincts; yet that's exactly what people new to frumkeit must do nowadays.

Coming from the secular world into the frum world, your very instincts might well be "off."

If you listen to those struggling, it's a constant battle against their inner nature (both that which with they were born and that which was indoctrinated into them by their family and society) to internalize authentic Torah values and an authentic Torah mindset.

It's a battle they have NO inner resources to fight.

I'm being serious.

They don't have it within themselves and they never received it from without.

And I'm sorry to say it, but as much as years of shiurim, seminars, a long stint in yeshivah or seminary genuinely help and do save their soul, it is so difficult to overcome the programming of an increasingly repressive and anti-Torah society.

I'm not sure if I should say this either, but I do kind of think it's becoming almost impossible, although a lot of headway can certainly be made, and any effort in the right direction makes you a better person and reaps you reward in the Next World, plus sweetens dinim right now.

But things are so vastly corrupt in the non-frum world, plus it has infected the frum world as you can rarely open a frum magazine or website without seeing something that is questionable, if not outright kefirah (or just "tiflut" if you're lucky). And even if an online article is good, the comment section often ruins everything.

So how are people from a non-frum background supposed to be able to sift through it all? And I don't mean just what they encounter in a frum website, but everything they've absorbed until now.

To complicate things, sometimes they even have an emotionally unhealthy or not-so-religious spouse or consulted with some kind of religious "guide" (a low-level rabbi or rebbetzin, "expert," adviser, mentor, kallah/chassan teacher, therapist, well-meaning frum neighbor or Shabbos host) that messes with their mind even more, making their struggle even more of a challenge.

Just to be clear: All these types of people listed in the above paragraph can also be VERY helpful! I myself had rebbetzin/mentor who changed my life and helped me so much with my hashkafah, and I'm very grateful to her. It depends who you encounter. Also, the same person who works miracles for your friend might be a disaster for you and vice-versa.

Yet despite all these obstacles, these strivers fight and they fight and they fight!

They won't give up.

They keep trying to grasp onto emunah and cultivate a relationship with Hashem, even when it feels like He's pushing them away.

You don't hear about them much because they are in so much pain, it's private.

Also, because most people find it so difficult to hear about impossible situations, situations in which the difficult person will likely never improve no matter how many hoops you jump through or situations which simply have no remedy until Mashiach comes (like death or disability), a lot of these struggling people get kicked in the teeth by those who struggle accept the impossible reality of their situation.

Following along these lines, they either blame themselves for the slightest mistake (including the lack of ability to read minds) or fear (from past experience) that they'll be blamed no matter what, so they don't want to make themselves vulnerable again.

Also, they know that halacha does not allow them to blab with abandon about the suffering they endured or are enduring from family members or faulty religious "experts."

So these blessedly unrelenting strivers learn at some point not to speak of it much, including with those who claim they can help them.

But they're there.

And oftentimes, it's these silent acts of dedication to Hashem that keep everything going.

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Dever in Our Times - And How We Should Respond to Protect Ourselves

26/1/2020

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It's chilling what's going on with the virus in China right now, which has reached plague proportions.

As pointed out in a comment by the host of the True Tzaddikim blog here, the virus went public during the week of Parshat Va'era, in which dever (pestilence) plays a significant role.

Rav Avigdor Miller discussed it at length as an epidemic affecting people, not just animals (which you can see HERE).

Furthermore, this virus hit right around the time of a big avodah zarah festival.

There are other things in China too, some of which are purely the fault of the government and some of which most of the people themselves willingly go along with.

(Forced abortion, even not long before birth, for mothers who break the "one-child-only" law, the aborting of female unborn by parents who prefer that their one child be a boy, & which has led to the unnatural ratio of more boys than girls in the country, the lack of compassion treatment toward the poor, the practice in some areas of eating the limb of a living animal, and so on.)

This year also saw the hurricanic destruction of an island in the Bahamas, a place known for its occult practices and rampant zimah, plus drug trafficking and the more horrifying human trafficking. (Holding people against their will is included in the Noachide prohibition against theft, and is a capital crime in halacha.)

There has also been flooding in places around the world known for being steeped in avodah zarah and seriously hefker behavior, plus human rights abuses.

These places are so steeped in immoral ways, the people themselves don't even WANT to change and be better. (For example, a lot of people like avodah zarah & hefker behavior; nowadays especially, many people honestly don't see anything wrong with them.)

We know from our chachamim that these things are a warning to us.

And as Rav Avigdor Miller and so many others have reminded us throughout millennia and in the Torah itself:

Our most important avodah is to serve Hashem B'SIMCHA – with joy.

We just keeping moving forward in embracing our lives of Torah & mitzvot, and we should do everything we can do embrace the mitzvot b'simcha.

Sometimes, "b'simcha" the hardest mitzvah to uphold.

That's right.

B'ezrat Hashem, we'll all do our best & may Hashem bless us with much success.

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How to Wrench Yourself Out of the Paralyzing Plague of Darkness: The Life-Changing Lessons We can Learn from What Rav Shimshon Dovid Pincus Says about Why Hashem Hardened Pharaoh's Heart & Why Hashem Punished Him Anyway

24/1/2020

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In the book of Rav Shimshon Dovid Pincus's ztz"l transcribed lectures Nefesh Shimshon - Gates of Emunah, Living with Faith: Bringing Hashem into Our Daily Lives, Rav Pincus gleans from the Rambam to clarify an issue that confounds people when they come across it in the Torah:

Why does Hashem harden Pharaoh's heart?

And why does He then punish Paroh (Pharaoh) when it's HASHEM who repeatedly hardened Paroh's heart?

It all connects to the paradoxical concept of bechirah chofsheet – free choice.

What Does "Free Choice" Really Mean?

Rav Pincus notes that this concept is often misunderstood.

Human bechirah goes far beyond that of animal bechirah.

Animals don't have bechirah. A hyena cannot decide to skip eating a fresh carcass just because it wasn't properly slaughtered.

Even with their offspring, animals care for them out of instinct. Animal sentimentalists don't like to hear this, but many species either abandon or eat their young when they feel the environment won't support them or when they sense their newborns are weak.

But human bechirah goes even further.

In order to have real bechirah, a person must have the ability to either do wonderful healing acts or cruel destructive acts.

This includes the ability to destroy oneself – not just physically in This World, but to actually destroy one's soul and eliminate any chance of obtaining even a tiny smidgen of bliss in the Next World.

In other words, to enable true bechirah, a person must have the ability to NOT do teshuvah...even if they want to.

And this chilling truth explains the dynamic between Hashem and Paroh.

When You Cannot Even Move to Save Your Life

Theoretically, a person has the ability to repeatedly make such poor decisions that he cannot return from that state of evil...even if he wants to.

In fact, during the Plague of Hail, Hashem sent Moshe Rabbeinu to tell Paroh that everyone should move inside.

Whoever remains outside would be killed.

The Brisker Rav explains that even though these giant fiery hailstones could certainly break through roofs, Hashem set things up so that the roofs would provide protection.

Only those foolish enough to remain outside would be killed.

Then Hashem caused a weird reaction in the Egyptians (who'd decided themselves into a state where teshuvah was impossible).

If the Egyptians feared the hailstones, they wouldn't be able to go inside!

They lost the ability to move, even an obvious move for their own self-protection.

Instead, Hashem decided to make their hearts so hard that when they saw the hailstones, they'd say, "It's not for real. It can't be."

And that's exactly what happened.

As it states in Shemot 9:20, only those who feared Hashem (and not the hailstones) retained the ability to access their free choice and protect themselves by ducking into a building.

Rav Pincus explains that when a person can no longer move spiritually, his state is called Choshech Mitzrayim (Darkness of Egypt, the 9th Plague). He quotes Shemot 10:23: "No man could arise from his place."

So a person who falls into "a state of total immobility" is "like Pharaoh and the Egyptians at that time."

Rav Pincus likens it to incurring a massive debt without ever getting one's finances together. Then when the time comes to pay up, the debtor has nary a penny with which to even start returning the massive debt.

This can be experienced on a less sinister level, explain Rav Pincus, like when a person damages his capability of kavanah in davening to the point that he can no longer daven Shemoneh Esrei.

Even on the day of his wedding while davening Mincha at the Kotel, a groom may discover that despite is best intentions, he was not able to daven this all-important Mincha with kavanah.

It's because of all the previous Shemoneh Esreis without kavanah.

Rav Pincus says this is the reason why some people fly out of shul the minute the davening ends. It's as if the shul spits them out do to their repeated lack of desire.

On page 115, Rav Pincus states:

The power of free choice gives man the frightening ability to chain himself and throw away the key.

Of course, this reminds me of the story popularized by Rabbi Wallerstein from the Kav Hayashar, in which a fabulously wealthy yet uncompromisingly tight-fisted mohel is particularly mosser nefesh to travel a great distance to perform a brit milah, where he discovers he must perform the brit milah on the half-demon child of a captive Jewish mother.

Despite his appalling miserliness, this mohel always conducts a brit milah completely free of charge. A brit milah was always the exception to his utter lack of generosity.

After refusing to accept anything from the demon father, the demon father finally opens a cabinet containing the mohel's "keys," and tells the mohel that he can have these keys since they don't really belong to the demon because they originally belong to the mohel.

After getting his "keys" back, mohel then returns to normal society and is indeed able to generously give tzedakah after that.

And therein lies the solution to recover the ability to do teshuvah even when you've destroyed that ability.

(See? In Judaism, there is never despair! Even from the Point of No Return, you can still return IF you REALLY want to!)

Teshuvah from Love Fixes Everything

The secret is teshuvah from love.

Even if in the extremely rare instance that Hashem doesn't want you back, your pursuing of Hashem's Will can turn everything around for the best.

Teshuvah from fear is still a million times better than not doing teshuvah at all.

However, if one has reached the Point of No Return, if one is stuck in Choshech Mitzrayim (whether it's the guy who can't daven or a complete rasha like Paroh), the key to getting unstuck is teshuvah from love.

Teshuvah from fear:
Giving someone money only after being threatened with a big stick.

Teshuvah from love:
Giving someone money because you really want to give it.

Teshuvah from fear is Hashem's Act.

Teshuvah from love is completely your act.

Rav Pincus states that while teshuvah from fear can be eliminated, teshuvah from love can never be taken away since that type of teshuvah belongs to the person.

Page 119:

Hashem will never take it away from him because that would contradict the principle of free choice.

And how can we access that?

How to Free Yourself from the Paralyzing Plague of Darkness

Here is Rav Pincus's advice on page 120:

When a person is in one of those low states where he feels nothing is moving for him, his goal at that time should not be to change his deeds.

Rather it should be change himself, his inner being.

Certainly easier said than done, but nobody ever said that escaping the Point of No Return was a bowl of stone-free cherries.

And this is where it gets a bit confusing, but still doable.

Rav Pincus presents the example of someone who wants to get out of his distraction and start learning seriously out of fear for his future (maybe the fear of getting a bad shidduch or no shidduch, getting a bad reputation or a lackluster portion in the World to Come, etc.).

So he commits to learning 5 hours straight with passion.

Rav Pincus says that is changing one's deeds, not one's self.

However, if a person works to develop a feeling of love for Torah, an appreciation for the value of Torah itself, this changes his whole approach to learning. In that case, a person should decide to come even just 5 minutes early to learn and then stay 5 minutes later.

That is changing one's self.

Why?

Because it demonstrates a thirst for learning. When you love something, when you crave it, you can't wait to get it! And then you don't want to leave it.

Superficially, it looks like both are changing deeds only.

But when a person makes a mental shift in his attitude and decides to come early to learning (or davening for that matter) and leave later, that reflects his own self.

NOTE: It's even more beneficial to read the whole thing in Rav Pincus's own words, the section called "How Far Free Choice Reaches," pages 109-122.

Final Thoughts & Plan of Action

Please also note that despite the fact that Rav Pincus himself absolutely loved learning & davening, he absolutely loved Hashem & felt loved by Hashem, Rav Pincus still recommends baby-steps.

5 minutes earlier and 5 minutes later!

This is something you run across again and again in Judaism.

BABY STEPS MATTER.

No one should scoff at small steps in the right direction.

Your smallest toddling step in Hashem's direction is very precious to Hashem.

So tachlis, what can you do if you find yourself immobilized in Choshech Mitzrayim?

I believe it's to consider your soul's real desire:

Where do you want to go?

Who do you want to be?

Why do you want to go there & be different in that way?

And how can you express that new and better desire?

And if you do find yourself in that frightening place where teshuvah from fear no longer exits, consider that rather than it means Hashem is rejecting you...

...consider that maybe it's a sign that Hashem cherishes you so much, He wants you to do teshuvah from love so He can pour upon you all the reward and closeness that comes from teshuvah from love.

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Rav Avigdor Miller or Parshat Va'era and Some Very Sharp Mussar on Learning Lessons that Applies to Current Events

23/1/2020

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What was the purpose of the 10 Plagues?

In Parshat Va'era: Judgments with Justice, Rav Avigdor Miller informs us that it wasn't just about Pharaoh.

"And Egypt will know that I am Hashem."

That was the main reason.

And many Egyptians indeed gleaned that lesson from the Plagues.

They joined the Exodus from Egypt, becoming the dreaded Erev Rav.

But the real lesson was for Bnei Yisrael themselves.

THEY needed to know Who Hashem was.

They needed this prior to accepting the Torah on Har Sinai.

WE need to know that He is Hashem.

The Profound Principles of Middah K'Neged Middah

Middah k'neged middah (measure for measure) is a well-known concept in Judaism.

As Rav Miller puts it on page 5, "the punishment a man gets in this world, in some way resembles the thing that he’s done wrong."

Rav Miller notes that middah k'neged middah is often obvious. The connection between the sin and the consequence is usually not hard to connect...if only a person would just contemplate it.

So why is the connection not often seen?

Rav Miller explains on page 6:

And the Mesillas Yesharim sets down the principle that most people don’t learn the lessons that Hashem wants to teach them because they’re just too busy to think.

There’s more than one reason, but the main reason why people don’t learn is because they’re too busy with life.

There are so many things to do, so many happy things, so many other things – whatever it is, but they’re busy all the time...People don’t pay attention and they don’t learn the lessons that they are expected to learn because they don’t make time to think, “Why is Hashem doing davka this and davka that?”

Midrash Rabbah says that with every Plague came a type of dever, pestilence. Yes, there was a Plague of Dever, but all the Plagues were accompanied by some sort of dever too.

What do you do in a case of dever?

Rav Miller quotes Bava Kama 60b: "Dever ba'ir, kanes reglecha – When there's an epidemic in the city, stay at home!"

Don't go out and mix.

And that's exactly what the people decided.

In those days, the Jewish elders, the zekeinim, were truly great Sages to whom the people really listened.

That's why Moshe Rabbeinu went to them first with tidings, because he knew the Am would listen to the zekeinim.

Anyway, the Jews closed themselves in their little homes.

And there was nothing to do except talk to each other.

And the zekeinim guided them to speak about tachlis, to contemplate what was happening.

Rav Miller says that many Midrashim derived from these conversations at home, with the Jews thinking and drawing conclusions, like the following (pages 7-8):

Let’s say when Makkas Dam came; so they’re sitting in their houses and talking.

“Did you hear what happened to Mamrei the Egyptian down the road? He went for a drink and his mouth is all bloodied up as if somebody punched him in the lips. He’s vomiting from disgust.”

“Aha! That bloody Egyptian now! You remember when he smacked me in the mouth and my mouth was bleeding? Now he’s getting it right back in his face!”

“Maybe in the wells there’s some water they can drink?”

Nothing doing! Look at the well next door – you see how red it is? Look at them – they’re digging in the ground trying to find an underground spring. And his brother, the wicked slavemaster – he’s walking around dehydrated begging for a sip of water. He looks like he’s about to faint.”

“Is that so? He’s the one who forced us to work all day in the sun and didn’t let us drink from the well. He’s getting exactly what he deserves, midah k’neged midah.”

Rav Miller freely acknowledges he is oversimplifying the conversations for our benefit.

The discussions probed much deeper than that.

Why?

He explains on page 8:

So they were talking all day long – but not like we’re talking here. I’m just talking kindergarten talk now, but they went to the bottom of it.

They had nothing else to do – they didn’t read newspapers or novels in those days; they didn’t waste time listening to the radio.

And the zekeinim taught them how to use their time during the makkos – to think about what Hashem was trying to teach them and to talk about it.

And we are supposed to do this too.

Rav Miller's Profound Losses

On pages 9-17, Rav Miller explains why he discusses the Holocaust the way he does.

He admits that it's very painful.

People forget that he himself was almost a victim, he and his wife and children. People forget that he knew the precious Jews slaughtered by the evil ones.

The victims were his wife's siblings and Rav Miller's other close friends. As he says on page 11:

My chaveirim, my best friends were all murdered.

Rav Feivel Pilvishker, zichrono l’vracha, a tzaddik, a young man who was learning all the time. He was always thinking in mussar in his spare time. And they found his body in the field outside the town – he was shot there and left to bleed to death.

Other friends too – Aharon Birzher, my chavrusa. He was the son-in-law of the Kurdaneh Rav, and he was murdered along with the Kurdaneh Jews.

My rebbi, Rav Avraham was burnt up alive in a fire when the Germans set fire to the hospital.

Rav Elchonon Wasserman zichrono l’vracha was in Slabodka and they marched him out with all the Slabodka boys – my chaveirim – and they shot them dead in the Ninth Fort.

Certainly we weep rivers of tears. When we say here that we try to understand that Hashem does things for a reason, it’s b’derech klal, on a general level.

But the fact that we lost our people is a devastating blow that we will never cease weeping for.

He acknowledges that many people feel it's a mekatreg on the victims to search for the meaning behind it all.

Yet Rav Miller says it's a mekatreg on Hashem if you don't discuss it.

Hashem doesn't do things for no reason.

And this is why Rav Miller delves into this painful subject: He does it all for the honor of Hashem.

(Note: Despite the middah k'neged middah Rav Miller discusses here, he clearly acknowledge here and in other lectures that we cannot know all the reasons for everything that happened in the Holocaust. There were such inhuman acts of brutality and sadism, such sheer savagery, we really cannot just point fingers.)

Some Very Sharp Mussar

Yes, there were wonderfully special people in Eastern Europe, Jews of unparalleled wisdom and yirah and emuna.

But Rav Miller states that those same towns portrayed as chassidish strongholds also included Reform communities.

In A Daughter of Two Mothers, Leichu is herself religious and therefore focuses on her fellow religious Jews. But even in their small town sheltered from the influences of the big cities, the poisonous strains infiltrated.

I remember thinking how odd it was that within this small town brimming with good frum Jews, Leichu didn't have a proper school. She either needed to attend the local public school with the non-Jews or the local Jewish school run by the Reform. (She ended up with the non-Jews, who ran their school with more propriety & concern for the children than the Reform school.)

Why wasn't there a religious school for the religious population?

Isn't that weird in such a lovely little town full of wonderful religious Jews?

So, it goes back to what Rav Miller was saying.

Likewise, in Lea Fuch Chayen's memoir, Out of the Depths, she recalls a moment toward the end, when she and her friends are slowly starving to death outside in a roofless boxcar covered in snow.

Lea attempts to raise their spirits by recalling Purim and predicting the many Purims they'll enjoy with the families they'll create by themselves after the War.

At that point, a Jewish woman in her thirties says, "Who is Purim?"

Who is Purim?

It's astonishing that a Jewish woman of her age from the burgeoning Jewish metropolis of Budapest (which also hosted a thriving frum community) never even heard of the holiday of Purim. I think it's sort of like if a Jew from New York never heard of Purim. She thought it was the name of a person, she was so far removed.

It's to this undercurrent of destruction Rav Miller refers.

He recalls how the Chafetz Chaim himself declared before the Holocaust that there wasn't one Jewish home without someone off the derech.

Rav Miller reminisces about on old rav who looked so beautiful and pious, as if he must come from such a pious family.

Then Rav Miller discovered that this rav was the only one of 5 brothers who remained frum! The other 4 went totally off the derech.

And as Rav Miller emphasizes, these rebels weren't quiet. Hard as it is to believe, they marched around with large signs: "We declare war on the Klerikalin" – Klerikalin were the rabbanim and the frum people.

And Rav Elchonon Wasserman said (page 12), “You’re declaring war on Hashem?! So Hashem will declare war on you!”

Chilling words.

Rav Miller tells us the truth, both the beautiful and the ugly (page 12):

What about all the apikorsim who lived in Slabodka?

I was there; I saw! Slabodka was a churban.

There was a yeshivah, it's true, but the city itself was no good at all.

Europe was being turned upside down by the Jewish resha’im.

*

Do you hear people speak about that when they teach about the Holocaust?

No, you don’t hear that. The whole subject is not even mentioned.

People are busy carrying out a propaganda campaign against Hakodosh Boruch Hu.

You know what they say? They say that they were all tzadikim in Europe.

Ahh, it was a wonderful place – they were all righteous, all kedoshim, and we just don’t know why Hakodosh Boruch Hu would do such a terrible thing to them.

I would never say this myself. I have no right to judge, me a former suburban secular girl growing up in America's materialistic 80s.

Even now, who am I?

But Rav Miller can say it. He has that right.

And then the dvar Torah gets very sharp.

I appreciate it; I want to hear it. It's the truth.

But his message definitely bothers a lot of people.

On page 13, Rav Miller opposes all the blame placed on European rabbanim for not telling Europe's Jews to go to Eretz Yisrael.

These rabbanim constantly exhorted their beloved brothers and sisters to do teshuvah, to prevent the Destruction.

The truth is that when you run away, you leave people behind.

Maybe there's not much choice. At one point, there really was no choice.

Okay.

But if you really love your brothers and sisters, you will try and prevent bad things from happening to them.

If you really care about someone, you're not just going to run off and leave them behind.

You'll try and prevent them from being harmed.

(I want to add also that in the memoirs I've read, sometimes big rabbanim were asked about escape, and the rabbanim said something like, "You can try. But there's a Heavenly decree on us and success isn't likely. But you can try."

Also, in A Sun and A Shield, the great talmid chacham Rav Yosef Paneth (also known as the Illeander Rav) found himself in a forest ghetto with around 7500 Jews.

He and his family struggled to convince other Jews to escape with them into the forest. He told his fellow Jews where they were going.

Yet who listened?

Out of 7500, only the rav, his wife, their children, a couple of men, and a young widow and her son agreed to escape.

The only children to survive that ghetto was the Paneth children (though not all of them) and the widow's son.

That was it.

So you have to understand that even when an extremely chashuv and holy rav actively told people to escape and even offered to help them escape with them, they simply would not.

(You can read more about that episode HERE; just scroll down to the middle of the post.)

Furthermore, Rav Miller makes a practical point that many don't consider (page 13, boldface my own addition):

They said that the gedolim, all the tzadikim, the Chofetz Chaim zichrono l’vracha too – all the leaders of the generation are at fault because they didn’t preach that the Jews should get up and move to Eretz Yisroel.

That six million Jews should get up from Europe and go to Eretz Yisroel in those days when nobody would let them in anyhow!

Also, you had families like the frum Kanners in Germany who were number 1 on the aliyah list for a capitalist visa – and they were constantly pushed off by the secular Zionist Resettlement office in Berlin.

(Personally, based on what I've read of the history of that time, I feel they were pushed off because they were frum. The secular Zionists did not want frum people in Israel. I can't prove it, but if you read the book, it's weird that they kept replacing the Kanners with others whom the secular Zionists claimed were in immediate danger and therefore needed to take precedence. But even when Mr. Kanner faced life-threatening danger and was actually sent to a concentration camp, the Zionist Resettlement office still did not allow him to use his rightful visa. See HERE for more on that.)

The Most Helpful Response to Jew-Hatred

On pages 14-15, Rav Miller says:

If only the Am Yisroel would have huddled together in their homes with their parents and grandparents and discussed the news with a clear mind, a great many lessons could have been learned.

“Why is this happening?” they should have thought.

All of a sudden, Germany – a civilized country – is committing such barbarous acts against them? What’s it for?

They should have thought about and discussed it with the ziknei hador; the same way the Bnei Yisroel in Mitzrayim spent time thinking about what Hashem was doing, the German Jews could have done the same.

And page 15:

There still remained a small island, the Torah World – wonderful yeshivos.

But they were a tiny minority because they had already been abandoned by the people.

The heart of the people was already in the hands of the misleaders.

And these misleaders didn’t say, “Look at what Hitler is doing! It’s time to do teshuva.”

The Chofetz Chaim zichrono l’vracha said it; Rav Elchonon Wasserman said it, “Do teshuva,” but who listened to them?!

Rav Miller notes that the initial middah k'neged middah was obvious.

Germany forbade intermarriage.

(Just as a side point: As a young secular girl first learning about the Holocaust, I was confused as to why this decree was presented with such offense by Jews in Holocaust books and lectures. After all, I wondered, weren't Jews NOT supposed to marry non-Jews anyway? Yeah, I got the basic idea that the Germans weren't coming from a good place. Sure. But why were the Jews so offended? Weren't they against intermarriage anyway? That's what I wondered back then.)

Then Jews must add Hebrew names to their identity papers: "Israel" for boys and "Sara" for girls. This is highly symbolic and obvious if you know that one of the reasons why Hashem redeemed the Jews from Mitzrayim was because of they kept their Jewish names.

I had no idea about that when I first learned about the Holocaust. But it became obvious later.

Rav Miller continues along this vein until page 19, but I don't have the stomach to write about it anymore.

It's just that we really, really need to listen to our real talmidei chachamim. Our real Gedolim.

If we love ourselves and love each other, that's what we need to do.

(If you want to see the whole picture of that time period, it's very worth reading everything Rav Miller describes on pages 11-19. A lot is left out of this post.)

Just the Act of Trying Reaps So Much Reward!

The rest of the dvar Torah discusses examining our deeds.

Rav Miller also answers the complaint of "What, I need to drive myself crazy trying to think about what Hashem is hinting at when I bite my tongue or stub my toe?"

As Rav Miller reassures us on page 21:

If you’ll make use of the opportunity, even if you won’t guess the real reason, you still struck gold!

Let’s say you’ll blame yourself for something else that wasn’t the real reason – but at least in that one thing you’ll improve.

And that’s already a great hatzlacha.

All credit for quotes and material used within goes to Toras Avigdor.

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Some More Thoughts on Therapy, Its Uses & Abuses

22/1/2020

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This blog has featured posts on therapy and therapists, and its flaws.

However, I do kind of worry that I've come off harsher than intended. It's hard to get all the perspectives into one single post, but I want to try.

Maybe I haven't emphasized enough that I don't automatically think badly of therapists or people who choose to invest in therapy.

I think most therapists and their clients are sincere and wish to help/be helped.

I also think we're basically talking about good people across the board (with some exceptions).

But I also see very real flaws in the whole system.

Having said that, of course, you can speak to someone.

You can speak to Hashem, but of course you can also speak to another person.

Lubavitcher women have a mashpia. Many people have rebbetzins or rebbis or good friends or mentors of some kind – someone who gives them chizuk & helps them better themselves.

In the book Words of Faith, the tzaddik Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender lays out recommendations on how to be a truly beneficial confidant.

For discussions of his ideas, please see:

How to Listen & How to Speak
Friendship & Encouraging Words
The Honesty Deception
A Tzaddik's Example: Listen, Empathize, Encourage
Human Interaction and the Secret of Light

Your therapist or adviser can also fulfill that role; the question is whether they ARE actually fulfilling that role to your best interests.

Going Back in Time for Some Personal Anecdotes

Being the secular American child of the 1980s, I've been to therapists a few times, although I never invested years in therapy.

For my generation (and I think everyone younger than me), therapy was & still is considered both the acceptable & the responsible thing to do. (And psychiatric treatment has now joined therapy in this respect.)

Two non-Jewish therapists did me no good whatsoever. Literally nothing came out of it, even though with one of them, I spent 6 months at the age of 16 going to weekly appointments because I felt very insecure and wished to become an emotionally healthy person, and thought that these weekly appointments would fix me. Total waste of time & money.

One high school guidance counselor (who are usually considered a joke) was a wonderfully empathetic listener and adored by the student body. A wide variety of students went to her, including those you'd think would never do so. While I'm grateful for the temporary relief she provided with her genuine caring, I made no progress whatsoever in self-improvement or any specific issues.

In fact, as I started looking into Torah Judaism and made plans for aliyah, she displayed sincere concern (she was a very sincere Liberal and a feminist), which included handing me the photocopied article from a magazine interview with a Palestinian terrorist who expressed the goal of moving to England and becoming a computer programmer after he was done terrorizing Jews. (Well, I considered him a terrorist anyway. The guidance counselor and the magazine clearly did not consider his actions as "terror.")

She also gave me another photocopied article of a secular Leftist Israeli who'd gone undercover as an Arab to see how it feels. Needless to say, it did not present a balanced picture.

Guess who were the poor sympathetic victims and who were the bad guys?

When I discussed this slanted hit-job with her later, addressing some of the more blatant and suspicious parts, she merely looked saddened at my inability to accept the facts as she saw them.

She also seemed confused by my opinion that the reporter's strong Leftist bias made him, well, biased.

Interestingly, despite the obvious middot work I needed to do, handing me these skillfully written propaganda pieces was the most proactive she'd ever been about changing my thought patterns.

And I'm still trying to remember if it was she who lent me a book written by a Reform rabbi, to influence me away from frumkeit...

Clearly, she only became concerned enough to leave aside the facilitative listening and influence me was when I looked toward become a more spiritual and moral person.

An Example of Truly Helpful Therapy for 1 Specific Issue

Later, in my 20s, I confided in a rebbetzin my unrelenting anxiety in a specific area. When she saw she wasn't able to help me, she set up a meeting with a frum female therapist who specialized in this issue (which was the responsible thing to do, and I was grateful to her for caring enough to do it).

This frum therapist also offered first appointments for free, so even though she knew this would likely be a one-time meeting, she still offered that time free of charge.

After I explained my anxiety, she got straight to the core of the issue with the help of a few insightful questions, then she addressed my issue with conviction in a convincing & thoughtful manner.

She thoroughly answered every concern I had about the issue, completely reassuring me.

With this particular weight lifted from my heart, I went on with my life and did not need another visit.

Perhaps this is a good example of what has been mentioned in previous posts: Therapy can be helpful for certain issues, but not necessarily for overall self-improvement (although it can do that too to a point).

While this particular issue ended up completely resolved in 1 session of therapy, I did not leave her office a better person than when I'd entered it.

I felt better (about this issue, anyway), but I wasn't actually a better person overall.

(And this says nothing bad about the therapist because the only goal of the session was to focus on this one issue, and not to work on myself overall.)

Lots of Money & Time with Very Little Benefit

Later, I went to another frum therapist over the course of a few months. She wasn't able to help me with that issue overall, but she did open my eyes to a certain negative behavior I'd unconsciously adopted.

Stunned by the realization, I quickly got to work on it.

That was an actual aspect of middot work. But just one and the main issue I'd come for wasn't helped even one bit (as far as I can remember).

Then I decided to continue with her regarding another issue, that of my fear of being the victim of a terror attack. (This was around the time suicide bombers were blowing up buses and kiosks, I knew people who almost victims of these attacks, so it wasn't an irrational fear.)

After cheerfully explaining how she personally did not relate to this fear, and cheerfully including a personal anecdote to show just how much she could not personally empathize, she agreed to work with me on it anyway.

Needless to say, this did not last long. Maybe I met with her once or twice more.

I think there is a tremendous pull in being listened to and also being liked. Because she listened to me & indicated that she liked me, I remember her fondly despite the fact that she was only of little help practically.

Should you pay hundreds (or even thousands of the course of months or years) for that?

I suppose that if you can easily afford to and you really crave being listened to and liked...well, I honestly don't know.

But you should at least know what you're paying for – and I think that the enjoyment of the therapist's caring and validation masks the reality that many people are not getting as much practical help from therapy as they feel they are.

The truth is, plain old therapy cannot really remedy a rational fear.

Hashem is really the only answer to fear.

Had she decided to learn Gate of Bitachon from Chovot Halevavot with me, or any other relevant chapters from other mussar books, it would've been much more helpful.

However, she herself would need to be on that level and in that frame of mind in order to give over such concepts.

(Although it could also be that just learning them together and speaking them out loud would've still been very helpful, even without her being able to project it. After all, the message of these great Sages comes through no matter what.)

Happier People aren't Necessarily Better People

The daughter of an incredibly wealthy secular family became suicidally depressed.

This is actually not so surprising as she was raised by a very self-righteous & distant mother (who was occasionally abusive) and hung out with other obnoxiously wealthy & decadent "friends" who held few morals and little meaning in their lives...which consisted of achieving good grades, while indulging in hard drugs and hefker behavior outside of school.

So she went to a very expensive & highly regarded secular doctor-psychologist.

Indeed, he helped her get out of her depression. She no longer wished to kill herself, and she not only rose out of her depression, but she charmed others with her funny & bubbly persona.

She also felt like therapy really helped her. She felt like her therapist saved her life (and he did).

Yet however much she felt better and happier, she was not a better person.

She continued to dabble in "soft" drugs, engage in appallingly hefker behavior (including becoming the mistress of a man she KNEW FROM THE FIRST was married with a child, then tried to wreck his marriage when he decided to stop the affair to return to his wife), and so on with behaviors that were either self-destructive or other-destructive.

Again, despite therapy saving her life and making her a happier person, therapy certainly did not make her a better person.

Physical Abuse? Cured! Emotional Neglect? Well...

A childhood friend told me about how, due to behavioral problems with another sibling, her parents were coerced into therapy.

She thinks this is why the physical abuse she'd been experiencing until then stopped.

So though her parents both stopped whacking the kids, and she stopped living in fear of being hit, her parents never became loving or nurturing parents.

Her father still had a temper and her mother was still heartbreakingly uninterested.

She said she's grateful that the therapy somehow stopped the physical abuse (which she thinks wasn't really inner change, but perhaps just the threat of being reported), but at the same time, she felt it showed just how much her parents really did not care about her.

Who is the Focus?

One final point:

Many advisers tend to talk about themselves under the guise of helping you.

Although this is neither so logical or helpful (unless your personality or situation happen to be so similar to the adviser's that this actually gives you helpful direction or validation), it's understandable because good listening calls for tremendous focus & self-restraint.

So it's understandable that people who spend so much of their time listening to others might get overwhelmed with the required self-discipline and start going on about themselves when they either should be listening or be talking about you and your situation.

So even when it's not helpful, it's still understandable.

However, therapists can do this too.

And while it's still understandable for the reasons above, this kind of self-indulgence is especially inappropriate when you are paying them so much for the time.

I think this is a problem, whether you're asking for aitzah or therapy.

Just to clarify: IF their own sharing is MEANT to be helpful and IS helpful, then that's fine. It can be really good.

But if it's just an emotional indulgence of theirs, that's not what you're there for.

Uh-Oh...I'm Even Worse Than I Thought!

When I first started doing hitbodedut and a real cheshbon hanefesh, I was struck with the profound realization of what bad middah was at the core of my negative behaviors.

I had never considered myself to have a problem with that particular middah (other middot, yes; this one, no), yet here it was in all its shocking starkness.

Interestingly, this issue never came up in any therapy session, it was never noticed by my parents or friends or my husband, and it never even came up with my mentor-rebbetzin who'd helped me so much with real middot work and self-improvement.

I don't want to say what it was, but let's use another example:

Let's say that I have problems with anger & spreading rumors, I enjoy making nasty barbs at others, and struggle a lot with giving the benefit of the doubt. (Ew, what a nasty person!)

(BTW, conventional therapy would diagnose me as suffering from low self-esteem and work on making me feel better about myself to stop the negative behaviors – which, as discussed above, doesn't ultimately help.)

So maybe I think my core problematic middot are anger, a sadistic streak (i.e. the middah of achzariyut/cruelty), and cynicism. And people who know me well might agree.

But when I do a raw cheshbon hanefesh in hitbodedut, I discover that I have a serious problem with envy. (Again, NOT the problem I discovered. This is a decoy.)

But wait – I never considered myself an envious person before! In fact, I always thought that envy was the LEAST of my problems!

And now, I am faced with the realization that not only is envy a problem for me, it is actually a HUGE problem and the root cause of my other bad middot.

(Meaning, most of the time rage boiled over, it had to do with envy. The nasty barbs and rumor-mongering emanated from envy, etc. Again, all theoretical.)

Again, these weren't my exact issues, but looking back, I don't blame anyone (including professionals) for not having cottoned on to one of the main middot I needed to fix.

It's was disguised by several other bad middot.

And in hindsight, I honestly don't see that it would've been picked up on in therapy.

Also, when you first stumble across a bad middah, you can be plunged into terrible shame, which might be a barrier when you're working via another person.

But it's okay because Hashem already knew this about you and anyway, HE was the One who planted it within you (so it's not really your fault that you have it, although you still have a responsibility to fix it).

So you can deal with the shame that way.

In fact, once you've discovered the middah and felt ashamed, you can now be really happy with this evidence that you are such a wonderful person who works on yourself so sincerely, and that Hashem loves you so much for doing so, and you've also sweetened dinim just by doing this.

Anyway, I don't blame anyone for never catching it.

It merely proved to me the importance of doing your own work on yourself in private with Hashem.

Conclusion

So I hope that clarifies things more.

Like I've said before, I think that therapy can be helpful for spot-cleaning specific issues.

After all, it helped me with a couple of specific issues and I've seen others helped too.

However, I've seen time and again that fixing a specific issue often does not lead to overall self-improvement.

Even feeling better or feeling happier does not automatically lead to overall better behavior.

(Along these lines, I could tell you a couple of stories of the hurtful behavior of cheerful people on antidepressants. Not the homicidal behavior of a minority, but the routine verbal behavior of many on antidepressants who indeed feel happier, but really should tape up their mouths. So they feel really good, but sometimes behave very badly WHILE feeling really good!)

If it addresses an actual middah, then yes, it can lead to self-improvement (although there are other middot that need to be addressed; rare is the person who only has one problematic middah).

And as has been mentioned in previous posts, statistics show that, for example, most divorced couples invested in marital therapy prior to divorce (i.e., the therapy did not help the marriage).

The same issues apply when going to any adviser for help.

Whether they realize it or not, many people invest in therapy to feel better, whether they actually become better people or not.

If you're in a situation in which you crave the relief gained from pouring out your heart to a sympathetic listener AND you can afford to pay someone for this...well, okay. I honestly don't know.

Ultimately, I think it's good to be aware of:

what you're really in therapy for
what the therapist can honestly do for you
what you can get out of it
how to deal the difference between feeling better & truly being a better person

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Stories of People who Overcome Pain & Trauma with Help from Regular People (and Not Professionals)

20/1/2020

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It's interesting that despite modern psychology's insistence that people cannot successfully overcome trauma & bad middot without therapy, you can actually run across people who've done just that.

It's not just that the victim didn't turn into a criminal; the former victim actually ended up becoming a good person.

Not a perfect person, but definitely a good person.

Nice. Moral. Compassionate.

The former victim became a decent spouse and parent.

Having said that, I do think that therapy with a goal-oriented emunadik therapist and a sincere and willing client can be very helpful (although the main work really needs to be done by the person him- or herself).

The problem is that many therapists (even frum ones) aren't necessarily emuna-oriented and many clients are not willing to do the real cheshbon hanefesh and middot work it takes to improve.

However, this idea that people cannot recover from traumatic experiences, that they cannot overcome their upbringing, without modern psychological theories and modern psychological treatment continues to be doggedly promoted, both in the secular world and the frum world.

This idea has become an absolute.

But I personally know or have read about people who overcame very difficult childhoods to become very decent people. Not perfect people, but certainly not dysfunctional people. Not even close.

And they did at least most of it without therapy.

Also, from the therapist's side of things...a person doesn't necessarily need a degree in psychology to help others.

Often, a caring friend with a strong sense of empathy, emotional intelligence, and emunah can do the job just as well if not better.

And what I discovered from reading Holocaust memoirs was that people were a lot more aware than we are given to believe.

And people were able to help each other.

A lot depended on how much the other cared about the person in trouble and whether they understood what that particular person needed.

Again, empathy & emotional intelligence played a huge role in helping the other.

(SPOILER ALERT: This post references the endings of several books you may or may not have read.)

Empathy & Validation as Natural Responses to Pain

In Holocaust memoirs that told of the period after Liberation, I noticed a recurring theme.

First of all, the survivors grouped together and repeatedly told their stories.

And everyone listened to each other empathetically.

This repeated outpouring of experiences, including lots of tears and non-judgmental listening, continued until the survivors no longer needed to do this.

It was a kind of purging of pain.

Interestingly, people who suffered through a death camp did not scoff at the pain of survivors of convents or others who, though they also suffered, had it much easier than those in a death camp.

A Death Camp Survivor Comforts a Survivor of the Convent

For example, in Behind the Walls, 15-year-old Chana ends up in a frum orphanage after having survived the Holocaust in a convent.

All the girls there are trying to rebuild their shattered lives.

One day, one of the other girls notices that Chana looks sad.

Annette, the survivor of the death camps, comes over to Chana and smiles at her understandingly and asks, gently, "Are you still 'there' in your memories?"

When Chana answers in the affirmative, Annette reassures her, "Don't worry. It's impossible to erase everything all at once. Slowly you'll free yourself. I am the same way."

This is astonishing empathy from a girl who survived torture and starvation while Chana lived in the relative safety and nourishment of the convent. Yes, most of the nuns were abusive and the convent was terribly cold in the winter while the food only fulfilled their minimum caloric needs...but it was still a nice refuge compared to the horrors of Auschwitz.

Annette goes on to say, "I understand that you didn't have it easy either."

How can Annette even compare the two? How is Annette so empathetic toward Chana's trauma when Annette's trauma was so much worse? Annette is obviously a genuinely caring & understanding young woman.

Then Annette reminds Chana that Annette's "there" was much worse than Chana's "there" – but not to put down Chana or invalidate Chana's pain.

On the contrary, Annette seeks to encourage Chana that if Annette and the other camp survivors can rehabilitate themselves, then Chana can too.

Then Annette gives an inspiring speech about the will to survive and to rebuild the Jewish people.

"I know it is hard to continue, but one must," Annette concludes.

Chana feels invigorated by Annette while the reader feels awed.

How is Annette so empathetic and encouraging of a girl who hadn't suffered nearly as much as she did?

It certainly wasn't because of anyone psychological theories! After all, these girls never learned psychology; they were only teenagers by the end of the War.

Annette simply possessed a wise & discerning heart, a good heart (which Pirke Avot tells us is the most important thing to have).

Post-Trauma Depression & How Survivors Dealt with It

A common & understandable response after the initial Liberation was depression.

In A Daughter of Two Mothers, twentysomething Leichu finds herself depressed around a month after Liberation.

She feels confused by and terribly ashamed of her own crying because she realizes that, hidden in a cave amid a beautiful forest by a Roma (gypsy) couple who treated her as if she was their own cherished daughter, Leichu got off quite lucky in comparison to her fellow Jews.

And while they came close to starvation at one point, Leichu and the Roma couple managed to have proper heating and delicious nourishing food most of the time.

But after Liberation, Leichu is surrounded by survivors of the ghettos and death camps.

So she feels ashamed of her grief.

Silently, Leichu cries and sinks into lethargy.

At one point, Mathili (a friend from before the War & a survivor of Auschwitz) decides that Leichu has been depressed for long enough.

She shouts at Leichu with "terrible screams" designed to jumpstart Leichu from her bed.

It works.

Once Leichu is on her feet, Mathili then switches to a loving & earnest approach. She implores Leichu to stop her obsessive thoughts of "What if I'd done this or what if I'd done that?" regarding Leichu's murdered mother.

Mathili then gives Leichu a beautiful speech of loving mussar, strengthening Leichu's emuna and reminding Leichu that "even though we don't understand, even though it is very, very hard for us – it was all done for our good somehow."

This is amazing emuna coming from a young woman who lost so much.

But from what I've read, it wasn't uncommon for fellow Holocaust survivors to allow each other that time to grieve and be depressed, then spur each other out of depression before losing themselves completely.

Again, the empathy, the understanding that grief & crying is acceptable & appropriate, but that at some point, one needs to be spurred out of it – where was it coming from?

There were no therapists around.

And while psychological theories proliferated in the early 20th Century, these young people would not have encountered the theories prior to the War, both because of their youth and their inaccessibility.

Because of their good sense and their caring hearts, they were able to do instinctively what psychologists claim is impossible without their theories.

Maybe It's Not Lack of Therapy That's The Problem, But Too Much Shallow Culture?

Interestingly, I once read that Holocaust survivors who came to Eretz Yisrael ended up better off than those who went to America.

Why?

Because in Eretz Yisrael, they were allowed to talk about their experiences.

In America, they were expected to repress them.

And sometimes the obtuseness survivors faced just made you go "Huh?"

For example, I remember reading one memoir in which the teenage survivor who ended up with relatives in the US was expected to go to sock hops and wear lipstick in order to forget her torture in Auschwitz. Her American family could not understand why she could not put the horrors behind her and immerse herself in the non-Jewish teeny-bopper lifestyle of the 1950s.

In Leah Kaufman's Live! Remember! Tell the World!, Leah survives the brutal Transnistria death march and is one of 3 survivors of Pechora, one of the most horrific death camps in Transnistria.

By age 10, Leah had seen her entire family die one by one, along with other truly horrific incidents. She needed to survive on her own in a cruel & genocidal world.

And with Hashem's Help, she did.

In 1947, Canada offered to accept over a thousand child survivors (on the condition that the Canadian Jewish Congress took full responsibility for their support) and Leah was one of them.

Though the director of the Jewish Immigrant Aide Society pondered how to greet the traumatized children in the most healing way possible, including preparing the aides with "social work techniques" designed with the traumatized children's needs in mind, Leah remembers the techniques and approaches as "empty, cold, and inappropriate."

The social workers also tried to get the children to open up about their experiences, but the children did not want to. (They did this upon the children's arrival, while the children were still en route to being settled, which is sort of strange, if you think about it.)

Leah was placed with a caring, yet secular, Jewish family who felt that speaking Yiddish at home was all they needed to preserve their Jewish continuity.

Immediately after they welcomed 15-year-old Leah into their family (perhaps they'd been advised to do so by well-meaning professionals), they asked Leah about her original family and what had happened to them.

Yet when Leah told them, this new family did not know how to respond to such horror.

They looked away silently before finally saying, "Maidele, du bist a groise fantazie – Little girl, you have a big imagination."

This unexpected response threw Leah into shock and made her determined to never speak of her past again. And she didn't until circumstances opened up that convinced her to speak out.

Nonetheless, the family continued to lavish material nurturing on Leah and even called her their "teire tochter – dear daughter."

Leah appreciated their dedication to her, even as she realized their limitations in giving her what she really needed emotionally.

In viewing the less healing response in North America, it's logical to assume that culture played a part. Even when psychology was considered and applied, it wasn't necessarily helpful (as in Leah's case).

Again, to facilitate healing, traumatized people really need to be dealt with via sincere warmth, acceptance, understanding of their individual needs, and emotional intelligence. As we see in the above examples, a teenage survivor of trauma herself could possess these traits while a trained professional could lack these traits.

(By the way, Leah is a truly remarkable & inspiring Jew. It is unfathomable that she came out of such horror and brutality with a personality so full of love, compassion, and emuna. In fact, I'm pretty sure I met her at one point, before I knew who she was, and found her to be a very warm, sweet, and sensitive person. You can see more about Leah in Choose Life: A Documentary about Leah Kaufman, but please be forewarned that some of the images included are extremely disturbing.)

A Heimish Chassidish Heart

When I was going through a hard time, a Yerushalmi chassidish acquaintance in her mid-20s called me.

She really spoke to my heart and I was both shocked and touched that she knew exactly what to say to me.

We came from such different backgrounds and there was no way she ever encountered therapy techniques.

We didn't even know each other so well.

How did she know that not only would it be good to call me, but also to know what to say?

When I asked her this later, she said that she simply sat down and thought about me, and what I must be feeling. After contemplating this for a while, she pondered what I might want.

Then she called me and said all that she said.

I was floored that someone would think about me like that when they already had a full life, and it taught me the real secret to reaching people in a healing manner: thinking about THEM – what's good for them, what's REALLY good for them, what THEY need, and so on.

I know I don't always succeed in doing this, but I think it's the correct goal.

And in the above examples, I think that's the difference in response.

When the Holocaust survivors were with people who fearlessly focused on their needs regardless of personal comfort, they received a genuinely helpful response.

When faced with people who cared, but could not step outside of themselves completely and could not let go of their own emotional comfort level, the survivors received a stunted response.

Dealing Properly with Unique Trauma

Returning to A Daughter of Two Mothers: Aside from the trauma of the Shoah, the book also shows how different people face other traumatic situations at different times.

Sometimes, they were handled wisely and sometimes not.

Leichu emphasizes that when her mother poured out her heart to Rivka Klar over the years, Rivka never told her not to cry. She accepted the tears and the pain, which is exactly what Leichu's mother needed & gave her comfort.

In another scene, Leichu confides in the Roma laundress (who later saves Leichu from the Nazis) that Leichu is actually adopted and expresses her anguish over this discovery.

The Roma woman simply hugs and rocks Leichu back and forth until Leichu calms down. Then the woman says some supportive and insightful words, which give Leichu a lot of comfort & encouragement.

Leichu is able to recover from her shock and go on with her life.

Later, when Leichu is with her real mother and struggling to adjust to the world of poverty with a loving widowed birth mother versus Leichu's previous world in an adoptive family with a upper-class mother and father in a life of luxury, Leichu again turns to the Roma laundress who grants Leichu more insight into her situation, then wisely says:

"You must accept this duality: that you enjoy your present life, yet miss your past life at one and the same time. That's the way it should be, that's exactly how you should feel, and you may well feel that way for a long time." (page 267)

This validation and insight was exactly what Leichu needed to hear, and it enabled her to go forward. (It is also obviously wise & true.)

Throughout the book, Leichu encounters different people throughout her struggles. Some respond unhelpfully. But it was amazing how many people did respond in a way that was validating, empathetic, and offered solutions & hands-on assistance that were genuinely helpful.

How did they manage this when they couldn't have possibly read any book on trauma or psychology, or have any experience with what Leichu was going through, whether it was dealing with her surprise discovery of her adoption or recovering from the Holocaust?

Again, I think the people who fearlessly and sincerely focused on what Leichu's real needs were managed to respond in a way that was genuinely helpful.

"Has Something Terrible Happened to You?"

As mentioned above, Leichu discovers she's adopted and this throws her into distress.

She becomes depressed and disconnects from her friends, her beloved nanny, and her schoolwork.

Eventually, her adoptive mother (who doesn't know that Leichu now knows the truth) takes her to the doctor.

After not finding anything physically wrong with Leichu, the doctor waits until the adoptive mother leaves the room to discuss tests with a nurse. He then sits down with Leichu and looks her in the eye.

"What is bothering you, Leichu?" he says. "Has something terrible happened to you?"

It's clear he's asking whether she has been abused in some way.

She tries to brush off the question, but the doctor refuses to be dismissed.

Not wanting to tell him about the traumatic discovery of her adoption, she simply says she discovered that "the world is full of thorns and thistles, and if there are flowers, they are hidden and surrounded by lots of thorns."

The doctor validates her perception of the world, then offers her thoughtful advice on how to navigate her way through "the garden of life without getting pricked too much."

The doctor's words sit well with Leichu and she throws herself into following his advice, which truly benefits her.

This was the 1930s in Budapest. Psychology was already established, though not nearly as developed as it is today. It makes sense that the doctor might have learned whatever psychology was available at that time.

However, modern psychology will tell you that prior to the, say, 1970s-80s, no one knew about abuse, so no one ever considered that possibility or talked about it, etc.

This also never made sense to me because of course people knew these things happened. Maybe they didn't think these things were common, but they certainly knew.

And clearly the doctor was aware of the possibility, as he clearly shows by his questioning.

He was also sensitive enough to realize that if Leichu hadn't confided in her adoptive mother about it, then Leichu would not reveal it in front of her, which is why the doctor waited until the woman left the room before sensitively confronting Leichu.

Now, how the doctor would handle the scenario had actual abuse been committed?

I have no idea.

But clearly, he was aware of the possibility and prepared to deal with it, and seemed genuinely concerned about it.

Tachlis: What is the Goal?

The intention of this post was not to bash well-meaning therapists who strive to help their clients heal from trauma and become emotionally healthy people.

Like I said, I think they can be helpful (although personal observation tells me that many are not as helpful as touted).

This post is more against the widely promoted idea that we were all helplessly dysfunctional until modern psychology came along to save us, and that therapy is the only solution for healing emotional pain.

And this is more in favor of the idea that normal caring people who possess emotional intelligence can be just as helpful, if not more so.

(In fact, you see that modern Western society is more dysfunctional now – with all the psychological theories and therapy available – than it used to be.)

And I think there is so much in modern psychology that is actually harmful. While I see people successfully dealing with 1 or 2 issues in therapy, they overall don't become better or nicer people (even though they often feel better).

I think that genuine compassion and caring, combined with emotional intelligence and rooted in emunah can take a person much farther in both helping others & helping oneself.

And I think it's those qualities we should be focusing on.

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Different Ways to Access Toras Avigdor (updated to correct link)

19/1/2020

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Here are different ways to access Toras Avigdor, according to your technological and format needs. Just for knowing, I do not receive any compensation in return for posting this. I just think that Rav Miller's daas is beneficial! (UPDATE: Link has been updated to home page rather than donate page; my mistake as I copied 'n' pasted the wrong link.)

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Encouraging Words from the Pele Yoetz

17/1/2020

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<<Previous

What Happens When Jews Yearn for the Very Culture that Enslaves Them

No Such Thing as Neutral

The Views of a Frum Anti-Zionist on Gentile Anti-Zionism

Increase the Light

How Can You Cast Out All That is Detestable?

Why Stay in Mitzrayim?

How Your Biggest Yetzer Hara Can Reveal Your Biggest Virtue

What's Really Good about You at the 49th Level of Tumah

What Does "Free Choice" Really Mean?

When You Cannot Even Move to Save Your Life

Teshuvah from Love Fixes Everything

How to Free Yourself from the Paralyzing Plague of Darkness

Final Thoughts & Plan of Action

The Profound Principles of Middah K'Neged Middah

Rav Miller's Profound Losses

Some Very Sharp Mussar

The Most Helpful Response to Jew-Hatred

Just the Act of Trying Reaps So Much Reward!

Going Back in Time for Some Personal Anecdotes

An Example of Truly Helpful Therapy for 1 Specific Issue

Lots of Money & Time with Very Little Benefit

Happier People aren't Necessarily Better People

Physical Abuse? Cured! Emotional Neglect? Well...

Who is the Focus?

Uh-Oh...I'm Even Worse Than I Thought!

Conclusion

Empathy & Validation as Natural Responses to Pain

A Death Camp Survivor Comforts a Survivor of the Convent

Post-Trauma Depression & How Survivors Dealt with It

Maybe It's Not Lack of Therapy That's The Problem, But Too Much Shallow Culture?

A Heimish Chassidish Heart

Dealing Properly with Unique Trauma

"Has Something Terrible Happened to You?"

Tachlis: What is the Goal?

Myrtle Rising

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