When I first came to Eretz Yisrael, I was totally secular.

By the time I made aliyah, I was a religious Zionist.

And I observed the state holidays, like Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) and Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day).

But as I drifted into the chareidi hashkafah, I learned that the whole custom with the siren was a non-Jewish observance, despite the awe-inspiring feeling and sight of the entire country coming to a stop in honor of those who weren't allowed to live to this day.

The charedi arguments made sense to me:
Tisha B'Av is the Jewish national day of mourning. And we mourn all Jews, without discrimination.

You can't say that those murdered in the Shoah deserve to be mourned more than those murdered by the brutes in the Chmelnitsky massacres or by the Romans and Babylonians during the Destructions of our Holy Temple.

You can't say that pre-State freedom fighters and IDF soldiers deserve to be remembered more than Maccabean soldiers or Jewish partisans.

However, the charedi rabbis also insisted that out in public, you must observe the siren's moment of silence because if you don't, those around you will interpret it as if you are spitting on the grave of those who were murdered.
And these feelings must be respected.

One charedi rabbi encouraged us to go to the Mount Herzl military cemetery on Yom Hazikaron.
He said it would be good for us to see this kind of sacrifice up close and to share the grief of our fellow Jews.
He said it would also be good to show other people there who mourning their friends and relatives on that day to see that we care, too.

So I went and it was indeed meaningful.

But responding to the siren inside my home where no one can be neither offended nor honored by whatever I do?

So...some people continue as usual, saving their mourning for Tisha B'Av in allegiance to millennia of Jewish tradition.

But some people pray.

Finally, I also decided to pray for Am Yisrael during that minute.

During the siren, I realized even more than Shabbat (unfortunately), the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael are totally quiet.

It's a moment with no TV, no iPhone, no radio, no bass-heavy music, no lashon hara or scoffing or even inane speech, no anger or irritability. Even people's thoughts would be purer at that moment, because what else could you be thinking about at that time?

Even better, a lot of people pray during that moment. Thousands of hearts and thoughts are directed toward Hashem at that exact moment.

So why shouldn't I also take advantage of that moment of national quiet?

May Hashem protect us all from any more destruction of any kind and bring Mashiach now.

(Go back to The Past 200 Years of Chinuch I: The Non-Jewish World.)

Without realizing it, the idea of “chinuch shel pa’am” (old-fashioned child education) in the minds of most people actually comprises a very narrow window of time in one of two specific locations comprised of Jews trapped within a specific economic status:

• early 20th Century, particularly pre-WWII, but not pre-WWI
• Russia and Poland
• poor

Furthermore, has anyone else noticed that this group was hit very hard by some of the worst spiritual onslaughts in Jewish history?

Haskalah, the Reform movement, the Conservative movement, Socialism, Communism, the mass immigrations to Western Europe and the Americas, Leftist secular Zionism (with a bit of anti-religious and anti-Sephardi eugenics)…

Without any sarcasm or derision intended, whatever methods used then during that narrow window of time didn’t work for a massive percentage of Jews.

If someone is promoting their chinuch method as “the original method used for raising children until Western psychology came along and ruined everything,” then I want to know if it is the method that produced the Chafetz Chaim or is it the method that produced the secular Communists?

(Also, as already stated in the previous post, Western science-based psychology actually came along and ruined everything at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, not the Sixties. The child psychology that started to form in the Sixties and reached its zenith in the Eighties was merely a reaction to the earlier form of Western child psychology.)

And as stated above, the poor weren’t always successful with raising their children while the rich weren’t always unsuccessful. Some children went off the derech in Poland and Russia while some children remained frum in Hungary and Germany.

And so on.

Furthermore, who else has noticed that the Sephardi communities in North Africa and the Middle East did not succumb to the Haskalah or Communism or Secularism or Reform "Judaism"?

Yes, they were affected somewhat by the Haskalah-influence in the 1950s. However, even the eugenicist onslaught by Torah-hating Leftist extremists against the Sephardim upon their arrival to Eretz Yisrael did not succeed in inculcating most Sephardim with the Torah-hatred and atheism found in many Jews from Eastern Europe at that time.

Jews in both groups have also noted that, generally speaking, even secular Sephardim are still rather traditional and express positive feelings toward God and the Torah.

Of course, I'm spouting broad generalities. There were (and still are) many courageously and marvelously frum Ashkenazim during the Haskalah and behind the Iron Curtain, and there are some rabidly secular Sephardim. But nonetheless, based on the general observation, maybe we should be investigating the chinuch methods used "pa'am" in Morocco or Iraq?

Furthermore, some of the methods used "pa'am" were induced by poverty and lack of technology. If you were washing laundry by hand (or scraping your pennies together to pay a laundress) and lugging water from a well, then yes, you were going to very strict with your kids about keeping their clothes clean. Circumstances insisted on this.

Likewise, if you were an underpaid malnourished cheder rebbi who needed to shuffle through snow in old boots to pick up some of your pupils and then come to a one-room hovel to teach 30 boys of all ages until evening, you might not be the most patient and caring teacher. (Unless, of course, you are Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky, who was an extraordinarily patient and understanding cheder rebbi back in Europe.)

When Rav Meir Shapiro revolutionized the yeshiva and cheder system in his area, he didn’t claim that’s how it was “pa’am”—because it wasn’t like that “pa’am”—at least not for the majority, who were poor (because cheders were often for the poor and thus weren’t funded well; wealthier children received private rebbis to their comfortable homes).

The rav saw that better conditions—and better teachers—were needed, so he went about creating and implementing an improved system. Yes, such improvements were certainly in the ruach of authentic Torah. And yes, there was a kind of tradition to it—basically, all students now learned in the same conditions that wealthy Jewish children generally had.

But Rav Shapiro was bringing the ideal attitudes and process shel pa’am, and not a system that developed out of lack of resources and necessity.

Even the revolutionary Beis Yaakov schools for girls had their predecessor in Rav Meir Lehman’s school for girls in Germany in the 1850s.

And while Jewish female literacy was often low, other Jewish daughters in history had been taught at home—sometimes on a very high level—by their parents or tutors. But no one took that into consideration and really, formal schooling for girls was unheard of. (To them, something that took place in Germany 70 years before wouldn’t have counted.)

There was no system “shel pa’am” on which to base Beis Yaakov. Sara Schenirer consulted with the rabbis of her day and based the curriculum on that. But she based her methods on Torah Judaism and emuna.

“Pa’am” in and of itself doesn’t legitimize anything.

It must be based on something in Torah and Chazal.

You can refer to traditional attitudes and guidance “shel pa’am”—such as Mishlei and the Mishna and so on. But the actual methods used often say more about the limited resources of that time than they do about recommended methods as per Chazal.

So next time someone is enthusing about a chinuch method based on the methods "shel pa'am," it's wise to wonder about the actual effectiveness of the method in the face of heavy trials and spiritual onslaughts (like what we face today too).

Romanticization and sentimentality have never been good tools of chinuch.
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Go back to The Past 200 Years of Chinuch I: The Non-Jewish World.

Go on to The Past 200 Years of Chinuch II: The Jewish World.
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In the Orthodox Jewish world, one of the most compelling ways to convince a mother of a particular child-rearing method is to insist that it is the method used "pa'am" or back in the olden days (i.e. before the Sixties).

• But were the methods genuinely effective?
• Did they truly reflect traditional values?
• Where did those methods really come from?
• And most of all, are those really the methods used "shel pa'am"...or are they, too, simply the same flawed science used today?

(Clarification: Not all science is wrong; a great deal of it is true and helpful. But science is also flawed in many respects - especially social science.)

I want to go through a brief history of chinuch/parenting methods, both in the Jewish and the non-Jewish worlds. (I’m focusing on the non-Jewish world in America because I don’t know enough about any other place to do it any justice.)

So let's start off with the non-Jewish world of parenting.
(The Jewish world of parenting and chinuch appears in its own post HERE.

In 19th Century America, parents based their methods on the Bible - specifically Proverbs.

The goal was to inculcate children with morals and Biblical values.

In other words, you wanted your child to be a morally upright person. So parents tried to both uphold in themselves and imbue their children with values such as loyalty, modesty, patience, independence, trustworthiness, honesty, responsibility, reliability, industriousness, neighborliness, and inner resilience.

From the other end, parents strove to distance their children from negative traits like vanity (yes, can you believe that vanity used to be despised?), selfishness, miserliness, duplicity, lying, fragility, and pansiness among others.

In fact, earlier in American history, the most popular names for the colonial settlers were either Biblical names (especially specifically Tanach names) or names like Reason, Constant, and Truth for boys and names like Chastity, Patience, Charity, and Modesty for girls.

Books and treatises on proper parenting existed, but a lot of it was Bible-based and self-evident.

And sure, those early Americans got stuff wrong because in order to understand "the Bible," you really need a knowledgeable, Hebrew-proficient Jew to explain it to you.
But they meant well and did the best they could.

In fact, the morality of that Bible-based American culture shines through its literature, particular its children’s literature.

For example, American literature tended to reflect morals and virtues while in comparison, British literature reflected more fantasy and pagan mythology. (Although American fantasy did exist and British literature, like The Jungle Book, contained morals.)

Compare popular American books of that time, like Little Women and Huckleberry Finn, to  popular British books of that time, like The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and The Princess and the Goblin. And ever since, the most popular children’s fantasies usually come from Great Britain.

Black Americans, freshly freed from slavery (but not from discrimination), also held firm to Biblical values and displayed admirable faith in God and heartfelt prayer.

Unfortunately, the 1890s brought about a movement to apply scientific principles to raising children. The term and concept of “adolescence” was also invented—to the detriment of society. (Previously, you had “youth” or “young people.”)

In 1894, eugenicist and head physician at New York's Babies Hospital (the leading hospital of its time) Dr. Luther Emmett Holt published the Care and Feeding of Children, which instructed mothers toward a rigid schedule of feeding, bathing, sleeping, and bowel movements, saying,

He also called rocking an “unnecessary and vicious practice.”

(While it’s hard to make a diagnosis decades later, descriptions of Dr. Holt sound like Aspergers: “he rarely smiled or laughed and appeared to be driven by a stern sense of duty… He expected the highest standards from his assistants but never gave praise or formed close friendships. Nor was he ever unkind.” Sometimes, those on the autistic spectrum recoil from physical touch and I can’t help wondering whether the doctor was projecting his own disposition onto all children. Furthermore - and in no connection to Aspergers - while he led the movement of the pasteurization of milk to prevent typhus and other epidemics, he was also was accused of conducting 1,000 tuberculin tests on sick and dying babies at the hospital.)

Using Holt as his inspiration, the father of behavioral psychology, Dr. John B. Watson, advised mothers regarding their children in his 1928 book Psychological Care of Infant and Child:

(Ironically, Dr. Watson’s daughter became a secret drinker who made several suicide attempts, one son became a successful Freudian psychiatrist before committing suicide, another son led “a rootless life,” while the fourth son ended up doing well in life after years of intensive therapy.)

Infant Care pamphlets based on these notions were distributed by the US government, which warned against “excessive” parental affection, advising parents to kiss their child only on the forehead and to limit hugs.

A lot of this was supposed to prevent disease and weakness.

This was the beginning of the end.

If you’ve met mothers from that generation, you’ll notice that many possess an absolute phobia of giving a child “attention” or “spoiling” them. In the compelling true story The Mountain Family, the author remembers her mother rebuking the delight she and her siblings were showing in the toddler’s antics by saying, “Don’t laugh, it just feeds the need for attention.”

I’m nauseatingly familiar with that attitude. It was incredibly prevalent with older people from that time period.

I also had an older relative who was obsessed about this. Though I had a plane ticket to visit her as she lay on her deathbed, I called her for fear I would arrive too late. She immediately asked about my baby, my beloved first. Forgetting who I was talking to, I started gushing, “Oh, he’s just fabulous! I can’t stop kissing and hugging him, he's just so wonderful!”

She chuckled knowingly, then said, “Oh, don’t do that—you’ll spoil him.”

“But he’s only five months old!” I protested.

“You’ll spoil him,” she gasped.

Until then, I hadn’t really realized how deeply ingrained this fear of “spoiling” was. I knew it was a major issue for that generation, but this was extreme. The lady was on her last legs, hooked up to machines, and all she could do was worry that I shouldn’t kiss and hug my infant? It’s profoundly disturbing.

(But after I read about Holt’s and Watson’s fear-mongering advice, I understood. Can you imagine if you were constantly warned by leading “experts” that showing your child affection would weaken the child, make him ill—perhaps even fatally so!—and cause him to become a bad person? That is pretty heavy stuff.)

Freudian concepts also twisted their way through all this.

Then Philip Wylie’s 1942 best-seller A Generation of Vipers stressed that overly protective dominant mothers and passive or absent fathers were the source of society’s ills.

So we see that at first, mothers were scared into being disease-obsessed, cold, rigid masters over their children. But 20 years later, being an overprotective and domineering mother was suddenly bad.  (Although Wylie got the problem with passive/absent fathers right.)

Let’s also not forget the discouragement of breastfeeding, trending since the 1890s. By the 1950s, breastfeeding was discouraged by both doctors and the media. One frum woman told me that doctors in the hospital who saw her trying to nurse her newborn compared her to a cow. But she ignored them and kept on going. “I just somehow knew that if Hashem gave this to mothers, it must be the right thing to do,” she said. “And I didn’t feel like a cow at all!”

Then along came Dr. Spock with Baby and Child Care in 1946, which encouraged mothers to trust themselves more and introduced a more relaxed (but not too relaxed) way of parenting that okayed physical affection, too.

While people like to blame Dr. Spock for the chinuch revolution of the Sixties, the truth is that the earlier parenting methods sparked it.

Amid Holt’s and Watson’s movements, other healthier advice popped up—such Dr. C Anderson Aldrich and Mary M. Aldrich’s 1938 Babies are Human Beings with the idea that:

But despite that window of wisdom, the cold and rigid parenting practices ruled.  

If you meet people from that generation, you’ll notice they are obsessed with children “manipulating” people. They even consider infants capable of manipulating fully grown adults. These people will accuse a kindergartner of “pushing” their “buttons” and “testing limits”—as if the kindergartner is behaving with full awareness of his or her behavior and the possible consequences. Muwahahaha! the devious 5-year-old must be thinking!

In reality, I’ve spoken with or read about many people who remember staring at the terrifying adult and thinking—or even saying aloud—“What buttons?! I didn’t touch any buttons, I promise! Just tell me what buttons and I’ll stop!” Because children are literal like that and not as devious and capable of complex thought as that generation was taught to see them.

Inner anger at the constant accusations of behavior they couldn’t possibly be cognitively capable of and being treated like demons obsessed with evil intent, in addition to the very real touch-deprivation—THIS is what probably sparked a rebellion in their descendents.

I’m going to harp on this a bit.

I keep hearing from well-meaning people that the chinuch/child-rearing upheaval we see today resulted from the introduction of psychology in the 1960s, along with a lot of other upheavals.

However, I strongly disagree with this as it never made sense to me.

The narrative goes something like this:
Everything was fine, everyone was happy—and then all of the sudden, normal intelligent decent people were incited to upend everything into a big stressful irrational mess?

No, it makes more sense that the deprivation and rigidity preceding the Sixties led to the insistence of many that “all we need is love!” and “peace, man!” and indulging children, thinking that letting children “be free” and “express themselves” without reserve, over-validating children’s opinions, and so on, are the battle-cries of people who feel severely wounded by the cold, rigid ways in which they grew up.

Especially for children who are born with a more deeply sensitive nature, cold and rigid parenting can make them feel dead inside. It can also make them extremely self-absorbed in an effort to give themselves what they so desperately need, but never received.

(The corrupting influences of radio, movies, and TV - yes, even the earliest and seemingly "innocent" movies - played an unseen yet powerful part in all this.)

Furthermore, if a child experienced abuse, they often received no support or validation, and hence, no healing. Now, I know that people today like to say that people didn’t know better back then about abuse OR healing, but the truth is that abuse of every kind has existed in every culture since time immemorial—tragically.

Prior to the Hollywood-influenced America, people were a lot more pragmatic and aware than people today like to think they were.

Furthermore, Freud really messed things up by insisting that stories of abuse were actually fantasies put forth by the victims (whom he obviously and wrongly saw as fixated tale-spinners).

So if you throw it all together, you have a lot of repressed pain and trauma just bursting for expression and healing.

Part of the reason why so many proponents of what they term “old-fashioned methods” (which largely are, as discussed above, actually pseudo-scientific methods promoted by eugenicists and other warped minds, which were at one point the “new and improved method!”) insist that we must return to these methods because “they worked!” is due to the surrounding decency in society at that time.

Even though TV and movies were already horribly corrupt, the corruption and promotion of indecent values was extremely subtle and had not yet transformed American society into the iridescent and perfumed cesspool it is today.

So it just never occurred to most people to act out in a way that many people act out today. In addition, “acting out” in those times carried severe penalties, both social and legal.

Yes, of course some of the child-rearing methods were genuinely effective and beneficial. And of course, there were also parents who genuinely cared about their children and possessed a lot of common-sense wisdom, good values, and effective parenting techniques.

But it’s a mistake to think that the child-rearing methods worked, when it was really society as a whole that “worked,” and that if we only went back to the child-rearing methods of the Fifties, everything would work out.

Based on everything written here, I honestly do not see much truth in that idea.

So next time someone insists that they are teaching or learning a chinuch method from the olden days or “shel pa’am,” you might be better off taking a moment to ponder what that really means before getting caught up in their enthusiasm.
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Go on to The Past 200 Years of Chinuch II: The Jewish World.

How is the victim culture or victim mentality created?

• By insisting that people are victims even when they’re not
• By excusing all bad behavior with the perpetrator’s story of suffering (which is likely real, but not an excuse)
• By insist on doing both the above regarding all your pet issues, even when you need to turn into a total hypocrite and contradict your own values.

 
Today, we’re just going to focus on the first:

• Insisting that people are victims even when they’re not.

When I was in high school, a teacher wanted to discuss in class discrimination against pregnant girls.

She wanted to highlight how pregnant girls were treated unequally compared to the guys who got them pregnant.

Now, my high school had a high rate of pregnant girls and none of us saw any discrimination or inequality.

But she insisted there was anyway.

So the teacher brought out the time-honored example:
“If a girl gets pregnant, she’s kicked off the cheerleading team. But the boy who got her pregnant can still play football.”

We all looked at each other. We’d heard this one a thousand times already, but only on forums impossible to confront—like TV programs.
(This was before you could tweet TV shows and stuff.)

Finally, one brave girl ventured to say what we were all thinking:
“Well, um, isn’t it dangerous for the girl and the baby to perform stuff like, you know, human pyramids and cartwheels, while pregnant?”

Ah! At last! At last someone asked that question! We'd always wondered, but could never ask. It was like the story in which a little boy finally pointed out that the emperor had no clothes.

Our brave classmate, Charlene, continued: “I mean, the guy isn’t pregnant, so he can play football. If he was pregnant, then being tackled and stuff would be dangerous and he’d get kicked off the team, too…right?” Hunched-shouldered, she looked around at us hopefully. We nodded and smiled reassuringly at her. That’s right, Charlene! You go, girl!

Then we looked expectantly at the teacher.

She looked startled for a moment, but quickly recovered and smiled superciliously. “But she’s not kicked off the team for health reasons,” said the teacher, “but because she’s pregnant.”

We looked at each other in confusion. Right! Because she’s pregnant! What’s wrong with that?

The teacher smirked at our seeming obtuseness. “It’s because they don’t want a pregnant girl on the team representing the school,” she explained. “It looks bad.”

“But you don’t even show at the beginning of pregnancy,” attempted another girl. “There’s no reason to kick a girl off the team because of how it looks because, um, you don't look pregnant.”

“Right!” said the teacher. “She’s only kicked off because she is pregnant, even though she’s not showing. The girl is penalized—but the boy is not.”

Now we were confused again.

“Well, that’s what I meant,” said that second girl. “I think it’s not healthy to be on the team when pregnant, like also at the beginning of pregnancy. Cheerleading is pretty strenuous and stuff. And maybe—maybe she could lose the baby.”

Then our hero, Charlene, said, “Also, do you even want to be doing backflips when you’re pregnant? I mean, don’t you get nauseous and stuff when you’re pregnant?”

“I think you’re tired a lot, too,” said another girl. “I think maybe you don’t feel like jumping up and down and waving pom-poms and stuff when you’re pregnant.”

“Okay,” said the teacher. “But she can just stand there. She doesn’t have to move.”

We all started exchanging Am I the only one who’s not getting this? glances again.

“So then what’s the point of being a cheerleader,” said Charlene, “if you can’t cheer or do any of the routines?”

The teacher gave another supercilious smile and said, “But the boy isn’t penalized at all. He still gets to continue his life as usual.”

“Because he’s not the one who’s pregnant,” said Charlene.

“Exactly,” said the teacher. “Society penalizes girls for getting pregnant. The girls are doing the same thing as boys, but the boys are never penalized.”

Huh?????

And then she went on with the class.

But the damage was already done.

She was one of the most popular teachers in school and these wacky condescending brainwashing episodes didn’t happen every day.

And while the first time, you might question the presumption, you stop questioning when it happens a lot—especially when it comes from someone you both like and respect.

When an idea is presented in a You’re-So-Stupid-If-You-Don’t-Get-This manner, only either a dim-witted or very gutsy and thoroughly informed person will challenge the idea.

She didn’t even address the issue of choice or healthy accountability.

Despite copious media propaganda to the contrary, EVERYONE in my generation knew since elementary school HOW babies are made AND how to PREVENT conception. All and any myths about preventing pregnancy were also addressed ad naseum. You couldn’t escape it. It was in school, in every teen magazine, on TV, and so on. The media and Leftist pundits wanted us all well-informed and we were.

So girls who got pregnant either did it on purpose or suffered from cognitive dissonance (i.e. “Yikes! But I never thought it would happen to ME!”).

The boys either cared or they didn’t. One even made it his goal to get one girl pregnant from every school in our district. And he succeeded.
(Thank you, Liberals and Feminists, for liberating jerks like him!)

But are cheerleaders somehow a special class of “girl”?
Are they somehow incapable of not preventing pregnancy?

As a side note, only girls can pretend to use birth control and then not actually use it.

This has happened countless times throughout history that a female has gotten pregnant on purpose after having promised her partner that she wouldn’t.

So maybe you have high school athletes who are being lied to by their girlfriends.

How about that, Ms. Lefty? So why should they male athletes be kicked off the team? Maybe she needs to advocate for an inquiry every time a cheerleader gets pregnant, to see whether the boyfriend was duped or not. After all, we don’t want boys getting kicked off the football team (or the chess team!) for no reason.
_________________________
Anyway, this is how the victim mentality develops.

The Leftists decide who the victim is and ignore straight-forward facts (like how somersaults and human pyramids are not recommended during pregnancy) and possible extenuating circumstances (like how it doesn’t always take two to tango).

At the beginning of 12th grade, a classmate informed me that Jaime was pregnant.

At first, I didn’t believe my classmate. I’d known Jaime since her nerdy junior high days. She was a straight-A student who’d been on honor roll since kindergarten. She’d played on the girls soccer team before becoming a cheerleader and was known to be intelligent, responsible, and mature. And she didn’t even date that much. In fact, I hadn’t known she had a boyfriend.

The classmate laughed at my disbelief. “Oh, you don’t really know Jaime,” she said. “When she was five, her mother came home with a new baby and Jaime said, ‘Okay, Mom, that last baby was yours. But this one’s mine!’”

That didn’t sound like something a five-year-old would say, but Jaime was always pretty advanced.

“Jaime has always wanted to have a baby,” said my classmate. “And she finally got the chance. She set out to do it and now she’s done it. Man, she is so happy and proud of herself.”

“What’s with the guy?” I asked. “Did he agree to this? Are they getting married?”

My classmate shrugged. “I don’t know if he knew she’d get pregnant. She doesn’t want to get married, she just wants a baby.”

Later, every time I saw Jaime in the hallway, she had a very smug look on her face. Why was she so pleased with herself? I don't know. After all, for most girls, acing calculus is much harder than getting pregnant.

Anyway, it’s hard to imagine Jaime doing this prior to the Liberation movements. I mean, she would’ve at least gotten married first.

(Thanks so much, Liberals and Feminists, for liberating girls like Jaime!)

And I can’t remember what Jaime did regarding her cheerleading. Ms. Lefty became the cheerleading coach and I seem to remember Jaime cheerfully sitting on off to the side with her pom-poms, but she dropped cheerleading after that—and why wouldn’t she? I mean, I've been pregnant several times and believe me, cheerleading is the last thing I'd want to do. Heck, just getting up off the sofa seems hard enough at times.

Okay, that's all I wanted to say for now.

Who do you think is really the victim here?

Over the past couple of months, I repeatedly found myself in situations that hit all my weakest spots.

Sometimes, you find yourself in a situation so painful and frustrating that, no matter how much you believe in Torah values and spiritual methods, you just shut down from within.

You can hardly think, you can't really move, and if you speak, you might scream.
Or cry.

And you can't get away from it while it's happening.

And it happens several times!

And it's a nisayon that you have a loooooong history of failing at.

(This can happen at work, within family or family visits, with neighbors, with school, etc.)

Anyway, that's what happened to me and I just couldn't do all the things you're supposed to do in that situation.

I couldn't even say "thank you" and praise Hashem knowing that everything is from Him and for my ultimate benefit, let alone daven (either for them or myself) or dance or give the benefit of the doubt or even think, "This is somehow for my very best" or anything else that is spiritually correct and helpful to do.

And I mean even after the situation was technically over, but still lingering in my soul.

All I could manage was a thumbs-up. Literally. When no one was looking, I managed to curl my fingers closed and stick up my thumb toward Heaven.

And you know what?

After doing that several times over a few days, I could feel the nisayon lightening up.

In fact, the situations somewhat improved.

It really did get easier and less intense. I could feel the tikkun flowing and the dinim sweetening.

But a year ago, I wouldn't have been able to manage even a thumbs-up that in that kind of situation. In that particular kind of nisayon, I still folded.

So for me on my level, this is progress: a secret little thumbs-up ("Like!") to God.

And it works because Hashem knows that I'm not bigger or better than this.

Think about it: God is totally Omnipotent, All-Powerful, the King of kings, Wholly Compassionate, All-Knowing, and the Source of Everything You Have.

He deserves everything and anything you can give Him: your heart, your thoughts, your body...even your life, if necessary al Kiddush Hashem (for the sanctification of His Name).

And yet, if all you on your pathetic level (speaking for myself) can manage is something that resembles the "Like!" icon on Facebook, then that's a merit in His Eyes.

And it gives Him nachat while also giving you rectification and blessing.

(How to Serve Hashem from a Place of Constriction explains what's going on with that kind of situation. Wish I'd known it then!)

Rebbe Nachman mentioned that spiritual effort is like a wheel in which all the spokes are all so close together that there's only a hairsbreadth's space between them. But the farther out the spokes extend, the wider the space expands between them.

So the miniscule degree between one spoke and another at the bottom actualizes a major span the higher it goes.

And that's the truth.

So if all you can manage is the tiniest gesture of "Like!", then just do that and feel happy about it.

In my younger days, I found myself in a very stressful situation while raising two small children.

I decided on a method that I felt would compensate the children as best as possible for all the stress.

When I mentioned it to a rebbetzin friend of mine, she praised my good intentions before casually explaining that what would really be best for the kids was a different method, one that would grant them more security and resilience and be more in the way of “educate the youth according to his way so that in his old age, he won’t depart from it.”

But I had powerfully negative associations with the method she recommended, so rather than questioning her more about to see how it could work in a positive way, I remained silent while mentally dismissing her recommendation.

Around a year later found me with regrets and paying a price for doing things my way, and I realized that she had been right.

I called her to tell her that I regretted not having listened to her, and that she really had been right, and I thanked her for having tried to help me.

“It’s fine,” she said. “Don’t be too hard on yourself about it. Everything’s from Hashem anyway, so you and your kids were meant to go with that method and not another. Everything will work out anyway.”

“No, but I really should have heard you out,” I said. “I really regret it now.”

“If you really should have heard me out, then Hashem would’ve had you do that. He didn’t. He obviously wanted you to do something else, so it’s fine.”

I had never had anyone respond so graciously before and with such an admirable lack of ego-investment. I didn’t know what to say.

She continued, “I mean, it’s really nice if you realized you’ve made a mistake to admit it and try to fix it, and it’s really nice of you to call me to tell me—good for you! You’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing and Hashem is doing what He’s supposed to be doing. And I did what I was supposed to do. Everything’s running right according to plan!” She laughed.

“You’re being really nice about it,” I said. “I mean, I don’t feel judged or condemned at all. In fact, you’re making me feel good about everything, even though I messed up.”

“Well, if you’re a good person, then why shouldn’t you feel good?” she said. “Anyway, what you really have to understand is that life is a journey. And we can never know what someone else’s journey is supposed to be. All we can do is give others our best shot, but then realize that they need to go where Hashem takes them. We can’t know exactly where that is or how Hashem wants them to get there.”

This really changed the way I think. It’s so important to step back and give other people the room to grow at the pace and in the direction that they need. I’m not saying that I’m perfect about this, but knowing that other people have a journey that I’m not privy to has enabled me to let go and step back after saying what I think about something or to remain silent when they’re processing something instead of me jumping in to “correct” them.

Of course, there are also times when we need to hold firm and be tough about a position.

But many times, trying to force people onto a certain path is tinged by our own need for control and validation.

We see that people need to go through certain stages in life, like infanthood, toddlerhood, etc., and that it would, for example, be terrible to rush a 3-month-old into walking and eating solids.

Then there are individual stages. People need to work things out that you don’t. Or you need to work through certain issues that other people don’t. Or one person needs to work through those issues in one way while another person needs to work through them in a different way—and at a different pace.

And sometimes, the person who you think is lagging behind you ends up sailing past you to a finish line that is much farther beyond your own finish line.

But yes, there is a general framework.

For example, all Jews must keep Shabbat. So I have no problem encouraging another Jew to keep Shabbat according to the laws expounded on in the Shulchan Aruch. But must that Jew keep Shabbat in exactly the way that I do—taking it in at the time I do (if I take it in very early), taking it out when I do (if I take it out at the later Rabbeinu Tam time), eating the foods that I do, and conducting the meals as I do (some families emphasize singing more, some emphasize divrei Torah more, some emphasize hospitality, etc.)?

No, they don't need to keep Shabbat in exactly the style that I do.

Likewise, when people start becoming frum, they take on different laws at different phases of their teshuvah.

For example, many girls take on some form of modest dress right away. But I’ve known others who started off with a serious commitment to the laws of lashon hara and were strictly watching their mouths and keeping Shabbat long before they transitioned from denim pants to flowing skirts.

There are guys who start wearing a talit katan (with the tzitzit tucked in and out of sight) and keep Shabbat long before they’ll start wearing a kippah outside of strictly religious ceremonies.

After Rabbi Wallerstein advised people to keep a daily gratitude journal, I started having two of my children write down 5 good things they experienced that day as part of our bedtime routine.

One child decided to draw his experiences instead of writing them.

Irrationally, I initially found this irksome.
(Well, not totally irrationally; sketching the experiences took a lot more time than writing, which significantly delayed bedtime.)

I pointed out that his pictures were taking up several pages at a time in his journal and that drawing was taking much longer than writing. But mostly, I felt like “This isn’t being done right. This isn’t how you’re supposed to be doing this. Therefore, maybe this exercise in gratitude won’t be as effective!”

Then I realized that my 10-year-old had a right (and maybe even an obligation) to express his neshamah according to its own Divinely imbued dictates. And that maybe drawing was even better than writing as far as implanting gratitude into his soul. Who knows? Anyway, I’m sure that Hashem had a lot of nachat from seeing His Kindnesses illustrated in such whimsical and copious detail...and what Hashem thinks is what’s most important.

(Although I did limit the time in which he had to draw and cut it down to 2 or 3 things rather than 5. I mean, the kid did have to go to bed at some point.)

So yeah, we can know in a general sense what direction people need to take. The Torah, the Shulchan Aruch, the mussar books all guide us.

But we can’t necessarily know exactly which path they need to take to get there, nor the speed nor grace with which they’re supposed to travel that path.

Like I said, I’m not perfect about this either. I’ve pushed when I should’ve held back and held back when maybe I should have pushed.

And I also get caught up in what I assume is a “must,” but is actually a “maybe.”

But the awareness that Hashem is running things so that I (nor anyone else) don’t have to? That really helps.

In the last two posts (Hashem-Love vs. Self-Love, Self-Acceptance, Self-Esteem, Etc. and Hashem and You: The Real Love Story), we discussed how developing a relationship with Hashem and increasing feelings of love toward Hashem is at the core of any self-improvement healing program as per the Jewish Sages.

And while taking shortcuts (like focusing on self-esteem, self-worth, self-compassion, self-forgiveness, self-image, self-acceptance, and so on) can produce positive results, they ultimately cannot bring you to your full potential and healing. The self-introspection necessary to rectify yourself and to achieve true teshuvah is impossible without clinging to God in the awareness that He loves you with an Indestructible and Eternal Bond of Love.
 
So if there is only to gain and nothing to lose by loving and accepting love from Hashem, then why don’t people simply head down the road of Ahavat Hashem/Love of God?
 
There are lots of reasons:

• Previous traumas and experiences that make you feel you can’t trust God, that God is scary, or that He even hates you, chas v’shalom.
• It feels unachievably far from your present state.
• It doesn’t really sound Jewish because Christians talk about “love” all the time and you haven’t heard Jews talk about love within a religious context.
• You may never have experienced love or only experienced exploitation and abuse in the guise of “love” and have no idea how to love anyone.
• People you respect encourage you in another direction (like the hyphenated “self-” way) because those people, despite their own goodness and good intentions, cannot relate to the concept of ahavat Hashem.
• Following on the previous reason, people you respect insist that this is not even attainable and only for tzaddikim.
• You have no clue how to even start, so you don’t bother even trying.
• It’s rarely discussed in modern-day lectures and books, so you either didn’t know about it OR you know, but didn’t realize how essential it is.

 
And probably other reasons that I didn't think of.

And yes, I feel weird writing about this topic because I am just as flawed and wonky as anyone else and am definitely not example of an ohev/et Hashem. I discovered the necessity of ahavat Hashem pretty late in the game because of some of the above reasons.

My own fork-in-the-road came when I started reading a lot of classic Jewish sources and could no longer maintain my state of denial and the fact that loving Hashem is expounded on at length in millennia of Torah literature regarding it's essential necessity and truth.

However, just the little attempts I’ve made at loving Hashem have produced undeniable results and I'd be happy if everyone else could benefit at least as much as I have - if not more!
 
So let’s start with the big questions:

Yes, absolutely. This is a Torah command we repeat several times a day:

And the above is just one of the most well-known examples.

Judaism is full of exhortations to cleave to Hashem. Chassidus has run with this idea and contains copious teachings on the importance of “deveikus” - cleaving to Hashem.

So you're halachically obligated to consciously and actively try, even if you can't relate to it at all.
(If "can't relate to it at all" describes you as it once described me, then please note that toward the end of the post, you'll find suggestions for getting yourself started according to your individual disposition and idiosyncrasies.)

Luckily, this isn’t an all-or-nothing bet. Any attempt at loving Hashem reaps happy rewards. The mere act of trying to form a loving relationship with Hashem, however awkwardly or inconsistently, automatically makes you a better and happier person.

Depending on where your starting point is, you may not become a good or happy person immediately, but you will be better or happier than you were.

The following may sound odd, but if you dismiss this Torah mitzvah (as many people mistakenly do) as something “only tzaddikim do,” or if you only acknowledge this mitzvah in word, but make no conscious effort in deed, it’s really no different than a Jew who claims to be frum, but then dismisses Shabbat as “only for tzaddikim” or insists that keeping kosher is “too hard and not for normal people on our level” or that keeping taharat hamishpacha is not for people in our generation (which is what the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements do).

For example, if you are a Sabbath-observant Jew, you likely do not keep Shabbat perfectly, but that doesn’t stop you from trying, right? I mean, have you ever accidentally hit a light switch on Shabbat? Made your morning coffee straight from a kli rishon? Felt sad or gotten angry? (Remember, joy is an obligation on Shabbat while sadness and anger are strictly forbidden.) Yet you don’t brush off Sabbath observance as “only for tzaddikim.”

So the same effort applies with this mitzvah, too.

Let’s ask the expert himself: Rabbeinu Bachya ben Yosef ibn Paquda (circa 1040).
In Chapter 4 of the Gate of Love of Hashem in Duties of the Heart, Rabbeinu Bachya lists 3 types of love, then says that only the third is not possible for every person. “Nature and instinct work against it,” he explains.

Yet he insists:
“The first two kinds, however, are within the grasp of most people, provided they work hard at the preliminaries cited earlier in this gate.”
(Feldheim translation)

The 3 kinds of love are:

• Love for which it is easy to give up one’s money
• Love for which it is easy to give up part of one’s body and all one’s money
• Love for which it is easy to give up one's money, body, and soul (i.e. your life)
  

Rabbeinu Bachya explains that Avraham Avinu achieved all these levels, but that realistically speaking, most of us can only hope to reach the first two.

Starting Out in Thought:
The first thing you can do is start thinking of things in your life which benefit you and for which you can be grateful. Praise Hashem and thank Him for whatever you have.

Again, the idea of praising and thanking God is king all throughout Torah literature.

As one starting point, you can think of all the things He has done for you and continues to do for you.

In fact, Rabbeinu Bachya himself lists 30 topics you can cover with Hashem in the section called Gate of Self-Accounting. You can use those as your springboard.

For more ideas on getting started with baby steps, you can read books written on this topic for regular people, like:

• Garden of Emuna
• The How, What, and Why of Talking to God (available here as a free download and can be read within an hour, so you can be on your way toward more love pretty quickly)
• Talk to God and Fix Your Health, (which includes fixing your mental and spiritual health too)
• I've also been going through Rivka Levy's 49 Days: An Interactive Journal of Self-Development and have already found several helpful springboard ideas and topics.
• Orit Esther Riter's book Turnaround: 180 Degrees in 180 Days also offers a variety of helpful tips for getting started in a loving relationship with Hashem.

There are other books written for English-speaking lay people on how to get started, but I can't remember them right now.

Any mussar book (Duties of the Heart, Pathways of the Just, Ways of the Tzaddikim, The Way of God, The Gates of Repentance, Palm Tree of Devorah) or any classic Chassidic book (such as the Tanya of Chabad/Lubavitch or Likutei Moharan of Breslov) can explain the importance of trying to love Hashem and advise you how to go about it. In particular, Breslov books encourage you to connect with God despite intense feelings of unworthiness, shame, and self-loathing.

Starting Out with Action

• You can tell Hashem you love Him.
• Blow Him kisses.
• Sing to Him.
• Dance for Him.
• Play music for Him.
• Write poetry to Him.
• Give Him a thumbs-up as you go about your day.
• Paint or sketch Him a picture of your feelings of love or gratitude.
• Read Shir HaShirim as if it's an actual exchange between you and Hashem.

People don't always realize that Judaism actually provides soul-expression for love. Sefardim in particular possess a whole tradition of piyutim, which are basically love songs to God. An Invitation to Piyut (H/T Hava haAharonah-The Last Eve) provides you with the words and melodies to many piyutim.

Some piyutim, like Yedid Nefesh, are well-known across the Jewish world, among both the Sefardi and the Ashkenazi communities.

(Composed around 500 years ago, Yedid Nefesh is a particularly stirring love-poem to God with particularly beautiful melodies. Here is Yedid Nefesh in translation. Here it is in transliteration. And here is a selection of its melodies; scroll down to #9. The Lev Tahor acappella group also has a very nice version of Yedid Nefesh.)

You can read piyutim or sing them as if you were actually singing or reading to your one great love of a lifetime.

In the Bakashah prayer composed by Rabbeinu Bachya at the end of Duties of the Heart, he strongly advises you to sing to Hashem.

Of course these are all just suggestions. Feel free to start off expressing yourself according to the nature Hashem planted within you.

Some people understandably feel extremely awkward or silly getting all lovey-dovey with God, but this is something that is incredibly powerful and sweetens harsh judgments hanging all over the world.

You don’t even need to intend your expressions of love as a merit for the Jewish people, yourself, or the world (although you certainly can if you wish!). Just doing it and getting yourself into that state is good enough, as far as God goes.

And the truth is, even a very unspiritual and disconnected person can activate a feeling of love for Hashem, even if it’s just for one fleeting second.

Women may have an easier time accessing this state than men due to women’s innate tendency toward emotional experience and expression.
 
Finally, like everything else in spiritual work, this is a process. It’s perfectly normal to fall on your face, to throw in the towel temporarily, to careen from “I absolutely positively ADORE you, Hashem!” to “AAAACK! How could You do this to me??!!!” and anything else.

The main thing is to try.

Torah Judaism: The REAL Religion of Love

In Hashem-Love vs. Self-Love, Etc., we discussed how self-esteem, self-love, self-compassion, self-acceptance, and all the other hyphenated psycho-scientific “self” terms aren’t discussed in Jewish mussar literature as the key to self-improvement and emotional healing.
 



The exception is self-image, but not the kind of self-image Western psychology advises you to develop, but the self-image of you as a holy person with a pristine soul and a wonderful Yetzer Tov, a person whose flaws and bad inclinations are just an extraneous layer, a “shell” that isn’t the real you at all.
 
No matter how horrible you are or what you’ve done, you still possess powerfully positive traits in addition to your negative ones. Any negative traits like selfishness, arrogance, nastiness, etc. are just a klippah (extraneous layer) over your jewel-like qualities and over your untainted Divine soul.
 
But maybe as you are behaving now, you really aren’t loveable.
Or esteemable.
Or respectable.
Or acceptable.
Or whatever other feel-good term you’d like to hyphenate to “self.”
(Or maybe you really are a completely righteous person. I don’t know. I don’t know you.)

Yet despite all and any of the negative traits and behaviors that may be mucking up your soul, Hashem still loves you more than you could ever love anyone else, even your own child, even your own Prince Charming or Dreamgirl, or even your own favorite cuddly pet.

Picture it like this:

Let’s say that you decided to swim in a pool of sewage, even though the person who loves you most in the world has cautioned you a million times NOT to frolic in sewage because it is dangerously unhealthy. And the person who loves you most in the world even repeatedly detailed to you the exact kinds of diseases and skin conditions and even deaths you can expect after immersing yourself in sewage. AND you have even almost drowned several times in the sewage.

Yet you insist on doing it anyway.

(I know that sounds gross and preposterous, but spiritually speaking, that is exactly what many of us are doing or have done.)

Despite your revolting obstinacy, this same person continues to rescue you every single time you cry out while drowning. And this person sits right next to you even though you reek like I-don’t-want-to-say-what.

And this person even lovingly hugs you tightly in all your repulsive filth and stench while saying, “No matter how disgusting you look, smell, and feel, I still love you more than anyone else in the whole world. I don’t want anyone else but you. And not only that, I want to raise you up and crown you with royalty, and give you the best of everything. I want to tell everybody that you are mine and that I love you most of all.”
_________________________
 
That is our relationship with God.
 
The above parable isn’t my invention. The theme of a besmirched, underserving potential prince or princess rescued and cherished by a king can be found throughout mussar literature and Chassidus.
 
You can be a psychopath, and Hashem will still be there for you, ready to accept any baby steps you choose to take in His Direction.
 
So the three important truths of human nature are:
1) Hashem planted any and all flaws and negative tendencies within you. The “real you” is not the bad stuff you think or do. Whether you were born with those negative traits or whether you developed them in response to trauma and abuse, they are from Hashem and not your fault.

2) The process of rectifying your flaws is the main reason why you exist in This World.

3) Hashem loves you so profoundly and more than any human being ever could, and tapping into that love is the key to healing and self-improvement.
 
Internalizing this reality is what enables us to do that kind of onerous self-introspection and self-refinement necessary to improve ourselves and fulfill whatever potential God imbued within each one of us.

I grew up with notion of self-love as being the key to being a happy, good, and successful person.

One of my favorite songs was sung by Whitney Houston with the chorus:
"Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all!"

(Prior to the Seventies, American society emphasized self-discipline and self-respect as the key to being a happy, good, and successful person.)

"Low self-esteem" was deemed the root of many destructive behaviors.
(It is indeed part of a destructive behavioral pattern, but the solution is not praise, positive self-image, and to hyper-focus on self-esteem—as well-meaning researchers insisted at that time, only to backtrack more recently.)

Then as time went by, psychologists and other social scientists realized that loving and esteeming yourself doesn’t necessarily make you a better person or help you live a better life. So in recent years, the term “self-compassion” has been popping up more and more with, yet again, extremely convincing explanations as to why THIS is the key to happiness, goodness, and success.

And still, there is still a lot of talk about accepting yourself, loving yourself, appreciating yourself, developing a positive self-image, and so on.

Self, self, self, self.

Additionally, any frum psychologist, coach, adviser, or any other frum professional in the field will tell you the same thing.

And as far as I can tell, all the people writing books, articles, or offering therapy along these lines are truly well-intended. They genuinely want to help people and the guidance they offer does often helps to a certain extent - particularly if the professional offering the method is a truly caring person.

The thing is that over the years, after reading a lot of Tanach, commentaries, mussar books and the like, I just can't see where Jewish sources emphasize self-love, self-worth, self-compassion, self-esteem, self-acceptance, etc.

It's just not there as far as I can tell.

True, I'm no expert. But if the whole emphasis on self-(fill-in-the-blank) was so crucial to healing and self-improvement, I should have come across it by now within the centuries of Jewish writings on this topic.

Yet all these writings just don’t use terms or describe ideas resembling that of Western psychology described above as far as I’ve ever seen.

(The exception seems to be the idea of a positive self-image. While the Sages don't use that particular term, they do emphasize the fact your neshamah is pure and that you have exalted potential, and that you can succeed in reaching that potential if you really try, and that you are obligated to see yourself in that light.)

And when well-meaning frum professionals discuss all this, they tend to focus on one sentence within Rabbeinu Yonah’s book Gates of Teshuvah. (I think it’s the part in which he explains how low self-esteem leads to a superiority complex because a person puffed up with arrogance got that way because he or she felt compelled to cover up his feelings of low self-worth with lots of fake superiority.) What about the rest of Gates of Teshuvah? In Breslov, Rebbe Nachman recommends that a depressed and despairing penitent find at least one positive trait within himself and of course, the story of The Prince Made Entirely of Precious Gems symbolizes the jewels of goodness hidden within every Jew.
(This is in line with the idea of positive self-image based our Sages' stipulations, and not that of Western psychology.)
But what about the rest of Breslov's Likutei Moharan and everything written therein?
There is a lot more to Rabbeinu Yonah's teachings and Breslov than what is cherry-picked by well-meaning advisers and therapists.

Or they insist that the recommendations by Western psychology are the same as in mussar literature, but that Western psychology presents it in a language we can understand.
(Again, there is some truth in this, but not as much as they like to think.)

Or frum advisers fall back on ye olde favorites:

• “That was then, but we can’t do that now.”

Or:

• “That’s only for tzaddikim, not regular people like us.”

Yet taking one sentence out of the vast treasury of mussar doesn't justify the solutions offered by Western psychology. What about all the other hundreds of thousands of sentences of mussar?

Furthermore, taking the idea of the hidden beautiful potential we all possess is still very different than the hyphenated “self” that keeps popping up (however well-intended) all over the science of self-improvement.

With the vast literature Judaism possesses regarding teshuvah (the main form of human self-improvement), could it be that the answer is only in one or two paragraphs in a couple of traditional sources that "happen" to jive with modern-day psycho-science?

Yet there is another powerful and common theme running through the entire Tanach, rabbinical commentary, and mussar books:

Divine Love

• the love that Hashem has for you and the love that you should ideally feel for Him.

Many mussar books dedicate entire chapters to the idea of Love.

Yet rather than emphasizing how to love and accept yourself, they focus on loving and accepting God.

Not surprisingly, loving and accepting God leads to loving and accepting both yourself and others, it leads to compassion for all creatures - and not the other way around.

This is what all the Sages seem to be saying.

Yes, you can work on self-compassion (or self-love or self-esteem or self-acceptance or self-worth or your self-image) and you can also work on general compassion (or love or esteem or acceptance) for others.

But it seems like doing so can only take you so far.

Trusting in Hashem’s Love and Omnipotence roots you in the knowledge that whether your bad  traits are innate or whether they are traumatic reactions to traumatic experiences, they aren’t your fault because HASHEM designated you and your faults that way.

So good-bye toxic shame!

However, while your bad traits aren’t your fault, they are still your responsibility to fix—a holy assignment directly from Hashem Himself with which He is both Happy and Willing to help you as much as you need.

Everything is about Hashem, everything is from Hashem, and everything He does is beneficial, so you might as well throw yourself on Him and start to love Him back.

(And yes, this is difficult and painful if you’ve had a lot of pain and abuse in your life.)

The problem is that by focusing on self, you’re not getting to the root of the issue.

A lot of people walk around today with crushing feelings of toxic shame. Toxic shame prevents you from being a decent person. All that inner toxic waste comes leaking out in a variety of ways: cutting comments, sneers, smirks, passive-aggression, verbal attacks, self-harming behaviors (cutting, addictions, eating disorders, etc.) and even violence.

Is a sneering, mean, manipulative, or violent person particularly loveable?
Respectable?
Should we accept them as they are?
Should they accept themselves as they are?

No.

And believe me, I used to be convinced that you could love, accept, and nurture another person into a state of better emotional health.

I used to believe that people who behaved badly didn't really want to behave that way, and that if you showed them an alternative, they would change. (This is sometimes true, but often not.)

I found out the hard and painful way that you can’t. Regardless of how much goodness they possess underneath it all, you just can’t bring it out of them no matter how much you try to love and nurture their hidden—unless they actively want it.

However, you can pray them into a better state, if God wills it. But in most cases, you can never love and encourage that person enough to heal them, no matter how much you focus on their good qualities and their very real potential.

And therefore, I’m not sure whether you can nurture or love yourself into a better state either. (Literally, I'm not sure.)

But you can pray yourself into a better state.

And the most powerful kind of prayer comes from a loving heart.

So maybe in your current state, you aren’t so loveable.
Maybe you really are acting like a selfish, uncaring, arrogant, and nasty person.

(And again, if you are acting this way, please remember that all your selfishness, callousness, arrogance, and nastiness came from Hashem—either He planted those traits as innate within you OR He designed you to respond that way to traumatic experiences in order to overcome them. Why? Something in the experience of fixing those traits repairs past-life mistakes, cleanses your soul, and earns you spiritual reward you wouldn’t otherwise deserve. Yay!)
 
So this is the truth as written throughout Chazal.
 
But in order to love Hashem back, you need to get to know Him better and develop a close relationship.
 
In a nutshell, giving God lots of compliments, focusing on the Good in Him, and having heart-to-heart talks with Him, and sharing yourself and letting Him share Himself is what develops your relationship with Him (as with any relationship),  and increases both your love for Him and your awareness of His Infinite Love for You.
 
But that's in a nutshell. Practically speaking, there’s a lot more to it than that, which I’ll be addressing in upcoming posts.

On April 9, my Internet connection failed.

Our telephone is connected to the Internet, so that failed too.

Because of Pesach, no technician was able to get to us until this morning, April 19.

Fortunately, we have cell phones, so a dead house phone wasn't terrible, but there was no email or other forms of advanced technology for 10 days.

(My and my husband's cell phones don't have Internet.)

At first, I felt frustrated and inconvenienced. And desperate. Yet I thanked Hashem for the disconnect. However, this is what you might call "giving in order to get." Simplistically, I thought that if I blessed Hashem for the "bad," He would quickly get my connection up and running.

He didn't.

Interestingly, after a few days, I started to enjoy my disconnected state. No phone calls and no surfing or blogging or emails.

By the time the company could send a technician, I was blase about it. "Whenever," I said to my husband.

The tech lull ended up being beneficial and gained some insights into stuff I needed to adjust in myself that I wouldn't have gained if the lull had "only" been, say, 3 days or even 7 days.

A friend of mine expressed her gladness that this Pesach, I ended up with a "Festival of Internet Freedom."

She's  right. I did.

Just what I'd been davening for, but didn't realize how Hashem would work it from His End.