One Elul, in preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I got hit with the idea to write out a cheshbon hanefesh (self-accounting) as a kind of pro-con list.

I think the original idea was to write out a list of things for which I was grateful about my life, but I wanted the cheshbon hanefesh aspect too, so I tore out a piece of notebook paper and scrawled a line down the middle.

In the left-hand column, I wrote:
Things for which I'm grateful/Things I like about my life.

(Because I couldn't make up my mind about exactly what that column should represent.)

In the right-hand column, I wrote:
Things I dislike about myself & my life/Things I wish I could change

(Again, I couldn't quite make up my mind, so I just wrote out a category that would cover everything I meant.)

And then I started filling out each category, sometimes bouncing back and forth between the two columns.

It was similar to a freewrite, in which you just dump out whatever comes to mind.

And it was all very messy, from the haphazard line down the middle to all the scribbling, including the scribbled "Oops, I forgotten to mention THIS!" notations.

Sometimes, a self-accounting isn't so nice 'n' tidy.

Anyway...to my surprise, I discovered that some things appeared in BOTH columns.

Actually, that shouldn't have been so surprising.

Why?

The Love/Hate Dynamic & You

Well, let's say you like heroin. So you might hate the fact that you ever discovered heroin or that you're addicted to it -- but if you're being honest, you've also felt pretty good on it at times. So if you've enjoyed yourself, then why not go ahead and express gratitude for the pleasurable experience, forbidden and illegal though it may be?

Sure, God certainly does not approve of your heroin indulgence, but you thank Him anyway because everything really does come from Hashem (both the good and the bad) and gratitude is always a good thing when it comes to you & Hashem.

So why not just say it like it is?

The same thing can apply to a serious gaming addiction or the food addiction behind one's obesity. You kind of hate yourself for wasting time or for being so darn fat, but at the same time, you admit that you do enjoy hunting down imaginary thugs in an underground tunnel while dressed as a hotshot noir detective or that you do enjoy the unlimited availability of buttery croissants from your nearby bakery.

You may hate yourself for the pettiness of all-consuming envy and you may hope that people continue to believe that your finely aimed verbal barbs are simply a result of a misunderstanding or you feeling victimized. Yet at the same time, you admit that you enjoy the feeling of self-pity or forbidden smugness at another's misfortune that accompanies the envy. And you admit that you experience sadistic pleasure as yet another well-aimed barb hits its target.

(BTW, I've never played a video game beyond Tetris, nor do I consider myself particularly envious or snarky, nor I have ever sampled heroin, and so on. These are just objective examples, not personal ones.)

Anyway, I wrote everything down, looked it over, felt kind of weird and embarrassed,  and then I read it out loud to Hashem.

I thanked Him for all the stuff I enjoyed, even if it wasn't "good."

And I asked Him to help me out with the stuff in the negative column, the things I disliked about myself and my life, and wanted to change (even if I also enjoyed them; I wanted NOT to enjoy them).

Then I shoved it in my closet and forgot about it.

But I took it out again around the Days of Awe, the major teshuvah time, and I looked Heavenward and sort of waved it around toward God. (Yes, I know He's technically everywhere, but I still tend to aim my gestures upward when addressing Him.)

And I said (to the best of my memory) to Him, "Look at this. This is a big mess. I'M a big mess! I cannot possibly deal with this all on my own." I glanced at it again, then shook the piece of paper at God. "This is crazy. You know that I don't have the money or time to deal with all this stuff by conventional means. I mean, LOOK at this column! It's like demanding that I fight 30 yetzer haras ALL the time -- all at the SAME time! How realistic is that? And You know that I barely have any self-discipline in the best of times. I always feel like everyone else is managing better than me and trying harder than I am. Yet I've got this whole big load of inner stuff to deal with." And I waved the paper at Him again, gesturing toward the column of negative stuff. "I mean, to give someone like me 2 or 3 things to work on is challenge enough...but all this? This whole entire list? I mean, my gosh...this is just not realistic." I continued, "Because if I'm being totally honest, a part of me actually enjoys a lot of this stuff, even as I also hate it. And You know what? I just can't stand this about myself. Aaaall this! I can't stand to deal with all the things in this right-hand column and I know they're really bad. So if you could please just fix it for me? Please just do it Yourself because I'm failing. I can't even make an inch of progress on this stuff. And I don't want to deal with that tension of constantly needing to fight and overcome the overwhelming desire for something You don't want me to have or do. I know that some people feel so great and victorious when they overcome stuff or when they're all organized and self-disciplined, but I mostly feel deprived and miserable when I do that. So could You please just do it for me? I'd be very grateful, thank You."

And then in davening, I would just make a quick reference to the list, something like, "And please fix all the stuff I listed in the right-hand column in my cheshbon hanefesh list. You know the one I mean? Yeah, that one. Okay, thanks so much."

From "Ooh, Shiny!" to "Meh"

And you know what?

It worked! Not long after Sukkot, I realized that I just wasn't into certain behaviors anymore. Even when confronted with the same situation, I'd look at my former indulgence and be like, "Meh. Who needs it? I don't even enjoy it."

A couple of things went away completely. They're not even on the radar anymore.

Others were greatly minimized. I might slip in it a couple of times a year and not with the same intensity or duration as before.

And alas, there are still some things for which the end STILL seems nowhere in sight.

But that's what we're here for.

Some negative stuff takes a lifetime to eradicate.

But what surprised me was that according to conventional wisdom, I was supposed to need intensive therapy and 12-Step programs in order to have even a chance of overcoming certain things -- and instead, they either went away or were greatly minimized completely on their own, with no effort on my part.

Thanks, Hashem!

But like I said, I still have several monstrosities to work on. So the party's not over yet.

EVERYTHING is from Hashem - Literally

Needless to say, I did not come up with the idea on my own.

It was greatly influenced by Rav Shalom Arush and Rav Ofer Erez.

It really is important to express gratitude for both the good and the bad (even if you can't muster up the actual emotion of gratitude; just saying it is still very powerful).

And Rav Ofer Erez in particular emphasizes the idea of thanking Hashem for your bad qualities. After all, He was the one who pasted them on you in the first place! So as counter-intuitive as it sounds, you really should say bizarre things like, "Thank You, Hashem, that I'm so attracted to dressing immodestly" or "Thank You, Hashem, that I so dislike dragging myself to a minyan 3 times a day" or "Thank You, Hashem, that I'm such an unspiritual superficial blob."

Or whatever your personal Achilles heel may be.

And then you ask Him to fix it for you, to heal it for you.

Whether you write out your own pro-con list, or whether you say it out loud, or whether you paint it in watercolors on printer paper, or sculpt it with Play-doh, it can be a powerfully helpful tool in overcoming certain traits and behaviors.

(Especially if you, like me, tend toward laziness or laisse faire or butter croissants.)
____________
May God enable us all to complete our tikkun in this lifetime, but not through trials and tribulations.
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Related posts:
What is the Most Painless Path to True Teshuvah?
What is the Main Purpose of Your Existence?
Why This Generation is So Astounding
How to Get Past Toxic Shame & Apathy
Even If You Must Grit Your Teeth to Do It...

In the previous post, God Helps: A True Story, you read about how my husband made his way to a yeshivah that at first glance, seemed like he and it wouldn't be a good fit, yet got accepted when the Rosh Yeshivah passed by at just the right moment and asked him a pointed question that told the Rosh Yeshivah all he needed to know.

But there's a prequel.

Much earlier, my husband checked out other yeshivahs, yeshivahs more in line with what he was familiar and whose students dressed like him. One yeshivah was located far out in the middle of several Yishmaelite communities, and the bus my husband rode was slammed by embittered Yishmaelim with a barrage of large rocks. Though my husband liked the yeshivah, he found the ride there and back too terrifying to endure again.

He also went to a very serious and highly regarded dati-leumi yeshivah. But they politely rejected him on the basis that he learned at a dati-mamlachti [government-religious] high school, and not a more religious yeshivah high school.

To this day, my husband has a dati-leumi cousin who mourns this rejection. "If only they'd accepted you then, you'd still be dati-leumi today!" she once lamented. "If only they'd known how committed you were to learning Torah and how much you'd advance in learning! But no...instead, the chareidim got you." And then she started into a soliloquy about how the yeshivahs need to be more accepting of people who obviously have a thirst for Torah learning, even if the potential students don't come from just the "right" background.

"I mean, to reject you -- you! -- JUST because you learned in a dati-mamlachti school -- it's not like you weren't religious at all! For crying out loud...look at how much you've accomplished in learning -- what a missed opportunity for them!"

She's upset that charedim don't generally serve in the IDF, and feels like if only the dati-leumi yeshivah had been more accepting, then my husband wouldn't have gone "off the derech" to the charedi world.

And she's right!

(We're extremely fond of her, by the way. And she's very fond of us too! She bubbles with tremendous simchat chayim -- joyous lifeforce -- and is always very exuberant and warm toward both of us and our children. It's just that the whole IDF draft issue concerning charedim really bothers her.)

Anyway, if the Rosh Yeshivah of that dati-leumi yeshivah (which really is an exceptionally fine yeshivah and produces exceptionally fine young men) had passed by my husband at that exact moment and thought to deal with my husband in a way that would tell him all he needed to know about my husband, then my husband would've joined their ranks.

But what with being rejected from learning Torah for something he couldn't help or being attacked by Yishmaelites for exiling himself (or trying to anyway) to a place of Torah, my husband was in desperate straits by the time he landed at that Litvish charedi yeshivah.

And the initial rejection by the Litvish charedi yeshivah crushed him as the final blow in his effort to do something he had thought Hashem wanted and something that Judaism considers as worth everything.

"I was just this little innocent Moroccan boy," my husband still relates with great feeling, "who didn't know anything about background or political or identity differences with regard to yeshivahs, but just wanted to learn Torah. And I couldn't understand why this was happening to me. I should've known that dark beige pants or sneakers meant anything to anyone? I wore a kippah, I wore tzitzit, and I wanted to learn Torah. What did anything else matter? I didn't understand all the nuances back then. I just felt rejected by all groups."

So he was in a very low place by the time the Rosh Yeshivah appeared on the steps.

Yet it was all a way of Hashem guiding him -- literally taking my husband's hand and pulling him away from this place and away from that place -- until my husband finally arrived at the place Hashem wanted him to be.

And that's the whole story. (I think...)

Here's a nice true story of siyata d'Shmaya (Heavenly assistance):

My husband grew up in a poor immigrant neighborhood in Eretz Yisrael and attended the local co-ed mamlachti dati (government religious) school.

But for most of high school, he wanted a more Torah environment.

So the day after graduating, he made his way to a large Litvish yeshivah.

Wearing his dark beige pants, a non-white shirt (with no suit jacket), sneakers, and a knitted kippah, he headed toward the yeshivah office and asked to enroll. The person there took one look at him, assumed my husband made a mistake in his choice of yeshivah, and politely rejected him on the spot.

Despondent, my husband trudged out the door and plopped himself down on the yeshivah steps, wondering where he could possibly turn now.

At that moment, the Rosh Yeshivah arrived up those same steps and looked at the glum Moroccan teen sitting there in his knitted kippah and non-yeshivish clothes.

The Rosh Yeshivah asked my husband if he was okay and what was wrong.

My husband replied that he tried to enroll in the yeshivah, but was rejected on the spot.

The Rosh Yeshivah pondered this for a moment, then asked, "When was your last day of school?"

"Yesterday," said my husband.

Knowing that it was customary for recent high school graduates to spend days or weeks after graduation living it up and touring around (rather than searching out a yeshivah), the Rosh Yeshivah said, "You're accepted. Come with me."

And he escorted my husband back to the yeshivah office, where he enrolled.

My husband spent the next few years there shteiging away in front of a Gemara.

Sometimes, it takes a true talmid chacham to see past the externals and into a soul thirsting for Torah.

And if you really want the right thing for the right reason, Hashem helps.
___________
For the events that preceded this event, please see:
God Helps: The Prequel

For a related post of how true talmidei chachamim notice and care about others (rather than being holier-than-thou snobs), please see:
The Behavior of Truly Great People

The last time I played a real video game, it was at a pizza restaurant. My siblings and I convinced our parents to let us each have a turn playing the most advanced and most expensive game, which looked exactly like a cartoon that featured a blond prince wielding a sword. My sisters and I couldn't get past the first minute of the game, which consisted of getting the prince to jump onto a moving wooden disc. Our brother got a bit farther than that, before the bitter "GAME OVER" appeared.

Both frustrating and disappointing, it helped me lose interest in video games, which I'd never been good at anyway. Later, Tetris came along and I could get lost in that (and actually showed some skill with it), but after the initial burst of enthusiasm, it became yet another take-it-or-leave-it activity.

So when I first heard about "gaming" as a culture and video game addiction, I was still picturing Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. I imagined teenage guys addicted to video games that looked like this:

Or maybe, at the most, something like this:

Boy, was I wrong!

I think I first realized that video games had developed much more complexity when I was looking for story plot ideas, and a blogger recommended a book of game plots.

GAME plots?

Yes!

As I read through the plots, I marveled at the complex and intriguing storylines.

How could little pixelated characters jumping from level to level actually star in their own full-fledged plot? (Remember, I was still thinking Donkey Kong and Pac-Man.)

Little did I know that the world of gaming provides lifelike interaction on a level never experienced before.

There are very real & problematic effects of video games on people. But first, let's look at who likes to play video games and why.

First of all, the numbers from Pew:

• 49% of Americans over age 18 play video games at some point.

And the split between men and women is nearly half-half.

• 10% identify themselves as "gamers."

But the hard-core gamers are predominantly male:

• 15% vs the 6% of females who consider themselves "gamers."

And my assumption of gamers as teenage males also needed some correction:

• 77% of males age 18-29 play video games, with 33% of them self-identifying as "gamers."
• 57% of females age 18-29 play video games, with 9% of them self-identifying as "gamers."
• 58% of all those age 30 to 49 play video games
• 40% of all those age 50 to 64 play video games
• 25% of all those 65 or older play video games

Interestingly, women over 50 are more likely to play video games than men over 50:

• 38% vs 29%

Social Interaction & Collaboration
Rather than playing against a computer, the most popular and addictive games are role-playing games whose characters are played by real people around the world. During the game, you get to know other people and their personalities. Characters flirt with each other, help (or abandon) each other, and interact in myriad other ways.

In fact, gamers develop real friendships with other players, and some have even married! (Not surprisingly, there is even an app to facilitate this for those interested in finding true love with their fellow players.)

To paraphrase the attitude of this app designer: "Instead of struggling with a conversation over coffee, it's less awkward to investigate a new dungeon together."

And while the character images are often otherworldly, you might feel that your choice of green monster with machete ears expresses something about you that only your fellow gamer can understand and appreciate.

The addictive side of this is that the player resists letting his group down.

Not playing can effect the same feeling that a necessary football player might have about backing out of a key game in real life.

Compelling Storylines & Plots
Today's games resemble complex and compelling novelized movies, complete with plot twists and heart-stirring music.

This is based on a description from a popular game:
Jay and his surrogate daughter Eileen, must traverse a post-apocalyptic America to deliver a possible cure for a fungal virus that has ruined the nation. Jay is prepared to do anything to protect Eileen.

Or this:
This is a neo-noire detective action-adventure involving a US army veteran who joins the homicide department after finishing his mission in WWII. Later, he discovers that his partner is a crooked cop and he also traces drug smuggling by Marines in his former unit, most of whom are assassinated by mobsters. Finally, he chases a kidnapper through underground river tunnels while overcoming underground flooding and thugs in order to save the day.

But will he survive?

And you get to be part of this heart-stopping action and high drama.

Very Real & Compelling Graphics
You really are starring in your own story.

Today's games are lifelike movies.

Look at these screenshots of games:

Real Emotion
The combination of compelling graphics and storylines provide the same effect that a compelling movie or novel does: emotional involvement.

In one of the most popular games, gamers around the world protested when the creators killed off a beloved character.

Gamers describe tears welling up in their eyes when two game characters express their love to each other or when another game character sacrifices her life for the other characters. Or describing "heartbreak" during a silent moment broken by the ringing of a phone which, when answered, emits the sound of your missing "daughter" crying out to you.

In other scenarios, gamers confess that they couldn't stop smiling or suppress elation during touching moments between characters.

In horror games, gamers note that they fear to be alone while playing.

Gamers emphasize the heightened pulse or strong emotions because they feel like they're actually serving on the front lines for something they believe in.

The Bowen Research study found that the most common emotions aroused in video games were:

• competitiveness
• violence/excitement
• accomplishment
• hate
• sadness

All fake, of course.

Yet these emotions ranked above love or spirituality, which are also experienced during gaming, but not as much as those mentioned above.

When Rabbi Wallerstein advised one gaming addict to make aliyah to Israel and serve in the IDF, rather than playing war games all day, the young man demurred.

"Why not?" asked Rabbi Wallerstein.

The young man replied that he didn't want to actually risk his life or suffer hardship, he just wanted to feelings without any actual risk.

Those of us uninvolved in the gaming world can turn up our nose at the idea of emotional attachment to video game characters and scenes, but it's really no different than crying when a character dies or finds true love in a novel or movie. Likewise, people (okay, maybe just Americans?) get all pumped up with patriotism and false feelings of valor during particularly rousing scenes in patriot movies.

Rewards
Video games offer all kinds of rewards, both actual and emotional.

Players enjoy the feeling of accomplishment when working up from level to level.

Top players earn bonus points, in-game rewards, or even actual financial rewards from the game's creators via tournaments played for actual cash prizes.

Undefined Endings
Players often play according to a schedule. (The different time zones worldwide complicate this, forcing players to play when they should be sleeping or doing other things.) But while they need to meet to start the game at a certain time, the ending depends on unknowns, like how successful the group will be at meeting all the criteria (both known and unknown) in order to make it to the next level.

In other words, short spurts of playing don't reap benefits and even lead to disappointment and other negative feelings.

The studies aren't clear whether video games are wholly bad for you, nor what the ultimate effect is on the human brain.

Some video games seem to improve certain functions IF they're specially designed to do so. For example, there are video games that seem to improve dyslexia.

But some gamers themselves admit that the games increase aggression. The initial war games were created by the military to give combat soldiers virtual training and to accustom them to killing so they'd be less traumatized in actual battle.

That's chilling, isn't it?

Obviously, role-playing realistic war or horror games are going to affect a person's psyche, whether they mean for it to or not.

When the mass shootings first popped up in American schools, restaurants, and movie theaters, a link between them and video games appeared, then disappeared.

Researching this led me to the more common and definite link between psychotropic medication and homicidal idealization.

At the same time, it's easy to understand how a young man suffering from schizophrenia or depression could become worse by role-playing these super-realistic horror or war games, or even hate-filled racist games, whether on medication or not. Many of the shooters were also gamers, which is why so many people jumped to blaming video games for the massacres.

Behavioral Changes
One study concluded that violent gaming didn't affect people negatively -- unless they were already suffering from negative behaviors like depression, rule-breaking, impulsivity, neurosis, inconsideration of others, disagreeableness, and getting upset easily.

(Again, in all or nearly all mass shootings in America, the murderer suffered from some kind of mental illness and played video games -- in addition to taking medication -- prior to the shooting.)

In another study, participants demonstrated increased apathy and decreased attention and concentration when tested.

The apathy and absorption isn't a joke. When a Taiwanese man died after playing a video game at an Internet cafe for 3 days, no one noticed for the first few hours. Because he sometimes fell asleep face down during his gaming binge, no one realized that his last face-down position was in fact death. (CCTV cameras showed that he struggled before he died, an act also unnoticed by fellow gamers and workers.) It was only when his body sprawled on the table and entered the stiffening phase that workers noticed and thought to call the paramedics. When paramedics arrived to cart the body out, the other gamers never even paused.

In another Taiwanese Internet cafe, a gamer lay dead for 10 hours before anyone noticed. Fellow gamers continued to play even as that body was carted out and the gamers didn't even realize that anything had happened until forensic police came to cordon off the area. Yet even then, many gamers refused to stop playing and stayed where they were.

Other studies indicate that it's not the violence of the video game that inspires aggressive behavior, but the feelings of frustration and failure that occur upon losing a game.

Finally, there have been a few deaths brought on by playing video games in one position for a shocking number of hours without eating or moving much.

Brain Changes
I want to start off by saying that brain studies are iffy. There's a lot that researchers still don't know or understand about the brain. Having said that, studies of the brain and gaming yield thought-provoking results...

The following studies were conducted upon people who didn't usually play video games and who, for the study, played for 1-2 hours a day.

Many studies show a link between violent video games and increased aggression, but these brain studies aimed to discover the physiological reason why violent video games increase aggression.

One study indicated negative changes in the frontal lobe in people who played a violent game for 10 hours over a week's duration. Disturbingly, this change in the brain persisted into the second week, despite the participants not playing video games at all.

Another study indicated negative changes in the parts of the brain that control attention, inhibition of impulses, and emotions.

Behaviorally, these participants demonstrated increased apathy and decreased attention and concentration when tested.

One researcher noted that the brains changed to resemble the brains of teens who suffered from destructive sociopathic disorders.

Are there any benefits to playing video games?

As noted above, strategy games or games specifically created to improve cognitive function do seem to do just that. There are studies that show decreased dementia, improved visual attention, improved cognitive function, improved treatment of dyslexia, increase in gray matter of the brain (which allegedly improves cognitive function in specific areas of the brain), and so on.

And some studies show that gamers demonstrate improved visual attention overall, regardless of the game played.

Yet the official scientific jury is still out as to whether the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

While I still believe that psychotropic medications are the main culprit behind particularly violent behavior (like mass shootings), it's chilling how often video games seem to be involved.

Like with the teenager who shot to death his grandfather along with 6 other people (and wounded 7 more) on the Red Lake Reservation in Minnesota, he committed this slaughter after having his dosage of Prozac increased. He was also on Ritalin. He spent a lot of time creating and uploading graphically violent animation on the Internet, animation based on violent video games he enjoyed, one of which enjoys global popularity.

Other shooters killed people according to the same methods used by gamers to kill characters in a video game. Since intricate role-playing violent video games came out, at least 14 mass murderers in America showed a history of addiction to the most popular role-playing violent video games prior to their rampage.  One even described a violent video game as a place where he felt "comfortable and secure."

Ugh.

It seems like people who already have a negative grasp of reality (a combination of their life circumstances, their diagnosis of mental illness, and their intake of psychotropic medication) respond badly when such realistic role-playing violent games are added to the mix.

And there's no realistic way of preventing angry, depressed, deluded, medicated people from accessing video games.

So what can we take away from all this?

• Video games definitely affect the brain, though it's not certain exactly how and how much.
• Video games, particularly violent ones, increase negative behaviors and emotional states.
• Video games are set up to be addictive, both emotionally and cerebrally.
• Video games reward players -- (emotionally, in the brain, and sometimes even financially)
• Video games can easily be more compelling, interesting, comfortable, enjoyable, and feel more meaningful than real life.

The spiritual problem with any kind of video game is the same problem with any distraction (no matter how innocent):
It wastes your time and emotions indulging in meaninglessness when you could be advancing yourself in some other way.

(And I really think that any activity is a serious problem if it prevents you from noticing or caring that someone has died in your immediate vicinity, God forbid.)

May we all gain our all our pleasures from spiritually pure sources -- and really enjoy them!
___________

Related links:
Playing Video Games May Make Specific Changes to the Brain
Pew Research: Gaming & Gamers
Video Game Addiction
For the US Military, Video Games Get Serious
Standing for Nothing: USA
The Real Reason Why People Sin

In his book, Ahavat Kedumim: A Commentary on the Story of the Lost Princess, Rav Ofer Erez writes:

A thought is an intellectual act. It comes from the mind.

But desire, will, yearning...this is an emotional act. It comes from the heart.

In his book, Ahavat Kedumim: A Commentary on the Story of the Lost Princess, Rav Ofer Erez writes:

Later, Rav Erez writes:

A century ago, one of the charedi leaders of yore (maybe it was Rav Shmuel Salant?) was heard talking to a group of Syrian chachamim (sages) in Hebrew using their Sefardi pronunciation.

Why was this a big deal?

In 1913, what later became known as "The Language War" began when the Haifa Institute of Technology decided to adopt German as their official language of instruction. (I know, I know...)

Later, it turned to a tug-of-war between Yiddish and Hebrew. Assimilated Jewish linguists insisted on secularizing the holy Hebrew language and instill it as the official language of Eretz Yisrael.

Others objected the secularization of the holy tongue, along with the unsavory political agenda behind it.

Some also felt that using Hebrew for mundane talk or in places like the bathroom profaned the holy tongue. (They weren't wrong. My kids happily chattered away in Hebrew in the bathtub and Hebrew is the language in Israeli discotheques, smutty movies, and coarse stand-up routines.)

So why did a great rav who came firmly down on the side of the pro-Yiddish camp, a sage known for his courtesy toward others, yet who when addressed in Hebrew by someone with an agenda, refused to answer in any language -- why did he turn around and all of the sudden start not only speaking in Hebrew, but speaking with a totally different and unfamiliar pronunciation (when he was strict about using Ashkenazi pronunciation in his prayers)?

As the rav explained, the Sefardi chachamim spoke classical Hebrew, the beautiful Hebrew of the commentators and ancient Sages. They spoke that language as their mother tongue and according to their traditional pronunciation.

He also spoke Sefardi-accented Hebrew with regular non-Yiddish-speaking Sefardim.

The pro-Yiddish rav spoke to them in kind because they couldn't know Yiddish (so that was a practical reason) and because the whole language divide wasn't about language, but about politics, "isms," and an anti-Torah agenda, all of which had nothing to do with the Sefardi community.

Yet when Hebrew could be spoken as a need by people who really knew how to use the language, the rav happily spoke Hebrew and spoke it using the pronunciation best understood by his fellow Sefardi Jews.

The great leader of what became known as the charedi stream of Orthodox Judaism, and a tremendous tzaddik, Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, sided with the pro-Yiddish side due to the assimilationist agenda behind the leaders of pro-Hebrew side.

Yet in response to a British government survey which asked what language was spoken by the respondent, Rav Sonnenfeld not only answered "Hebrew," but advised others to answer the same--even though Rav Sonnenfeld's conversational language was indeed Yiddish.

When some of the pro-Yiddish camp objected, Rav Sonnenfeld replied, "What can I do? When I speak to God, I speak only in Hebrew--how can I deny that?!"

Obviously, Rav Sonnenfeld considered his main language to be the one in which he spoke to his Creator.

At one point, Rav Sonnefeld mused that it was perhaps a mistake for the religious community NOT to have adopted Hebrew immediately upon arrival in Eretz Yisrael. "By doing so, we would've pre-empted the irreligious camp...We would have then not been forced into taking a negative stand against Hebrew being the official language."

But these things are hard to predict.

Anyway, what I learned from all this was:

• Don't get caught up in the technicalities of a gadol's opinion; understand the real motivation behind the opinion.
• A gadol is coming from a place of love and not a place of fanaticism with getting all yipped-up on misplaced zealotry.
• Communicate in the language OTHERS understand best (this goes beyond mere language choice, BTW)
• The goal is to meet the other as far as you can, and not assert yourself over the your fellow.

Figuring out how to do this with each situation can take a bit of trial and error, but as long as we're trying, then that's really good.
___________

*Quotes were taken from pages 322-323 of Guardian of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld.
Related links:
The Only "ism" You'll Ever Need
What is the Heart's Nusach?

At a Tehillim/Psalms gathering for women I attended in the US, the woman leading the Tehillim-recital was a Yemenite-Israeli woman who taught at an Ashkenazi school (that accepted all Jews as long as they were frum) and was married to a yeshivish Askenazi.

This meant that she was competent in both ways of Hebrew pronunciation.

She lead the Tehillim in a pleasant sing-song and most charmingly of all, she was so into the davening that the words flowed out in whatever pronunciation naturally flowed forth.

This means that she said: "Shir Hama'alois" -- with the second "a" pronounced as the classic Yemenite guttural "ayin," followed by "ois" instead of "ot."

It was obvious that she had no idea she was mixing nusachs.

It was delicious. Here was Am Echad in one person.

Now, I realize that sticklers for nusach will bristle about the importance of staying within one nusach for davening.

And that is important for formal davening.

But if you're equally comfortable in both, then when immersing yourself in the uplifting heart of Tehillim, both might flow forth naturally. And really, it's better to just immerse yourself in your love of Hashem than to hold yourself back and get caught up in the technicalities of consistent pronunciation.

For me, sometimes "Shabbos" is easier to say than "Shabbat." Especially if I want to describe something as "Shabbosy." "Shabbaty" just doesn't feel the same.

I still find "tsnius" (modesty) more comfortable to say than "tsnee-OOT" because "tsnius" is how I first learned the word.

But all that depends who I'm talking to because it's important to say things in the way most comfortable for the other person.

Likewise, when speaking with a Chassidish Yerushalmi friend, I try to greet her with "Gut Shabbos," even if she's greeting me with "Shabbat Shalom."

In fact, my Chassidish neighbors always use Sefardi pronunciation when speaking to me and other Sefardi neighbors. They also smoothly turn the conversation from Yiddish to Hebrew if a non-Yiddish-speaker arrives, including when they address each other (which they normally would in Yiddish) in front of the non-Yiddish-speaker.

It's all just a friendly way of respecting one's fellow.

When my children first started attending a Sefardi school, the Moroccan ganenet used to wave to me out the window of the van, calling out, "Gut Shabbos!" as they sped by on Friday afternoons.

She didn't need to do that because despite my Ashkenazi ethnicity and American nationality, I'm not frum from birth (i.e., I didn't grow up with "Gut Shabbos!") and I'm married to a Moroccan who davens in a Sefardi synagogue, and we happily send our children to a Sefardi school and I am quite comfortable with "Shabbat Shalom!" and general Sefardi pronunciation.

But in her experience, Ashkenazi Americans say "Gut Shabbos!" and she wanted me to feel comfortable and accepted.

Very nice!

As always, it's the heart that counts.

When my husband and I are were temporarily rabbi and rebbetzin (or is it rabbanit?), one of our congregants was this lovely 90-year-old lady named Shayna. (She attended our Sefardi synagogue because it was within walking distance and I'm not sure that she was aware of the differences. To her, it was a kosher synagogue with a mechitza and an Orthodox rabbi, and that's all that mattered.)

During Sukkot, she would come up to me to wish me a good year among other good things, and she did so in Yiddish. I only got the gist of her exact words ("a gut yahr!"), but I remember the feeling of warmth and pleasure that soaked through me as she leaned her smiling wizened face toward me with her wrinkled hand on my arm and spoke to me from her heart.

In Shayna's experience, frum people bless each other in Yiddish. So it never occurred to her that she shouldn't speak to me in Yiddish, especially since I was the rebbetzin -- no matter that I came from a secular English-only background (which she didn't know about) and that I was married to a Moroccan-Israeli and that we were standing in a Sefardi synagogue.

And I loved her for it.

Conversely, if you are in Israel and you greet your Sefardi neighbor with "Gut Shabbos", she might get offended. Why? Because then it feels like you're imposing your nusach on her, as if her nusach isn't good enough. Also, there's this implication that Yiddish is the proper language as opposed to Hebrew (or the Jewish-style Arabic common among Moroccans).

And sadly, there are indeed some Ashkenazim with that attitude, which is why your Sefardi neighbor isn't being oversensitive when she gets miffed about your perfectly friendly "Gut Shabbos." (Although she should still give you the benefit of the doubt, that you were just expressing your ahavat Yisrael in the best way you knew how. Or that you just forgot how it might come off to her.)

Then around another Sukkot in Eretz Yisrael, a Chassidish-American acquaintance came up to me and started wishing me all sorts of nice things for the coming year -- in Yiddish.

Ironically, I suddenly felt irritated.

I don't know Yiddish, I fumed silently. Why was she putting me in this uncomfortable position of nodding blankly and not knowing how to respond to her gush of words because I mostly didn't understand? She knows I'm originally from an "out of town" location in America and that I'm firmly in the Sefardi community here in Eretz Yisrael. Why on earth would I understand all the Yiddish coming out of her mouth?

This admittedly insignificant incident left me disgruntled.

But why? What was wrong with me all of the sudden?

Why, when Shayna did EXACTLY the same thing, it imbued me with warm fuzzies, yet when this acquaintance did it, I got all flustered and resentful?

Even stranger, I actually like Yiddish. I enjoy trying to speak it with my friends' children who only know Yiddish.

So why did I all of the sudden have a problem with Yiddish?

I guess it's because it's the heart that counts.

Shayna is brimming with goodness, so when she talks to you in the language of her choice, then all her goodness just gushes forth into you. And Shayna was speaking to me in Yiddish because she thought that was the best way to convey her good wishes; she had no idea I didn't understand. (Ditto with the Sefardi ganenet above.)

Yet this acquaintance tended to be firmly entrenched in her own world and in her way of doing things. She and her husband were used to being leaders of their community and expressing good wishes in Yiddish was the RIGHT way to do things, gosh darn it, whether the listener understood and whether the listener was comfortable or not.

In other words, she wasn't reaching out to me, she was asserting herself over me (and vicariously, over a whole large group of fellow Jews).

Was this intentional? Likely not. Some people are just very self-absorbed and so used to holding on to their own thing (which, if you've lived frum in America, you need to do to resist the pull of secular American culture), that they don't realize when they've overstepped.

So this is what I've learned:

• Be like Shayna.
• Be like my son's Sefardi ganenet.
• Be like my wonderful Chassidish neighbors.
• Be like the Yemenite Tehillim leader.

Reach out from the heart and don't overreach.

Israeli potato salad graces my mother-in-law's table every Shabbat and chag, and it appears frequently on mine too.

It's a colorful, pretty, and flavorful potato salad. It's also versatile as you can customize it to your taste by omitting or increasing any of the ingredients, and it will still turn out good.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

• 2 fist-sized potatoes (or one giant potato cut in half for quicker cooking)
• 1 small to medium carrot (depending on how much you like carrots)
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup peas (fresh or frozen is best, but canned is okay too)
• 1 pickle
• mayonnaise (however much you like)
• salt
• white or black pepper

Prep

• Peel carrots and potatoes, then boil them with the egg until soft enough to cut and eat with pleasure, yet not too mushy.

(This takes around 30 minutes.)

*You can dice the pickle during this time.

• If using frozen or fresh peas, you can either add them to the boiling carrots, potatoes, and egg, or you can pour boiling water over them and let them sit covered for at least 15 minutes, depending on how you like your peas.
• When ready, pour everything into a strainer.
• Let the carrots, potatoes, egg, and peas sit until cool enough to handle comfortably.
• Dice everything into cubes. (They need not be perfect cubes; just however you like your cooked veggies. You can also slice everything or cut them into chunks.)
• Dump everything (the carrots, potatoes, egg, and pickle) into a bowl.
• Add however much mayonnaise, salt, and pepper you all like.
• Mix it all together.
• Transfer to a storage container and/or serving bowl.

And there you have it: Israeli potato salad.

Betayavon!

To save/download a shortened version of this recipe (i.e. without all the little tips), please right-click the image below, then click "Save Image As" and save it to your desired folder.

When I was attending chinuch classes, I heard a lot of questions along the lines of, "But my parents did that with us, and we still turned out okay. So why is it suddenly so bad to do that now?"

Just to be clear, none of these mothers wanted to do whatever unpleasantness their parents had done with them (whether it was hitting, yelling, making children wear out-of-style second-hand clothes, or anything like that), but they were legitimately trying to understand why these unwanted acts were suddenly so damaging.

As you might have guessed, there was never a real answer. Mostly hemming and hawing about a "different environment" and "things have changed" (oh, those ambiguous undefinable "things"!) and "it's a different generation."

All true, but not terribly satisfying because Jews kept immigrating into different environments throughout history and also, harmful movements within Jewry (particularly Easter Europe) kept rearing their ugly heads (like haskalah, Reform, Communism, etc) and snatching Jewish souls.

(And I don't blame the chinuch people, up to their ears in the problems of this generation, for trying their best to answer questions they didn't really know how to answer.)

Anyway, I wondered the exact same things and for the exact same reasons: I didn't want to do XYZ, but why indeed were common trials for children suddenly the reason for them to go flying off the derech?

Why was davka my generation of mothers being racked up to such a high standard?

And it wasn't just in parenting either. A woman's role suddenly expanded to include many more roles and expectations. Conducting proper shalom bayit and maintaining good mental and physical health also became fraught with challenges and contradictory advice.

And the constant refrain: "But our grandmothers didn't (work outside the home, exercise, eat spelt, fill-in-the-blank) and they were fine. So why do we need to ____?

Yet at the same time we were being told to somersault through all these hoops, nothing seemed to work (or only worked temporarily).

And so we heard our Sages quoted regarding the times of Mashiach: Chutzpah will increase, shalom bayis problems will increase, finances will go nuts, and so on.

That just makes Hashem sound capricious.

WHY do we have all these problems?

Is God just a big meanie? No, that can't be.

But while I can't know the deep kabbalistic reasons for everything that has changed, what I have discovered is that roughing things up forces you to burst out of your bubble of complacency and get your act together.

In other words, God wants us to get rid of all the garbage mucked all over our luminous souls to fulfill our true potential.

Let's take parenting for example.

Yes, at one point you could parent your children according to your own whims and moods as long as you covered the minimum bases set by your society.

But is that good for the parents?

No.

When there are no consequences to your lack of self-awareness and lack of introspection, then you tend to keep drifting along in whatever direction your ego or mindset takes you.

What chinuch problems do is they force you out of your complacency and stretch your mind to find other (and hopefully better) ways of relating to your children and raising them to be the best they can be.

And it's the same thing with shalom bayit.

When you or your spouse feel like divorce is on the horizon, it forces one or both of you to take a good hard look at what's really going on. You need to dig deeper. If divorce is really the best option, then take it. But sometimes it's not. It depends. There are people who turned to Hashem for even very serious shalom bayit problems, saying thank you and investing in long discussions and soul-searching with Hashem, people who eventually either found themselves getting divorced without suffering the usual grueling process involved in divorcing an abusive person, or they stayed married and the marriage became a happy one.

Health problems perform the same function. I've lost track of the number of people who suffered intolerable side effects (or lack of effectiveness) from conventional treatments, and who thus turned to herbs, better eating habits, exercise, and prayer as a more effective way of treating their illness.

This includes mental illness too. There are people who started digging deeper and got themselves off of medication (including for serious diagnosis that psychiatrists insist need life-long medication, like bipolar and schizophrenia). They looked at what the roots of their illness really were and made lifestyle and behavioral adjustments accordingly. They then passed on their newfound knowledge to others in order to help fellow sufferers.

Note: The process involved in overcoming a mental or physical illness, or in dealing with a severely dysfunctional marriage or really problematic children or any other grueling challenge is not simple or short. The above summaries should not be taken flippantly. The process is a lot of work. And sometimes, no matter what we do, we still don't get the desired result in the end because there are hidden metaphysical reasons why the desired result never arrives.

We either can't know the exact reasons or we can't know all the reasons for a particular tribulation. At the same time, many people suffering financial woes discovered, upon digging deeper, that their money came from a non-kosher source, or that they weren't honest in their dealings, or that they hadn't been giving tzedakah in the proper amounts.

In Rav Yehudah Hachassid's phenomenal compilation from the late 1100s, Sefer Chassidim, there's the true story of a formerly wealthy man who wept to his rebbe about his terrible suffering. Despite having had several children whom he married off and in whom he'd invested his wealth to set them up in their new homes, the formerly wealthy man was left without any progeny at all. His children all died before their time and before having children of their own and all the wealth he'd invested in them was lost too.

The man begged to know why Hashem left him lonely and poor in his old age.

"Did you deal honestly all your life?" asked the Rebbe. "Did you always keep people's trust? Did you ever cheat anyone?"

The man admitted that while he'd never cheated or stolen from a fellow Jew, he did betray the trust of a non-Jew who'd appointed the man to manage the non-Jew's business and committed theft against that non-Jew.

"Indeed," the man mused, "my sorrows began right after his death."

The Rebbe then explained that after this non-Jew died, he complained before the Heavenly Court. Noting that the complaint was justified, the Heavenly Court decreed upon the Jewish man to lose all that he'd acquired in a forbidden manner, and that this was just punishment for his sin.

The Rebbe then reassured the man that he can still do teshuvah. The suffering he was experiencing was atoning for this sin and with teshuvah, the old man certainly had hope for eternal salvation when his time would come to stand before the Heavenly Court.
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A very sharp story indeed.

And as horrific as it is to lose all one's children without even being able enjoy the comfort of grandchildren, atoning for sins the Afterlife is even worse. Doing true teshuvah for his sin in This World enables him to see his children again in the Afterlife.

But the point is that without this tribulation, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't prevent the profound losses he suffered, he never would've investigated further and never would've discovered that the actions he considered permissible were in fact completely forbidden and looked upon with great severity in Shamayim.

Also, had he done some soul-searching prior to the non-Jew's death (when he could still ask forgiveness and pay him back), he could have averted the entire tragedy. And had he done some soul-searching after the first child died and sought out atonement then, he possibly could've prevented the loss of the other children.

We can't know for sure, but that's the implication.

In summary, we're having a lot of problems in so many different areas.

Problems with no apparent solution, no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we investigate and invest -- this means that there is only one solution: God.

Look, it's difficult.

I have wholeheartedly frum friends from yeshivish homes who, no matter how much they're suffering from one of their children, refuse to make God-connection and self-introspection the center of their efforts. They spend tons of money (which they don't have), endure humiliating situations, undergo enormous aggravation and frustration, hop from medication to medication, run all over the country and even fly out to other countries -- all in search of the solution to the problem. 

Because of their own (understandable) issues, they feel they just can't turn to Hashem and start looking for the message in it all or begging Him to remedy things.

To compound the confusion, they also cling to a false feel-good pride in how much effort they're investing in helping their child. This feeling is misleading because they're feeling good about dancing around the solution rather than leaping into the only real solution available.

I understand why they do it because I used to do it too until I crashed and burned really badly. But all the understanding and justification in the world can't change the basic fact: Only Hashem can work the miracles they so desperately seek.

If you have issues with Hashem, like anger or fear or resentment or shame or suspicion or general lack of belief, then that needs to be dealt with according to your personality and level. A lot of people have issues with Hashem; it's quite normal even if it isn't discussed so much.

In that case, you can just start talking to Him about these issues and see where He leads you from there. You can also read Garden of Emuna, which addresses these issues (and a whole lot more) head-on, or you can read the classic mussar books, like Duties of the Heart, Pathways of the Just, Ways of the Righteous, Pele Yoetz, etc.

For works that aren't classic mussar and aren't obvious how-to books, but deliver great sustenance for the soul and powerful practical guidance, feel free to try out Words of Faith by Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender or Rav Ofer Erez's From the Depths.

If you want something bite-sized, then you can try out Rivka Levy's pocket-sized book The How, What, and Why of Talking to God, which contains very helpful guidance and tips, and can be read in half-an-hour.

(Links below.)

In this type of thing, you go according to what speaks to you and what works for you on whatever level you're holding on now.

But the main thing is to connect with Hashem emotionally with your heart in a way that is real.

The only way to merit Mashiach is via emuna.

And the only way to develop emuna is to turn to Hashem as the Source of everything, good and bad.

And if we won't turn to Him on our own, then He needs to overcome our resistance and turn us to Him against our will. (Or against the will of our yetzer hara, anyway. Our yetzer tov is quite happy to turn to Hashem.)

But it's all Love.

God wants a deep abiding connection with us because He loves us so much.

Books mentioned above (some available to read online, some not):
Sefer Chassidim: Introduction
Tales of the Heavenly Court, Vol. II (The above story was reprinted here.)
Duties of the Heart/Chovot Levavot
Pele Yoetz
Garden of Emuna
Words of Faith
From the Depths
(Disclaimer: I haven't yet read From the Depths by Rav Ofer Erez, but am in the middle of reading another book of his and I've listened to his classes and read his Torah gems on the English website, and find his material to be startlingly beautiful, powerful, and illuminating. So I feel pretty certain about recommending this book, which is the only one of his that has been translated into English as far as I know.)
The How, What, and Why of Talking to God