​In an earlier post, we touched on the quandary of an oversensitivity within a person.

Now we're going to delve into what this is and how to deal with it.

Every person has something which really bothers them.

It’s like a sunburned piece of skin or an open wound. If you press your thumb against other areas of their skin, they feel fine. But if you press against an open wound or a sunburn, they’ll scream in pain and jerk away from you.
 
And that’s normal.
 
Everyone has something vulnerable and oversensitive like that.

​Whether you were born with it or developed it through certain experiences in your family life or school, everyone has at least one sensitive spot.
 
Much of the time, a person just wants other people to give way to their sensitive spot. And if you know someone’s area of oversensitivity, it’s good to be sensitive to it and avoid pressing on it.

But the problem is that one person can have many areas of sensitivity.

​Also, because everyone has a different area, it can be hard to keep track of each person’s area of oversensitivity and especially when you need to remember that this person has these 3 areas of oversensitivity while another has 10 areas of oversensitivity, and then keep track of the different areas of oversensitivity in another 7 people…
 
Realistically, you can’t expect everyone you know to tiptoe around your particular area (or areas) of oversensitivity. Even if they really want to be sensitive to you, they’ll mess up sometimes.
 
So a person will be happier in life if they work on their own area of oversensitivity. That way, when someone presses against it, you won’t be as angry or as hurt. Or maybe you’ll work on it enough that it’s no longer oversensitive.
 
But most of all, Hashem gives you your flaws (and having an oversensitive spot that others need to tiptoe around is a type of flaw) in order to work on. The very act of working on your various middot rectifies your soul and enables you to fulfill the very mission for what Hashem sent you here.
 
As Rebbi Akiva Rabinovitz stated:

So there are 3 main steps to achieving balance for an oversensitive spot:

1. Avoid the extreme of demonizing the other person for something that’s actually your problem.
2. Either give the benefit of the doubt or find a merit (or both, if possible).
3. Avoid the other extreme of blaming yourself being oversensitive when the other person is at fault.

First of all, you need to identify the oversensitive spot.

How?

When you feel a rush of rage, despair, pain, or anguish, the precursor likely touched on an oversensitivity.
 
Could that still be the other person’s fault?
 
Yes. But just because another person does something wrong doesn’t mean that you’ll get SO upset about it.
 
So when it’s your area of oversensitivity, you can step back from the emotion while focusing on the situation itself.

​Then you can see whether you’re projecting onto the other person negativity that simply isn’t there, or whether the other person really is behaving badly, but you still don’t need to take it so much to heart.
 
Rav Avigdor Miller mentions (can't remember where) the importance of laughing off another’s annoying behavior. Sure, laughter isn’t always the appropriate response (especially if you laugh out loud & make things worse), but it certainly takes the heat off of many irritating situations.
 
For example, in a recent shiur (Judaism is in Real Danger; Includes Current Events - starts at 52:00), Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi describes his encounter with a smiling man who refused to respond to Rabbi Mizrachi in any way. Even when Rabbi Mizrachi asked him direct questions, the man continued to smile yet did not reply at all.

Rabbi Mizrachi just laughs it off. He's neither embarrassed nor offended.
 
Later, Rabbi Mizrachi discovered that the man was on antidepressants and that’s why he was so smiley yet so unresponsive. (I think this is part of what's known as “emotional blunting.” As a friend of mine explained, the person can’t really feel their own feelings so they can’t really feel yours either. I've seen this with others on antidepressants.)
 
And really, laughing is the correct response—even before you discover that the rudeness is chemically induced.
 
So for example, even if someone intentionally ignores you when you greet them, then that reflects on their own bad middot and lack of derech eretz. Sure, it’s a little embarrassing when it happens and it stings a bit.

​But it doesn’t have to overwhelm you with despair or angst. And even if it does, you don’t need to act on that rush of negative emotion.

You can try to diffuse your rush of negative emotion by laughing it off.
 
But there’s another aspect to all this and that’s giving the other person the benefit of the doubt.

A small group of women gathered for a shiur at a neighbor’s house. I found myself sitting next to the lady giving the shiur. It was a good class and during a break for refreshments, I leaned over and told the woman how much I'd appreciated her lesson.
 
She didn’t even look at me.
 
Feeling my face heating up, I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me. After all, she was just staring downward with a glum expression. So I tried again, but again, no response.
 
Embarrassed, I glanced around. But to my relief, no one seemed to have noticed.
 
I didn’t know what to think of the woman. It didn’t make sense that she would purposely ignore me, but it didn’t make sense that she didn’t hear me either.
 
A couple of days later, I was speaking with the neighbor who hosted the class and she commented that the lady who gave the shiur suffers from minor brain seizures.
 
“It’s very distressing,” the woman confided. “She can never know when they’ll happen. What if it happens while she’s cooking or if a small child runs out of the house or starts doing something dangerous while she’s having a seizure?” The woman shook her head. “She always needs someone around in case she has one, like one of the older children or someone.”
 
Realization started to dawn on me.
 
“Is it scary for the children to see their mother have a seizure?” I said.
 
“No,” said the woman. “You don’t see anything. She just freezes.”
 
I realized that must have been happening when I was trying to talk to that same lady. She wasn’t ignoring me at all. She was having a seizure.
 
Having said that, you can’t go around thinking that every person who snubs you is having an invisible seizure. It’s something to keep in mind, but no need to be so unrealistic.
 
So taking a lesson from Rebbe Levi of Berditchev who, when faced with a Jew knowingly smoking on Shabbat for no good reason, the Rebbe simply detoured into another area and praised the man for not lying.
 
When there’s no excuse for the person’s behavior, find a merit in another area of the person’s behavior!
 
(We can't justify genuinely forbidden behavior due to the prohibition of chanifah. But we can still find a positive attribute in another aspect of the personality.)

Here's another example:

​When you take your kid to gan, you pass by all the other mothers of your child’s ganmates. You all often say hi to each other.
 
But once, there was one mother who refused to even look at me when I greeted her, yet she would talk to some of the other mothers. Again, I found her consistent snub very embarrassing.

​So I stopped greeting her even though that felt wrong too.

And over time, I saw that she simply compartmentalized people. If it served her to acknowledge them, she did. If not, she didn’t—even if they spoke to her directly. Pretty bad middot, actually. But I also noticed that she was a very attentive and patient mother.

​So while I couldn’t justify her lack of derech eretz, I could still direct my mind to take a detour into another area of her personality and admire her maternal attentiveness and patience.

It’s important, however, not to assume that every time your oversensitive spot gets pressed that it’s always your problem and doesn’t reflect on the other at all.
 
Over time, you can habituate yourself to a mild or dismissive response when that spot gets pressed. But if you excuse the other person’s bad behavior completely because you assume that each time they bother you, it’s your problem and not theirs, you can find yourself tolerating intolerable behavior or unnecessarily staying up in a harmful relationship.
 
While I don’t think that we need to snub and condemn people all the time, mussar sefarim (Pele Yoetz, Orchot Tzaddikim, etc) tell us to hang out with people who are better than us in order to be influenced by them.

If we just ascribe all uncomfortable or hurtful encounters to our own oversensitivity and excuse the other person more than they deserve, then we can end up spending too much time with the wrong kinds of people.

Also, these types pick up on the fact that you’re blaming yourself for their bad middot and they often enjoy taking advantage of this.
 
Sometimes, they’ll even tell you this outright (in a joking manner so they don’t sound too nasty) especially if you’ve already admitted that you’ve got an oversensitivity in the particularly area on which they’re pressing.
 
This doesn’t mean you can’t give them the benefit of the doubt or find a merit in them.

You can. But you needn’t spend much time with them either.
 
Even if you’re giving them the benefit of the doubt (or even going so far as to blame yourself for feeling bad around them), spending time with people who have bad middot and really don’t try to improve eventually affects you negatively.

You can either start absorbing their bad middot or you can start thinking that their bad middot are just your imagination and blame yourself for feeling bad around them.

Also, pretending that something forbidden is actually okay falls under the prohibition of chanifah, which is basically when you claim that something wrong is actually right. (There are something like 9 categories to the prohibition of chanifah.)

No one’s perfect, but you want to associate with people who are at least trying to work on themselves and not with people who only give lip-service to middot-work.

So this is the summary of how to deal with your oversensitive spot:

• Identify it (usually via strong negative emotions often out of proportion to the event)
• Don’t demonize the other person for not being sensitive enough to your oversensitivity.
• Don’t demonize yourself for being oversensitive.
• Recognize that it's simply part of Hashem’s self-rectification plan for you in this lifetime.
• Give the other person the benefit of the doubt.
• Don’t justify genuinely bad behavior or middot, but detour around the bad to find a positive attribute in another aspect of that person.
• Don’t go so far to the other extreme that you always blame your own oversensitivity and end up spending too much time around people who aren’t good for you.

In Parshat Vayishlach, Rabbeinu Bachaye offers more insight to justify the actions of Shimon and Levi. Yes, Yaakov told them “Achartem oti,” but that doesn’t mean they were actually in the wrong.

​According to Rabbeinu Bachaya, Yaakov Avinu objected to the deception that preceded their execution of the male Shechemites, and not the actual execution.
 
Why?
 
In Bereisheit 34:13, Rabbeinu Bachaye explains:

​Rabbeinu Bachya notes that Ramban disagrees with this premise, yet as Rabbeinu Bachya further elucidates:

​He concludes with:

​It’s interesting that regarding the laws of bnei Noach, even enticement or seduction [pitui]—which involves no physical force or physical compulsion—receives the death penalty according to Rabbeinu Bachaye.
 
I’m guessing it’s the death penalty because all forms of stealing (which also include abduction and the violation of women) receive the death penalty for bnei Noach.

And because pitui is an aspect of geneivat hadaat—“stealing of the mind,” meaning to deceive and give the wrong impression, then it’s a form of stealing.

But I don’t know for sure; that’s just the only thing I can figure.
 
Interestingly, Rabbeinu Bachaye lived in Muslim Spain 1255-1340.

​How did he arrive at such a "radical" female-sympathetic idea in such a chauvinistic culture 7 centuries ago? His sympathetic attitude certainly could not have been an influence from his surrounding culture or time.

In fact, his surrounding culture would've thought Rabbeinu Bachaye downright wrong, weak, or crazy for believing such a thing.

(Remember: This culture still kills girls in this kind of situation, even if they're very young and even if the criminal nature of the crime is very brutal and obvious.)

I guess it must just be from the Torah itself.

​In Parshat Vayishlach, Dinah Bat Yaakov undergoes a horrific ordeal.
 
Many layers of insights and deeper meanings (including rectifications and gilgulim) are revealed within this episode, but we’re just going to focus on gleaning 2 lessons from one aspect of it: Dinah’s behavior & dress.
 
Chazal point out that Dinah left her family’s secure area to go out to see the Canaanite females, which is how Shechem saw her and managed to abduct her in the first place. Also, her sleeve accidentally went up, exposing her elbow.
 
If you, like me, grew up with feminist brainwashing, you initially find this insight offensive.

​Blaming the victim! How dare they?!
 
But that’s not what Chazal is doing.

​First of all, Dinah inherited her mother’s yatzanit trait; Leah Imeinu was otherwise exceptionally modest and saintly. But nobody’s perfect. Either way, an inherited trait is not Dinah’s fault.
 
Secondly, Dinah and Yosef Hatzaddik switched souls, which is why he possessed certain feminine attributes and Dinah possessed certain masculine attributes.

​(Initially, Leah Imeinu was going to birth Yosef Hatzaddik, but in her great compassion and righteousness, she prayed for a girl so that her sister Rachel Imeinu would be equal to Zilpah & Bilha in the number of Tribes produced.)
 
So the fact that Dinah possessed certain masculine tendencies that led her to take this risk is definitely not Dinah’s fault.
 
So this is the first lesson: Ladies, you need to protect yourselves.

This is the opposite of feminist ideology, which insists that you have the right NOT to protect yourself.

But here's your real right: You have the RIGHT to protect yourself.

In fact, it's even an obligation to protect yourself.

​That's from the Torah, not from me.

Yet as we all know, protective measures like modest behavior and modest dress are not full-proof.
 
Nothing is fool-proof.
 
Bomb shelters can be bombed. Locks can be picked.
 
But we enter bomb shelters anyway. We lock our doors anyway.
 
Why? Because it’s good hishtadlut.
 
And because Judaism loves women, it encourages women to at least make efforts toward self-protection.
 
Because of the feminist propaganda, women and girls in America are discouraged from taking proper measures to protect themselves. This dumbing-down of the American female has reaped terrible consequences for girls and women.
 
In response to the growing number of assaults and harassment against young women, some caring tough guys formed an website (No-Nonsense Self-Defense) to give females—particularly college-aged women—sensible advice for self-protection.

They discovered that despite feminist blather about female "rights!" to behave however and go wherever they want, such conduct usually ignited or escalated a threatening encounter, resulting in a full assault against the woman.

While feminist snarkiness and "grrrrl" characters in books and movies display female feistiness as the desirable and victorious trait, studies reveal that this same feistiness often precedes a violent encounter.

Meaning, 80% of violent encounters were preceded by the young woman using INEFFECTIVE violence when striking out against her potential assailant.

In other words, despite media brainwashing, real-life feisty girls are more likely to lose when faced with a predatory male.

So No-Nonsense Self-Defense stepped in to help women avoid encounters and when faced with such an unwanted encounter, No-Nonsense Self-Defense teaches women how to avoid escalation.

(Sort of like what Dinah's episode comes to teach us.)
 
Yet despite their motto (“We don't object to the fact that the woman threw the first strike; what we object to is that she didn't break his jaw!”), No-Nonsense Self-Defense is regularly accused of chauvinism and misogyny by Liberal extremists who simply cannot accept the following truths:

• Women are often smaller and weaker than men.
• Women have less experience & skill in physical confrontations. (Boys grow up rough-housing and engage in high-contact sports, like tackle football and the like.)
• Women are either not willing or not capable of deterring a violent encounter with the amount of violence necessary for deterrence.

Yet because No-Nonsense Self-Defense actually cares about women, it continues to propagate pretty much the same lesson presented by the Chumash:

Protect yourself by avoiding encounters & avoiding escalation.

​Furthermore, Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller has observed that some men act like predators while some women act like prey.
 
So let’s take the example of wild bears.
 
People and bears have lived together in America since time immemorial. Not literally together, but in the same forest.
 
And most of the time, despite bears being omnivorous predators, people weren’t attacked.
 
Even today, people go camping in bear country, but take precautions because while most bears will leave you alone, they are still predatory animals who can mess up your campsite if you leave attractive stuff accessible.

​Actually, bears can do a lot worse than just mess up your campsite, but you get my drift.
 
So what are some precautions campers should take against bears?

Avoid encounters with bears.
This means the following:

• Watch out for signs of bears in the area: fresh tracks, torn logs, clawed trees, flipped rocks, scat. (Drunken frat boys often leave similar signs.)
• Only travel through bear country in a group.
• Avoid late evening trips or returning to camp in the dark.
• Avoid being near food sources that attract predators.

Upon encountering a bear, avoid escalation.
This means the following:

• Stay calm—look apathetic, if possible—yet wary.
• Protect any small children in the group (i.e., pick them up).
• Stay in a group.
• Move away (slowly and sideways, if the bear is stationary)
• Do not let the bear access your edibles.
• Don’t drop your pack.
• Leave the area & detour to a non-bear location.
• Carry bear spray.

 
Likewise, the above contains good guidelines for girls and women when around men (i.e., potential predators) who aren’t their father or husband.
 
To take this mashal even further:

​People who work in America’s National Parks tell of some of the horrifyingly stupid things people have done around bears.
 
For example, some brutally stupid parents think it’s cute to paint their children’s hands with honey and have them hang those hands out the car window to be gently licked by the charming bear approaching their car.

A real Kodak moment!
 
Except the bear did a lot more than lap up the honey.
 
The person telling the story didn’t want to go into details, but I think we can all imagine.
 
Yet disturbingly, as Rebbetzin Heller pointed out, some women do just this:

They paint themselves with honey when they’re out in bear country (like if they're dressed provocatively & drunk on a college campus or in a night club or something).

In other words, they transform themselves into something a predator wants to devour: prey.
 
And certainly, there are parents who paint their children with honey and expose them to predators.

Even without the honey, you should NEVER roll down your car window and expose your children to a potential predator!

And I mean that metaphorically as well as literally.
 
Is it their fault? And is being mangled or killed a fair consequence for lack of brains? I mean, heck, the children weren’t at fault at all; it was their parents!
 
Yet it still happened because this is the physics of the world in which we live. There are predators. This is nature, like it or not.
 
Of course, you can always hope for a miracle and miracles happen a lot more than we like to acknowledge (Hashem shomer peta’im), but a thinking & caring person takes normal measures of protection against the natural way of the world—and the natural way of the world includes predators (bears, Canaanites, etc.).
 
So that’s Lesson #1.

​If you look at the consequences for Shechem, things didn’t work out for them.
 
They got slaughtered—literally.
 
So this is a very interesting lesson:

• Dinah unwittingly endangers herself by leaving her family compound.
• She innocently goes out to positively influence the females of a culture whom she knows consists of immoral reprobates (but she also knows she can improve the females -- yet she is kidnapped before she gets the chance).
• She’s not careful enough with the modesty of her clothing.
• And all this leads her right into the clutches of Shechem who violates her, then doesn’t want to release her.

 
Yet despite all this, SHECHEM is blamed.
 
And SHECHEM is punished.
 
Not Dinah. Not at all.
 
Yet real misogynists would describe Dinah’s behavior as “asking for it.”

Historically, most (maybe all?) non-Jewish societies took the "she was asking for it" attitude whenever girls or women were violated (unless she was a nun or something). They nitpicked over her behavior and the way she was dressed. Only if they found her character, behavior, and dress impeccable could they proceed with a guilty verdict for the abuser. Maybe.
 
And even today, Yishmaelite culture punishes the victim. Even a preteen girl will be murdered by her Yishmaelite family members for this act she couldn’t have possibly wanted and on the contrary, experienced as profoundly traumatic.

Several years ago, Israeli newspapers reported on a Bedouin mother from Israel’s South who made it to the Beer Sheva police to deliver her traumatized 12-year-old girl into their prison to protect this girl from her own father and brothers who wanted to murder her for having been violated! I can only imagine what it must have been like for such a young girl to have undergone such a horrific ordeal and then need to run for her life, knowing that her closest family members wanted to murder her.

Actually, I can’t imagine. It’s just terrifying.
 
But other cultures around the world are not much different. No matter how obviously innocent the female victim and how obviously guilty the offender, many cultures still treat the female victim with little or no compassion.
 
But the point is: The family of our Avot and Imahot were NOT like this.
 
And the truth is: Chazal needs to mention Dinah’s unintentional lack of modesty in behavior and dress in order to impart this all-important message:

Even if her behavior or dress makes her look like she’s “asking for it,” VIOLATING HER IS NOT ALLOWED.
 
Despite Dinah inadvertently "doing like this" and "doing like that," everyone dies.
 
All the bad people die, I mean.
 
Interestingly, the brother (Shimon) who (along with Levi) helped carry out the strict din against Shechem was also the brother who took Dinah under his wing.

​Rather than killing his victimized sister, Shimon comforted and protected her.

This shows how the uncompromising Jewish adherence to justice runs parallel to the Jewish ability for equally uncompromising compassion and love. 
 
So this is a very powerful lesson to be gleaned from the Chumash, but you need to scour the secular agendas out of your brain in order to glean it.
 
Having grown up amid secular Liberal culture myself, I can sympathize with how difficult this scouring can be.

​But don’t give up! Hashem helps.

A summary of events follows (the REAL events, not El Al’s fairy tale of the monstrous penguins)...
 
Here are 4 eyewitness testimonies:

What Really Happened on Flight 002
Yaakov "Ketzaleh" Katz is an Israeli hero.

​While I’m not one of his voters (he’s in the religious Zionist camp while I’m in the charedi one), I have profound respect for the kind of Jew who, as he’s lying wounded on the battleground and almost completely split in two, cares only for his secular comrade’s spiritual progress.
 
(Please see HERE for that whole story.)
 
That’s my kind of Jew!
 
And I’ll certainly believe him over El Al’s Facebook page any day.
 
A Few Thoughts From a Passenger on El Al Flight 002
A very level-headed & convincing account of events.

FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT: El Al Fiasco Ends in Display of Achdus, Kiddush Hashem on Shabbos in Athens
​I think his point about it all maybe being Hashem's way of getting funding for a mikveh is a good one.
 
El-Al Sponsered Shabbos of Unity (also an eyewitness report)
Omigosh, you mean it was some secular people yelling at some of the shomrei Shabbat, and not the other way around?
 
Could it be? But secular Israelis NEVER raise their voice to one another. Hmm…I’ll have to get back to you on this one. (Just kidding.)
 
No, but seriously. It seems that regardless of the passenger’s religious observance, nearly all the Jews on the plane were behaving with achdut and helpfulness.
 
And as many others pointed out, it wasn’t a secular-religious issue as portrayed in the media.
 
I totally agree with Ben Chafetz, that the fiasco could’ve been reported in a very positive way -- to El-Al's benefit.
 
From a religious point of view, it was more of a success than a failure (although I'm very sorry for the inconvenience & stress everyone experienced before & after this amazing Shabbat):
​

• Dozens of different types of Jews being mosser nefesh for Shabbat.
• Wonderful achdus and achvah.
• Monstrous penguins—oops! I mean charedim—and other types of religious Jews sharing their mehadrin meals with their secular brothers and sisters who didn’t receive any food at all.
• Chabad does it again! With only a few hours to prepare for hundreds of people in all different situations (mothers with small children, Chassidic businessmen, rabbis, people with medical issues, etc.), the Hendels merited enormous success & blessing.
• All culminating in an unforgettable Shabbat and a particularly stunning kiddush Hashem.

 
After reading this, I actually felt bad for the committed Sabbath-transgressors who went on to catch another flight on a different airline for Shabbat.

For sure, the frum Jews enjoyed their weekend much more on both the physical and the spiritual levels.

May we all merit to join together in such achdut & chessed around a mitzvah.

​One morning, I was davening as usual. But between prayers, I would drift off into daydreaming.
 
Wasting that time meant that davening stretched a lot longer than necessary—and for no good reason.
 
Furthermore, I knew that for Shemoneh Esrei (the Standing Silent Prayer), I needed to change into more appropriate clothes.
 
One should daven Shemoneh Esrei dressed as one would to open the door to someone—and not in a nightgown (albeit a very tsnius nightgown).
 
So I consciously realized that I needed to change, but decided to daven Shemoneh Esrei anyway because I didn’t feel like wasting any more time and to just jump into Shemoneh Esrei.
 
I just started Shemoneh Esrei when the phone rang.
 
How frustrating! If only I’d gotten a rein on my daydreaming before, I’d have davened surrounded by quiet and be finished already, able to answer—rather than trying to daven while distracted by the phone.
 
A minute after the phone stopped ringing, I heard a knock on the door—more distraction. Was it connected to the ringing phone?
 
And I still couldn’t answer.
 
Yet because in Eretz Yisrael, most Jews feel like family with each other, my dear beloved brother the postman opened the door a crack and said, “Oops, sorry,” laid a package on the cabinet near the door, then closed the door and left.
 
I admit it caused me a fit of giggles as I stood before my Creator.
 
It also caused me strong feelings of shame as a strange man saw me in my nightgown (although there wasn’t anything to see because it’s very modest, but still; it’s not appropriate).
 
What was Hashem trying to tell me?
 
It wasn’t hard to figure out.
 
Number 1:
Had I focused on davening with zerizut (not davening fast, but commit to davening without getting distracted between sections), I would’ve been able to daven in peace and then able to answer the phone and the door.
 
Hashem gave me the quiet space in which to daven, but I didn’t make good use of His Generosity.
 
Number 2:
​I really need to be dressed appropriately—at least how I would dress to answer the door—when I’m davening Shemoneh Esrei. Had I been dressed appropriately, I never would’ve been embarrassed or ashamed when being seen by my dear beloved brother the postman.
 
So I’ve been trying to apply these newfound lessons to my morning davening...

​...except for the times when I forget. ;-)

We're told by the media reasons for devastating wildfires: global warming, drought conditions, strong winds, President Trump, not clearing away forest debris — did I miss one?

But the Spiritual Self-Help blog brought up the idea of underground heat as a contributor (or cause) of such wildfires. Furthermore, reports of the Athens fire "chasing us all the way into the water" or "all of the sudden, flames were at the side of the car" sound more like fire from under the ground than fire from spreading above-ground — though I don't know enough about fire tendencies to say for sure.

Doing further research, I discovered this article:
Southern California Hotspot Hits 812 Degrees, Baffles Experts

How many other hot spots like this are there that HAVEN'T been discovered?

After all, this one was only discovered "after the land got so hot that it started a brush fire and burned three acres."

Could it also be that they don't report every hot spot they discover? (After all, this one was discovered a while ago.)

Because I'm not in touch with the geological surveys of southern California, I can't say for sure. But I'm inclined to think there might be more than 1 undiscovered (or unreported) extreme hot spot in southern California.

What's going on? I'm not sure. It's just food for thought.

Unless of course, it's President Trump secretly heating hydrocarbons deep inside the Earth. Or maybe he's opening those cracks through which they're seeping out!

And even the theory about deep-seated hydrocarbons leaking out is just that: a theory.

There's no proof.

No one knows what's going on.

But perhaps such extreme hot spots should be taken into account.

Here's a gem from Rav Avigdor Miller's dvar Torah for Parshat Vayetzei:

Anyway, at the beginning of our marriage, my husband and I went to visit a rabbi (with the rabbi’s agreement) and at my husband’s prompting, I asked the rabbi directly, “What nusach should I daven?”

That question was part of the reason why we were there.

I’m Ashkenazi, my husband is Sephardi, and another rabbi told me that some poskim say the wife should take on her husband’s nusach while some say she should stick to her own familiar nusach.

So we went my husband’s rabbi to get a decisive answer.
 
And the rabbi acted like I hadn’t said anything. He just looked away and didn’t say a word -- not even a grunt.
 
I felt very embarrassed and confused. Had I said something wrong? Or was he thinking it over? Perhaps he hadn’t understood me with my heavy American accent?
 
I glanced at my husband, who also seemed taken aback, but after a long and uncomfortable silence, the rabbi started talking to my husband about something else.
 
I was really confused.

​Also, just for knowing, the rabbi would look at me directly (in a modest manner) and address me directly at other times. So it wasn't that he refused to talk to or look me in the face by custom.
 
At a pause in the conversation, I waited a moment and then politely said something like, “Excuse me, kavod harav, um…I was just interested in knowing what nusach I should daven now?”

He looked at me in an odd way, then turned away and made no response.

​So I said, “Um, the thing is I davened Ashkenazi until now, but now I’m supposed to take on Sephardi minhagim…” I faltered because he still made no reply. “So, uh, I heard that some poskim say one way and some say another and, uh, I was just wondering which nusach I should daven?”
 
He frowned and looked away from me.
 
Now, instead of feeling mildly confused or a bit taken aback like a normal person might, I felt devastated—because this is my sore spot. I’m way too oversensitive in this area.
 
At this point, my husband got up the guts to politely re-ask my question and the rav looked at him, frowned, and made this irritated motion with his hands and shoulders.
 
And my husband immediately raised his palms in surrender, “Okay, sorry, sorry! Never mind. Ah…” And my husband changed the subject.
 
When we got home, I burst into tears as I asked why the rabbi treated me so. My husband tried to make a joke out of it and quipped that apparently the rabbi wanted to rely on my husband.
 
“So why didn’t he SAY that?” I cried. "Why did he act like I don't even exist?"
 
My husband shrugged apologetically. He grew up in a traditional immigrant Moroccan neighborhood in Eretz Yisrael, where respect for people who learned Torah was sacrosanct and he couldn’t bring himself to speak about his rabbi any further.
 
To compound things (and I'm revealing this with my husband's consent), my husband’s father died very suddenly when my husband was a teenager, and he always missed the closeness they’d shared. So he instinctively sought a father figure in his rabbi.

​And this rabbi could be very warm and friendly when they learned or spoke together, and such paternal warmth is what my husband understandably craved—but the rabbi could also be irritable and sharp and prone to short bursts of frightening temper. (I saw it once and it froze me speechless—and all because his wife brought the wrong coffee. Cripes.)
 
What I didn’t know at the time was that this rabbi has a lion-like temper (which was why my husband got nervous when the rabbi got irritable and why my husband was hesitant to push the rabbi to answer the innocent—and very simple!—shaila).
 
And as I also saw several times, this rabbi can be very friendly and warm toward people, then treat them with disdain or hostility. (And he did this to me, sometimes acting like I didn’t exist as he did above, or being really nice and then with a paternal smile, plunge his verbal dagger into my nefesh.)
 
Eventually, we drifted off from him and much to his credit, my husband eventually managed to overcome the very understandable desire for some kind of father figure.
 
In other words, despite his hasmadah in learning and the tremendous intellectual knowledge he possessed, this rabbi's Torah learning remained stuck in his head only and never managed to fully flow down to his heart.

You could definitely see the influence of Torah on him, but there was still a lot missing.
 
And some people are like that.

​For whatever the reason, some people learn tremendous amounts of Torah (sort of like academics like to learn their own weighty tomes and philosophies), but such people never manage to actually INTERNALIZE the Torah they learn. (Or they only internalize a very small percentage of the vast amount of Torah they’ve learned.)
 
Of course, we’re all flawed and even someone who learns Torah for years can still exhibit flawed middot at times.

Only Hashem is perfect.
 
But this rabbi's extreme behavior exhibited itself regularly.
 
And we need to use caution when choosing a rav. Just because someone has a lot of Torah-learning in his background doesn’t mean he is a Torah personality.
 
For example, when a regular frum Jew asked Rav Avigdor Miller how to deal with a learned rabbi’s lack of derech eretz, Rav Avigdor DIDN’T say, “Gevald! Why aren’t you giving him the benefit of the doubt? Who are you, a lowly regular Yid, to judge such a big talmid chacham?!”
 
No.
​
Rav Avigdor knew that rabbis can lack derech eretz. So he recommended that the regular Jew write the rabbi a polite anonymous letter.
 
Here’s the original Q&A:

In Going Home…to Yerushalayim, a commenter asks how can we know who to listen to and who not?
 
It’s an excellent and vitally important question.
 
So first of all, it’s important to pray for this.
 
Both Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender (Words of Faith) and Rav Michel Dorfman recommended saying “Utaknenu b’aitzah tovah milfanecha” (said in Maariv and Bedtime Shema) with as much kavanah as you can regarding this issue.

So when I saw the rabbi erupt into bursts of short but very intense anger (over nonsense), I could have realized he wasn’t the real deal.
 
It was confusing at the time because in those days, there was tremendous pressure on baalei teshuvah to find a rav (any rav!) and many stories showcased how blind obedience to a rav reaped a satisfyingly happy ending.

There are also many stories showing rabbis acting oddly and later revealing profound and legitimate reasons for such behavior.

But they were tzaddikim with ruach hakodesh—which is very different than the vast majority of rabbis who most certainly do NOT possess ruach hakodesh or tzidkus. So you needn’t assume your rabbi’s unhalachic behavior is the result of profound holiness.
 
Anyway, I thought the problem was me and that if I only had enough emunat chachamim, everything would be fine.
 
(But things didn’t work out and I learned a big lesson: Intellect is NOT the same as wisdom. And we shouldn’t place our emuna on a “walking encyclopedia,” but only on a real true chacham.)
 
So it’s not easy and it takes some time, but that’s one way to go.

The following pertains specifically ​to gedolei hador, but it's still good general advice.

This is what Rav Avigdor Miller suggests in Recognizing a Gadol Hador:

• See who other gedolim are calling a gadol.
• Do great rabbanim from outside his group consider him a gadol?

​By the way, we can and certainly should respect all people for the good middot and authentic Torah knowledge they DO possess. Some people are experts on the halachos of tevilat keilim or lashon hara, but lack sensitivity or expertise in other areas.
 
We should not start gossiping about a rabbi’s—or any person’s—bad traits unless there is a halachically mandated benefit in doing so.
 
We must always find a good point in every Jew—the more good points, the merrier.
 
However, on the subject of rabbis, you don’t need FOLLOW them if they aren’t up to par.

​If their views conflict with those mentioned in STANDARD halacha and mussar, you DON’T need to follow them.
 
Yes, you treat them with same courtesy and respect as you do any human being.

But you don't need to follow them.
 
Their opinions and hashkafahs aren’t kodesh kedoshim—unless that rabbi truly embodies Torah haskafah.
 
So if they aren’t representing Torah truth (and long gray or white beards with impressive rabbinical attire and rabbinical degrees don’t AUTOMATICALLY determine their level of Torah truth), you don’t need to (and shouldn’t) follow them.

Frum media isn’t perfect either.

​Please see:
Rav Avigdor Miller on the Yeshivah & the Sane Asylum

And this connects to what’s happening in both Eretz Yisrael & Chutz L’Aretz today:
Are the Reshaim Endangering Us?​

P.S. This post started off with mentioning the problem of a sore oversensitive point. I want to continue discussing how to deal with any point of oversensitiveness. When ignored, it interferes with having a good life and good middot. So more on how to deal with that in 3 Steps toward Overcoming an Oversensitivity in Your Personality.

Ahava Lange is a vibrant frum wife & mother who has been suffering from life-threatening illness for a very long time.

Her doctors in America and Eretz Yisrael basically gave her a death sentence 2 months ago and she wasn't sure she'd live to see the bar mitzvah of their only son.

Happily, Hashem brought her to life extension in an unexpected place: Istanbul, Turkey.

Incredibly, the treatments have been working, but she is still in poor physical condition and must continue flying to Turkey for the treatments.

(I can only imagine how agonizing it must be to constantly travel in such a state.)

The treatments themselves are also pretty grueling.

You can read more about the latest part of her journey here:
A Letter to You

If you can, please consider donating here:
www.gofundme.com/ahava-emunah-lange-cancer-treatment

(Other payment options are offered there if you don't want to donate via gofundme or you'd like to make it tax deductible.)

Please continue to pray that Ahava Emunah bat Chava Ehta merit a complete and speedy recovery of the nefesh and the body along with all the other Jews suffering from illness.

(H/T to Kala for bringing this important update to attention.)

UPDATE (as of 15/11/18): Here are extra tidbits on the topic:
​
Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi 
Parashat Toldot-includes current events
(from 00:28:15 to 00:32:28)

Rav Avigdor Miller on the Poor Apikores

​As many already know, tinok sheh nishba is a Jew wholly under the influence of non-Jews since the childhood.

​This Jew grows up “captive” (literally or figuratively) in a completely non-Jewish environment with no chance of learning about Judaism or fulfilling mitzvot.

Their lack of mitzvah observance grants them a status of “innocent” in Shamayim.
 
And understandably so.
 
Like many other frum Jews, I was taught that all non-religious Jews (including many formerly religious Jews) fall into the category of tinok sheh nishba.

In other words, they aren’t accountable for their transgressions because it’s not at all their fault. And as to why they don’t come back to the fold—or why they don’t even consider authentic Torah Judaism an option—well, that’s all part of the tinok sheh nishba dynamic.

(And granted, there is also tremendous anti-Torah propaganda in society today.)
 
But I started having experiences that made me question this oh-so comfortable outlook.
 
Tinok sheh nishba has more to do with a person being held accountable in the World of Truth.
 
And that’s where things get dicey.
 
Just because I want to be generous-minded doesn’t mean that my generosity holds any water in the Heavenly Beit Din.
 
Having said that, all my learning has shown me that I’m still more accountable for my sins than they are for theirs.

I’ve committed myself to Torah. I’ve read the mussar books.

Believe me, I have what to answer for!
 
But just like I need to be honest about myself and my own accountability, I always need to be honest about the terms and ideas presented in halacha and Chazal.

Circumstances showed me that the label of tinok sheh nishba isn't so simple as to mindlessly apply to every single non-frum Jew...

​Here’s a modern-day example of a genuine tinok sheh nishba:

My chassidish friend had a coworker who, upon finding out my friend was Jewish, responded, “Oh, you’re Jewish? You know, some of my relatives are also Jewish.”

“Like who?” said my friend.

“Like my mother.”

Oho!

Turns out that this person’s Jewish mother died when he was very young and his non-Jewish father married a non-Jewish woman.

Understandably, this unwitting Jewish child felt his non-Jewish stepmother as a real mother. To compound things, their area hosted very few Jews and certainly no religious Jews.
 
I think we can all agree this person fits the classic definition of a tinok sheh nishba.
 
(And just for knowing, my chassidish friend invited him to her Seder that year, where she and her husband introduced him to Judaism.)
 
But let’s go on to people considered tinok sheh nishba, and yet...

​While on a visit to America, I stopped off in New York where my aunt hosted me. Because she and my uncle don’t keep one whit of halacha, she generously stopped by a fully kosher restaurant to pick up some food for me.
 
All the guys working there were young energetic frum guys. They were bouncing around and having a great time. They related to my aunt and I with good humor and friendliness, making us feel like we were part of their gang.
 
With my aunt standing right there, I explained as inoffensively and nicely as I could that I needed the food wrapped in a way that it could go into a non-kosher oven. My aunt was feeling so comfortable that she intervened to explain that her home wasn’t kosher, but she wanted to be able to warm up food for me.

(I think she was also testing them to see how they'd respond to her open declaration of kefirah.)
 
The guys didn’t break their jolly stride.

They pulled off enormous swathes of tin foil and started wrapping my food with gusto.
 
The frum guys were so good-natured and understanding, I felt truly grateful toward them. My aunt was smiling the whole time. Even after we left, she continued smiling for the next couple of blocks.
 
It was a big kiddush Hashem (and thank you very much to all of you frummies who treat your customers with such grace and understanding wherever you are—kol hakavod on the wonderful kiddush Hashem).
 
This aunt has also met other frum Jews and they have also treated her with graciousness and open arms.

Yet she continues to sporadically attend their Reform congregation and boasts of activities like when they organized a choir to raise money for iffy environmental causes.
 
Seeing as she lived her whole life between Brooklyn and Long Island (not exactly frum-free areas) and seeing as she has encountered very nice frum Jews who even spontaneously invited her and my uncle to their home for Shabbat, does she truly fall into the category of tinok sheh nishba?

​One of my Jewish relatives is a man of great old-fashioned integrity.

His love and passion for Judaism is contagious and his favorite part of the Torah is Sefer Iyov (Book of Job). The son of very assimilated parents, he also grew up in Brooklyn and had a lot of interaction with tepid Orthodoxy.

He never would’ve married a non-Jew, but the Conservative-which-is-actually-radically-Liberal movement of Jews told him that their “conversions” are completely kosher (even though their “converts” needn’t keep the basic 10 Commandments, let alone other vital mitzvot, like taharat mishpacha, etc.).

​So he married his non-Jewish girlfriend who agreed to “convert”—which means he was living with a non-Jewish woman for most of his life and none of his children are actually Jewish.
 
In their later years, both he and his non-Jewish wife repeatedly experienced many positive interactions with fully Orthodox Jews, including Chabad shlichim.
 
During a visit, I once said to him, “I don’t mean this offensively at all and I hope you’ll take this in the spirit I mean it in…but I can’t help thinking that you would have made a really amazing and wonderful Orthodox Jew. And I mean that in the nicest, most respectful way possible.”

He quickly reassured me that he knew I meant that as a compliment and that he definitely took it that way—and that he was even honored that I thought so highly of him.

Then he mulled over his response.

Finally, he said, “I really thank you for that praise. And yeah, I think I could’ve been Orthodox, but…” He sighed and shook his head. “I’m just not knowledgeable enough to really fit in with the other Orthodox guys.”

“You could catch up!” I blurted out. After all, this guy had a degree in engineering from an Ivy League college. And he also knew Hebrew.

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’d rather be a knowledgeable Conservative Jew than an ignorant Orthodox Jew.”

​Aack!
 
I couldn’t believe he actually said it outright. (Also, I’d no idea he felt this way.) He was basically saying that becoming frum wouldn’t be comfortable for his ego. He was choosing his religious system based on his ego, of all things.
 
How’s that going to hold any water in Shamayim?
 
And is that tinok sheh nishba?

​I have a friend who definitely looks like tinok sheh nishba.
 
But is she?
 
The product of a completely assimilated Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father, she attended Hebrew school held at the JCC on Wednesday nights throughout her high school years. It featured an eclectic mix of teachers, including some frum teachers. One of her favorite classes was Mishna taught by an Orthodox rabbi. Her other favorite class was taught by a Chabad rabbi. (His classes were always packed—much more than anyone else’s, including any of the non-Orthodox teachers.)
 
When I became frum, I hosted her as a single woman. Once, we even spent Shabbos by a frum family in Far Rockaway. She also spent Shabbos with me and my husband in Eretz Yisrael in a charedi neighborhood with no cars or radios on Shabbat, the whole Shabbat atmosphere, etc.
 
As far as I know, not only has she met frum people, but all of her interactions with frum people have been extremely positive.
 
When I once mentioned how I always thought she was the smart one in our relationship, she looked uncomfortable and said that she always thought I was the smart one.

Flabbergasted, I pointed out that she was scoring straight top marks in honors calculus in 12th grade while I took dumb-people algebra (where they spread the algebra over 2 years rather than one) and even then, I needed to go to summer school to make up for flunking it. (Admittedly, failing beginners Algebra had more to do with lack of effort than lack of intelligence, but still.)
 
“Yeah,” she said, “but that’s not really intelligence. On the other hand, you think about things.”
 
“So do you,” I said, recalling many of our past conversations.
 
She shook her head. “No. Maybe I’ll listen to a discussion of stuff and even participate. But just on my own? I don’t really think about things. I mean, you actually pondered whether God exists and you researched it.”
 
“So did you,” I said. “I mean, you were an atheist at one point, then you decided you kind of believe in God now…”
 
“No," she said. "Atheism was just a stage because I was really into Ayn Rand at the time. But I didn’t really THINK about it.”
 
Then at one point, she said, “If someone would hold a gun to my head and say, ‘Choose any religion in the world—but you MUST choose one’—I’d choose Orthodox Judaism.”
 
“Really?” I said. “Not Reform?”
 
“No,” she said. “The only religion I’d want is specifically Orthodox Judaism.”
 
She’s married to a non-Jew and keeps absolutely nothing of Judaism. Not Yom Kippur, not Chanukah, nothing. (If she’s invited by other assimilated Jews to attend a Seder—however they do it—she’ll go, but she doesn’t do it on her own.)
 
Is she a tinok sheh nishba?
 
And are her reasons for not doing teshuvah going to hold water in the World of Truth?

​I’m not saying all this to condemn people. And I’ve davened for the above people to do teshuvah. (Although the male relative passed away a couple of years ago without ever doing teshuvah, so much for that.) And for about 20 years, I've sent them appealing Aish HaTorah videos for nearly every chag. (This is a modern twist on Rav Avigdor Miller's suggestion to send them a paid subscription to a frum newspaper.)
 
And like I wrote above, Hashem holds me more accountable than He holds them.
 
I’m just asking about as far as the definition goes—in all honesty—are the above people really tinok sheh nishba?
 
And will their excuses (ego, an unwillingness to really think about things, etc.) be accepted in the Heavenly Beit Din when the time comes?
 
And are their reasons being accepted now?
 
No offense intended, just being honest and above-board about the whole issue because people like to throw the term around (as I myself used to) and now I question whether it's correct to do so.