Blog Archives

Today's Experts in Various Areas of Torah (including Mussar & Chassidus)

30/11/2021

Someone asked Rav Itamar Schwartz of Bilvavi about rabbinical experts in serving Hashem.

Here's how Rav Schwartz answered him:

As of now I do not know one who has the comprehensive understanding on how to guide you, but I can give you some examples of names of people today who each are experts at the areas of Torah they are known in.

An expert on any of the words of the Gra is, Rav Dovid Cohen from Chevron.

An expert on the path of Ramchal [Rav Moshe Chaim Luzatto, Way of Hashem, Mesillat Yesharim, etc.] is, Rav Mordechai Shirki, who heads Machon Ramchal.

An expert on Reb Yisrael Salanter’s methods is, Reb Uri Weisblum.

An expert on Maharal is Rav Yehoshua Hartman, who prints Maharal sefarim and who heads Machon YaM, and above him is Rav Yonasan David, the Rosh Yeshiva of Pachad Yitzchok.

An expert at the school of thought Kelm and Slabodka is, Rav Reuven Leuchter.

Concerning the approach of Novhardok — find out from his talmidim in France about who the expert on Novhardok is today, because I do not know about it.

An expert on Chabad Chassidus is, Rav Yitzchok Ginzberg and Rav Yoel Kah, z"l.

An expert on Breslev Chassidus is Rav Kluger from Beit Shemesh.

An expert on Chassidus in general is Rav Yaakov Moshe Erlanger.

An expert on Kaballah is Rav Yitzchok Meir Morgenstern.

https://question.bilvavi.net/blog/2021/11/25/who-are-the-experts-today-in-avodas-hashem/

Hope this helps!

Inspiring Message from Bitachon Weekly

29/11/2021

Inspiring message from Bitachon Weekly Parshas Vayeishev 5782, page 8:

The Main Thing in Avodas Hashem Is Your Effort, Not Your End Product

Working for Hashem is much more pleasant than working for people.

With Hashem, you are working with truth; and He is happy with your efforts alone.

With people, you must have good results, or else they may think there is something wrong with you, and that you are not a good person.

To receive Bitachon Weekly by email, send a request to:
thenewbitachonweekly@gmail.com

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www.kolhalashon.com

Bitachon Hotline—“A Life of Bitachon”
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Please note: I've no connection with Bitachon Weekly; just find their material uniquely amazing & wish to spread this wonderful dose of sanity in an increasingly insane world.

What to Pray for on Each Night of Chanukah

28/11/2021

The following is found in Kedushas Levi by Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev in 1798.

(The Chatam Sofer says that crying in front of the candles ensures your prayers will be answered.)

Each night of Chanukah holds a different & extra-special power for certain types of prayers.

It goes as follows:

1st night: Pray not to be lonely or depressed.
2nd night: Pray for shidduchim (getting married), shalom bayit (harmonious relations with your family)
3rd night: Good, happy, & healthy children
4th night: 4 Imahos/Matriarchs — to be a normal person in my 4 walls — of true essence
5th night: Chamisha Chumshei Torah — daven that your husband should be a talmid chacham & so should your sons & sons-in-law

On the 5th night more of the Menorah is lit up; daven for more light in your life — daven for a revelation.

6th night: Simcha. Joy. You can have everything and still be sad...so daven for simcha.
7th night – Happy Shabbat. Zemirot & divrei Torah at your Shabbat meals. Shabbat is source of all blessing.
8th night - Daven for barren women to become mothers of healthy children.

8 is above nature – an extremely powerful day to daven.

The author also says that if you are planning to start something new — if you start on Chanuka — it will be blessed & more likely to succeed.

A big THANK YOU to the people who sent me this segulah — I'd forgotten about it, so your email provided a huge benefit.

What Chanukah Lights Say about Reaching the Real You

28/11/2021

An inspiring Chanukah message from Bitachon Weekly Parshas Vayeishev 5782, page 20 (boldface mine):

Bais Shamai says we light eight lights on the first night, and subtract one each day.

Bais Hillel says we start with one, and add one each night.

Bais Hillel taught us to think upwards with constant positive thoughts:

• A person must say: The world was created just for me. [Chazal58].

• The entire world is forgiven through the Teshuva of just one person. [Chazal 59].

• The entire world was created to benefit just one person. [Chazal 60].

Remind yourself of the great deeds you have done in your life.

This is the real you, and you are expected to continue being great.

Forget about your Aveiros and weaknesses [unless this brings positive results].

Keep moving upwards and think BIG [no matter how many mistakes you keep making].

Every person has special qualities that no one else has.

It is his job to:

• find them
• think about them
• talk about them constantly
• appreciate them
• thank Hashem for making him a great person
• keep davening day and night all your life for more and more greatness.

Always think highly of yourself [even if it’s not completely true] since the way a person feels about himself is the way he will eventually become.

The more a person has voices telling him he’s really not so good, the greater he really is, since the Yetzer Hara always starts up with our greatest people.

Please also see Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender's ideas on how to access the secret power of Chaunkah:
www.myrtlerising.com/blog/how-to-access-the-secret-power-of-chanukah

Rav Avigdor Miller on Parshat Vayeshev: Fighting the Jewish Inferiority Complex

25/11/2021

In Rav Avigdor Miller's dvar Torah Parshas Vayeishev-Chanukah 5 – The Chanukah Battle, we start off by receiving a fully detailed scene of what happened when Yosef HaTzaddik tried to escape the clutches of Potifar's wife.

Based on the Midrash, here's the illustrative description (page 4):

So now this poor innocent woman is standing on the street shouting to everybody,
pointing at this dirty fellow who had tried to violate her...

...Potiphar rushed home from work and when she told him the story, all the details about what this wicked Ivri had tried to do, he became full of rage; he seized Yosef and began pummeling him.

And after a good beating, he grabbed Yosef by the ear and she grabbed him by the other ear, and they dragged him to the police station, to come before the judges to be sentenced...

...She and her husband are dragging Yosef through the streets by his ears.

Potiphar was an important official and his servant was well known so this disturbance certainly drew a crowd.

Women and children were staring from the windows; the men were rushing out of their houses to the streets to see what was going on...

And our sages tell us that as Yosef was being dragged through the streets, Potiphar
and his wife were heaping contumely upon his head.

She was shouting accusations, and Potiphar was gnashing his teeth.

“Look what we did for him. We elevated him. We made him the majordomo, the manager of our house, and that's how he tried to pay us back? By acting so lowly?!”

And the Egyptians who witnessed this spectacle, they were looking on and shaking their heads.

“Well, that’s what you get for taking him as a slave in your house. What else could you expect from a Hebrew? Only a dirty Ivri could be that wicked and do such an uncivilized thing.”

Ivri means a Hebrew but for the Egyptians it meant a hated nation, a corrupt people.

And they were kicking Yosef and spitting at him, insulting him as he was being dragged through the street.

At the same time he endured all this, Yosef HaTzaddik kept repeated the same verse (Tehillim 39:9): "The reproach of low people should not come upon me."

Potiphera's wife had pursued Yosef. The Egyptian people were steeped in immorality.

Yet now all the hypocrites came to fore with appalled, offended, pearl-clutching sensibilities.

As if!

Yet Rav Miller notes this as characteristic of Jew-haters.

Dirty people will call a Jew "dirty Jew."

Greedy, power-hungry people will accuse Jews of loving money over all else.

Cold-hearted, hostile people accuse Jews of being the same.

Rav Miller references a letter Pope Gregory wrote to King Louis of France, declaring that “Jews commit the most terrible crimes that are too horrid to speak about.”

Oho, Catholic Church!

Not sure exactly which King Louis & Pope Gregory corresponded here, but we all know about the Catholic Church.

Yeah, there are some decent and sincere people there. In modern times, some proved instrumental in saving Jews during the Holocaust AND returning Jewish children to the Jewish people.

But historically, the Church has shown itself as a bastion of corruption & immorality & bloodshed.

Talk about pot calling the kettle black.

As noted within the PDF, Protestants complained about Jews trying to kill Christians at every opportunity. That was not true of the Jews, but of the Christians themselves.

Nazis accused the Jews of trying to murder & corrupt society...while the biggest murderers & corrupters of society were the Nazis themselves.

The list goes on.

Here's an interesting note on page 6 from Rav Miller:

There is extensive literature on this subject only that you can't get it.

It's very hard to buy these books that speak about the crimes of the church.

There's a powerful organization that sees to it that this literature is not available and therefore to get books, real works that reveal the deeds of the papacy is almost impossible.

One historical work I wanted to see when I was writing one of my books but it was very hard to get my hands on.

There's one copy in the public library in the main branch and you can't take it out.

That's what an organization can accomplish.

Look Who's Talking

Rav Miller notes how a person can feel ashamed if someone speaks publicly in Yiddish—even as Italians & all sorts of other ethnic groups freely speak their language without a care.

Some Jews feel ashamed or uncomfortable with traditional Jewish garb. Even seeing another Jew in Chassidic garb makes them uncomfortable.

Yet scores of non-Jews go about wearing purposely ripped clothes or pants sagging to an extreme, or other extremely undignified or vulgar styles.

Some even feel proud of their ugly, demeaning style.

Many belief systems entered the heads of frum Jews.

At one time, Jews felt attracted to the Egyptian mentality. Later on, many internalized Greek & Roman philosophies—including their music, literature, and attitudes.

Today, many frum people seek to harmonize atheistic & hedonistic ideas with Torah Judaism.

Some do so purposefully while some do so automatically.

Rav Miller elucidates how evolution crept into the Orthodox Jewish community on pages 10-11.

On pages 11-12, Rav Miller mentions books of Jew-hatred from the time of the Greeks until an old edition of Roget's thesaurus.

On pages 13-14, the rav offers examples of Jewish self-hatred.

Fighting the Jewish Inferiority Complex

On pages 14-19, Rav Miller describes the seeds of the Chanukah saga...and it all started out with a massive Jewish Inferiority Complex, which even infected knowledgeable Jews who should've known better.

In a nutshell, everything went into a slide all because of what Yosef HaTzaddik initially experienced at the hands of the despicable hypocritical Egyptians: cherpat naval.

In other words: being despised by lowlife hypocrites.

And here is the main lesson & goal of Chanukah for us today (page 18):

On Chanukah we’re expected to grow great in combating the yetzer hora that caused the trouble of Chanukah.

It means we have to begin falling in love with the Am Yisroel – that’s what Chanukah is trying to teach us.

And if we don’t get busy studying the emes of the Torah, then sooner or later the yetzer hora will win out and we’re going to fall into that error of the ancient Misyavnim [Hellenists].

On pages 19-20, Rav Miller describes his experience with one way to do this: reading Shir HaShirim.

It's true that if you pay attention to the words & understand that it's Hashem speaking to you personally with the uncompromising love expressed within, it's an incredibly powerful experience.

Saying Shir HaShirim for 40 days is also a good segulah to meet your zivug. My husband & I got engaged on Day 39. (He was saying it too, but not sure which day he was up to at that point.)

A synopsis of the real Chanukah story appears on pages 20-25.

Throughout pages 25-31, Rav Miller emphasizes the importance of appreciating the goodness of the frum community.

He acknowledges we are not perfect.

And he goes into detail on those pages.

By the way, thinking of yourself with self-worth helps you act that way. People tend to act to expectation.

Having grown up in a mostly non-Jewish secular society with the Conservative & Reform movements, I always noticed that frum Jews are THE most self-critical.

No other group ever criticizes themselves like frum Jews.

This includes all the frum Jews who constantly say, "We're in denial about this-and-such! Our community refuse to acknowledge/deal with this-and-such!"

No other community does that as far as I've ever seen.

Even the activist frum Jews who ARE doing their best deal with [fill in the blank], still go around decrying themselves by saying "we frum Jews aren't doing enough!"

It may be true they're not doing enough & that so much more needs to be done.

Yes, it's true!

But it drives me crazy when these same frum self-critics refuse to see through the self-propaganda of the non-Jewish/secular society, which portrays itself as having its act together, but really doesn't.

(I think this results from working exclusively with the frum community while studying articles, books, lectures, and podcasts from the non-frum/non-Jewish. You see all the problems in the frum community while the non-Jewish/non-frum community paints a picture of what they want. And let's not pretend their material has nothing to do with making a bestselling book or course, right? Sure, they focus on problems in their society, but with a coat of paint over it. Also, nowadays, many non-Jews lack the values to understand what is a problem & what isn't, and what is a solution & what is not.)

Their supposed resources & solutions are not as effective as they like to claim.

I have personal experience in this with them.

Yes, all their organizations and so forth manage to help some people.

They aren't completely useless.

But the reason why Western society as a whole is plummeting in every area results from a lot of stuff being mostly talk with very little action, or simply ineffective.

They can advertise & promote as much as they want, just like a pig can advertise & promote its kosher sign of a cloven hoof as much as it wants.

But inside, its digestive system acts like that of every other treif beast.

Credit for all material & quotes goes to Toras Avigdor.

Modern Sefardim, Shabbat in Morocco, and the Possible Messages of the Current Attacks on Jews

23/11/2021

In the Morocco of my mother-in-law's days (1940s-1960s), shemirat Shabbat stood as the rule, not the exception.

And Moroccan Jews kept Shabbat happily. It held enjoyment & meaning for them.

Living within a traditional Muslim society also meant belief in one God stood as the norm.

Religious customs, regular sessions of prayer times throughout the day, modest dress & behavior for both men & women, hospitality...this gave the Moroccan Galut a platform to embrace the fundamentals of Jewish tradition.

The moderate climate also enabled abundant harvests of a wide variety of fruits, legumes, and vegetables, which thus enabled a tremendous amount of generosity in feeding the poor.

Even when the secularizing French influence infiltrated both the Jewish & non-Jewish societies of Morocco, it lacked Eastern Europe's rabid craze for the destruction of everything religious.

Making Room for Religion

Even today, you see how less-religious Sefardim tend to give way to the more religious.

For example, during the blessing said during a bris milah, you'll see very secular-looking Sephardi women suddenly cover their hair out of respect for the blessings.

When attending religious weddings—including the not-terribly-religious weddings, even the most secular women make some attempt at tsniyut, whether it's being technically covered up with long pants & long sleeves, or a longer-than-usual skirt.

Normally bare-headed men don a kippah.

In fact, in a wedding with a lot of bare-headed guests, kippahs get passed out to anyone who needs, and everyone dons one. No considers it religious coercion.

In fact, I recently attending a wedding on my husband's side in which the bride's gown showed an appalling lack of tsniyut (as did most of the female guests)...but the initial dancing hosted by the secular-looking DJs featured a mechitzah smack in the middle of the dance floor!

And everyone respected the mechitzah (for as long as it lasted).

BTW, the mechitzah (pleasantly) shocked me because when I first came to Eretz Yisrael around 30 years ago, the solid dati-leumi committed to weddings with separate dancing, but no mechitzah.

So all the more so with this family, a very tepid dati-leumi, I felt sure there would be mixed dancing all the way.

But much to their credit, the first part of the wedding not only featured separate dancing, but also a mechitzah on the dance floor.

When I expressed my joyful shock, one of my older kids told me this has become the norm; most weddings among this crowd feature a mechitzah on the dance floor.

And frum pop songs blared out from the speakers, including chassidish ones.

And everyone loved it, singing along & raising their hands prayerfully to shout, "Hashem Melech, Hashem malach, Hashem yimloch l'olam va'ed!" (Hashem is King, Hashem has always been King, Hashem will remain King forever & ever.)

As another example of mixing: In the slideshow of the new couple projected onto the walls, posed next to his really nice yet extremely immodest kallah stood the chatan...wearing long thick tzitzit.

And a kippah, of course.

(In case you're wondering how the chuppah ceremony is conducted with such a revealing kallah at these secular-religious Sefardi weddings, the kallah usually wears some kind of covering under the chuppah only. Or her veil remains long enough to cover—even if it's a see-thru veil. And the rav acting as mesader kiddushin takes tactful care not to face her.)

Wait a Minute...WHO was Throwing Rocks Again?

At the same time, today's Sefardi communities developed a reputation for patience & acceptance of those seemingly less religious.

I wondered how it all went together back in Morocco's religiously devoted days of yore.

So I very nicely & sensitively asked my mother-in-law whether there were Jews who transgressed Shabbat in Morocco when she lived there.

"Yes," she said. "A few. But only inside their home. Never publicly."

"So there was never public desecration of Shabbat in Moroccan?"

"No," she said firmly.

She also indicated that the minority of Shabbat transgressors didn't want to take their Shabbat transgression to the street.

In other words, they weren't unhappy living amid a shomer Shabbat society, even if they did not believe it for themselves.

Intrigued by this complete (and correct) reversal of today's norm, I said, "What would have happened if they'd violated Shabbat on the street?"

"They'd throw rocks at them."

Oho, I thought. So it's not just those "fanatic charedim"...or so I assumed.

"Really?" I said. "In Morocco, the Jews threw rocks at Sabbath violators?"

My mother-in-law's eyes widened & she went speechless as did a double-take. "No!" she said when she'd recovered from the apparently shocking insinuation. She managed to stammer, "Not the Jews—the Arabs."

Now it was my turn for a double-take. "What—the Arabs?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Wait, let me get this straight," I said. "In Morocco, if a Jew would have violated Shabbat publicly, the ARABS would throw rocks at them?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Why?"

"Because they knew the Jews shouldn't be doing that."

If a Jew in Morocco walked out of his house smoking a cigarette or getting into a car on Shabbat, his NON-Jewish society would stone him on the spot.

The connection between obvious transgression & negative consequence back then & there was obvious to all.

In fact, even if you don't personally approve of it, it's hard to label that as Jew-hatred or antisemitism because the goyim in that situation were davka making sure Jews observed Judaism...as opposed to so many other times throughout history when the goyim tried to force Jews to violate Judaism.

And in addition to the basic respect these Shabbat-transgressors had for their Jewish society, the threat of stones zooming their way also kept their desecrations from crossing into the public sphere (a dynamic that ultimately weakens everyone & brings harsher judgement on a populace).

What Might These Nasty, Sometimes Lethal Hits be Hinting?

For millennia, our Neviim & Sages have been telling us that Jew-hatred is merely the stick used to keep us in line with our unique, holy, and unparalleled role in rectifying the world & achieving personal greatness in the This World & the World to Come.

The surrounding nations are a type of polishing-sifting mechanism for Am Yisrael.

Only rarely do the surrounding societies remind us to return to the framework of halacha in such an obviously pro-Torah manner, as the Moroccan Muslims did when they attacked Jews who publicly desecrated their own religion of Judaism.

Usually, it's much less targeted & much more anti-Torah than that.

(For example, throwing rocks at Jews for doing things like living in Eretz Yisrael or going to daven at the Kotel.)

It doesn't mean we cannot defend ourselves.

It doesn't mean the haters are blameless. They're wicked & will face harsh consequences for their Jew-hating actions.

But it does mean we should also look beyond the stick (even as we struggle to dodge or fend off the stick).

As we find ourselves hit once again by a wave of attacks by Yishmael, we can look at what might be going on beneath the surface.

Once again, the attacks come as hits from behind or from the side—unexpected, short & to-the-point, yet lethal (or almost lethal, depending).

One thing that comes to mind is the nasty little barbs people sometimes shoot at others.

While the offender usually minimizes the nasty barb as "cute," "clever," "funny," or "S/He deserved it," the victim often feels slapped in the face, gutted, humiliated, enraged, etc.

With comment sections & social media, nasty little comments have reached an all-time high, spreading faster & farther than ever—before an audience of hundreds, thousands, or even millions—and staying there theoretically forever.

Another message might be about all the seemingly "little" breaches people make in halacha.

The skirts that are just a bit too short, the shirt that's just a tad too tight. (Men shouldn't wear tight pants either: https://dinonline.org/2016/02/26/tight-clothes-for-men/.)

The hair-covering that's not completely appropriate (because, hey, the main thing is covering the hair).

The one little look at something online not completely appropriate or even absolutely forbidden.

How many men glance at something online when they could be glancing at something in limud?

And as sincere & heartfelt as one's simple love of Hashem may be, all the "little" breaches mentioned in the weddings above are as appalling as the sincerely observed mitzvot in those same venues are meritorious.

(Probably, there are also other ideas I'm not thinking of.)

In so many situations, the Yetzer Hara comes through the back door, sneaking up from behind or to the side of a person looking the other way.

Then the Yetzer delivers that stab, that bullet.

Needless to say, I'm talking to myself as much as anyone else. I also struggle with all sorts of stuff.

Of course, as far as practical protection goes, normal security methods should be implemented & strengthened.

But throughout Jewish history, our greatest Sages have always emphasized the need to invest in good soul-searching & teshuvah when faced with Jew-hatred.

The Beautiful Rose Garden that is You

Whenever we speak of self-scrutiny (cheshbon hanefesh), we must emphasize the importance of doing this with love & compassion.

We should feel GOOD about seeking out what we need to strengthen.

And taking baby steps in the right direction is absolutely fabulous. Generally, you don't need to make grand gestures unless you really feel willing & able to do so.

It shouldn't be depressing or "Oh no, not this AGAIN..."

It should be like weeding a beautiful rose garden.

You are the rose garden in all your glorious beauty—and you just need to do your lovely gloriousness a favor by pulling out a few pesky weeds.

If even that's too much (and for some people, based on their personality & traumatic experiences, it really might be too much), people are also free to dance & sing songs of praise to Hashem as a response.

Simply davening or saying Tehillim are also wonderful responses.

And that's it.

Comforting Quote about Time: Free Graphic

21/11/2021

SOULFUL CELEBRATION: A Poem by Nechumelle Jacobs

18/11/2021

For more posts featuring Nechumelle Jacobs & her incredible poetry, please start here:
www.myrtlerising.com/blog/pearls-of-wisdom-an-inspiring-poem-by-nechumelle-jacobs

Rav Avigdor Miller on Parshat Vayishlach: Start Climbing the Ladder to Your Full Potential by Starting on the Bottom Rungs

17/11/2021

In Rav Avigdor Miller's dvar Torah for Parshas Vayishlach 5 – Living with Intent, we learn about the importance of proper intent behind our actions.

This means taking a moment to look at your own tzitzit (or that of your husband or son), and think about what it means (page 9):

They should see it and remind themselves of the great ideals.

“How happy I am that I’m a Jew! How fortunate we are that Hakodosh Boruch Hu chose us!...He chose us from all nations from all languages!”

It doesn’t take long but even in a flash, as these thoughts pass through your mind, you have transformed the mitzvah into a different mitzvah altogether.

It's fantastic to do the same when you give tzedakah or look at/kiss the mezuzah.

Even if you're only giving tzedakah because you're embarrassed to say no, adding the above thoughts transform your giving into something far greater.

The Great Virtue of Allowing Yourself to Do Things Imperfectly

One of the terrible mental diseases today is purity of thought & motivation.

Demanding absolute purity of motivation while completely invalidating any good act as long as it carries the faintest whiff of impure motive?

That's the recipe for disaster.

That keeps a person sunk in despair, rage, and bitterness.

You see this in secular society, that people will say something is not clean or not good or not right ONLY because a certain purity of motivation is lacking.

And people are never satisfied.

There's all this nitpicking like, "This is a sign of low self-esteem, this means you're co-dependent, this is hints at your need for control, this is a sign of emotional immaturity, this means he's ADHD, this is narcissism," and so on.

Everything is pathologized.

Now, sometimes the above are true and need to be addressed.

But sometimes the negative labels are overexaggerated.

And even when true, a person is a LOT more than "co-dependent" or "ADHD" or whatever.

The human soul possesses an aspect of the Divine.

Why not focus on that?

In many societies, people want perfection, yet feel furious, depressed, resentful when they cannot receive this illusive perfection.

And certainly, purity of intent is a wonderful goal.

But as we're climbing the ladder of goodness, it's okay to mix pure intentions with less pure intentions.

No one can ever simply leap from the ground to the top rung of the ladder.

Impossible!

We must start somewhere—and that "somewhere" lies on the bottom rungs of the ladder to achieve potential.

You're not a hypocrite if you've mixed motivations. You're allowed to try!

You're allowed to be imperfect!

Here's Rav Miller on pages 14-15:

It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy life!

Enjoy! You can be happy!

You can make a lot of money! Nothing wrong!

Where do you find in the Gemara, anyplace that it’s wrong to make money, it’s wrong to be rich, it’s wrong to be happy?

It’s a fundamental error to think it’s wrong.

A man can marry a pretty wife. He doesn’t have to take the ugliest wife he can find and say, “I’m marrying only l’shem Shomayim.”

It’s a big mistake people make in pshat. You can marry a pretty girl. You can make money.

You can eat a big lunch and fall asleep on a comfortable pillow. Why not?

Only that you should add some intent.

While you’re doing it, you shouldn’t waste your life. You add the intent l’shem Shomayim.

So you say, “Well, he’s a faker. He’s not doing it for Shomayim! He wants to make money. He wants to eat a good lunch.”

No! That’s a mistake! It’s a mistake! You can add an intent even though it’s not your sole intent.

And therefore, whatever you are, wherever you are, you could transform your life with a little bit of thought.

It's not hypocritical.

Hakodosh Boruch Hu doesn't expect you to give up your livelihood, your good life, but while you're busy living that life, why not add the intention of doing it for some noble purpose, for the end of serving Hashem.

And therefore everything you do becomes noble; it becomes sublime and your life is packed with accomplishment.

By allowing yourself to be imperfect, you conversely enable yourself (and others) to become better & closer to perfection.

Some Final Tips

On page 16, Rav Miller explains what's wrong with the general welfare programs.

On pages 17-21, Rav Miller offers little thoughts to think in your daily routine to uplift in one second your mundane acts to the Divine.

Also, on the last page, Rav Miller offers advice to parents struggling with a child attracted to less-than-ideal pastimes.

"One small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day!"

How to Utilize Secular Social & Psychological Research for the Frum Community...and How Not To

16/11/2021

At one point early in my years of becoming frum, I loved articles & books showing how a Torah concept exists & receives backup by secular sources.

It gave the Torah path validation.

Later, I felt troubled by these same articles & books.

Why do we need the support of secular sources to validate Torah views?

Especially since secular sources can mislead. Contrary to how they're presented, they're actually not objective.

People think atheism equals objectivity, but without awareness of the human soul, the tzelem Elokim (Divine image) imprinted upon EVERY single human being, and God...it's impossible to arrive at the Truth.

Without God & the Divine aspects of a human being, it's also impossible to fully heal people from trauma & mental illness & all sorts of other dysfunctions. (As we've seen, the rise of all sorts of addictions, dysfunctions, and mental illnesses in Western society parallels the rise of secularism.)

Sometimes Studies Apply to General Society, But Not to the Frum Community

For a long time, I believed that properly conducted studies held a lot of value.

I still believe this to a degree...but not as much as previously.

The studies are usually PRESENTED in a convincing manner and...well, looks can be deceiving.

For instance, the studies conducted on non-Jewish societies do not always apply to the frum community.

Let's take the studies on children of divorce.

As just one example:

Within general American society, studies showed how children of divorce were more likely to get divorced themselves as married adults.

It made sense and I repeatedly heard this applied to the frum community.

Because it made sense, I also believed this applied to the frum community...DESPITE the fact that my personal observation did NOT view this outcome.

Meaning, to my observation (which I paid no attention to because of the secular research results), most of the married children of divorced parents (whether FFB or BT) tended to not only stay married, but even seemed to have better-than-average marriages.

Why is this?

Officially, I don't know.

But my observations showed the following:

On shidduchim, adult children of divorce developed more solid ideas on what to look for & less swayed from their ideals by others, enabling them to find a better spouse.

Once married, they seemed not only more committed to making the marriage work, but held more insight into HOW to do that.

However, because of my unwitting bias in favor of the secular research, I instinctively ignored all that.

(Note: It's very politically incorrect to say this, but nonetheless...most children of divorce experience a lot of long-term pain over the divorce—EVEN when the divorce is necessary. It's not fair & it's not always true, but many times, the children perceive & experience the whole ordeal differently than their parents. As FRUM married adults themselves, they loathe putting their children through that & go to great lengths to avoid it. Their frum lifestyle, value system, and attitude greatly assist them in their marital goals.)

Yet it wasn't until I read the early incoming results of a study on the frum community—which showed that FRUM children of divorce are NOT more likely to get divorced.

Only then did the light bulb flash on, enabling me to see what my eyes & ears had been telling me all along.

(Disclaimer: The link to this study was bookmarked on my old computer, but when I upgraded, my bookmarks got "translated" into 112 pages of confusing computer-language text crammed together in one long 112-page sentence. For the life of me, I cannot remember or find this website run by a couple of frum guys. If I ever figure it out, I will post it here.)

Think about your own observations:

In the FRUM community—of the divorced people you know—how many came from married parents & how many came from divorced parents?

Offhand, I can think of only 2 who came from divorced parents.

One divorced woman was the child of secular parents who repeatedly divorced & remarried all sorts of other people throughout her childhood. She also continued to embrace certain secular attitudes even after she became frum (which I believe contributed to her insistence on getting divorced without a good reason).

Another divorced woman (who, ironically, should've gotten divorced much earlier; a rare situation in which divorce would've definitely benefited both her & her children) was the child of divorced secular parents & held onto the marriage as long as she could BECAUSE she didn't want her children to go through what she went through. She managed to hold out until the youngest hit the mid-teens before getting divorced.

(And despite initially insisting she never wanted to get married again, she is now happily remarried to a good guy, baruch Hashem.)

All the other divorced frum couples I've known grew up with married parents (as far as I know).

In fact, I know some frum families in which more than one child got divorced or in which one child divorced more than once. In one case, one child was married 3 times by the time he was in his early thirties!

And again, these multiply divorced children grew up with parents who stayed married to each other.

These are not children of divorce.

And it made me think...

How many frum singles on shidduchim were harmfully stigmatized by this secular statistic?

How many faced automatic rejection simply because people believed they were more likely to get divorced—when that's apparently not even true for frum people, not for FFB nor BT?

(Again, whether they're born frum or not, the basic fact of BEING frum does NOT make children of divorce more likely than anyone else to get divorced themselves—both statistically & observationally.)

Yet each time I encountered adult children of divorce who remained married, I automatically considered each one the exception without even considering the absurdity of there being so many exceptions!

Unfortunately, based on the secular research, I also perpetuated this false presumption within the frum community.

That divorce statistic is just one example of error when we apply the results of a general study to the frum community without further examination.

So yes, the studies can be helpful, however:

one must always look out HOW the study was conducted and...
...IF those results really apply equally to the frum community.

(Note: I'm not saying that frum children of divorce don't have issues. Addressing specifically the issue of marriage, I'm saying that statistically & observationally, when frum children of divorce get married, they don't seem to divorce more than anyone else.)

When Can These Studies Help?

When can these articles & books validating Torah sources be valuable?

Perhaps when they prod us to look at an aspect of Judaism we always dismissed based on cultural or personality attitudes.

For example, reading an email about an idea presented in a book by Michael Easter called The Comfort Crisis (which I've not read) reminded me of a famous Mishnah in Pirkeh Avot 3:1.

The best way to a truly fulfilling & happy life is to think about death!

Here's Pirkeh Avot 3:1:

Akavia the son of Mahalalel would say:

Reflect upon three things and you will not come to the hands of transgression.

Know from where you came, where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting.

From where you came—from a putrid drop; where you are going—to a place of dust, maggots and worms; and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting—before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

And an excerpt of Pirkeh Avot 2:10:

Rabbi Eliezer would say:

The honor of your fellow should be as precious to you as your own, and do not be easy to anger.

Repent one day before your death...

(The famous question that follows is: But how can we do that when we don't know the exact day of death? So Rebbi Eliezer said to them: "So being the case, he should repent today, for perhaps tomorrow he will die; hence, all his days are passed in a state of repentance.")

And this Zohar (found on the Level 3 of the understanding of the above Mishneh here www.dafyomi.co.il/general/info/avot/33.html):

And the Zohar says: "fortunate are those who imagine in their hearts as if this day they are leaving the world."

Echoing the above, The Comfort Crisis cites the results of researchers from Kentucky University.

Their study showed how people who contemplate their own death are more likely to:

Show concern for others (via donations of time, money, and blood to blood banks)
Feel more gratitude & appreciation for the life they now experience

In other words, contemplating death makes people nicer, happier, more fulfilled—and overall better people!

In the frum community, some people experience a resistance to delving too deeply into the above mishnayot, perceiving these concepts as too gloomy, negative, or depressing.

Or some people associate death contemplation with groups like the Goths, whose nihilistic attitudes take the whole idea too far.

(For example, I knew a Goth girl who garbed herself with black hair dye, black eyeliner, and black clothes & slept with an empty coffin in her room—in fact, I think she sometimes slept IN the coffin—not to remind herself in a positive way of death to motivate herself to live better, but in a creepy, need-to-be-unique-&-considered-deep nihilistic way. Not good.)

So coming across a scientific study proclaiming the benefits of contemplating death could open the mind of a Jew with a block in this area.

It could also provide a new window into the above mishnayot, rather than automatically avoiding them or dismissing these mishnayot as "for people in previous generations" or "not for our generation because it's too harsh for our modern sensibilities," etc.

Using Social & Psychological Research Wisely

So can we use research about general society? Does it have value for us?

Sure.

But we need to know HOW.

Common sense & our own observations must take priority to these studies.

We also need to know HOW these studies were done, on which populations, how big a population, etc.

Sometimes, the studies either aren't always right OR they aren't true for the frum population.

Furthermore, their proposed solutions might be lacking too, influenced by social agendas or money or prestige (or all three).

This proves difficult to resist because those who promote the results do so via incredibly persuasive methods.

They believe in the results, they believe this knowledge will help others...which is why they are so incredibly persuasive.

And like I mentioned above, I also used to take this stuff very seriously & promote it.

I also believed it!

So I do not demonize or condemn people who swallow this stuff whole & who promote it. Most genuinely intend to help.

But again, though well-intentioned, it's not always correct.

Also, even when the results are correct, the methods created to solve the issues are often not completely correct (and therefore, not completely effective).

Or maybe they're even harmful.

So regarding the solutions: The methods are simply neither correct nor effective OR they're only partially effective...BECAUSE they tend to evolve from an atheist framework.

In short, these studies can be used to:

open a person's mind to an aspect of Judaism formerly dismissed (whether consciously or unconsciously).
offer more accessible language to understand certain ideas within Judaism.
validate certain feelings & dynamics.
provide a springboard or framework to understand a certain area or dynamic.
provide some benefit; even if only partially effective, it's still better for the person than nothing at all.

But we should be careful not to swallow them whole & uncritically.

We should use our own minds & observations, not be afraid to question (at least silently for ourselves), and to recognize that scientists & researchers also hold bias & agendas (this is true even of the minority who truly strive for objectivity).

We should definitely imbibe regular sessions of Torah & mussar/Chassidus to keep our minds working in the right direction.

Torah is what gives the brain a good workout.

<<Previous

Today's Experts in Various Areas of Torah (including Mussar & Chassidus)

Inspiring Message from Bitachon Weekly

What to Pray for on Each Night of Chanukah

What Chanukah Lights Say about Reaching the Real You

Rav Avigdor Miller on Parshat Vayeshev: Fighting the Jewish Inferiority Complex

Look Who's Talking

Fighting the Jewish Inferiority Complex

Modern Sefardim, Shabbat in Morocco, and the Possible Messages of the Current Attacks on Jews

Making Room for Religion

Wait a Minute...WHO was Throwing Rocks Again?

What Might These Nasty, Sometimes Lethal Hits be Hinting?

The Beautiful Rose Garden that is You

Comforting Quote about Time: Free Graphic

SOULFUL CELEBRATION: A Poem by Nechumelle Jacobs

Rav Avigdor Miller on Parshat Vayishlach: Start Climbing the Ladder to Your Full Potential by Starting on the Bottom Rungs

The Great Virtue of Allowing Yourself to Do Things Imperfectly

Some Final Tips

How to Utilize Secular Social & Psychological Research for the Frum Community...and How Not To

Sometimes Studies Apply to General Society, But Not to the Frum Community

When Can These Studies Help?

Using Social & Psychological Research Wisely

Myrtle Rising

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