​I want to start off by reiterating that the Pele Yoetz was a very holy and knowledgeable Jew who chose to die of plague in order to spare his community of suffering that same plague. He strove for honesty and yosher in every aspect of life.

And as much as he felt the pain of his fellow Jews in whatever difficult interpersonal situation they found themselves, the Pele Yoetz maintained equal awareness that Olam Haba is a very real place, and that rising to the occasion by overcoming your bad middot earns you a goodly portion in Olam Haba while giving in to your lower instincts and emotions can land you in a lot of trouble with Heavenly Judgement.

With this in mind, much of the his advice flies in the face of what our secular-influenced culture tells us now. Yet you’ll see that the Pele Yoetz’s advice follows the actual halacha.

In other words:

• The Pele Yoetz understands your pain.
• The Pele Yoetz also understands that Hashem is behind the difficult situations.
• The Pele Yoetz has an excellent idea of exactly how awful Gehinnom is and how marvelous Gan Eden is.
• The Pele Yoetz VERY MUCH wants people to avoid Gehinnom.
• So the Pele Yoetz tailors his advice to help people avoid Gehinnom in their Olam Haba because he feels that suffering Gehinnom in This World is more than enough.

 

• Remember, the Pele Yoetz himself was willing to suffer the plague for several weeks and then die so that no one else would need to suffer the same fate (including those very difficult people who might actually deserve such a fate).

And this final point:
The Pele Yoetz focuses on your present and future behavior.

​He barely focuses on external causes because despite your upbringing and many other factors, you still have the capacity to behave with good middot or you wouldn't be commanded to do so.

Needless to say, I struggle with the above as much as anyone else. Sometimes, I do my best to maintain my middot and succeed, but sometimes I fail. That's how it goes. I publish the Pele Yoetz's advice for myself as much as anyone else.

Secular modern psychology is atheistic, even if many psychologists aren’t actual atheists. So psychology focuses on the surface-level emotional well-being of the client rather than on the client’s soul and future well-being once the soul leaves the body.

​Also, no therapist is going to be as mosser nefesh for you as the Pele Yoetz.

Your therapist will never take your Heavenly Punishment upon his- or herself like the Pele Yoetz did for his errant brethren.

So it's best to listen to him as much as we can.

Rav Avrohom Ehrman’s book Journey to Virtue notes that part of fulfilling the mitzvah of v’ahavta l’re’echa kamocha (love your neighbor as yourself) includes (but is not limited to):

• Speak only in a positive manner about others.
• Show the same degree of concern for their honor as you do your own.
• Camouflage their deficiencies just as we would wish our own faults to be overlooked.

The above is admittedly VERY HARD to do with people who treat you badly.

Modern society accuses people of being "fake" or "in denial" or "Pollyanna" or "a stooge" when they do things like only speak positively of others or camouflage other people's deficiencies.

Yet that's only true when your INTENTION is to cover up for a bad guy who uses your cover to keep hurting others. It's true when prefer to disassociate and actually pretend nothing in wrong and continue neglecting yourself or others, or if you're trying to be a goody-two-shoes.

In Judaism, you don't pretend that bad is good. (That's chanifah -- totally forbidden.)

You simply emphasize the good.

However, when your intention is to remain well-aware, but commit to HASHEM'S value system and follow the above strictures with integrity, then that's being more REAL than anything else.

Remember, as elucidated in a past post, Judaism considers the whole truth told only when the positive is included.

Modern society is the exact opposite. Truth is only when the negative is included.

​This was a very complex post to put together because the Pele Yoetz acknowledges both the awful reality of some people’s behavior together with the unknowable Divine Plan behind putting you together with such people.

And he discusses both the spiritual reasons along with the here-and-now reasons as motivation to rise to the occasion when dealing with difficult people.

But his MAIN FOCUS is on CORRECT BEHAVIOR. He openly acknowledges that correct behavior may not influence the difficult person to behave better. He says that it can, but it doesn't necessarily.

This approach is very different than the approach even many frum advisors use today, so it can take time to internalize the Pele Yoetz's message because it initially feels like sandpaper-rubbing rather than a loving caress.

So it’s all together and that makes it difficult to sum things up (especially on a computer screen where the eye naturally skims the information rather than reading it carefully—mine too).

The Pele Yoetz doesn’t mince words when describing people (“lowly and disgusting” “depraved” “bad character” “bad and difficult”) nor does he make excuses for the miserable behavior.

You don’t hear about anyone’s unfortunate upbringing or background or environment. Instead, he mostly attributes people’s flaws to the generation or to general factors (like old age), rather than to specific circumstances.

HOWEVER, he also very strongly encourages people to push themselves spiritually to be the best they can be—despite the weakness of the generation and the rampant ignorance in society, or any other factors (like old age, stressful situations, etc).

His Balkan Jewish society was interesting because while there weren’t secular Jews per se, there were very ignorant Jews. Some didn’t know how to read or know how to read Hebrew.

For example, he advises a man who doesn’t know Hebrew to go to a Sage before Yom Kippur to have the Hebrew Vidui (Confession) translated into the vernacular.

(We don't need to do that nowadays because we have Artscroll and Metzudah and the like. But the point is to understand each word of Vidui.)

​At the same time, Sarajevo was the Torah center where the Pele Yoetz learned too, and Sarajevo produced many talmidei chachamim and tzaddikim. And then you had everyone in between those 2 extremes.

The Pele Yoetz speaks strongly about the need to overcome your lesser middot and behave in an exemplary manner while at the same time acknowledging how hard that can be. Sometimes, his expectations seem too high—yet he addresses this too by saying that if the Torah commanded it, then it cannot be impossible.

“The Sages spoke only of one whom the controversy pursues him. And he flees from it and the peace flees from him and he runs after it [i.e the peace]—THAT is called a ‘rodef shalom—a pursuer of peace’ and his deeds will be praised at the gates.”
​
Several times, the Pele Yoetz makes the point that being a rodef shalom—a pursuer of peace—implies behaving peacefully with truly difficult people. Else why do you need to pursue peace? If a person is lovely, then peace exists on its own—no need to go running after it.
​
So he definitely understands that some people are difficult and that maintaining your middot with them is very difficult.

​How does that all connect with lashon hara?

Our most difficult and painful relationships are exactly what trip us up, spiritually speaking.
​
There is opportunity for great loss—or great gain, depending on our response.

Lashon hara for no halachically permissible reason entails spiritual loss.

Problems among family ties can trip off the most lashon hara.

So among our more intricate family relationships, the Pele Yoetz has a lot to say.
 
Below, you’ll see some of the advice he offers both spouses and in-laws.

Note: Coming from secular Western society, it’s quite a pop in the face. So be prepared… 

​The Pele Yoetz insists on exemplary behavior on the part of spouses and in-laws even toward a spouse or child/parent-in-law who is awful.
​
First, he reminds both husbands and wives:
Love of the soul is the most important love of all, so the spiritual goals for you & your spouse need to be foremost at all times.

He actually repeats this idea for husbands, wives, and parents throughout the book.

​The Pele Yoetz says to wives:

Note: I wish EVERY person involved in ANY shalom bayis counseling would commit the above to memory and engrave it on their heart!

It IS difficult to offer general advice because NOT ALL PEOPLE THINK ALIKE. The Pele Yoetz encourages women to conduct themselves according to the nature of HER husband and HIS character—NOT according to whatever stereotypes your advisor has of men or according to your rebbetzin’s husband’s nature.

He stated this nearly 2 centuries ago, but who is listening?

Anyway the Pele Yoetz also advises wives:

• "You should be sensitive to your husband’s honor whether he is a moral person or a sinner, whether praiseworthy or dishonorable, because he is to her as a decree from the King of the Universe. Hashem brings individuals together and matches them to each other."

"This is like a man whom the king desires to glorify and so appoints him as second to the king. The entire nation is obligated to act toward him with respect, even if he is a leper or a repulsive person."
​

• Your reward will increase when your performance of your marital mitzvot demonstrate that you act for the sake of your Creator.

I want to focus on this for a moment because so much marital advice today, whether from secular psychology or shalom bayis “experts” focus on pleasing the other spouse and bending over backward to their will (and especially for women to do so).

Many give this advice despite the fact that pleasing and appeasing behavior never changes abusive people. Also, because most people with personality disorders FEAR intimacy, giving them more love not only doesn’t help but can even trigger MORE abusive behavior, depending.

But the Pele Yoetz doesn’t advise respectful behavior to improve shalom bayit (although he says that explaining to the person using soft words can help, which he bases on a verse from Mishlei--but no promises).

As indicated above, he clearly states that the reason for good treatment, whether for husbands or wives, is for Hashem’s Sake and for the sake of your Olam Haba.

Why?

Because, as the Pele Yoetz states, the whole point of relationships is to facilitate spiritual goals.

Even with marriage, the Pele Yoetz encourages a wife to look behind the curtain of her husband (“whether praiseworthy or dishonorable”) because that marriage (like EVERYTHING else in life) is a decree from the King of the Universe.

You honor your husband because doing so honors HASHEM and his decree.

This is just like the idea propagated throughout Judaism (including the Pele Yoetz) that you should be among the insulted who do not return a hurt with a hurt, which is an ideal Judaism also upholds outside of marriage.

Why?

​Because the unpleasant incident or situation is from Hashem. Therefore, there is some benefit to it, like an atonement or middah-building exercise, or whatever.
​
Unlike modern-day shalom bayis advisers, the Pele Yoetz doesn’t focus on pleasing the husband nor does he start engage in exaggerated generalizations about men in an effort to blindside the wife into submission.

(Secular/non-Jewish therapist often do the same, including using their diagnosis of the husband suffering from a personality disorder or Aspergers or just needing unconditional love or whatever in order to manipulate the wife into co-dependence or submission.) 

In fact, he doesn’t mince words. He acknowledges that some husbands are “dishonorable” and that a husband can be “harsh in character and opinions, a lowly and disgusting man who shares no good--ish kasheh b’middotav u’v’de’otav, nivzeh v’chadal ishim, chasar kol tov.”

(Nor does he quantify such behavior with allusions to an unfortunate background or dysfunctional upbringing of the aforesaid “lowly and disgusting man.”)

He wants a wife to rise above her natural inclinations in the face of such behavior—just as he encourages EVERY person (including the husbands of dysfunctional wives) to respond to ALL insulting or dishonorable behavior with dignity.
​
(Meaning, his mussar isn’t just for wives or even just for marriage, but a general principle applicable to all interpersonal dealings.)

At the same time, the Pele Yoetz encourages a wife to wait for a more relaxed moment and then “rebuke” her husband in a soft, sweet way by saying things like:
“Why did you do this-and-such? What is my sin and what is my transgression that you got worked up against me and got angry at me when I’ve done nothing to harm you? Is this good in the Eyes of Hashem?—and other good things.”

(Note: The language suggested by the Pele Yoetz was originally for early 19th-Century Sefardi Bulgarians and may need to be adjusted for modern English-speakers. They are just suggestions, after all.)

He also recommends pleading sweetly with an abusive husband in a more conducive moment, but he’s clear that these are only recommendations. He makes no guarantees that such words will reap the desired effect if the behind-the-scenes Heavenly decrees indicate otherwise.
​

• A wife should pray for her husband.

 
Finally, he insists that:

• Wives must use iron strength to refrain from revealing their husbands' failings and misdeeds to anyone.

(Again, the Pele Yoetz obviously understands how challenging this is, else why would he advise utilizing such strength in the face of such a nisayon?)

At the same time, the Pele Yoetz obviously heard from suffering wives he’s clearly aware of abusive behavior.

For example, in the case of physical abuse and insensitive behavior in the bedroom, the Pele Yoetz extols as a very big mitzvah to help such a wife, whether by Jewish officials beating the husband into submission or by assisting her in obtaining a divorce if she wants. (Interestingly, he offers neither option to husbands suffering from difficult or evil wives.)

How does this connect to lashon hara?

The Pele Yoetz shows heavy insistence against bad-mouthing your husband in any way, yet if it’s l’toelet (like she needs outside official help to protect her from an especially abusive husband), then obviously she can say something. Otherwise, how would the Pele Yoetz have known what was going on in her home or that a woman needed such help?

But whether the husband’s behavior is severe or just annoying, it’s clear that a lot of what passes for acceptable conversation nowadays is actually completely forbidden.

​In actuality, no joking or kvetching about your husband is permissible, even when his behavior seems to justify complaint.

Finally, the Pele Yoetz advises an abused wife:

• "She should also pour out her soul before Hashem every single day and perhaps Hashem will have mercy on her and her prayers will bring forth fruits."

Again, this doesn't rule out divorce from such a person or asking for intervention.

As the Pele Yoetz agitates against husbands who "may their name be obliterated" are "biliya'al (depraved)" and "treat Jewish women like maidservants (shifchot)":

​"It is fitting for anyone who has the ability to chastise them [the abusive husbands] when possible. And if they have the ability to extract their wives from their hand when it's the desire of the wife--because a woman cannot dwell in the same place as a snake--it's a great mitzvah to save the oppressed from his oppressor."

I know, I know.

This is in direct contrast to what’s taught in shalom bayis shiurim, which teach that the obligation of sensitivity is upon the wife.

The husband gets a free pass because "he’s a man" and "men aren't smart enough" and "can’t understand these things"—or so they claim.

​This is why it is so important to turn to classic sources written by real tzaddikim and leave behind all the secular-influenced or Christian-influenced blather.

People who offer such advice come from despair; they’ve despaired of getting men to fulfill their halachic responsibilities—just like feminists have despaired of men.

​So instead, they dump everything onto the wife. And looking at marriage and children today, it obviously isn’t helping. But their despair doesn’t let them think with an expanded mind.

Thank God we have our Sages to open our minds to the truth!
 
Anyway, the Pele Yoetz insists even if a wife:

• intentionally burns his food
• engages in certain transgressions (like lashon hara, anger, cursing, taking Hashem’s Name in vain, “similar things mentioned in Nashim and Nezikin”)
• violates his will
• is generally bad and difficult
• lacks intelligence
• spends too much money
• angers him to his face
• and so on,

--nonetheless, a husband should never:

• become angry with his wife
• shame her
• curse her
• strike her

Furthermore, the Pele Yoetz insists that a husband:

• Always speak to his wife pleasantly
• Use soft speech at all times with his wife (including when he's trying to convince her to correct her bad behavior)

Why?

A husband must bear the yoke and be among the insulted who do not insult and accept upon yourself the Judgment of Heaven with joy "because a woman is sent to man from God."

Again, the Pele Yoetz avoids being superficial about things.

He clearly realizes that some people are just plain bad apples, yet because these people are challenges sent by Hashem, we are supposed to rise to the occasion.

He cautions husbands several times that hating a bad or difficult wife can lead to producing a ben sorer u’moreh—the son of a hated wife, as mentioned in the Torah.

• He exhorts men to genuinely love such wives to avoid producing rebellious children of bad nature.

To my mind, this a very high demand in light of the terrible middot mentioned above.

How can a man love the kind of sinful, vindictive wife mentioned above?

Again, the Pele Yoetz bases his advice on achieving the best Afterlife possible. The awful spouse is merely the conduit to achieve a blissful eternity:

• “The fence to avoid quarreling in his home is to avoid being so exacting with each and every cent of household expenses.”

​

• “He shall increase the honor of his home, each thing in its time, and appease his wife, because blessing only rests within his home for the sake of his wife.”

 
Though sympathetic to the challenges of a dysfunctional spouse (and even supports divorce for an abused woman), the Pele Yoetz reassures both suffering wives and suffering husbands that if they can maintain their own good middot (including refraining from lashon hara), then their Heavenly Reward will be tremendous.

Note: He provides a more advice & obligations for both husbands and wives than listed here.

​The Pele Yoetz insists that a daughter-in-law should:

• Be quick & careful to honor her husband’s parents (“as a king and queen”) even more than she honors her husband even if their “yoke” is heavy upon her and even if her parents-in-law are bothersome and possess bad character (“as is common among the elderly”).

Please note that the Pele Yoetz doesn’t say “even if she THINKS they are bothersome and have bad character,” but that they ARE bothersome and DO have bad character. Once again, he acknowledges that some people are indeed bad apples and doesn't dismiss the daughter-in-law's perception as mere tension common in that relationship.

• She should strive to understand what they like and aim to please them.

 

• At the same time, he recommends that if parents-in-law and children-in-law really can’t manage civility, they should not be together.

Again, the Pele Yoetz doesn’t get all sentimental about it all.

The reason for the above is because the merit of the parents aids the children. Meaning that performing the above actually helps the daughter-in-law. In a sense, she’s doing it for herself and her own children.

He reassures both children and children-in-law that in regard to honoring parents and parents-in-law, “one who honors others will be respected and his reward will be greatly increased and l’fum tzaara agrah”—one’s reward comes according to one’s exertion.

Interestingly, the Pele Yoetz states that:

• The son-in-law is obligated to honor his wife’s parents.
• The obligation for a son-in-law to honor his wife's parents is possibly even greater than the obligation to honor his own parents because due to his wife’s parents, he merits to be saved from sin and establish his lineage (presumably due to having married the daughter they produced).
• He must not be ungrateful to them.
• He must act as a son to them.

 
Regarding adult children and their own parents, the Pele Yoetz recommends:

• Avoid financial dependence on parents whom it is difficult to honor.

• “If it happens that the wife of the son is a bad and difficult woman--ishah ra’ah kashat ruach,” it is your responsibility to “bear her yoke and guide her with pleasantness and not to impose your burden upon her.”

(Again, the Pele Yoetz doesn’t say that you merely THINK your daughter-in-law is a bad and difficult woman—she actually IS genuinely horrible. Nonetheless…)

• And if she behaves inappropriately, you should let her know (nicely) in private and not expose her awfulness (navlut) to others.

 

• You should only praise her and treat her respectfully before others.

 

• All the more so, you should not expose her awfulness to her husband (your son) so that resentment not enter his heart and he shall not come to hate her.

 

• “Woe to them, the father and mother who cause this [their son’s hatred toward his wife]! For behold the Holy Name written in holiness, the Holy One Blessed Be He commanded to erase it in water to place peace between a man and his wife (Shabbat 116a)."

​

• "And it is better for a father and mother to suffer a thousand evils and not facilitate controversy (machloket) between a man and his wife.” 

 

• “Therefore, the father and mother need great intelligence to behave with good behavior with the sons and the daughters-in-law in order for their marriage to go forth nicely in peace and straightness.”

 

• “And even if there are some displeasures or grudges, they [the parents] should be very careful not to let these things be known or seen by outsiders because it is a foolishness and a shame for both sides and causes lashon hara and gives them a bad reputation.”

He advises that in situations in which parents-in-law and children-in-law cannot behave peacefully and properly with each other, then:

• The good and just--hatov v’hayashar” thing to do is avoid sitting together because “this separation is pleasant for them; it is their life--zo hee chayahem.”

Finally, the Pele Yoetz also speaks against discussing your children negatively with others.

The Ben Ish Chai in Laws for Women goes as far as saying that a mother who complains to the father about the children is actually endangering them because if justified, her complaints against them can cause them to be punished from Shamayim.

​He doesn’t condemn a beneficial discussion of how best to handle Junior’s difficult behavior, but he’s referring to the litany of teinos some parents pour forth toward their spouse.

​Much of the above advice is anathema to Western mores. With the modern emphasis on standing up for yourself and your rights, being “honest” and “real” about everything, “being yourself,” and much more, the Pele Yoetz’s advice seems backwards and constraining.
 
Yet over the years, I cannot deny that all the people who publicize the faults of their spouses or in-laws (children or parents) receive no good from this and don’t even experience real relief.

It’s hard for me to say this, but this includes those who really suffer (as the Pele Yoetz acknowledged above) and whose complaints leak out due to their immense pain.

I’m really sympathetic to those whose pain leaks out because living with a horrible spouse infects your very being and every aspect of life.
 
Particularly for women, who are likened to the Moon which receives light from the Sun (i.e. her husband), a woman whose husband maltreats or neglects her genuinely feels like a cold dead rock suspended in a dark airless Universe.

A woman in such a situation will find it very difficult to keep it all in and only pour out her heart to Hashem (as the Pele Yoetz encourages her to do) but not to other people (unless there’s a toelet, like to get divorced, as the Pele Yoetz notes).

One woman I knew married to an emotionally abusive man even became suicidal at one point—despite frequently leaking out her pain and resentment to others, despite therapy and despite consultation with rabbis. All the outpourings and/or comments never helped. 
​
Whether it’s via humorous jabs or sad comments or even tearful admissions, I’ve seen that it really doesn’t help and any relief is only temporary. (Though relief isn’t guaranteed because sometimes the listener responds in a way the speaker finds hurtful.)

Like I've said before, my initial heart's reaction is to listen and empathize with the other. But I can't help seeing that all the intended support and empathy doesn't seem to offer more than temporary relief. However, when there has been something practical that I could do, then things ended up better.

So there's a difference between pouring your heart out when it can't help you (but maybe it feels like it helps you) and pouring your heart out when it can.

I'm not demonizing anyone for doing it -- believe me, I understand what emotional pain is like -- I'm just saying there is a way to do it that's beneficial and a way that is not.

​Well, not me saying it, but the Pele Yoetz.

I'll be following up this last bit in another post.

I just got an interesting quote in my Inbox [emphasis mine]:

​This issue is what has come up on this blog several times.

Conventional "solutions" touted throughout society as "the best" or "the only" solution to problems either don't help, don't help as much as needed, or even harm.

Despite the positive smiley encouraging presentation, such promotion of band-aid methods ultimately leads to despair.

Hashem loves you with a Love that you can't even imagine feeling yourself, no matter how much or how deeply you have ever loved another person. He is the Only One Who truly has your best interests and Who truly cares about you.

​And He is the True Healer of all ills.

English-speaking frum media with the noblest of intentions continuously pushes secular solutions to problems, whether it’s therapy, medication, yoga, or anything else solidly recommended in secular society.

As I’ve said before, I think therapy can be helpful depending and I’m not necessarily against psychiatric medication used for very specific reasons for a very limited amount of time. (And according to my reading, yoga isn’t ever kosher even when it’s advertised as “kashered,” so that’s out.)

But even helpful therapy doesn’t usually solve the problem at its core. And its helpfulness depends so much on the chemistry between the therapist and client, how spiritually healthy and emuna-filled the therapist is, how much the therapist actually likes the client and sees the client's God-given potential, plus how much the therapist can help the client develop emuna and carry out a real cheshbon hanefesh...and much more.

Yet the most compassionate, caring, responsible response with which people are constantly bombarded is to encourage a suffering loved one is to "get professional help."

​Psychiatry keeps insisting that psychiatric medications are the only way to treat mental illness despite both anecdotal evidence and a leading psychiatrist’s claims and research evidence that medication actually makes people worse in the long run, not better.

Yes, that’s right.

At the end of a lifetime of official, professional, “responsible” psychiatric treatment, the patient will not even be back to their original starting point of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or whatever. They’ll be worse.

So how is that "treating" the illness?

As stated before, I don’t see a problem with temporary treatment. I can only imagine what a psychotic episode is like, and maybe someone needs a medicinal “kick” to get them out of a dark tortuous place and into a place where they can ponder their situation, its roots, and how to proceed.

But most (if not all) of what secular society recommends as "treatment" or "responsible" doesn't ultimately heal the problem.

I used to think therapy was the answer for all emotional ills.

Then I tried therapy. I tried it several short-term times with different therapists over the years for different reasons. Most were either not helpful at all or somewhat helpful, and a couple (the frum female ones) were pretty helpful—yet could not provide me with complete direction. (That needs to come in a quiet place from private discussions with Hashem.)

I also couldn't help noticing that others who'd undergone therapy still suffered from poor morality and psychological issues.

I also believed with all my heart that if I would cleave to a rabbinical-approved chinuch method (as taught by the rabbinically approved rebbetzin) and jump through every hoop insisted (no matter how high or how narrow), then I would succeed in turning out ideal frum children, which was my dearest dream.

(Note: To my knowledge, these authorizing rabbis don't hear the nitty-gritty details of the shitahs presented nor do they hear the stories told for emphasis. The authorizing rabbis go by a basic run-down of the shitah—which will always be presented in a Torah-based way because that's what the person truly believes he or she is doing--and the authorizing rabbis go by the integrity and middot of the person promoting the shitah. But just because the person knows how to deal with her own children or students doesn't mean that she knows how to deal with other people's children or even with other people who are very different than her.)

The books that helped me break away from the chinuch loop were (in the order I discovered them):

• Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery by Riso & Hudson (helped me realize that much chinuch advice either does nothing or is the opposite of what a Type 8 child needs and can even worsen that child’s behavior)
• The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen by Dr. Robert Epstein (validated a lot of my own against-the-stream observations since high school and proved that most “adolescent” behavior is actually culturally induced rather than the much-touted "teen brain"; also one of the only secular books of this type that not only doesn’t put down Judaism, Torah, etc, but even admires authentic Judaism)
• Garden of Education by Rav Shalom Arush (this made me throw out every other chinuch book; it was all I needed)
• Yeladim Mutzlachim by Rav Shalom Arush (its collection of prayers for chinuch is invaluable; and using historical examples of Gedolei Hador from all groups, it proves the importance of prayer and spiritual inner work for raising children)

And needless to say, both my children and I are still works in progress. None of us are perfect and we never will be. And because I'm far from tzidkus, I struggle with implementing the authentic Jewish mussar as I should. Yet at least I'm bumbling up the right path; I wasn't before.

Being human, all therapists run into their own limitations at some point. Their blind spots (which every human possesses) will eventually block you, their client.

Furthermore, when I was in the chinuch loop, I discovered that many chinuch advisors don’t really possess the spiritual foundation and expanded mind to truly help parents raise their children.

For example:

• For complex reasons (some unfathomable in our 3-dimentional world), Hashem placed specific children with specific parents for everyone’s benefit, pre-determining struggles and conflicts (along with harmony and suitability) beforehand.
• Because they are only human, chinuch advisors can make some accurate observations based on their experience, but they will always miss other things simply because they are human and cannot see everything that Hashem sees. (And sometimes, what they miss is exactly what the parent needs to know for that child.)
• Hashem gifted each parent with the wisdom & insight to raise each child; therefore, a chinuch advisor’s job is to draw out that wisdom and insight, not to impose the chinuch advisor’s “solutions” onto the parents. However, this is much more complex and demands much more emotional and mental stamina than imposing shitahs.
• Switching methods can lead to temporary relief, but using the child’s undesirable behavior as a springboard for a parent’s cheshbon hanefesh and consequent teshuvah is a million times more likely to lead to improvement in the child’s behavior ON ITS OWN. (Although nothing is guaranteed because we don't know Hashem's Plan for us.)
• Children’s aberrant behavior is more likely a reflection of the parents’ middot on some level, and less likely a reflection of specific methods used.

 
As just one example of the last point:
A bullying child is most likely a reflection of a parent’s bullying tendency, even if this tendency is nearly unperceivable and not consciously or practically witnessed by either the child or the parent. (Meaning, maybe the parent is unconsciously and subtly bullying an adult sibling, but the bullying isn't expressed anywhere else or at anyone else—yes, the message can be that subtle.)

​This COULD also mean that the child experiences bullying by a parent, but it doesn’t HAVE to mean that.

Having said all that, the majority of chinuch advisors definitely deserve an A+ for good intentions.

They stretch to the limits their patience and energy to help desperate & struggling (or arrogant & obstinate) parents and their children. But they can also accidentally harm as much as they help. (Or even harm more than they help, depending.)

Why?

Because chinuch methods aren't generally based on Torah hashkafah. Some methods can be adapted to Torah hashkafah, but the goals set in Mishlei and mussar sefarim aren't necessarily the goals of the chinuch class.

​(The main goal for your child, BTW, is for them to fulfill their soul-potential and get them into the best Olam Haba possible, may everyone live in good health until 120.)

The majority of chinuch advisors unknowingly hold views based on 1 of the following:

• Post-Sixties methods created (and continuously re-adjusted) by anti-Torah Liberals and Leftists with either secular Leftist or Far Eastern "spiritual" agendas
• Pre-Sixties methods created by secular sick anti-Torah elitists and eugenicists
• People with ulterior agendas posited as “good for the child!” but were originally a stab at temporarily improving the economy or lowering employment or whatever. 

​Regarding therapy, I couldn’t help seeing that therapy often made people feel better, but not act better. For example, one secular person I knew went to a top-rated secular psychologist when she felt suicidal. He managed to cure of her desire to kill herself, yet not her penchant for pritzadik behavior (including an affair with a married man), nasty acts of revenge, and so on. But yes, she did feel much better about herself.

(And that doesn't even begin to cover the people who felt worse after therapy.)

That’s just one example. There are a lot more.

Likewise, I’ve noticed so many people jump from therapist to therapist and from method to method. While therapists defend therapy by saying it can only help those who want to be helped and are willing to do the inner work—and this is true—because this is true, people are better off just doing it with Hashem.

Hashem truly loves us and knows everything about us. In fact, any bad middot you discover were planted there BY HASHEM in the first place, so rather than blaming yourself, you can just flip it back to Hashem and say, “YUCK. I don’t want this! Ugh, what an absolutely awful middah. Take it back—please, take it back!”

​(Don’t worry. He loves it when you do this. That’s the whole point of your existence and why He put you here in the first place. World of Tikkun!)

So what is the point of this post?

The point is that we are inundated from all sides by advice to use secular (or secular-based with a frum twist) treatment for our emotional, psychological, mental, and relationship problems. And in the frum media, they promote this based on secular research (with the best of intentions; they genuinely want to help).

Yet that same secular research is itself coming out and saying:
​“THIS ULTIMATELY DOES NOT WORK.”

So who are you going to listen to?

The “I’M the ultimate solution—right over here!” and “THIS ULTIMATELY DOES NOT WORK” are both coming from the same source (secular science and research).
​
So who are you going to listen to?

​Or, rather Who are you going to listen to?

Related Posts
By Dr. Zev Ballen:
The True Doctor of the Soul
The Therapeutic Wasteland
The Origins of Emuna Coaching
Do You NLP? (please make sure to read Chaim's valuable comments at the end)
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Anti-Depressant Use Leads to Worse Long-Term Outcomes
Does Long-Term Use of Psychiatric Drugs Cause More Harm Than Good?
Psychiatrist Says: More Psychiatry Means More Shootings
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Myrtle Rising Chinuch Posts
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For Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender's advice on beneficial listening and how a true friend should behave, please search through Posts on Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender.
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What is the World of Tikkun?

This is really late to be posting about praying for the upcoming school year (which starts on Sunday for many frum children), but here it is anyway (because I forgot until now):

A Short Yet Powerful Tefillah for Our Children
​
How Praying for Your Child Can Work

May all our children enjoy a school year brimming with bracha and hatzlacha and good health!

A big lesson to learn from Rav Eliezer Papo's masterpiece, Pele Yoetz, is the way he ends every chapter.

While he interlaces encouragement and positive words within each chapter, some also contain dire warnings and stern rebuke. Nonetheless, he never leaves us without reassurance, encouragement, and hope.

Rav Papo maintained a firm belief in our power to rise above our addictions, bad habits, false beliefs, and our yetzer hara in any form.

For example, at the end of the chapter on Young Men/Bachur (you can imagine all the dire things he mentions in such a chapter), Rav Papo ends with:

The chapter called Rebuke/Gaarah concludes as follows:

He ends the chapter entitled Speech/Dibur, a chapter full of exhortations and prohibitions, with the following:

Rav Papo ends the chapter Rising Early/Haskamah with characteristic optimism and holy cheerleading:

Go, team Am Yisrael, go!

Rav Papo ends General Principles: Part I/Klalot Alef with:

The end of Afternoon Prayer/Mincha:

So we see that it's important to end on a positive, reassuring, and encouraging note:
Yes, sinning is terrible and Gehinnom is just awful -- but if you just try your best to do the right thing, then God will help you out, He'll stand by your side all the way, and things will ultimately end up wonderfully!

Rav Papo also finds excuses for the errant, a way to judge them favorably and with understanding, even as he rebukes the wonky behavior, like in the chapter on Speech/Dibur:

See? Rav Papo blames the inane behavior on the yetzer hara, emphasizing the great strength of the yetzer hara, which implies that these people are good and want to do the right thing, but have simply collapsed under the weight of their yetzer hara. Also, he acknowledges the very real embarrassment people tend to struggle with in such situations.

(Then Rav Papo explains how to get up and fight the yetzer hara.)

You can just imagine what Rav Papo has to say in his chapter on Illicit Acts/Znut, but even after he mentions some pretty reprehensible acts, he never stops judging favorably:

In other instances, Rav Papo inserts a plea for Hashem to atone for their sins, as in the chapter entitled Judges & Officers/Shoftim v'Shotrim:

So I learned 2 important lessons from the entire Pele Yoetz:

• It's essential it is to find merits and judge favorably even as you're discussing what's wrong with society or as you're attempting to correct someone's behavior.

 

• It's important to always end on a note of hope and sincere belief in the person's innate goodness and ability to improve and do teshuvah.

I think it's also a guide for when hearing rebuke from others, to know what level the critic is really on and where their criticism is really coming from. If they can't see the good in you, if they can't see that you're not evil or stupid but just stuck or uninformed, if they don't believe that you have the ability to change for the better, well, then...you sure aren't hearing rebuke from a tzaddik.

Rav Eliezer Papo willing underwent a prolonged and agonizing death for his community, then left a legacy to assist and encourage us forevermore.

We can trust that his attitude and approach are the real deal.

With the death of an old family friend came the death of his family line.

I'm not sure whether the deceptive decline started with his parents or grandparents, but Alan's parents got married and settled in a bustling Jewish area of New York. They created the ideal nice 'n' tidy American family: one boy and one girl.

It was easy and enjoyable to be part of the thriving Jewish -- though not so religious -- community in that area.

The boy, Alan, grew up and met Marybelle in college. Marybelle, long disillusioned with Christianity, enjoyed the watered-down Jewish beliefs and practices and was pro-Israel (which was the norm in America back when Israel was seen as the poor, harassed, struggling underdog constantly on the verge of total annihilation).

Marybelle happily underwent a Conservative Jewish "conversion" and was embraced as a Jew by Alan and his family because their Conservative rabbi declared it all to be totally kosher. (After all, only fanatics wouldn't approve of the delightful Marybelle and nitpick about fuddy-duddy details like Shabbos and taharas mishpacha.) Marybelle remained an enthusiastic synagogue attendee on Saturdays where she often sported a pink & white kippah, and she joined the synagogue sisterhood, and proved herself a proud supporter of Israel (as long as the pro-Israel politicking never went too far Right).

Alan and Marybelle lived a happy life together and were some of my favorite adults as a child. (Marybelle is indeed a delightful and caring person.) They both loved children, yet they never managed to produce children. Alan's one sister also married a non-Jewish man and never managed to produce children either.

At the age of 70, Alan came to Eretz Yisrael for the first time. He was recovering from several bouts with illness and organ failure, but feeling better, he figured this was his chance to finally visit the Land.

One quiet morning, he sat with my husband and I in a still-new children's park ringed by the flora and fauna innate to Eretz Yisrael, surrounded by a heart-stirring view of Eretz Yisrael's hills and fields.

The conversation ebbed and flowed because Alan couldn't stop himself from pausing to take in all that was around him, slowly turning his salt-and-pepper head this way and that. He breathed in deeply and his eyes were aglow with dreamy bliss.

Though always a cheerful person, I'd never seen him look so serene and blissful.

But it was deeper than that.

His face was aglow with the look of a man who'd finally come Home.

He'd finally found his place, even though he never realized he'd been searching for it.

But it was too late.

Had Alan made different choices, I could see Alan fitting into one of the Anglo communities of Ra'anana or Ramot of the Eighties.

But instead, Alan died not long after that visit without any remnant, neither for himself nor for his parents.

And his sister never left a remnant either.

That was it. End of the line.

The end of the line for Alan and his sister resulted from tidy feel-good decisions pushed by the Conservative movement back in the Sixties and Seventies. Promising fulfilling life and a bright future, they upheld Liberal American values, which trumped Jewish values every time.

Perhaps Alan's parents' line wouldn't have ended had they gone beyond the oh-so tidy one-of-each and had more children (if they could, I don't know) who might have had children.

And had Alan's parents sent him and his sister to a teacher or an institution that could've taught them real Jewish values, perhaps Alan and his sister would've made different decisions, decisions more conducive to the Jewish soul.

And perhaps had the Conservative rabbis not been so gung-ho about masking intermarriage via fake "conversions," Alan's parents might've thrown up more resistance. And perhaps Alan himself, who obviously did care about marrying a Jew, wouldn't have been duped into the feel-good act of marrying a non-Jewish woman because of his certainty that she now was Jewish...a woman who, though delightful, wasn't his real zivug.

And maybe Marybelle herself, who did seem to have a real attraction to Judaism, would've either discovered Torah-true Judaism and followed through with a real conversion or would've become a righteous non-Jew following the 7 Noachide Mitzvot. (Although this is getting to deeply unknowable territory, with regard to what Marybelle's lifelong attraction to Judaism really means.)

Needless to say, there are no guarantees.

After all, there are frum Jews who go off the derech and marry out, there are Jews who never have children, and so on. (Although it is a comforting Jewish belief that one's deeds are offspring -- like children -- so a barren Jewish couple can take comfort in the mitzvot they've created, even though childlessness is still an admittedly painful nisayon.)

But without the all-smiles reassurance from the Wishy-Washy Whitewashing movement, then Alan could've had a fighting chance.

But it's over now.

I personally have at least 2 close Jewish relatives who leave no Jewish descendants.

One is dead and the other is dying.

Others have more non-Jewish grandchildren than Jewish children. (For example, 3 Jewish grandchildren from one child and 5 non-Jewish grandchildren from the other from different marriages.)

And this is also due to other factors growing in society at large, such as deciding against getting married or having children, never getting around to having children, or waiting so long to have children that it may no longer be possible without a lot of medical intervention.

Or skipping the marriage aspect entirely and finding a donor to have a baby on your own.

And if you're an assimilated Jew, then these often are your children.

There's not much choice; this is the society nowadays.

It's really hitting home to me now.

Because when I first became frum, I focused on having a good relationship with family and old friends of family.

And it felt good to do my part, like davening that everyone does teshuvah, and that things work out well for the very likeable non-Jewish partner too.

And I even tried talking to/corresponding in a really nice (too nice actually, in regrettable hindsight) approachable manner with a couple of Conservative rabbis, but despite their friendly open facade, they proved extremely close-minded.

If you become frum, then that circle of family and old family friends often ends up meeting your frum circle. In my case, all the frum people they met were very likeable and approachable.

But all those years of niceness and approachability never seemed to have any effect.

Then you see everyone getting older and -- let's face it -- more decrepit.

And the truth starts to sink in: It's too late.

But you still have hope for the pintele Yid to come galloping through like the Calvary at high noon.

And then the Jew keels over and that's it.

The End.

Unfortunately, enthusiasts of the Conservative movement would find my attitude horribly offensive.

Because they have good intentions and a minority of their members stay connected to their Jewish rituals (albeit the watered-down version of them) and marry Jews, they feel that's reason enough for hope and good cheer.

Yet I'm seeing death.

That generation raised on the feed of synthetic Judaism is dying and they're dying in the most spiritually desolate way possible: without a remnant of Jewish deeds or Jewish children.

May Hashem atone for us & gather us back to Him with Revealed Compassion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That just makes Hashem sound capricious.

WHY do we have all these problems?

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

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

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

Let's take parenting for example.

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

But is that good for the parents?

No.

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

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

And it's the same thing with shalom bayit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look, it's difficult.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Links below.)

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

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

The only way to merit Mashiach is via emuna.

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

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

But it's all Love.

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

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

Sora was born in 1898 to a wealthy Chassidish family in Europe. Her parents brought a melamed (private teacher) to their home to teach the boys. Curious and intelligent, Sora sat herself in a corner of the room to listen. When the boys could no longer sit still, they ran off and the melamed continued teaching knowing that the little girl in the corner was still listening.

Because a proper Chassidish home of that time contained no books other than Torah books in Yiddish and Hebrew, Sora became accustomed to reading books like Orchot Tzaddikim/Ways of the Righteous and Tzena U'Rena for pleasure.

And so Sora grew under the tutelage of her Chassidish parents and the mussar and halacha Sora learned on her own, sheltered from the storms of change that unleashed upon so many souls.

Much later in life, Sora was sharing a home in America with her widowed daughter and little granddaughter. Sora's husband was dying and the family was preoccupied with his care, which demanded a lot of physical and emotional stamina during this trying time.

At one point, Sora trudged into the kitchen to get something and came upon her young granddaughter making a big mess with a large bowl of water and way too many soap suds. Sopping doll clothes lay scattered about.

This kind of mess was the last thing Sora needed at her age and at this trying time.

But never one to lose her composure, Sora thought a moment then calmly asked, "What are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm just washing my dolly's clothes!" her young granddaughter cheerfully replied.

"Yes," said Sora, "I can see that your washing your dolly's clothes. But why?"

"Mmmm...because Zeidy's sick."

Sora thought for a moment, then said, "I see." Pause. "So you think that if you wash your doll's clothes, that's going to help Zeidy feel better?"

"Yep!"

In the course of the conversation, Sora discovered that her granddaughter had been watching everyone busying themselves around the house doing things for Zeidy (Grandpa). The tasks needed to be done properly and efficiently, so there was no opportunity to allow a young child to "help" as usual. Feeling helpless and desperate to contribute, the only thing the little girl could think to do was wash her doll's clothes.

"Well," Sora finally said. "Yes, I think it would make Zeidy very happy to know you were washing your doll's clothes for him, and that now they're all nice and clean. And you know what? As soon as he wakes up, I'm going to tell him what you did and he's going to be so happy to hear it."

The little girl started nodding and bouncing with pleasure.

"But right now," said Sora, "it would make Zeidy happiest if we clean all this up and then keep the floors neat and dry from now on. He'd feel a lot better if we did that. What do you say?"

"Oh, yes!" said the little girl. And she jumped up, went to get the mop, and together they cleaned up the mess and hung the doll clothes to dry.

And as long as her Zeidy's final illness lasted, the little granddaughter behaved herself very well.

And what could have been a bad memory for this granddaughter was transformed into a very positive memory. She felt loved and understood, and she learned how to really contribute in a stressful situation (i.e. sometimes the best thing to do is to stay out of the way and don't make a mess). She also learned from example the art of dealing with children (or with people in general): Don't assume.

Ask.

Had Sora been influenced by the American parenting attitude of the Fifties, she likely would have jumped to labeling her granddaughter as "attention-seeking."

Especially because her granddaughter, intelligent and lovable as she was, also got up to some serious mischief at times, it would make sense to see the doll-laundering fiasco as a way to manipulate the adults to pay attention.

But that's not what the youngster was thinking. She wasn't thinking, "Ooh, I'm feeling so jealous and deprived of attention. I think I'll go make a big mess and then try to dupe everyone into thinking that I simply wanted to launder my dolly's clothes. Muwahahahaha!"

In fact, she wasn't thinking much at all. As far as the little girl knew, her only motivation was to get busy cleaning something for Zeidy.

On the other hand, had she been influenced by the not-yet-existent Eighties, the grandmother might've seen this as a cry for love and nurturing. "Poor baby! She's feeling lost and abandoned! She's impacted by all the tension and lack of attention, but has no way to express herself!" And then she'd receive lots of cuddling and maybe a big discussion to let out her feelings about what's going on with Zeidy.

And what's wrong with that?

Well, again, it's jumping to an assumption that's not necessarily true. It's closer to the reality than the pre-Sixties attitude, but at the same time, there ARE times in life where you just can't give a child your full attention, which is something children need to learn to deal with. Furthermore, children shouldn't be allowed to think that their negative emotions justify acting out or inconveniencing people who already have too much on their plate.

(We know adults like this, right? Too bad they weren't taught better as children.)

Instead, Sora took a quintessentially Jewish way of dealing with it.

Just as the Ramban advised in his famous letter, she spoke all her words "b'nachat" -- with equanimity and pleasantness.

Sora also gave her granddaughter the benefit of the doubt, another Torah ideal. Yes, the child could've been manipulative and attention-seeking (children sometimes are), but what if she wasn't? This needed to be figured out.

And this is also where I think Sora's scholarship came into play. When reading the mussar books and Tanach commentaries, it's impossible to miss the contemplative inquisitiveness they display. First, they notice when passages or incidents don't add up. Then they calmly wonder why. After a contemplative analysis of all the relevant factors, they arrive at their penetrating conclusion.

When watching our gedolim questioned about complex or painful issues, it's impossible to miss their composure as their contemplative mind analyzes the facts at hand.

They're not unemotional or apathetic; they merely possess a high degree of yishuv hadaat -- a composed mind.

Even those who are naturally buoyant or fiery still express themselves within a framework of yishuv hadaat.

So again, it took me a long time to realize the imperative to ask the child about his or her motivation.

Like I mentioned in a previous post, I've only ever heard 2 options for raising children: pre-Sixties (yet post-1800s) and post-Sixties.

So it took me a while to grasp this investigative yishuv hadaat approach.

But I picked it up from hearing stories like this, stories about people who weren't influenced by psychologists of either era.

I also noticed this in memoirs from 19th-Century America. It was impossible to miss the long pauses adults incorporated into their dealings with errant children. Initially, I either saw this as a laconic backcountry communication style or I was confused -- this adult seemed so smart; why were they suddenly behaving in such a plodding manner?

And even when some kind of punishment was called for, it was often decreed with an absence of emotion. At times, the parent or teacher even seemed quite reluctant to administer any consequence.

Even odder, there were situations for which I was sure a child would be punished, but none was forthcoming. And again, this decision against punishment was determined by an adult who'd suddenly grown laconic and made his decision after a very long and contemplative silence.

This surprised me because child-rearing in "the olden days" is reputed to hold that sparing the rod meant spoiling the child -- and to interpret this (which is anyway a mistranslation) literally and unreservedly. (The real verse reads: "He who spares his shevet hates his son" -- and a shevet can be a rod, but it can also mean a structural framework, like a tribe, which is also called "shevet.")

Yet contrary to what I'd always heard, I discovered that people didn't jump to this option automatically. And even when they did utilize this option, it wasn't in a rage. Okay, yes, of course sometimes people were abusive and enraged, but it certainly wasn't a given.

I started to realize that people influenced by Tanach operate under a whole other behavioral system. All the more so, knowledgeable Jews with access to millennia of sagely scholarship and guidance.

In his 1824 masterpiece Pele Yoetz, Rav Papo clearly outlines the need to respond to each parenting situation according to its specific need. Sometimes a stern response is necessary, sometimes a soft response, and sometimes a parent should make himself as if deaf and blind!

It depends; there is no black-and-white approach to raising children.

Our Sages even composed a prayer for parents that asks Hashem for the wisdom to know when to laugh and when to rebuke, when to be stern and when to be pleasant, etc.

So this is what I'm working on now.

I know I tend to jump to conclusions with my children rather than taking the time to ask the right questions and to contemplate the answers and the situation at hand. (American culture seems to be phobic of conversational pauses.)

Sometimes I jump to a negative conclusion based on past experience with the child. But sometimes I jump to a positive conclusion that if wrong, can habituate the child toward being irresponsible, undisciplined, and narcissistic.

This is especially challenging when a child anyway displays a tendency to leap for looking, toward aggression, teasing, forgetting, daydreaming, or anything else. It's easy to assume that a child forgot to do something because he's anyway gets his head stuck in the clouds, or that a child started a fight because he anyway tends to do that.

But maybe not.

That's what I learned from the way Sora interacted with her own granddaughter.

Take a step back. Ask. Investigate. Contemplate. Then respond.

Don't fear a long pause of silent contemplation.

On the contrary -- embrace it.

It's the authentic Jewish way.
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Related article:
Seeking a Way through the Parenting Maze

 One of the big challenges me and my generation face with child-rearing is the only 2 options presented:

• The "pre-Sixties" mentality that expressed a deep fear of "spoiling" a child combined with the belief that a child's core essence is manipulative and attention-seeking, and so anything they do that is remotely distasteful to parents or teachers is rooted in their innate inclination to be a gremlin. (This is the pre-Sixties "ideal" that some people wish to return to; you can see the post The Past 200 Years of Chinuch: The Non Jewish World for more information.)

or

• The post-Sixties mentality popularized by Eighties pop-psychology, which is wishy-washy, overindulgent, unrealistic, and facilitates emotional immaturity and stunts emotional and spiritual growth.

It's really frustrating because there doesn't seem to be a middle ground of solid common sense, although one indeed exists.

Furthermore, taking God out of the whole picture just messes everything up. The pre-Sixties model developed from secular (and in one case, eugenicist) minds, which then imposed the ideas on a mostly religious populace.

Because Christianity believes that all people are born in sin, the idea of children as motivated by a need for manipulation and attention helped the mostly religious American populace to accepted these ideas (including the government-promoted opposition to physical affection and soothing babies & children), likely because it all seemed to fit right in with their religious beliefs.

This model was also accompanied by copious smirks and sarcasm. If you ever encounter people from this generation who hold by this method, they treat children with contempt as if even a very young child is consciously plotting any negative behavior (or behavior merely perceived as negative by the adult) with exquisite sophistication. And even when that child stops the behavior or proves their innocence, the adult continues to smirk because the adult "knows" that the child is still up to no good and still intends to do something impish, in line with his innate gremlinhood.

In other words, the child can never win. The child can never be good enough.

But when young people got fed up with being treated like demons in child-disguise, and older people with painful memories of being treated the same started writing books and speaking out, society heaved over in the other direction, but still left God out of the picture, which was equally (if not more) harmful.

As for my own upbringing...well, my parents were fairly assimilated Jews with a fondness for certain Jewish traditions and holidays. But there was no real Torah-based attitude in my home. So there are aspects of my upbringing that I consider beneficial and which I do incorporate into my own parenting methods, but there are also aspects which I reject and seek to replace.

So while I searched for the authentic Torah way of raising children, I merely kept running into one of the above attitudes, neither of which are based on Jewish sources, no matter how much their proponents insist they are.

(And drawing a bull's eye around a landed arrow AFTER it has been shot doesn't count as hitting the bull's eye, if you know what I mean.)

Reading Rav Arush's Garden of Education gave me so much that I tossed out all my other chinuch books. (And I'm toward the end of his Yeladim Mutzlachim/Successful Children, which has also been a tremendous help.)

More recently, a caring reader alerted me to the existence of Dr. Sara Yaroslawitz and her "Hands Full Chinuch" series available as both CDs and books. After reading a couple of articles about her and listening to a couple of free classes available on her site, I'm looking forward to obtaining her book to see if it's a good companion to Rav Arush's material. Her samples sounded right up my alley.

But what I still struggle with is finding that elusive path when it's not in me to do so. Meaning, I need to look for something I've never seen.

For me, parenting constantly feels like shooting in the dark.

When one of my kids was thirteen, I desperately needed fabric softener, yet couldn't run out to buy some. He was the only available person around to do it. Yet he's not completely reliable even in the best of times (he's a blithe spirit who believes in living in the moment) and he'd never bought fabric softener before.

So I asked him if he could do it, and he made a reluctant face while insisting that he didn't know how to buy it. He made lots of elaborate gestures and asked rhetorical questions to "prove" his incompetence in face of the task.

I started to give in as per the Eighties mentality and some chinuch classes.
(After all, I don't want him to resent going shopping or suffer fabric softener aversion for the rest of his life due to the trauma he suffered upon being forced to buy fabric softener when it was beyond his capabilities! And I don't want him going off the derech because he feels like Judaism is all about forcing your kids to do things they don't want to do and don't feel capable of doing. *sarc* See? The pop psychology mentality makes you overthink everything until you're neurotic.)

But then I thought it might be good for him to do something he didn't want to do. It's usually good for children to get accustomed to doing things they don't feel like doing and then enjoying their victory over their yetzer hara (which is what actually builds self-esteem).

Also, I thought he could recognize fabric softener at the supermarket because it's been around the home his whole life and even if he never noticed the specific bottles of fabric softener near the washing machine, they do display the words "fabric softener" on the label at the supermarket.

Finally, I figured the worst thing that could happen is that he'd buy a super expensive kind, buy something else (stain remover, for example), or return empty-handed. Really, that would probably the worst thing. He likely wouldn't suffer life-long resentment or go off the derech from it.

(Actually, I feared the "return empty-handed" option A LOT because it would only reinforce negatives and also leave me flummoxed as the best way to respond when I was already over my head with getting him to do it in the first place.)

So I pleasantly (pleadingly?) insisted that he would indeed go buy it and gave him a lengthy explanation of exactly how to find and recognize it.

Of course, I prayed for a positive outcome.
(Yes, God cares about us so much that He even wants us to contact Him regarding these little things too.)

When my son came home all smiles bearing the new bottle of fabric softener, I saw that he even bought exactly the brand and scent I'd wanted.

Thanks, God!

But how to respond?

• Eighties: Tons of gushing & infantalizing praise.
• Pre-Sixties: Tons of smirks and comments like, "See, silly? You made a mountain out of a molehill. Don't try to get away with copping out again." Laugh.

They're both inappropriate.

Then I remembered that the whole point of chinuch is to help children achieve their full potential. We want our children to achieve their complete rectification in this lifetime and merit a wonderful Eternity. I also remember that he possesses a shining soul that is all good and any behavior otherwise is just a klippah of the yetzer hara.

"Thank you SO MUCH," I said.

(The core essence of a Jew is gratitude and expressing gratitude.)

"This really helps me. I really needed this."

(Your contribution is meaningful. I assigned you a task for a meaningful reason and not simply because I like to torture you.)

Then I emphasized his success in doing something that he didn't know how to do and didn't think he could do, yet not only did he do it, he did it exactly right.

So he can see himself as a competent individual whose existence is meaningful and can take risks because his proven competence in the face of a new task renders him liable to succeed.

He doesn't need rivers of praise for completing the task, nor does he need to be mocked or put down for his initial attitude toward the task.

The above leads to infantilization and inadequacy (either of which eventually lead to despair and a "why bother?" attitude or a hamster-wheel attitude where a person is always pushing but never really feeling good enough).

But he does need to know that his actions are meaningful and that his abilities are real.

An admittedly trivial example, but the adults who develop from such children are built from such trivial events. A big part of raising children is knowing that the small matters influence the big matters later.

So that was a positive example, I guess.

But mostly, I continuously feel inadequate to the task, like I'm raising my children blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back.

And that's why I end up leaning on Hashem so hard (which is apparently what He wants in the first place).

Sources mentioned in this post:
Are Your Hands Full? by Dr. Sara Yaroslawitz
Sample audio preview by Dr. Sara Yaroslawitz
Garden of Education by Rav Shalom Arush
Yeladim Mutzlachim by Rav Shalom Arush (Hebrew)

One very difficult challenge many (if not all) people end up facing nowadays is dealing with problems that don't seem to have a real solution.

For example, let's say you have a difficult child. So you'll make the rounds of child experts and eventually a child psychiatrist or two. During that whole runaround, you'll try methods promoted as "tried-and-true!" You'll be inundated with compelling stories to convince you of the effectiveness of a particular method, and you'll commit yourself wholeheartedly to that method.

And you'll do so EVERY SINGLE DARN TIME.

In this way, you'll commit yourself to conventional methods, alternative methods, and methods that completely contradict each other.

And sometimes, you'll see right away that it doesn't work so well for your child. Yet other times, you'll go around crowing about how you've found the answer and encouraging others on this path -- until it stops working or backfires, dragging you back to square one. Again.

Eventually, you'll be recommended to start your child on medication. ADD, ADHD, depression, ODD (Oppositional Defensive Disorder), bipolar, etc. all provide nice labels accompanied by unproven theories ("ADHD derives from a neurological imbalance in the brain which can only be corrected by Ritalin" or "The frontal lobes don't fully develop until age 20, so Risperidone helps correct that until the brain corrects itself", etc.)

(FULL DISCLOSURE: Years ago, I put one of my kids on Ritalin for 6 months when he had trouble learning to read.)

Medication often provides temporary relief for ragged parents. Often, but not always. Regardless, the problematic behaviors eventually flare up again, or are replaced by other problematic behaviors, or physical complications develop, necessitating medical treatment of some sort.

Once children are on medication, between the episodes of relief lie return visits to the doctor for adjustments in medication, replacement medication (i.e. switching from Ritalin to Adderall), or adding another medication to deal with the side effects of the first medication.

And that's IF the medication works and IF the child is willing to take the medication.

Yet even among families with exemplary shalom bayit, heartfelt consultations with premier chinuch experts and rabbanim, blessings from righteous rabbis and rebbetzins, heroic string-pulling to land the child in the "right" school and raise the child in the "right" environment...these people STILL have problems with that child.

One of my sons attended a yeshivah that described itself as a yeshivah for "boys who don't like to learn." Basically, the entire yeshivah was comprised of boys who could be (or were) diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. I have nothing but reverence for the people who committed to teach them because based on my son's stories, I wouldn't have lasted a day teaching before running screaming out of there as fast as I could.

Anyway, my son mentioned the rows of medication (mostly Ritalin) that lined the shelves of the principal's office. Every morning, droves of students needed to come and take their medication.

So if medication is such a pat solution to ADHD, then why did these kids need to be in a special yeshivah? Why hadn't their behavior normalized enough to allow them to remain mainstream?

In some cases, the parent goes on medication because the whole runaround with the child has become so stressful!
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The above used child-rearing as an example, but you've problem seen a similar dynamic with shalom bayit issues, health issues, and anything else.

So what gives?

When nothing works and there's nowhere to turn, that's supposed to compel a person to turn to Hashem.

Now, practically speaking, we all see that it doesn't do that for everyone.

Many people continue to run from Hashem, which just makes Him pursue them even more (in a loving manner, of course).

People either keep running while juggling bowling balls or they just collapse (via immersing themselves in escapes like drugs -- whether legal or illegal -- entertainment media, video games, novels, sports, gambling, work, political movements, social media, or worse).

Now, we all have our vices and our struggles with the yetzer hara. You can fall in his many traps AND connect with Hashem.

That's actually what we're supposed to be doing.

If you have issues with Hashem, like you're angry at Him, you hate Him, you wish He didn't Exist, you're afraid of Him (in a paralyzing way rather than an invigorating way), then that needs to be dealt with.

Those issues are pretty normal nowadays and you can deal with them by discussing them directly with Hashem Himself (counterintuitive, yet true) or by reading any mussar book that speaks to you, especially Garden of Emuna.

Preferably, you should be discussing your issues with Hashem AND reading whatever you need to read to gain the understanding you need according to your individual needs.

(Note: Contrary to what some people have said, that Hashem prefers you to yell at Him rather than ignore Him -- nope. You can discuss your issues passionately with Him and be open about your true feelings, but even these passionately honest discussions should still be conducted with respect for God being the King of the Universe and Infinite Creator and all that.)

Also, due to reasons beyond the scope of this post, many people simply cannot relate to the idea of turning to Hashem as one would to a loving father. For sad yet understandable reasons, that is simply way beyond the comprehension of many people today.

So maybe those people need to turn to Hashem as one would toward the ideal friend.

In short, the reason why all these problems crash our way just before Mashiach is because that's our final chance to grab some emuna, gain some atonement, and turn to Hashem in a way that is raw and real.

Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender puts it best when he encourages us to turn to Hashem "like one who speaks to a faithful, beloved friend: one who will certainly accept your words, forgive, and continue to do you good."

May we all succeed in achieving our true potential and complete tikkun without trials or humiliations.

The Torah compares the Jewish people to olives.

Why?

Because the most precious aspect of an olive (its oil) only comes forth when pressed.

Olives on their own are bitter, unattractive, and not good for much.

But olive oil contains many healthful properties and contains a wide variety of highly beneficial uses.

And this segues into the heart-stirring life and personality of Janusz Korczak (pronounced "yanush korchak").

Born as Henryk Goldszmidt in Warsaw in 1878 or 1879 to assimilated Jews, Korczak later took on the pen name "Janusz Korczak" and rose to become one of the most heroic figures in the Warsaw ghetto.

Because we'll be discussing several books in the post, I've provided some images to give you a better idea:

(The words in blockquotes way below are taken from page 92 of Gutta: Memories of a Vanished World.)
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The terror Korczak felt as a child upon witnessing the brutal methods common in Polish schools during his time combined with several other impacting experiences inspired him to develop more compassionate and more effective child-rearing methods.

While I haven't yet read his books, he apparently favored a gentle and mature approach with children, while still inculcating necessary values of responsibility, self-discipline, consideration of others, and emotional maturity.

Unlike the American pop psychology movement, which viewed (and still views) self-esteem as a goal rather than a result, it seems that Korczak understood that self-esteem was the result of making good decisions and engaging in mature behavior, rather than something that can be merely bequeathed to a child (or any person).

Even his books for children, praised for being able to enter the mind of a child so appealingly, were meant not only to entertain, but to inculcate important values.

Not only was Korczak raised in a completely assimilated environment, his family life wasn't ideal either. In fact, his father later died in a mental hospital.

Korczak himself became agnostic and didn't believe in forcing any religion onto children.

After attending university to become a pediatrician, he served in the Polish army, and eventually joined the staff of a Polish orphanage.

But because of their hate-filled attitude toward Jewish orphans (who weren't always literal orphans, but placed there by destitute families who'd lost one parent), Korczak went on to open his own orphanage for Jewish children where he was free to apply his own methods for raising children and did so with tremendous success, as attested to one of the last surviving orphans, Itzchak Belfer. (Link below)

Within Polish society, Korczak rose to become one of the leading pedagogues of his time, with his own popular radio show where he propagated his child-rearing theories via stories and wry humor.

With the publication of his book, Kaytek the Wizard, Korczak became the JK Rowling of Poland when his book hit enduring bestseller status, its fandom similar to that of the Harry Potter phenomenon. But it wasn't his first novel; other popular books preceded this one.

Korczak's brilliant assistant, Stefania "Stefa" Wilczyńska, was no less dedicated and heroic than he. Never married, she was viewed as a true mother by the orphans who continued to visit her after their own marriage with their children, whom Stefa related to as if they were her real grandchildren. In fact, Stefa successfully ran the orphanage on her own for a couple of years when Korczak was called into military service during WWI.

In the 1930s, Stefa visited Eretz Yisrael and worked with the children of a kibbutz where she provided the staff with good guidance and advice on how to improve their care of the children before returning to Poland.

In Korczak's orphanage in Poland, the children described the set-up as a mother-father dynamic, with Stefa as the mother who remained "at home" with the children and Korczak as the father who supervised them in the early morning and came home from his other work in the evenings to children who skipped and danced to greet their returning "father."

After the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, arrangements were made for Stefania to flee to Eretz Yisrael, but she chose to remain with her orphans and enter the hell of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Despite his Polish connections, his non-Jewish lifestyle, his noble Polish appearance, and the willingness of influential Poles to hide him, Korczak remained with his children when the Nazis forced the orphanage into the Warsaw Ghetto.

There, he, Stefa, and their assistants made every effort to create a normal and even thriving life for their children. Even though they too were starving, they did everything they could to provide whatever food and activities for the orphans.

In his 60s at this time, Korczak developed terribly swollen feet from entire days spent plodding from one welfare institution to another, standing in lines and begging bread or buckwheat for the children. He also suffered lung problems among other health issues.

He personally and lovingly cut the children's hair and nails, told them funny stories, weighed them, and gave them their medicine. He also checked on them as they slept, pulling a fallen blanket over one slumbering child and checking the forehead of another suffering from fever.

How was a man broken in health, rejected by the very society to which he'd given so much (including endangering himself as a doctor on the battlefield), and himself starving able to provide nearly 200 children with not only their physical needs, but the love and tenderness they so desperately lacked?

As an agnostic, he didn't even have God to lean on.

Gutta Sternbuch, the scion of a respected Chassidic family and a graduate of the original Beis Yaakov seminary in Cracow, also joined the staff of the orphanage.

Gutta taught the children blessings and Hebrew songs. She said Shema with them at bedtime and regaled them with stories of tzaddikim and miracles.

Periodically, Korczak sat by and listened to Gutta's religious uplifting, impressed by the positive impact she made on the children. Despite his own feelings toward any religion, he encouraged Gutta to continue because it made the children happy and that was all he cared about.

When Gutta wasn't able to make the curfew, she spent the night at the orphanage. During those times, Korczak asked her about her upbringing and Beis Yaakov experiences, to which he listened with a curious and open mind.

At one point, he told Gutta,

Then he implored Gutta,

She promised.

At one point, Korczak and his staff arranged a special outing for the children.

The controversial head of the Judenrat, Adam Czerniakow (who gained hot-button fame when he committed suicide rather than participate in Nazi deportations), initiated a park project. He gathered a group of Jewish artists and architects trapped in the ghetto to create a park of trees, mountains, valleys, a waterfall, cows and sheep -- all out of paper.

(They had no other materials.)

The children were outfitted in special navy-and-white uniforms for the outing, also all made out of paper.

Because of the Nazi terror and deprivations, the children were in deplorable condition despite the best efforts of the Korczak's staff. Some were just days away from death.

But they radiated joy as they visited the "park" and enjoyed every moment of the outing.

Gutta later recalled: "If I could, I would award this park the highest prize for human endeavor and creativity...I was so proud of the Jews who created this park."

Throughout the entire ordeal of the Warsaw Ghetto, Korczak struggled to find escape and refuge for the children. Until the very end, his former friends and the Polish Underground were willing to help him personally, but Korczak refused to abandon his children.

"You do not leave a sick child in the night, and you do not leave children at a time like this," he stated.

One effect of starvation is not just physical lethargy, but mental lethargy. Apathy seeps into the sufferer.

Korczak and Stefa experienced this too, but they fought it for the sake of the children, continuing to minister to them with all the love and care they could muster.

In the first week of August 1942, the Nazis decided to liquidate all children's homes in the ghetto. On that day, Korczak requested 15 minutes to ready his staff and the children. The nearly 200 children between the ages of 2 and 13 were dressed and groomed as meticulously as possible under the circumstances.

To soothe their terror as much as possible, Korczak told them they were going to the countryside where they would experience fresh air and eat berries.

With Korczak heading four neat rows compromised of the children, Stefa, and the nurses & teachers devoted to the children throughout their ghetto incarceration, Korczak held one particularly debilitated child in his arms while holding the hand of another as the heart-breaking entourage was marched all the way through the ghetto to the main boarding platform.

As they moved forward, one of the teachers bravely tried to prop up the children's spirits by breaking into a rousing marching song about keeping one's head up through a howling storm.

It was a very long way to the trains and the children suffered, but the group was not allowed to stop walking.

As they crossed over a bridge, their heartless escorts shoved the youngest ones up the bridge and then knocked them down the other side as Poles below shouted, "Good riddance, Jews!"

Upon reaching the boarding site, they encountered thousands of other Jews sentenced to cattle car transportation.

At that point, one Judenrat official urged Korczak to come with him to the Judenrat for a possible reprieve. But Korczak feared leaving the children for even a moment.

And Korczak's fears proved right.

As the Judenrat official stood there, the Nazis ordered Korczak's orphans to be loaded into the cattle cars.

At this point, the account splits. Some say that a Nazi official, influenced by a person with sway, approached Korczak with a document that would allow Korczak to return to his residence.

Others say that this officer was actually working under Nazi orders because sometimes internationally famous Jews were transported to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp with deceptively better conditions designed to mislead the Red Cross.

Still others say that an SS officer recognized Korczak as the author of his children's favorite books and offered him an escape.

But Korczak refused to leave his children.

Then they were sent to Treblinka where their final moments were lost to history.
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Note: The shock of losing Korczak and his orphanage was so great that for years, various people claimed to have spotted Korczak, Stefa, or the orphans around the Polish countryside.

But no evidence exists of their survival.
*
Gutta Sternbuch would have accompanied them to their final destination, but Hashem had other plans for her and she survived to marry and raise a family and nurture fellow refugees, as documented in her memoir.
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When we read of heroism, it's easy to get caught up in the jaw-dropping "What!" and lose sight of the subtler "How?"

With very few exceptions, most heroic people unknowingly worked up to their heroism via a series of smaller heroic decisions throughout their lives. The heroism of Korczak and the others stands out not only because of the ultimate sacrifice they made in the end, but also because their heroism was ongoing. It's easier to be a hero for a moment than to keep up the heroism through deteriorating health, mental lethargy, disillusionment, constant terror, and the bleakness of a truly hopeless situation.

And that's the real lesson to take away from such stories:
It's the decisions they made in the good times that affected how they responded in the bad times.
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Even though I'd come across Janusz Korczak's story decades ago, my discovery of Stefa was a lot more recent. Equally devoted to the children throughout their lives, Stefa refused refuge in Eretz Yisrael and also accompanied her cherished charges into the gas chamber.

And according to eyewitnesses, even throughout the terrible hell of the Warsaw Ghetto, Stefa's physical and emotional deterioration wasn't as rapid or pronounced as Korczak's.

Why?

Women's Studies devotees will certainly proclaim that it is merely because Korczak's male status earned him historical status while Stefa's gender relegated her to the sidelines.

But the truth is that Korczak was an international celebrity in that part of the world. Respected by colleagues for his military service and his education while adored by the nation for his theories, wry humor, and writing, Korczak was both the (l'havdil!) JK Rowling and the Dr. Spock of his time complete with books, speaking engagements, and his own radio show, all of which was the TV and Internet of its time.

And this likely propelled his deterioration too.

While I can't know for sure, accounts indicate that Korczak was never able to make peace with the betrayal of the Polish society he'd helped revolutionize and build. A handful of colleagues were willing to save him, but not save the children whom he treasured more than himself.

Everything he'd devoted his life to was being torn apart and annihilated.

The horrific circumstances rammed him into the wall of disillusionment again and again.

He'd invested heart and soul into propelling society to a better place, using his fame to make his world more moral, caring, wiser, and compassionate.

Yet it all ended with him carrying broken children in his own faltering arms while dragging his broken body past jeering countrymen into crate on wheels headed for a gas chamber.

I'm not sure if he ever sensed the precious golden oil that managed to seep out of the olive press in which he found himself.
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Itzchak Belfer, artist, sculptor, and last survivor of Korczak's orphanage

Note: Janusz Korczak achieved even more in his life than what's written here. Furthermore, his ghetto diary was saved and published, revealing much more about his life and his personality. There is also so much more good to relate about Stefa and the teachers and nurses who tended the children in the orphanage, which are available online and in books. This post is just a drop in the sea.