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All Beginnings are Difficult: Homeschooling

30/3/2020

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Years ago, during a blessedly short stint as a kiruv rebbetzin, I found myself with a 4-year-old at home with me all day.

His brother, older than him by 1 grade, needed to be in school. Because of the exorbitant American tuition of private school, we could not afford to put the 4-year-old in school too. 

Fortunately, Hashem had me irrationally (or so I thought at the time) save all his older brother's weekly sum-up sheets (daf kesher) from school last year, so I actually had all the material necessary to homeschool this child.

I decided to get started homeschooling via candy.

That, and this 4-year-old being a particularly well-behaved, acquiescent, and intelligent child, made me believe that homeschooling would be a breeze.

Only it wasn't.

The child refused to learn. He got distracted easily. He wouldn't listen. He wouldn't participate.

I tried different methods (rewards, a this-is-fun! approach, calm yet firm, calm yet stern, etc.) and absolutely nothing worked.

I started to feel like a failure. I also started to panic. Planning return to Eretz Yisrael at some point, I felt frantic about him being place a year behind.

Then I decided to consult with one of the other young women who'd also come from Eretz Yisrael in our kiruv group.

She'd been teaching in Eretz Yisrael for several years and loved her profession. She was also a determined, passionate, intelligent, and organized person whom I was sure could offer me good advice.

(In general, she was good at giving good advice.)

But when I explained my goals and my problems to her, she gazed at me intently without answering.

Finally, she said, "I don't know how to tell you this, but in my experience, parents can't teach their children. Children simply refuse to learn from their parents."

Flummoxed, I began stammering my response. But what about all the homeschooling parents? And what about parents who do homework with their children (knowing full well that homework is often a miserable stress on the parents and the cause of much child-parent tension)?

She shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "It could be that because homeschooling parents started off that way, like the children were never in school, so the children simply adjusted to that reality. Or maybe because they don't offer any other choice, so eventually the children come around."

She sighed and looked at me with great seriousness. "But I really don't know how homeschoolers do it. Because in my experience, it just doesn't happen." She paused. "Even me. My children won't learn from me."

"Really?" I said. "And you know how to teach!"

She nodded with a rueful smile. "Yeah. And I REALLY know how to teach! Parents love me because I give my all to my students and make sure that every one is working up to her full potential. And I've tried teaching my own children. But I just can't. They simple won't learn from me."

It was a comfort to know that I wasn't doing anything wrong; the situation was simply a genuinely challenging one.

So I mostly gave up and baruch Hashem, we were back in Eretz Yisrael a few months later and the 4-year-old was able to catch up.

(Interestingly, it was the older child who got messed up with school and switching languages & programs twice in one year.)

​But why I am telling you this story?

Regardless of the Current Results, You're Doing a Great Job. Really.

It's not to discourage those of you who have found yourself quarantined into an impromptu homeschool.

By the way, I'm also homeschooling my 5-year-old now. We started off with a couple of minutes of morning davening. (Disappointingly, that was a grueling & frustrating activity for the first week, but then got better). Then we started doing very small amounts of reading. I also expected that to go well because this child loves reading his worksheets from school, but has suddenly dug in his heels about reading with us with no impetus from school (although that also improved a bit recently).

I decided to make parsha and weekly topics his bedtime story, so hopefully that will go well.

And no, we're not overwhelming him. Literally a couple of minutes for davening and then for reading should not be a huge pressure. (Except that for some reason it is. Even with chocolate.)

This time, there really is no choice and I know I must keep plowing ahead. (Asking Hashem to make this go more smoothly has definitely helped.)

But the point is for you homeschoolers to realize that teaching your own children, ESPECIALLY after they've been habituated to classroom schooling, is a real transition and a real challenge.

If you're not accomplishing what you hoped with homeschooling (even if you made sure to start out with minimum standards) or if you're finding it very frustrating and stagnating...then please know there is nothing wrong with you or your child. 

It's the situation.

It's a genuinely difficult situation. As we saw above, even a successful, experienced, professional teacher struggled with teaching her own children.

Yes, it ultimately can be done, and Hashem grants siyata d'Shmaya in situations like this, but please don't blame yourself or think that you're doing something "wrong" or that you're missing some secret "key" to homeschooling.

You're not. You're totally fine.

And also, I've read accounts of committed homeschooling moms who described days that, even for them, the kids just won't settle down to learn or the mom just can't bring herself to teach them that day. (Or even a few days in a row.)

So it's not easy-shmeezy for anyone.

Also, we're all getting ready for Pesach right now.

So...please don't feel bad.

Please feel good.

Because whatever you're doing (even if you haven't actually accomplished much with the kids) is all part of the effort and the transition, and you deserve a lot of credit for any efforts you are making.
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Dina's Rosh Chodesh Secret

20/3/2020

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On a Rosh Chodesh, not long after we were first married, my Moroccan-born Israeli-bred husband and I went to visit an older cousin of his living in a small but attractive apartment in a predominantly secular neighborhood in Yerushalayim.

Her name was Dina & she served us some leftover hamin (Moroccan cholent), in which every garbanzo bean tasted like it had been cooked individually to perfection.

As we sat in her kitchen, I couldn't help noticing the massive placard of Birkat Hamazon taped to the wall next to the kitchen table, similar to what you find in some schools. Above was a handwritten sign saying: Rosh Chodesh today – ya'aleh v'yavo!!! 

Ya'aleh v'yavo is a special prayer inserted within Birkat Hamazon (and Shemoneh Esrei) in honor of Rosh Chodesh.

That's odd, I thought. Her youngest in his 20s. Why does she need such a large placard by the table?

She must have put it up for her grandchildren, I figured.

Nice. She initially impressed me as more traditional than religious – the type that keeps Shabbat and kashrut, but isn't always knowledgeable in other areas – but apparently she's more knowledgeable & serious about her mitzvah observance than she appeared. Very impressive.

At the time, I also didn't realize she was covering her hair because the shaitel she wore was a very realistic copy of the bordeaux-colored hair popular among older Sefardi women in Eretz Yisrael.

Then I noticed a sign on her fridge: Rosh Chodesh today – don't forget ya'aleh v'yavo!

And on her upper kitchen cabinet, I saw another handwritten sign: Remember – ya'aleh v'yavo!

I was no longer so sure the massive Birkat Hamazon with its accompanying Rosh Chodesh reminder was for her grandchildren because signs on refrigerators & kitchen cabinets are usually for oneself and not for the grandchildren.

Then we moved into the artfully decorated living room, where I saw another massive placard of Birkat Hamazon taped to the azure wall next to the dining room table.

That's definitely unusually because many people don't wish to affect their living room-dining room look with a massive placard of Birkat Hamazon.

I realized that in this home, Birkat Hamazon was of the utmost importance.

And this placard also sat under another handwritten admonishment to remember to say ya'aleh v'yavo.

I realized it must be for her.

Just to make sure, I politely asked her about it.

With a self-conscious yet contented little laugh, she admitted that yes, it was for her. Still, self-conscious she murmured something about how it's just her thing.

"Nice," I enthused. "Very nice, actually."

In all my life, I had never seen someone so concerned about forgetting to say ya'aleh v'yavo during Birkat Hamazon.

Impressed, I wondered where her dedication to ya'aleh v'yavo came from.

And I think I got the answer several years later on the way to a family wedding.

The Long-Lasting Influence of "Beis Yaakov" of Tangier, Morocco

On a special bus reserved for taking my husband's extended family to his brother's wedding, I found myself sitting next to Dina.

Not only did I like Dina, she also had the most beautiful French-Ladino accent on her Hebrew, making her even more of a pleasure to listen to.

Also, whenever I find myself with my husband's older female family members, I always try as gently as I can to get them to tell me about their lives back in Morocco. 

Usually, they're a bit hesitant due to Moroccan culture being looked down on by Ashkenazi (mostly secular) Israelis as primitive. Sometimes, their own children make fun of them for it. The fact that for many (maybe even most) Moroccan Jews, Arabic is their main mother-tongue didn't help things. 

(It's a very Jewish-style Arabic however – it's not Judeo-Arabic, but more like yeshivish English.)

Some cover it up by emphasizing their knowledge of French, but the majority of Moroccan Jews I've met are more comfortable speaking Arabic.

But once you show you're open-minded and even eager (though not too eager, because that can be kind of demeaning too), they usually open right up.

Dina had grown up in Meknes speaking French and Arabic. Then her parents sent her to the Jewish girls school in Tangier, where they spoke Ladino.

Dina was of that age which some girls attended school and some didn't. And no offense to the romanticized image of the pious unlearned Moroccan woman (who did exist, but that type was more characteristic of the generation above Dina), but in Dina's generation, there is a sharp difference between the ones who received a Jewish education and the ones who didn't.

The ones who didn't are often traditional, but not necessarily so pious or so knowledgeable.

I know how weird that sounds because their own mothers were pretty knowledgeable in the areas they needed to be. So why didn't it get passed down to their daughters without a formal education? I'm not sure. I think it has to do with the same ruach that affected the Jewish girls in Europe pre-WWII. The Beis Yaakov girls were stunning in their knowledge, middot, and mesirut nefesh. But most of the girls who did not manage to receive a good formal Jewish education did not end up the same way as the Beis Yaakov girls, even if they had pious mothers. Some did, but most did not.

​But the Moroccan women you'll meet who received a solid Jewish education in Morocco are incredibly committed.

Anyway, I asked Dina if it was Beis Yaakov, and she said it wasn't exactly a branch of Beis Yaakov, but it was very similar to Beis Yaakov.

Because these were sheltered Jewish girls from good families living away from home in a dorm in a country where neither Jews nor females had many rights, the school really watched over the girls like their own daughters.

Dina recalls that in addition to the warmth of the teachers, there were also madrichot (counselors) in the dormitory (which was in the same building as the school, I think). Because girls married by age 18 in Morocco at that time, the madrichot weren't much older than the students, and they were more like big sisters to the students.

One of Dina's warmest memories of her school was Rosh Chodesh.

On Rosh Chodesh, all the girls would get together and produce a meal fitting for Rosh Chodesh, along with a variety of the tasty little Moroccan pastries you see at their simchahs until today.

Then they would all sit down to eat and sing piyutim (poetic Hebrew love songs to Hashem written by holy rabbis), including special piyutim for Rosh Chodesh.

And I realized that this solid foundation in Yiddishkeit is what held Dina so firmly throughout all the years and transitions.

She covered her hair even when it was uncomfortable & unfashionable to do so, like among secular upper-class people who already looked down on her for being Moroccan.

While I normally don't admire shaitels that are indistinguishable from real hair, I feel that in Dina's situation, it's a tremendous virtue & I admire her so much for it.

​It shows her mesirut nefesh for covering her hair. In her situation, there was no other comfortable way to do it.

And now her unique dedication to ya'aleh v'yavo also made sense.

The "Beis Yaakov" of Tangier managed to ingrain into their students a profound appreciation of Rosh Chodesh – a monthly holiday with a special emphasis for women.

And that quiet impact still reverberates many decades later.
  • Why is Rosh Chodesh Considered a "Women's Holiday​"?
Okay, I just have to vent here. True confession time: I ALSO WANT TO LEARN IN BEIS YAAKOV OF TANGIER! I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time! ... Okay, yes, I know that Hashem always put me exactly where I needed to be in order to achieve my personal tikkun, but I can't tell you how much I would've loved learning Torah Judaism in Ladino (!!!) with a familial staff, and cooking & baking all sorts of delicacies on Rosh Chodesh while singing piyutim with all the girls. It's really something worth envying, no?
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How Turning to Torah Can Help Us Sift through A Lot of Confusion to Find the Right Path (with a special emphasis on chinuch)

5/3/2020

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Several years ago, I found myself with more time on my hands than I'd had in years.

Baruch Hashem, my Hebrew skills had also improved.

I knew that it was very important for women to know Tanach well (and mussar and relevant halacha), so I decided to study the parsha each week with the major commentaries.

Obviously, that goal meant biting off more than I could chew, which I realized after only a few weeks.

But it also brought some very nice surprises.

First of all, I fell in love with the Kli Yakar's peirush. With so much beautiful metaphor and so much sympathy toward women, it inspired me to focus on him & Rashi for the rest of the year.

Secondly, I realized that seeking out the good points in every scenario was a vital part of cultivating an authentically Jewish mindset.

​No, not whitewashing bad behavior, but simply seeing the positive aspects or intentions of a situation.

Literally all the mefarshim do this.

It's especially interesting when juxtaposed with their uncompromising commitment to Truth, their tremendous fear & love of Hashem, their profound piety, and their clear-eyed ability to call a spade a spade.

For example, the Ohr Hachaim explains Hagar's untoward behavior toward Sara Imeinu after the birth of Yishmael as a well-intentioned misunderstanding of the relevant halachot.

Hagar wasn't even Jewish. Furthermore, she was of Egyptian stock and that's not good. It exerted a pull on her when the going got rough, as Rashi explained.

Yet the Ohr Hachaim saw her as not-as-bad-as-she-seems.

He did not approve of her behavior, but simply explained (using lots of proofs from the Gemara that my husband helped me with) that she hadn't meant to be so disrespectful; she'd simply misunderstand how the halacha worked.

The Kli Yakar also did this with Achashverosh, explaining that Achashverosh meant to atone for his sins via his use of the Temple garments and vessels.

(Please see The Kli Yakar - Parshat Titzaveh & How to Avoid being a Pathological Pollyanna–and scroll down to the section on Mountain of Sludge) 

His intentions, explains the Kli Yakar, made Achashverosh "karov l'shogeg – close to being an unintentional sinner."

Close, but not quite.

The Kli Yakar still states unequivocally that Achashverosh was a rasha.

And those are just 2 examples.

Anyway, this attitude running through all the mefarshim brought me to realize that the truth of a matter is defined by seeing the positive in a situation.

NOT by denying wrongdoing or evil, but seeing some positive aspect, even if it's only a vague inner intention of the mind.

This is in direct contrast to Western society today, which considers negative statements of proof that you're seeing the truth.​

What is a Real Courage or Honesty?

In the modern world, honesty is often defined by whether you are willing to state the negatives.

Courage is also often defined by the willingness to state the negatives.

In contrast, whenever a positive aspect is mentioned among the negatives, it's often contradicted or even shouted down.

Again, I'm not talking about using a positive to justify or defend bad behavior.

No. 

Rather, if you state that there was a positive result amid negative consequences or acknowledge a good intention despite the wrong behavior, then you risk being accused of being in denial, being politically correct, an apologist, a flatterer or a suck-up, being too "nice," repressed, justifying or excusing bad behavior, and so on.

Today, it actually takes more courage to stand up and point out what is right or good.

​Real honesty means stating the actual truth — the WHOLE truth.

Why Aspects of Mainstream Chinuch Feels Helpful, But Actually Isn't

​This also helped me realize that a lot of the speakers and articles in the frum community calling attention to problems were attacking problems in the wrong way, especially regarding OTD youth — which is why we haven't seen much success with solving these issues.

Oh, yes, on an individual level, yes. A great many people have been helped.

But overall, we're seeing a downward trend in this particular area.

But why? With so many organizations and professionals available nowadays, and with so many classes, courses, and books on parenting, why are we having increasing problems with youth?

Even more striking, in families that possess a wide span between the oldest and the youngest child (meaning that their oldest is a married 40-year-old and their youngest is a 19-year-old in sem or yeshivah), the siblings don't even look or act like they were raised in the same family.

It's the same family, same parents, more or less same parenting (even though many times, the parents do raise their younger children differently than they raised their older ones), but a completely different generation.

I don't know all the reasons, but let's look at one, and that's the chinuch guidance many parents (particularly the mothers) received from chinuch "experts."

So what was happening in the world of frum parenting, starting around the 1990s (and in the 1970s-80s in the secular world)?

First of all, you would be inundated with very disturbing stories of people being mistreated by their frum parents or their frum school (which, again, is a reflection of the same trend starting earlier in the secular world).

VERY disturbing stories.

And they were often behaviors that no normal person would ever think to do...not even once.

In other words, you really don't need to warn parents and teachers NOT to do such things.

For example, some people are serial killers or mug little old ladies walking down the street.

Do you need to warn people NOT to do this?

Do you need to exhort against the terrible pain murder or mugging causes the victims?

​NO. Of course you don't!

No remotely normal person WANTS to murder innocents or mug little old ladies.

So who were these chinuch people talking to with their really disturbing stories?

Taking the Most Horrible Extreme & Applying It to Normal People: Huh?

For contrast, let's turn this around:

If you're speaking to people who DO think serial killing or mugging little old ladies is a justifiable activity, do you think that telling them "this is really bad and here's why it's really bad" will stop them?

Likewise, most of the parents and teachers who are liable to act out in such abusive ways often lack the self-awareness to connect the stories (and their sad outcomes) to their own behavior. 

(I'm talking about people who regularly exhibit dysfunctional behavior, not occasional one-offs.)

For example, back in the Nineties, a story made the rounds telling of an angry father who engaged in a physical abusive incident against his teenage daughter, violating several major Laws, plus the societal norm of behaving less aggressively to a girl than one would toward a boy.

This is obviously very disturbing.

It's also very unusual.

Because of this particular father tromping on both halachic & social restraints against such behavior, it's clear that there's something very wrong with him.

For example, Judaism is impeccably clear about the prohibition against becoming violently angry, and against bodily attacking people (unless for self-defense).

It's forbidden. This is the Rambam (Maimonides) and all the other major Sages throughout the ages.

Furthermore, this is his own child and a daughter (it's natural for fathers to be softer on their daughters than their sons).

Clearly, he is an abnormally dysfunctional person.

Now...would you personally ever do such a thing? Even if you're were really angry?

No, of course not.

Do you know anyone who does?

Probably not. Or if you do, you know ONE.

Yet this story was repeated ad nauseam and always presented in a "SEE WHAT'S WRONG WITH OUR COMMUNITY – AAAAAAAGH!" approach.

Okay. Yes, OBVIOUSLY, it's very wrong and must be taken care of.

But what about all the good parents?

Not perfect parents, but people who are doing things right — or at least SINCERELY TRYING to do the right thing?

Why was chinuch instruction 97% of the time "SEE WHAT'S WRONG WITH OUR COMMUNITY?!!! – AAAAAGH!" rather than "see what's right"?

Why was it so defensive and reactive (like, "we must prevent this horrible thing and its awful result!") instead of proactive ("Let's achieve this wonderful goal and strive for this lovely outcome – and you all have the beautiful soul potential within you to make it!")

Why couldn't they have presented it at least 50-50?

And why do I as a parent have to be lumped in the same category as the deranged father above, as if we all are on the brink of such behavior?

Again, the above chinuch-dynamic was a direct result of the surrounding culture and fashionable psychology of that time.

It wasn't an authentically Jewish style or method.

Yes, we were TOLD this was an authentically Jewish style, but as we all know, saying something doesn't make it true.

And we see now that it didn't help; our amount of problems with youth has increased.

This is because many of the allegedly Torah-based chinuch methods were not actually based on Torah.

Rabbi Borg Gives a Shiur

A few years ago, I attended a lecture given by one of the chinuch superstars.

Basically, it consisted of a detailed description of the dangers of all sorts of modern technology for our children, along with a detailed analysis of how there was no possible way to prevent our children from seeing or using this technology, no matter how aware & protective we are as parents.

And that was it.

Just really depressing & hopeless.

There was no finale like, "And so clearly, the only thing we can do is turn to Hashem. He set up this situation to bring us closer to Him — and show the power of the sincere heartfelt prayer of a loving parent!"

Or something like that.

But...nothing.

Just...all is hopeless. "We are the Borg. Resistance is futile."

Give up. Don't even try. There's no point because you cannot fight it anyway.

And where was God with this Borger rebbe?

I didn't see Him anywhere the entire lecture.

And just for knowing, I believe that Rabbi Borg intended to be helpful, but simply got caught up in the wrong mindset (i.e., a non-emunah mindset).

Ironically, a friend who also attended the lecture praised it.

The rabbi's knowledge of all the ins and outs of the situation impressed her.

When I pointed out that he offered no solutions or chizuk, she wasn't so bothered by that lack.

For her, the mere awareness of the issue was impressive. Yes, the rabbi was "raising awareness"! (This is another modern concept that can be positive if it actually leads to solutions—but the way society is set up, it often leads to impotent frustration instead, resulting in chafing masses.)

I think there's also relief in feeling that "I can't really do anything anyway," which superficially relieves self-blame and intense shame when things go wrong.

But you can have hope & personal responsibility WITHOUT toxic shame and self-recrimination.

​And that is actually what Torah Judaism offers us.​

By knowing that Hashem is cultivating every step of our individual journey for our benefit and by knowing that our neshamah is pristine and good, we can more easily face challenges without getting bogged down in miserable feelings.

You are Really Awful – But Fear Not! The Chinuch Expert is Here to "Save" You!

While reading the commentaries on the weekly parsha "raised my awareness" in a way that led me to solutions (i.e., let's see what people are doing RIGHT!), and I was able to change back then, I unintentionally revisited the issue more recently.

I ended up receiving a daily newsletter titled something like Merry Motherhood – Raising a Happy & Heimish Mishpacha!

It sounded good & I thought that having a daily chizuk for parenting would be good for me. 

But I cancelled after a week because it such a downer.

Once again, I was reading about really awful parents & teachers, accompanied with an explanation about why this behavior is so bad and how important it is to avoid it.

Just like with the story of the deranged father above.

And the implication is that I need to know this, that your average parent needs to know this, because...we are liable to be really awful & abusive – unless we are told NOT to be!

Yes, there's a secret monster inside us all just waiting to jump out & devour our children & students!

​We're all ticking time-bombs just waiting to explode!

​Sigh...

It's such an incredibly negative & insulting message derived from modern pop psychology, in which everyone is pathologized and anyone who is emotionally healthy is simply labeled as "asymptomatic" or "no apparent dysfunction" or whatever. 

​In brainwashing people into thinking that they are innately bad, it can actually cause bad behavior.

It's also so un-Jewish.

Why assume the worst about everyone?

What about giving the benefit of the doubt?

Seeing a person's good points?

​What about knowing that the core neshamah is good & help people access that?

And isn't it a tad arrogant for the "expert" to feel that he or she has achieved wonderfulness, but no one else is wonderful (unless, of course, they follow this expert's sage advice)?

What about realizing that Hashem is running things and that most people already possess a sense deep down of what's wrong or a sense of what their child needs, but may simply need help accessing that?

Why Did Things Move in This Direction? And What's the Real Solution?

Why did this method become so popular in the frum community?

I can't know everything, but these are some possible reasons:

(1) First of all, the Jewish neshamah has a definite Tzedek, tzedek tirdof (Justice, justice, thou shalt pursue) aspect to it.

Many, many Jews absolutely cannot stand to see any kind of unfairness or victimization.

So upon encountering abuse, the soul cries out.

And that's normal, even positive.

You want to protest this awful dynamic. You feel like it shouldn't go on for another moment and that it should never happen again.

You feel like it's absolutely unconscionable & must be stamped out immediately.

That's all good.

In fact, that's very good.

But it all depends on how this goodness is channeled.

In the secular world, assimilated Jews channel this via the only means they know: liberal values.

So they support socialism (and even communism), think that abortion & euthanasia are acts of compassion, and so on.

And they really believe they are fighting injustice.

Likewise, these frum professionals also believe they're doing something helpful by assuming the worst and slapping the most negative examples in our faces all the time.

​Not to mention, it's so disturbing to hear that you the reader get all riled up...with absolutely no outlet for your outrage.

So you're all riled up and...?

So you also can end up hating the frum community because it's portrayed as so awful with no tikkun in sight.

(2) And even more deceptively, a lot of frum people think that things are better among the non-Jews. (And from personal experience? It's not.) 

How did this misunderstanding happen?

For one thing, a lot of these chinuch people read the secular literature on child psychology, parenting, etc. Some learned in universities, even Orthodox universities, in which whatever-current-popular-psychology-model is promoted.

They consult with other frum people who've also been deeply influenced by pop psychology, particularly the Victim Model.

Additionally, all popular theories contain some grains of truth, else they wouldn't have such popular emotional appeal.

The Victim Model also has some grains of truth to it.

(3) I think we've all heard about the concept of a certain "ruach" that comes into the world at different times, which is why you'll see entire continents get caught up in the same ruach. Again, this needs to be channeled properly. We really need daas Torah to deal with any ruach.

(4) Finally, when you're working with difficult people & difficult situations, you get inundated by them, which makes it appear that the entire world is profoundly dysfunctional in THIS particular way, based on your copious encounters.

That's pretty normal. But again, it's important to cultivate yishuv hadaat by stepping back and re-orienting your perspective.

I admit that it bothers me a lot that many of these chinuch people are from a yeshivah background and they learn Gemara regularly (along with parsha & mussar).

And despite their Torah background, they are still so impacted by other influences, like the emotional appeal of pop psychology, the presentation of current popular theories as the only game in town, and their own correct outrage at the injustice, plus the fact that their profession causes them to be inundated with problems & giving them a skewed perspective.

And again, it's understandable why they're affected in this way, but I can't help feeling that their learning should provide more of a buffer and imbue them with more yishuv hadaat than they seem to exhibit.

For example, when I was in junior high & high school (in the American non-Jewish public school system), it seemed like the sxual abuse or exploitation of girls was all over the place.

​And in the secular world, it actually kind of is.

For some reason, I attracted a lot of secret confidences at that age, so I think I was exposed to hearing this information more than others. 

And these problem increased despite so much available support: hotlines widely available & advertised (including on TV shows popular with young people), vastly increased "awareness," specialized organizations, the widespread acceptability of going into treatment for any issue, support groups, female judges, female empowerment, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

For all it helped. (Not.)

Unfortunately, as is characteristic of Esav, the Western World has managed to convince nearly everyone that it holds the solutions to everything and that even though everything has obviously gotten much worse, the solutions still lies within their theories – and ONLY within THEIR theories – and that, anyway, no other society is doing any better.

​That's what they claim.

And a lot of frum professionals totally swallow this, going so far as to look to the non-Jewish community for solutions — including the Catholic Church, of all things, like "Look at how the Catholic Church has dealt with their problems of abuse!"...and there's no cognizance that, while there are good people in the Catholic Church, overall it's an organization based on tumah & just wants to cover things up. If a perfunctory admission of guilt will make them look pretty, then they'll do that.   

​"Fauxpologies" (fake apologies) are very popular with bad people. Fauxpologies enable awful people to continue indulging themselves, more than almost any other strategy.

Beloved Am Yisrael, they are not an example to follow.

Note: Of course we can use the facilities of the non-Jewish world: transportation, hospitals, courts, prisons, etc. But these aren't solutions to overall problems. The secular world does not actually have solutions. They pretend to & promote themselves as such, but they actually don't.

Without Torah (and this means the 7 Mitzvot of Noach for the non-Jewish society), there is no other way to improve society.

And those frum Jews who deal with problems need to use their Torah learning to find the answers and use that learning to act as a buffer against Edomite influences & theories.

If they come from a yeshivah background and keep up their learning, then they definitely have it within them; they just need to focus on continuously accessing it.

And so once again, we see that looking INTO Torah provides us with what we need.

Despite the Downturns, Things are Still Looking Up

Despite all the above, it's important to emphasize the following:

  • There ARE good therapists.
 
  • There ARE good chinuch advisers.
 
  • There ARE good people working in these fields.
 
  • There ARE people, even with a university background in secular theories, using authentic Torah to sift through & offer you guidance that is truly beneficial.

And we've seen frum professionals doing a real cheshbon hanefesh and coming around to authentic Torah guidance.

It's very hard not to swallow whole these secular theories.

Despite my initial secret misgivings about some of it, I also got swept up in these theories at one point. 

These theories are promoted in such a persuasive manner, it's hard not to get caught up in them, especially if you spend years immersed in them via a college education.

Furthermore, you often get a lot of disapproval and even polite name-calling ("in denial," "do you really think you know better than...?", etc.) for merely questioning these theories or bringing up contradictions.

So I had to work through this (with the valuable help of Chazal, whose Torah-based wisdom is truly eternal), and I don't think we should think badly of professionals who also initially got caught up in it, then turned themselves around (which, in their field, takes tremendous courage & a commitment to Torah values).

It also showed me how much a regular non-talmid-chacham can gain from learning Torah sources on his or her own level. Hashem crafted Torah to be accessible to any sincere seeker on his or her own level, even if it's a low level.

Yes, the more skills & the better hashkafah you have, the more you'll gain from Torah sources.

But a person has to start somewhere, so why not start wherever one is & build up?

​When I encountered a fresh look at the old chinuch information that inundated us when my children were young, it showed how problematic and davka un-Jewish it was, and that's why very little of it was actually helpful or effective.

And it's wonderful that people are waking up and looking to Torah & connection with Hashem via tefillah and talking to Him in order to raise their children and generally live their lives better.

And I very much hope that continues to strengthen.

May we all merit to be mechanech our children & students in the way that's truly best for THEM.
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The #1 Way to Protect Yourself from Plague, Disease, and Other Illnesses

2/3/2020

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DISCLAIMER: These types of topics should always be read with the awareness that some illnesses are preordained, like maybe as a rectification for acts committed in a previous life. Or maybe something to do with the parents (which can also be affected by what's discussed below). We sometimes see babies born with disease or disability, for example. They haven't even had a chance to be influenced by the icky stuff in life! Obviously, there are other things going on. So please keep that in mind as you read the following...
Upon re-reading Rav Itamar's Schwartz's booklet on the Erev Rav (a collection of different lectures given on the topic), one section (pages 43-46) jumped out at me: Protection from Illness. 

He notes that the impurity of a world without Torah is what makes a Jew sick, pointing out how Yaakov Avinu only got sick once he ventured into the impure environment of Egypt.

(Needless to say, this means specifically the impurity of the non-Jewish world, and not the wonderful non-Jews who strive to follow the 7 Mitzvot of Noach. A truly non-Jewish world rejects Torah, instead of embracing Torah via the 7 Noachide Laws, like a sincere non-Jew does.)

Quoting the Chatam Sofer (Shabbat 86b), Rav Schwartz explains that we cannot bring medical proof from non-Jewish medical healing on how to heal illnesses found in Jews — even when it appears to be the same illness.

Does this mean that, say, studies showing that extra doses of vitamin C & zinc reduce the length of illness don't apply to Jews?

So I'll risk extrapolating that yes, it could mean that vitamin C & zinc will work fine for Jews too, but it doesn't have to mean that. In other words, the studies don't prove that it will be effective for Jews, but yes, it can also be effective for Jews.

(Interestingly, recently, there was an unusually high rate of measles in the frum community, despite frum communities being generally pro-vaccination and therefore comprising a high percentage of people vaccinated against measles. Could the Chatam Sofer's chiddush explain that? I don't know enough about the whole issue to say for sure, but it's intriguing.) 

Rav Schwartz says:
Hashem says, “I will separate you from the nations.”

This is the key we need in order to merit the promise that Hashem made to us: “Any illness which I placed upon Egypt, I will not place upon you, for I am Hashem, your healer.”

That is how we are truly healed – when we are separated from the nations.

​But when we are influenced by the nations, we are susceptible to their various sicknesses which Hashem brings upon them.
The more a person shows that he is of the seed of Amo Yisrael (His Nation Israel), the more he expresses the Yisrael within him...the more he merits Hashem's Healing. 

In other words, the more we think & act as if we're saying, "I'm one of Yours, Hashem!"— then the more Hashem treats us like one of His.

You Make Me Sick, Mitzrayim!

When did the deadly plague appear among the Jews in the Midbar?

Only when they allowed their hearts to hanker after the influences of Egypt.

Bamidbar 11:4 - 5:
​But the multitude among them began to have strong cravings. Then even the children of Israel once again began to cry, and they said, "Who will feed us meat? We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt free of charge, the cucumbers, the watermelons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.
Yes, the main kvetchers were from the Erev Rav, but the Yisraelites allowed themselves to be influenced by all the fracas too.

Yet despite the powerful sway of the Erev Rav, Rav Schwartz reminds us that we also have the power to NOT be influenced.

The proof is that in Egypt, we did not change our Hebrew names, our refined Jewish style of clothing, or our holy Hebrew language.

Apparently, that's all the proof we need.

We Must Trace the Source of Anything We Encounter

So, tachlis, what do we do?

How do we prevent illness?

We prevent illness by distancing ourselves from non-Torah influences.

How do we do that?

First of all, says Rav Schwartz, we must trace the source of anything we encounter.

Is it an authentically Jewish source or a non-Jewish source?

In other words, is it sourced in holiness...or not?

In this lecture, Rav Schwartz specifically discusses the following issues:

  • The compulsion of some to immediately seek to bring any new non-Jewish product or idea into the frum world (with kosher certification & rabbinic approval, of course).
 
  • The enthusiasm to get a hechsher on as many different foods as possible or to create a kosher imitation.

Yet what, for example (says Rav Schwartz), is the root desire of those who seek to either kasher non-kosher foods or to create a kosher imitation?

Giving into physical desires, making money, garnering accolades for this "accomplishment"...  

Now, maybe sometimes there is a holy reason for doing the above.

For example, the wide availability of hechsherim means that secular Jews have more of a chance of eating kosher food (even without meaning to).

But generally Rav Schwartz's stated reasons are the real ones. Not always, but mostly.

  • New styles of clothing are created by some of the most degenerate people in the world.

Miniskirts, high heels, and tight pants are some of the least uncomfortable clothes to wear.

Waist-length loose hair is also a major pain in the neck (and in a shaitel, a massive expense in both the purchase & the upkeep).

​Yet look at how some otherwise frum people insist on wearing them.

Their insistence is certainly not out of a dedication to uphold Jewish values because miniskirts, high heels, tight pants (for either men or women), and long loose hair (for either men or women, real hair or wigs) are not tsnius.

So what is the source? We all know it's not holiness.

It's something else.

Going off on a tangent: It is my secret wish to go back to the clothing of our Imahot – long, loose robes. With the right kind of design and fabric, these can look elegant enough for a wedding. And it's not just me. I have a chassidish friend with impressive yichus who secretly wishes the same. Maybe someday, we'll no longer be confined to wearing modern Edom-style shirts & skirts...sigh...

  • Many books today are authored by frum people borrowing non-Torah ideas.

And yes, Rav Schwartz acknowledges that they get rabbinical approval for these books, even when the entire book is in the spirit of the non-Jewish ideas about life.

(Usually, rabbanim do not read the entire book; they judge by a sampling & their estimation of the author's character, plus their good-hearted desire to help a fellow Jew with his or her parnassah.)

This happens quite often with books on psychology & psychiatry, although we must commend those frum professionals who gradually broke out of the mold of their university indoctrination and started to sift through the sources, in addition to using their own experience, research, and study of Torah sources. 

Rav Schwartz says in other lectures that some frum people are writing legitimate stuff and also Rav Avigdor Miller said that some frum psychologists are using genuinely kosher techniques but speaking with psychology-jargon so that other will take them seriously.

The supposedly frum chinuch today is another massive culprit of dressing up non-Jewish ideas in Torah garb, then selling it to unsuspecting new mothers.

(Actually, I was a suspicious young mother myself because a lot of what I came across presented as "authentic Torah chinuch!" reminded me of all the Western child psychology I'd been reading in my teens & twenties. But my peers were uncomfortable with my questioning the methods we were learning, so there was no one to discuss it with, and thus it took me a while to break away from it. Reading Miriam Adahan's Awareness and then a talk with my rebbetzin really helped me cut free from it all.)

​It's important to note that the people selling Western child psychology as "authentic Torah chinuch!" are not tricksters, but simply unaware that it's not actually Torah chinuch.

Rav Schwartz himself says that some of the people misguiding others are not bad, but well-intended. For example, those who are, say, trying to get charedim into the army aren't always Erev Rav, but a Yisrael-soul convinced it's doing a good thing. They're not evil, just misguided.

I'm not trying to rip apart these chinuch "experts," especially since they have such good intentions. However, they often hurt as much as they help. The assistance and the damage goes hand-in-hand.

I can't help being concerned that parents be made aware of this so they don't suffer like I and many others have.

Having said that, there are definitely people who ARE offering authentic Torah chinuch and who help much more than they hurt.

May they be blessed.
​
  • Our external appearance, our homes, and our actions may seem like pure Torah, but our minds & hearts often yearn for aspects of Mitzrayim (i.e., the non-Jewish influences).

This is a huge challenge. As written in a previous post, the secular world has everything down to a science. 

They carefully study & calculate how to attract your very brain.

Songs are carefully composed so that just hearing a briefest sample of a song tricks your brain into wanting more.

Movies and TV shows are timed exactly to what your brain wants regarding scenes and turning points.

Advertisements spend a fortune on research to cultivate images and words to attack your brain into thinking a certain product or idea is irresistible.

Video games also hit you right in your brain.

Facebook has long been famous for their carefully crafted addictive aspects.

The list goes on and on.​

How to Fight the Mitzrayim from Within

​The best way to fight the root desire for outside influences is to:

Bring more authentically Jewish influences into your life.

  • Read material by real talmidei chachamim. (Nefesh Chaya by Rav Shimshon Dovid Pincus is a wonderful resource for women. It's also a real page-turner.)
  • Read well-written books about tzaddikim, like Rebbetzin Kanievsky.
  • Listen to or read transcripts of Rav Avigdor Miller when he starts describing how the non-Torah lifestyle & values appear through Torah eyes. (It's pretty witty too.)
  • Listen to Jewish music composed by Jews with pure souls: chassidic niggunim or Sephardi piyutim are a great place to start.
  • Do mitzvot. Learn Torah. Give tzedakah. Do chessed.
  • Pay attention to talking like a Jew — what slang do we use? Do we pottymouth? Lashon hara? Any meaningless chatter or unnecessary clowning around? 
  • Talk to Hashem as you would a Best Friend Who truly cares about you and genuinely wants to listen to you.

These are just some suggestions to start. You probably have your own.

Also (and I feel kind of silly saying this), but I'm obviously not any different or better than anyone reading this. All the above are things that I've either had to face with myself or am working on now.

I'm learning new aspects and gaining new insights all the time — sometimes on a daily basis.

Basically, you want to keep adding light to whatever your own personal darkness is.

​May we all succeed in meriting a complete healing of both the body & the soul.
To read the sources referenced in this post, please see:
  • Rav Avigdor Miller on Choosing the Right Psychologist
  • Erev Rav Talks (a collection of drashos given by Rav Itamar Schwartz)
  • Erev Rav Talks, pg. 34, It’s Not A Financial Issue of the Government (when he says "In fact, those people [who are pushing for the draft] might not even be aware that the ‘Sitra Achara’ is controlling them, and they might even be earnest in their intentions. Some of them actually are earnest, and they aren’t trying to be wicked. They simply don’t understand what they are doing to us.")
  • Kosher Novels, Films & Shows, especially when he says toward the end: "Only the books and sefarim which have been written by those who served Hashem through a richly developed internal world of their own – whether the author was a man or a woman – are appropriate for a bas Yisrael (Jewish girl/woman) to read. There aren’t that many of these books/sefarim available, ​but they do exist."
  • Why This Generation is So Astounding
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Authentic Torah Chinuch Comes from the Heart

26/2/2020

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While many chinuch courses claim to offer the "authentic Jewish" way of raising children (when often unbeknownst to the teachers of these courses themselves, the methods are usually based on either post-1960s Western child psychology, or the child psychology developed in America's 1890s and strongly promoted by the US government in the 1920s), reading memoirs can give us a glimpse of what true Jewish chinuch really is.

In Gutta: Memoirs of a Vanished World (pages 47-49), Gutta is sent to teach little girls in Stopnitz, Poland, after a 18 months of study in Cracow's Beis Yaakov high school.

Initially, Gutta pleaded & argued with Rav Orlean of Beis Yaakov not to send her to Stopnitz, which Gutta described as "a shtetl in a cast-away corner that could be found in no atlas and where no train stopped, a shtetl forgotten by the world, cut off behind the mud of its roads and fields."

Stopnitz's surrounding neighborhood was referred to as "King Poverty's giter (pitiful possessions).

When, after a journey squeezed between suitcases, Gutta got off the bus in Stopnitz, she scrutinized at the narrow alleys, the half-fallen homes, and the torn facades around the market place.

The Beis Yaakov schoolhouse itself was, in Gutta's words, "a run-down, neglected cabin."

Again, not because of disrespect or apathy, but poverty. The townspeople simply lacked the resources to give more to their beloved girls school.

Yet Gutta's time in Stopnitz completed what Beis Yaakov sought to instill in her:
I became one of those people who constantly lived with God. 

In Stopnitz, I completely lost myself — or perhaps I found myself.

(page 48)
The local shochet and his wife hosted Gutta throughout her stay in Stopnitz.

Gutta described their home as "a heavenly school of simplicity, sincerity, love for others, and for God...The house was filled with music, Tehillim, and niggunim."

​Gutta adds:
In this house, I discovered that even the most impoverished person possesses something that he can share with others: love and joy.
This is what Gutta took from Beis Yaakov & Stopnitz.

And this is what later enabled Gutta to give so beautifully of herself and to reflect the light of her neshamah into the tormented little girls & orphans she ended up teaching in the hell of the Warsaw Ghetto.

But it was the shochet's wife who intrigued me the most.

The Ideal Jewish Mother

The shochet's wife, Sara Pshitik, treated Gutta with so much warmth and appreciation.

The Pshitiks gave Gutta their best room, their best food—anything they could.

Why?

All because she was a Beis Yaakov teacher.

(When Sarah Pshitik offered Gutta something to eat, Sarah often insisted, "To teach children, you need strength.")

Their youngest child was a toddler named Moshe, whom they affectionately called "Moishenyu."

When Moishenyu started to take his first steps, he fell down and cried (as is totally expected).

Each time this happened, his mother picked him up and kissed him, her own face glowing with joy and happiness.

"Wonderful, Moishenyu, wonderful!" she said. "God bless your first steps, Moishenyu. May God guide all of your steps to mitzvos and good deeds!"

Then she'd turn to Gutta and say, "So, teacher, do we not have a great God, Who shows such great kindness to me, Sarah Pshitik, a simple Jewish woman? Teacher, you are educated. Tell me something about this great kindness. How can I, a simple woman, praise God and thank Him enough?"

And then she would turn to Hashem: "Holy, great Creator, filled with kindness: Guard the steps of my little boy so that he will not fall, and that he will remain a good and blessed Jew."

Something So Authentic can Still Feel So Foreign

The truth is, I have a hard time imagining exactly how to do this in real life.

It wasn't just love & reassurance Sarah was giving Moishenyu; it was a whole mussar shmooze geared for toddlers, along with the opportunity to cleave to Hashem.

EVERY single time the child toddles over?

How does that work? (Especially if you have more going on at home than the toddling of this one child.)

I think this is something that is hard (at least for some of us) to do without having seen it in action.

Still, I regret not having at least tried it when my kids were toddlers. (Yes, I read this then, but it seemed so foreign to me at that time—appealing & inspiring, but foreign—that I just couldn't think how to do it.)

I suppose it's one of these things that you should just jump into and becomes more natural with time.

Also, and very importantly, while your inside affects your external behavior, the opposite is also true.

Even if it feels unnatural or silly at first, copying Sarah Pshitik can help you internalize these values.

Anyway, I very much wish that this kind of truly authentic chinuch could be taught in chinuch classes.

Later, upon reading Rav Shalom Arush's Garden of Education, I was able to implement one behavior of his religious Moroccan mother, and that is to shower the children with blessings as they go out the door.

It was simple & straight-forward enough to attempt.

And at that point, I finally realized how much more important these spiritual efforts are over the practical methods.

Yet even though I don't "shower" my children like Rav Arush's mother did with hers, I do bless them in Hashem's Name to have a good day, be protected, learn well or earn well, and so on. Maybe just 1 or 2 blessings, but that's still MUCH better than none.

Truly authentic Jewish chinuch might be more challenging to teach than the "do this, do that" methods of today because Sarah Pshitik's method comes from the heart & her husband (who also possessed the same heart) fully participated in this authentically Jewish chinuch in the home; it requires an internalization of Torah values, both on the part of the chinuch teacher and the parents.

Every person is born into this world to rectify themselves, to complete tikkunim.

​As one major Rebbe said, this is a World of Tikkun.

Authentic Jewish Chinuch from the Heart

The point of This World is to achieve the best eternity possible, and this is really the main idea behind how we should be raising our children.

Therefore, the foundation of chinuch is about deepening your own emunah & bitachon — and passing this on to your child.

This idea lies behind the famous story of the man who went to the Chafetz Chaim to ask how he should raise his newborn son, and the Chafetz Chaim declared, "You're a few years too late!"

(It wasn't really too late, but the moral of the story is that you can't give what you don't have, so you need to be working on yourself if you wish to give your children a good chinuch.)

Likewise, the Steipler Gaon said that 50% of chinuch is role-modeling.

The truth is, there are chinuch people who could give this over to parents, but many parents today are not receptive.

Many parents today want to-the-point, practical methods ("say this, do that")—not because they're superficial, but because they're overwhelmed.
​
Still, I think it would be good to try inculcating this.

And it doesn't need come from an "official" chinuch expert; maybe there is someone in your sphere who does this.

For example, when I was in the Beit Hachlamah, I roomed with a woman from Bnei Brak who'd just given birth to her 9th or 10th child.

Whenever he burped after she patted him on the back, she sang out: "La-bree-oooooooooot!" (To your health!) And then she sang out pasukim & blessings upon him.

I surreptitiously watched her in fascination.

It seemed like a lot of emotional output per burp, but it also seemed much more fun & meaningful than burping baby the regular affectionate (or wearying) perfunctory way.

She was a compactly built & energetic woman in her thirties with big glasses.

She chatted with me as if we were long-time neighbors, and out of the blue, she cheerfully declared that everyone has bad days sometimes and it doesn't necessarily mean that anything is really wrong.

"You can even cry over the laundry," she proclaimed. "I have! Yes, I even sometimes cry over the laundry. And you know what? That's okay! I tell my oldest daughter that it's normal to feel overwhelmed at times and it's normal to cry even over something as routine as the laundry."

She went on to tell me that she felt it was important to tell her daughter that feeling overwhelmed and crying were perfectly normal aspects of motherhood, and she stressed that she wanted her daughter to know this so that she wouldn't feel bad about herself when it happened.

(This also makes it easier to go on with life & get out of a funk.)

I found this very eye-opening and reassuring because until that point, I'd somehow been ingrained with the message that if I ever cried over such things, it was because I was spoiled, ungrateful, possibly silly, and generally suffered from a bad hashkafah.

But this Bnei Brak woman was certainly not from a "pampered" American middle-class background, and she clearly possessed a cheerful & spiritual nature.

​She seemed a warm & loving mother.

In other words, she seemed the farthest thing from a "bad hashkafah," and she was still saying all this.

I thought it sounded nice. I thought it sounded psychologically healthy.

And I also admired how she related to her daughter as a future Eim b'Yisrael (Jewish mother) and cared enough to prepare her to be a psychologically healthy mother herself.

Just Leap In!

But maybe you don't have an example around (as far as you know, anyway).

In that case, you can just try to wing it on your own.

You can work through the initial discomfort to try your own spin on Sarah Pshitik or the mother from Bnei Brak or anyone else you read or heard about.

Kol hahatchalot kashot — All the beginnings are hard.

It's such authentically good behavior that just bumbling through it can be self-transforming. So it's really good to at least try it.

​I very much wish I had.
Posts alluded to above:
  • What is the World of Tikkun?
  • The Past 200 Years of Chinuch I: The Non-Jewish World
  • Getting Back to Torah Basics: The Contemplative Parent
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Tsniyut: The Modesty of Jewish Women Goes Far Beyond the Technical Measurements

3/12/2019

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UPDATE: Correction: It was the Tunisian Jewish women who dressed in billowing white wraps and pointy head-coverings, not the Greek Jewish women. (Sorry for the misinfo!) Plus, 3 authentic photos of these Tunisian Jewish women & men have been added to the end of the post. (Their heads look pointy because, apparently, pointy princessy hair-coverings – which they wore under the white sheet – were in style back then...)
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Because tsniyut means a lot more than just the technicalities of inches regarding widths & lengths, I often prefer to use the word "dignity" or "refinement" as the translation, even though technically, the word means "hiddenness" in Hebrew and is indeed used that way throughout Tanach (and often not talking about women's clothing, but about Jewish behavior or even miracles – as shown in An In-Depth Discussion of One of Today's Most Despised Topics: Tsniyut/Tsniyus/Modest/Dignified Behavior & Dress).

For example, a friend of mine mentioned Jewish women of a certain group she sees from time to time in her neighborhood.

These women dress in traditional Arab dress, meaning a black hijab around their head and shoulders, plus a long black robe.

My friend says it doesn't really bother her in principle (yet some others get personally offended & disgusted when they see these women), except that when she first encounters these women, she's tenses up and checks them out until she realizes they are Jewish women and not potential terrorists.

And others certainly feel the same.

In fact, I imagine that any Jew (including Jewish men) in the vicinity would do as my friend and surreptitiously keep an eye on this women for suspicious activity, including trying to gauge whether she might have a suicide bombers belt around her midriff.

It's hard to label these clothes as "tsniyut," even though the technical covering is halachically sound as far as the length & width go.

Why?

Even though many be-hijabed women worldwide are not looking to massacre Jews, some have made strenuous attempts to do just that in Eretz Yisrael.

Hence, when Jews spot a be-hijabed woman in a neighborhood never frequented by Muslim women, they are prudent to be wary until her intentions can be clarified.

So if your clothing is actually instilling anxiety or fear within your fellow frum Jews, that doesn't fit within the bounds of tsniyut (especially because such a style is causing men to look at such a woman with extra scrutiny).

At this point, one might make the argument that all frum women look scary to at least some people because of the incitement of secular media. So a secular person with no other knowledge of frum people might feel anxious upon seeing a frum woman in his grocery store, thinking that it's a Jewish Taliban invading the area.

The difference is that wariness around a black hijab is a reasonable response in Eretz Yisrael. Women dressed in such a style have attempted to murder Jews. Actually, male terrorists have also used hijab and other traditional Muslima coverings to disguise themselves as females and elude Israeli security.

The fear doesn't derive from media incitement or false prejudices.

Therefore...

If your own fellow frum Jews who understand tsniyus cannot help but suspect you are a terrorist when they see you, then this is obviously a breach in tsniyus, despite the careful attention to technical measurements.

Likewise, a book I have on Jewish women throughout the ages shows a photo of a group of Jewish women in  ̶G̶r̶e̶e̶c̶e̶ ̶̶Tunisia from the year 1900. While their style of tsniyus was quite commendable at the time, the billowing head-to-toe all-encompassing white sheet with its pointy top gave me a lurch in the pit of my stomach when I first saw it.

For a moment, I thought it was a picture of the Ku Klux Klan (a murderously exclusive gang of bigots – one of their early murder victims was a white Republican senator – formed by Southern Democrats after the Civil War whose uniform consists of a billowing white robe, white covering over the face, and a pointy white head-covering).

Clearly, dressing in traditional Jewish G̶r̶e̶e̶k̶ ̶Tunisian attire today would not be tsnanuah.

So we see that tsniyut isn't just about measurements.

It IS about measurements – covering the necessary parts IS vitally important – but it's not ONLY the technical inches that count. Getting lost in the technicalities can actually produce a lack of tsniyus, as occurs with these Jewish women in hijab.

It's a certain mindset, a certain understanding; it contains nuance and most of all, a desire to imitate Hashem, who is also Hidden from the human eye. (Please see Why is It So Important to be Modest? for more.)

Despite the expansive width & generous length of the clothing, we should not dress like those who (possibly) hate us.

Tsniyut should not strike terror in the hearts of those around you.
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Tunisian Jews davening in the Borgel Jewish cemetery, circa 1900
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Jewish women davening at the Borgel cemetery in Tunisia, circa 1900-1920.
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Rav Avigdor Miller on Parshat Chayei Sara: Sara's Tent as the Prototype for the Beit HaMikdash

22/11/2019

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(B'ezrat Hashem, any limud or positive acts from this post should please go as a zechut for the complete & speedy recovery of Menachem Mendel Shlomo ben Chaya Rochel.)​
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In Rav Avigdor Miller's dvar Torah on Parshas Chayei Sarah 3 – Sanctuary of Sarah, we learn that Sara Imeinu's home was the greatest home in history.

Like the Kli Yakar, Rav Miller compares Sara Imeinu's home to the home of the Mikdash.

And her passing was like the Churban (Destruction).

Rav Miller states that the first Churban in Jewish history was actually Sara's passing.

While we tend to think of the Giving of the Torah as our Nation's monumental event (and it was indeed), Rav Miller explains that our founding Fathers & Mothers were the magnificent part of our history.

The Shechinah dwelt in their homes.

It's amazing. What was in the Kodesh Kadoshim (Holy of Holies) in the Beit Hamikdash was actually in the homes of our Avot & Imahot.

When they passed on, the Shechinah went into Exile.

What Were Avraham & Sara like as Chatan & Kallah?

Rav Miller describes what the beginning of the marriage must have been like.

Initially, Avraham Avinu was Sara Imeinu's teacher (they had a 10-year age difference & people married young back then), so he showed her all he had learned about his own observations of the world, observations that gained him tremendous TRUE knowledge because "he saw better than any professors will ever see."

And Sara Imeinu soaked it all in.

On page 5, Rav Miller describes what Sara's own study of the world must have been like.

Sara started off as the brilliant student of her husband, then she rose to great heights on her own, eventually achieving nevuah that surpassed even that of her holy husband.

A Truly Fun Home

On page 7, Rav Miller describes the great challenge of perceiving Sara Imeinu's home:
Now as much as I’m going to tell you, you must know that it is not going to approximate what the greatness of that house was.

I’m like an ant looking up at a tremendous mountain trying to describe what’s high up on the summit.

I’m not capable of fully understanding the greatness of Sarah’s tent.

​It’s like a blind man speaking of the glory of the sunlight — we never saw it and we have no idea about the splendor that prevailed in that house.
Let's consider this for a moment.

Rav Miller acknowledges that we generally consider Avraham Avinu the builder of our Nation. He was the one out there doing things.

And indeed, he was a tzaddik beyond our imagination.

However, who built the Beit HaMikdash?

Sara Imeinu. In her tent.

When they slaughtered meat, they were like the Kohanim performing korbanot.

When they ate, it was like they were eating offerings from the mizbeyach.

Sara Imeinu's challot were the prototype of the Lechem Panim in the Beit HaMikdash.

Rav Miller goes on to say (pg. 8):
All their thoughts and all their deeds were devoted to the ideal that Hashem is in our house.

That’s what made it a beis hamikdash — the kedusha, the Awareness of Hashem, was so dense that it constantly impinged on their awareness in everything they did.

Now don’t think that a Jewish home is lacking cheer and fun.

Avraham and Sarah lived very happy lives. They had more fun in their ​home than we have – much more.

Why was Yishmael's Laughter So Bad?

And now we can understand the problem with Yishmael's laughter.

Rav Miller acknowledges what the mefarshim say about the symbolism of Yishmael's laughter.

But Rav Miller says that just the plain meaning, that Yishmael was laughing & jesting in such a holy home – the same as clowning around in the Beit HaMikdash on Yom Kippur – just the laughter on its own was absolutely appalling.​

What's the Secret to Keeping House like Sara Imeinu?

Interestingly, despite the fact that Sara & Avraham were extremely wealthy with hundreds of servants, Sara Imeinu performed most of the housework herself.

And what's the secret to housekeeping like Sara Imeinu?

​It's on page 11:
Every chore that people do in that house, if it’s a frum house and they do it l’shem Shamayim, that’s the ingredient – l’shem Shamayim, then they’re building something that’ll last forever.
Then Rav Miller says even more radical things (radical to our ears, anyway):
When a mother is putting clothing into the washer she’s thinking, “I want to maintain a frum Jewish house because Hakodosh Boruch Hu gave me this function. I don’t have to work in an office. I won't run for elections to be a city councilwoman – it’s a waste of my life. Right here is the place where I achieve.”

And children!

“The more children that I can have, the bigger the achievement.”

​A woman like that is building a Beis Hamikdash – she is emulating the avodas Hashem that made Sarah into Sarah Imeinu.
Rav Miller acknowledges that the term "l'shem SHamayim" is bandied about so much nowadays that it has lost its meaning for us.

So he emphasizes that l'shem Shamayim means "with the awareness of Shamayim."

Everything Avraham Avinu & Sara Imeinu did, it was with this awareness.

People talk about "mindfulness" a lot nowadays, and an awareness of Shamayim is the real mindfulness we are supposed to cultivate.

The Old Treasure in the Home

On pages 12-13, Rav Miller goes into vivid detail of the baby-steps we can take to add to our lives more kavanah l'shem Shamayim.

He also mentions a pithy proverb from Gemara Erechim 19b:

"Saba b'veita – pacha b'beita."

"An old man in the house is a calamity in the house."

Retired men belong in kollel, says Rav Miller, not being a nuisance to his wife in the home all day.

It's such an interesting 2000-year-old observation because we see in our times how shalom bayit often disintegrates when a husband retires. So many women complain of a retired husband who spends his time nitpicking at how she runs the home, criticizing how things are organized, and kvetching.

Get thee to a kollel! 

Then Rav Miller quotes the same Gemara:

"Savta b'veita – sima b'veita."

"An old woman in the house is a treasure in the house."

A man is a treasure in yeshivah. 

A woman is a treasure in the home.

Rav Miller explains how women grow wiser as they grow older. They dispense wisdom & chessed.

Yes, I see in the Yerushalmi communities how dedicated older mothers are to their grandchildren & adult children.

For example, when a daughter gives birth before Pesach, Yerushalmi mothers invite the entire family (all those little darlings!) for the entire week of Pesach.

It is tremendous work to host small children and take care of a yoledet, all the more so over Pesach and often with their own children still at home and more guests coming. But they do it so willingly! 

​I really look up to them.

And their wisdom is a real treasure too.

My husband and I still turn to his mother for health remedies & advice, plus a little bit of dream interpretation. (Her own mother was a kosher dream interpreter in Morocco.)

Although sometimes, the dreams go a bit too far – like when my mother-in-law's long-dead brother came to her in a dream after yet another son was born to us and requested that we name this son after him because none of his secular children had done so.

So we did. It's hard to say no to the dead. Chessed shel emet and all that. Do the dead favors, even though they'll never be able to pay you back. It's a big mitzvah.

Anyway...

Among frum women in general, I've seen how grandmothers develop patience they lacked in their younger years.

I've seen how supportive & discreet & sensitive they are with their children struggling with their own children – struggles these older women didn't necessarily have to deal with in their child-rearing years, but have become all too common now.

Society considers older women crones and old-fashioned and no longer useful or beautiful.

But Judaism declares: sima – She's a treasure!

Reaching Back to the Original Nature & Nurture

On page 14, Rav Miller goes into a brief yet lovely exposition of Eishet Chayil (A Woman of Valor).

Ultimately, Avraham Avinu & Sara Imeinu are the prototype for us.

No matter what home we grew up in or what background we came from, our real nurturing comes from this first Jewish couple.

A convert is referred to as the son or daughter of Avraham Avinu & Sara Imeinu.

We need to stretch back further than our immediate family & background to reach it.

It's there, it's accessible, but we need to cultivate an awareness that it's possible.

Let's wrap up on Rav Miller's final note (pg. 15):
It’s beyond our sight; it towers beyond our range of vision how great we could become – but every person who begins the career of building a home has the right, the obligation, to build that home on the same foundation that Avraham and Sarah laid down for their home.

​And that’s the foundation of the greatest possible loyalty to Hakodosh Boruch Hu and the greatest possible dedication to the ideal of making the very best home that they could make.
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What is the Message of Galut Yishmael?

12/11/2019

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An Eye-Opening Experience at an Israeli Men's Prison

Recently, my son was called upon to do some work at an Israeli men's prison.

A Muslim Arab fellow (we'll call him Achmed) worked with my son and Achmed was a bit apprehensive about working at a prison, even though it was a minimum security area (i.e., the prisoners aren't dangerous).

My son reassured Achmed that these prisoners were not violent criminals, that they were in prison for non-violent crimes, and he had nothing to fear.

There was a pause as Achmed tried to think of what these people could have possibly done that earned them a prison sentence for a NON-violent crime.

(In Achmed's world of the Palestinian Authority, white-collar criminals presumably can buy their way out of a prison sentence & sx offenders either aren't persecuted – because what they did isn't considered wrong in their society – or they manage to buy or intimidate their way out...or they're executed. It depends.)

Finally, Achmed asked my son if these non-violent prisoners have been locked up due to same-gender hanky-panky.

He couldn't think of anything else to fit the circumstances.

My son burst out laughing.

"We don't imprison people for that!" he said.

Achmed was shocked to hear that. He was even more shocked to learn that such activity isn't remotely illegal in the Medinah, let alone punishable in any way.  

Insularity can be Fun!

​So it was a funny story.

And it is also a very telling one.

​It is also intriguing how some Arabs living their entire lives in Israel remain clueless about the basics of Israeli society & laws, including basic halachah, and they never even learn Hebrew despite the similarities between Hebrew & Arabic, making it an easy language for Arabic-speakers to learn.

Even if they're more secular, they still live relatively insular lives.

And they PREFER living relatively insular lives.

​They like their culture.

Here's a sharp story related to that...

Tsniut Saves from Death

Yad L'Achim regularly hosts events in which a woman they rescued tells her story.

One woman, the daughter of a Jewish mother & a Muslim father, was married off in her teens to a Muslim in the village of her paternal grandfather, who was also the local sheikh.

Yad L'Achim helped her escape & make a new life for herself.

She became totally frum & married a good Jewish man.

But remember: The Muslim world considers her Muslim. And her escape from her Muslim husband is a terrible dishonor to him and to their clan. (Not to mention, leaving Islam is itself an executable crime, technically speaking, even if it's not always enforced.)

Anyway, long after her teshuvah & Jewish marriage, she was walking down the street one day (maybe Geula, Yerushalayim?) and dressed in full tsniut-mode: long skirt & sleeves, hair fully covered with a nice scarf, etc.

Suddenly, an Arab man stepped out in front of her, blocking her way & glaring at her.

It was one of the cousins from her ex-husband's village.

She was terrified he might kill her on the spot.

(Though that sounds melodramatic, it was actually a realistic possibility, given his value system & his ability to hide or be hidden among the alleys & other fellows working there, OR if he was caught, he could always rely on Israel's revolving doors of "justice" for Yishmaelim.)

Instead, he just stood scowling at her & looking her over.

Finally, he said something like, "I really should kill you for what you did. But as long as you're going to keep the family honor by dressing modestly, I guess we can let you go."

Then he left.

She explained to us that due to their insular lifestyle, her Muslim family members really have no clue that Judaism commands modesty for Jewish women (and men too, actually). 

The Arabs mostly see secular Jewish woman who give no thought to tsniut (dressing & behaving with dignity).

So when this Arab cousin saw that she dressed modestly & even covered her hair (like Muslim girls & women do), he could only assume that she was doing so out of respect for the values of the Arab side of her family.

Without knowing Jewish Law, he could only assume that her intentions were to "keep the "family honor."

(And yeah, it's weird because he was in a place like Geula where you see modest Jewish women everywhere. But for some reason, it just did not compute with him. He thought whatever he thought. And baruch Hashem for that! Otherwise, she may not have lived to tell the tale...)

A Combined Message from Galut Yishmael within Galut Edom

But let's ponder this for a minute:

THIS is the Galut (Exile) that Hashem put us in.

Yes, Galut Yishmael applies more to Eretz Yisrael, but the Western countries (especially Europe) are also increasingly experiencing Galut Yishmael.

And look at how Yishmael is:
Unapologetically insulated.
​
  • They often keep their names. (There isn't even an Anglicized form of names, like Yassar needing to be called Jassar, like there is with Hebrew names. And I don't mean for ease of pronunciation, like "Mohammed" instead of "Mochammed." I mean, if you say Yechezkel instead of Ezekiel, no one will know who you mean. I haven't heard such an equivalent done with Muslim names.)
​
  • They keep their style of dress (more or less).
​
  • They keep their language (even when they could learn Hebrew so easily & it would help them so much to know Hebrew well).
​
  • They cling to their beliefs without apology or appeasement. (They may fudge things a bit, like redefine the meaning of Jihad with a false watered-down definition, but mostly they simply insist that Sharia law is just & compassionate & better, and that they aren't all terrorists – which is mostly true – or that what you consider terrorism isn't actually terrorism, and that if you think badly about Sharia or the way individuals practice Sharia, then you are an Islamophobic racist bigot who is persecuting them, and you'd better shut up.)
 
  • They have neither tolerance nor respect for atheism or polytheism.

And whether their values & laws are actually correct or not, they hold on to them unapologetically.

Having said all that, yes, they want a lift in their material lifestyle.

They want to enjoy the material comforts of the West. So they head West.

And while they're living on welfare in Europe or North America, they not only hold on to their own values, but unapologetically insist that others not only respect their values & beliefs, but even adopt them too.

(A British Jewish friend related how a Nigerian Muslim woman stood outside a British mall, boldly calling on everyone to dress more modestly. Let's see a religious Jewish woman try something like that! Even her fellow frum Jews would censure her and feel embarrassed by her.)

Look at how Yishmaelite weekend-schools in England have no problem teaching children how to cut off the hands of thieves without killing them – including detailed diagrams of the anatomy of the human arm, wrist, and hand to show how to carry out this procedure.

(And they also teach other stuff many Westerners find disturbing.)

And look at how British authorities minced around the whole thing!

Compare that to the British handling of frum schools for simply refusing to teach anti-Torah values.

In the Yishmaelite weekend-schools, you have the active instruction of how to carry out brutal punishments & executions for crimes (including acts that are not considered crimes by your average Brit).

​And the Yishmaelites are unrepentant. You don't like it? Then YOU are the one who's wrong. That's their attitude. They don't go groveling or trying to smooth things over.

But for simply NOT teaching a secular value, the Jews get skewered?

Seriously?

Anything good & just in British law comes from Jewish Law.

Western countries originally based their laws on their religion, which derives any of its positive values from Judaism.

Yet it's against that same Judaism they turn.

(Interestingly, the Ofsted [The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills] that minced around what to do with the Yishmaelite curriculum was the same Ofsted that downgraded a Jewish school for hosting separate classes for boys & girls. I didn't realize gender-segregated education was such a problem for British authorities. After all, Eton still doesn't accept girls & there are still no boys at the Cheltenham Ladies College. Am I missing something?)

Here's Part of the Message...

​Certainly, much of the above is a generalization and does not apply to every single Muslim.

There are certainly exceptions to everything written above.

But in general, the attitude of Yishmael today is as described above.

And it's actually how we're supposed to be with OUR own pure Torah value system of TRUE justice & compassion, as defined by Hashem Himself.

  • WE are supposed to insulate ourselves within our own holy Torah value system.
 
  • WE are supposed to dress, speak, act, and look like Jews – and do so with quiet dignity & without apology or embarrassment.
 
  • WE are supposed to dismiss the pop psychology & teach our children according to the purity & beauty of Torah Law.

Look at what Hashem is shoving in our face all the time.

There is definitely something He wants us to glean from Galut Yishmael. (Actually, there are a few things. This post addresses only part of the message.)

Will we get the message?

And even more importantly, will we be able to act on it?
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Rav Miller on Parshat Va'etchanan with Wonderful Advice on Transforming Your Home & Family

16/8/2019

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In Parshas Va’eschanan – Sanctuary of the Jewish Home, Rav Miller discusses a question I think many of us have wondered about: Why was Moshe Rabbeinu so resistant against going on to the Next World?

After all, Moshe Rabbeinu was the epitome of emuna.

He knew Hashem was guiding everything in the Universe.

He knew that death is nothing to fear.

He knew he had a wonderful Paradise beyond comprehension waiting for him.

Also, Moshe Rabbeinu achieved more than any other human being ever had.

So why didn't he go peacefully?

Why did he daven 515 tefillot and with such intensity, he shook up the Universe?

The short answer is that Moshe Rabbeinu loved us very much and also wanted to perfect himself even more.

​The long answer is in the dvar Torah itself.

Personal Royalty

At this point Rav Miller emphasizes each home is basically an empire in which each father is a king and each mother is a queen.

And he delves into all the responsibility that entails, which is admittedly a bit intimidating.

He paints the great example of Rav Channa's house of chessed, as described in the Gemara. It sounds very difficult to dedicate the entire home to chessed in the way Rav Channa did, but Rav Miller explains that Rav Channa and his wife did it in a way that made each other and their children happy.

And that's definitely food for thought.

Yet Rav Miller acknowledges that the vast majority of us can't be like Rav Channa.

So what can we do?

We can take steps to fill our home with kedushah, with mitzvot...with Hashem.​

And we do this one step at a time, elevating the routine mitzvot:
You have to train yourself and your family to think, “Right now, we’re doing the mitzvah of washing the hands; Hashem commanded us to obey the chachamim.”

​You’re making the house kadosh by doing that.
Developing a real love and appreciation for mitzvot is the way to transform your home.

When you feel that way inside, you project it out to your family.

​Here are some ways of looking at yourselves:
That element should be introduced in the building of Jewish home as much as possible.

“Our home is a makom kadosh,” you tell your family. We must accustom ourselves to this thought:
​
A Jewish house is a holy house. The same Shechina that came down on Har Sinai is in every Jewish home – it’s not a mashal. 

Where else would Hakodosh Boruch Hu come if not in the place where constantly His word is obeyed?

​Milchigeh dishes, fleishigeh dishes, pareve dishes, everything is done k’halacha. Shabbos, kashrus, everything!

***

A child wants to eat something, so he asks, “Am I still fleishig? Can I get ice cream yet?”

“No, not yet.”

The child watches the clock.

​A little boy is watching the clock - there’s nothing like that in the world. 

You won’t find such holy children anywhere else!
The Rav Miller offers many ideas for raising your children with kedushah, even when surrounded by modern secular values.

That's very worth reading.

​He concludes that section with this advice:
And so the house is kadosh.

It’s something we have to say to ourselves and to our children - you should repeat it constantly. 

You can tell them, “Every time you do something good in this house, you’re making the house even more kadosh. Every time you learn Torah in the house, every time you daven, every time you say birkas hamazon, any bracha you make in the house, the house is becoming more and more kadosh.”

​Tell them that - they won’t listen; they’ll say, “Yes, yes,” but it’s going into their little heads.

Don't Forget This Part of Meal-Planning

Rav Miller offers a great many wonderful ideas for using meal times as pleasant chinuch for the children, a time to inculcate authentic Torah values into the family and the home.

He calls it a form of "meal planning," which means you need to have an idea of what you want to mention before you sit down to eat with everyone. (But he recommends against telling the kids that you planned the topic; let them think it's inspired.)​

Which Building is Really Built to Last?

Incredibly, our homes that were dedicated to kedushah will rise again with Techiyat Hametim (Resurrection of the Dead)!

(Rav Miller derives this from the Gemara.)

The holy homes of our holy Sages, which are in ruins now, will also rise again!

The strongest & tallest & most beautiful edifices of today will fall at some point.

Yet the humble abode of the Chafetz Chaim, of all the holy people, will rise again.

It's a whole other way of looking at the world.

What Kind of Home are We Creating?

And these are important questions we need to answer ourselves:
And therefore an honest parent should stop and ask himself: “What kind of home do we have? Am I accomplishing in my home what Moshe Rabeinu begged for many many days to have the opportunity to accomplish?"

The most rewarding life for a man and a woman, is to make use of that opportunity that Moshe begged for, and put the best that they have into that house.

The walls of their house should witness only kindliness, only politeness, good character, kindly words, avodas Hashem, joyous Shabbosim, zemiros on Shabbos, divrei Torah, helping each other, performing acts that Hashem commands us to do.

All day long the bnei bayis are putting idealism into the walls of their home.

***

Of course theory is always easier than practice.

But we have to strive for the ideal, for the building of a home that Hashem intended when He told the Am Yisroel, “Return to your tents.”

​The creation of a home founded on the principles of Ma’amad Har Sinai is a creation that is eternal.
Regardless of what kind of family we have (even if it's just yourself), may we all succeed in making our families and our homes abodes of kedushah and Torah idealism.
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What kind of home do we want?
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What You Didn't Know about Odd Gemaras & What Your Yearnings Really Mean: Rav Avigdor Miller on Some Heavy-Duty Concepts in Parshat Korach & Parshat Chukat

4/7/2019

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Parshat Korach 2: Your Mind is Forever

For our brothers & sisters in chutz l'Aretz, Toras Avigdor has produced Rav Avigdor Miller's dvar Torah on Parshat Korach 2: Your Mind is Forever.

And it's a real geshmakeh doozy. 

Rav Miller describes aspects of Gehinnom, sheds light on strange stories from the Gemara (like raising Bilam from dead to talk to him and the conversations of 2 dead girls in a cemetery), and delves into the importance of doing teshuvah NOW.

Even if you think you can't keep up a better behavior, try anyway. Whatever you do is really, really good. 

And as always, Rav Miller fights the good fight against the tsunami of anti-Torah culture:
There’s a whole outside world of gentiles and secular Jews, and every second, their sewage is pouring into our world.

And therefore we have to stand guard day and night over our minds.

Think about how unequal of a contest this is.

Because how much yiras shomayim are we really pouring into our minds day and night?

How many exhortations to tzniyus are your wives hearing from the novels they read?

How many Torah ideals are you hearing on the radio?

How much do English teachers in the yeshiva high schools urge the boy to become great talmidei chachomim and to spend their free time studying Torah?

How many billboards do you see warning you to be careful with lashon hora, and urging you to do chesed and mitzvos?

​All you see is the opposite.
With even very bad things becoming the norm, or even considered good nowadays, we need to ponder how much we're being affected by sources formally considered neutral.

Even listening to right-wing conservative religious pundits or reading their articles is a problem. Maybe you need it for something in particular l'to'elet. But despite their good intentions, these pundits have been very influenced by Leftist values. 

Nowadays, even Right-wing conservative religious pundits dress like cocktail waitresses (if they're women), encourage mechanisms to prevent pregnancy in pre-marital relationships rather than encouraging abstinence until marriage, cuss like sailors, and other behaviors that would've been considered indecent even by liberals in our grandparents' time.

Not to mention the Jew-hatred at the edges of the conservative religious Right.

​With the Leftist hatred of God-based morality in general and its anti-Israel stance, plus its love of fake science, the Left has always been a force against the Jewish people.

But the Right also has its bigots. And many on the Right cannot accept that church-attendees did not replace the Jewish People as the Am Segulah and cannot differentiate between the profoundly assimilated Erev Rav-esque Jews (who muck around in Leftist garbage) and the genuinely searching or committed Jews.

So we need to guard our minds.

​As Rav Miller continues:
The outside world is pouring in all types of filth and we’re not pouring kedusha into ourselves, it’s a very unfair contest.

But even if we would be pouring into ourselves Torah and yiras shomayim day and night...All day long you’re cramming your head with Chovos Halevavos [Duties of the Heart].

It’s a good thing by the way - even one drop is a good medicine.

But if at the same time the sewage is pouring in too, then what good is it?

​You have the best wine, the most expensive wine, and you pour it into a cup that’s filthy with mud, a cup that’s crawling with bacteria and worms, so what kind of taste will it have?

"To create a mind, that’s our job in life. And that’s the most important business we can do in this world."
Even if you're in Eretz Yisrael and already went through Parshat Korach, it's very worthwhile reading what Rav Miller has to say because he explains things you might have always wondered about and he also gives very good mussar for the very real challenges we face today.

​Let's get to work creating wonderful minds for ourselves!

Parshat Chukat: The Reality of the Next World

In Parshas Chukas: The Reality of the Next World, Rav Miller goes into detail about why Judaism insists on burying a body a soon as possible. It's not the entire reason, but he details why it's good for US to do it quickly.

He talks about tumah, defilement of the mind.

Then he elucidates one of those Gemaras (Brachot 44a) that apikorsim and Jew-haters love to hold up as an example of Talmudic weirdness and impropriety.

As usual, there are layers of meaning beneath the surface.

People who insist on taking such Gemaras at face-value are either ignorant or looking for excuses for their apikorsut.

Either way, it's only something that really dumb and disingenuous people do.

And Rav Miller draws the curtain aside to show us what's really going on behind the scenes.

Clarification: Not understanding the Gemara is fine. That's honest. Yeah, I also didn't know anything about the underlying meaning of all that fruit-eating until Rav Miller explained it. But using the superficial translation of it to fuel Jew-hatred or apikorsut indicates a dumb and disingenuous person. That's all.

And even our seemingly This-World yearnings derive from a deeper source in the soul.

​Rav Miller says:
Or let's say you're standing on a country road, and you look down the road and it's winding down for miles and miles. 

And you're thinking, “I'd like to travel on this road, to see what's doing at the other end.”

That yearning is real!

That yearning for travel, “I'd like to go and travel down this winding road,” should be a symbol for us.  

​​"Because there is a road, a true road to happiness. ​The road to Olam Habah is the winding road without any deceptions."
Hakodosh Boruch Hu is not deceiving us.

​The road of your life leads somewhere.

​Our life is a road that leads to a much greater destination than any other road.
Our desires to travel down the road, to sail to the horizon at the edge of the sea, to find the end of the rainbow - these are all yearnings rooted in a much holier yearning, to remind us for what we really need to yearn.

All the pleasures of this world: extravagant weddings, continental breakfasts, chocolate cake and a shluf on Shabbos, a sparkling home, scrumptious food...these are just allegories for Olam Haba to make us yearn for a good portion in Olam Haba and to motivate us to do what we must to get there.

Focusing on Olam Haba creates joy and prevents suicide and all sorts of problems.

A person focused on utilizing This World for the Next remains silent in the face of anger, criticism, and foolishness - including when they come from one's own spouse.

But we need to talk about it a lot.

Once, after Rav Miller mentioned Olam Haba in several lectures, a man burst out: “What's this that you're mentioning Olam Habah, Olam Habah. You sound like a little girl.”

​What a humiliating way to speak to a talmid chacham.

​But Rav Miller just kept on going with what he knew was right. 

This dvar Torah also presents ways to inculcate a desire for Olam Haba in children, whether you're a teacher or a parent.

"Be a propagandist for Hakodosh Boruch Hu."
And all that Rav Miller writes in Parshat Chukat is connected to the Parah Adumah.

​So if you want a better understanding of an unfathomable aspect of Torah, this dvar Torah is worth a good solid perusal. 
  • ​Parshat Korach: On Dangerous Neighbors
  • Parshat Korach 2: Your Mind is Forever
  • ​Parshas Chukas: The Reality of the Next World
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