Category: Lashon Hara

A Little Bit about Lashon Hara

6/4/2020

Many of our Gadolim already pointed to lashon hara as being one of the causes behind this pandemic and its bizarre consequences.

It's not surprising, especially since modern technology enables lashon hara to get out of hand, spreading around the globe – and to do so immediately.

Prior to modern technology, one simply could not commit lashon hara on the levels possible today.

How much lashon hara could you spread by mouth alone?

And that was already considered really, really awful.

Telephones & radios & newspapers increased the power of lashon hara.

Then with social media & Internet, the impact of one short phrase of even avak lashon hara (the dust of lashon hara) became magnified by thousands of times.

Podcasts & video-sharing sites also magnify lashon hara into the thousands.

Putting aside the blogs & websites (whether Jewish or not) that promote lashon hara, how many otherwise good people unthinkingly participate with a short comment or tweet – or even a thumbs-up "Like!" in response to a slanderous social media post?

Even people who care about lashon hara don't always realize that what they've read is forbidden.

Even if you care about lashon hara and have studied the laws, it's still easy to trip up in this area.

We all have our blind spots and we also sometimes forget the halacha (which is particularly complex in the laws of speech).

Very Common Scenarios that Trip Up even the Best of Us

Though I've been through books on lashon hara, studying a halacha a day over a long period of time, I'm always surprised by what I miss at this point about lashon hara.

Right now, I subscribe to an excellent Q&A about lashon hara that arrives in my Inbox every day.

(You can also subscribe at the Chafetz Chaim Heritage Foundation HERE.)

This way, you can easily learn a halacha each day.

And here are some real-life examples that arrived from this Q&A to my Inbox, examples that trip up even good, well-meaning people:

Bothered by wrongdoing

The town I live in has an overwhelmingly Jewish population. Every day I drive to work during the morning rush in our town, and the aggressive way many people drive really bothers me. They push their way into traffic, giving drivers no choice but to let them in; honk their horns excessively; speed wildly through about-to-turn-red lights, etc.

Q:I feel that if I don’t talk about it, people may not realize how wrong it is! May I tell my coworkers or family members, “People in our town drive so aggressively, it’s appalling!”

A: Talking about a group even without names is lashon hara. Additionally, many people speak like this with a “holier than thou” attitude that does not yield results and reinforces negative speech. This is loshon hora, and there is no excuse for speaking this way. If you are proposing realistic solutions to people who will take you seriously and make changes in the way they drive, that would be a valid to’eles, and speaking would be permitted.

Reviewed by Rabbi Zev Smith. Actual halachic decisions should be made by a rav or halachic expert on a case-by-case basis.

How many people know that the above is forbidden?

Unless you are:

Offering practical solutions...
...and offering them to people who will actually listen...

...then you aren't allowed to say it.

I missed this one myself because the person is speaking about such a general group (i.e., he's not targeting a specific individual or named group within the Jewish community; he's not even specifying whether it's a frum community) and because he has a good intention for speaking of it (he wants to stop it).

That's a big lesson for those of who blog (and gave me an "Uh...oh" sinking feeling in my own stomach).

Here's another from the same source on a more personal level. Again, note the good intentions of the person posing the question:

One neighbor on my (primarily Jewish) block is careless about where he parks his car. He blocks people’s mailboxes so the mail can’t be delivered. He obstructs people’s driveways so they can’t park or get out. He even parks in front of the garbage containers so that the garbage can’t get picked up.

It really bothers me, but as a peaceable fellow, I don’t want to confront him about it.

Q: May I tell our shul Rav about it? This way, the Rav can speak to him and he’ll learn his lesson, and I won’t have to give up on my friendly relationship with him, since he won’t know it was I who told.

A: One may not speak loshon hora about another person even l’toeles (for the benefit of preventing people from being harmed) without trying to approach that person first. Your neighbor may change what he’s doing if he hears it from you. Ask advice from a knowledgeable person as far as how to approach your neighbor in a way that is tactful and respectful.

Reviewed by Rabbi Zev Smith. Actual halachic decisions should be made by a rav or halachic expert on a case-by-case basis.

Isn't that such a common scenario? Especially since the questioner wishes to speak with a rav, and not just a friend or family member of the offender.

Especially because he wants to involve his rav, many people think that doing this is actually a GOOD idea. (Heck, I did too! And I've been reviewing hilchot lashon hara daily for a couple of years now.)

Surprisingly, it's not okay to even ask his rav to speak to the offender about it until he has spoken personally to the offender.

(This is, of course, in case where he's not sure whether the man will listen to him. If he knows for sure that the offending man won't listen, then it's a different question.)

Here's another common scenario, also from the same source:

My husband’s the best person to intervene
I was at my in-laws’ home for Shabbos, prepping the food with my mother-in-law before the Friday night meal. Suddenly she began criticizing the way I speak to my children. She was agitated and even called my parenting methods “lazy.”

Q:I’m hurt and surprised. My mother-in-law is generally a kind and sensitive woman with a refined nature and positive attitude. I want to tell my husband what happened so he can intervene with his mother and give her a chance to apologize or explain. May I tell my husband what happened even though it’s negative information about his mother?

A: When someone acts out of character, we must try to understand what happened and see it in a positive light. If it’s clear that the person really did speak or act incorrectly, we have to assume that she realized it and immediately regretted it. Speaking to someone else about the incident is usually not considered l’to’eles. (If the hurt person feels she can’t move on, then she should consult rabbinic guidance about venting to another person.)

Reviewed by Rabbi Zev Smith. Actual halachic decisions should be made by a rav or halachic expert on a case-by-case basis.

Again, this is another common situation in which many people do not even think twice about before speaking with their spouse.

And again, note how the questioner sees herself as a having a beneficial reason for speaking to her husband, especially since she wants to give her mother-in-the-law the benefit of the doubt and hear her side of it.

Time's Up

The above are all common situations engaged in by good, well-meaning people who care about hilchot lashon hara.

It's so easy to trip up in such situations.

And then what happens when such things are upload to public outlets?

Or even a private email or text between only 2 people?

Many people in the frum community have been complaining about the online lashon hara since the beginning – and good for them.

To their credit, they leave warning comments after posts or articles containing lashon hara.

But it has been going on for a long time and just getting worse.

Hashem was very patient for a long time.

And now we're seeing the consequences of our behavior.

May we all do teshuvah to the point that we don't even WANT to speak lashon hara – not even by accident!

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5 Tips from Rav Kanievsky to Find Your Soulmate, Plus Some True Stories to Illustrate Why These Tips Really are So Important

4/11/2019

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Recently, Hidabroot published a response from Rav Kanievsky that was unusually long for him.

(For the whole story leading up to the list & the list itself, please see the original article: Searching for Your Soulmate? 5 Tips from Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky)

Here are the 5 tips:

1) Take upon yourself to be extremely careful of speaking or hearing gossip.

2) Don't criticize anyone.

3) Don't bear a grudge (be makpid) against anyone.

4) It is also very important that nobody is makpid on them. So if there is a suspicion that they caused somebody pain – they should appease them, ask for forgiveness and ask them not to be makpid.

5) They should pray for friends who are searching for a shidduch.

We All Know Some Crazy Shidduch Stories

After hearing rounds of discussions for years regarding all the derech-hateva theories for the shidduch crisis in America (I haven't heard of a similar crisis in Eretz Yisrael, regardless of community), it's refreshing (as usual!) to hear da'as Torah on the issue.

And just to be clear, I did NOT say that there are no desperately-seeking-shidduch situations in Eretz Yisrael (there are, unfortunately). However, I'm not seeing the mass-crisis proportions they apparently face in America.

I know way too many stories of unlikely meetings & marriages between people for me to take derech-hateva theories lock-stock-and-barrel.

My own Israeli husband is a few years older than me & started dating when I was still an assimilated high school girl in America. Would a round of 40 days at the kotel have helped him when I was in tenth grade?

Well, he did it. And yes, it helped!

But not immediately.

Another friend of mine was an American chassidish girl in her late 20s who met her bashert in America right after he'd gotten off the plane from Tehran. And they met in the waiting room of the office of a Reform rabbi!

(She was passing through for business & having just arrived in America, he didn't realized this wasn't a real rabbi. Noticing the serious young man in a kippah & tzitzit who clearly didn't belong there, she quickly got him pointed in the right direction, and then they married a year later. See? You don't NEED a hotel lobby. It's nice, but Hashem can set up your meeting anywhere.)

That's just two examples of situations in which the derech-hateva solutions would not have helped. We all know others.

I know people who are overweight, not extremely attractive, people who are jerks, obnoxious people, and decent but eccentric people, physically disabled people, and even mentally disabled people who got married without a long wait.

We all know people like this.

I know people who are not so attractive with some pretty bad middot who are happily married because their spouse has bad middot in the same way and they have a Bonnie 'n' Clyde compatibility.

And again, I think we all know couples like that.

Watch Out for Those Hakpadahs!

And yes, the hakpadah thing can be a real issue.

I personally know people who traced their delayed zivug back to people they'd hurt.

In one case, an engagement broken without proper consideration or apology delayed the ultimate shidduch.

How did was that figured out?

Well, prior to their ultimate marriage, one spouse was on the brink of coming to a BT institution in Eretz Yisrael, but an odd experience cast the possibility out of mind.

Two years later, that partner finally arrived at the same BT institution, and via a staff member at this institution, this couple finally met and married.

"Why did that happen to me?" said that partner later on in the marriage. "I was all set to go – and it would've been GOOD for me to go there earlier – why did I suddenly decide not to go?"

After determining the approximate time this sudden refusal happened, the other spouse reluctantly admitted that not only had the broken engagement occurred around that time, but it was broken in a way lacking in derech eretz. Not intentionally hurting anyone, but lacking the courage to deal with the situation correctly, the partner just ditched.

Now think about that. Because of a broken engagement handled poorly, the ultimate shidduch was pushed off by at least 2 years.

Selfless Tefillah

Also, my husband's nephew ended up stuck in shidduchim for a few years.

Finally, my husband's nephew and one of his mother's co-workers (a much older woman) decided to daven for each other that the OTHER should get married first.

My husband's nephew is a very sincere and temimusdig person. He truly davened that she would marry first. (Also, let's be completely honest: He was still younger than she and likely feeling less pressured about getting married already.)

Not long after he took on this davening, my husband's nephew met his wife who is such a wonderful young woman. It was an unusual shidduch because she was FFB from a chashuv family (my husband's nephew was secular until he decided to go to yeshivah for 9th grade), but they are quite compatible and have been producing beautiful Jewish children at a rapid clip. (Their first 2 children are only 11 months apart.)

Derech Hateva: Only be a Small Slice of the Hishtadlut Pie

Please note that I'm NOT calling for completely ignoring derech-hateva theories & solutions.

These theories & solutions exist for a reason.

But based on the above & many other stories like all the above, I really feel that tefillah & cheshbon hanefesh MUST be a MAJORITY part of the solution.

In all the above examples, only tefillah & cheshbon hanefesh could help.

All the derech-hateva solutions do not help one whit if your bashert is in Tehran, high school, and so on.

God willing, may all our singles (whether never married, divorced, or widowed) please find their good & true shidduch b'sha'ah tovah umutzlachat.

(This is a nusach I personally heard from the late Dayan Fischer ztz"l, who advised the girl I accompanied to daven that Hashem should bring her shidduch hatov v'hanachon b'sha'ah tovah umutzlachat.)

Related Post:
When Giving Results in Receiving: A Love Story

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Sharing What Burden Exactly? The Unspoken Elephant in the Room

12/6/2019

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I’ve been preparing a very long post about my son’s eye-opening experiences in the IDF, but there’s so much to write, it’s overwhelming. So instead, I’ll just present it in gulps as series.

(Also, if you don’t like or get tongue-in-cheek humor, you may not like this post.)

The Speech Hechsher for This Post

And just in case anyone is wondering:

Because there are 3 participants (the speaker, the listener, and the subject) in a discussion of another person, I got my son’s permission to write about him (although my perceptions of his experience don’t necessarily reflect his perceptions of his experience).

I feel positively about my son and he feels positively about himself, but as stated, there is one more participant in the discussion and that is YOU, the listener/reader.

Needless to say, no matter how positively I write about my son, someone somewhere can read into it lots of negativity. And is this okay?

So I asked a lashon hara expert.

So the lashon hara rav said that it is permitted for a number of reasons, one of which is because I’m anonymous. And he said that the 1 or 2 people who know us already know about my son, so it’s not a big deal for them to know more details.

Finally, again, this post reflects only my perceptions of events. My son might (and often does) have (VERY) different conclusions about the same event.

Why I Thought I Already Understood

Part of the reason why I feel my son’s experiences add to the discussion about the IDF and Israeli society is because he ended up in a non-combat position.

(He tried very, very hard to get into a combat unit and is actually well-suited to combat, but he was blocked for reasons I’ll explain in another post.)

Because I initially came to Israel as dati-leumi and frequently hung out with young Israelis who were after army service (mostly paratroopers and armored corps for boys or sherut leumi for girls), I thought I knew a lot about it from the inside.

I originally looked down on those “parasitical” charedim for not sharing the burden of military service.

Later, I also heard the charedi side of things, found it compelling, and that’s the community I ultimately settled in.

So I felt well-informed, both philosophically and socially.

Yet my son’s experiences opened my eyes to so much, some of which I’ll share with you here.

The Hidden Side of the IDF (for Anglos, anyway)

Why do you, most likely an Anglo, need to hear about the non-combat part of the IDF—which is the majority of the IDF?

Nearly everything you read in English is about some kind of combat soldier, whether it’s Nachal Charedi or the son of Americans in Golani or Givati, etc.

Seriously.

Every English-language Jewish media outlet (including blogs), whether online or print, whether secular or dati or charedi, only talk about combat soldiers and combat units.

So if that’s all you hear about (and that’s most of what I ever hear about), then you’re automatically getting a skewed view of what’s really going on.

For example, as of 2014, the IDF consisted of 176,500 soldiers. Miluim (a reserve unit consisting of male citizens who serve a month of military service each year until middle age) comprise 445,000.

Of these, combat soldiers make up 26-30,000.

Such a small percentage of the entire IDF is dedicated to combat?

I appreciate these combat soldiers.

But what’s everyone else doing?

Well, there are certainly non-combat positions essential to national security, like Intelligence, watching security cameras, standing guard, and so on.

I appreciate them a lot. Probably you do too.

Do you think that’s what the other thousands of soldiers are doing? Essential security tasks?

No way.

But certain politicians and media must push this idea that every IDF job is essential.

And they go to bizarre extremes.

Sharing the Burden of Ponytail-Swinging

For example, the IDF choir and dance troupe are considered military service.

I’m not joking.

Yes, everyone goes through a few weeks of basic training, regardless of what job they’re later assigned. But that doesn’t make them quality soldiers. It doesn’t even mean they are fit for guard duty (even if that’s what a recruit ends up doing).

So a girl who enlists to the IDF choir, which once entailed things like unbuttoning her shirt too low and swinging her ponytail and her hips around as she sings, is considered to have “carried” her “fair share of the burden” regarding military service.

This is despite the fact that her performances did NOT make the country safer in any way whatsoever, and if you look at it from a spiritual point of view, her performances actually WEAKEN the Israeli military and increase strict judgment over the Land and the Am in general because as has been pointed out for millennia, Hashem hates pritzut and breaches in tsniut.

Furthermore, some people harshly condemn religious soldiers who choose not to watch their holy sisters objectify themselves in such a manner by quietly leaving & avoiding the whole spectacle.

But even non-religious Jews should be able to recognize the utter uselessness of a choir or dance troupe as MILITARY service.

Yet several years ago, when Israel wanted to give a singing award to one of its female pop artists, an older male singer objected because she hadn’t served in the army (meaning in the IDF choir), and therefore had not carried her "share of the military burden," and thus should be disqualified.

You have to wonder why some people (often secular Leftists) froth so intensely over the enforcement of even the most meaningless “military” service.

Because it is completely irrational to believe that a teenage female singer benefits the security of a country surrounded by some of the most vicious terror groups in the world, it seems there might be some kind of agenda at play here.

Here are some more examples of useless "military" service:

Sharing the Burden of Watching Pirated Movies Online

At a base hosting 300 servicepeople, one girl was in charge of Culture & Recreation.

She sat in her office all the livelong day watching movies and texting on her cell phone while dressed in official IDF uniform.

Only once, during the 6 months my son was there, did she fulfill her duty: She showed them an American movie.

Yet in Israeli society and according to some of the more befuddled leaders, this is considered military service and she is commended for upholding her “share of the burden.”

Culturally, she is considered a worthier citizen than, say, a chareidi woman who is gainfully employed, contributes to increasing the Jewish population on Eretz Hakodesh, and actively participates in the Israeli economy as a consumer. Not to mention all the mitzvot our frum heroine does, which increases merits & sweetens din over the entire Jewish people.

Another IDF serviceman sat in his office all day in some kind of human resources position. Apparently, if one of servicepeople had a problem with something, they could turn to him.

How often do you think a group of only 300 people who went home every week or two needed his services?

Right. Hardly ever.

The Top-Brass of Hungover Moppers

Two young men tasked with mopping the outside of the base 3 days a week regularly showed up hungover and spent Day 1 of their heilige military service complaining about how hungover they were.

They apparently needed to rest more on Day 2. Day 3 saw a cursory cleaning before they went back home. Sometimes, they didn’t even show up on Day 1, serving their oh-so essential military duty only 2 days a week.

Yet again, there are many Israelis who consider this “military service” and credit this pair with “sharing the burden,” elevating them to a status far above that of a charedi father who learns Gemara, invests in an apartment in Eretz Yisrael, and contributes in so many ways to Israeli society and the economy.

Look, if you consider a few hours of hungover kvetching and half-hearted mopping to be a far more significant contribution to Israeli society (and security!) than shteiging away in front of a Gemara all day, then I’m not sure you & I can have much of a conversation about this.

But you probably don’t exalt hungover kvetching & half-hearted mopping because if you did, you would probably avoid reading this kind of blog.

Sharing the Candy Bar Burden

Then there was the guy in charge of the on-base store. That was his entire service.

Now, we know that soldiers need to replenish supplies.

Even though the non-combat types, like on this base only stay for a week or 2 at a time, people still run out of stuff and need replenishment.

Part of the job was making sure the store was well-stocked with popular American candy bars and candy-covered chocolates.

Perhaps there is some deep military secret behind ensuring that every IDF recruit receives his full ration of chalav akum American junkfood that, by the time it gets to the Israel, tastes like its wrapper.

Do I dare question whether this constitutes “sharing the burden”?

(No, I didn’t eat it; I’m a chalav-Yisrael-only type of gal. But I’ve eaten American candy bars in Israel before. Let me leave it like this: Just stick with Taami (yum!) and all those chalav Yisrael guys.)

Real Friends Share Burdens

Then my son came home enthusing about the popular American TV show Friends. I’d heard of it but never seen it (thank God).

Yet how did my son know about it?

Why, he and his fellow Israeli Supermen spent entire days in air-conditioned rooms watching American TV shows on a giant LD screen.

You see, dear reader, there exists the unconscionable scandal of yeshivah students who are studiously avoiding the military draft by parasitically shteiging away with Rav Assi and Rebbi Meir, while our boys sit in IDF uniform watching depraved American sitcoms and eating Reese’s Pieces!

How long will Israeli society tolerate this vile injustice?

Oh, wait! They’re NOT tolerating this terrible inequality—there are obsessed politicians working in a frenzy to make sure that EVERYONE shares "the burden”! (Although chocolate and TV has never seemed much of a burden to me, personally, but then again, I’m not exactly an anti-Torah Leftist. Anti-Torah Leftists seem to feel differently about things.)

In other words: No parasites allowed!

Okay. Let’s define that more clearly:

Learning Gemara – parastical.
Watching depraved American sitcoms in IDF uniform while eating Reese’s Pieces – doing your civic duty and sharing the military burden.

Got it? Good!

Needless to say, fond reader, this is EXACTLY why I made aliyah and supported my son in his IDF service: so that he could become fully acquainted with ALL the degenerate Hollywood programming I’d left far behind! Plus chalav akum candy bars!

Im tirtzu, ein zo agadah!

The 2 Lone Tzaddikim

But seriously now, not all the recruits were lounging about.

There were 2 dati soldiers who used all that spare time to learn chevrusa together.

And this may shock the “share the burden” extremists, but learning Gemara in all your spare time actually does more for Israel’s security and success than Friends and American candy bars.

Now, if they had all that spare time and weren’t really serving a role necessary to Israel’s security, then why couldn’t they just be in yeshivah? What is the point?

However, I do want to commend them and say that if the IDF was an authentically Jewish army, this is what the soldiers would be doing when not actively engaged in a vital task: learning Torah.

Kol hakavod to these two bachurim.

NOTE: There WERE indeed VITAL military duties carried out on this base. 100%.

But it sure wasn't everyone.

And that's the whole point of this post.

Standing Guard?

One of my son's cousins spent his entire military service guarding a weapons storage INSIDE an armored corps base.

Is this necessary or not?

Yes, in-base weapons need guarding. Some soldiers steal things.

But I question whether you need actual soldiers or whether Israel's hi-tech systems would be both cheaper and more effective than a teenage boy.

Literally, I question this. I don't know enough about security system effectiveness and costs to answer this affirmatively.

However, I suspect this is yet another non-essential job available to take in the glut of soldiers not qualified for essential jobs, but I'm honestly not sure and am willing to be corrected by someone who actually knows for sure.

Shavua-Shavua

Finally, there is something in the IDF called shavua-shavua (week-week).

This means that for 1 week, you are on an army base, then the next week you work at a pizza parlor or waiting tables in a restaurant, then the next week you are on base again, then the week after that, you’re back to pizza and waiting tables.

And this continues until you are officially discharged from the IDF.

Now, why would the IDF institute something like shavua-shavua?

Because there are way too many people for certain jobs.

For example, you couldn’t have all the firemen or cooks serving at the same time because there just aren’t enough jobs to go around. Meaning, some parts of the IDF are vastly overstaffed.

Having said that, the IDF very recently phased out a lot of shauva-shavua roles, but shavua-shavua still exist for cooks and I can’t remember who else.

But the necessity of shavua-shavua is something else to keep in mind when someone starts frothing at the mouth about charedim not “sharing the burden.”

If there is a glut of soldiers in certain areas, then why are they so obsessed with increasing this glut?

Why Does It Take 5 Girls to Watch a Radar Screen? And Since When Do Soldiers Serve as Field Hands?

Years ago, a young woman told me of her IDF service, which consisted of her & 4 other girls gazing at the same radar screen on the off-chance that they might spot something suspicious. (Occasionally they did, but it was almost always a false alarm.)

She was embittered about it because it had been clear to her that while you might need 2 radar-gazers, you certainly do not need 5 per screen.

And so she spent her service doing this useless busy-work while subjected to standard military discipline if she didn’t do her useless busy-work according to protocol. (Plus, I think there was also lots of coffee-bringing involved.)

Furthermore, when I was a young datia-leumit, I met a young man who explained that his army service consisted of tending fields on a kibbutz. Not GUARDING the fields from marauders, but actually working like a farmer.

I totally did not get this at that time. Completely flummoxed, I kept asking him about it in an effort to clarify. ("But how is that ARMY service? Why did the IDF put you there? Why do they need SOLDIERS to till the fields?")

Realizing how foolish it sounded, he got all sheepish about it, which made me realize I should leave him alone and change the subject. So I did.

Later, I asked my combat and sherut leumi friends for clarification, but they just laughed, agreeing that it did sound kind of absurd to label farming as military service. And no one was able to explain the rationale behind it.

But the above taught me that parts of the IDF were and are overstaffed, and that they assign people to meaningless duties simply because with a mandatory draft, there is no other choice.

But I was really shocked to learn of the amount of “soldiers” serving in useless positions or positions of questionable necessity, and spending a huge chunk of their “service” in vapid recreation.

The above examples are just a sampling.

Why the Obsession with Sharing an Imaginary Burden?

As you can see from the above, the basic technical act of IDF enlistment does not in any way guarantee that you end up sharing any kind of burden.

It COULD mean that if you go to a position VITAL for Israel's security.

But for many recruits, the "burden" is largely imaginary. Some recruits aren't doing anything remotely burdensome or even minimally useful. (I'm looking at you, Culture & Recreation Girl!) It's propaganda.

From a purely rational military point of view, it greatly disturbs me that certain officials are so obsessed with enlisting every last 18-year-old in the country, even if it means a waste of funds for completely meaningless duties, when Israel is surrounded on every border by masses of terrorists who are horrifically savage and intent on the genocide of every Jew in Eretz Yisrael.

Why are certain politicians and certain military officials so much more obsessed about ensuring that Shmulik from Bnai Brak serves even the most meaningless role (as long as it’s in “official” army capacity) rather than learning Torah or getting a vocation or getting married and raising a family?

Why is that more important to them than securing Israeli citizens against war and genocide?

Rationally speaking, as political & military leaders in such a dangerous & volatile region, their ONLY focus should be on security.

So why the obsession with recruiting every last Tova, Dan, and Hirshy?

Note: For a purely charedi view on the whole topic of mandatory IDF recruitment, you can read how Rav Avigdor Miller answered this question:

How could you say that a person should avoid military service in Israel when there are millions of Jews living there who have to be protected?

It's shocking how current his answer was because he said this in 1978!!!

For more posts in this series (for which I haven't yet figured out a title), please see:

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How to Avoid Playing with the Most Dangerous Fire

22/5/2019

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Stay Out of It

While daas Torah unites in its primary goal (perfecting our souls & perfecting the world), it can diverge regarding how to accomplish the goal.

In shiurim in which someone asks the rabbi or rebbetzin about taking sides, either in a machloket between rabbanim or just differing streams of TORAH-TRUE Judaism (whether between the misnagdim & chassidim of yore, or the different chassidic groups, or any divergent derechs today), the answer was always:
"STAY OUT OF IT."

Rav Avigdor Miller constantly warned his listeners not to get involved in any way because he insisted it's getting involved in fire. Don't do it!

Rav Miller himself was a Slabodka Litvak. Yet not only did he never put down groups following other daas Torah, he even defended their right to follow their own Torah-based daas Torah, whether it was another type of Litvish (like Telshe) or Sephardi or any kind of Chassidus.

You can follow your Rav/Rebbe without fighting with anyone else and without denigrating anyone else, whether the Rav/Rebbe himself or someone from his group.

(Clarification: "Someone from his group" means someone who actually follows the rav, and doesn't just use a distorted version of the Rav/Rebbe's hashkafah to indulge his or her own yetzer hara.)

And honestly?

If it's a real talmid chacham, you should be able to see the value of his derech, understand WHY he is doing what he's doing...even if you don't personally follow or agree with that derech.

After exploring the issues, you should be able to come to some kind of intellectual understanding and even appreciation of a wholly Torah-allegiant yet different derech.

Furthermore, any kind of real daas Torah does not generally WANT you fighting with others, even to defend his honor.

So why do it? If you really respect him, why go against his will?

What If He isn't the Rav You Think He is?

Another reason why STAY OUT OF IT and APPRECIATE ALL LEGITIMATE TORAH PATHS are such important and helpful advice is that sometimes, you can think that your favorite speaker or your shul rabbi is a tremendous chacham for whom you're willing to go to battle.

This is particularly likely to happen among people who haven't yet gained enough knowledge to know that while their rabbi is a cool guy and a smart one, he's definitely not a talmid chacham.

I learned this lesson the hard way. (Story for another time.)

Anyway, this is something I wish I could shout from the rooftops:
Smicha does NOT mean a rabbi is wise, insightful, or good.

It COULD mean that, but it doesn't have to.

All smicha (rabbinical ordination) really means is that a guy passed a test of academic knowledge. If it was high-level smicha, he's probably intellectually intelligent.

But that doesn't mean he's "a big talmid chacham!" or anyone you should be swooning or tussling over.

(And yes, I've heard people swooning over or boasting of or defending the honor of their favorite rabbi, calling him a "a big talmid chacham" when he definitely is NOT. A smart guy? Yes. A nice, sincere guy? Maybe. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. A charismatic guy? Yes. An actual talmid chacham? NO.)

So that's another reason not to get too wound up. You might be getting wound up for no good reason at all.

Case in point: When I was becoming frum, I really thought so many people were so smart and so frum, and that certain rabbis I met were powerhouses of Torah knowledge.

Then over the years, I realized that, while all these people should be appreciated and admired and respected for their many good points, they weren't Rebbetzin or Rav Kanievsky.

And that's fine!

So while it's important to humble oneself to listen and learn from people who know more than you, there are still higher levels and lower levels of Torah knowledge & behavior, and we shouldn't make people into something they are not.

It's a tribute to frumkeit that a guy can spend his childhood and young adulthood in yeshivah, and come out with such impressive knowledge. And then as he keeps reviewing throughout life and maybe even gets smicha, he really does accumulate an impressive amount of Torah learning.

VERY GOOD.

But it doesn't mean he has internalized it.

It doesn't mean he is a talmid chacham.

Getting Down to the Nitty-Gritty

So...love and appreciate different groups and different daas Torah (REAL ones) even as you stick to your own derech.

And love and appreciate your favorite rav, but know what he is not (unless, of course, he really is a genuinely tremendous talmid chacham. Some are.).

And this all goes for me too, of course.

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Your Inalienable Right to Teshuvah - No Matter What Scoffers & Cynics Say

22/1/2019

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One of the most important rights a person has is the right to do teshuvah.

People have a right to change for the better.

Unfortunately, there will always be those who call a changed person “fake” or “hypocrite” and remind that person of his or her former deeds.

There will always be those with the conviction that the sinful, flawed you is the “real” you. (It’s not.)

But you can’t let that stop you.

You Can't Collect Scattered Feathers

Around 20 years ago, in a moment of frustration, I confided lashon hara in a “friend”— lashon hara that I mistakenly assumed was l’to’elet due to my emotional pain.

Then I forgot about it.

But she didn’t.

Around 10 years later, we ran into each other and pretty early on in the conversation, she asked how I was managing with so-and-so.

“Oh, fine,” came my breezy answer.

“Really?” she smirked. “Because you sure weren’t before.”

(“Before” was 10 years prior.)

“Oh,” I said, realizing what the problem was. “Yeah, we had some issues then, and, oh, there were a lot of things I didn’t understand. But I understand them now and we get along fine.”

She sniggered. “Really?” she said. “But don’t you remember how that person said [the appalling & strange thing that person had said]. I mean, that was really weird. You don’t remember that?”

Oh, right! I’d forgotten about it. But fortunately, it no longer appalled or distressed me because I’d moved past it. Now I fumbled for words. And she chuckled again. Then I stammered something like, “That person didn’t mean it that way and I never should have repeated it to others.”

At that point, I think she realized her own impropriety because she sobered up and the conversation ended pretty quickly after that.

Now, I don’t think you really need halacha to tell you NOT to do what she did. I mean, it’s pretty smarmy to remind a person of lashon hara said 10 years ago AND insert it early into a conversation when you’ve only just reconnected. Furthermore, it’s even smarmier to twist their arm about it — not only to remember it, but to get re-offended by it.

I really think that any decent person would realize on his or her own not do such a thing, even without knowing that it’s halachically forbidden.

But it taught me some things.

Lessons Learned

1) First of all, it gave me the chance to atone for what I’d said. I took the blame off the subject of the lashon hara and also admitted that I shouldn’t have said it in the first place. I was able to express regret for the deed.

2) Secondly, it drove home that old parable, that negative speech is like waving a pillowcase full of feathers into the wind — you’ll never be able to re-gather all the feathers. They’ve simply scattered too far and wide. (But it was a lesson I needed to learn a few more times before I really got it. Ultimately, sitting down each day to review these laws really helped.)

3) Thirdly, it showed me how important it was to avoid doing this to others — and to let the other person CHANGE. Really, I don’t understand why she didn’t switch the subject when she saw I initially didn’t remember the incident. Why did she work so hard to conjure it up again and rub it in? I really don’t get it.

4) And finally, I needed to take responsibility for myself. Yeah, she was wrong to do what she did—that was a couple of serious transgressions right there on her part. But she’d never have been able to do that if I hadn’t said what I said in the first place.

I was wrong to have said what I said.

And that’s that.

The Penitent Peddler

Especially if you speak out against your former errant behavior and in favor of correct behavior, certain people will target you.

And the Kli Yakar describes all this well in Vayikra 14:4 (Parshat Metzora).

There is the famous midrash of the rochel, the peddler, who made his way through the area of Tzippori, proclaiming, “Who wants to buy the elixir of life?”

And only Rav Yannai was interested.

What was the elixir of life?

Shemirat halashon — guarding your tongue from speaking slander (whether true or not), rumor-mongering, tale-bearing, and any other negative speech that is of no benefit.

The Kli Yakar delves into the deeper layers of this story. Because rochel is the same word as tale-bearer – a person who spreads rechilut – the Kli Yakar maintains that this peddler was actually a slanderer who’d done teshuvah and was now encouraging others to do teshuvah too.

What happened?

Once upon a time, the rochel went about slandering others and "casting strife between brothers," in the words of the Kli Yakar.

“Yet later, he gave his heart to do teshuvah and requested the ways of healing mentioned by our Sages: Torah learning for a talmid chacham and shever ruach [a broken spirit] for an am ha'aretz.

“And he saw that these ‘medications’ benefited him.

“Therefore, his heart filled with the desire to bring merit to the masses and to bring teshuvah to all the very towns in which he knew there were gossipers.”

So the rochel marched through these towns with his tantalizing proclamation.

“For they were like sick people who need medications for a cure, which needs to be purchased.”

But the people wouldn’t allow it.

Yes, they came out at his call — to harass him.

“Etmol hayitah rochel holech rachil — Yesterday, you were a slanderer who went about slandering!” they said. “V’hayom atah rotzeh l’taken darcheinu? — And today you want to fix our path? Kashot atzmacha tachilah! — Clean up your own backyard first!"

(Loose translation — kashot means “adorn” or “decorate” or “fix up.”)

Yet the rochel DID clean up his own backyard!

That’s why he was there. He’d found the right “medication” (Torah study and a broken spirit of remorse) for the “illness” (fault-finding combined with gossiping about those found faults).

And now he wanted to share the “cure.”

Instead, they humiliated him and insisted he was still the same old fault-finding slanderer who’d gone around fomenting strife between brothers.

Of course, this can be considered an atonement for his previous behavior. Their response to him was very wrong, but as far as he goes, he can take it as a kaparah.

Yet why did they respond the way they did?

Baalei Ra'atan Don't Count

The Kli Yakar describes them as baalei ra’atan — people who choose to seek out the faults in others and then gossip about those faults: “…they'd already chosen for themselves the rotten path and their tongues were used to speaking lashon hara.”

People who haven’t done real teshuvah don’t see the possibility of change. Even if they see a changed person in front of their face, they simply do not believe their eyes.

This is a reflection on them, not on you.

3 Types of Trepidation

Yet to be fair, there are times when another person’s hesitancy to accept the new you is justified (and then you need to be patient and understanding):

You’re very quick to apologize without any change.

This type tends to combine an apology with self-denigration.

If you're doing this, you're not actually doing teshuvah at all.

How so? What's going on with this type?

Subconsciously, this type feels that the self-denigration atones for their mistakes, and in a sense, permits them to repeat the mistake again. There’s no real teshuvah there and they’ll repeat the faulty behavior pretty quickly after they apologize. And they’ll continue this way, often for years, without ever changing.

If this is what you’re doing, people have a right to distrust your apologies and admissions of wrong-doing.

Until you actually change your behavior, people don’t need to take your apologies or breast-beating seriously.

You’re still in the ping-pong phase of teshuvah.

You really intend to stop the behavior and you even succeed to a certain extent – but then you backslide.

So you jump back on the wagon and even stay there for a time...until you fall off again.

This occurs because it takes time & trial-and-error to learn the new improved behavior. You’ve boarded the ship and now you need to gain “sea-legs” as you sail the churning waters.

But until you’ve gained your sea-legs, you lurch around, tripping & falling.

Others are within their rights if they choose to keep their distance from your lurching until you’ve got your sea-legs firmly in place. After all, you’ve sprawled onto these people before; they don’t want to get in your way again.

But don't feel bad. The ping-pong phase is perfectly natural, especially if you're learning a behavior that's very foreign to you.

(This is actually a good sign because it means you are really striving for profound change by aiming for behavior that is so different than your sinful ways, you need to learn it like learning a foreign language.)

You hurt them so much before, they want to make sure you’ve REALLY changed.

These people aren’t unforgiving, just wary. They’re willing to accept you’ve changed; they just want to make SURE you actually have.

Failure Never Erases Success

You also have the right to fall without being considered a failure.

Falling is pretty common.

For example, after a year of total sobriety, an alcoholic can suddenly go on a drinking binge.

After 6 months of measured behavior, a reformed ka'asan can suddenly fly into an outburst.

There are a few reasons for this. One is simple human weakness.

Another major reason is that it drives home how bad the behavior is. For example, an alcoholic may feel so sick on this sudden binge that he doesn’t even want to ever drink again. Throughout the year, he felt pretty good with his sobriety, but still yearned to at least get tipsy again. Yet after the sickening binge, he no longer even yearns for it.

This is known as descent for the sake of ascent. You needed to plummet in order to really rid yourself of the bad middah.

Another reason is to keep yourself connected to Hashem and disconnected from gaavah. In the midst of a fall, you can’t feel like you’re oh-so victorious and better than others. You also realize that your success came from Hashem and not your own willpower.

Regardless, there are people who will point to your fall as “proof” that you really haven’t changed.

How stupid and horrible of them.

All those moments, hours, days, and weeks of struggle…all those excruciating obstacles you faced as you fought your ingrained bad habits and forged new good behaviors…it’s all meaningless.

Really?

It’s nothing? You didn’t do anything at all?

Of course not.

In THEIR eyes, in the eyes of people who’ve never really done teshuvah, your efforts and successes don’t exist.

But your naysayers are wrong, wrong, wrong.

Your efforts and successes DO exist – and they mean a lot!

They’ve already formed an imprint on your soul.

And so you pick yourself up and try again. Hopefully, you’ll last out for longer until the next fall. And then you’ll last longer and longer – until you don’t fall again.

Good is Always Stronger Than Bad

In Judaism, good deeds can never be erased.

Only bad deeds can be erased (via true teshuvah).

Anything good you do stands forever.

Even evil people get rewarded for the good they've done, no matter how minuscule.

(This is one reason why you'll see bad people with lots of success; they're being rewarded in This World for the little good they've done.)

People who try to convince you that a fall invalidates all the progress you made up to that fall are not coming from a Jewish point of view.

The Only Opinion that Really Matters

You have the right to improve yourself.

You have the right to change.

You have the right to turn over a new leaf.

Sure, we all know that we have an obligation to better ourselves.

But we have a right to change too.

And even if others don’t believe you, even if others mock you or reject you or scoff at you, you need to know that Hashem sees your transformation and that it’s registered in Shamayim.

And that’s all that matters.

To see more about the Kli Yakar's interpretation of the above story, please see:
Part II: The Happy Cure for Blabbermouthed Fault-Finders (AKA, The Kli Yakar on Parshat Metzorah)

For more on the problem with self-denigration, please see:
5 Reasons Why Self-Denigration Never Helps

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How Guarding Your Tongue Brings Blessing

12/12/2018

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There was an acquaintance I knew for 4 years—and during that entire time, I never knew she was separated and then divorced. (This also says wonderful things about that community, by the way, that people didn’t gossip.)

I ran into her at the supermarket, on the bus, at the park with her children—and she was always sweet, friendly, and cheerful with nary a bad thing to say about anyone.

Needless to say, if a separated or divorced woman needs help, she should be able to ask for it and receive it. Also, there’s no problem with mentioning your marital status, whether it’s divorced, widowed, married, or single.

My point is that she never said a word against her ex-husband nor her in-laws, including after they were divorced. And I’m sure she must have had what to say. Marital problems are incredibly painful.

But as the halacha tells us: If there is no halachically permitted to’elet (beneficial purpose) to lashon hara, it’s forbidden to say it.

Later, she remarried to a good man with children of his own. Because her family size suddenly doubled, life got busier and more stressful, but she seemed happy. The marriage seems good.

What I also found both unusual and heartening is how the stepchildren get along together. Some even became best friends, share clothes, and walk arm in arm together. You’d think they were twins, but they are step-siblings. Obviously, both she and her second husband must have been good parents as single parents and apparently continue to be good parents together.

But I can’t help thinking that guarding her tongue & maintaining a good mood & good middot in what must have been a very trying situation brought her a lot of bracha.

Shemirat Halashon Helped Other Things Too

In another situation, a couple with several children separated. The woman wasn’t a bad person at all, but nor did she have the most appealing personality.

Yet throughout the separation, she refused to say one word against her husband. Even when prodded, she either kept her silence or said something brief in his defense.

She also didn’t play around with lashon hara by dissing him under the guise of “merely” commenting or joking about male generalities and stereotypes.

As time went on, admiration for her grew.

Even people who hadn’t liked her much before developed a high regard for her because of her integrity during the separation. Eventually, she and her husband got back together and stayed together. She also found herself better-liked than before.

Just to emphasize: Her personality didn’t change from the time of separation to the time of reunification. People who didn’t like her so much before suddenly liked her a lot now SOLELY because of the integrity she displayed during the separation.

All in all, a win-win situation—all because she guarded her tongue so carefully.

No Guarantees in This World

The above are in very strong contrast to yesterday’s post, in which a very well-meaning community involved itself in the details of each other’s shalom bayis problems (which means engaging in copious unnecessary lashon hara)—which not only didn’t alleviate any problems, but didn’t prevent numerous divorces either.

Does guarding your tongue always work out so nicely?

Or does indulging in continuous lashon hara always backfire?

No.

I think we all know people who slander their spouse (or ex-spouse), their boss, their co-workers, their parents, their in-laws, their children, their siblings, etc. and it doesn’t seem to hurt them. On the contrary, maybe they even do it in such a way that garners them lots of sympathy.

Likewise, there are people very careful to guard their tongue, and they don’t get the benefit of the doubt or the support they need.

The simplistic explanation is that the sinning person gets his reward in This World for the good he has done while punishment awaits him in the Next.

In contrast, there is also the concept of tzaddik v’ra lo—Hashem stores all the reward for a good person in the Next World and allows that good person to experience their atonement in This World.

There are also very deep and complex reasons having to do with past lives and other stuff to which I’m not privy, but trust that Hashem knows exactly what He is doing.

The Lashon Hara Deception

But in general, everyone I know who regularly talks or writes lashon hara about people do not experience relief from their problems.

This includes people dealing with genuinely difficult and dysfunctional people. Sometimes, the pain simply leaks out—and who can blame them? There’s definitely room for compassion here.

But over time, I saw that it just doesn’t help. There’s temporary relief and nothing more than that.

You see people who write about this family member and that neighbor—using real names!—and things never improve or only get worse (which gives them a lots of fodder for future columns, I guess).

And how many times have you sat through a shalom bayis class in which the rebbetzin disparages her husband (with humor, of course) under the guise of talking about normal male-female differences in marriage?

Notice that her marriage never improves and she rarely holds up her husband as a good example.

And people who truly suffer in their marriage or family don’t really find resolution in dropping lots of sarcastic comments about their nemesis or even continuously pouring their heart out to friends and a string of therapists.

Please notice that as long as they keep doing that, their situation stays the same or even worsens.

I could give several real-life examples of people who simply could not stop themselves from badmouthing their in-laws and spouse.

Some were quite justified in their complaints (like in the case of emotional or verbal abuse) while others merely imagined they were justified.

Regardless, nothing good or healing ultimately came out of it.

But because yesterday’s post was full of negative examples, I want to stick with positive examples in today’s post.

So I’ll just say this:

The exception to the above ended up being those who initially complained about their spouse, in-laws, parents, neighbors, etc.—and then stopped.

Whether justified or not, they stopped.

Those who stopped the understandable but ultimately forbidden lashon hara and instead turned just to prayer and gratitude to Hashem often saw an improvement in their situation.

Turning Ideas into Action

So tachlis: How do you deal with difficult people in life?

You just don’t say anything unless there’s a clear halachic to’elet for doing so.

Hopefully, you’ll experience blessing in this world for guarding your tongue—and many do.

But the Pele Yoetz emphasizes that it’s the Next World that counts.

He clearly states several times that guarding your tongue from revealing the faults—and going so far as to praise to others--of specifically your spouse, parents-in-law, and children-in-law reap great reward in the Next World...even (or especially) if these people are genuinely dysfunctional and your complaints are perfectly justified.

He says that in the case of children- or parents-in-law, you often will see the fruits of your silence (and praise) in this world via your own children or grandchildren.

But as he says to the husband who’s married to a wicked wife, if you treat her badly and get angry at her and slander her, then you simply get Gehinnom in both This World and the Next.

Pretty strong mussar if you ask me!

But again, he’s only saying this because he wants to truly help us and he wants what’s truly good for us.

And the only true good is Eternal Life in the World to Come.

It’s hard to always remember & actualize this, but any step we take in this direction is very, very good.

A Secretly Fragmented "Family" - All because of Lashon Hara?

11/12/2018

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I once got to know a certain community that prided itself on its close-knit support.

“Our children know they’ve got extended family through our community,” they explained. “All the adults are known as their aunts and uncles. We always pitch in for each other’s simchas and crises.”

Whether a family experienced sickness, birth, divorce, moving, or any other life upheaval, they received the full support of the community. And it really was heartwarming to see how they would pitch in to help—and give real help—without even being asked.

Many were committed to a kollel lifestyle—or at least a partial kollel lifestyle. Many didn’t have a computer or if they did, it really was for work and the children had no access to it.

So it was a community with a serious commitment to Torah and chessed. Very nice!

The Snake Slithering through Gan Eden

But I admit I was uncomfortable with the way they talked about each other. Very warm and accepting, you pretty quickly got an earful of what was going on with different members of the oh-so familial community.

Furthermore, they weren't always so nice to each other or talk about each other's kids so nicely.

For example, one of the teenagers clearly suffered some form of mental retardation. And she was a nice and friendly person too.

Yet the other girls her age responded stiffly or rudely to her when she approached them to chat. And the minute her back was turned, they doubled over with repressed laughter, their hands clutched over their mouths and exchanging looks with each other that clearly said, Omigosh—such a freak! Right?

Of course, people can be very uncomfortable around those with special needs. It’s pretty normal to be stiff or awkward when you aren’t used to them.

But these girls had all grown up together and were family, right? Also, you’d think their parents had spoken to them over the years about how to behave with this very nice yet mentally challenged girl.

Yet they didn’t seem to know how to behave and they didn’t seem very compassionate either. Where was the unity and warmth?

And yes, I realize that people like to dismiss such behavior as “Teenagers!”

But I’ve seen so many teenage girls behave with sensitivity and refinement in so many different situations to know the difference between youth and a display of poor middot.

Many teenage girls would never behave that way.

Anyway, there were several things like that. That’s just one example.

We are (a Fragmented) Family

But what really took me by surprise was the divorce rate in this seemingly lovey-dovey community. Some couples divorced early on in the marriage, but others got fed up after 12-20 years of marriage and 5-7 children.

What a strange thing to happen when there is such much support and so much “We are family!” feeling...

Some people who noticed this high divorce rate remarked that the community didn’t have a firm hashkafah and therefore lacked the stability a firm hashkafah gives. And that can be true. And the rav to whom they were wholeheartedly committed lived in a faraway city, so he wasn't right there with them, which can be a problem.

But to this extent?

No, it didn't make sense that hashkafah or the rav's location were the major factors in the high rate of shalom bayis issues.

What came out over time was how involved they were in each other’s personal lives. They knew so much of each other’s marriages. Open discussions took place with each spouse facing an entire community of shalom bayit advisers.

This is a problem because the halachot of lashon hara do not allow this at all.

Both spouses openly discussed their issues with—well, everybody.

So everyone knew all the dirt on everyone else.

And some of the couples were getting divorced over problems that were indeed problems, but not the kind of thing you’d necessarily get divorced over. And not problematic enough to divorce in your son’s bar mitzvah year (as happened in one case).

Revenge & Abandonment

The other thing was the antagonism of the divorcing wives toward their husbands.

It was like there was all this repressed resentment and anger suddenly bubbling to the surface.

By the way, I’ve known women who’ve gotten divorced from verbally or emotionally abusive husbands and these women just want him OUT. They never want to see, speak, or deal with him again.

That’s normal, as far as I can tell.

And in this community, many of the women were very angry at their husbands. And yes, some for good reason.

But one even developed an elaborate plan of how she was going to torment her husband via the court system after their divorce. She wanted to milk him for all he was worth—which puzzled everyone else because he’d been in kollel the entire time and had no money of his own.

So what was she trying to do? It was obviously pure animosity on her part because there was nothing there to milk.

Yet that elaborate plan of vengeance didn't seem like a normal reaction. Like I said, most suffering wives want him out of their lives; they don't want to keep up after him with all sorts of nasty plots.

Also, while she had a lot to complain about him, he didn’t have much to complain about her. In fact, he even justified her complaints about him (like he knew he wasn’t very communicative within the marriage). But admitted that he wasn’t sure how to be more communicative with his wife. He said that he just froze up when dealing with her—something he didn’t do with other people and he honestly didn’t know why nor how to solve the problem.

Fortunately, Hashem put a stop to the wife’s plans for revenge by causing her to remarry within months after the divorce and then having that marriage go on the rocks, which between that and dealing with her kids and the stepkids, absorbed her too much to carry out revenge.

Her ex-husband kept quietly about his business and within a year, was remarried to a very nice divorcee with her own home, several young children, her ex-husband totally out of the picture—a very nice woman who wanted nothing more than to support a husband in learning.

And she was fine with the fact that he was quiet as long as he was nice (which he was).

Other women just picked up the kids and went back to Europe or North America, stranding their Israeli husband as an older and suddenly childless bachelor.

In one case, I think he deserved to be abandoned because he’d consistently made poor decisions to the detriment of their children (among other stuff)—and he refused to improve.

But in another case, it seemed more vindictive--especially when she came back after a few years to dump the child on the ex-husband and go back to her life (and new marriage) in chutz l'Aretz.

(Fortunately, the ex-husband was very happy to have his child back in his life again, even though the adjustment was a challenge.)

So you had avenging or abandoning wives in situations that didn't seem to really call for such measures. (Although like I said, it seems that at least one husband deserved to be abandoned.)

What are the Real Laws of Love & Honor?

But the point is that this community perceives itself as oh-so close and supportive.

Yet just under the surface, there are a lot of shalom bayit problems. (And not all those suffering unhappy marriages get divorced.)

So the community has support and unity (at least on the surface), but the actual married couples don't?

Weird.

I can’t help thinking that with all the emphasis halacha places on respecting one’s spouse and not exposing the flaws of family members—especially family members that halacha obligates us to honor, such as parents, parents-in-law, and our spouse—that this well-meaning community is blocking itself from blessing.

We know that refraining from lashon hara earns us unimaginable light in worlds we cannot see. But we also know that indulging in lashon hara brings about the opposite: terrible din.

It was really the Pele Yoetz that brought the severity of this to my attention.

Despite modern society’s penchant for joking around about one’s husband or wife or in-laws, the Pele Yoetz strongly opposes any kind of negative comment about people you’re commanded to honor.

Today, it’s amazing how much dirt people spill about their spouse while chalking it up to “normal” masculine or feminine behavior—as if that makes exposing it okay.

People do the same about their in-laws—again, downplaying their lashon hara as talking generally about normal tensions with in-laws.

But the Pele Yoetz exhorts us to do the opposite.

He says we should davka cover up the flaws of our spouses and in-laws (both parents-in-law and children-in-law) and praise them to others.

Why? Not because we are big fake liars, but because that is the proper thing to do according to him.

Let’s look at what other truly great people say about all this:

Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender explains in Words of Faith, page 376 (emphasis mine):

"Meaning that the tikkun of sin is only through confessing before Hashem Yisbarach or the true Tzaddik.

For few are those who are able to hear confession without it causing the confessor to be discouraged."

This means there is no tikkun in talking about your problems to others. Yes, it's permissible at times. But if you want to actually be fixed, you need to turn to the Original Source of your flaws and problems.

Rav Bender further advises (page 373):

"Know this:

To join a friend in personal matters, especially in sins and iniquities, does much damage."

That's for the listener. Unless there's a real halachic to'elet (beneficial purpose) to listening, hearing out another's personal stuff and flaws "does real damage."

And then on page 376, he cautions listeners against "digging after mistakes, even if you mean well." He advises such well-intentioned listeners:

"In practice:

Do not desire to know another's personal matters for it is only the work of the yetzer and his seductions.

And it is the complete opposite of why friends bond."

Oho!

And in a nutshell, that explains why this seemingly close-knit community wasn’t actually close at all: “…it is the complete opposite of why friends bond” and "the work of the yetzer."

Oops!

In efforts to help each other and figure out what people needed to do to improve their situations, they ended up joining "a friend in personal matters" and "digging after mistakes."

And this is a very easy mistake for a well-meaning & compassionate person to make.

How would we know without Rav Bender to lay it out for us?

On page 4 of The Laws of Interpersonal Relationships: Practical Applications in Business, Home, and Society, Rav Ehrman elucidates the mitzvah to love one’s fellow by the following principles (culled from the Ramban, Shaar Hatevunah, Shemirat Halashon, and the Gemara)

Speak only in a positive manner about others.
Show the same concern for their honor as your own.
Camouflage their flaws in same way you’d want them to camouflage your own flaws.
Be as protective of their money and property as you are of your own.
Assist them to the best of your ability (emotional, financial, and physical support whether large or small)
Try to diffuse a person’s anger at another.

Dissecting your spouse’s flaws with an entire community (or inserting them into casual conversation with friends or relatives) obviously violates the above precepts, especially the first three.

Having said all that, if your spouse is awful in some way and you need outside help, then halacha allows you to get it.

Just as one example: The Pele Yoetz praised as “a great mitzvah” the act of assisting a Jewish woman married to a “snake” to get divorced if she wanted.

It’s admittedly to difficult to observe the above principles because our society deems acceptable the mentioning the flaws of people we’re obligated to honor and love—as long as we do it humorously or we hide behind the veneer of gender stereotypes or in-law stereotypes.

Look, I didn’t know it either until I read the above books.

Live and learn, eh?

So hopefully, we’ll all keep learning and improving—and be the kinds of Jews defined by Chazal and not by society.

Me, too.

May we all succeed in living up to the dictates of the Torah.

Related Posts:
The Real Purpose of a Home & Family
The Best Marriage Counseling: Tefillah, Teshuvah, and Tzedakah
The Pele Yoetz on Family Relationships: When Honesty Stops being a Virtue, Part II

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The Best Marriage Counseling: Tefillah, Teshuvah, Tzedakah

10/12/2018

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As we all know, there are socially acceptable forms of lashon hara.

Halacha forbids these types of lashon hara, but cognitive dissonance persuades us that it’s okay.

One form that personally tripped me up (and has tripped up a lot of well-meaning people) is thinking it’s okay to confide in a person or allow someone to confide in you under the impression that it’s l’to’elet (for a beneficial purpose) as it allows the speaker to purge pain from his or her heart, hopefully leading to forgiveness or yishuv hadaat or something beneficial like that.

This is a particularly tricky situation because if you’re the speaker, you’re likely in great pain and don’t mean to slander anyone, but simply cannot deal with the overwhelming anguish.

If you’re the listener, you certainly don’t want to add to the person’s pain. Your friend already feels invalidated and devastated—do you really want to make things worse by shutting your friend down?

Possibly, you’re also afraid of your friend not forgiving you or hating you for being holier-than-thou (in their eyes, anyway) and rejecting his or her needs in a time of overwhelming pain.

If we feel like Hashem is a Caring Listener Who Can & Wants to Help, we'll find that it's much more beneficial and halachically correct to pour out our pain to Hashem rather than another person.

But for many people, making the transition from a human confidant to the Divine Confidant presents a big challenge.

So what happens when we can't make the leap, even when halacha insists on it?

The Ongoing Chain of Confidants

Over time, I started to notice that pouring out my heart to someone became a coin-toss: Would they say the right thing or not? Would I feel better...or worse after having made myself so emotionally vulnerable?

And then it’s easy to get into the cycle of needing to turn to yet another confidant after the previous confidant responded incorrectly (or simply not satisfyingly enough)—in addition to the initial need to vent about the situation that upset you in the first place.

On the listener’s side, I slowly began to notice that not only was I not the person’s only confidant (a prerequisite of lashon hara l’to’elet), but I was even one in a long chain (or small group) of confidants.

For long-standing relationship problems with someone unavoidable (a spouse, sibling, parent, parent-in-law, co-worker, neighbor, etc.), the chain of lashon hara seemingly l’to’elet became an unintentional pattern.

Friends, relatives, rabbis, rebbetzins, advisers, and therapists—ultimately, no one could ever help the sufferer enough.

One friend of mine even bragged to me that she’d been to every frum female therapist in Jerusalem and no one was able to help her. Maybe it validated her to know that her husband was so impossible. If he was such a hopeless case, then that absolved her of any responsibility in the marriage.

Frankly, I don’t think she visited every frum female therapist in Jerusalem, but she certainly made the rounds of friends, therapists, rabbanim, advisers, etc. And her husband is certainly so emotionally unhealthy, he is unlikely to ever became a decent husband or father.

However, all her outpouring never provided her with more than temporary relief.

Furthermore, it stopped her from doing the inner work she needed to do on herself (aside from her husband, she had flaws that needed fixing—just like the rest of us). She also didn’t invest in helping her children survive a dysfunctional home.

And unlike a lot of well-meaning people, I don’t automatically think that divorce is always possible or beneficial with an extremely dysfunctional spouse. (It depends.) Nor do I think that a mother is able to totally overcome the dysfunctional influence of the father (yet another well-meaning yet misleading fallacy) despite her best efforts.

But in that friend's case, one after another child has been developing a mental illness (with a couple of them even spending time in a mental hospital), suffering a divorce (or two), going off the derech, etc.

So while a mother can’t completely save her children from their father’s negative influence, she can still give it her best shot and, with Hashem’s Help, prevent them from suffering as much as this particular family is suffering.

In retrospect, as cold as this may sound, I feel like all of us who let her cry on our shoulders not only didn’t help, but may have even tripped her up. Had she had no confidant, she’d likely have turned to Hashem. In fact, I noticed that she loved saying Tehillim and the look on her face as she said Tehillim was very special and inspiring.

(Although to be honest, nowadays people who feel lost tend to turn to long-term medication & not prayer or middot work—although I’m sure that some people taking medication long-term also work on their middot and turn to Hashem in personal prayer.)

A major reason why no one was able to help her was because she wanted validation ONLY. She did not want to do the deeper work.

Compassion & Clarity

And I don’t automatically think badly of anyone who indulges in the lashon hara pattern described above. If they were talking about their spouse, all the people I knew were in genuine pain and enduring real suffering. They weren't trying to slander their spouse, but simply find relief for their pain.

(But in cases with a neighbor, an in-law, or an ex-spouse—or a soon-to-be-ex-spouse, there was sometimes an element of wanting to ruin their name, even if that motivation was not obvious. And sometimes the speaker herself wasn't aware of her underlying motivations.)

Also, not to be too graphic, but if the husband is very dysfunctional, then physical intimacy becomes something that destroys a woman on the nefesh-level. Women are more sensitive in that area and their nefesh-pain is very real.

But practically speaking, many people in very painful situations don’t observe the halachos of lashon hara l’toe’let.

And despite all the compassion and understanding of why they feel and respond as they do, I can’t help noticing that there’s no bracha for them in their outpourings.

Is It Worth It?

Recently, I read that marriage counseling often doesn’t help. The writer pointed out that nearly all divorced couples had been to a marriage therapist!

And that really got me thinking…

Every divorced couple I know (if I know their situation) has traipsed through the maze of shalom bayit advisers and therapy.

I once asked a marriage counselor about her track record. She was a very straight-forward person who had no problem admitting that while she had helped some couples, she'd lost track of the majority (meaning, she doesn’t know if they got divorced or worked things out or are still the same) or else they got divorced.

So the percentage of couples she'd actually helped achieve shalom bayis was small.

Furthermore, all the couples I know who aren’t divorced but aren’t happily married either ALSO traipsed through the maze of shalom bayit advisers and therapy—and they STILL haven’t achieved shalom bayit.

On the other hand, I knew someone who implied that she and her husband used to not get along so well, but they both (especially she) engaged in lots of prayer and intense middot work and now they get along much better. She seems to like her husband a lot now.

Hmm…

I asked my husband about this. (He knows a lot more people and different kinds of people than I do). After mulling it over, he realized that he doesn’t know one couple helped by therapy. And indeed, all the divorced couples he knew had been to therapy or some kind of couples counseling prior to their divorce in an effort to save their marriage.

This includes, by the way, people who regret the divorce later.

Meaning, maybe therapy can help people who really need to get divorced do so more peaceably. But why didn't it help people who ended up regretting their divorce?

Now, maybe you do know people for whom therapy saved their marriage. (After all, the therapist above noted that she had helped several couples.)

But how many?

Between the two of us, my husband and I couldn't even come up with one couple whose shalom bayis was in the merit of a therapist or adviser.

Just shalom bayis. Forget about divorce.

Between the 2 of us, do we know even one couple whose shalom bayis is due to therapy?

Basically, it seems that couples who get along do so on their own. And couples who don't aren't much helped (or helped at all) by outsiders.

Needless to say, there can be legitimate reasons for this. A truly dysfunctional spouse will usually not be helped by any kind of counseling. Abusive people are almost incurable. So the marriage either ends in divorce or just keeps straggling along with no resolution.

And any good therapist/shalom bayit adviser will tell you that they can’t perform magic; the results are really up to the people involved. How much are they willing to listen to constructive criticism? How much are they willing to work on themselves?

And if only one spouse is willing to do the work, while the other spouse refuses?

Sometimes divorce is the better option, sometimes it isn't. It depends.

Also, I don’t know what the prices are now, but back when many people I knew were going for marriage therapy, prices ran between 300NIS-700NIS a session. You could easily fork over your entire month’s salary to a therapist.

And should you? What if the result is simply to discover that your spouse suffers a personality disorder or something else that can't be helped? What if you discover that your only choices are to either continue in an unhappy marriage or to go through a stressful divorce with all that follows in sharing child custody, remarriage, and so on?

Is the investment of 1000s of shekels worth it?

Now, maybe it IS worth it. If it's worth 1000s of shekels, then it's worth 1000s of shekels! Fine & good.

But what if it's not? (And for many people, it seems like it's not.)

Teshuvah, Tefillah, Tzedakah

Very gradually, I started to realize that if you’re desperate enough to fork over that much money, best give it to a genuinely needy Jew or organization and ask Hashem that in this zechut, He should help you have a good relationship with your spouse/relative/co-worker/boss/neighbor.

In addition, talk over your middot and your pain with Hashem. After all, He is the Source of it all. Human beings have blind spots. Your therapist/adviser could easily miss something important or say the wrong thing or offer the wrong guidance.

And the big thing? Toxic shame.

How many times have you heard someone rant over something their therapist or adviser said while you’re biting your lip and thinking, "But it’s kind of TRUE. You DO need to work on that"?

Yeah, sometimes they're ranting because the therapist or adviser was SO wrong and SO off.

But sometimes they're ranting because the constructive criticism hit too close to home--and they don't realize it because toxic shame blinds them to their underlying motivation or flaw.

Yet with Hashem, all you’re doing is saying, “You gave me this ugly middah. You gave me this destructive behavior. It’s from You! Please take it back because I sure as heck don’t want it!”

With Hashem, there’s no need for toxic shame because your bad middot and behaviors don’t reflect on the Real You at your neshamah level—Hashem gave you those tendencies.

Whether He plugged them into your inborn nature or you developed them from your God-given life experiences, Hashem caused all that to happen.

He already knows the truth about you, so you’ve nothing to hide.

And getting back to the original point:
If you really do need to pour out your heart (or listen to someone pour out their heart), then it’s important to be aware of the actual halacha.

(I’m cringing a bit as I write this because it’s so hard when someone is in a lot of pain to even attempt to enforce halachic boundaries—no matter how gently and compassionately you do so. But if you know that you’re not their only confidant and you know that you’re not more than a temporary relief—or maybe you’re even a crutch that they’re unconsciously using instead of turning to Hashem--well then…)

Related posts:
Listening to Lashon Hara to Calm a Spouse (Hamodia)
Can I Vent My Pain to My Sister? (Hamodia)
Emuna: The Only Choice (Dr. Zev Ballen)
The Pele Yoetz on Talking about Various Family Members
Our Latest Research Indicates that Everything We've Been Promoting Based on Our Latest Research...is Wrong!
Insights into Lashon Hara about Yourself
How to Speak or Listen to the Lashon Hara of Hurt Feelings

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The Real Purpose of a Home & Family

5/12/2018

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Several years ago, Hamodia printed a column in which Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller contrasted 2 different mother-daughter relationships.

In one scenario, the mother allowed her teenage daughter to pour out her heart and thoughts with no restraint. The daughter discussed her perceptions of other people using their names and any other identifying information without a second thought. Both the mother and the daughter viewed their relationship as “close” and one of sharing.

Yet Rebbetzin Heller noted that a relationship based on lashon hara doesn’t possess genuine intimacy.

In contrast, she described a relationship in which the mother and daughter felt close to each other, but the mother allowed the daughter to discuss others only when necessary and without names or any other identifying details (unless there was a to’elet—a beneficial purpose—in revealing these details).

This revolutionary (for me at that time) idea struck me because I hadn’t considered that placing boundaries on a child’s conversation could still facilitate a close relationship with that child. My own children were still young at that time and Hashem led me to read this column before I needed to—which was great preparation for my future relationship with them.

Even now, it’s surprising how much a child can confide without telling me anything more identifying than “a classmate of mine” or “a kid in the neighborhood.”

Yes, sometimes names and identifying details need to be revealed, but not usually. And even when the child can’t avoid telling you who’s bothering them, the other laws of lashon hara l’to’elet need to be observed.

There are no hard-and-fast rules about this. Age, for example, can be a deciding factor. Child-parent discussions involving lashon hara l’to’elet occur at the parents’ discretion and since it’s impossible to be perfect about this, you just give it your best shot based on whatever knowledge you have of the situation and the halacha.

But I’d grown up with the modern child psychology that children need all their feelings validated and that any lashon hara they spoke was automatically l’to’elet because a child “needs” that outlet in the parent.

However, one thing that Judaism (and Rebbetzin Heller’s column) emphasizes is how the home is really training ground to bring out your child’s soul-potential.

Our job as parents is to train the child to be the best he or she can be and consequently earn the best Olam Haba possible.

The only way to do this is to do the following:

First, as parents, work on our own middot.
Secondly, to train our children to adhere to halacha.

And while I knew that “being friends” with one’s child is not good for them, I had a harder time breaking away from the idea that children need to be happy and a parent needs to build a child’s self-esteem. It didn’t help that many very well-meaning chinuch “experts” opined that a happy child-parent relationship was necessary to prevent children from going off the derech. The child needed to feel loved and also love the parents.

It sounds so nice and logical. What could be the problem with it?

Doing What's REALLY Best for Your Child

As one rebbetzin explained to me in my early years of motherhood, a parent cannot focus on making a child happy.

A parent must focus on doing what’s best for the child, regardless of how hard that is for the parent or how much the child dislikes it. Determining parental success or failure by how the child feels about the parent creates a recipe for disaster.
(You can see more details about that exchange in Allowing Others Their Own Life Journey.)

Also, what I didn't realize back then was that self-esteem cannot be given, it can only be earned by a person through making moral choices and taking the higher road (even if it's only a tad higher than the road everyone else is taking).

In other words, parents can teach their children how to earn & cultivate their own self-esteem, but parents cannot give their children self-esteem.

And yeah, I'm still cleaning up the mess from having gone with the child psychology of the 80s & 90s.

(Fortunately, Hashem helps.)

Furthermore, it's not hard to notice that many children with seemingly close & friendly relationships with their parents grew distant or even angry at their parents later while many strictly raised children ended up becoming close and appreciative of their parents later.

Yes, parents whose strictness is based on being control-freaks or who are too lazy to say yes when saying no is easier have given firm boundaries & high expectations a bad reputation. But those parents aren’t doing what’s best for the child; they are simply indulging their own bad middot and ignoring their children’s feelings for their own convenience while pretending they are being responsible parents.

But to parent wisely, the only question that needs to be answered is:
What is BEST for my child?

Not what makes me, the parent, happier. And not what makes the child happier. But is BEST?

This actually takes enormous self-discipline, self-honesty, and most of all:
Copious prayer.

And it is the real challenge of parenthood.

May we all succeed in raising our children according to their derech and may both we and Hashem receive a lot of nachat d'kedushah from them.

Here are some helpful halachic Q&A regarding lashon hara between parents and children:
hamodia.com/columns/mishmeres-hasholom-ask-rav-151/
https://hamodia.com/columns/mishmeres-hasholom-ask-rav-140/
https://hamodia.com/columns/mishmeres-hasholom-ask-rav-137/
https://hamodia.com/columns/mishmeres-hasholom-ask-rav-136/

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Part II: When Honesty Stops Being a Virtue

10/10/2018

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Back to Part I

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

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

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

In other words:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being "Real" -- for Real

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

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

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

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

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

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

You simply emphasize the good.

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

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

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

When Separation is Good

And of course, there are the little known halachot of keeping away from people who repeatedly sin, display bad middot, etc., so as not to be influenced or harmed by them.

The Pele Yoetz himself urges family members who cannot get along (i.e., adult children & their parents, children-in-law & parents-in-law) to refrain from spending much time together and even from sitting together at gatherings, if necessary.

This separation from impossibly difficult situations includes helping a very abused wife get divorced if she so desires, calling this divorce assistance “a very great mitzvah” -- meaning, you'll increase your reward in Olam Haba by helping her.

On the other hand, the Pele Yoetz emphasizes that such relationships are from Hashem. So therefore: Rising to the occasion accrues generous reward (though he doesn’t promise you’ll see that reward in this lifetime).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No More Blame Game

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

“The Sages spoke only of one whom the controversy pursues him. And he flees from it and the peace flees from him and he runs after it [i.e the peace]—THAT is called a ‘rodef shalom—a pursuer of peace’ and his deeds will be praised at the gates.”

Several times, the Pele Yoetz makes the point that being a rodef shalom—a pursuer of peace—implies behaving peacefully with truly difficult people. Else why do you need to pursue peace? If a person is lovely, then peace exists on its own—no need to go running after it.

So he definitely understands that some people are difficult and that maintaining your middot with them is very difficult.

How does that all connect with lashon hara?

Our most difficult and painful relationships are exactly what trip us up, spiritually speaking.

There is opportunity for great loss—or great gain, depending on our response.

Lashon hara for no halachically permissible reason entails spiritual loss.

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

So among our more intricate family relationships, the Pele Yoetz has a lot to say.

Below, you’ll see some of the advice he offers both spouses and in-laws.

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

General Advice for Relatives

The Pele Yoetz insists on exemplary behavior on the part of spouses and in-laws even toward a spouse or child/parent-in-law who is awful.

First, he reminds both husbands and wives:
Love of the soul is the most important love of all, so the spiritual goals for you & your spouse need to be foremost at all times.

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

Ladies First: Advice for Wives

The Pele Yoetz says to wives:

It is difficult to offer general advice because not all people think alike.

Rather, based on the nature of her husband, a wife needs to conduct herself according to his character with grace and insightful understanding in order that their marriage should be successful in love and companionship.

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

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

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

Anyway the Pele Yoetz also advises wives:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

Why?

Because the unpleasant incident or situation is from Hashem. Therefore, there is some benefit to it, like an atonement or middah-building exercise, or whatever.

Unlike modern-day shalom bayis advisers, the Pele Yoetz doesn’t focus on pleasing the husband nor does he start engage in exaggerated generalizations about men in an effort to blindside the wife into submission.

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

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

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

He wants a wife to rise above her natural inclinations in the face of such behavior—just as he encourages EVERY person (including the husbands of dysfunctional wives) to respond to ALL insulting or dishonorable behavior with dignity.

(Meaning, his mussar isn’t just for wives or even just for marriage, but a general principle applicable to all interpersonal dealings.)

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

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

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

A wife should pray for her husband.

Finally, he insists that:

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

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

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

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

How does this connect to lashon hara?

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

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

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

Finally, the Pele Yoetz advises an abused wife:

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

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

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

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

Advice for Husbands

Likewise, the Pele Yoetz insists that husbands behave with exemplary middot toward even a difficult and wicked wife, all the more so toward a regular wife.

And again, he repeatedly emphasizes the importance of doing so for Hashem’s Sake.

And he holds the husband of a dysfunctional wife to much higher standards than he holds the wife of a dysfunctional husband.

“A difficult wife requires determination to behave toward her with peace and affection in honor of the Shechinah.”

If a man fails in the test of a difficult or evil wife, then you end up with 2 Gehinnoms: Suffering in This World because of your miserable marriage & suffering in the Next World because you failed your challenge (by responding in kind or indulging in escapist activities or whatever)

That’s pretty heavy, isn’t it?

The Pele Yoetz insists that in general, there’s an obligation of “mighty love--ahavah azah” between a husband and wife, repeating what’s written in Yevamot 62b, that a husband is obliged to love his wife as himself and to honor her more than himself.

He explains:

The obligation to be sensitive is cast upon you more than her as Baba Metzia 59a says: "A husband must always be cautious in regards to hurting his wife because since her tears are near, so is her pain.”

I know, I know.

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

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

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

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

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

Thank God we have our Sages to open our minds to the truth!

Anyway, the Pele Yoetz insists even if a wife:

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

--nonetheless, a husband should never:

become angry with his wife
shame her
curse her
strike her

Furthermore, the Pele Yoetz insists that a husband:

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

Why?

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

Again, the Pele Yoetz avoids being superficial about things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advice for Children-in-Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interestingly, the Pele Yoetz states that:

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

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

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

For Parents-in-Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advice for Parents Still Raising Children

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

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

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

Why "Getting It Off Your Chest" Ultimately Doesn't Help

Much of the above advice is anathema to Western mores. With the modern emphasis on standing up for yourself and your rights, being “honest” and “real” about everything, “being yourself,” and much more, the Pele Yoetz’s advice seems backwards and constraining.

Yet over the years, I cannot deny that all the people who publicize the faults of their spouses or in-laws (children or parents) receive no good from this and don’t even experience real relief.

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

I’m really sympathetic to those whose pain leaks out because living with a horrible spouse infects your very being and every aspect of life.

Particularly for women, who are likened to the Moon which receives light from the Sun (i.e. her husband), a woman whose husband maltreats or neglects her genuinely feels like a cold dead rock suspended in a dark airless Universe.

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

One woman I knew married to an emotionally abusive man even became suicidal at one point—despite frequently leaking out her pain and resentment to others, despite therapy and despite consultation with rabbis. All the outpourings and/or comments never helped.

Whether it’s via humorous jabs or sad comments or even tearful admissions, I’ve seen that it really doesn’t help and any relief is only temporary. (Though relief isn’t guaranteed because sometimes the listener responds in a way the speaker finds hurtful.)

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

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

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

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

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

So to sum up:

Painful relationships are challenges from Hashem.
Countering painful relationships with good middot earns you amazing Heavenly reward.
Countering painful relationships with bad middot earns you Gehinnom in both This World & the Next
Lashon hara offers temporary relief (if that), but no more.
Lashon hara without toelet (even when justified) can make things worse for you, both in This World and the Next.
We acknowledge the very real pain of painful relationships, but we don't use that as an excuse to transgress.
Your good behavior can (maybe) influence the other positively.
Your good behavior sometimes still can't influence the other to behave better or see the good in you.
Act for Hashem's Sake, not for the sake of the other person's ego desires and dysfunction.
"It is difficult to offer general advice because not all people think alike."

Back to Part I

May this post be considered a kaparah for my own falls into lashon hara and may we all be protected from any sins of the tongue.

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The Lashon Hara Deception

Turning Ideas into Action

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Revenge & Abandonment

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The Ongoing Chain of Confidants

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Is It Worth It?

Teshuvah, Tefillah, Tzedakah

Doing What's REALLY Best for Your Child

Being "Real" -- for Real

When Separation is Good

No More Blame Game

General Advice for Relatives

Ladies First: Advice for Wives

Advice for Husbands

Advice for Children-in-Law

For Parents-in-Law

Advice for Parents Still Raising Children

Why "Getting It Off Your Chest" Ultimately Doesn't Help

Myrtle Rising

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