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

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

And you'll do so EVERY SINGLE DARN TIME.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what gives?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes, you might find yourself feeling bad about things you used to not even notice, or things you usually even feel good about.

You might start remembering long forgotten indiscretions you'd once considered excusable, insignificant, funny, or clever...and realize with a gulp that they were actually appallingly nasty or immoral behaviors to have engaged in.

At this point, many people do one of 2 things:

• Try to re-bury it all as fast as possible by forgetting it or dismissing it as "not that bad" or blaming another person or situation.
• Indulge in self-denigration and self-loathing, and generally feeling bad in an attempt at fake teshuvah.

But feeling bad about something bad you have done is really good!

It shows that your values are changing -- and changing for the better.

For example, it means that you're starting realize that:

• Aiming snipey little barbs at people really isn't clever.
• Mocking others in the wittiest way really isn't funny.
• That act of petty revenge? It actually wasn't so petty or even justified.
• Angry outbursts really aren't so easily forgotten or defensible.
• Chronic lateness isn't actually so excusable or benign.
• [Fill in your own personal "uh-oh!" moment here.]

And that's a very good sign.

Once you start realizing how bad a certain middah is, you're less likely to indulge it.

Not only that, you start feeling antsy about it just sitting on your cheshbon. Despite other feelings of dread or discomfort, the urge to apologize, reimburse or rectify start to prick at you.

These are real feelings of teshuvah: remorse and rectification.

It's very important not to get bogged down in just feeling bad, which is sharpest detour AWAY from teshuvah. People who just feel bad usually don't do much work on their middot.

They just end up drowning in self-loathing.

So once you start feeling bad, please also start feeling good about feeling bad.

It means you're changing for the better.

It means you've started internalizing true ideas of right and wrong.

You're exchanging lies for the Truth.

You're on your way to becoming a deeper, wiser, and better person.

And that's really good!
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For more on why self-denigration & self-hatred is so disingenuous:
5 Reasons Why Self-Denigration Never Helps

We're still not long after Pesach (even if it feels like Pesach was ages ago) and now we're heading into Shavuot to receive the Torah and solidify ourselves as a committed Nation of God after the initial Redemption from the spiritual darkness of Mitzrayim.

Pesach brings to fore the core of the Jewish people and Judaism. It's all about birth, rebirth, sea-splitting emuna, and Redemption.

Yet the destructive Erev Rav forces quietly tear at the edges of even this most transformative earth-shattering process.

Authentic Jewish tradition tells us that a mind-boggling 80% of Jews in Egypt didn't survive the Plague of Darkness.

Astoundingly, they didn't want to leave the slavery of Egypt.

Ultimately, only 20% made it to the Exodus.
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Recently, I was pondering the movement within non-Torah Judaism that refers to itself as "Conservative." (Boy, is that a misnomer!) I grew up within this movement and this was the community and synagogue to which we belonged.

And I was thinking about how much destruction they've wrought upon the Jewish people, all under the cheerful auspices of "progress" and good intentions.

What's insidious about the leaders within this movement is that they're knowledgeable enough to present their fallacious views in a convincing manner to Jews who aren't knowledgeable at all or only minimally knowledgeable.

Recently, Batya Medad blogged about her experiences with this movement (among other topics), saying:
"The vast majority [of Jewish teachers] were actually strictly practicing and believing Orthodox Jews, but they had to dilute their teaching to suit the Conservative theology and the even less Jewishly committed parents, who would have had them fired or pull their kids out of the school if there were signs of 'brainwashing'."

[Emphasis mine -- MR]

This isn't progressive, but dishonestly restrictive -- exactly what the Conservative movement's adherents accuse Torah-true Judaism of being.

A boy I grew up with became a Conservative rabbi a few years ago. This boy possesses a very nice personality; he's warm and caring, and also enthusiastic about Judaism. He attended the rabbinical school of this movement where the indoctrination is very skillful and convincing, and he's brought his theories and enthusiasm to his own congregation.

This is heartbreaking because such a precious Jew could do so much good within the Torah world, but it's very hard to untangle such indoctrinated Jews from the Conservative movement's finely woven heresies. And I've known several Conservative rabbis with this same kind of personality. They care about their congregants and have genuine affection for a lot that Judaism has to offer.

Why? Because Judaism is genuinely beautifully and the thirst within the Jewish soul is only slaked by Torah spirituality.

(Not to mention the Conservative rabbis who are merely good administrators and enjoy the nice home provided by the congregation in addition to the 6-figure salary common among such communities, particularly the larger communities. And yes, I'm aware that some Orthodox rabbis fit this description too.)

To make things more confusing, Conservative rabbis near major Orthodox areas (like New York) practice Judaism similarly to many Modern Orthodox Jews. In fact, I was shocked when one Conservative rabbi told me that he required his female converts to commit to mikveh and taharat hamishpach (the laws of Family Purity) after marriage, in addition to Shabbat and kashrut. (Taharat hamishpacha isn't generally valued or even know about within the Conservative movement.)

But in many parts of the US, the Conservative rabbi and cantor may be the only people who don't drive on Shabbat. Yet even th rabbi and cantor's Shabbat observance is lacking. With no respect for the millennia of interpretation by Sages possessing the intellectual level of Albert Einstein, the Conservative leaders simply pick and choose according to convenience.

God is a far and distant figure subject to their own imagination. And they deal with the personalities within Torah according to their own grasp, meaning that they bring all the greatest of the greats down to their own level (which is low indeed) instead of striving to lift themselves to follow the example of the Patriarchs, Matriarchs, and Prophets.

The result is that there is nothing to aspire to -- except whatever the lowly rabbi or Conservative teacher determines according to his or her own ego and personality limitations.

I remember one Conservative rabbi who rarely even made it to Shacharit services during the week; he just showed up on Shabbat (a "once-a-week" Jew!). Usually, there wasn't even a minyan (even when including the women) for weekday Shacharit despite its location in a predominantly Jewish area. The elderly guys complained about how "the rabbi doesn't even show up for Shacharis! What kind of a rabbi is that?"

A Conservative rabbi, apparently. With a 6-figure salary.

It's also common within the Conservative movement to pick a scene or person from Tanach, ignore wholesale the millennia of Sagely scholarship (mostly because they lack the skills to study it or understand it), then distort it so that the Conservative Jew ends up more religiously observant than, say, Avraham Avinu. (And yes, this is a real example. They believe that Avraham Avinu did not keep kosher, but the Conservative Jew does, so look who's the frummer Yid!) And that's how they justify their lack of observance.

It's incredibly egocentric.

More evidence of the great Conservative ego is their attitude toward women and women's mitzvot.

Their great hero, Solomon Schechter, initially dismissed the eloquently written bilingual (maybe even trilingual?) journal of Gluckel of Hameln simply because it focused on women's daily tasks (in addition to her Torah knowledge, business acumen, high intergrity, and much more).

Also, it's telling how they dump women's mitzvot to the side while promoting men's mitzvot. Women are encouraged to don tallis and tefillin, yet men aren't encouraged to light Shabbat candles, even though they are halachically obligated to if a female isn't lighting for them. In realtime, you see girls in their youth groups wearing tallis, tefillin, and kippahs, but almost none of the boys light Shabbat candles.

And I already mentioned their attitude toward taharat mishpacha...

Apparently, progressive "enlightened" men can't let inconvenient laws get in the way of their taavos.

I remember a Conservative rabbi who got booted out for having an affair with his secretary. This devastated me as a child because I'd liked her so much and couldn't believe such a warm-hearted nice lady could've done such a terrible thing. I remember impassionedly pleading something to parents like, "Are you sure it was with her and not with someone else? Are SURE it was her?"

Furthermore, go to some Conservative synagogues, and you'll see young woman reading from the Torah surrounded by a group of oh-so "helpful" and attentive middle-aged men who were probably too pathetic and Woody Allen-looking to get anywhere near attractive girls in their younger years. Who knew a girl needed so many gabbais to help her out?

Girls also help lead parts of the service.

But where are the boys? Or the middle-aged women?

Teenage and college-age girls are more fun to watch on the pulpit, I guess. (Although these helpful old guys will insist that girls are simply more interested and "more mature." How convenient.)

By the way, I heard this word all the time among the male congregants to describe teenage girls: mature.

Many Conservative rabbis and their male adherents enthuse over young female participation, and are oh-so encouraging of young females while lauding young female "maturity," all under the auspices of "progression."

It's just a load of weasel words, quite frankly.

They care about women's issues in the way that feminism cares about women's issues, which means that it's all about getting women to emulate negative male traits and valuing traditionally male contributions over traditionally female contributions (i.e. careers are in, but childbearing is out, etc.).

Note: The above may not be the case at every single Conservative synagogue across the entire 50 states. But what I wrote of aren't outliers either, despite what a Conservative adherent will otherwise insist.

While conversing with a Conservative rabbi who required some kind of adherence to the laws of taharat mishpacha for his female converts, he mentioned his experiences in archeology and told of an ancient archeological site indicative of Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael.

"And there was NO evidence of a mikveh!" he proclaimed.

(See? This is yet again an example of how they try to make themselves out to be frummer than our ancestors. "We do mikveh and they didn't! We're more machmir than the Avos!")

"How do you know?" I said. "Maybe you guys missed it. Maybe you just dug around it without even realizing it was there. Anyway, a woman's mikveh was often located a bit away for reasons of modesty."

He frowned as he thought this over, then declared, "No, we excavated pretty thoroughly!"

Knowing the technical difficulties and limitations of excavation, I was highly skeptical regarding the proclaimed thoroughness of their excavation. But I went with it and said, "Was there a natural body of water nearby, like a river or something?"

"Yes," he said.

"Well, maybe they just used that," I said. "I mean, we're talking about a Middle Eastern climate, not a Russian climate." These women also spent most of their years nursing and pregnant, which meant they mostly only needed a mikveh once every year or two. "Maybe they didn't feel the need to carve out a whole mikveh when they had a river right there," I added.

He fell silent for several moments, then said, "Hm."

And this is the really sad thing: At that time, this Conservative rabbi was a highly educated guy with degrees from university and his "rabbinical" seminary while I was just this twentysomething housewife pregnant with my second child and working in a little store part-time while my husband learned in kollel. Yet in an argument centering on his area of expertise, the little newly frum kollel wife bested him within a couple of sentences. Logically speaking, that shouldn't have happened.

But embarrassingly, he still managed to get me in the end.

How? He simply twisted over to another topic and distorted it in a way so that I couldn't recognize what he was talking about (although I was definitely familiar with it), and left me stammering, much to my embarrassment and frustration.

At the time, I hadn't yet read up on the different kinds of tactics utilized to manipulate arguments (strawman arguments, sloganeering, distractions, ad hominem attacks, cherry-picking, etc.), so I wasn't aware of what he was doing and got caught in it.

(If you'd like, you can see the continuation of that conversation in a previous post: How to Distort the Torah: A Guide for Apikorsim and Their Victims.)

The above doesn't even begin to cover the devastation of intermarriage that these Conservative "rabbis" have wrought on the Jewish people.

With all their pseudo-"conversions" of people who are either pressured into it by well-meaning yet  presumptuous Conservative Jewish in-laws or non-Jews who like aspects of Judaism without feeling compelled to commit wholeheartedly or for people who enjoy having the now-coveted status of being a minority, the Conservative "rabbinate" decimated the Jewish people in America.

(And yes, I realize there are also Orthodox rabbis who do not take conversion as seriously as they should and thus produce converts who are ill-prepared and ignorant of important aspects Judaism, and whose status is also questionable.)

Anyway...this year, I received emails from members of my old Conservative community (and the accompanying Reform community) which enthused about the family get-togethers for the Pesach Seders. Some were 50% Jewish. Then one enthused, "We had 13 people at the Seder!"

But only one participant was actually Jewish.

So you had non-Jews cooking up and conducting a whole Pesach Seder and chanting about how God took them out of Egypt (when He didn't), and opening the door for Eliyahu Hanavi to come in and take a sip of wine.

Now on the positive side, these predominantly non-Jewish Seders are likely Hashem's way of getting the basic message across to the one sickly elderly Jew at the table. That Jew at least heard the Haggadah and ate some matzah, so maybe some soul-healing will spark from that.

Anyway, the Conservative leaders are hard to argue with. They cherry-pick their knowledge from a wide array of sources within authentic Judaism, science, political movements, and philosophy. Then they distort things to their perspective, something which they are previously taught to do in their seminaries and classes.

So it's all very ingrained.

Then you have the natural human ego and the leadership resistance to admitting that they're living a lie and giving up their nice home and their 6-figure salary.

It's all too human, of course. Which is exactly why you need traditional authentically Jewish mussar to have any chance of battling problematic character traits like greed, the need for honor, ego, and all that.

I'm not really different than them in that respect. The only real difference between me and them is that Hashem has allowed me to access these traditional authentic Jewish sources with an open mind, and these leaders and adherents do not do so.

Having said that, even an entrenched Conservative Movement leader can still do teshuvah.

That's all.

As I look this over, I'm aware of how biting it will sound to those who don't see the Conservative Movement in the same way.

But I'm looking over a long wide swathe of destruction.

Furthermore, so many Jews in this movement have warm Jewish hearts and shining souls. Yet where their beaming hearts and souls channeled?

Into a meaningless vacuum.

Many of the good adults I knew as a child are aged and dying now.

Or dead.

It pains me that, depending on their situation and life choices, they're dying without ever knowing the real beauty and depth of Torah. They only ever tasted a watered-down version.

They're dying with disillusions and confusion about why their children and congregations are so apathetic to that which was so important to their parents and grandparents.

Many are dying without ever having been in an authentic Jewish marriage.

Some die leaving self-hating assimilated progeny behind them.

Others die without leaving behind them even one Jewish child or grandchild.

And some of these non-Jewish children and grandchildren are even antisemitic (in a goody-goody politically correct way, of course).

Within their seventy, eighty, or ninety years, these precious Jews never do even a moment of teshuvah.

And whose fault is that?
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B'ezrat Hashem, Mashiach will come soon and sort us all out.

He'll gather all the Jewish neshamas out of whatever Galus (Exile) he finds them in and bring us all Home, hopefully enveloped in within Hashem's Great Loving Revealed Compassion.

In the words of Gidon the Judge at his own family's Pesach Seder around 3100 years ago:
"If our forefathers were tzaddikim, then perform a miracle for us in their merit. And if they were reshaim, then just as you performed for them, perform a miracle for us too."

Amen!
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Related posts:
Aliyah, Moving To Israel (Batya Medad's blog post)
Sinking in a Deluge of Quicksand while Dancing the Hora
How to Distort the Torah
True Greatness Hides Itself (more about Gidon the Judge)

In American culture, there is tremendous pressure to be "open and aboveboard" and "honest" about everything.

Doing so is meant to remove stigma and shame, allowing people to receive support and aid for whatever they feel ails them. It's also meant to remedy loneliness by providing comfort and reassurance to anyone secretly suffering the same issues.

Furthermore, being so open about yourself and your struggles/illnesses/addictions theoretically encourages patience and forgiveness on the part of others.

And so people are encouraged to be open about dealing with their own ADHD, depression, bipolar disorder, addictions, eating disorders, abuse, their failings, and much more.

Yet in America's not-so-distant past, even innocent physical ailments were considered private. I remember when, with the intent to provide helpful medical histories, a Southern relative of my parents' generation sent out an email describing general ailments and their onset as suffered by long-gone family members.

Endearingly, she apologized both at the beginning and the end of the email for "getting so personal" and sincerely hoped she hadn't "offended anyone" by going into so many "personal details."

After a lifetime of confessional bombardment, I found her delicacy downright charming.

I remember the big push in the Eighties for alcoholics to come out of the closet and get treatment.

Many did.

But years later, a couple of articles came out questioning the no-holds-barred approach. Former alcoholics discovered it was difficult for others to put the alcoholic's past behind them as readily as the alcoholic had.

After years of sobriety and stability, the self-proclaimed alcoholic no longer centered his life or identity around his former addiction...but others still did.

Furthermore, people sometimes encounter rejection and discouragement when they reveal feelings or experiences that the listener simply cannot handle, which makes the speaker feel even worse.

Needless to say, I don't think we should go back to the times when disabled children were kept out of sight or shipped off to institutions and kept hush-hush.

But I think there's a balance between extremes.

As discussed elsewhere on this blog, Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender strongly discourages revealing too much to friends.

As far as he's concerned, one should only reveal the minimum necessary for a friend to understand where you need chizuk. In return, that friend should provide the following:

• soul-restoring words
• chizuk
• happy talk (cheer you up, maybe?)
• encouraging words
• words of Torah
• doing good (maybe doing practical favors, like loans or babysitting)
• seek your good points and allow you to seek his or her good points
  

I must admit that this has been hard for me after a lifetime of being indoctrinated with how "healthy" it is to pour out your soul and be open and honest about feelings and experiences.

But I'm trying. Like with all spiritual efforts, it's been a bit of seesaw, but I've made some progress, so baruch Hashem for any forward-motion.

In addition, you also develop an unhealthy dependency on others because you get so used to getting things off your chest to another person, rather than God or your diary. You feel like everything that bothers you is a reason for lashon hara l'toelet, despite how the actual halacha defines lashon hara l'toelet.

But keeping things between you and God isn't repression, it's the healthiest form of self-expression and self-expungement.

Watching your mouth also brings more blessing and relief.

Yes, pouring out your heart to a friend can bring temporary relief (IF the friend responds in the way you need), but it tends to be short-term and shallow. It feels good, which keeps you coming back for more. The relief, though momentary, is very real. But then the problems continue.

Judaism says, "Bracha ba'a b'seter" -- "Blessing comes in secret" or in a hidden manner or undercover.

When someone is really bothering you, and instead of talking about their horribleness to your spouse, your mother, and your 3 best friends, you instead turn to Hashem and thank Him for the atonement, explore the message in their bad behavior, and you daven that the horrible person does teshuvah from love while also noting a good point in their favor...THEN you're most likely to see blessing and achieve relief (albeit not always immediately).

Of course you still need friends, but friends are best kept within a certain framework as described in the bulleted list above.

Hashem sends us pain as a wake-up call to come closer to Him and develop a dependency on Him, and not to come closer and develop a dependency on other people who ultimately can't love you or help you in the way you need most (even if they still love and help you to the best of their abilities -- which is still limited compared to Hashem's Ability to love and help you).

There are extraordinary amounts of rain pouring down in Eretz Yisrael, completely out of character for this time of year.

(Although right now, it's looking pretty sunny all of the sudden.)

And there have been destruction and tragedies as a result, may all those who've suffered be comforted among all the mourners of Yisrael.

But the rain also has a message.

Rain can both bring life and take life, as we've sadly seen.

And in Perek Shirah, the rain sings the following song from Tehillim/Psalms 68:10--

Regarding this verse, Radak comments that because the preceding verse mentions "dripping heavens" as an allusion to tribulations, this verse needs to emphasize that now, the rain pouring down is the opposite of the oppressively "dripping heavens" -- this is rain of manifold munificence, and it's pouring down upon Yisrael.

The word translated as "Your heritage" or "Your inheritance" (nachalatcha) alludes to the Jewish people, who are the inheritance of Hashem.

He explains the rest of the verse as:

"Fortify it" -- fortify Your inheritance. You shall fortify Yisrael, the Jewish people.

Even if the enemy has already gotten a few victories under his belt and you're totally exhausted, don't give up. God will fortify you so that you won't give up on what's most important.

Both Rashi and Malbim also describe this verse as comforting and encouraging.

Am Yisrael is in a desert where it doesn't rain, according to its innate nature. Yet when the people are weary and thirsty, Hashem not only sends them rain, but sends them an abundance of rain, "rains of generosity and blessing," says Rashi. "Like cool water on a depleted soul," says Malbim.

Literally, this verse refers to Am Yisrael during its time in the desert before the first Shavuot, before the Torah was given on Har Sinai.

But the metaphors are clear (especially if you read the entire Psalm).

The giving of the Torah slaked the soul's thirst and fortified the Jewish Nation.
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Crazy rain is gushing over Eretz Yisrael right now, rain that isn't supposed to pour down in such amounts at this time of year. And this rain has brought tragedies, may Hashem protect us all.

But this rain also has a message for us.

When we are exhausted and thirsty, surrounded by hostile nations and in a hostile environment, God will send darkness and rain tribulations down on our haters while providing us with generous amounts of refreshing blessing, fortification, and renewed strength.

Hold fast to Yerushalayim (and all that it implies) and never give up.

May we always experience rain as an obvious blessing and never as a tribulation or tragedy.
__________
Related links:
Song of the Rain
Also, there has been an unusual amount of thunder and lightning in Eretz Yisrael.
Song of Lightning

As mentioned in a previous post, I really wonder how much of the kind of male chauvinism occurring in American society prior to the feminist movement was actually a result of advertising and Hollywood projection, rather than innate male tendencies or traditional societal attitudes.

The feminists leading their way in the Seventies would've grown up in the Forties and Fifties -- right smack in the middle of Hollywood's ever-growing movie list and also when TV was becoming popular. By 1955, half of American homes possessed a TV.

That's a pretty powerful influence.

To compound things, this Forties/Fifties generation was raised by America's first film-going generation. In the 1920s, most Americans went to movie theaters on a weekly basis, with all the Hollywood influence and cultural impact this implies.

(Just as a quick example: The heavy makeup, shorter skirts, and suggestive dance moves popular in the films had an immediate impact on the fashion and dancing of the average girl in the 1920s. The movies also influenced women toward smoking, drinking, and public displays of affection, acts that were unacceptable before.)

Because women were portrayed so badly in film and TV -- and because men were also  portrayed negatively when interacting with women -- it seems that decades of showing abusive men and exploited women as good or normal might have influenced general society, no?

The earlier black-and-white films touted as "innocent" by many today (including some frum people who should know better) were actually worse in some ways than modern films. Yes, the violence wasn't as graphic and the male-female interactions weren't as explicit and the language wasn't as crass, but the disdain for women was extremely obvious and so bad that a smidgen of it was no longer acceptable by the Seventies (even as all other aspects worsened, as mentioned).

For example, it was common in older movies for a woman to become hysterical (often with good reason, but still exaggerated compared to how normal women behave in the same circumstance). At that point, her husband or boyfriend would give her a ringing slap in the face. This was portrayed as good or necessary. (This kind of scene was no longer acceptable by around the Seventies.)

Now, in real life, how many times do you see women literally becoming hysterical? Rarely, right? Yet this was common in the movies. What further confused and disturbed me as a little girl was how, logically speaking, the woman seemed to have good reason for her hysteria: She felt genuinely frightened or threatened, sometimes she was being lied to and manipulated by the very guy who hit her for her own supposed good, and so on.

Even worse, the slapper was often portrayed as a good guy. So you had the "good" guy slapping a woman who was rightly upset.

Hmm...

In another old black 'n' white film (lauded as "progressive" for its predominantly black cast), a woman slouches on the sidewalk pining for her rogue boyfriend to take her back. Just then, he walks by with his new girl on his arm. When the lovelorn woman throws herself at his feet and hangs onto his arm, he smacks her back down onto the pavement. The girl on his arm just sniffs and they continue on with their stroll. The pining woman continues to sing of her grief over the scumbag's rejection.

Now, I ask you: Is the above scenario normal?

Yes, I know there are dysfunctional people like this. But I'm asking if it's normal.

After all, would a normal woman still want a man who just whammed her to the pavement? (And do normal woman yearn for cold-hearted abusive men who cheat on them?) And from the replacement girl's side of things, wouldn't you be unnerved if your man smacked down his distraught pitiful ex right in front of you? Wouldn't that imply something disturbing about his character?

Also, again, the women's distress was justified. All she wanted was for him to marry her, a very decent and wholesome desire. She was willing to give him everything in return, yet he rejected her. And when she showed rightful distress over this, he attacked her as if she was a disgusting bug. And rather than realizing that he was a violent miscreant whom she was better off without, she continued to warble piteously about his rejection.

The messaging there is pretty awful, yet we are supposed to accept it as normal.

Ben Shapiro has often explained Hollywood's methodology:
Hollywood creates a likeable or sympathetic character, then makes that likeable sympathetic character do something the viewer would normally find repugnant.

And that is how Hollywood changes society's values.

This is the problem in a nutshell.

On the old TV shows and movies, I also remember a couple of times when a woman was physically abused by her husband or boyfriend. Again, the husband was a popular character on the series or the lead in the film. So again, you have someone you like doing something demeaning and abusive. Even worse, it's presented as comic and the studio audience is laughing uproariously. So not only is abuse okay, it's also funny and entertaining, and judging by the woman's scripted reaction, made her like him more.

Another confusing scenario that occurred often in the old reels was how the female lead would be pursued by the ideal guy: good-looking, responsible, steady, and treats her respectfully. However, there was also a cad in the film who was handsome but without any other redeeming qualities. Yet the female lead would always fall for the cad and reject the attractive decent guy who very much wants her and wants to marry her!

I remember finding this very disconcerting as a child.

It was so blatantly disturbing and irrational that Gloria Steinem capitalized on this exact experience in her books. Tapping into this experience garnered her a following of women who remembered being disconcerted girls watching the kind of roguish man she should avoid being portrayed as the hero while the heroine makes a terrible life choice by choosing him over the truly good guy -- and this was portrayed as a happy ending.

And again, Hollywood was not portraying normal life. Traditionally, girls were brought up to AVOID this exact scenario. Since the 1700s, literature (both fiction and non) and caring relatives warned girls against falling for cads. The stable good guy in pursuit of marriage was the desirable one.

But not in Hollywood.

Both the men and women in Hollywood tended to find marriage suffocating. They found exciting and physically attractive people far more alluring than good-looking people of good character. The Hollywood stars and staff valued negative emotional drama over fulfilling life dramas, such as weddings, childbirth, family dinners and holiday gatherings, etc.

And they brought this warped attitude into their art, which they then projected onto the entire world.

As a teenager going into the 1990s, reading Gloria Steinem's description of this experience suddenly brought back forgotten memories of these films and the confused, disconcerted little girl I was while watching them.

All the more so, for women who'd grown up in the Forties and Fifties, for whom these types of films were the only fare.

Harassment and unwanted touching also appeared commonly in older films. And again, it was often the hero or the likable character indulging in it. Furthermore, it was also portrayed as funny, and not as threatening and traumatizing as it would be in real life.

For example, I was a huge fan of the Marx Brothers movies. I loved them as a child and watched them repeatedly. At the same time, it bothered me how Groucho Marx was always stringing along that older wealthy lady for her money. It was portrayed as amusing and acceptable to reject a woman merely because of her looks (even though Groucho Marx was extremely unattractive himself) and to use her just for her money and connections.

This reflects the real Hollywood moguls until today. In the latest present-day scandal, for example, you saw the repulsive-looking mogul exploiting beautiful young women who would otherwise never come near him if he hadn't been wealthy and influential.

Hollywood bigwigs have often been ugly immature creepy men who viewed women in a disturbing manner. And that's also what they portrayed in their movies.

Hitchcock, for example, described actors of either gender as "cattle" and was just plain gross with women off-set.

Hollywood screenwriters and producers were always pointing the cameras at themselves, so to speak, justifying their own immoral behavior and deplorable values.

In another scene, Groucho Marx starts mauling the cabin maid whose come to arrange the linens in his ship cabin. She looks obviously unhappy about it, but he doesn't give a hoot. I remember feeling shocked that she seemed totally resigned to his gaggle-eyed, grinning groping. She didn't seem surprised or horrified and did nothing to defend herself, didn't try to move out of the way, leave, push his hand, slap him, complain, delicately fend him off, nothing. She didn't even freeze up; it was all business as usual.

Again, the scripted behavior did not reflect a real-life response.

Note: I'm not saying that her response would never have happened, I'm saying that it wasn't a normal response to a man mauling a woman as she's carrying out her job. Many women would be shocked and freeze up, or some other kind of traumatic reaction.

Furthermore, she was his subordinate. There was an implication that as the maid, she had no power and that putting up with his mauling was part of her job.

And it was really creepy that he was so enthusiastically enjoying himself when she so obviously was not.

Yet the film portrayed it as funny. We were supposed to laugh at this and think it was cute, like an endearing little boy who caught with his pudgy little hand in the cookie jar.

Mauling a helpless maid isn't endearing or funny -- unless you are a degenerate.

But again, as the audience, you liked the Marx Brothers. Everyone did! Yet they committed immoral acts as part of the fun. And that's exactly what breaks down the viewer's inner defenses.

Children's movies didn't escape this either. I remember in Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang looking on with horror as a cackling man poured wine down the front of a protesting woman's low-cut dress. It seemed scary to the little girl I was because I wouldn't want someone doing that to me. Yet again, this was portrayed as comic and not as vulgar or appalling.

In the The Little Princess (1939), Shirley Temple recites this whole sonnet (completely unrelated to the plot) about a guy smooching a girl who doesn't want it at all, but it's presented as funny and acceptable. I also found that very disturbing as a child. For girls, it's scary to think that someone can just grab you or force himself on you in some way.

So when you have an entire generation (or more) of boys growing up watching this behavior (which was traditionally considered appalling) as merely funny and cute (something a woman will definitely tolerate), how does than affect males and their own behavior toward women?

Seriously. If you read earlier memoirs and the like, grabbing at women just wasn't considered appropriate. (It was more something that drunks did, and drinking & drunken behavior also used to be looked down on.) Novels and moral literature abounded with cautions to girls about such men and men weren't supposed to behave improperly around women.

(Remember how men used to watch their language around women, remove their hats, and say "Ma'am"?)

Of course, abuses and exploitation occurred in society prior to Hollywood.

No one can deny that.

My point is that in a society founded on the principles expressed in Mishlei/Proverbs (as America once was), all the above was not acceptable and considered very inappropriate until Hollywood came along and said that it's actually not bad at all; it's not only acceptable but it's even funny and something all the cool guys do.

In a 1940s movie, the hero was a handsome young college student fighting a Nazi spy. Yet in one moment completely out context, a demurely dressed blonde student quickly passed by the hero and his group of friends. In response, they craned their necks to make demeaning catcalls at her before turning back to a very serious conversation of national security.

And again, her facial expression (and did the speed with which she passed by them) showed that the attention was completely unwanted.

So you have the likable attractive hero suddenly harassing an innocent young woman who's obviously very unhappy with his treatment. It also indicates that it doesn't matter whether the woman intensely dislikes such treatment. It's okay anyway! Her feelings are totally irrelevant.

This kind of portrayal stamps approval on such behavior.

Another popular classic movie from 1954 had the hero leering at a dancer who lived in an apartment across the street from him and had no idea she was being spied on by the creep.

And in one of the first scenes, his girlfriend played by a particularly beautiful actress came to visit. She had everything: beauty, wealth, good manners, and high social standing. Yet she sat there knitting while he treated her with utter disdain. At one point, she showed disappointment about being kept on his string instead of him committing by marrying her.

He waved his hand at her and told her, "Aw, shut up." (This would've been considered appalling manners in the 1950s.) And in response, she just pouted, but didn't leave or even get huffy with him. Instead, she kept on sewing. (Message: Even if you have nothing to offer, you can treat super desirable women like flies, and they'll totally accept it.)

Now at this point in America, it was completely acceptable and even laudable to marry your serious girlfriend. The vast majority of American men in the 1950s married between the ages of 22-23.

And this was not just considered a good thing, it was considered the manly thing to do.

Getting married demonstrated highly regarded traits like responsibility, maturity, and the ability to shoulder weighty duties like holding down a job and making enough money to support a family. Remaining faithful was also expected and respected.

But to the men of Hollywood, marriage was like a prison. Populated by men who valued immorality and considered women playthings, their leading men had to be crass creepy cads because that's what they were too.

The other problem with this scenario was treating an extremely desirable woman like dirt. This is a common theme in older movies. The female stars of Hollywood consisted of some of the most beautiful women in the world. Most men of that time would be thrilled if such a woman wanted them and would marry them in a second.

Yet in the movies, the leading men repeatedly treated these most desirable women with appalling disdain.

Again, this is not how normal men instinctively relate to women who are beautiful, rich, refined socialites. But in Hollywood, this was considered appropriate and normal behavior because the men running Hollywood were (and continue to be) abnormal jerks.

Even when the script implied that the young beauty was breaking all social mores by giving him whatever he wanted, he still treated her like dirt. Again, this was confusing as a youngster because it seemed like these men were unpleasable. Even when she gave him everything he wanted, he still didn't like her. Yet he was the good guy?!

And as always, such behavior was portrayed as amusing and totally acceptable.

Unlike feminists, I don't believe in letting guilty people off the hook just because of their gender. This means that Hollywood actresses also share the blame. Yes, these women were usually exploited. But in their private lives, they also behaved with unrepentant immorality.

They were sort of like the Hollywood women today who complain of harassment, but did and do nothing about the child abuse rampant in Hollywood, and continue to star in roles that demean women.

Unfaithful to their own husbands and cheating with married men and producing a baby from that adulterous union, neglecting or abusing their own children, and in general behaving like horrible narcissists, the beautiful stars known as "America's sweethearts" bolstered Hollywood's lack of morals.

Even in their old age, they showed no remorse. You can find interviews with these elderly stars in which they applaud today's lack of morality, complaining that "back in those days," they needed to hide their infidelities so as not to harm their popularity. One former star said the reason she kept getting divorced and married was because in "those days," it wasn't acceptable to live with a man, so you had to marry him.

They were often awful mothers too.

So again, you had women who held no respect for real women's roles (like that of a faithful wife or nurturing mother) acting out her own decrepit value system. And rather than striving for a truly fulfilling role in real life, like becoming a doctor or a teacher, these actresses played out their real selves backstage, by using men and being used by them.

This next example has nothing to do with women, but it shows how far back Hollywood was comprised of corrupt people and was already warping traditional values.

Let's take a 1928 Laurel 'n' Hardy film. It starts off with an escaped criminal followed in hot pursuit by a comically furious policeman.

So immediately, the film encourages you to sympathize with the law-breaking criminal against the law-upholding cop. Then something heavy falls on the cop, and it's supposed to be funny and good, because the cop (who is behaving with courage and justice) gets punished and the criminal gets away.

Later, Laurel 'n' Hardy end up with hermit crabs up their trousers. Most of the movie consists of this joke, that these grown men are getting "nipped" on their rump specifically by the crabs, and keep thinking the other man is the one who's pinching him there.

Not only is the humor preschoolish, but it portrays bizarre assumptions and behavior. What grown man would "nip" another grown man in normal society? Can you imagine the men of Little House on the Prairie or Caddie Woodlawn behaving in such a manner -- even as a joke?

Who would think up this kind of scenario? (Hint: A creepy perv.)

Then Laurel 'n' Hardy needed to adjust their pants in the alley way, and when they come out together zipping up their pants, they accidentally do so in front of shocked passers-by.

This is vulgar however you look at it. If you're an innocent, you'll see it as, "Goodness, two men were caught looking like they'd been relieving themselves in a public alleyway!" But if you've grown up in modern American society, you'll see that the implication of two men coming together out of an empty alley way while zipping up their pants as...?

You tell me what the script was hinting at.

My point is that even way back in the Twenties, Hollywood was already really gross and projecting their degeneracy and vulgarity and immaturity onto the silver screen.

And it used humor, which is the best way to break down defenses.

Because then they can claim they're only kidding. I mean, what's wrong with you? Can't you take a joke?

Or they can accuse of you of having the dirty mind. I mean, sheesh, is that what YOU really think when you see two men coming out of the alley way? Get your mind out of the gutter, you family-values hypocrite.

See what I mean?

One of Hollywood's slogans is that they're merely portraying real life.

Yet again, all the above were against social norms.

The "real life" Hollywood likes to portray is its own degenerate narcissistic meaningless life.

However:

• Catcalling and harassing women was considered unacceptable in normal society, especially when the women's dress and behavior reflected ladylike propriety.
• Not wanting to marry (and especially not wanting to marry a highly desirable woman with every asset in the book) wasn't considered normal or desirable.
• Touching women inappropriately or forcing yourself on women was also not acceptable.

And this list goes on.

This doesn't mean that such things never happened--tragically, of course they did! But as long as such behaviors were frowned upon, they were limited.

Yet once Hollywood portrayed these behaviors as innocent, amusing, and even idealized, that portrayal affected the moviegoers and TV audience.

How could it not?

I remember as a teen that we spoke like the characters we watched on TV. Our slang, inflection, and attitude were all copied from our entertainment media. And we certainly absorbed their values, especially since outside of religious communities, the only values we ever encountered were the ones epitomized in our TV, movies, and magazines.

Is it too much of a stretch to imagine that a young man who has spent his life watching leading men and heroes harassing and disrespecting and even hitting women as comic relief or as a necessity or uncontrollable act might absorb this attitude?

And what about their effect on the girls and young women watching them?

Remember, these movies went on for decades.

Going to the movies was considered an innocent American pastime, like picnics and white picket fences. There was little social criticism of the content.

Sure, film and TV faced a censorship board, but they didn't censor everything and anyway, Hollywood considered it a badge of honor to do everything it could to circumvent these censors.

How must it have been for the girls who were suffering from an abusive father, a father who slapped their mother, or who were harassed or touched/kissed inappropriately by someone, to see their trauma and violation displayed on the big screen -- and portrayed as funny, endearing, or justified?

That sounds pretty traumatic to me.

So I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the leading feminists and passionate proponents evolved from dysfunctional backgrounds:

• Gloria Steinem lost her mother at very young age and her father wasn't able to be the kind of parent Gloria needed
• Germaine Greer's mother likely suffered Aspergers, which drove Germaine from the home by age 18
• Betty Friedan's mother was an unhappy housewife who mourned her loss of career
• Simone de Beauvoir's high intelligence was complimented by her father as, "Simone thinks like a man!" -- implying that high intelligence cannot be a feminine trait.
• Several suffered from philandering fathers
• Many impassioned feminists suffered abuse from men when they were young girls

Other feminists don't seem to have grown up in a dysfunctional family, but their adult behavior is so dysfunctional, it makes you wonder.

For example, the extremely popular feminist Alice Walker reports positively on both her parents and her teachers, even as she grew up in impoverished segregation and a brother accidentally shot her in the eye with a BB gun. Yet she was an appallingly neglectful and insensitive mother to her own daughter. At one point, Alice even informed her daughter that she had "chosen" to love her (implying that her daughter wasn't innately loveable, but rather someone that Alice needed to force herself to love). This deeply hurt her daughter.

Just as bad, Alice Walker published a famous poem in which she compares her daughter's birth to other "calamities" in her life.

How would YOU feel if your celebrity mother described your existence in her life as a "calamity" AND announced this to the entire world?

When her daughter asked for an apology for the years of pain caused by Alice, Alice refused and insisted she was no longer interested in the job of mother.

There is something clearly wrong with a lot of these "womyn."

(If you missed it, this previous post explains why a woman who is supposedly pro-woman & fights for women's "rights" can still be so cruel to other women, including her own female child.)

And like I said, Gloria Steinem used the disturbing Hollywood portrayals to touch women and bring them to her side. But once she had innocent women in her grasp of pseudo-empathy, she offered destructive solutions framed in pretty pictures.

Sociopaths are shockingly skilled at feigning empathy (in the short-term; over the long-term they start to sound weird because they're just faking it). They know which buttons to press and how to play the victim.

(Remember, Nazism started and continued on the fuel of a victimhood mentality. This is the way fascist movements gain and keep momentum. Communism did the same.)

In summation:

• Any chauvinistic attitudes or oppression that already existed in society was enthusiastically fanned by Hollywood and glorified as normal or desirable or funny.

 

• Rather than assuming that society was always rife with awful misogyny and that a man's natural inclination is to oppress women unless he has a feminist around to make him behave, it makes more sense to take a look at the role Hollywood played in glorifying the mistreatment of women.

 

• Hollywood embraced certain mores and behaviors generally considered immoral or unacceptable, and presented them as funny, acceptable, or even ideal.

 

• Hollywood productions were never innocent and clean. In the world of films and TV, there are no genuine "good ol' days" to return to.

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Note: Radio, which both preceded and paralleled film, was also a problem, as was Vaudeville, on which the first films were based. Furthermore, while this post focused on American film and TV, the film/TV industry in other countries was similarly problematic.

Note: If you choose to comment, please use coded language or purposely misspelled words to mention topics that, say, you wouldn't discuss around children because my filter is fickle and can block me from seeing my own post if it picks up on certain words. Sorry for the inconvenience!
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For a long time, I also held the view that many frum women hold: that while feminism brought a lot of bad stuff, it also served as a conduit for some good things too.

They claim when that there were real problems within society that needed to be fixed, and we've all benefited from those positive changes that came along with feminism.

The problem is that while yes, there were real problems that needed to be fixed, it isn't actually true that feminism was the answer, and that the positive changes since the feminist movement resulted purely from the feminist movement.

The misogynist or limited aspects of society were already changing even before feminism officially bombarded the scene.

In an interesting book called Let Them Journey: Uniting the Past with the Future, we meet the British daughter of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, Etta bat Shlomo HaLevi (her last name wasn't mentioned), who qualified as a barrister (a common-law lawyer) in 1944 while she was a married woman with 3 young children.

(She wasn't the first female barrister, but she was one of a tiny minority of female barristers.)

She was the only woman in her class and yes, she did have to put up with a snipey comment from her lecturer and active obstruction later from another barrister to whom she was apprenticed. (This type of barrister is known as "a barrister principal.")

Yet rather than indulging in flamboyant protests and slogan-chanting, she simply put her nose to the grindstone to prove her professional worth.

And it worked!

Through Etta's intelligence and competence, she turned her barrister principal around & he ended up sending her work out as his own, assuring her a place in the barristers' chambers. (Yes, I know that copping her work as his own is far from ideal, but it could be that this was the common practice with their male apprentices too, and not only acceptable, but even complimentary. It's not clear to me either way from the context.)

Anyway, as a working barrister, she argued her cases with intelligence, grace, and tenacious patience before male judges against other male barristers, winning the judges to her side.

She also developed a method for dealing with juries, which consisted of repeating her point 6 times, a method which persuaded them to vote in favor of her clients.

So as a lone woman working in a male-dominated profession, she not only became a barrister, but a highly successful barrister -- without feminism or employing feminist tactics of social change.

She became successful because she possessed innate talent and because she worked very hard, both mentally and practically.

Meanwhile, back in America: The woman feminists love to hate, Phyllis Schlafly, worked her way through a prestigious university and earned such high marks and so impressed her professors with her intellectual brilliance that Harvard Law School was willing to accept her around 1944 even though at that time, Harvard Law School was not accepting female students. (Officially, Harvard Law School did not start admitting women until the 1950s.)

Phyllis didn't know this. She assumed that Harvard Law School had suddenly started accepting women prior to her admittance, and had no idea they'd made an exception specifically for her based on her intellectual qualifications and remarkable analytical abilities. (Nonetheless, she decided to go work in Washington D.C. instead.)

Again, this exception was made for Phyllis based on her phenomenal competency, and not via the feminist movement, which hadn't even revved up yet.

In fact, opportunities and expectations for women had been changing since the 1920s.

On the other hand, even prior to official advancements for women, American women enjoyed many freedoms and rights. 19th-Century pioneer women, for example, had the right to own their own land and proved up both land claims and tree claims, same as men. They carried pistols and rifles and worked in stores and newspaper presses, among other jobs.

At the same time, no one can deny the social and official limitations women faced when trying to engage in traditionally male activities and professions. In addition, the way women were portrayed in movies, TV, and ads really was a problem, such as floor wax ads featuring a women in full makeup, set hair, an insipid smile, and heels while waxing a kitchen floor. (And those were just the more innocent portrayals of women in advertising.)

Many movie & TV portrayals of women were just awful, making light of women being groped, harassed, or disdained by one of the male leads or women being exploited or physically abused in a way Hollywood portrayed as justified or funny.

Because Hollywood had been projecting their trash and corruption since at least the 1920s, it's hard to say whether the legitimate feminist complaints were a product of society or whether such deplorable male behaviors and attitudes were inculcated into society by Hollywood.

Who was around to remember society before Hollywood? And those who were old enough to remember, did they have any way of expressing themselves?

(The post after this one will detail Hollywood's role in the mistreatment of women.)

Another friend of mine remembers female police officers (in uniformed skirts) in the 1950s. She explained that female officers were necessary for arresting female offenders because it wasn't thought appropriate for men to deal with a female offender the way they dealt with male offenders (i.e. patting them down, touching or wrestling with her in the process of putting on handcuffs and getting the female perp into a police car).

The truth is, women's journeys through traditionally male professions initially mirrored the Jewish journey of upward mobility in America. Schools of higher education placed quotas against Jews and many upscale clubs while companies rejected Jewish membership and participation.

In fact, when the intermarried Groucho Marx wanted to use a beach associated with an upscale club that did not allow Jews, he pleaded with them by quipping, "My kids are only half Jewish. Can't they at least go in the water up to their knees?"

(Ironically, his children weren't Jewish at all according to halacha and should've been allowed entrance as full-fledged non-Jews. But try reasoning with antisemites about such things...anyway, such discrimination was the wake-up call Groucho got for spitting on Torah Law.)

The point is that Jews and other minorities faced discrimination by putting their nose to the grindstone and working their way to the top. They proved themselves, first by "working twice as hard to be considered just as good," and then making a name for themselves to the point that, for example, Jews and Chinese are stereotyped as hard-working, good in school, smart, and successful. Yes, Chinese people must face down the stereotype of "being good at math," a stereotype that dogs them at every step.

What's so awful about that?

And why couldn't women have done the same?

(In fact, Yetta bat Shlomo HaLevi did so for herself. A male barrister who lost to her after a hard fight in court told another barrister, "I was Yettaed."

I realize that many women who've been traumatized by the chauvinism of yore cannot see that things were already changing and would continue to change without the official blitzkrieg of the feminist movement.

(If you've been traumatized, you want things to change YESTERDAY. The pain is unbearable and you feel like you can't bear it for another moment.)

Many also couldn't see that the chauvinism was incited and encouraged by more modern influences, like Hollywood. (Yeah, feminists criticized Hollywood, but couldn't see that men themselves weren't the innate problem, but that Hollywood was.)

The rejection and discrimination many women experienced caused profound trauma, which is why no matter how much they see their daughters and grand-daughters facing traumas of their own brought on by feminism, such as premarital wantonness, abortion, much increased violence & abuse against women & girls, a sharp upturn in brutal female violence, low self-esteem, confusion, eating disorders, marital difficulties, suicide, depression, and much more, they continue with their mantra of:

"But when I was a girl, we were told we could only be teachers and nurses rather than doctors & lawyers!"

This is despite the fact that most of them -- and most men, for that matter -- don't aim to become and indeed don't become lawyers or doctors.

But it's the principle that bothers them.

Disturbingly, this principle bothers them more than the killing of unborn babies and the effect that has on the aborting mother, or the rampant wanton behavior popular among young girls for decades now, the increased violence and violation against females and children in general, with its higher incidence of low self-esteem and depression and self-destructive behaviors among females, and the savage assaults girls commit in growing numbers.

In fact, these feminist sympathizers seem to feel that being discouraged from being a doctor (which again, most of them didn't want to be in the first place) is worse than actual hands-on abuse or violation of girls, which became much more common in the wake of feminist advancement.

(BTW, I don't deny that if you really yearn for a certain calling and you were born with the abilities to excel at the calling, that it's not devastating to be blocked from your heart's yearning simply because of your gender and societal expectations. It IS devastating! But that still doesn't justify all the abuses and harmful ideas that came along with the freedom to fulfill your own calling.)

Isn't it ironic that feminism came under the guise of wanting to stop the abuse of women and girls, and ended up at the forefront of facilitating such abuse?

Yet if you confront feminists with this, they'll merely make 2 points:

• (1) No, there is EXACTLY the same amount of abuse going on, but just that back then, it was rarely reported.

It's true that sxual abuse was vastly underreported. (It's still underreported today, BTW.) But there is nothing to show that levels back then were even close to today's levels. Furthermore, there are social realities that facilitate abuse, which weren't as common back then. Also, assault on dates happens often enough today. Are you trying to tell me that in the 1950s, "date assault" was also common? (I'm not arguing whether it happened at all, I'm asking whether it was common.) Feminists also claim there is an epidemic of male students violating female students on college campuses. Did this same alleged epidemic exist also in the 1950s?

(Yes, I realize there were far fewer women on campus back then than there are now. But were the women who were on co-ed campuses being taken advantage of while drunk and assaulted in the numbers they are today?)

And what about some serious brutal assaults and murders committed by teenage girls, something almost unheard of prior to the feminist movement? Female violence has risen 250% since 1973. Is that progress?

• (2) At least today, we have resources to treat victims -- and that's a feminist accomplishment.

This is true that today there are more official resources. Yet it seems that the plethora of resources developed due to an ever-rising need for them. (Meaning, an increase in abuse led to an increase in the need for organizations to handle it. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these resources is questionable. Some therapists do wonderful work with victims, some don't. Ditto with organizations.)

And how well did those trained professionals and resources work out for, say, the 16-year ordeal of the Rotherham girls? Or for abused Muslim women and children in these "progressive" Western countries when courts or social services side with Sharia law?

As another example: Look at how feminists scream assault about acts that sometimes aren't even actually assault, yet ignore the thousands of cases of very real and horrific exploitation and assaults on vulnerable young girls from Rotherham, England to Yazidi girls in the Middle East?

In the Rotherham case, we see that having women in professional positions doesn't automatically help females. (That was one of the big claims of the feminist movement.) This is because we need good professionals, regardless of gender. Mothers, female social workers, female councilwomen, female staff in care homes, female directors, female cops, etc. did little to nothing to protect female victims.

Yes, Rotherham was exposed and prosecuted by several female professionals (along with their male colleagues) and several mothers also took action, but the mere act of having females in traditionally male professions or having females involved at all did not automatically prevent or help the abuse and exploitation of females. Having GOOD women (and men!) in professional positions is what ultimately helped.

(In fact, even after all the facts came to light, a female MP and Jeremy Corbyn supporter, Naz Shah, retweeted and liked the following post in 2017: "Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.")
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Most notable case-in-point: In response to the poisoning of a Russian double-agent, England's female Prime Minister:

• IMMEDIATELY launched investigations
• expelled 23 diplomats
• is taking measures against an entire COUNTRY

Yet her initial response to the Rotherham horror?

• Accused authorities of "dereliction of duty"
• Blamed several factors
• Promised to appoint a chair to investigate

And that was only after the whole thing went very public. Remember, the initial abuses went on for 16 years.

(And yes, I realize Theresa May was "only" Home Secretary at the initial expose of the crimes, but my point is that she still had the power to do more and could also take Prime Ministerly action now. Yet from then until now, her response toward the crimes against the girls has been weak in comparison to what she's apparently capable of.)

Let's hear it for grrrl power! [sarc]

In short, many women mistakenly credit feminism with the progress we like when that progress was already happening anyway. And as for the very disturbing casualties of the feminist movement? Well, they seem to just think it's an unavoidable pity.

And anyway, we see that the mere act of having a woman in a position of authority does nothing to help victimized women or stop the victimization of women and children, unless she happens to be a GOOD PERSON.

Just like with men.

The more I learn, the more I realize that emphasizing the "good" aspects of feminism while minimizing the bad aspects is like doing so for any fascist movement.

I know that sounds extreme, but I hope you'll read yesterday's post to understand why one might feel this way: The Only "ism" You'll Ever Need.

Likewise, I was already seeing the ravages of feminism as a pre-teen, but I was brainwashed into thinking that it was either good or that the 1950s (and all time prior) were even worse. And I can't help noticing a steady decline in female well-being since my own girlhood. The problem is that women and girls are still being fed the same slop I was, and cultishly insist that their suffering is either good or at least still better than the pre-Sixties upheaval. And like with me and the girls in my generation, they're continuously conditioned to believe that the genuine problems that did exist could only be solved by feminism, and any worsening of society is simply a necessary and unavoidable evil.

The fact that the bad stuff was already improving and the role that Hollywood actively played in increasing the mistreatment of women from the early 20th Century is ignored and even denied.

But the truth is that we've benefited from feminism the way that Germans benefited from Nazism or Communists benefited from Communism (i.e. free health care, free education, housing, and some initially poor revolutionaries achieved high status, leadership, and wealth).

NOT because opportunities for women is a bad thing (they aren't), but because those opportunities were already opening up and presumably would've continued to do so had not feminism come along to slash things open like a mega-monster jeep on spiked wheels.
____________
For specific examples of Hollywood's role in corrupting society's attitude toward women, and in polluting society in general, please see:
How Hollywood Corrupted America.

Related links:
The Relationship Between Multiple Partners & Anxiety, Depression, Substance Abuse Disorders: A Cohort Study (You can scroll down to the end for the tables and results.)
How Childhood Abuse Leads to Wanton Behavior
More Statistics on Child Abuse, Or, Why Single Moms Should Probably Stay That Way
(Clarification: I definitely think divorce is the best solution is some situations and I also have known of several superb stepfathers. HOWEVER, from a purely statistical point of view, introducing strange men into one's home -- whether it's a boyfriend or a new husband -- statistically raises the chance of abuse of one's children, and increased child abuse has been one result of the increased divorce rate -- even though practically speaking, it's not always true. In secular society, divorces often (not always, but often) occur unnecessarily or without taking the child's well-being into consideration. The increased secular divorce rate and the not-dire reasons for this increased divorce rate are a direct result of feminism.)

Myrtle Rising related links:
"America's Scary New Direction" series (for specific correlations to Nazism, please see Part III and onwards)
Breaking Out of the Big Lie about Motherhood
When a Woman's Right is a Moral Wrong
Creating the Victim Mentality: A How-To Guide

The only "ism" you need is Judaism.

(And even if you aren't Jewish, Judaism still provides you with the value system you need to be an upstanding non-Jew.)

With all the other "isms" available today, it's easy to get caught up in other philosophies that seem to provide what Judaism appears to not provide.

So people turn to Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, feminism, nationalism, atheism, polytheism, humanism, environmentalism, materialism, and so on.

But if you delve into the original Jewish sources or receive Torah from people who are in touch with authentic Judaism, then you enable yourself to receive everything you need from one source: Judaism.

I can't deny that looking into the original Torah sources takes some adjustment if you haven't studied them before.

And even Jews born into the religious community and who attended religious schools can face a similar adjustment if they've been very influenced by the attitudes of non-Jewish society and/or received their education from people who've been unconsciously influenced by surrounding attitudes and outlooks or by authority figures who simply didn't have the capability to pass on and explain the authentic Torah mindset.

Like everything else, understanding what's already been laid out for you by Chazal (the Torah Sages) is a process.

Your mind needs to adjust to a new (and better) way of thinking and perceiving yourself and the world around you, and perceiving God.

Fine! That's exactly what God put us here to accomplish.

Before Communism, countries like China and Russia were run by imperialists. Regular folk were at the mercy of royals and landholders.

No matter how hard you worked or how talented and brilliant you were, there was no way for you to get ahead. You were stuck in miserable grinding poverty, no matter what you did or what potential you possessed.

Furthermore, if someone from the gentry class decided to beat you, whether because you didn't fill your quota on the field or simply because the bigwig wanted an outlet for his sadism, then you had no recourse. If your superior chose to shove you in an underground prison to slowly starve to death, that was his prerogative. If he felt like assaulting and violating your wife or daughter, then again, there was no recourse and nothing to do to prevent it or heal from it later.

And we all know how Russian superiors and Cossacks treated the Jews, regardless of any Jew's position.

So when Communism came along proclaiming both social and economic equality for all, that was irresistible to your average peasant.

And even those who believed in God didn't mind the spiritual "equality" part and parcel of Communist belief. Ultimately, Communist leaders didn't want ANY superior above them -- not even God.

Some of the only people who could see the cruel fascism underneath the veneer of Communism were Orthodox Jews (but even then, not all of them). 

So Communism came to correct some very real and tragically widespread human rights abuses. It came to remedy very real and genuinely unjust oppression.

But because it wasn't based on the right value system (the core idea of saying that your work and accomplishments don't belong to you and can't benefit you is in itself a huge problem), it was doomed to failure and ended up oppressing and abusing people far more than imperialism.

Communism was predicated on despair.

The reason why impoverished people agreed to such equality is because they didn't feel they could have a much better life anyway. Let everyone have their basic needs met -- a decent roof over their heads, enough to eat, basic medical care, etc. -- and that's enough! At least they wouldn't have to see the rich enjoying what the poor couldn't. Let everyone be kind of poor (but not too poor).

(Revenge played a part in this too, of course. Let's punish the rich!)

Likewise, Nazism initially came under the guise of compassion for the underdog.

The period after WWI consisted of hopeless suffering and impoverishment for the German people. Disenchanted youth abounded (including former soldiers), who discarded respect for rank and age. Communism's promise of equality and an end to poverty exerted a magnetic pull on many German youth.

But even after the initial phase of poverty eased prior to the victory of the Nazi party, many German working class still suffered.

Factories exposed workers to dangerous conditions without compensation. Transportation and journeys to the countryside were for the rich who had cars and could afford to pay for vacation resorts.

In fact, class discrimination in pre-WWII Germany was so severe that in school, the child of blue collar workers could receive a lower grade (no matter how high he actually scored) just to keep him beneath the children of doctors and professors. So the idea of making everybody equal (except the Jews) with equal opportunities solely on the basis of merit (i.e. loyalty to the Nazi party and its leader) was a very big deal back then.

(Incidentally, Hitler [yemach shemo - may his name be erased] barely mentioned the Jews in speeches between 1932-1933, making the Jew-hatred endemic in Nazi dogma less obvious.)

And to be sure, YM"SH (yemach shemo - may his name be erased) temporarily produced exciting progress for Nazi society.

Under the Nazi party, Germany nearly eradicated unemployment (for Aryans), broke down class barriers and enabled new and much-needed opportunities for the poor (especially the children), it greatly improved working conditions in formerly dangerous factory environments that sometimes injured or even killed workers, and Germany expanded workers rights in general, significantly improved the quality of life for working-class Germans (they could now afford cars via the German-made VW bug and vacations at newly built affordable resorts), and more.

Furthermore, the Nazi party instituted great strides in environmentalism, animal rights, organic foods, and anti-smoking attitudes. They also fought Communism (not because they opposed Communist principles -- Nazism and Communism proclaim similar ideals -- but because they didn't want to share power). They also made society safer by sending habitual criminals and sx offenders to concentration camps. (Yes, the first victims of concentration camps tended not to be Jews, but non-Jews considered asocial, criminal, or politically incorrect.)

The above is why some people say that had YM"SH dropped dead in 1938, he'd have been hailed a hero (despite the cruel anti-Jewish legislation he'd already enacted by March 1933 and onwards because in the end, economic comfort and ego-stroking trump Jewish suffering in the eyes of many).

And some Germans still privately believe that Nazism had its positive side.

The implication is that the initial Jewish suffering, torture, and eventual genocide was just a lamentable side effect of German progression.

People (particularly the youth) are always trying to re-invent the wheel.

The same problems crop up generation after generation (inequalities, discrimination, unfortunates who fall through the cracks, etc.) and the wheel turns, somersaulting those once on the bottom to the top, while those on top plunge to the bottom.

In trying to analyze how the German people could've turned into such a barbaric killing machine that even treated babies and toddlers with ruthless sadism, the prelude to that genocidal era is rarely discussed. Ditto with Communism and many other isms.

The human rights abuses were very real.

The pain and trauma that catapulted people into their respective "isms" was very real and justified.

However, you see that all these people actually cared nothing for others.

All the cries for equality and compassion and "rights for all!" were mere slogans that secretly meant: "Compassion for me, equality (which actually meant superiority) for me, rights for me."

And the movements continue to snake their way through society, replacing the prefix of their chosen "ism" with another prefix ad nauseam.

And it's always done under the battle-cry of compassion and fairness...

...when all they really care about is rights for oneself and everyone else be damned.

Except for Judaism.

Whatever good exists in another movement already exists within Judaism.

And anything that Judaism rejects or forbids cannot be justified within the good points of another movement.

We've already seen too many times what happens when people believe otherwise.
_____
Related post:
How Ingratitude Leads to Genocide

As a not-spectacular newcomer to Torah Judaism, I think it's sometimes intimidating to see all the very special and talented baalei teshuvah and converts. Sometimes, it seems like everybody was an upwardly mobile wildly successful professional before they became frum, then they merely transposed all that onto their new frum self in a Torahdik way.

It's also definitely inspiring. And it's certainly fun to read about!

Furthermore, as a fellow college-dropout BT said to me, "I don't think I deserve credit for becoming frum. I didn't have anything else in life anyway. But those people who had fully built successful lives and then left it all? THAT'S impressive! THAT'S real mesirut nefesh (self-sacrifice)!"

And I have to agree.

Particularly those who came from careers that are impossible to duplicate in their former full secular glory within the frum community (i.e. female singers, dancers and actors of either gender, models, etc.) They do have an outlet within the frum community, but it's not at all the same.

So they deserve enormous credit for making such a life-upending decision -- all because Hashem said so. And because of that, they also bring a hefty zechut (merit) to the Heavenly Scales for all of us.

But there's another side to it that gets ignored.

If one was a top-notch speaker/guru/dancer/singer/emcee/event-planner/missionary/performer/politician/journalist/whatever, it's good to take a break from that -- and not just to figure out how to upload the kosher version of your formerly secular role, but to really internalize Torah values so that it imbues the heart and mind, regenerating the art or role as a natural outflow from a truly Jewish conduit.

I've seen people go back into their art or profession before they're spiritually ready.

And depending on the expression demanded in that art form or profession, they end up doing a "kashered" version of their former role -- with all ego, lack of tsnius, compromised integrity, and invented loopholes this sometimes entails.

For example, I once observed a person who'd become frum via their spouse, but still had a lot of issues with certain aspects of Judaism. Not yet comfortable with even very nice people in the frum community, the person still sought out secular colleagues, associates, and clients who wouldn't spot the religious inconsistencies in this person's behavior and attitude. The problem was this person's form of self-expression and profession kept this person firmly in the limelight and the world of eye-catching self-promotion and competition.

The kashered version of the profession did do some good, but as far as I could tell, the person and the person's family were paying a price.

Leaping out as a role model or representative of Torah spirituality is a problem when one is not internally there yet.

This doesn't (and can't) mean inner perfection.

But if your profession or art keeps you in the public eye and/or within an anti-Torah framework, then it's good to take a long stride back from it if at all possible.

What's meant by "anti-Torah framework"?

Every art form today is soaked with heresy, Eastern mysticism, immoral idealization, and a road to success that is paved with halachically forbidden or problematic "musts" -- and not because of the art itself, but because of the culture that has grown around it and the methods or equipment deemed necessary to express this art on a professional and award-winning level.

And lot of other roles and careers suffer the same kind of corruption.

Therefore, rather than genuine soul-expression, a lot of frum expression seeks to imitate the secular expression with a kosher version of the secular embodiment.

This is a process, of course. And one needn't wait one's whole life before feeling ready to do re-engage. But at the same time, it's also good to take a break (IF possible) from external expression. Meaning, one can write or paint or sing for oneself until one is solidly ready to present to the public.

Obviously, performance-oriented expression demands an audience, and this becomes more complicated when taking a break from it all to regroup oneself. (I honestly wouldn't know what to suggest for, say, actors or emcees or speakers.)

Also, if your sole source of livelihood derives from this profession, then that throws another wrench into things.

If a person risks impoverishment by taking a break, then that has to be handled differently than a person whose art serves as non-parnassa self-expression.

I don't feel I can say "Do this" or "Do that."

The individual situations vary so much in their details and consequences that I don't see where hardline advice fits in.

But I do feel that IF possible (IF!!!), it's good to take a LONG break in order to get in touch with your genuine soul needs and expression.

And if you find that break imposed on you by external circumstances, you can feel good about it and feel the blessing in it (even if you also feel frustrated too).

(That's kind of what happened to me.)

Yes, it might look like missed opportunities or failures, but it's really an opportunity to regroup your inner self. Other people might also pressure you to get back into things in a superficially kosher way or you might feel a little lost as you grope around to adjust to the new and deeper you.

That's normal.

But I can't help what I've observed.

I have seen people jump back in too soon and it doesn't seem so healthy, spiritually speaking.

You don't want to be a superficially kosher imitation of secular art or non-Jewish roles.

You want your soul to have nourishment and expression for its real essence.

(But at the same time, please remember that no one can be perfect about this and it is a process with all the ups and downs of any spiritual process.)

First of all, the REAL short-cut and most painless path to teshuvah is demonstrated in Rav Shalom Arush's book The Garden of Miracles: Say "Thank You" and See Miracles. (You wouldn't believe what kind of miracles people experienced purely by thanking God without doing anything else.)

Basically, you stand there (or sit) and just thank Hashem for every single thing you can think of for as long and as much as you can.

You can experience salvation from just that alone.

But there is another "short-cut," and that involves focusing on enjoying yourself and side-stepping your yetzer hara in that way.

Also, I want to point out that you can achieve true teshuvah this way, but not necessarily complete teshuvah -- although never having made complete and perfect teshuvah, I cannot say for sure.

Anyway, your goal is to fill yourself up with good acts and good thoughts and good middot (qualities) until there is no room left for anything bad.

In a sense, it's really doing sur m'ra v'aseh tov (turn from evil and do good) backwards with the intention of turning from evil as you go along.

(If you ignore sur m'ra completely, you end up like those people who just pick and choose or who constantly seek out loopholes for their weaker points.)

I'll give you an example.

When I first started keeping Shabbat, way back in the USA, I encountered 3-day holidays and extremely late sunsets. As all you chutznikim know, some years bring a 3-day fiesta with every chag. And depending on where you live, a summer Shabbat can end long after bedtime.

Friends and spending Shabbat with enjoyable hosts still made this all enjoyable, but you can still end up with a lot of free time, especially if you get stuck in a non-religious environment on your own.

So I read a lot. But I wasn't picky about what I read and anyway, I didn't immediately know the importance of Shabbat-compatible reading material.

(This gets further compounded if you see your otherwise fine frum host reading the newspaper or news magazine with his bowl of cereal before heading off to his 9 AM davening, which was what it was like in many communities in America at that time.)

Even more challenging, there wasn't a whole lot of frum reading material at that time. Frummies barely even had magazines! (And now you've got a dozen.)

Then I learned that you were supposed to confine your reading material to "the spirit of Shabbat." I confess that I initially ignored it. How could I spend hours reading something like a formal English commentary on the Parsha? Or an English translation of a mussar book. Yes, read them of course. Of course! But to spend the entire afternoon and evening doing so? EVERY Shabbat? And what about those 3-day yantivs, eh?

But then some very riveting and inspiring frum Holocaust memoirs starting appearing, so I joined lots of women in reading those. But depending on the content, they're not exactly within the spirit of Shabbat if you consider that Shabbat is supposed to be a joyful time.

So I tried to concentrate on whatever I deemed "kosher" novels and books and magazines for Shabbat. And I kept this up for quite a while.

Occasionally, I made a stab at reading purely Torah, Shabbat-spirited material ONLY, but found such restriction too much of a strain.

But the more I delved into Torah Judaism and put into practice and learned, the more I changed on the inside without even realizing it.

At one point, I found that even a "kosher" secular book or article took me out of Shabbat. 

This was a good sign because it meant that I'd finally become sensitized to the sanctity of Shabbat.

So it started off with mild disorientation, but I still wanted to be entertained in the conventional way.

Then it kept getting stronger. I started to feel a kind of yuck when I'd get up from my non-Shabbosy Shabbos reading.

Once, as a guest in someone's empty apartment, I discovered a whole array of American news magazines out in the open on a magazine stand. And what tantalizing topics! That Shabbat, I kept reading them until I made my soul sick. The contrast was so tangible and so unpleasant this time, I instinctively resolved to stick to only frum books from now on.

(This still included Holocaust memoirs, BTW.)

As time went on, I even had a couple of Harry Potter novels on the end table which I kept glancing at throughout Shabbat, but didn't pick up. (Even though I knew better, I was still a big Harry Potter fan at one point.) And it wasn't a wrenching challenge because my refusal was emotional and not intellectual.

As time went on and I kept progressing in my mitzvah observance (with the normal set-backs that accompany any spiritual advancement) and connecting to the spirit of Shabbat, my reading material kept narrowing down, but for emotional reasons, not intellectual ones.

Meaning, I didn't need to struggle with resisting the temptation to read this or that. The temptation was either barely there or not there at all.

So I wasn't feeling deprived or in a constant battle with the yetzer hara.

And to be perfectly upfront, I still occasionally peruse something that's not completely within the spirit of Shabbat, but that occurs maybe once a year or every two years.

At the same time, I don't want to put down the value of gritting your teeth and going head to head with your yetzer hara. People do it and do so successfully.

But the thing is that those types who tend to succeed in this manner also become kind of hard and judgmental. You see them marching along with a set jaw and a hard or determined look in their eyes. But they get a certain gratification from knowing that they are fighting the good fight and see their misery as a sign that they're in the trenches, which means they're doing the right thing. And they do a lot of good things. They end up running things or being the go-to person for certain tasks or say yes whenever asked to do a mitzvah like visiting the sick or hosting guests, etc.

At the same time, because they're weighted down and acting out of self-compulsion rather than simcha shel mitzvah, they don't always do these mitzvot graciously. They can be tough hosts or inflexible administrators of whatever task they've taken on.

And they tend to believe that whatever iron-clad behavior they engage in is good for the recipient and will explain exactly why their limitations benefit the recipient (who may not sense the benefit).

Having said that, there are some traits you do just need to grit your teeth and get down to work on them directly because you can't just ignore them while you focus on pumping up their positive opposites. You just can't allow certain behaviors to get out of hand.

And it goes without saying that you are supposed to do a daily cheshbon hanefesh.

But for myself, I realized pretty quickly that I can't function in a constant state of miserable grit. I'm not very good at suffering. Life feels very ugly and overwhelming in that state, and I don't feel any sense of satisfaction of a job well-done in that state, which the above people obviously do feel. Also, I can't just brush off the unbending cold interactions with people that this state often ends up producing. I feel bad if I can't host guests with warmth, etc. For me, just the bare fact of "doing it" feels way below par unless I'm doing it "right."

So if you're like me (maybe a bit too hedonistic to "enjoy" maintaining a stiff upper lip, a clenched jaw, and general emotional suffering), then focusing on strengthening the good points and gathering insights into the deeper meanings and spiritual aspects of different mitzvot might be the way to go (while still gritting your teeth in certain other areas of your personality when necessary).

This post used Shabbat reading material as an example, but you can apply the principle to anything.

Let's say you tend to get resentful and envious and covetous of others. The minute you start to feel that encroaching sense of bitterness or resentment, what can you do?

You have at least 3 options:

1) You can just catch yourself WITHOUT identifying the feelings as "the evil trait of envy" or "the strict Torah prohibition of covetousness as stated in the Ten Commandments" and immediately start blessing the other person. You can murmur the blessing or think it in your head silently. If someone has exactly the car you want, you can say, "I wish for this person to be able to afford an even nicer car -- or to receive more cars just like this one! Hashem, may you bless this person that this car never breaks down and that this person never experience any hardship from this car."

2) You can also say, "Thank You, Hashem, that I don't have such a car. Even though I really want one, I realize that my not having it means that having my junky car (or not having a car at all) is what's best for me because everything You do is for my very best. So thanks, God!"

3) Or you can just ignore everything and dive straight into counting your own blessings: "Thank You, Hashem, for giving me a good working refrigerator, I have indoor plumbing, I have comfortable shoes, I've got a real comfy pillow, etc."

Whatever makes you happy.

Having said that, you may be gritting your teeth at first as you do it. But usually, you'll start to feel some good pretty quickly.

But wait! Didn't I just say that you need to avoid teeth-gritting? Yes! So depending on what you're working on and how you decide to go about it, you may need some grit to get you over the initial hurdle. But then you get to feeling good. Also, when you bless others and wish the best for them (however much you manage to work up in your heart at any given moment), Hashem sends blessing to you.

So when you do that, it starts feeling good and you have that to look forward to next time it hits you. It's not like you're saying, "I must not feel envy. Envy signifies a serious lack of emuna. I must control my mind and my heart to prevent any envy from entering." That's pretty heavy. And like I said, some people can manage this way. But I'm not one of them.

With Shabbat reading, I didn't even try to limit myself. I just kept on going with enhancing Shabbat and the reading material adjusted on its own. (BTW, talking to Hashem regularly really helps with this because it gives you something really beneficial and enjoyable to do on Shabbat, if you can find that private moment.)

But with envy or hatred, I find I need to side-step it more proactively.

So it depends.

And it is a process. At first, maybe you don't want to try at all. Then you kind of bounce back and forth before finally being catapulted up to the next level.

Okay, so the point here is that you work according to your own personality and do what feels good with the intention of self-improvement, but without focusing overly much on "I'm firmly engaged in an intense program of self-improvement!" (unless of course, that makes you feel good and happy).

Related posts:

• How to Use Joy for Self-Improvement
• How to Live the Good Life? Request It for Others
• When Mussar & Self-Improvement Don't Work
• The Most Effective Way to Fix Your Flaws