Should a parent let her child experience on her own, so that when she finds the truth she'll be stronger?
ANSWER:
It's too expensive to learn by experience. If you're going to let a child fiddle around with a lighted gas range, she wouldn't have a chance to learn from experience. There are people who allowed their children to learn from experience, but their children weren't around anymore to use the experience. Therefore, you have to use your experience and transmit it to the child by means of words and by means of a strap. A strap is a very good conductor of experience.
You learned that to run in the street, to play in the street is not conducive to good health, but a child doesn't know that. When a child persists on running into the street, you are justified in being strict and chastising him; it's the biggest hatzoloh, you're saving his life. When Hakadosh Baruch Hu chastises us, He does the same thing; He transmits His experience to us too.
Therefore we can't afford to let anybody experience anything; vicarious experience is the best way.
I know a case of one rosh hayeshiva who made a very big error; he still thinks he's right. He said he allowed evolution to be taught in his high school. And when there was a complaint he said, better let the boys come in contact with it now, then on the outside, he wanted to inoculate them. So if he would inoculate them with arguments against it, maybe...but he was inoculating them with arguments for evolution because the teachers were apikorsim. So what kind of talk is that? It's just an excuse because he wanted to use the free textbooks that he gets for nothing. That's his excuse; it's only irresponsibility.
We cannot let our children experiment, once a child gets hooked on bad things then it's almost goodbye.
Good Shabbos To All
Thisl is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
“When the Holy Ark would travel, Moshe would say, `Arise HASHEM, and let Your foes be scattered. Let those that hate You flee from before You.’” — Bamidbar 10:35
In this posuk, Moshe Rabbeinu is equating hatred of the Jews with hatred of HASHEM. “Let those that hate You flee from before You.”
Rashi is bothered by the comparison. Why does Moshe’s call the enemies of the Jews, “enemies of HASHEM?” Maybe they are just enemies of the Jewish people? Rashi answers, “Anyone who hates Yisroel hates HASHEM.” It seems clear that Rashi assumes that the root cause of anti-Semitism is hatred of G-d.
This concept of attributing hatred of Jews to hatred of HASHEM seems difficult to understand. After all, if we study history, we see many reasons that Jews were hated – and they had nothing to do with hating HASHEM.
The Jealousy Theory
One reason that has been commonly cited for anti-Semitism is simply jealousy. Historically, it was the Jew who brought his economic wisdom and acumen to the various countries he inhabited; it was the Jew who became the adviser and confidante to kings and governors. The Jewish contribution to the cultural, scientific, and technological evolution of civilization is nothing short of astounding. Whether in academics, politics, the media, or the professions — from curing polio to discovering atomic energy, from Hollywood to Wall Street — Jews have had an extraordinary influence on human progress. It seems that in business, politics, art, theatre, science, and social movements, the Jews are at the head. With contributions as diverse as those made by Freud, Spinoza, Trotsky, Kafka, Jerry Seinfeld, and Albert Einstein, the Jew excels. From 1901 till 1990, over 22% of Nobel prizewinners worldwide were Jewish, even though Jews constitute less than ¼ of 1% of the world’s population.
This alone would seem like a logical reason for anti-Semitism. The Jews have proven to be smarter, more enduring, and more successful than the peoples of the lands into which they were exiled.
However, this isn’t the only reason. There are many more.
The Scapegoat Theory
Another cause held responsible for anti-Semitism is the scapegoat theory. To gain power or distract the population from their suffering, a monarch would look for a place to put the blame. What better a place than the eternally despised Jew? By arousing the masses to Jew-hatred, an individual seeking power could use this energy as a galvanizing force to bring together masses of unaffiliated individuals. We certainly have seen many instances of this during the past 2,000 years.
The “We Killed Their God” Theory
But there are other reasons that sound plausible. One is deicide – we killed their god. The average person would agree that is a sound reason to hate a people. After all, it certainly doesn’t sound very friendly, charitable, and kindly to kill god.
The Chosen Nation Theory
Finally, one of the most oft-quoted reasons to hate the Jews is that we make no secret of the fact that we are the Chosen People. As clearly written in the Torah, the Jewish people have been given a unique role to play amongst the nations: to be a light, a guide, and HASHEM’s most beloved nation. Is it any wonder that throughout the millennium we have been hated?
But these aren’t the only reasons. There are many, many reasons presented to hate the Jews. How does Rashi explain that anyone who hates Jews, hates HASHEM? Maybe it is simply one of the reasons above.
The answer – there is no answer
The answer to this question seems to come from the very question itself: why is it that the one constant throughout history is that everyone always hates the Jews? It seems that all things change. Movements come and go; ideologies pass with time; systems of governments evolve. The only thing that doesn’t change is that everyone hates the Jews. Rich or poor, powerful or weak, dominant or oppressed, the Jew is hated – and then blamed for causing that very hatred.
Beginning with Avraham Avinu almost 4,000 years ago, there has been an endless stream of reasons to hate the Jew. And that itself is a most curious phenomenon. In whatever country the Jews found themselves, they were loyal and industrious citizens, yet they were always hated and always for different reasons.
Despised in one county for being too powerful, then trampled in another land for being too weak. . . Segregated into ghettos, then accused of being separatists. . . Accused by capitalists of being communist, hounded by communists because they were “all” capitalists. . . Hated for killing a religion’s god, yet equally despised in civilizations that don’t worship that god. . . Called “children of the devil” and the devil himself. . . Blamed for the Bubonic Plague and typhus, for poisoning wells and using sacrificial blood for baking matzahs. . .
With such varied and assorted rationales, it seems that there is no shortage of creativity when it comes to hating the Jew. The only consistency in reasoning is: we hate the Jews. Why we hate them doesn’t matter. The cause of the hatred doesn’t matter. The only thing that really matters is that we truly, truly hate them.
What Rashi is teaching us is that there is no plausible reason for anti-Semitism. It can’t be explained because it makes no sense. When you look into every cause, not only doesn’t it answer the question as to why, you quickly find another circumstance where that cause wasn’t present, yet the hatred was still there – as powerful and pervasive as ever.
The Jew represents HASHEM
The pattern that emerges is that there is no logical reason for anti-Semitism until you focus on the real cause – that the Jew represents HASHEM. We are HASHEM’s people. When the gentile looks at a Jew, he sees HASHEM, and that image is not always attractive to him.
This concept carries a huge lesson for us. While we may forget our holiness and our destiny, the gentile nations are always there to remind us: we are different, we are unique, and our role is unlike that of any nation. As is quoted in the name of Rav Chaim Volozhin, “If the Jew doesn’t make kiddush, the goy will make havdalah.”
If we recognize our greatness and live up to our title of the Chosen People, we are then exalted, revered and respected. When we fail to recognize our unique destiny and absorb the cultures of the times, then we are sent reminder after reminder of our unique role amongst the nations – HASHEM’s Chosen People.
We are Jewish orthodox women coming from Chassidic, Litvish, Ashkenazi and Sephardic backgrounds. All of us have a child or spouse that is currently struggling or in recovery from addiction. We meet weekly to learn, share, support and give hope to each other. Our group was founded and facilitated by a JACS (Jewish Addiction Community Services) therapist with years of experience helping families and individuals like ourselves.
You have spent tireless years raising your children, endless diaper changes, wiping noses, helping them with homework, soothing their physical and emotional hurts, laughing with and loving them. Then - something went wrong. Something you thought only happened to other people’s families. Alcohol, drugs, and other self-destructive behaviors entered your child’s life, changing everything.
You sadly wondered, “What happened to my sweet innocent child?”, “What did I do wrong?” and “What can I do to fix them?”, “Why did this happen to me?” You feel confused, betrayed, guilty, angry and ashamed. You feel confused, betrayed, guilty, angry and ashamed. In moments of honesty you realize that your other children or relationships are suffering. Sometimes you falsely believe that once one crisis has passed the problem will go away, but it does not. Many parents and siblings feel as if they are being held hostage to the addicts’ behaviour and moods in their own home.Are you ready to change?
We know you may feel some shame admitting and talking about your situation as we did. When you first walk into to the meeting you may feel uncomfortable for a few minutes, but in exchange, we promise you that you will gain a lifetime of support and knowledge. You can come to listen or share – there is no pressure either way.
Please join us on Tuesday evenings at 8 p.m. at the home of one our member’s home in the Bathurst / Wilson area. To attend everyone must agree to keep our anonymity requirements. Please call JACS 647-347-1250 x227 (David) for more information. If you would like to talk to one of us before coming to the group, we will be glad to speak with you. All contact with our group and JACS is confidential.
David Kaufman
Jewish Addiction Community Service
Director of Outreach and Education at JACS
Addictions Therapist
Office: 416-638-0350 x227
Email: DavidK@JacsToronto.org
Website: www.jacstoronto.org
Is Someone You Love Struggling
With An Addiction? You have spent tireless years raising your
children, endless diaper changes, wiping noses, helping them with
homework, soothing their physical and emotional hurts, laughing with and loving
them. Then - something went wrong. Something you thought only happened to other
people’s families. Alcohol, drugs, and other self-destructive behaviors entered
your child’s life, changing everything.
You sadly wondered, “What happened to my sweet innocent child?”, “What did
I do wrong?” and “What can I do to fix them?”, “Why did this happen
to me?” You feel confused, betrayed, guilty, angry and ashamed. You feel
confused, betrayed, guilty, angry and ashamed. In moments of honesty you
realize that your other children or relationships are suffering. Sometimes you
falsely believe that once one crisis has passed the problem will go away, but
it does not. Many parents and siblings feel as if they are being
held hostage to the addicts’ behaviour and moods in their own home.Are
you ready to change?
We are Jewish orthodox women coming from Chassidic, Litvish, Ashkenazi and
Sephardic backgrounds. All of us have a child or spouse that is currently
struggling or in recovery from addiction. We meet weekly to learn, share,
support and give hope to each other. Our group was founded and facilitated by a JACS (Jewish
Addiction Community Services) therapist with years of experience helping
families and individuals like ourselves.
We know you may feel some shame admitting and talking about your situation as
we did. When you first walk into to the meeting you may
feel uncomfortable for a few minutes, but in exchange, we promise you that you
will gain a lifetime of support and knowledge. You
can come to listen or share – there is no pressure either way.
Please join us on Tuesday evenings at 8 p.m. at the home of one our member’s
home in the Bathurst / Wilson area. To attend everyone must agree to keep
our anonymity requirements. Please call JACS 647-347-1250
for more information. If you would like to
talk to one of us before coming to the group, we will be glad to speak with
you. All contact with our group and JACS is confidential.
David Kaufman
Jewish Addiction Community Service
Director of Outreach and Education at JACS
Addictions Therapist
Office: 416-638-0350 x227
Email: DavidK@JacsToronto.org Website:
www.jacstoronto.org
Q. What is the halacha regarding using electric shavers? Does lift and cut make any difference?
Thank you
A. There are basically three different opinions in regards to using electric shavers. Early Gedolim including Chofetz Chaim (Likutey Halochos – Makos 21a) was against using even mechanical clippers that cut the hair until nothing remains, considering this as the hashchassa or destroying facial hair that the Torah prohibits. However, scissors may be used to remove facial hair since they do not accomplish total destruction, as the hair is cut in between the top and bottom blade. Therefore, stubble equal to the thickness of the bottom blade of the scissors remains. Following this stringent position the Chazon Ish, the Steipler Gaon, and many other Poskim prohibited the use of all electric shavers.(Igros Chazon Ish 1: 197- 198, Hadras Ponim Zoken, Kovetz Teshuvos 32, Minchas Yitzchok 4: 113, et. al.)
However, many Poskim maintain that the violation of this Torah prohibition is not determined by the size of the hair that is left, but by the instrument used, and if there is direct contact of the cutting blade with the skin. Horav Moshe Feinstein, Horav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin zt”l and other Poskim permitted the use of ordinary electric shavers, since they function as scissors, utilizing two blades to cut. The inner blade of the machine, does not cut by itself, and must be assisted by the outer screen of the shaver. The screen traps a hair within it, and as the inner blade approaches it, the hair rubs along the side of the screen and they both cut the hair simultaneously. This may not apply to the “lift and cut” shaver. According to the company that manufactures them, a lift and cut shaver first lifts up the hair and then pulls it into the machine. Once the hair is inside the shaver, the inner blade cuts it by itself closely to the skin, cutting it off completely at skin level, thus achieving a very close shave. A similar problem may involve Micro-Screen Foil shavers. The Terumas Hadeshen, (quoted by the Rema, Y. D. 181: 10) maintains that when shaving with scissors, a person should be extremely careful to either hold the bottom blade still, using only the top blade to cut his hair, or to use scissors where the bottom blade is incapable of cutting by itself. The reason for this is because extra precaution should be taken to prevent mistakenly shaving solely with the bottom blade, even a minute amount, since this is equivalent to using a razor.
There is a possibility that in micro-screen foil shavers, the micro-screen foil itself has cutting edges that can cut by themselves. This screen is comparable to the bottom blade of scissors, since it touches one's skin. Rabbi Avrohom Blumenkrantz zt”l writes the following in his Pesach sefer "...The new problem being discussed today is that the micro screen shields are so thin that they on their own have a cutting ability. We tested it and found out that if you bring a hair through the holes in the micro screen shield and by just moving the hair without too much pressure it could cut the hair.
Other Poskim are even more lenient The Zomet Institute follows the recommendations of an article by Rabbi Shabtai Rapaport (Techumim 10, p.200.) He proposed the criterion for not being scissor like and prohibited, whether the blade is capable of cutting hair without rubbing against the screen that covers it. And his conclusion was, that in the machines with a metal cover screen the blade alone cannot cut the hair, therefore the cutting is permitted.
Horav Shlomo Miller’s Shlit’a is reluctant to permit outright the use of any electric shaver, reflecting the first opinion mentioned above, and he strongly recommends not to use the lift and cut or micro-screen versions. However he permits the use of trimmers that leave over a stubble that is minuscule
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as revised by Horav Shlomo Miller Shlit”a
by Rabbi Y. Michalowicz
1. Shabbos immediately precedes Shavuos this year. Therefore, one should ideally light a two or three day Yahrzeit
candle prior to Friday evening candle lighting, so that there will be a pre-existing flame from which the women
may light from on Saturday and Sunday evening.
2. One is not permitted to prepare for Yom Tov on the preceding Shabbos. Therefore, For this year of 5775, the
earliest time to make preparations for Yom Tov, light Yom Tov candles, and to make Kiddush on Saturday
night is 9:42 PM. (It would be more ideal after 9:50 PM or even more ideal after 10:12 PM.)
3. One makes 2 blessings on the candle lighting: One for the Mitzvah of lighting the Yom Tov candles and the other
“Shehechiyanu” blessing. Ideally, the women should light by the time the men arrive home from Shul. However, if
they did not, they may light the entire night.
4. One may sleep on Shabbos; thereby having the strength to stay up Shavuos night. However, one should not
express this before sleeping, as such a verbalization would degrade the holiness of the day.
5. One should ideally finish eating Shalosh Seudos before 5:09 PM in order to be hungry for the Yom Tov meal.
Additionally, one should ideally daven Shabbos Mincha before eating Shalosh Seudos. If one forgot or was
negligent and did not eat the third meal in time, it may still be eaten afterwards. However, a full meal should not
be eaten then.
6. There is a well known minhag to bring flowers into shul and one's home as a remembrance that on Shavuos we
are judged on "Peiros Ha'ilon" - fruits. However, one should not cut off branches from fruit bearing trees for this
purpose because of the Torah prohibition of "Bal Tashchis”.
7. Kiddush on the first night should include blessings of 1) Wine, 2) Kiddush, 3) Candle, 4) Havdala, 5)
Shehechiyanu.
8. Many have the minhag to eat a milchige [dairy] meal (and milk and honey) on Shavuos. However, one is also
obliged to eat fleishig [beef] to be yotze [discharges his obligation of] Simchas Yom Tov with meat.
9. In order to satisfy all opinions, it is preferable to have a meat meal both in the evening and in the day of both days
of Yom Tov [4 meals], and to have a dairy meal or snack in the day before your meat meal.
10. If one finds it difficult to eat meat so late at night, there are opinions that permit you to eat dairy meals at night.
11. All agree that you should have meat meals at least one time on each of the two days of Yom Tov.
12. If one eats milchig but not "hard cheese" (which requires one to wait six hours before eating meat) one need not
bentch and wash again before eating meat. However, one should wash his /her mouth well and the tablecloth
should be changed. (Other poskim require one to bentch).
13. There is a custom to stay up the night of Shavuos and learn Torah. This is based on the Midrash which says that
the Jewish people overslept the night before Matan Torah and Hashem had to awaken them to receive the Torah.
Therefore we stay up all night to rectify their oversight.
14. The Arizal [The Kabalist Rabbi Yitzchok Luria] writes that one who does not sleep the night of Shavuos and toils
in Torah is assured to live out the year and no harm will occur to him.
15. There is a compilation of Torah learning known as "Tikkun Lay'l Shavuos,” which has The Zohar and the writings
of The Ari'zal as its source, and many have the minhag to say/learn this on Shavuos night.
16. Generally women should not say the "Tikkun Lay'l Shavuos". However, some say that a woman who counted all
the days of Sefiras Ha'omer may learn the portions of the Tikkun which are from Tanach.
17. One who stayed awake all night of Shavuos should, after Alos Hashachar (dawn), use the restroom, wash his
hands and then make the berachos of "al netilas yadayim" and "asher yotzar", and listen to Birchas Hatorah from
someone who slept.
18. One who stayed awake all night should not make a beracha on his tzitzis. Rather, he should make the beracha on
his Tallis Gadol and have in mind to be yotze for his tzitzis with the same beracha. Someone who does not wear a
Tallis Gadol, should hear the beracha from someone else who will discharge his obligation.
19. One who stayed awake all night should listen to the berachos of "Elokai Neshama" and "Hamaveir Shayna
Mayeinoi" from someone who slept during the night.
20. One who goes to sleep after Alos Hashachar Shavuos morning (or on any day) does not say the beracha of
Hamapil.
21. To summarize, for those who have stayed awake all night, the minhag of Ashkenazim is that after Alos Hashachar
(4:23 AM) one goes to the bathroom, washes ones hands, makes al netilas yadayim, and asher yatzar, and then
listens to and is yotze [discharges his obligation of] Birchas Hatorah, Elokai Neshama, and birchas Hamaavir
Chevlei Sheynah, from someone who slept, and then one says all rest of the usual morning berachos for oneself.
22. While reciting Birchos Hatorah on Erev Shavuos, one may clearly stipulate that his berachos should be in effect
only until the next morning. In this case, he may recite the berachos on Shavuos morning although he did not
sleep.
23. If no person who slept is available, many poskim rule that the berachos of Elokai Neshama and Hamaavir Chevlai
Sheynah may be recited even by one who did not sleep.
24. One may not make any Yom Tov preparations on the first day of Yom Tov for the second night, light candles, or
make Kiddush until after 9:42 PM.
25. Second night candle lighting is done in the same way as on the first night. Kiddush has the blessings on 1) Wine,
2) Kiddush, and 3) Shehechiyanu. It does not have blessings for the Candle or Havdala.
ANSWER:
Bad memories mean - not sad memories, I'm talking about bad memories. A person once picked up a newspaper and saw a piece of tiflah, something that was foul and it went to his head at that moment, how do you get rid of that? That's important, how do you get rid of the wrong ideas? You passed a billboard, there are very bad ideas on billboards today sometimes. How do you get it out of your head? We follow the Rambam's advice: fill your head with good things so there shouldn't be any room left for wrong things. Now that's very important; your mind must be full of ideas.
When you walk in the street, are you thinking of Torah ideas? For instance, are you thinking how great it is to be a Jew, she'lo uh'sani goy? Are you thinking about your tzitzis? Ur'isem oso uzchartem es kol mitzvos Hashem. Do you ever think about any mitzvos when you look at your tzizis? Oh it's a pity, get in the habit, when you look at your tzizis think about something. Think about mezuzah, think about shmiras halashon, think about learning Torah, there are a thousand things, think about something.
When you see a mezuzah, look at the mezuzah and the mezuzah is saying Hashem echod, Hashem is one. What does that mean? He is the mehaveh, He is the only one that exists, and He made the world come into existence out of nothing, at least that much you should think. Now, I can't say every time you see a mezuzah, but sometimes the mezuzah should be able to remind you of something. It reminds you also to get busy and learn Torah, and when you're in the house at the Shabbos table, the mezuzah is looking at you all the time, and watching you.
You're sitting in the house eating, look at the mezuzah, it's watching you, watch out! Don't talk the wrong things! Don't get angry! Be polite, make a brochoh with kavanah, the mezuzah is looking at you!
Therefore that's how to get wrong things out of your head.
Good Shabbos To All
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
We pray every day not to be subjected to temptations and not to be subjected to tribulations, so Rabbi Grozovsky asks, but that's our purpose of being in the world (to be tested)?
ANSWER:
Our job is, to avoid temptations and tribulations. They're going to come anyhow, we shouldn't seek it. We have to run away from temptation and we have to try to protect ourselves from all kinds of suffering; that's our job in life. Now why that is, it's simple. Suppose you have a fellow Jew and he's suffering from a toothache and you can do something for him, shall you say no, suffering is good, yisurim are good for him! No, your job is to help him out, uh'zov ta'azov imo, help him out with his burden.
Suppose that Jew is not our fellow man, the Jew is myself, is it any less a mitzvah that I should have pity on this Jew? On the contrary, it's more mitzvah, because a man has to have more pity on himself. The closer the relative is the more he should have pity. Therefore, I have to protect myself against suffering, it's my duty. The body is not mine, I'm responsible to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for this body that He entrusted to me, I have to protect the body.
Therefore I have to guard the body against suffering and against ordeals. But don't worry, there will be ordeals aplenty and tribulations will come no matter what you do to avoid them.
Good Shabbos To All
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
The attached statement on the subject of physician-assisted dying was approved by, among others Rabbis Assayag, Lowy, Miller and Ochs and is sent out in the name of the Vaad. PDF version available below.
April 7, 2016
We, the undersigned Orthodox rabbis of Canada, hereby express our categorical objection to and deep dismay over the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Carter v. Canada to grant a right to physician assisted dying (PAD), and the subsequent Report of the Special Joint Parliamentary Committee on Physician-Assisted Dying which expands the scope and circumstances allowing and even requiring PAD beyond the Supreme Court’s ruling.
We understand the arguments to be made in favour of PAD. We understand that individuals facing terminal illness with significantly diminished quality of life may wish to end their suffering and the suffering of their loved ones.
Notwithstanding these arguments, we express our opposition to PAD, because of the following:
• According to Jewish tradition, and as expressed explicitly in the Torah (Bible), God gives man life, and it is therefore God alone who has exclusive purview to take away that life. Even people who take their own lives are committing murder. Anyone who aids and abets suicide is therefore an accessory to murder. By creating a legal pathway for killing the ill, our society is supporting and normalizing the act of murder.
• Regardless of an individual’s quality of life, Judaism asserts that every moment of life on this earth is precious to the Creator, and so actively terminating a relatively low-quality life is still ending a precious life. By diminishing the value of a terminally-ill patient’s life, society demeans the value of all human life.
• The legalization of PAD will potentially prey on the most vulnerable in our society, those whose physical health is waning, and who may have fallen into depression or other mental illness. Those expressing a desire to end their lives have been known to change their minds once their physical or mental anguish can be alleviated through treatment. There is no way for anyone to know how they will feel in the future; resorting to suicide, even in the face of terminal illness, is a permanent solution to what is often a temporary problem.
. . . 2
- 2 –
• We fear that over time, the “slippery slope” aspect of PAD will result in our hospitals and clinics actively encouraging patients to end their lives so as not to be a burden on their loved ones and on an already overburdened health-care system. A disproportionate amount of medical spending takes place in the last years of life. The structural and financial incentives to promote premature death will subtly and explicitly influence many unfortunate results.
• Health care professionals of various faiths and consciences may be put in positions of conflict between Canadian law and the mandates of their respective faiths and/or consciences. There is currently insufficient provision in the Report of the Special Joint Committee on Physician-Assisted Dying for health care professionals who are conscientious objectors to recuse themselves when a patient requests PAD.
• Should this PAD become the standard of care, it will become difficult for members of many faith communities to enter health care professions, especially in areas of geriatrics and palliative care. We are concerned that professional schools, professional colleges and hospitals may eventually establish qualifications that would require applicants to accept and perform PAD or face rejection.
For these reasons and others expressed by various faith communities, we oppose Physician Assisted Dying. We state that any participation in PAD is forbidden by Jewish law. While the Supreme Court has decided to the contrary, we cannot be silent in the face of what our religious teachings and our conscience tell us is contrary to what is good and moral. We are committed to continue advocating for the value of life within our society.
We call upon all people throughout Canada, especially those in positions of leadership, to raise their collective voice, restore moral clarity to our society, and eliminate this trend toward the devaluation of human life. We further call upon legislators, medical care professionals, organizations and facilities to challenge PAD – within the confines of the law – wherever and whenever possible. We also call upon medical professionals to respect and accommodate their colleagues who conscientiously object to Physician Assisted Dying.
If a person was hurt by somebody's words, should you discuss it with anybody?
ANSWER:
If he's able to forget about it, it's the very best way. That's the ideal of savlonus; because it was given as a test. If he passes the test and just forgets about it, that's the most successful way.
To talk it over means, you want somebody to justify you and to blame him. Sometimes you want him to console you, but if a person knows that you don't need consolation, the biggest consolation is that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is satisfied with you. So forget about it.
Some people go to psychologists, counselors; it's a waste of money and a waste of time. They'll make a big fuss about it, and they'll make another visit necessary, and another visit, and the bills keep on piling up. The best thing is get it out of your head, just laugh it off, laugh from simcha because it's a benefit given to you. It was a privilege, and you passed the test and now it's all over.
Good Shabbos To All
This email is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
Why do we make a seudas mitzvah for a boy when he becomes bar mitzvah and not for a girl when she becomes bat mitzvah?
ANSWER:
When a boy becomes bar mitzvah, he is chayov in all the mitzvos; a girl doesn't get all the mitzvos. There's another reason however, and this is an important reason.
The derech haTorah is to keep women under the cover. Women should come out in public, even a girl, is not the derech haTorah; it can't be helped, that's human nature. There's a blanket between us and between the other gender. L'hisracheik min hanoshim, keep away from women, not because - chas v'shalom, women can be even better than you are, but you have to keep away from men and men keep away from women.
At a boy's bar mitzvah, he comes into shul, everybody listens to him, looks at him. It's not good for a girl to be looked at too much, the less they see her the better off we are; it can't be helped. Men have a drive that women don't have, men are more easily excited than women are, that's why men have to be more careful not to have women around them that they can't look at.
Any woman who walks in the street with her body exposed, she's going to pay a very big price; she's going to be punished terribly for what she did to men. She walks in the street, exposing her body to men, a tremendous punishment is going to be upon her. She doesn't realize how expensive it's going to be, because men are sensitive. It can't be helped, that's their nature.
Therefore Hakadosh Baruch Hu said, that there should be a great mechitzah between man and women forever and ever, and that's the kedusha of the Am Yisroel, we're separate. It doesn't mean chas veshalom any reflection; the Jewish women are kodesh kodoshim just like the men are kodesh kodoshim. In a certain sense, the gemara says that women are more fortunate because when they stay home and don't look for kavod, don't fight who gets shishi, it's easy for them to avoid many things that men have nisyonos.
Therefore the Jewish woman is just as kadosh and in Gan Eden they'll be no less than men, no less than men, only in this world we have to separate them, that's the derech haTorah, that's the holy nation.
Good Shabbos and A Freilichen Purim To All
This email is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
The American Declaration of Independence speaks of the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Recently, following the pioneering work of Martin Seligman, founder of Positive Psychology, there have been hundreds of books on happiness. Yet there is something more fundamental still to the sense of a life well-lived, namely, meaning. The two seem similar. It’s easy to suppose that people who find meaning are happy, and people who are happy have found meaning. But the two are not the same, nor do they always overlap.
Happiness is largely a matter of satisfying needs and wants. Meaning, by contrast, is about a sense of purpose in life, especially by making positive contributions to the lives of others. Happiness is largely about how you feel in the present. Meaning is about how you judge your life as a whole: past, present and future.
Happiness is associated with taking, meaning with giving. Individuals who suffer stress, worry or anxiety are not happy, but they may be living lives rich with meaning. Past misfortunes reduce present happiness, but people often connect such moments with the discovery of meaning. Happiness is not unique to humans. Animals also experience contentment when their wants and needs are satisfied. But meaning is a distinctively human phenomenon. It has to do not with nature but with culture. It is not about what happens to us, but about how we interpret what happens to us. There can be happiness without meaning, and there can be meaning in the absence of happiness, even in the midst of darkness and pain.1
In a fascinating article in The Atlantic, ‘There’s more to life than being happy’2, Emily Smith argued that the pursuit of happiness can result in a relatively shallow, self-absorbed, even selfish life. What makes the pursuit of meaning different is that it is about the search for something larger than the self.
No one did more to put the question of meaning into modern discourse than the late Viktor Frankl, who has figured prominently in this year’s Covenant and Conversation essays on spirituality. In the three years he spent in Auschwitz, Frankl survived and helped others to survive by helping them to discover a purpose in life even in the midst of hell on earth. It was there that he formulated the ideas he later turned into a new type of psychotherapy based on what he called “man’s search for meaning”. His book of that title, written in the course of nine days in 1946, has sold more than ten million copies throughout the world, and ranks as one of the most influential works of the twentieth century.
Frankl knew that in the camps, those who lost the will to live died. He tells of how he helped two individuals to find a reason to survive. One, a woman, had a child waiting for her in another country. Another had written the first volumes of a series of travel books, and there were others yet to write. Both therefore had a reason to live.
Frankl used to say that the way to find meaning was not to ask what we want from life. Instead we should ask what life wants from us. We are each, he said, unique: in our gifts, our abilities, our skills and talents, and in the circumstances of our life. For each of us, then, there is a task only we can do. This does not mean that we are better than others. But if we believe we are here for a reason, then there is a tikkun, a mending, only we can perform, a fragment of light only we can redeem, an act of kindness or courage or generosity or hospitality, even a word of encouragement or a smile, only we can perform, because we are here, in this place, at this time, facing this person at this moment in their lives.
“Life is a task”, he used to say, and added, “The religious man differs from the apparently irreligious man only by experiencing his existence not simply as a task, but as a mission.” He or she is aware of being summoned, called, by a Source. “For thousands of years that source has been called God.”3
That is the significance of the word that gives our parsha, and the third book of the Torah, its name: Vayikra, “And He called.” The precise meaning of this opening verse is difficult to understand. Literally translated it reads: “And He called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying ...” The first phrase seems to be redundant. If we are told that God spoke to Moses, why say in addition, “And He called”? Rashi explains as follows:
And He called to Moses: Every [time God communicated with Moses, whether signalled by the expression] “And He spoke”, or “and He said”, or “and He commanded”, it was always preceded by [God] calling [to Moses by name].4 “Calling” is an expression of endearment. It is the expression employed by the ministering angels, as it says, “And one called to the other…” (Isa. 6:3).
Vayikra, Rashi is telling us, means to be called to a task in love. This is the source of one of the key ideas of Western thought, namely the concept of a vocation or a calling, that is, the choice of a career or way of life not just because you want to do it, or because it offers certain benefits, but because you feel summoned to it. You feel this is your meaning and mission in life. This is what you were placed on earth to do.
There are many such calls in Tanakh. There was the call Abraham heard to leave his land and family. There was the call to Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3:4). There was the one experienced by Isaiah when he saw in a mystical vision God enthroned and surrounded by angels:
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)
One of the most touching is the story of the young Samuel, dedicated by his mother Hannah to serve in the sanctuary at Shiloh where he acted as an assistant to Eli the priest. In bed at night he heard a voice calling his name. He assumed it was Eli. He ran to see what he wanted but Eli told him he had not called. This happened a second time and then a third, and by then Eli realised that it was God calling the child. He told Samuel that the next time the voice called his name, he should reply, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ It did not occur to the child that it might be God summoning him to a mission, but it was. Thus began his career as a prophet, judge and anointer of Israel’s first two kings, Saul and David (1 Samuel 3).
When we see a wrong to be righted, a sickness to be healed, a need to be met, and we feel it speaking to us, that is when we come as close as we can in a post-prophetic age to hearing Vayikra, God’s call. And why does the word appear here, at the beginning of the third and central book of the Torah? Because the book of Vayikra is about sacrifices, and a vocation is about sacrifices. We are willing to make sacrifices when we feel they are part of the task we are called on to do.
From the perspective of eternity we may sometimes be overwhelmed by a sense of our own insignificance. We are no more than a wave in the ocean, a grain of sand on the sea shore, dust on the surface of infinity. Yet we are here because God wanted us to be, because there is a task He wants us to perform. The search for meaning is the quest for this task.
Each of us is unique. Even genetically identical twins are different. There are things only we can do, we who are what we are, in this time, this place and these circumstances. For each of us God has a task: work to perform, a kindness to show, a gift to give, love to share, loneliness to ease, pain to heal, or broken lives to help mend. Discerning that task, hearing Vayikra, God’s call, is one of the great spiritual challenges for each of us.
How do we know what it is? Some years ago, in To Heal a Fractured World, I offered this as a guide, and it still seems to me to make sense: Where what we want to do meets what needs to be done, that is where God wants us to be.
Beethoven rose each morning at dawn and made himself coffee. He was fastidious about this: each cup had to be made with exactly sixty beans, which he counted out each time. He would then sit at his desk and compose until 2:00pm or 3:00pm in the afternoon. Subsequently he would go for a long walk, taking with him a pencil and some sheets of music paper to record any ideas that came to him on the way. Each night after supper he would have a beer, smoke a pipe, and go to bed early, 10:00pm at the latest.
Anthony Trollope who as his day job worked for the Post Office, paid a groom to wake him every day at 5:00am. By 5:30am he would be at his desk, and he then proceeded to write for exactly 3 hours, working against the clock to produce 250 words each quarter-hour. This way he wrote 47 novels, many of them 3 volumes in length, as well as 16 other books. If he finished a novel before the day’s 3 hours were over, he would immediately take a fresh piece of paper and begin the next.
Immanuel Kant, the most brilliant philosopher of modern times, was famous for his routine. As Heinrich Heine put it, “Getting up, drinking coffee, writing, giving lectures, eating, taking a walk, everything had its set time, and the neighbours knew precisely that the time was 3:30pm when Kant stepped outside his door with his grey coat and the Spanish stick in his hand.”
These details, together with more than 150 other examples drawn from the great philosophers, artists, composers and writers, come from a book by Mason Currey entitled Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work.1 The book’s point is simple. Most creative people have daily rituals. These form the soil in which the seeds of their invention grow.
In some cases they deliberately took on jobs they did not need to do, simply to establish structure and routine in their lives. A typical example was the poet Wallace Stevens, who took a position as an insurance lawyer at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company where he worked until his death. He said that having a job was one of the best things that could happen to him because “It introduces discipline and regularity into one’s life.”
Note the paradox. These were all innovators, pioneers, ground-breakers, trail-blazers, who formulated new ideas, originated new forms of expression, did things no one had done before in quite that way. They broke the mould. They changed the landscape. They ventured into the unknown.
Yet their daily lives were the opposite: ritualised and routine. One could even call them boring. Why so? Because – the saying is famous, though we don’t know who first said it – genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration. The paradigm-shifting scientific discovery, the path-breaking research, the wildly successful new product, the brilliant novel, the award-winning film, are almost always the result of many years of long hours and attention to detail. Being creative involves hard work.
The ancient Hebrew word for hard work is avodah. It is also the word that means “serving God”. What applies in the arts, sciences, business and industry, applies equally to the life of the spirit. Achieving any form of spiritual growth requires sustained effort and daily rituals.
Hence the remarkable aggadic passage in which various sages put forward their idea of klal gadol ba-Torah, “the great principle of the Torah”. Ben Azzai says it is the verse, “This is the book of the chronicles of man: On the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God” (Gen. 5:1). Ben Zoma says that there is a more embracing principle, “Listen, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Ben Nannas says there is a yet more embracing principle: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Ben Pazzi says we find a more embracing principle still. He quotes a verse from this week’s parsha: “One sheep shall be offered in the morning, and a second in the afternoon” (Ex. 29:39) – or, as we might say nowadays, Shacharit, Mincha and Maariv. In a word: “routine”. The passage concludes: The law follows Ben Pazzi.2
The meaning of Ben Pazzi’s statement is clear: all the high ideals in the world – the human person as God’s image, belief in God’s unity, and the love of neighbour – count for little until they are turned into habits of action that become habits of the heart. We can all recall moments of insight when we had a great idea, a transformative thought, the glimpse of a project that could change our lives. A day, a week or a year later the thought has been forgotten or become a distant memory, at best a might-have-been.
The people who change the world, whether in small or epic ways, are those who turn peak experiences into daily routines, who know that the details matter, and who have developed the discipline of hard work, sustained over time.
Judaism’s greatness is that it takes high ideals and exalted visions – image of God, faith in God, love of neighbour – and turns them into patterns of behaviour. Halakhah, (Jewish law), involves a set of routines that – like those of the great creative minds – reconfigures the brain, giving discipline to our lives and changing the way we feel, think and act.
Much of Judaism must seem to outsiders, and sometimes to insiders also, boring, prosaic, mundane, repetitive, routine, obsessed with details and bereft for the most part of drama or inspiration. Yet that is precisely what writing the novel, composing the symphony, directing the film, perfecting the killer app, or building a billion-dollar business is, most of the time. It is a matter of hard work, focused attention and daily rituals. That is where all sustainable greatness comes from.
We have developed in the West a strange view of religious experience: that it’s what overwhelms you when something happens completely outside the run of normal experience. You climb a mountain and look down. You are miraculously saved from danger. You find yourself part of a vast and cheering crowd. It’s how the German Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) defined “the holy”: as a mystery (mysterium) both terrifying (tremendum) and fascinating (fascinans). You are awed by the presence of something vast. We have all had such experiences.
But that is all they are: experiences. They linger in the memory, but they are not part of everyday life. They are not woven into the texture of our character. They do not affect what we do or achieve or become. Judaism is about changing us so that we become creative artists whose greatest creation is our own life.3 And that needs daily rituals: Shacharit, Mincha, Maariv, the food we eat, the way we behave at work or in the home, the choreography of holiness which is the special contribution of the priestly dimension of Judaism, set out in this week’s parsha and throughout the book of Vayikra.
These rituals have an effect. We now know through PET and fMRI scans that repeated spiritual exercise reconfigures the brain. It gives us inner resilience. It makes us more grateful. It gives us a sense of basic trust in the Source of our being. It shapes our identity, the way we act and talk and think. Ritual is to spiritual greatness what practice is to a tennis player, daily writing disciplines are to a novelist, and reading company accounts are to Warren Buffett. They are the precondition of high achievement. Serving God is avodah, which means hard work.
If you seek sudden inspiration, then work at it every day for a year or a lifetime. That is how it comes. As every famous golfer is said to have said when asked for the secret of his success: “I was just lucky. But the funny thing is that the harder I practice, the luckier I become.” The more you seek spiritual heights, the more you need the ritual and routine of halakhah, the Jewish “way” to God.
I hope this finds you all well and happy and enjoying ‘Yeshiva week’. There are so many topics in this parsha, from which to choose, but I finally settled on conveying to you the following story, one that teaches us something very basic but valuable, about ‘ Kibud Av v’Eim ‘ (honoring parents), I found in an unidentified parsha-letter. The author brings it from a sefer called ‘Nitzotzos’. First, a short historical anecdote:
Among the devastating events that we commemorate on Tish’a b’Av, is the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, for on that day (July 30) in 1492, after a four month warning period, Spain became “Judenrein” – officially ‘cleansed’ of its 250,000-strong Jewish population. There were some though, who stayed, by ostensibly converting to Christianity while secretly remaining true to Hashem and the Torah. We know them as the Marranos, and they were the primary targets of inquisition spies who actively sought to catch them doing Jewish things and then to burn them at the stake as heretics in accordance with Inquisition ‘law’.
Many of these marranos were very wealthy merchants or people who held positions of power and prestige in government. King Ferdinand himself, was completely unaware of the fact that his closest advisor and confidant, a man by the name of Don Pedro (fictitious name), was one of these secret Jews. However, as was so often the case, others in the royal court who burned inside with jealousy at the close relationship between Don Pedro and the king, decided to use the inquisition to their advantage. They collected enough evidence (and not much was needed) to convince the tribunal of Don Pedro’s guilt. Not only was he convicted of heresy against the church, but also of the unforgiveable crime of treason for deceiving the king, queen and the entire royal court. He was sentenced to be burned at the stake.
During his short confinement in prison, messengers were sent by the king to plead with Don Pedro to publicly apologize, reject Judaism and vow to, from then on, conduct his life in accordance with the catholic faith. That would be all that would be needed for the king to exercise his authority of pardon. Nevertheless, the now-openly Jewish minister adamantly refused to do anything of the sort.
At last, the appointed day arrived. An “auto-de-fe” was set up in the main city square. These gruesome events always attracted many spectators, but it wasn’t often that the king himself attended. This time he did. The prisoner, looking worn and weary, was dragged in chains, out to the platform. The shackles were removed so that he could step up to be strapped to the cross. Unexpectedly, the king bolted out of his chair and ran up to Don Pedro. “ Please my dearest friend,” he whispered, as the entire crowd silenced themselves and struggled to eavesdrop on the conversation, “ For my sake as well as yours – renounce your Judaism right now, and I can reinstate you in your position immediately! Please, it hurts me so to see you suffer needlessly like this!”
Don Pedro, the suffering but determined Jew, did not whisper his response – he let out an anguished wail, “ The chain! The chain! ”
No one understood what he meant by these strange words. The king looked down just to confirm that the shackles had been removed, and then tried to reassure Don Pedro, “ The chains have been removed my brother. Why are you moaning about chains? Why does this seem to be so painful when it could be so easy?”
“ Do you want to know what chain I am talking about? “ his voiced now boomed with Jewish pride and defiance. “ I am talking about the great chain that links me back, through my parents and grandparents, all the way to Avraham our forefather. I am only one small but nevertheless important part of our history, entrusted with passing down our heritage, our continuing relationship with G-D, to the next links in the chain. I have no right, nor do I have the slightest inclination to sever that connection. Do with me what you will, but I will never renounce my faith and loyalty to G-D and the Torah!”
The concept of children showing reverence and loyalty to the heritage and to the legacies imparted to them by their parents, has always been a powerfully motivating and life-altering one – and that could be a positive thing or not. ( Still, I think one of the most insidious parts of current western culture is the ridicule and disrespect with which it treats many things old and established; but anyways…). If children would appreciate how much energy parents expend, to convey to them those things that they consider important, the children would understand that following in a parent’s GOOD footsteps, greatly honors that parent and earns the child a mitzvah of “Kibud Av v’Eim”.
R’ Avrohom Abba Weingort, an orator of note in Yerushalayim, was once invited to speak to a small, intimate audience in Modiin. The topic he chose was this very mitzvah of honoring one’s parents. In the course of his talk, he was reminded of an incident that happened with his Rebbe, to which he too, was a witness.
His Rebbe, R’ Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg ZT”L (1884-1966), famous for, among other things, his colossal halachic work, “Seridei Aish”, served as Rosh Yeshiva at the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin, between the two world wars. At a time when so much of German Jewry had embraced the reform movement or outright secularism, he was a beacon of strength and light, representing true orthodoxy despite the crushing adversity. Most of the time, he devoted and confined himself to his duties as Rosh Yeshiva, but every Yom Kippur, he made it his practice to daven at the great Central Synagogue of Berlin, and that, despite the added hardship of it being located quite a distance from his home.
The year was 1921. Yom Kippur was a day, as it is even in our times, whose seriousness inspired even the most secular of Jews to attend Shul, and many still chose to daven in the traditional orthodox setting. There was an air of solemnity and decorum throughout Shacharis, as all in attendance concentrated deeply and genuinely as they communicated with their Creator. At the conclusion of the Haftorah, the Gabbai announced “Yizkor!”. Immediately, most of the young people, and others who had not by then, lost any close relatives, exited the Shul and went to wait outside until Yizkor would conclude and Mussaf would commence.
All of a sudden, a large, black limousine, escorted front and rear by two police motorcycles, pulled up and stopped directly in front of the Shul. With impatient curiosity, the crowd mulling about, turned to see who would be coming out of the official-looking vehicle. The rear passenger door opened abruptly, and out stepped the Foreign minister of the German “Weimar” Republic, Walter Rathenau. Most onlookers were shocked and surprised to see this man even come near a Shul. Yes, he was indeed a Jew, but one who had quite publicly forsaken anything and everything associated with Judaism and the Jewish people.
The minister ignored the hushed mumbling around him, and rushed up the steps of the entrance to the Shul with a look of satisfaction on his face when he realized that he had arrived just on time for Yizkor. Many observers seemed untroubled by Rathenau’s appearance, but a number of others had strong opinions against his ‘hypocritical’ attendance at Shul – they argued too, that it was offensive to them that for the sake of a mere custom, Yizkor, this man would arrogantly desecrate the sanctity of the holiest day of the year by driving right up to the front of the Shul. Discussions turned into arguments and continued after Yizkor had finished, even as they took their seats to begin Mussaf. Fortunately, the minister did not hear any of these nasty comments as he left and disappeared back into his limo.
The Chazzan approached the Bima to begin Mussaf, when unexpectedly and uncharacteristically, R’ Weinberg stood up and advanced toward the Bima. Signalling to the Chazzan to wait, he began to speak. “ Rabosai,” he roared, “ What were some of you thinking when you disparaged and mocked a man who, in all sincerity, came to Shul to pay proper Jewish respect to his father’s memory. Can any one of us, even imagine how much tumultuous thought went into his decision to do this, a full five years after his father’s demise? I tell you all now,” he said sternly, “ Anyone who shows this kind of respect to his parents, guarantees for himself, the zechus of possibly he, but definitely his descendants, returning to the fold and doing Teshuvah! With this one tiny act, Herr Rathenau has shown that he has not completely removed himself from the heritage passed down to him. He has not severed the great chain of Jewish history!” With that, the Rav returned to his seat, his terse words making a huge impression on the entire congregation.
R’ Weingort, having concluded the story, scanned the small audience in Modiin to gage their reaction. Suddenly, one of the men got up, shaking and looking somewhat faint. Everyone in the room turned his way and it was clear that the man had been crying. “ The Rav mentioned Walter Rathenau!” he said, obviously still very emotional. “ That was the last Yom Kippur of his life – he was brutally assassinated about nine months later! Walter Rathenau was my great-grandfather! I am here attending this shiur today, because his grandson, my father, became a Baal Teshuvah! Indeed, as the Rav promised, the chain has been revived!”
Another short vignette: There was a small Shul in north Tel-Aviv that generally struggled to scrape together a minyan. One day, an elderly man began frequenting the Shul for davening. He didn’t socialize with anyone and would hurry out right after davening ended. The Rav’s curiosity was piqued by this man who looked like someone who had not been a regular attendee at Shul for most of his life. It was quite an anomaly for an older person to become a Baal Teshuvah, and finally after a few days the Rav approached him. “ Shalom Aleichem sir,” he said to the man as he caught him hurrying as usual, out of Shul. “ We’re glad to see that you are becoming one of our ‘regulars’.”
“ Yes, Aleichem Shalom,” he replied. “ I just recently became religious.”
“ Oh, how wonderful,” the Rav responded with a warm grin. “ If you don’t mind my asking, what made you make such a drastic life-change at your age?”
“ Well,” offered the man willingly, “ did you hear about the case of Rav Ravitz Z”L?”
The Rav was indeed aware of the case, and of the Kiddush Hashem resulting from it. R’ Ravitz was in dire need of a kidney transplant. All of his children were eager to help and ended up arguing over who would have the zechus of donating their kidney to him. They could not reach agreement on their own, and brought the case to R’ Elyashiv ZT”L, who ruled that the Bechor, the firstborn, had first rights to this zechus. The case received much interest, even in the media, and resulted in a great Kiddush Hashem.
The Rav nodded and the man continued. “ Well I was in the same position as R’ Ravitz. I too, urgently required a kidney transplant and the doctors approached my children, whose kidneys would be the best match for me. My son apologetically refused because he was set to take an extended business trip abroad and was afraid that the surgery would render him too weak to function effectively. My daughter also turned them down because she was poised to begin a new semester at university, and also feared being too weak to address her studies diligently. “So you see,” said the old man, tears now running down his wrinkled cheeks,” I gave them life. I invested everything, time, money and physical effort for them, and they still abandoned me in my time of need. I was so hurt! And it was just then, at this low point in my life, that I read about the case of Rav Ravitz and realized the greatness, the transcendence of Torah and the Torah life. If my children, nebich, in their ‘progressive’ lives, were no longer sensitive to the chain of decency and ‘Hakaras Hatov’ taught by Judaism, I was not going to let my own life slip away, disconnected from my forefather’s heritage. I felt an urgent need to grab hold of the chain, at least for myself – right then and there, I began my Teshuvah journey!”
How can a person not be depressed when he hears about so many people who are dying young?
ANSWER:
Let me tell you, it's an excuse, it's an alibi. People are looking for a tirutz to be unhappy, that's all it is. The truth is, you don't care much about them, you're looking for an excuse to be unhappy. On the contrary, you should say Baruch Hashem that You protected me. All day long think about that, Hashem protected me! Of course what can you do? Pray for them. Are you praying for that person? No, you're just showing that you're dissatisfied, asking questions. Why don't you pray for him? In shmonei esrei, in refaeinu, are you praying for him?
And in addition to that you should thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu, Modim anachnu luch, we thank you Hashem, You saved me and my wife, and my sons and my daughters, and my grandchildren! We don't have such things among us, Baruch ata Hashem ha'gomel chasadim tovim le'amo yisroel! Are you thinking that? That's one of the purposes. When you hear tzaros, you have to rejoice that you didn't get the tzaros.
Rejoice you say, I have to rejoice? Be mispalel for them, if they need money, help them get money, but you should not lose sight of the fact that Hakadosh Baruch Hu has protected you, and you have to utilize that to have more simcha in your life. Whenever you hear of a misfortune, think that Baruch Hashem it didn't happen to me. You stand shmonei esrei, you bow down Baruch Ata Hashem, you think, I thank you Hashem.
For what am I thanking You? Nothing at all, you bow down like a robot! Bow down and think, You saved me from what that person has.
Now, we don't know why Hashem did it to that person, Hashem has His reasons, but Baruch Hashem He didn't do it to me. That should be your reaction, and be happy and enjoy it.
How can I enjoy somebody else's tzaros? No, I'm not enjoying it, I'm praying for him. You know what else you can do? You can contribute to his health by giving some money to bikur cholim. Whatever it is you should do...but at the same time, utilize it and understand that Hakadosh Baruch Hu rescued you from that trouble.
Good Shabbos To All
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
Maimonides called his ideal type of human being – the sage – a rofe nefashot, a “healer of souls”.[1] Today we call such a person a psychotherapist, a word coined relatively recently from the Greek word psyche, meaning “soul”, and therapeia, “healing”. It is astonishing how many of the pioneering soul-healers in modern times have been Jewish.
Almost all the early psychoanalysts were, among them Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Otto Rank and Melanie Klein. So overwhelming was this, that psychoanalysis was known in Nazi Germany as the “Jewish science”. More recent Jewish contributions include Solomon Asch on conformity, Lawrence Kohlberg on developmental psychology and Bruno Bettelheim on child psychology. From Leon Festinger came the concept of cognitive dissonance, from Howard Gardner the idea of multiple intelligences and from Peter Salovey and Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence. Abraham Maslow gave us new insight into motivation, as did Walter Mischel into self-control via the famous “marshmallow test”. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky gave us prospect theory and behavioural economics. Most recently, Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Green have pioneered empirical study of the moral emotions. The list goes on and on.
To my mind, though, one of the most important Jewish contributions came from three outstanding figures: Viktor Frankl, Aaron T. Beck and Martin Seligman. Frankl created the method known as Logotherapy, based on the search for meaning. Beck was the joint creator of the most successful form of treatment, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Seligman gave us Positive Psychology, that is, psychology not just as a cure for depression but as a means of achieving happiness or flourishing through acquired optimism.
These are very different approaches but they have one thing in common. They are based on the belief – set out much earlier in Habad Hassidim in R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi’s Tanya – that if we change the way we think, we will change the way we feel. This was, at the outset, a revolutionary proposition in sharp contrast to other theories of the human psyche. There were those who believed that our characters are determined by genetic factors. Others thought our emotional life was governed by early childhood experiences and unconscious drives. Others again, most famously Ivan Pavlov, believed that human behaviour is determined by conditioning. On all of these theories our inner freedom is severely circumscribed. Who we are, and how we feel, are largely dictated by factors other than the conscious mind.
It was Viktor Frankl who showed there is another way – and he did so under some of the worst conditions ever endured by human beings: in Auschwitz. As a prisoner there, Frankl discovered that the Nazis took away almost everything that made people human: their possessions, their clothes, their hair, their very names. Before being sent to Auschwitz, Frankl had been a therapist specialising in curing people who had suicidal tendencies. In the camp, he devoted himself as far as he could to giving his fellow prisoners the will to live, knowing that if they lost it, they would soon die.
There he made the fundamental discovery for which he later became famous:
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.[2]
What made the difference, what gave people the will to live, was the belief that there was a task for them to perform, a mission for them to accomplish, that they had not yet completed and that was waiting for them to do in the future. Frankl discovered that “it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.”[3] There were people in the camp who had so lost hope that they had nothing more to expect from life. Frankl was able to get them to see that “life was still expecting something from them.” One, for example, had a child still alive, in a foreign country, who was waiting for him. Another came to see that he had books to produce that no one else could write. Through this sense of a future calling to them, Frankl was able to help them to discover their purpose in life, even in the valley of the shadow of death.
The mental shift this involved came to be known, especially in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, as reframing. Just as a painting can look different when placed in a different frame, so can a life. The facts don’t change, but the way we perceive them does. Frankl writes that he was able to survive Auschwitz by daily seeing himself as if he were in a university, giving a lecture on the psychology of the concentration camp. Everything that was happening to him was transformed, by this one act of the mind, into a series of illustrations of the points he was making in the lecture. “By this method, I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past.”[4] Reframing tells us that though we cannot always change the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we can change the way we see them, and this itself changes the way we feel.
Yet this modern discovery is really a re-discovery, because the first great re-framer in history was Joseph, as described in this week’s and next’s parshiyot. Recall the facts. He had been sold into slavery by his brothers. He had lost his freedom for thirteen years, and been separated from his family for twenty-two years. It would be understandable if he felt toward his brothers resentment and a desire for revenge. Yet he rose above such feelings, and did so precisely by shifting his experiences into a different frame. Here is what he says to his brothers when he first discloses his identity to them:
“I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life … God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.” (Gen. 45:4-8)
And this is what he says years later, after their father Jacob has died and the brothers fear that he may now take revenge:
“Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as He is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” (Gen. 50:19-21)
Joseph had reframed his entire past. He no longer saw himself as a man wronged by his brothers. He had come to see himself as a man charged with a life-saving mission by God. Everything that had happened to him was necessary so that he could achieve his purpose in life: to save an entire region from starvation during a famine, and to provide a safe haven for his family.
This single act of reframing allowed Joseph to live without a burning sense of anger and injustice. It enabled him to forgive his brothers and be reconciled with them. It transformed the negative energies of feelings about the past into focused attention to the future. Joseph, without knowing it, had become the precursor of one of the great movements in psychotherapy in the modern world. He showed the power of reframing. We cannot change the past. But by changing the way we think about the past, we can change the future.
Whatever situation we are in, by reframing it we can change our entire response, giving us the strength to survive, the courage to persist, and the resilience to emerge, on the far side of darkness, into the light of a new and better day.
Something extraordinary happens between last week’s parsha and this week’s. It is almost as if the pause of a week between them were itself part of the story.
Recall last week’s parsha about the childhood of Joseph, focusing not on what happened but on who made it happen. Throughout the entire roller-coaster ride of Joseph’s early life he is described as passive, not active; the done-to, not the doer; the object, not the subject, of verbs.
It was his father who loved him and gave him the richly embroidered cloak. It was his brothers who envied and hated him. He had dreams, but we do not dream because we want to but because, in some mysterious way still not yet fully understood, they come unbidden into our sleeping mind.
His brothers, tending their flocks far from home, plotted to kill him. They threw him into a pit. He was sold as a slave. In Potiphar’s house he rose to a position of seniority, but the text goes out of its way to say that this was not because of Joseph himself, but because of God: “God was with Joseph, and he became a successful man; he was in the house of his Egyptian master. His master saw that God was with him, and that God caused all that he did to prosper in his hands.”
Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him, and failed, but here too, Joseph was passive, not active. He did not seek her, she sought him. Eventually, “She caught hold of his garment, saying, ‘Lie with me!’ But he left his garment in her hand, and fled and ran outside.” Using the garment as evidence, she had him imprisoned on a totally false charge. There was nothing Joseph could do to establish his innocence.
In prison, again he became a leader, a manager, but again the Torah goes out of its way to attribute this not to Joseph but to Divine intervention: “God was with Joseph and showed him kindness. He gave him favour in the sight of the chief jailer … Whatever was done there, He was the one who did it. The chief jailer paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph’s care, because God was with him; and whatever he did, God made it prosper.”
There he met Pharaoh’s chief butler and baker. They had dreams, and Joseph interpreted them, but insisted that it is not he but God who was doing so: “Joseph said to them, ‘Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me.’”
There is nothing like this anywhere else in Tanakh. Whatever happened to Joseph was the result of someone else’s deed: those of his father, his brothers, his master’s wife, the chief jailer, or God Himself. Joseph was the ball thrown by hands other than his own.
Then, for essentially the first time in the whole story, Joseph decided to take fate into his own hands. Knowing that the chief butler was about to be restored to his position, he asked him to bring his case to the attention of Pharaoh: “Remember me when it is well with you; please do me the kindness to make mention of me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this place. For indeed I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into prison.”
A double injustice had been done, and Joseph saw this as his one chance of regaining his freedom. But the end of the parsha delivers a devastating blow: “The chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, and forgot him.” The anticlimax is intense, emphasized by the double verb, “did not remember” and “forgot.” We sense Joseph waiting day after day for news. None comes. His last, best hope has gone. He will never go free. Or so it seems.
To understand the power of this anticlimax, we must remember that only since the invention of printing and the availability of books have we been able to tell what happens next merely by turning a page. For many centuries, there were no printed books. People knew the biblical story primarily by listening to it week by week. Those who were hearing the story for the first time had to wait a week to discover what Joseph’s fate would be.
The parsha break is thus a kind of real-life equivalent to the delay Joseph experienced in jail, which, as this week’s parsha begins by telling us, took “Two whole years”. It was then that Pharaoh had two dreams that no one in the court could interpret, prompting the chief butler to remember the man he had met in prison. Joseph was brought to Pharaoh, and within hours was transformed from zero to hero: from prisoner-without-hope to Viceroy of the greatest empire of the ancient world.
Why this extraordinary chain of events? It is telling us something important, but what? Surely this: God answers our prayers, but often not when we thought or how we thought. Joseph sought to get out of prison, and he did get out of prison. But not immediately, and not because the butler kept his promise.
The story is telling us something fundamental about the relationship between our dreams and our achievements. Joseph was the great dreamer of the Torah, and his dreams for the most part came true. But not in a way he or anyone else could have anticipated. At the end of last week’s parsha – with Joseph still in prison – it seemed as if those dreams had ended in ignominious failure. We had to wait for a week, as he had to wait for two years, before discovering that it was not so.
There is no achievement without effort. That is the first principle. God saved Noah from the flood, but first Noah had to build the ark. God promised Abraham the land, but first he had to buy the cave of Machpelah in which to bury Sarah. God promised the Israelites the land, but they had to fight the battles. Joseph became a leader, as he dreamed he would. But first he had to hone his practical and administrative skills, first in Potiphar’s house, then in prison. Even when God assures us that something will happen, it will not happen without our effort. A Divine promise is not a substitute for human responsibility. To the contrary, it is a call to responsibility.
But effort alone is not enough. We need seyata di-Shemaya, “the help of Heaven”. We need the humility to acknowledge that we are dependent on forces not under our control. No one in Genesis invoked God more often than Joseph. As Rashi (to Gen. 39:3) says, “God’s name was constantly in his mouth”. He credited God for each of his successes. He recognised that without God he could not have done what he did. Out of that humility came patience.
Those who have achieved great things have often had this unusual combination of characteristics. On the one hand they work hard. They labour, they practice, they strive. On the other, they know that it will not be their hand alone that writes the script. It is not our efforts alone that decide the outcome. So we pray, and God answers our prayers – but not always when or how we expected. (And of course, sometimes the answer is No).
The Talmud (Niddah 70b) says it simply. It asks, What should you do to become rich? It answers: work hard and behave honestly. But, says the Talmud, many have tried this and did not become rich. Back comes the answer: You must pray to God from whom all wealth comes. In which case, asks the Talmud, why work hard? Because, answers the Talmud: The one without the other is insufficient. We need both: human effort and Divine favour. We have to be, in a certain sense, patient and impatient: impatient with ourselves but patient in waiting for God to bless our endeavours.
The week-long delay between Joseph’s failed attempt to get out of jail and his eventual success is there to teach us this delicate balance. If we work hard enough, God grants us success – but not when we want but, rather, when the time is right.
Hamburgers as Hakaras Hatov (Gratitude):
The Orthodox Jewish World Says “Thank You” with IDF BBQ
By: Yael N. Ehrenpreis Meyer
Just another night at a base near Jerusalem… Khaki-clad young men stifle yawns as they return from daytours
of duty at watch-towers and bus stops, train stations and highway patrols. Young women, several
attired in the uniform of the IDF educational corps, gather for a late-evening meeting. The burden of their
infinite mission weighs heavily – but these are, after all, 18-to-20-somethings, and so these hundreds of
soldiers look to each other for some way to lighten the mood and enjoy a few hours of “off-time.” They
haven’t had much luck with this new “mission,” when in the corner of the sprawling base, suddenly… a
spark of light, the immitigable smell of burning charcoal, the sight of unfamiliar figures chattering in English
while chopping never-ending rows of onions… catches their attention.
What is going on here, on this base, tonight?
Israel is a nation where things happen fast. The security situation turns upside down, famous figures see
their popularity rise and fall, geopolitical alliances shift – and great people, from vastly different sectors of
the complex Israel demography, get together and make the improbable happen, almost overnight.
In the midst of the current wave of terror, the volunteers of Tzevet Paamon (the Paamon Team) were busy
going from checkpoint to outpost to watchtower, handing out snacks and support to soldiers on alert.
Paamon was founded to memorialize Major Chaggai Bibi, a man who was “the epitome of giving,” in the
words of his best friend, Amit Amar, who has dedicated his time to trying to fill in the gap of what was lost
that day twelve years ago when Chaggai was killed in the line of duty.
Yossi Goldberger, too, is a known figure on Israel’s “giving scene.” Hearing about Paamon’s initiative on a
local secular radio station, he became determined to expand it to an even larger scale. To transform this
“good resolution” into reality, Goldberger turned to his partner in giving on the other side of the Atlantic,
Rabbi Pesach Lerner, Executive President Emeritus of the National Council of Young Israel. As co-chair of
the American Friends of the International Young Israel Movement, Israel Region, which contributes to the
physical and spiritual welfare of the IDF, Rabbi Lerner is someone all too familiar with the challenges that
Israel’s soldiers face on a regular basis. Looking through the prism of his experience, Rabbi Lerner saw this
plan as an opportunity: a perfect way to give the North American Orthodox community the privilege of
expressing hakaras hatov (gratitude) for the boundless devotion of the young men and women in the IDF.
Rabbi Lerner and Yossi Goldberger told Amit, "Give the soldiers a barbecue – with all the extras! Let them
know we care about them. We will take responsibility for the cost." Rabbi Lerner made a few phone calls to
guarantee the first few barbecues. He was interviewed on the Nachum Segal Metro New York Jewish radio
program, he sent out a mass email – and the Jewish people responded.
November 18, 2015: All of these “ingredients” – the plans, the good will, the support, the generous-minded
individuals to carry it out – came together on a dark and windy night at a central IDF base in Har Gilo, just
south of Jerusalem, the third barbecue organized by this new international coalition of likeminded
individuals, Charedim l’maan haChayalim – Orthodox Jews in Support of Israel’s soldiers. Long tables are
laid out and assembly-line style, thousands of ordinary round rolls are transformed – by being smeared with
chummus, ketchup, mustard or mayonnaise, stuffed with lettuce, tomato and onions, and then topped with
a perfectly grilled hamburger as piéce de resistance – into a sandwich that is more than a sandwich: it is an
expression of love and appreciation. And the young soldiers – like hungry teenagers the world over – can't
wait to eat these delicious "expressions." One young corporal promptly wheedles himself a second
sandwich; one young military officer has brought her own “security,” the stuffed bear sticking out of her
backpack, to join her for a barbecue dinner. ("The older you get," one volunteer comments, "the more you
realize that all of these thousands of 'soldiers' are really just 18-to-21-year-old kids who should still be at
home with their mothers, not out on the frontlines of every danger zone!") When they ask (through the
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crunch of fresh lettuce) "who is funding this barbecue, and the new weekly barbecues that are now the
buzz throughout the army – after all, tonight's event is the third in just three weeks?" they are told,
"chareidim she' b'chutz la'aretz sh'echpat lahem, Orthodox Jews outside of Israel who care, who appreciate
your military service and want to say thank you." Their reactions range from mere surprise to complete
astonishment: Really? They care - about us? I never realized... Wow!" An act of hakarat hatov, of
appreciation, has turned into a massive kiddush HaShem.
Despite the chill in the air, the atmosphere is warm – and not just from the smoke-filled barbecues. A
potpourri of the Orthodox world, volunteers spanning the generations and the vastness of the North
American continent, never pause from their chopping and stuffing even as they explain what brings them
here, on this night, for this cause.
Philanthropic support for Israel is such a strong value for the Canadian Jewish community that it is
ingrained across the generations. So it’s not surprising that tonight’s sponsors, the Westmount Shul &
Learning Centre of Thornhill (North of Toronto), are represented by both the parents and children of shul
members. There are the Nussbaums, Harriet and Arnold, of Montreal, listening to young Amitai, a
private from Kiryat Ono, announce (burger in hand) that this is his very first month of his basic training, and
admit (sheepishly) that he still gets homesick at night. “You can’t imagine how good it feels to know that we
matter so much to charedim around the world,” relays the young recruit. His listeners understand. Married
for 60 years, Harriet & Arnold continue to radiate their appreciation for one another and for Israel, a
dedication that has defined them through the decades. Indeed, tonight is not Harriet’s first visit to an army
base. That first, she explained, “happened in 1979, when I directed a public affairs seminar for Canadian
Hadassah-WIZO, taking Hadassah and WIZO members around Israel to show them the impact of
Canadian generosity.” Today, nearly 40 years later, Harriet is back on a base, once again reflecting on a
vital tzedakah initiative, this time on behalf of her children, who daven at the Westmount Shul. Looking
around fondly at Amitai and the many others young enough to be her grandchildren, all eagerly waiting for
their burgers and then happily munching in the darkness, the past and present seem to merge. “The
soldiers I met in 1979,” Harriet concludes, “might have their own grandchildren on this base tonight!”
Speaking of grandchildren, the Westmount kehillah has yet another representative here tonight, Thornhill
native Shira Kaller. After getting married, Shira, who is studying kinesiology and Joshua, a Florida native,
settled in an apartment near Geulah. They are one among thousands of kollel couples building the
foundation of a Torah home by starting their married life in Jerusalem. But for them, limmud (learning) must
lead to ma’aseh shel mitzvah ( mitzvah actions)– and sometimes that transcendent ma’aseh translates into
grilling a burger to perfection and stuffing a baguette with me’urav Yerushalmi. Joshua, who is already a
qualified lawyer, is learning in a small yeshiva he describes as “committed to serious learning – learning
that motivates serious character development. Torah is our imperative, and empowering our ethical and
moral development through Torah is our imperative as well.” His description of the ethos of his yeshiva
captures the forces driving this committed young couple, as well as all of their fellow volunteers, tonight and
at every barbecue event.
On the subject of ethical imperatives, it is only during their non-stop chopping and serving that the
supporters of tonight’s barbecue learn just what a critical role the Har Gilo base plays in providing character
education for the entire IDF.
Reut is the kind of vivacious young woman you’d want as your child’s teacher. She is in fact serving an
important role as an educator, but since this is Israel, this twenty-year-old is teaching in the context of her
army service. It is Reut who explains to everyone the concept of “Education Week.” Whether from Golani,
Nahal, Givati, or another infantry corps, or a member of the armored, artillery or combat engineering corps
of the ground forces, every combat soldier from the entire country spends a week at one of only two bases
in the country (the other is in Latrun), for an intense seminar exploring their Jewish and Israeli identity,
recounting the tradition of the IDF and its military history, and learning about the principles and obligations
incumbent upon those serving in the world’s most ethical army. And the fact that these new recruits are
experiencing love from North American Orthodox Jews represents a perfect addition to their "Education
Week" lessons. "In short,” Reut summarizes, “it is here, to this very base, that all our soldiers come to learn
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the reasons why they are fighting. Every week a new cohort of 500 chayalim from around the country arrive
at Har Gilo. In fact,” she adds with a smile, “you could have a never-ending series of barbecues here,
recurring festivities for every week’s class of 500 visiting combat soldiers!”
A barbecue every week? It’s definitely a dream. But after all, the entire initiative had been a dream: a
dream which can be transformed into reality – if all of us make it happen! Indeed, thanks to the commitment
and action of a few community leaders and several generous sponsors to date, thousands of soldiers have
already been impacted, their hearts and hunger filled to capacity by the tangible, very edible
demonstrations of gratitude being exported to their bases by the international Torah community.
But surely IDF BBQ should touch every soldier! After all, we need our chayalim to assure our security
throughout Eretz Yisrael – in Jerusalem, Gush Etzion, Chevron, the Golan, up north and down south. So
shouldn’t we make sure that IDF BBQ reaches every where they do?
Yossi Goldberger, meanwhile, is pleased by the rapid pace in which their efforts have been realized – from
the first conversation to this, the third barbecue, with two more already in the works (Westmount Shul is
sponsoring another BBQ for Dec. 1) , has been just a few weeks. And he has no doubt that this momentous
Kiddush HaShem has only just begun, with a wave of enthusiastic support just on the horizon. How can he
be so certain? It’s simple: “When someone understands what life is like for our soldiers, they understand
immediately that we all need to do this. The chayalim are on duty day and night, Shabbos and Yom Tov,
sometimes for weeks on end. Our children sleep well at night because other people’s children – our
soldiers – are always on alert. Knowing this, what Torah-observant person isn’t eager to thank the young
people who protect Eretz Yisrael?” Adds Rabbi Lerner, “Everyone wants to say thank you – all we’ve done
is given Orthodox Jews around the world a direct way to embrace our soldiers with expressions of
appreciation, to say to each and every one of them, ‘we care.’ That is why we are here.”
Show the chayalim you care by sponsoring an IDF BBQ!
For more information or to say “thank you” to Israel’s soldiers:
Visit: www.idfbbq.org
Contact Rabbi Lerner: info@IDFBBQ.org
In order to receive a Canadian tax receipt,
Please contact the Westmount Shul at
905-881-7485
In his Laws of Repentance, Moses Maimonides makes one of the most empowering statements in religious literature. Having explained that we and the world are judged by the majority of our deeds, he continues: “Therefore we should see ourselves throughout the year as if our deeds and those of the world are evenly poised between good and bad, so that our next act may change both the balance of our lives and that of the world.”[1] We can make a difference, and it is potentially immense. That should be our mindset, always.
Few statements are more at odds with the way the world seems to us most of the time. Each of us knows that there is only one of us, and that there are seven billion others in the world today. What conceivable difference can we make? We are no more than a wave in the ocean, a grain of sand on the seashore, dust on the surface of infinity. Is it conceivable that with one act we could change the trajectory of our life, let alone that of humanity as a whole? Our parsha tells us that, yes, it is.
As the story of Jacob’s children unfolds, there is a rapid rise of tension between his children that threatens to spill over into violence. Joseph, eleventh of the twelve, is Jacob’s favourite son. He was, says the Torah, the child of Jacob’s old age. More significantly, he was the first child of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel. Jacob “loved him more” than his other sons, and they knew it and resented it. They were jealous of their father’s love. They were provoked by Joseph’s dreams of greatness. The sight of the many-coloured robe Jacob had given him as a token of his love provoked them to anger.
Then came the moment of opportunity. The brothers were away far from home tending the flocks when Joseph appeared in the distance, sent by Jacob to see how they were doing. Their envy and anger reached boiling point, and they resolved to take violent revenge. “ ‘Here comes that dreamer!’ they said to each other. ‘Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a wild animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.’”
Only one of the brothers disagreed: Reuben. He knew that what they were proposing was very wrong, and he protested. At this point the Torah does something extraordinary. It makes a statement that cannot be literally true, and we, reading the story, know this. The text says, “And Reuben heard and saved him [Joseph] from them.”
We know this cannot be true because of what happens next. Reuben, realizing that he is only one against many, devises a stratagem. He says, Let us not kill him. Let us throw him alive into one of the cisterns and let him die. That way, we will not be directly guilty of murder. His intention was to come back to the cistern later, when the others were elsewhere, and rescue Joseph. When the Torah says, “And Reuben heard and saved him from them” it is using the principle that “God accounts a good intention as a deed.”[2] Reuben wanted to save Joseph and intended to do so, but in fact he failed. The moment passed, and by the time he acted, it was already too late. Returning to the cistern, he found Joseph already gone, sold as a slave.
On this, a midrash says: “If only Reuben had known that the Holy One blessed be He, would write about him, ‘And Reuben heard and saved him from them,’ he would have lifted Joseph bodily onto his shoulders and taken him back to his father.”[3] What does this mean?
Consider what would have happened had Reuben actually acted at that moment. Joseph would not have been sold as a slave. He would not have been taken to Egypt. He would not have worked in Potiphar’s house. He would not have attracted Potiphar’s wife. He would not have been thrown into prison on a false charge. He would not have interpreted the dreams of the butler and baker, nor would he have done the same two years later for Pharaoh. He would not have been made viceroy of Egypt. He would not have brought his family to stay there. To be sure, God had already told Abraham many years earlier, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there” (Gen. 15:13). The Israelites would have become slaves, come what may. But at least they would not have had this happen as a result of their own family dysfunctions. An entire chapter of Jewish guilt and shame might have been avoided.
If only Reuben had known what we know. If only he had been able to read the book. But we never can read the book that tells of the long-term consequences of our acts. We never know how much we affect the lives of others.
There is a story I find very moving, about how in 1966 an eleven-year-old African-American boy moved with his family to a hitherto white neighbourhood in Washington.[4] Sitting with his brothers and sisters on the front step of the house, he waited to see how they would be greeted. They were not. Passers-by turned to look at them but no one gave them a smile or even a glance of recognition. All the fearful stories he had heard about how whites treated blacks seemed to be coming true. Years later, writing about those first days in their new home, he says, “I knew we were not welcome here. I knew we would not be liked here. I knew we would have no friends here. I knew we should not have moved here …”
As he was thinking those thoughts, a woman passed by on the other side of the road. She turned to the children and with a broad smile said, “Welcome!” Disappearing into the house, she emerged minutes later with a tray laden with drinks and cream-cheese and jelly sandwiches which she brought over to the children, making them feel at home. That moment – the young man later wrote – changed his life. It gave him a sense of belonging where there was none before. It made him realise, at a time when race relations in the United States were still fraught, that a black family could feel at home in a white area and that there could be relationships that were colour-blind. Over the years, he learned to admire much about the woman across the street, but it was that first spontaneous act of greeting that became, for him, a definitive memory. It broke down a wall of separation and turned strangers into friends.
The young man, Stephen Carter, eventually became a law professor at Yale and wrote a book about what he learned that day. He called it Civility. The name of the woman, he tells us, was Sara Kestenbaum, and she died all too young. He adds that it was no coincidence that she was a religious Jew. “In the Jewish tradition,” he notes, such civility is called “hessed – the doing of acts of kindness – which is in turn derived from the understanding that human beings are made in the image of God.” “Civility”, he adds, “itself may be seen as part of hessed: it does indeed require kindnesses toward our fellow citizens, including the ones who are strangers, and even when it is hard.”
"To this day", he adds, “I can close my eyes and feel on my tongue the smooth, slick sweetness of the cream cheese and jelly sandwiches that I gobbled on that summer afternoon when I discovered how a single act of genuine and unassuming civility can change a life forever.”
A single life, says the Mishnah, is like a universe.[5] Change a life, and you begin to change the universe. That is how we make a difference: one life at a time, one day at a time, one act at a time. We never know in advance what effect a single act may have. Sometimes we never know it at all. Sara Kestenbaum, like Reuben, never did have the chance to read the book that told the story of the long-term consequences of that moment. But she acted. She did not hesitate. Neither, said Maimonides, should we. Our next act might tilt the balance of someone else’s life as well as our own.
We are not inconsequential. We can make a difference to our world. When we do so, we become God’s partners in the work of redemption, bringing the world that is, a little closer to the world that ought to be.
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
QUESTION:
How do you answer someone who says religious women are second class?
ANSWER:
Religious women are A-1 class!! There's nobody better than religious women. Now what about religious men? They're also A-1, certainly we're not going to say that women are better than men. Oh, you want to say they're second class compared to religious men? Look, with Hakadosh Baruch Hu there's no such thing! Everybody is judged on his merits, like I mentioned before. A righteous Torah woman, a woman who is Orthodox and is loyal to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and tries her best, can many times outdo the biggest tzadikim.
I give you one example here. Rebbetzin Kaplan, who made a revolution in America, and she did more than any single Rosh Hayeshiva did in America. But even if you're not such a successful personality, in your own home, if you serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu with a pure heart and you try very hard, there's no question that you can become great. What do you want? You want to hold speeches? Speeches are not for women to hold in public, there's a reason for that, it's a biological reason, it can't be helped. Women can speak to women, but you can't become a Rosh Hayeshiva if you're a woman. And don't bewail the fact that you can't become a Chief Rabbi, there's a reason why women cannot do that, it's a technical reason.
Therefore every person should utilize his opportunities, and women have opportunities to become great no less than anyone else.
Important Numbers
