When it came time to check up on his son in yeshiva, Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv, the Alter of Kelm, would sometimes simply go into his son’s dorm room to see if everything was in an orderly fashion. If everything was in its place, he knew his son was excelling in the yeshiva.
As a parent who didn’t go through the days school/yeshiva system who has children currently in the system, have there been things that they have learned that suprised you in a postivie way?
The first thing that surprises me about them is the simple fact of the things that they know at a much younger age than I knew it. When I was starting to open a Chumash for the first time at 17 years old, it would take me a minute to break my teeth over pronouncing a two syllable Hebrew word. But my fourth grader has been saying all of bentching almost by heart for a year or two already. At 17, I only knew the really famous Bible stories and had never studied Parsha. My first grader mentioned at the Shabbos table that Rivka was from Charan, which is in Padan Aram!!! Gevalt!
This year, the kids are doing a program called “Derech,” short for “Derech Eretz Kadma LaTorah,” “Proper character traits are a pre-requisite to learning Torah.” They studied the concept of Tzelem Elokim, understanding that we must act and treat others in way that reflects consciousness of the fact that we are all created b’tzelem Elokim, in the image of G-d. This past week, they learned about making a Kiddush Hashem. The kids really get into the stories and the discussions about these things. They are a really good influence on them and it really gets their heads in the right place.
Although there are sometimes issues in the upper grades, my younger kids are just so much better off and live a much more wholesome life than outside of a nice yeshiva setting. They are truly fortunate to have such an upbringing today. We are very fortunate that we and our children’s friends don’t have televisions in the home. It is truly a bracha to be able to raise our children in such a way and be at less risk for all of the bad things that are considered normal outside the frum community.
I am surprised and amazed by how much the kids know at such a young age. They can read and understand so much Chumash, halacha, and Hebrew at such a young age. It’s beautiful to see how much a human being is capable of. Ashreinu u’matov chelkeinu, fortunate are we and how great our portion that we are able to send our children to such great schools, even when we were not able to have that kind of education!
Neil, I’d be interested to hear your answer to this question as well!
I recently asked blogger Rafi G, from Life in Israel, about the importance of minhagim. His well thought out answer is a must read.
Neil asked me for my thoughts on maintaining a person’s minhagim while learning in Yeshiva, and I thank him for giving me the opportunity to address you in his forum.
When I was in yeshiva I noticed a phenomenon. People were conforming to a standard method of behavior. They were no longer growing up doing things the way they had grown up doing them, the way they were raised to do them, but did things the way of the yeshiva.
I can understand why some people would want to change a personal custom for the more specific custom of a yeshiva. That being, people often do not want to stand out. Most of us do not want to look different. Somebody might think I am doing something the wrong way, so by changing what I do to what everyone else does, I protect myself.
There is also another reason I have found why some people change from their own customs to do things more generically like “most of the people around them”. That would be that they often do not have the confidence in what they are doing and that what they are doing is correct.
I know somebody, nothing to do with yeshiva – he is not in yeshiva but the example still works, who has begun learning halacha much more now, in his late thirties, than he ever did before. He is coming across halchos that he did know about before, things he did differently than they way the Mishna Berura, for example, might explain something. This fellow, when he comes across these halchos, frequetly decides he was wrong before and changes what he does. Sometimes I tell him off, or other people do, and say that perhaps there is another source for what he did. Just because the MB writes to do something one way does not mean you did it incorrectly before, and it does not mean you should change your ways. The he will continue learning, and sometimes later in the same sefer, soemtimes in a different sefer, the Aruch Hashulchan for example, he will find another opinion explaining to do it the way he had been doing it all along.
Another example, someone told me this story about themselves. He learned something about making a bracha and washing. I do not remember the details of the halacha he learned, but he was very disturbed by it because he grew up knowing that his grandfather did that differently. This bothered him that his grandfather did it incorrectly (according to what he had just learned), so he came up with some sort of explanation that his grandfather did it because x,y, z and in this situatuion he would also have followed the MB. I told him, why are you making up a story to explain what your grandfather did. You have no idea and it is all a figment of your imagination. Maybe your grandfather had a custom, maybe he had a source from another sefer, or maybe the rav from the town he had come from told his kehilla a different way of doing things as being the right way. Sure enough, shortly later he found another source for what his grandfather had done.
By changing customs, often out of lack of confidence as to the “correctness” of what you are doing, you are not only changing a family custom, but you are being motzi la’az al ha’rishonim. You are saying your anscestors did not know what they were doing, and you know more than them. And that is hardly true.
In Europe there was no such thing as we have nowadays – everybody keeping their own customs. If you lived in Galicia youkept the Galicia minhagim. If in Germany, the German minhagim. if in Poland, the minhagim of Polish Jews. etc. It is only in recent generations, the generations of post-World War II that we live together in a community and each still keep minhagim from previous generations that differ with each other. Technically there should be a minhag of Jews in Chicago, and a minhag of Jews in new York, and a minhag of Jews in London, a minhag of Jews in Haifa, Jerusalem, Melbourne, wherever. But there is not. We keep our minhagim of previous generations. I do not know why that has changed. I assume it is because of the melting pot the world has become – the global village of sorts. It used to be people stayed put. They lived there whole lives in one place. Nowadays, with the ease of travel, we move around from place to place, from community to community. Such a thing as a community custom might not even exist because everybody in the community comes from different places, merging various customs.
We all have customs how to do things. I wash before kiddush on Shabbos. I wore a tallis from when I was bar-mitzva even though I was not living in a yekkish kehilla (in the melting pot of America, and specifically Chicago, there are few community wide customs, so it is ok and common to see people in the same community following different customs). Did I have reasn to be embarrassed and refuse to wear my tallis or to wash before kiddush? I could have if done so. I stood out in the Litvishe yeshiva (Telshe) that I learned in. A teenager never wants to stand out. He is setting himself up for ridicule. But I did it. I continued wearing the tallis. I continued all my minhagim that I knew about.
I did so because minhagim are a piece of the rich history we have as Jews. We all come from different places with different backgrounds. They say the 12 tribes each had a different nusach of tefilla, and each had its own customs. We are not meant to merge and blend our customs into one. We should be proud of our anscestors, who often knew more than us, and we should follow in their ways. The variety of Judaism is the spice of Judaism. Don’t make Judiam bland by removing all the spice.
During an Avos U’banim (father and son) learning program on Shabbos I had a discussion with my son (entering 3rd grade) and one of his friends (entering 5th grade) about behavior and kavod (honor) that we need to have while in a shul or beis midresh.
I quoted the Gemora in Megillah 29a that states the since the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash (Holy Temple) Hashem’s Shechinah (Presense) which use to reside in the the Beis HaMikdash, now on a certain level resides in a beis haknesses (shul) and beis hamidrash (study hall).
My son’s friend piped up, “I thought that Hashem is everywhere?”
My son then quickly quoted the famous Uncle Moishy lines, “Hashem is here, Hashem is there…Hashem is truly everywhere.”
They brought up a good point. I submitted to the following analogy to hopefully explain this concept:
We know that the sun give us light all over the section of the Earth that it shines upon. However if you were to take a magnifying glass and put a leave under it, with some careful focusing you can focus part of the sun’s light and burn a leaf (this was a favorite activity of mine when I was younger). By doing this we are not taking away any of the light that’s being shined by the sun. So to, as I explained to my son and his friend, when we say that Hashem’s Shechinah resides in both shuls and batei midrashim, it doesn’t mean that Hashem is only in these places and not everywhere else. The Shechina itself is only being re-focused in certain locations. That focusing of doesn’t take away from Hashem being everywhere.
… or the great escape.
Friday morning my wife and I woke up to our 21 month old uber-daughter yelling, “Out! Out!”. We then heard a thump, some crying and a door open. I got out of bed and when into the hallway to find our daughter out and about.
I found our two older children playing and asked them, “Did you take your sister out of the crib?”
They both answered in the negative.
I looked at our toddler and said, “Did (insert name of brother here) take you out of the crib?”
She said, “No.”
“Did (insert name of sister here) take you out of the crib?”
Again, “No.”
“Who took you out of the crib?”
She looked at me, raised her right hand up in the air, as if she was in a classroom, and answered, “Me.”
Rav Dessler teaches that ratzon, desire, is the root of all action and that Hashem will help fullfill ones’ ratzon. He gives the example of a a thief who wants to steal something will, with effort, acquire the desired object. Of course, our desire, as Rav Dessler write in Michtav M’ Eliyahu, to grow in closenss to Hashem or work on Middos perfection will also be assisted by Hashem.
In this case, my daughter simply wanted out of her crib. My wife’s desire, latter that morning was for me to lower the mattress in the crib. No more suprise escapes…for now!
With the stress and pressure of Pesach upon everyone my son found a way to bring a smile and loud laugh to his Abba. Shabbos night after dinner my 8 yr old uberson and I were looking at his library book, Guiness World Records To The Extreme. It had some pretty wild things in it like the person with the longest nose, longest fingernails, longest toenails, longest beard, longest ear-hair, etc. In my own way of trying to show him that most things in the our world can be seen through the eye of the Torah, I mentioned to him that there is a bracha that one says when they see “strange and unusual people”.
He, in his most serious 2nd grader voice, looked me in the eyes and said, “I’ve heard of that bracha, Abba. I think it’s “sh’lo a’sanni freak!” And then he fell off the sofa laughing! My wife and were cracking up, too.
While we do try into instill the idea of kavod habrius in our kids, I was pretty impressed with his quick wit.
Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin of Salant
So careful was R’ Yisrael to honor others, that he would even address young boys with the formal you (Ihr) in Yiddish in order to develop their self-esteem.
From Sparks of Mussar by R Chaim Ephraim Zaitchik
In the INSPIRED PARENTING shiurim given by R Moshe Weinberger (tape 7), I found a very meaningful eitzah in what my mindset should be when speaking with my children, especially when I might be tempted to get angry at them.
R Weinberger, based on the writings of Rav Zilberberg, says that when you get angry at your kids or have to discipline them you should try to visualize them as teens, or even adults, with children of their own. When you think about lossing your patience because you son hadn’t finished part of his homework or you daughter can’t decide exactly what she wants for breakfast remember that you are not only losing patience with a child, but with the future father or mother of your own grandchildren, and all the future generations within your family. This, to me, is a very powerful thought.
Can we even think about our own kids as bubbies and zaidies? Would we lose our cool at someone who is 60, 70, or 80 years old over something that really isn’t worth it in the end? In the heat of the moment I need to remember that before isn’t just a shayna maidel or a mentch-Yisrael, it’s the source of my family’s future.
A Simple Jew commented here and asked me how I interpret the following said in the name of R Yisrael Lipkin of Salant: When running to complete a Mitzvah, one can destroy an entire world on the way.
I think the following two vignettes about R Yisrael should be told in order before I continue:
A) When asked to tell something over about Pesach, R Yisrael would tell his talmidim prior to Pesach that they should be careful to be nice to the widows that bake the shum’ra matza they purchase before Pesach.
B) R Yisrael was once asked to tell over a thought prior to starting davening on Yom Kippur. He told those around him that they should be careful before davening that night when they put on their tallisism and not hit the person behind them with the tzitzis of their own tallis.
Clearly being, what was viewed at the time, as highly sensitive to others was a major part of R Yisrael’s Avodas Hashem. He put a re-emphasis on mitzvos Bein Adam L’Chavero that seemed to be lacking in the mid-to-late 1800’s. For him, in fact, Bein Adam L’Chavero was an aspect of Bein Adam L’Makom.
Shabbos night two weeks ago (just after R Yisrael’s Yartzeit) I actually read the above quote to my 8yr old. I gave him the above examples and also asked him if it would be fair if he was running a race and decided to trip someone he was running against so that he could win. Of course, he thought that it would be unfair and not a “real win”. Then I used a senario that was more close to home. When we are late to shul Shabbos morning (this is a real life example) and we rush into the beis medresh so that we can get two seats together, how would Hashem look at us if we bumped into several people on the way and distrubed their kavana as they were davening to Hashem?
This is probably what R Yisrael was speaking about…frumkeit. Let me use my zerizus to do whatever I need to do to, and another’s expense, to fullfill my mitzvah. That’s what the founder of the Mussar movement was up against. I see the same thing when people go shopping and grab the last package of sushi pushing aside someone’s shopping cart or a parent cuttting off cars so that they can get a prime spot in the ‘car line’ at school. To some, it might not seem like a chiddush to be thoughtful. Others, just might not think. If each mitzvah that we do creates a malach and each person is considered a ‘world’, then how careful must we be that the path we make towards fullfilling even the ‘smallest’ mitzvah doesn’t totally destroy the proverbial flower garden that belongs to our neighbor?
Yesterday I was in a Walgreens to pick something and partake in my once a month crazy habit.
After not finding what I had hoped to find, I continued down the candy aisle. I started laughing. The aisle stared out with candy, then progressed to energy/sports bars, and finally there was shelving at the end of the aisle filled with weight-loss products. HaHaHaHa!
This is gevaldik product placement! What better way to get someone to buy a pill to curb your appetite, than to stick it right next to all the candy. It worked for me. I started thinking (for a minute) if I really even needed to be looking any candy, at all? I could use a pill to help me loose weight, or even some exercise. I suppose some people might use the same approach in chinuch in schools or at home. The “let me show you how NOT to act and then maybe you’ll decide that you really don’t WANT to go down that path” approach is often applied when people use terms like “at risk” or “the hashkafic GPS is broken” (my term for “off whatever derech”). From what I’ve read (and heard from people) a major factor in this trend is not is seeing a genuine Simchas HaChaim in people who are Torah observant.
As I left the store I started thinking about what “products” I want my children to “purchase” from me, their teachers, friends, and our community. I recall listening to Rav Moshe Weinberger’s Inspired Parenting series, (either tape 5 or 6), and hearing that our kids notice exactly when and what we are excited about. Rav Weinberger gives two examples:
1) A mother who can’t wait to go shopping with her daughter when there’s an amazing sale, yet doesn’t get excited about Yom Tom
2) A father who goes to a ball game with his son and screams and cheers the whole time, yet during davening Shabbos morning, he can barely get enough energy to say the words in the siddur
I am not against shopping or sporting events, believe me. But, the responsibility we have by having little eyes watching us is great. I see it in my own kids, in different ways. My 8 yr old, who attends shul with me on Shabbos morning, amazed me by sitting down when the man who makes Kiddush for the minyan sat down to make Kiddush for everyone. I was amazed because when I asked him about why he sat, my son told me, “because I see you sit.”
My 5 yr old, when playing with her 15 month old sister often will use the same phrases and gestures that my wife uses when interacting with the baby.
And even the baby will give kisses to her doll or try to kiss the mezuzzah, all because that is she sees. Product placement seems to be key when you have consumers living with you.
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