Category Archives: lessons

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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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Old Navy, Home Depot, and Novardok?

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Commenting on the Novardok mussar exercises (see Moment 2 here) designed to work on humility, Rafi G wrote:

I can see how it would humble a person, but isn’t it some sort of chillul Hashem (maybe that category is extreme for this case) or something that Jews are looking so foolish and stupid walking into a hardware store and asking to buy clothes? Doesn’t it make Jews look foolish? I have a hard time believing there is really such an important benefit of humility gained that can justify the overall bad light in which it portrays Jews, and specifically yeshiva students.

This chillul Hashem factor seems to be a big one, I admit. This quote might clear things up about the Alter of Novardok’s methods:
Rav Yosef Yoizel also formulated a special program aimed at helping students break their negative character traits and acquire new ones. This program consisted of various exercises designed to provide students with “spiritual courage”, a courage that would imbue them with the confidence to do whatever was needed to promote Yiddishkeit despite any deterrents that would arise. One such exercise called for them to act strangely in public, so that people would ridicule them. For this exercise, bochurim from the Novardok yeshiva would enter a shop and ask for a product not sold there, such as watermelons in a drugstore or screws in a bakery. (Originally found in the Yated, posted online here)

In essence, we see that the plan was to instill a feeling that no matter what an individual or society might think, if I can act in a way that doesn’t make me feel embarrassed, the better off I am.

I don’t think we had a situation where a yeshiva student would go into Old Navy asking where the power drills are, and then insisting that the store really does carry them in stock. I have always thought it was more like a student or two going into store or shack “A” that sold hardware and asking if they carried any fresh bread. After being told, “No”, the yeshiva student would say, “Oh, my mistake. I must be confused. Have a nice day.”

There is a great book titled BEYOND THE SUN (long out of print) by R David Zaritzky (who studied in Novardok and also with the Chofetz Chaim in Radin). I had heard about the book in 1991 and found a copy 15 years later. Sadly, I loaned it out and somehow didn’t get it back. The book itself is viewed as a fictional account of the the Novardok system and has several profiles of the Alter and other key figures in the Novardok movement. As I recall, it discusses this same issue, focusing on this idea that a student in Novardok was trained not to be embarrassed by serving Hashem and doing what was right against the various anti-Torah movements of the time.

This whole exercise could have been viewed as a chillul Hashem, as Rafi suggests. At the time, though, most yeshiva students were getting a bad rap from the Maskillim. That’s part of the reason that in Slabdoka there was an emphasis on one’s clothes looking fit and proper (it might also have been a reaction to Novardok’s emphasis on most things non-materialistic).

Either way, today, I think most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We want to be Avdai Hashem and have the strength to be a Torah Jew in all situations, yet also want to give Klal Yisrael a “good name”. I try to stay away from chillul Hashem as much as I can, to the point recently, when we went on a family outing I was against bringing saltine cracker because of the crumbs that are left when the kids eat them. Maybe, I’m taking it a little too far?

Small Mussar Moments

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Moment 1One morning, several weeks ago, I got a practical lesson in zerizus thanks to my 5 yr old daughter. She decided to read at the table instead of eating her cereal. When she “decided” to actually eat, her cereal was now soggy. She started crying because her “cereal was ruined for life, Abba, for life!”
I was taken back by the obvious mussar lesson. If something like cereal can be “ruined” by simply not choosing to eat it at the right time, then how much more can the opportunity to get close to Hashem be lost by not acting at the right time.

Moment 2
For some time now, my wife and I have been looking into purchasing Nok Hockey for the family. I had found two different national sporting goods chains that advertised it online. Going into both chains on the way home from work, I asked several employees where I could find the item. In both stores, I was given blank stares. It seemed that no one had ever heard of Nok Hockey. I had to explain exactly what the item looked like and how it was used. Again, this didn’t ring a bell. In the end, I went to the manager of each store and was told that it must be an “online item only”.

This reminded me of the exercises that students of the Novardhok school of mussar would partake in. They would often go into hardware stores and ask to purchase clothes, or go into clothing store and ask to purchase bread. These exercises were used to work on negating any trace of guy’vah (haughtiness). After these frustrating attempts, we resorted to eBay.

Moment 3
In the Hirhurim Parashah Roundup: Vayechi 5768 by Steve Brizel there was a link to an idea based on a teaching of R Shlomo Woble z”tl. If found these passages to be most interesting, as I have been trying to isolate some of my better traits lately.
“The Mashgiach said in the name of his rebbi, Rav Yerucham Levovitz z”l, that every person possesses an underlying middah, and if he would be cognizant of that middah he would be able to perfect himself. He elaborated that every person is born with one complete character trait, and through utilizing this trait to its fullest potential, one is able to perfect his character.

What is the way that we can become familiar with our underlying character trait? When the Mashgiach was asked, he answered, “If one would keep a daily accounting of the traits that arise in every given situation, after a few weeks he will be able to tell which trait manifests itself most often.”
If we can make an effort to recognize our strengths and weakness, after just a short while we might be able to transform the way we relate to the situations that arise on a daily basis.

This idea of recording when those traits some up has really helped me. I have been keeping a record of several traits that pop up in my daily actions and have taken time to recall them during my nightly Cheshbon HaNefesh. Then I added some ideas that I read from A Simple Jew’s conversation with his Rebbe that has only clarified things for me.

Moment 4
This past Sunday we went to an indoor sportsfest. One of the many sponsors for this event happened to be Adidis. They had a massive booth with a lot of sports activities for kids. The center attraction was the massive truck and trailer with their new ad campaign plastered everywhere, “Impossible Is Nothing”. My wife spied it from across the room and said, “Neil, you have to go check that out.”

More an a witty play on words, “Impossible Is Nothing” instantly reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from the Alter of Novhardok, R Yosef Yozel Hurwitz:
I never thought about whether I could do something, but only about whether I had to do it. And if something must be done, then Hashem will give the means of doing it.
Often times I fell that the only limit to what I can accomplish is the limit that I personally set for myself. This same quote from the Alter of Novhardok was recently expanded on in a post by Dixie Yid here.

Moment 5
Last week while driving home I saw the following sign in front of a non-Kosher restaurant, “Before you make your resolution, make your reservation”. I found it almost humorous, but this really showed me the greatness of Yiddishkeit. Do you ever hear a Rav in a shul or a Rebbe in a yeshiva telling people to go ahead and commit all the aveiros you want to in Elul, because you can do Teshuva? The secular world tends to tell people that you should do what makes you feel happy and worry about tomorrow, well, tomorrow. Really, they are speaking to the guf.

Our style of communication should be different, we should, in theory, address the neshama first. Maybe the sign should have said, “Make a reservation to make a resolution”, putting thought into what you want to change is only the first step. Bring it into action is the second. Mussar to myself, as usual.

40 minutes as a second grade substitute

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Right off the bat, I have now idea how any teacher can go through a whole day an not lose their voice. Kol Hakavod to everyone in Chinuch or education.

This week I spent my lunch time watching my son’s second grade class, so his Rebbe could attend a staff Chanukah luncheon. Basically, I was to sit down and watch my son and his fellow friends eat their lunch. I, of course, didn’t really feel like sitting.

Then I told them that before coming in the class I opened my car trunk and found: A case of water, a “Snap-N-Go” baby carset stroller, and a skateboard. I asked the class what they could learn about me from these three items.

Then I asked them what sports teams are in Cleveland…of course they named the Indians and the Cavs. Then I told them a story about a Rosh Yeshiva from Cleveland, R Mordechai Gifter z”tl (whom their second grade Rebbe had learned bei for a number of years), who when in high school at MTA had a collection of Rabbi photos on his dorm wall. The photos were set up as a square with a blank spot in the middle. In this black spot, as I recall, was a piece of paper with the words, “Where will you be?” written on it. This is what he looked at when he wasn’t in class. I explained to the boys that what we see and surround ourselves with says a lot about who we are and what’s important to us.

I asked them why it’s important to place your menorah either in your doorway or by a window? Several answers included: it’s the halacha, so that people know which homes are Jewish, and so that we can let the mitzvah shine. The last answer is the one I used to start a talk about the importance of loving to do mitzvos and so happy that you make your own light. I told them that when people walking by their homes see a menorah or see their family sitting down to eat on a Shabbos night, it sends a powerful message that lights up the world.

After that we played one of my favorite games, called Good News/Bad News. It was taught to me years ago from a Rabbi who as since ‘retired’ from being a ‘Kiruv professional’. Basically you write down a list of all the negative that the class come up with to describe someone. We got things like: weirdo, not good at sports, funny dresser, smelly, come to class late, doesn’t finish homework, etc. All in all, our list included 24 items given within a five minute span.

Then we moved on to the Good News. The class lists all the positive things they can say about someone, such as: he’s smart, nice, friendly, good ball player. We only got to 14 items in the same five minute span. The point, as I explained to the class, was that it’s much easier to find bad things to say about someone than it is to find the good things to say.

Lastly, I paired up the kids in groups of two (yeah, I realized that a pair is a group of two), and had each one say out loud something nice about their partner and then had the partner do the same.

I’d like to think that I gave over some important lessons, but who knows?

Ponder this, and feel free to comment…if you had a short time with your son/daughter’s peers and wanted to give over some ideas that are important to you, what would they be?

Missionaries and the Jedi Mind Trick

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Recently, while leaving a kosher supermarket in Skokie, IL, I noticed a man putting out a stack of booklets titled “THE END IS NEAR” published by the “Assembly of God” near the entrance/exit of the store.

I was in a good mood and knowing that a lot of non-observant Jews go shopping at this store, I felt that I needed to do something. I approached the man and said, “Hi.” He replied back and then I looked him in the eyes and said, in my best Jedi voice (soft, yet sure of myself), “Please, give me all of your booklets, now.”
He told me that I could have one. I then said, “These are not the coverts that you are looking for. Please give me all of your booklets now.”
“These are not the…what?” he said.
“These Jews that go shopping here are not the converts that you are looking for. You’re better off giving your booklets to non-Jews”, I told him. Again I said, “Please, give me all of your booklets now.”
“I’d be happy to give you one”, was his reply this time.
“Nevertheless, you will give me all of your booklets. Do you not believe in your New Testament?” I asked.
“Sure I do”, he said.
“Are you familiar with Luke 6:30? I believe it says, “Give to he who asks…”
“Yeah, I guess it does,” he said.
“So my friend. I would like all of your booklets,” I said.
I got them!
As I walked away, I smiled to him and left with these words, “You serve your master well and you will be rewarded.”
Of couse, the booklets ended up in the garbage.

Have a good…uh…legal holiday?

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I’m usually at a loss of what to say around Thanksgiving. Some people get offended that I tell them to, “Have a good Thanksgiving”. Others seem to be shocked that I don’t wish them a “good Thanksgiving”.

It has sort of become an either “too frum” or “not frum enough” issue. For the individual that tries to be ethically sensitive to others, it’s just plain confusing.

It’s much easier to say “Gut Shabbos Kodesh”, “Good Shabbos”, or “Shabbat Shalom” to people. There are those that I’ve said “Gut Shabbos” to and they simply reply, “Shabbat Shalom”. I make a mental note when this happens so that next week I will say, “Shabbat Shalom” to them.

I do this based on something I learned from R Moshe Weinberger on Shavuos in 2005 (or in 5768, if you were offended by me using 2005). He said that when R Shlomo Zalman Aurbach was asked to be the Me’sadar Kedushin or be asked to read a Ketubah for Sephardim he would use the Sephardic pronunciation for his Hebrew (evris or evrit, if you will).

Again, with Thanksgiving, you really don’t know which team people are on. I suppose I’ll stick to my guns and wish people I see a “good Thanksgiving”. If they don’t like it, I’m sure I’ll find out about it and make a mental note for next year.

Habits

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We all have them. Some of them are good, others are not so good. Some manifest themselves as traits, middos (tov v’ra), and personality quarks. Here are a couple of examples of habits that I’ve taken note of over the past few months:

1. We spent about a month before Rosh Hashana trying (with success in the end) to de-Crocify our son. He spent a fun filled summer wearing his Crocs almost every day. While we were happy to see him enjoying them, the downside is that once you start wearing Crocs your foot feels very confined in anything else (I will attest to this). Throughout Elul he had been wearing his new Shabbos/Yom Tov shoes around the house so that he can get use to them. At first there was great resistance. “They are not a comfortable as my Crocs”, was a common line from him. With patience and effort he successfully wore ‘regular’ shoes all Rosh Hashanah without too many complaints (only to relish in the fact that he could rock his Crocs on Yom Kippur). I realized during the month that were letting him get use to his Shabbos shoes, that some habits are easier to break with when attacking them in small doses (like slowly chiseling away at something bit by bit). This technique is used in popular Shemiras Ha’Lashon programs, where in individual makes a commitment not to speak Lashon Horah from a set amount of time.

2. Recently we stayed with my brother-in-law, his family, and their two dogs. My one year old Uberbaby daughter was not to hip to the dogs at all. For the first 5 days she could cry if a dog came near her. We debated about what to do to get her acclimated to the pets. At first we tried to get her to pet them and sit next to them. Well, she happens to be a pretty fast crawler and is becoming a confident walker, too. So we then opted to do nothing. We simply allowed her to get use to seeing us interact with the dogs and go about our business. Within, as I wrote, 5 days, her fear was gone. She would pet them and even give them her food. This approach of breaking a habit by watching others set an example happens to be one of the most effective middos management tools used both in chinuch and more importantly, in the home.

3. I do a lot of our grocery shopping. Usually, I’ll pick up non-food items at one store and then get actual food at one of several stores in the area. Because of time constraints prior to the Yom Tovim this year I found myself doing massive shopping at one store that has both non-food, food, and extensive kosher deli/bakery/take-out as well (if you live in Chicago, the name of the store happens to rhyme with the word cool) and it seemed to take forever. I was very frustrated by this. Mostly by the fact that I wasn’t so familiar with all the aisles and where certain products were. I was in the habit of not knowing my way around the store.

After Yom Kippur I was reading an article in Fast Company (one of my favorite websites and mags) about Design Thinking and I realized that I could use the concepts behind design thinking to help me with my grocery shopping issue. In brief, if you haven’t read the entire article yet, the ideas behind Design Thinking are:

Define the problem
Create and consider many options
Refine selected directions
Pick the winner, execute

Applying the steps of Design Thinking to spending less time in a particular grocery store might look like this:

The problem is that I don’t know my way around
My options might be that I could study a map of the store, do more shopping there, spend my lunch hour walking around the store to see where things are, or just not change a thing
Doing more shopping there might help, but the learning curve will be slow. I like the idea of spending my lunch hour there. The extra exercise wouldn’t hurt me.
I started walking around the store and I feel like I have a better grasp of which aisle I can find things like: plastic wrap, flour, rubbing alcohol, chullent beans, and toothpaste.

One cool thing about the first step (Define the problem) is that it really make you think. At first glance, it might seem like the problem was that grocery shopping took to long. That’s really not the problem. The problem was that I didn’t know my way around the store.
The Design Thinking approach can also help with things like anger. Why do we get angry? Usually it seems on the surface to be for different reasons. I’ll use the example that happens to me. I get upset or angry sometimes when my son doesn’t do something right away when I ask him (of course this is only a reflection of the same lacking on my own part). But that’s not the real reason I get angry. I was zoche to be in Woodmere, NY to hear Rav Moshe Weinberger’s 2005 Shabbos Shuva drasha at Aish Kodesh (totally rainy night, thunderstorms, and over 1000 people showed up). The following is based on my own notes:

Why do we scream and get angry? When we miss the train or when your wife burns the kugel. Why do you yell at your kid? You yell at your kid for not cleaning his room. For something like not looking in the zemiros book? That is what kids do. Rav Kook says the source of your anger is with yourself, because you can’t control yourself. It’s not due to the people that are trying to be good to you and love you.

In my case, the emes is that I get upset because I feel that what I ask to be done should be done right away. It’s guyvahdik, plain and simple. Rav Kook’s words seem to imply that it’s all about a lack of self control. Either we feel that we need to be in control or we simple have no control over our anger.

If anyone has any ideas about dealing with habits, I’d love to hear them. Thanks for reading.

The Adventure of the Observant Jew

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I spent alot of time (mostly Shabbos afternoons in high school) reading Sherlock Holmes (especially the Annotated Sherlock Holmes (two volume set). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a way of writing and letting us see most of what Holmes saw, but not quite the whole picture until it was explained by Holmes. Sherlock’s keen sense of deduction and obervation are legendary.

A classic example would be from the beginning of A Scandel in Bohemia:

“You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.”
“Frequently.”
“How often?”
“Well, some hundreds of times.”
“Then how many are there?”
“How many? I don’t know.”
“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.

We are often referred to as ‘observant Jews’. ‘Observant’ is defined as:
paying close attention especially to details
quick to notice; showing quick and keen perception
law-abiding: (of individuals) adhering strictly to laws and rules and customs; “law-abiding citizens”; “observant of the speed limit” wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

I guess, it’s true. Compared to other groups of Jews, we, ‘Torah observant’ would fall into the above definition. I’d like to focus on the “quick to notice; showing quick and keen perception” aspect of being ‘observant’. The leaders of previous generations were not only Gadolim in terms of their Torah knowledge, but were extremely sensitive to the world and people around them. I admit, sensitivity to the individual within Yiddishkeit was one of the things that constanly blows me away. I humbly offer three examples for you to think about and maybe even discuss at your Yom Tov table:

In the last years of the great 19th-century thinker Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, he asked his grandchildren to take him to see the Alps. When questioned why at such a late age he wants to go sightseeing, he answered: “I am worried that after my life I will go up to heaven and Hashem will ask me, “Samson, warum hattest du nicht gesehen mein schonen Alpen?” Samson, why did you not see my beautiful Alps?” (Based on the Artscoll biography of RSRH).

Once, Rabbi Dov Ber, the Alter Rebbe’s son, was studying late at night, his infant son in a cradle nearby. Rabbi Dov Ber was so immersed in his studies that when the baby fell out of the cradle he did not hear the child cry. The Alter Rebbe was also studying in another part of the house. But he heard his grandson’s cry and quickly went to pick him up. “You must always hear the cry of a child,” the Alter Rebbe rebuked his son.
Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, the Bais Halevi, was once asked the following question: Can a person fulfill the mitzvah of drinking for cups at the Pesach seder with milk, instead of wine? The Bais Halevi answered no and then gave the individual who asked him the shi’lah a large sum of money. Later Rav Soloveitchik was asked why give so much money, if all the person needed to buy was some wine for the seder. The Bais Halevi replied, “Because he asked about using milk for the seder, that must have meant that he didn’t have enough funds for any meat, as well.”

We do observe. Hopefully it’s the right things. The beauty of Hashem’s world, a child in need, an opportunity not to embarrass someone is dire straights.

I was recently asked, what I found to be a difficult question. “What excites you?”
I was caught of guard and really didn’t have an answer at the time. It bothered me. I have a lot to be excited about. It’s stories like the ones above that excite me. It’s hearing good news about my kids being sensitive to others in school that excites me. It’s Lightning McQueen realizing that sometime you win even though you don’t come in first place that excites me. It’s the way I feel when my neshama know that I’m doing the right thing that excites me. It’s the smell of fresh ground coffee on a Sunday morning that excites me. I realized that it was difficult for me to initally answer that question because I really don’t take as much time as I should to be observant of my surroundings. This is something (along with several other things) that I am working on during this new year.

Sukkos excites me. After spending time in shul of a beis midresh davening we are commanded to leave our homes and venture outside into the world. We take our all of the feelings from Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur and bring our families outside the safety of our homes. The message of the above three stories is simply: Look around. See and listen to what is around you and show koved to all that Hashem as created. I wish you an inspiring Sukkos.

Modern Uberdox

“I write not because I have the strength to write, but because I do not have the strength to remain silent.” -Rav Avraham Yitzchok Kook zt’l