Category Archives: lessons

Makeovers

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Throughout most of my high school days, Aqua Net (the hairspray of champions) was my secret weapon to cool hair.  Had a friend not pointed out the bottles of Aqua Net on the shelf to me when we were shopping last week, I never would have noticed that Auqa Net got a new can.  I took a can of “Extra Super Hold Unscented” and opened the top…ahh, it still smelled the same..  That sort of crisp-dangerous-to-the-environment-gonna hang out with my friends-“Unscented” smell that is simply Aqua Net.  I guess the company decided sometime between 1989 and now that they needed to revamp their image.  I didn’t even know that people really used hairspray anymore.  My wife would never think of using it on a shaitel.  It would totally ruin the hair.
Is it the same formula?  I don’t know.  I have a feeling that it is.  Most likely as newer products came on the market the company decided that they had to revamp their image for a new generation.  It doesn’t really surprise me now that I think about it.  Feldheim did the same thing with the English adaptation of Michtav M’Eliyahu, Strive for Truth.   That series of six seforim has undergone 3 1/2 different book covers (I count the “cover” of vol 4 as only a 1/2, since it was the only one in the series with that cover) since it’s original publcation.  Why?  Probably the same reason as Auqa Net, they wanted to attract a different generation of readers.
I was constantly being told in school not to “judge a book by its cover”.  I never fully agreed with this notion.  Without getting into a debate about chitzonius (outwardness) and pnimyus (inwardness) I think it’s safe to write that the outer appearance is important, to a certain extent.  If you’re looking to buy a book or sefer, the cover does have to catch you eye (even if it’s plain like THE CATCHER IN THE RYE).  However, if a company changed the shape of a hairspray can, I’d gather that sales were probably down for a long time and this move was, like, their last chance.   I think about think that we have in our home that have been pretty much the same for generations:  siddurim, mezzuzos, Shabbos candles, a menorah, afikoman bags, the crazy construction paper rings that we put in the sukkah every year.  These are not really revamped, repackaged, or madeover.  Some might look more modern, but these items are pretty much the same.  Sales are hardly down for the things that are timeless.

Mixed up mussar

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Driving my kids to school is usually pretty a constant diet of deciding what music should be played or what “book on cd” to listen to.  This morning, however, I attempted to show them that life lessons can be found everywhere.

Yesterday  on the drive we saw a concrete mixer truck and it was full.  How did I know it was full?  Because the drum was turning around and around and around.
I asked the kids why the drum was turning and my uberson said that, “If the cement stops turning then it gets hard.”

My uberdaughter then said that, “If it gets hard then it is useless.”

I told them that each of us are like the cement and the cement mixer.  If we are not constantly in motion trying to be better Jews doing Mitzvos like helping our friends and serving Hashem then our neshamos will get stuck like hard cement and it will be difficult to build ourselves up and be better people.

Did the get it?  Sort of.  My 4th grade son told over the moshul to his Rebbe and got a “zechus ticket”.  My 2nd grade daughter told her younger sister that if she didn’t share then her neshama would get stuck like cement.

Home on the Range

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Sometimes I kid myself and think of this is a “mussar blog”.  It’s really just a personal blog with a bit of mussar that I give to myself thrown in from time to time.   Like now, for example.

Just over two weeks ago was the first time I had been back in my hometown of Wichita, KS in exactly twelve years (to the Parsha). My dad a”h had been hospitalized and based on what I had heard from family members and at the suggestion of my wife I flew out to be with him.

Waiting to board the plane in Chicago, people were dressed up in costume (as it was October 31). I was even asked if I was “dressed as an Orthodox Jew”? That in and of itself made the trip worth it, as a mussar lesson. After an hour and twenty mintues I landed.

As I got off the plane and walked past the TSA check-point, I could only smile, remember the dozen water guns that I had packed for family vacations in the 70s and 80s and how all of those water guns had been confiscated. At the time, it seemed like a big deal. In retrospect, most airlines would probably welcome a water gun these days. Not much had physically changed in the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport since I had been there last. They still had coat hook right inside the restrooms (which implied that crime was still low in the city) and the chairs throughout the airport were still the same. The phrase that came to mind was, “if it isn’t broken, then don’t fix it”.

A majority of my time was spent at the hospital with my family. Driving back and forth to the hospital I looked at the streets and buildings. Some had been torn down, many businesses had closed, with others opening up in their place. Certain professions seemed to have stayed afloat over the years. Most accounting, real estate, and dentisty businesses seemed to have stayed the same. Several indepenant “fast food” places closed only to have similar businesses open in their place. Aside from having several Starbucks locations not much had really changed. I drove past my old house, the flood prevention program (really it was a creek in my neighborhood that provided my bother and I with hours of adventure), and my old schools.

I also connected with a few close family friends from when I was growing up. One of them actually gave a beautiful hesped for my father a’h. I was reminded about the importance of community, specifically a Jewish community. The community in Wichita is pretty much made up of about 1000 Jews split almost down the middle as either reform or traditional. It’s a close knit community where people connect as Jews. Not so much in terms of observance or rituals, but because they are serious about their Judaism.

All of my aunts, uncles, and cousins came in for the funeral, as well. Most of them I hadn’t seen since my own wedding almost 13 yrs ago. It was comforting to see them, even under the above mentioned situation. Family comes together when it’s important, but you have to make it important (a lesson I’m learning now).

The morning after my father a”h was niftar I stopped off to buy a copy of the local paper at Starbucks (to have a copy of the obiturary and an article that was written about him) and the young man behind the counter introduced himself to me and said that he was sorry to hear about my dad. The manager at the Starbucks was also working and introduced herself as the wife of the Reform Rabbi in town. She also expressed her deepest condolences. That’s the community were I grew up.

My family lived in Wichita for 35 years. My father a”h went to the same shul with many of the same people for 35 years. To me that was impressive. Talk about lifelong friends. Wow. I hung out with two old friends that I had lost touch with years ago. We all had good memories growing up of our families doing things together. I’m fortunate that my kids have similar memories with close friends of ours here in Chicago.

I ended up spending a just under a week in Wichita. Had it been under better circumstances, I probably would have gotten together with a few old friends from high school. Instead I simply came back to where I was from and now I’m trying to move forward.

The other side of Lech Lecha

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Bereshis 14:13 And the fugitive came and he told Abram the Hebrew, and he was living in the plain of Mamre the Amorite, the brother of Eshkol and the brother of Aner, who were Abram’s confederates.


Rashi: הָעִבְרִי [So called] because he came from the other side (מֵעֵבֶר) of the [Euphrates] river (Gen. Rabbah 42:8). [Text from Chabad.org and the JPS Transation]

Rav Shlomo Friefeld explains,  as printed in the book In Search of Greatness, (on page 14) quotes the actual Midrash, that “explains why Avraham was called Avraham the Ivri.  What is an Ivri?  The Midrash says that the term Ivri come from the word ever, which means a side.  It is often used for a riverbank.  Every river has two sides, this riverbank and the opposite one.  Avraham was called Avraham the Ivri, the “sider,” or one who stood on the side.  What does that mean?  The Gemara says that Avraham stood on one side and the entire world stood on the other.  He had his beliefs, and the entire world was opposed to them.

Now, I saw a very similar idea brought down by Rav Dovid Hanania Pinto, shilta in Pahad David.  Rav Pinto says:

It is written in the Torah that the children of Israel were called “Ivrim”. The first person to be given this name was our patriarch Abraham. The term “Ivrim” has two meanings:

When man comes close to the Eternal by studying the Torah and observing the Mitzvot, he “comes from the other side” (“Ivri” means one from the other side of the river) just like our patriarch Abraham did. A man bound to the Torah is able to live with another who is not, even if their opinions are different. Why? Because the first man, as Abraham did, adjusted his convictions to the “other side”.

There is another reason why the children of Israel are called “Ivrim”. The root  of this word is “Avar” (past). This means that instead of being satisfied with everyday life that  keeps changing from one day to another, they lived attached to their past. They were bound to the magnificent past of our Saintly Forefathers, and this past is immutable in the image of the Holy Torah revered by our ancestors.

The ability to stay strong in your convictions and live with others who think differently than you is the mark of greatness.  It’s that ability, when rooted, as Rav Pinto writes, in the past, in Emunas HaChamim (faith in our Sages) and Zechus Avos (merit of our Forefathers) that gives each Jew the strength to be an Eved Hashem, like Avraham Avinu.

This was written Zecher Nishmas my father-in-law, Dan HaLevi ben Aharon a”h.  My father-in-law a”h not only survived the Shoah, but remained a proud Jew every day of his life.

Previous posts on Lech Lecha can be found here and here.

The Koach of Torah

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Today marks the 8th Yartzeit of Rav Ahron Soloveichik z”tl.
In the fall of 1989, I was a freshmen at YU.  As I recall classes had been barely going on for even a week and I saw a flyer in my dorm about a shiur on Lecture about “Hilchos Teshuva”.

I was fresh out of public school and had been observant for just over two years, at the time. Through my high school involvement with NCSY I had heard the name “Soloveichik” (although usually in reference to the Rav, who spelled it “Soloveitchik) quite a bit and had even read an article written by Rav Ahron regarding a Jew’s place in non-Jewish socieity. I was curious what this “Rabbi Ahron Soloveichk” was like and figured it would be cool thing to hear him lecture (the term “shiur” wasn’t in my vocabulary back then).

I showed up a few minutes early, which was easy since the lecture took place in the “shul” in my dorm building, and took a front row seat. Slowly the chairs filled up. I recall seeing a lot of older YU guys, probably semicha students. Slowly, I heard mumbling and some commotion from the back of the room, as two gentlemen escorted an elderly man who was using a walker, the Rav Ahron Soloveichik.

To me he looked frail and I remember being inpressed that he was able to use a walker, despite having had a stroke in 1983. Slowly he made his way to the table in the front of ths shul. The two men who accompanied him helped Rav Ahron transition from the walker to the seat at the table. Again, the one word that came mind was “frail”.

It is commonly know that even if one doesn’t understand a language, it is very possible that you can get an idea of what a speaker is talking about by emotions that come through in the spoken word. Rav Ahron’s shiur on “Hilchos Teshuva” was given in English, my native language, but I really didn’t understand much of it, I sadly admit. Based on my background at the time, most of the quotes from the Rambam and, what must have been, the brilliant analysis on the part of Rav Ahron were really lost on me. I did, however, take away something just as meaningful and memorable.

When Rav Ahron Soloveichik sat down at that table to begin his shiur, he was hunched down with head just about at the height of the table. As he started speaking his voice was soft, but as he continued his voice got stronger. Almost in sync with the strength of his voice, with each word of Torah that came from his lips, he seemed to start sitting more and more upright. He started moving his arms as he spoke and became animated. By the middle of the shiur his voice was booming and he seem to be sitting fully erect. It was almost like a different person was speaking. As I’ve looked back over the years at this incident, I realized that what I had witnessed was the true Koach of Torah.

Learning Torah and being able to teach Torah changes a person. For Rav Ahron Soloveichik Torah was a lifeline, I saw that with my own eyes! It connected him and gave him incredible strength. I was zoche to see that evening that the Torah wasn’t simply something that we took out three times a week from the Aron Kodesh, nor was a collection of stories, teachings, or laws. The term, “Toras Chaim” comes to mind. The Torah is a living Torah and Rav Ahron both received strength from it and used that strength to give over the Torah to future generations.

May his neshma have an aliyah.

How to open the heart

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In a shiur I recently downloaded (thanks to Hirhurim‘s Joel Rich)  given by Rabbi Benji Levene, a grandson of Reb Aryeh Levin, I heard the following story. Rabbi Levene once asked his zaide, “How did you manage to open up so many chilonim, non-relgious people, to relate to other people and open their hearts to so many beautiful things in Yiddishkeit? What was your mazel?”

Reb Aryeh answered:
There was one a son and a father that came to a rebbe and they were holding a winter coat that they owned.
The father said, “Rebbe, we have a coat. One coat only that we own. Coming winter now, I need the coat, I’m an old man. I need to have this coat. My son doesn’t feel the cold the way that I do.
The son said, “Rebbe, my father sits home the whole day and I go out and bring in parnassah. I go out in the cold, he’s at home. I need this coat.

The rav is left with a problem. He can’t say “cut it in half” because then they both won’t have a coat. He has to give them an answer, though. He thinks for a minute and says, “I’ll give you an answer tomorrow. Come back tomorrow, but when you come back each of you needs to take the other person’s side. Then I’ll give you an answer.”

They came back the next day with the coat and the father tells the rebbe, “I have a coat and it belongs to my son.”
The son then says, “I have a coat and it belongs to my father.”
The rav opens his closet to reveal a coat hanging there. The rebbe says, “It’s no problem, you both have a coat for the winter.”

The father looks at the coat and says, “Rebbe can I ask you one more question? When we were here yesterday, was that coat in the closest?” The rebbe answers that it was in closet yesterday.
“So why didn’t you give it to us yesterday? Why did we have to come back today?”

The rebbe replied, “You don’t understand. When you came to me yesterday and the father said, “I have a coat and it’s mine” and the son said. “I have a coat and it’s mine”, I thought, “I also have a coat in the closet and it’s mine.”
“When you came to me today and the father says, “I have a coat and it’s his”, and the son says, “I have a coat and it’s his”, I said to myself, “I have a coat and it’s yours.”

Rabbi Levene concludes, “If you want to open up another person’s heart to yours, then open your heart to that other person. You will see how wonderful, how much magic there will be in the way that other person will open up their heart to yours.” (End of story)

Aside from being a great story for anyone in kiruv or chinuch, I think as a husband and a parent, I will try in the upcoming year to really keep this story in mind. When the uniform clothes that were picked out (and aggreeded upon) prior to going to bed are not exactly what my daughter wants to wear when she wakes up or my son tells me that other kids go to bed much later than he does, I will try to put myself there and open my heart a bit wider.

Speeding for thrills

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The photo above was taken with the camera on my cell phone.  It’s actually the rollercoaster cars of the Vertical Velocity (V2) ride at Six Flags Great America zipping past me at 70 miles per hour (from 0-70 in four seconds).
Growing up, I was wasn’t a big rollercoaster fan.  I wasn’t scared of them, but there was always that thought in my head (especially with wooden coasters, which are the best to ride on) that if I was on a ride and the car flew off the track, oh man, that would probably hurt.  As I got older I began to be less worried about this.  It’s not because my Bitachon was so great, but I realized that the odds were pretty good that nothing so horrific would happen to me.  I remember in high school reading an old interview with Abraham Maslow and he was asked what things he was sure of in life.  His answer was great.  He said that he was fairly sure that when he sat down in a chair that the chair wouldn’t break.  He based this on the fact that he has never fallen on the floor from sitting on a broken chair.  I think the same is true for most amusement park rides.
So, a week ago last Sunday I found myself in line for the V2 with my friend’s 5th grader son.  This kid loves coasters.  I happened to be the only one out of three adults willing to go with him on the ride- ok, I really wanted to go on the ride, too.  As I stood in line I was talking with a few people and found out that most of them were repeat customers for the V2.  They loved the speed and the felling of the straight 185-foot vertical freefall drop.  I stood in line, watched the cars race past me and thought about saying some Tehillim.  I got on and kept telling myself that as long as we stay on the tracks we’ll be fine.  I admit the freefall drop is pretty scary, but cool.  I got off the ride and it was over for me.  Of course, my companion wanted to again, but I said once was enough for me.
I get it, it’s fun.  But why go on any it again?   The best answer I can come up with is that people want to relive that initial thrill.  I can sympathize.  I remember my first real Shabbos.  I recall an awesome Shalosh Seudos with great niggunim.  I will never forget my first date with my wife.  We all want to go back, somehow.  The problem I have in attempting to use this real-life analogy is that it seems like you are going no where fast if you settle to go back on the same ride again and again.  Essentially you are choosing a thrill of comfort.


There are other rides based on the same principles of physics and speed in the amusement park of Yiddishkeit.  Life shouldn’t always be the same.  As I get closer to Rosh Hashana I feel more and more like I don’t really want to reach a level of ruchnius like I had on my “best Rosh Hashana ever”.  That isn’t creating something chadash, new.  That simply is going on the same ride again and somehow I don’t believe that is what Hashem wants from me this time.

A father’s love

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Just last week I was able to view some old home movies from my childhood.  These were old 8mm movies that were transfered to DVD.  Although my children didn’t really understand why there was no sound, my father and I got a kick out of watching them.  For me it was really something very unique.


When you look at old pictures you get a feeling for that frozen moment in time, but viewing movies is a totally different experience, even without the sound.  I watched footage of my parents playing with me when I was a newborn, my fiirst birthday party, family trips and visits with relatives.  While these were all great to view, there was one thing that really got to me.  Seeing my father play with me.  These images were priceless.  It showed a side of him that I hadn’t seen in many years.


My relationship with my dad is a very formal one.  We talk a few times a week, but mostly it is about things that are really not that important (this is something that is being worked on).  To see him playing with little old me in these old home movies really got to me.  It reminded me how parents have such a strong love for their children, even before their children are old enough to do things on their own.  It reminded me of how much I love my own kids and how fun it is just to play with them.  The joy and love that a parent has for a child is, in fact, almost childlike itself.  We act silly with our kids, do things to make them laugh, and shower our kids with affection.  Eventually the child grows up, life has more demands, and, at times, the parent/child relationship becomes more serious than fun, more formal than comfortable.  This is just my observation.


The fact that it is Rosh Chodesh Menachem Av only makes this post more meaningful, for if it wasn’t for our Father’s love, Avinu Shebashamayim, we would not be here.  The love never stops.

OK, I did it.

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When I was young I enjoyed reading the Sunday Comics.  “Family Circus”, was never my favorite thing to read (I was more into the Far Side) , the classic NOT ME Ghost always gave me chuckle.  Mostly because I could totally see myself in a situation where it was obviously my fault that X had happened, I could envision myself saying, “Not me.” and deflecting blame to another party.

I realized Wednesday night, while driving for an hour, that Hashem has taught me a very difficult lesson in responsiblity.  The times that I judge to quickly, find a reason to hate someone, or try to make myself feel better by talking badly about someone don’t go unnoticed.  I’ve get it.  I don’t like it, but I get it.  It’s my fault.  As I’ve been told and as I’ve read for years, “Each generation in which the Beit Hamikdash is not rebuilt is considered as if it was guilty of its destruction”.  I hope to make the next Three Weeks very meaningful.