Statistics and Us

Rabbi L. of Flatbush has a granddaughter in a coma (may she have a refuah shleima).  He reported that the doctor was asked what her prognosis is. 

The answer wasn't positive but the doctor added: You never know, with you people things are different.

***
It's one thing for us to hear that in a shiur or read it, and another thing when someone in the field, apparently not Jewish, says it!

"180 Rechov Yaffo"

I just finished reading this book, "180 Rechov Yaffo" by Meir Wikler (Menucha Publishers) and it was a delight.  He writes stories about the man on the cover, R' Nachum Cohen, a Sadigerer chassid who lives in Geula.

R' Cohen, the father of 19 children, personifies simcha and bitachon and has incredible siyata dishmaya.  The stories told about his ruach ha'kodesh and advice are remarkable.  He is not a rebbe but people (including women) line up twice a week, when he has visiting hours, to speak to him and receive brachos and advice.  There is no charge.  The title of the book is the address of his office.  He is very warm and strikes up friendships with all kinds of people. 

No Baby Showers

What I'm wondering about is the custom of not buying anything for a baby until it is born.  It seems to be regarded as inviting an ayin hara.  As someone put it, anything under the category of "counting your chickens before they hatch" is considered ayin hara-ish. 

This puzzles me because it would seem to be act of faith, that one has bitachon that all will go well, to buy things for a baby before it is born.  There is even a story (or several) about two women who asked for and received a bracha for a child and, as an act of faith in the fulfillment of the bracha, one of them bought a carriage.  She had a baby.  The lesson apparently, is that by purchasing the carriage, she was tangibly expressing her confidence in the bracha.

So why was that a good thing for her to do, while the general custom is not to do that? I understand that in one case, it's about confidence in a bracha, while in all other usual situations, a bracha is not involved.  Why doesn't the same reasoning apply?

Putting in the Work

Miriam Stark Zakon wrote an article about having completed a year long study of bitachon which is all about putting Hashem in the picture, and then encountering a frustrating situation in which Hashem wasn't in the picture for her at all.

"I realized that in my search for bitachon, I'd been enjoying the company of a fantastic group of women, basking in the intellectual and emotional stimulation of a shiur, maybe taking a few baby steps in the direction of self-improvement."

Her epiphany was, "Baby steps don't win marathons.  You want to win bitachon? You've got to work.  You've got to do more than you ever thought you could do."

She had felt so good about spending a year studying an important subject.  It took a temper tantrum for something not going her way to make her realize the dissonance between what she had spent the year studying along with the pride she took in it, and how much it had actually changed her.

I found this a valuable insight.  For those who like to learn, it can be gratifying just getting through the material and feeling that sense of satisfaction.  For those who do this in groups, it can be stimulating and delightful to learn along with others.  It all makes an impact, but like the author points out, if you want more than that, you need to put in work to master anything.

Extreme Bitachon

In continuation of two posts ago about bitachon, my favorite bitachon story is about the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov who were sent by the Besht to a man to learn about bitachon. As they visit with him, a man comes in and pounds on the table and then leaves. Their host explains that this is the first warning from the poritz (squire) that he must pay the rent. He seemed relaxed about it, and when the man came in a second and a third time and banged on the table, he still seemed calm. The talmidim said: So you have the money? and to their surprise he said he didn't.

The talmidim watched in great curiosity as the man set off to the poritz's mansion to pay the rent, with no money in his pocket. They wondered how it would play out.

In the distance they saw a wagon approaching the host, stopping, and then travelling on, then stopping again, turning around and going back to their host. Then their host continued on to the mansion.

When he returned, the talmidim were eager to hear what had happened. So, did you pay the rent?!

Of course, he said. How did you do that if you had no money? they wondered.

He explained that the farmer in the wagon that approached him had offered to buy the produce that would eventually grow on his land. He made an offer but the amount was not enough to pay his rent, and so he DECLINED. That's why the wagon drove on.

But then the farmer changed his mind and drove back. I know you to be an honest person, and if that's what you think you should get, I'll pay you. And the farmer gave him the full amount, whereupon the man could pay his rent!

***
The certainty, the equanimity, that he was apparently an ordinary man, not a tzaddik.  Gevaldig!

Financial Strategies from the People at Mesila

In response to the question in the comment posted to the previous post, what they can do is read the book, Your Money and Your Life: Mesila’s down-to-earth, Torah-based strategies for managing your finances. This book is a compilation of Mesila’s financial advice columns that ran in Hamodia.

Shmuli Margulies, Mesila’s chairman, said “The material in this book is very different from the material you will find in other books on financial management. Our goal in writing this book, like our goal in all of our activities, was to combine Torah hashkafah, professional knowledge, and the experience we have amassed in our years of experience working with families and businesses, in a way that will help people to successfully navigate contemporary financial challenges and achieve financial stability.”

Mesila's stated mission is to empower families and businesses to seek, achieve and maintain financial stability.
Mesila is dedicated to combating poverty by:

• Raising public awareness of the importance of financial stability and independence
• Promoting the development of attitudes and habits that lead to financial stability
• Giving business owners the professional tools to manage their businesses correctly
• Guiding people to create and implement sustainable, long-term solutions to the economic challenges they face

Contact information for Mesila is here

I read the book and overall, it sounds sensible.  It bothers me a little that although they talk about bitachon, they place such an emphasis on hishtadlus that I don't see where bitachon really comes into the picture.  For example, they believe in constantly upgrading your skills and marketability.  Why is that necessary if a person did reasonable hishtadlus? They will say that upgrading your skills is part of reasonable hishtadlus. 

I also wonder about their seeming belief that everyone can attain financial stability.  That seems to come from the mindset that if you put in the effort and handle your finances right, you will succeed.  Where is Hashem in this picture?

Upping the Odds for a Miracle

A letter that I wrote to a frum publication:

I'd like to share with your readers what it says about prenatal sonograms in the book Aleinu L'Shabei'ach (Devarim, p. 242) by Rabbi Yitzchok Zilberstein. After a patient refused to have an ultrasound done, with Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky's support, a doctor asked R' Zilberstein to explain this to him. He asked his brother-in-law, R' Kanievsky who said that if there are no specific medical problems with either the woman or the fetus, it is preferable for her not to do a routine sonogram. As long as no problem has been diagnosed, prayer is more beneficial. If, however, a woman has a sonogram done and it shows a defect in the fetus, it will require an open miracle to heal the baby and not everyone is worthy of a miracle.

R' Zilberstein brings support to this position from the miracles related about Elisha and the Shunamite woman with the oil and later with her son, in which the miracles needed to be performed discreetly. Hashem wants miracles to be done in as inconspicuous a manner as possible. A blessing from a sage and prayer are more effective when an illness or defect have not been discovered and a big miracle need not be performed.

R' Zilberstein said he heard in the name of the Klausenberger Rebbe zt'l that a person should go to a sage for him to pray before he goes to the doctor, because once the doctor says there is a serious problem, it is much more difficult for the sage to reverse it.

R' Zilberstein adds that many times, women have the routine sonogram which reveals a possibility of a problem and this causes the woman to be extremely anxious and fearful, especially when many defects are incurable. Doctors often recommend the termination of the pregnancy, which is forbidden. All of the anguish suffered by the mothers is therefore pointless, he says, since there is nothing they can do about the defect and there is a good chance the baby will be fine. It is better not to take these tests since Hashem created the world in such a way that a woman should not know what is in her womb, as Shlomo Ha'Melech says in Koheles 11:5.

I have read numerous stories of women who were given dire news upon taking a sonogram and were pressured to terminate the pregnancy. These stories ended with a healthy child. Were the doctors wrong or did a miracle occur? We don't know. What we do know is that those reading the sonograms don't even get the gender right 100% of the time, or the size of the baby. If sonograms are about saving even one life, as one letter writer wrote, thought should be given to all those lives that are ended, r'l, because of routine sonograms. Likewise, thought should be given to the effects of prolonged and extreme anxiety on the expectant mother and the fetus.

A Different Way of Looking at it

R' Fischel Schachter tells a story about a man from London who had a heart attack in America and did not have travel insurance.  He had to pay $10,000 out of his own pocket.

He frustratedly asked his rav, why?! Why did this happen on my first trip out of the country? I never had a heart condition before!

The rav asked, how much would it have cost you in England for those ten days in the hospital? He said $2 a day!

The rav said, obviously, you were meant to spend that amount on medical expenses. Do you know how long you would have had to stay in the hospital in England for that?

We don't know what Hashem's cheshbonos are.

We need to trust and believe that it's all good.

What Doctors Say

A mother said, "My daughter was valedictorian recently. I'm proud to say it because she had a very hard beginning, and spent many weeks in an ICU after she was born. The neonatologist said she will never be in a regular classroom."


Time and again, I read stories in which doctors make dire pronouncements and are proven wrong.  In Judaism we have the principle: doctors are permitted to heal (with Hashem's help).  They have no right to make pronouncements about the future.


They make dire prognostications in the name of honesty and enabling parents or the patient to be prepared, but since they aren't prophets and are sometimes (often?) wrong, what they say is cruel and counter-productive.  As authority figures, what they say carries a lot of weight and it can be very hard to be optimistic and have bitachon in the face of bad news from a doctor.


How many parents have gone through months of agony because a doctor said their unborn child would not be normal, would be deformed, until to have a healthy child be born? I'm always left wondering whether the doctor interpreted the information correctly and the couple's prayers changed things, or the doctor was mistaken from the get-go.  I don't know, but I have read numerous stories in which this happened.  True, the doctor's negative expectation may have been the impetus for lots of prayer and good deeds, but that did not give him the right to scare people who won't abort and can't do anything about the situation.


It would be helpful if someone collected many of these stories, verifying the information, i.e. what the doctor said and what actually happened, in categories like: pregnancy, preemies, illnesses, comas, what faculties and abilities patients were told they could and could not regain, and how many years they were told they would live.  It would be a great resource in bolstering our faith in the Rofei chol basar.

Clashing Beliefs

If you took a poll among frum people and asked them whether they believe Murphy's Law ("Anything that can go wrong will go wrong") to be true, what do you think they would say?

I've heard people refer to to Murphy's Law and although it might be done jokingly, I think they believe it to be true to some extent.  How does this fit with what we believe? Does it take into account R' Bachya ibn Pekuda's Chovos Ha'Levavos, Shaar ha'Bitachon? He writes:

If we knew we had a friend who:

1) never ceases worrying about us

2) is able to fulfill our wishes

3) knows our exact needs and what is good for us

4) controls all the people and powers in the world and does not allow any of them to harm or benefit us without his consent

5) is overflowing with kindness and compassion even if we are undeserving

we would completely relax and stop worrying about ANYTHING.

Hashem is merciful and gracious; He neither slumbers nor sleeps, He is your Father, He made you, Hashem is good to all and His mercy is on all His creations etc.

Can you refer to Murphy's Law and simultaneously take "gam zu l'tova" seriously?

The Impact of Stress on Our Health

More than half of all cases of heart disease are not related to the common risk factors of high cholesterol, smoking, or inactivity. (Integration of Physiology and Behavioral Scienc)

In a Mayo Clinic study of people with heart disease, emotional stress was the strongest single predictor of further problems, such as heart attack or cardiac arrest (Mayo Clinic Proceedings)

Three separate studies have shown that stress is more closely related to heart disease and to cancer than smoking is. (British Journal of Medical Psychology)

A study conducted at Harvard showed that men who experience elevated chronic anxiety are six times more likely than contented men to die from a sudden heart attack. (Circulation)

***
Living with the principles of Shaar Ha'Bitachon is not only a spiritual accomplishment; it has a tremendous effect on our physical health.

In R' Bachya ibn Pekuda's Chovos Ha'Levavos, shaar ha'bitachon, he writes:

If we knew we had a friend who:

1) never ceases worrying about us

2) is able to fulfill our wishes

3) knows our exact needs and what is good for us

4) controls all the people and powers in the world and does not allow any of them to harm or benefit us without his consent

5) is overflowing with kindness and compassion even if we are undeserving

we would totally relax and stop worrying about ANYTHING.

Hashem is merciful and gracious; He neither slumbers nor sleeps, He is your Father, He made you, Hashem is good to all and His mercy is on all His creations etc.