Choosing Well

In contrast to the sad story told two entries ago, here, here is a story where one positive remark changed a person's life:

The story is told (I read it in Let There be Rain) about the secular president of an Israeli university who recognized Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, the Ponovezher Rav in an airport. The president introduced himself by saying, "K'vod harav, we are in the same business. I am raising funds for my university and you are raising funds for your yeshiva."

R' Kahaneman responded by embracing the man and greeting him warmly.

The president said, "If the rav knew what a sinner I am, he would not give me such a warm greeting."

The rav said, "If only you knew what a holy spark lies in your neshama, you would talk differently about yourself."

In his memoirs, the man wrote that from that day on, "I began to feel like a Jew and act like a Jew. I refrained from certain sins forever, and I accepted upon myself to do certain mitzvos.  I was reborn because of how the Ponovezher Rav greeted me and spoke to me."

***
In this case, it was the yetzer tov and the neshama coming to the fore. In the previous examples, it was the yetzer hara triumphing.

We Do Have Choices 2

As a follow-up to this post here, Rabbi YY Jacobson tells the following story:

He got an email from a parent. A ten year old girl started displaying apathy to Judaism. Today she is 14 and is completely irreligious. The parents are wonderful people and have a wonderful home. They could not understand what went wrong. They tried various therapists, was there trauma of some kind? What alienated her? They couldn't figure it out.

A few weeks ago, she told them what happened. She was eight years old and she did something wrong in class. The parent was embarrassed to tell R' Jacobson what she did, it was silly. The teacher went over to her in front of the class and said, "I never met someone who has a yetzer hara as big as yours."

The girl told her parents that she decided to prove her teacher right.

***
Why was her self-image defined by a statement by a teacher as opposed to all the things she saw and heard at home? Granted, a morah is a major force in a little girl's life, and the way the woman said it to her in front of the class made a huge impact, but still ...

Does the 14 year old understand that she is living her life as though dictated by a lady whose class she was in six years ago? That she has not thought through what life is about and made her choices accordingly, but is acting like the woman's lackey? Is her life so enjoyable this way, with her thinking every day - Yes! I will show my teacher she is right! - ?

As someone who recreated herself as an adult put it, "We are the people we decide to be, not the people others expect us to be. We can decide."

We Do Have Choices

In a talk, Rivka Malka Perlman told about a young man whom her brother (Benzion Klatzko) is trying to be mekarev.

The person is tough and bitter and her brother asked him what's your story?

He said, when I was younger I was okay, but then my mother got sick and passed away. I was very lonely and having a very hard time in school, and I ended up connecting with not the greatest kids.
One day, the boys threw a rock at someone's car and the alarm went off. The owner came out screaming but the other boys ran off and I was blamed for it. The man said I'm calling your father and the police. The police came and took a report. My father came and took me home and was very disappointed with me.

I was punished and I didn't know what to think. I had gone from being an average person to a horrible person. I left school and did horrible things.

***
One day he was at a pizza shop and a nice man came over and spoke to him. He began casually meeting him, and he gradually spent more time with the man and began to trust him. The man recommended a summer camp for him. He was excited to go and the man said he would take care of the money and speak to the boy's father.

He hadn't been in a Jewish environment for so long but this seemed like a chance to start over.
His father gave permission and camp was a fresh start and he was reminded that he's actually a nice guy, and he started to have fun again and to heal from his mother's passing.

He came back from camp a new person.

The guys back home saw that he was different. They invited him to a barbecue and he was nervous about attending because he hadn't had friends back home in a long time. He decided to give it a try. He wanted to be the kid he was in camp, but it was hard to do that at home.

The barbecue was wonderful and he felt so grateful that the good times could last. He went inside to the kitchen for more drinks and saw, to his dismay, that the host was the owner of the car that had been hit by a rock. The man yelled, I remember you, I don't forget kids like you, you think you can come to my house and be part of a barbecue here, what are you doing on my property? Get out of here, you don't belong here!

"That was the end for me. I joined a gang and that's me today."

***
I heard this story and thought, it is so important to teach children about free choice, that Hashem makes things happen to us, but we get to choose how to respond. We are not compelled to react one way or another.

Losing his mother and feeling lonely, made him friendly with fringe kids. Being yelled at, apparently wrongly, made him decide he's bad. Going to camp and having a good experience, made him feel he's good. Being yelled at again, made him feel turned off from everything and everyone. He behaved like a marionette - when his "strings were pulled," he moved in that direction.

One can imagine someone else in similar circumstances responding differently. It's not like this young man had to respond as he did, though he may have felt that there was no other way. It is this that I think we must convey, that we do have choices in our responses, that the way we respond is not a given.

As I read in a book about happiness long ago about a former prisoner of the Soviet gulag who spent 12 yrs. in concentration camps, starved, beaten, humiliated, who lost two fingers to frostbite who said, "Victim! I am not a victim! I survived!"

Many people can’t do this. They carry their hurt forever. They begin to define themselves as their pain.

Life hurts but you can’t allow yourself to get wrapped up in this hurt, constantly reliving it, fearing the future and grieving the past. That’s victimization.

Other people can hurt you but only you can victimize yourself.

Just Say No

There is a powerful story on aish.com here about a drug addict who quit his habit when confronted with the idea, "You don't have to do drugs."

 

What?! Of course nobody has to do drugs! The point is well stated in the article which you can read; it's that there are things we get involved with and they become our way of doing things and we don't even consider that there could be another way.  This can be applied to all sorts of habits and attitudes we have.

 

Astonishingly though, the former addict still referred to his condition as a dreaded disease.  What a pity to apply a word like disease to something this individual just walked away from.  Can a person with cancer tell himself, "You don't have to have cancer" and not be sick anymore? Can someone blind due to macular degeneration or someone with cerebral palsy tell themselves they don't have to have these conditions and then be cured? Of course not.  So why use a disease model when it is not taken as a mashal but as the literal truth, and it mostly certainly is not a disease?

Two Points for Being Consistent

Re this post: does-it-work-both-ways and this one: east-and-west , it's not often that I come across someone who is consistent in their parenting outlook.  Author Yael Mermelstein writes that she went to a shiur where the lecturer told the following story:

"Her friend had gone to a rav, bitterly bemoaning the sense of deep failure and disappointment that she felt as her son was no longer keeping Torah and mitzvos. 

"The rav asked her, 'How many other children do you have?'

"She answered, 'I have eight others.'

"And how are they doing?' asked the rav.

"The woman looked at him proudly and said, 'Boruch Hashem, they are all very matzliach (successful).'

"The rav shook his head slowly and then said, 'Your son is no longer walking the derech ha'yashar (straight path) - that is not due to you, just as the hatzlacha the other eight are experiencing is not due to you either.'"

I wonder how this rav defines the term "nachas."

Does It Work Both Ways?

There is an ongoing discussion in R' Grylak's column in Mishpacha magazine about parents who expel their wayward children from their homes.  He is incredulous that parents can do this, especially to 15-16 year old girls.

A rabbi who founded a home for these homeless girls tells R' Grylak that it is the shame the parents feel because of their child, the feeling of betrayal, that she humiliated them in front of the world.  "After we sacrificed so much for her, after we nurtured and raised her, she turns around and spits in our faces?" And he says that throwing her out is their revenge.

R' Grylak then goes on to elaborate on the erroneous idea that parents have that their children are their personal property which is why they feel so deeply ashamed and hurt when their children reject their upbringing.

When I read this, my mind went off on a tangent.  According to R' Grylak's reasoning, there would be no good reason for parents to kvell and feel nachas when their children do well.  If, according to him, we should not feel ashamed if our children do things to reject our teachings, by the same token, should we not feel proud and thrilled when our children embrace our teachings?

It's Inherently Contradictory

"I have a disease.  It is called Compulsive Overeating.  I do not have the ability to control food choices or portion size.  This is the way Hashem made me."

That is a quote from a letter to the editor of a frum publication.  The author goes on to say that he joined OA and since then he has maintained a 150 pound weight loss.

After reading contradictory statements like these time and again, I can't help but wonder.  Is it possible that I am the only one who notices that he is not making any sense? He just said he has a G-d inflicted disease in which he lacks the ability to control food choices or portion size.  In the next breath he extols an organization that he joined which has helped him control food choices and portion sizes.  Nobody comes to his home and monitors his food intake.  There are no cameras recording all his eating.  No penalties if he makes the wrong choices.

What happens is, he decides to control is food intake.  So does he have a disease or not? Can he control himself or not?

Aren't the answers obvious? I.e. He acquired terrible eating habits and is working to overcome them.  That is commendable.  I don't see why they have to falsify the facts.  Why the need for the disease lie? Why the need for an illogical claim of lack of control when those who "work the steps" are controlling themselves?

He concludes the letter by saying, "There is a solution.  It is not surgical.  It is not in taking supplements.  It is not counting points.  It is not by tricking your body into burning its own fat.  Rather, the solution is Overeaters Anonymous."

Why not this alternate conclusion: There is a solution.  It is neither surgical nor does it involve supplements nor counting points nor tricking your body.  It's about free will and acknowledging that as a human being we have free choice and can exercise this power.  For ain davar ha'omed bifnei ha'ratzon - nothing stands in the way of one's will, as the author has shown.

The Devil Made Me Do It

Rabbi Wolbe is quoted as saying that the most prevalent kefira (heresy) in our generation is in the realm of free will.  "I couldn't help it," and "My circumstances forced me," are some of the most common excuses given today to explain one's behavior and choices.  This week's parsha Re'eih begins with, “See that I am placing before you today a blessing and a curse.”  As the Rambam puts it in Hilchos Teshuva:

Freedom of choice has been granted to every man: if he desires to turn toward a good path and be righteous, the ability to do so is in his hands; and if he desires to turn toward an evil path and be wicked, the ability to do so is in his hands... This concept is a fundamental principle and a pillar of the Torah and its commandments.

A recent magazine cover had a picture of the Boston bomber which annoyed many people as it seemed to glorify him.  What bothered me more than the picture was the accompanying text:

"How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam, and became a monster."

When I saw the phrase "failed by his family," it was, here we go again ... I read many articles about him and don't recall that part of his bio.  He seemed to be doing well in college and had friends.  But if we can say he was failed by his family, maybe we will feel bad for him and understand "where he is coming from."  It's a good thing we didn't psychoanalyze Hitler and his cohorts; just labeled them as evil and fought to destroy them. 

And the phrase "fell into radical Islam," sounds accidental.  You know, you only fall accidentally, not on purpose.  So poor guy, he was failed and he fell and he became a monster.  Do all those crippled and bereaved by him feel for him too?