Getting the Loving Message Across

Rabbi Noach Orlowek writes, "R' Yechiel Yakobson, one of Israel's revered educators, once met with a group of 'off the track' teenagers.  He asked them how he could prevent what happened in their families happening in his own.  They answered, 'You don't have to worry.  Your children know you love them.'"

R' Orlowek then writes, "At a wedding in Milwaukee, I sat at the same table as Rav Michel Twersky, who grew up in Milwaukee 80 years ago and attended public school, since there were no yeshivos there at the time.  I asked him how he and his brothers turned out to be such wonderful marbitzei Torah and paragons of Torah principles and Torah living.  When I asked the question, his entire demeanor changed.  Slowly and clearly, he said something that has never left me.  'We knew two things about our father, that he loved us very much and that he believed in us.'"

R' Orlowek goes on to point out that this is not to say that families where children have rebelled did not love their children.  "But sometimes, the message that they love their children does not come through clearly."

One approach to getting the message across is by seeing which "love language" means the most to a child.  Gary Chapman explained how he came to categorize five love languages, "Some of my encounters with couples through the years that brought me to realize that what makes one person feel loved does not necessarily make another person feel loved. For a number of years, I have been helping couples in the counseling office discover what their spouse desired in order to feel loved. Eventually, I began to see a pattern in their responses. Therefore, I decided to read the notes I had made over twelve years of counseling couples and ask myself the question, “When someone sat in my office and said, ‘I feel like my spouse doesn’t love me,’ what did they want?” Their answers fell into five categories. I later called them the five love languages."

It's simple and straightforward and worth looking up.

Avoiding the "Whatchamacallit Syndrome"

Rabbi Pam z"l was very particular about using lashon nekiya (clean language).  He once addressed the talmidim in beis medrash and said I don't understand how someone can use the words "stupid" and "crazy."

He also said, I don't understand how someone can say whatchamacallit.  A talmid went over to him after the schmooze and asked, what's wrong with whatchamacallit? R' Pam said, if you are saying whatchamacallit, it means you didn't think before you spoke.

The person delivering the talk I was listening to, this talmid of R' Pam, said: Let's not fall into the "Whatchamacallit Syndrome," whether it's our brachos or how we talk to one another.  In every aspect of our lives, if it's a whatchamacallit life, it means we didn't think before we did it, and that's dangerous.

We can guess what R' Pam would think about the usage of "whatever," and "you know" and the other fillers we use.

More Than Happy

I've been noticing superlatives lately.  Things like, "The bus is more than dependable."  Hmmm.  And if you merely said that it's dependable, why wouldn't that be enough to convey its reliability?

She said she's more than exhausted.  Is being exhausted not expressing her tired she feels?

"I'd be more than willing to help."  How much more than willing is that?

He said he's 1000% sure.  And if he said 100% would that somehow convey that he's a bit uncertain?

Why have words become meaningless so that we have to pump them up to express what we mean?

Language and Us

 He was a typical macho Israeli who did not even want to sit down next to a religious man, he so despised what he stood for.  Nevertheless, when he eventually sat down and began speaking in Yiddish, to the astonishment of the rabbi, his persona was transformed.  When asked how he knew Yiddish, the Israeli said, "Ich shtam fun Vizhnitz" (I originate in Vizhnitz) - a Chassidic town in the Ukraine. 

I found the idea fascinating, that the language we speak has an effect on our demeanor.  Does the melodic tone or harshness of our primary language shape our outlook? Or perhaps it is because Yiddish speaking people have been closely associated with religious observance that by reverting to Yiddish, the man was also slipping into a more traditional mindset ...

As for Yiddish in our schools where the children don't speak Yiddish at home, I am familiar with the arguments against it and they are reasonable and yet, I think it's such a pity that so many of today's children are deprived of it.  Children are adept at learning new languages, the younger they are the easier it is.  If they had Yiddish immersion at a young age, the arguments about the burden of another language the children don't otherwise use would fall away for it wouldn't be a burden. 

I am seeing the products of the no-Yiddish approach and it seems to me that they are lacking in a way that maybe I cannot express in words.  A language goes along with a culture and mentality and otherwise fine and frum children are missing out because their Yiddish expressions are limited to "nebach" and "gezuntheit" and they cannot follow a Yom Tov Ehrlich song.  These songs and the Yiddish language are saturated with gefil that does not carry over in translation.

The solution: Go beyond Yinglish (yeshivish-English like geshmak and gevaldig sprinkled in English language sentences) and learn Yiddish!

Double Standard

I read an article about language in which a Chassidishe woman was asked why there seems to be a greater emphasis on men speaking Yiddish than women.  Her answer was, "I think it's the feeling that we should keep the men purer, that it's more important for them to be less exposed to the outside world."

She's not alone in this feeling.  There are many homes in which the women do the shopping and deal with government agencies, banks, insurance companies etc. so as to spare the men the exposure.  This is not about sparing them bittul Torah which is another issue.  One woman I know drives the family car and does the errands so that her husband shouldn't have to look at the people around him.  There are communities where girls are taught English and English subjects in a serious way while the boys are not, and the reason is not about bittul Torah (at least not in some communities) but about chinuch al taharas ha'kodesh which applies to girls as well as to boys!

I'm puzzled by this.  In Jewish life, it used to be the men who "went out" of the home, often traveling to do business.  Women were sequestered to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the society they lived in with Jewish women in Moslem countries much more protected and isolated from the world around them.  In Eastern European countries women sold goods in the marketplace and shopped but this wasn't to spiritually protect the men who were also "out there" working.  There was always the idea of men protecting their women and girls, not only from outright danger but also in the sense of sheltering them and preserving their modesty.  I think it was in a book about Shvester Selma that it described how she traveled with a male chaperone because women in her society did not travel unaccompanied.

Yet there is a feeling that women need to spiritually protect their menfolk while they can read certain things and look at certain things.  Now they are probably right about the men not reading and looking at those things but that doesn't mean that the women should! There seems to be an attitude that women won't be affected, that it doesn't matter if they read and look, that women can go to non-Jewish supermarkets and see people in immodest attire and see the magazines at the check-out counter and nisht geferlech (it's not terrible).  They may not be affected in the same way but to say there is no effect?!

Something seems to be askew in our reasoning.