Yes Scare Tactics

follow-up to previous post

According to R' Avigdor Miller z'l:

"We have to know that there's a dread of Hashem.  This includes the fear of facing Him in the World to Come, coming face-to-face with Him, the greatest dread of all.  One of the functions of this dread is to think of Gehinom. Every Jew must train himself to put into his thoughts as a permanent addition that there is a fearsome Gehinom going on all the time.  There is nothing as bad as Gehinom.  Whatever people have suffered in this world, even the crematoriums, the concentration camps, the gas chambers, is nothing compared to Gehinom.  There are some denizens of Gehinom who have always been there, reshaim of the nations who caused the Jewish people to suffer, and are there right now screaming in eternal, terrible pain.  Being aware of that is part of our emuna; just like we believe in Hashem, we have to believe in Gehinom.

"Of course we have to be convinced there is a Gan Eden too, but when we talk about pachad (as we do in the Rosh Hashana davening), part of our fear is directed at Gehinom."

No Scare Tactics

R' Yaakov Bender says (Chinuch with Chessed), "Gehinnom is not something to be discussed with 8 year olds, and perhaps not even with mesivta aged boys.  You may discuss reward and punishment but the gory details of Gehinnom will not create healthy teenagers.  There is a time and place for everything.  At the very sensitive age of 13 or 14, we are not trying to scare our children into being good."

Threat of punishment is scary.  So it's not clear how he proposes to discuss the punishment aspect without scaring the children.

And while only scaring children into being good is not a good approach, why should true, scary aspects of how Hashem runs the world be off limits?

I wonder how R' Bender thinks teachers should handle the more gory stories of our history, stories like Akeidas Yitzchok, Chana and her Seven Sons, the death of Rabbi Akiva, the curses in the Torah which are delineated in great, gory detail, etc. And I wonder how he thinks the Holocaust should be taught. Or maybe he is only opposed to gory details when it's Gehinnom, but when it entails what people do to people, he thinks differently.

I don't know, but this thought of his made me stop to think. I'm not convinced.

Consequences

Tanach is full of statements warning us to fulfill Torah and mitzvos or else dire things will happen and it tells us that it will be good for us if we listen to Hashem.

The belief in reward and punishment is one of the principles of our faith, so I can see the importance of letting us know about the consequences of our actions.  However, what see repeatedly in Tanach and later in our history is that the warnings did not help.  When the prophets urged us to do teshuva no doubt some people took the warnings to heart, but the goal - avoiding the churban, was not achieved. 

So what are we to learn from this? How should parents educate children and how should our mentors and leaders teach us? In our historical experience, if there was no rebuke, people deteriorated.  If there were exhortations to improve, it did not help enough to avert the catastrophes of our history (though it probably averted all sorts of evil decrees we don't know about).

And how do the warnings of Tanach fit with ideas that have been presented in the past few decades, based on research and experiments, that show that neither punishments nor rewards are that effective in teaching children and have even been proven to be counterproductive?

Do It for Them

Another thing (in addition to Tehillim lists) I haven't gotten a satisfactory explanation for is when people announce at a shiur or event that the learning should be a zechus or l'ilui nishmas someone.  What does that actually mean?

I would understand if people got together solely for the purpose of providing a zechus for someone, but if the shiur is happening regardless, because it's a weekly or daily event, how does tacking on the words "this should be a zechus" accomplish anything?

So too, the calls for "Do a mitzva for ----." If someone does a mitzva as a zechus for someone else, does that mean they forgo the reward of that mitzva and bestow it on the other person? That's an enormous gift! Is that what they mean?

I saw lists of mitzvos that people from all walks of life committed to doing in honor of the slain Holtzbergs.  I can understand being moved by the Holtzbergs' devotion to the Jewish people and how they enabled and encouraged others to do mitzvos, and wanting to do something that they valued, i.e. a mitzva.  If that is what they mean by doing a mitzva in their honor, fine.

But how about pages in books, and entries on websites, which say "dedicated to ..." What does that mean? The person paid money for what purpose? I must be missing something because to me, it simply looks like a way for the publisher to raise money and for the person to have a name mentioned.  Does it go beyond that to accomplish anything else?

Everyone else seems to go along with it as though it makes sense.  I just don't get it. 

Chinuch for Doing Mitzvos

I found it interesting to read that Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon, mashgiach in Lakewood, says that if a parent speaks to children about the advantages and rewards of doing mitzvos, rather than the joy of living with mitzvos, this is not a good idea (I found it interesting because so often you hear that the goal is Olam Haba).

He says that if you tell children, "Do this mitzva because if you do it, you will get a reward" or if the parent says excitedly that he himself is doing a mitzva in order to get Olam Haba, this is not good chinuch.

He explains that this only teaches children to do a mitzva because it is worth your while.  The child might think that for his parents, Olam Haba is wonderful, but he has other ideas about what makes something worthwhile.  He can think: Let my parents go after the reward that interests them and I will go after the reward that interests me.  He will have learned that mitzvos are done for the rewards and he can apply his own standards of rewards.

If, however, the child sees the joy that a parent has when doing a mitzva, if that joy is the foundation of the home in which he grows up, then, says R' Salomon, he will inevitably be affected by the spirit and the mood and the atmosphere and he himself will feel that joy when he does the mitzvos.  This kind of chinuch will reach him no matter what he thinks constitutes a worthwhile reward.

***
What about being mechanech children to do mitzvos to bring Moshiach, to "make a brick for the Beis Ha'Mikdash?" Is that something that can motivate children and is it good chinuch?

If it's done as a "formula," something said by rote, then you shouldn't count on it motivating them.  But if you are able to convey to children, whether aged 3 or 6 or 10, how Moshiach's coming is something they personally want and it's immediate and real, then yes, it's good chinuch.