Don't, It's Forbidden versus Do, It's Good for You

Someone proposed that instead of the signs in shul that say, "Assur l'daber ..." - it's forbidden to speak during the davening, the chazoras ha'shatz, kerias ha'Torah, the signs should say something like, "Praiseworthy is the one who refrains from talking ..."

Then today, someone shared a thought - all the restrictions of Shabbos, you can't do this and you can't do that, are that which enable you to experience the beauty of Shabbos.

I'm all in favor of beauty and being positive but I am wary when people propose emphasizing the positive exclusively.  If you don't state clearly that something is forbidden and you only say what wonderful things will occcur if you do things right, I think we will be getting only half the picture and half a picture is a distortion of the truth. 

It is claimed that today's generation can't be told things in negative terms, they reject that, they need to be explained why and see the beauty.  I'm not so sure.  But then again, maybe I'm not today's generation! If I am told that something is outright forbidden, I know where I stand.  It's clearly off-limits.  If I'm told about the brachos I'll get if I do the right thing, well, I want brachos, but it's just not as compelling to me as being told: danger! stay away! If I'm told I'll be praiseworthy if I do this, I may not be interested, so I won't be praiseworthy ... not a big deal.

 Would we write on a bottle of bleach or other dangerous product: If you ingest products other than this, such as actual food, you will be so much better off! Or do we write: Danger! Poison! If accidentally ingested, call Poison Control.

I understand that different times and different cultures require different approaches but certain things need to stay the same because they are Torah and Torah is Truth for all time.  I note that there are 248 Positive Mitzvos and 365 Prohibitions.  Oh my! So many more negative mitzvos than positive ones! Why is that so? I don't know.  Yet it tells me that G-d sees fit to couch most of His mitzvos in the form of "don't" rather than "do" (though some mitzvos are written in both the positive and the negative). 

What is the bigger motivator for you to keep halacha - knowing how it's good for you or knowing the negative consequences if you don't keep it?

This is ADHD?!

 

A woman in an article on aish.com describes her 5 year old as violent and aggressive.  He bites, throws things, chokes her, and he does this with a smile or a kiss.  Not surprisingly in today's world of psychiatry, the child is medicated for ADHD.  Mind you, these are NOT symptoms of ADHD but who cares? If you can control him with mind-altering drugs, why not? After all, the alternative would be to actually see what on earth is motivating a 5 year old to act like a vilde chaya.  Was he abandoned in childcare since babyhood? Is there no discipline at home? There is not a single mention of how the parents respond to his terrible behavior! Only how she tried dietary methods and then moved on to drugs.  She says she is waiting for him "to grow up, and to grow into an understanding of greater self-regulation." Heaven help us ...

Dr. John Rosemond the parenting expert would laugh at her description and her medical solution.  He would say make a list of the objectionable behaviors: throwing things, biting, deliberately breaking anything, hurting anyone, and tell her son that the doctor said that this behavior indicates he is not getting enough sleep and that he should be put to bed right after supper, but no later than 6:30 p.m., until these behaviors cease completely for three weeks. If, during the three weeks, the child did a single one of these behaviors, the three weeks have to start over the next day.  In one case, said Rosemond, it took six weeks, during which time the three-week cure started over seven times, mostly in weeks one and two.  Rosemond is a no-nonsense kind of guy, as you can see. He believes in setting down the rules and enforcing them like parents used to do once upon a time.

I would add to Rosemond's "prescription" because his approach only addresses the behaviors with the goal of eliminating them. I would recommend that the parents figure out (perhaps with the help of an outsider) why their child is acting in this way. What message is he trying to convey? How can his needs be satisfied without his having to resort to ugly behavior?

But medicating him? Seems reprehensible to me.

The Hospital Under the Bridge Syndrome

In a recent issue of Mishpacha magazine there was an Amitz story called "Advance Notice" which irked me because the message was the wrong message.  In short, a woman is left to handle 5 children under the age of six, the youngest of whom is a newborn.  She had no help whatsoever and had to care for the children (including the toddler who became ill), do the cooking, cleaning, and laundry, and all shopping herself.  Then, rather than reading that she finally got the help she needed, we read that she got a medical diagnosis instead and the subsequent treatment. 

This is reminiscent of the Chelm story in which the wise people of the town build a hospital under the bridge because of the many accidents that take place there rather than fixing the bridge.  This woman did not need a doctor, a diagnosis, or treatment.  She needed help in the house! We are fed article after article to convince us that PPD is nothing to be embarrassed about and urging people to be aware of the symptoms and to seek help.  Are we in Chelm?! It is obvious that if a woman has to deal with everything this woman had to deal with, that she is more likely than not to break! Rather than work on teaching us to "recognize the signs" and convincing us to get medical help, how about urging women to get the physical household help they need! If a woman is having her fifth child under age six, she and her husband must be urged to get household help.  The articles should be directed at women to insist they not be martyrs and at men to insist that they do not allow their wives to be martyrs.  No more hospitals under the bridge!

a related post:

http://bikores.blogspot.com/search/label/PPD

Blessings

Back in April I wrote about healing in connection with Rachel Naomi Remen's book "Kitchen Table Wisdom" which I was rereading at the time. 

http://bikores.blogspot.com/2010/04/true-healing.html

Well, now I'm rereading her other book, "My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging" which is as beautiful as her previous book.  Ms. Remen had a frum grandfather who had no frum children but he was there to teach the author until he died when she was seven years old.  He lovingly called her Neshuma-le and her encounters with him and his teachings are so poignant.  She grows up to lovingly transmit the kindness and compassion and wisdom she received, to others.  The theme is - recognizing the blessings in your life.  Sometimes we are blessed and don't know it.  It's something like being given a check and not cashing it.  It's about opening our eyes, seeing what really matters, what is true.

caveat: not every selection is 100% kosher

In Control Or Not?

Here is a line from an article that I read:

"We live in a society of personal control and achievement.  We are led to believe that if we flex our muscles hard enough and are diligent and persevering enough, we can control the outcome of our lives and those of our children."

Are we living in a society in which we are led to believe we are in control? I think we get mixed messages.

- We are told time and again that eating properly (the right amounts, nutritious food) and exercising are up to us and we are enjoined to take care of our health. 

the message is, we are responsible for our health and it's up to us to maintain it, in other words - it is within our control (despite the fact that we all know that illness strikes seemingly at random and kills children and young people)

- Many support the idea of bachurim having a plan for the future that includes what they will do to support a family.

the message is, we can plan for our financial future and carry out that plan (despite the fact that we know that some businesses surprisingly take off and do well while many fail and that many people who prepared for a particular career are doing something else either willingly or because they cannot find work in their fields)

- When it comes to our behavior and moods, it's our genes, it's our "chemical make-up," it's our upbringing, that make us the way we are.

the message is, we are victims
it's not our fault that we fly off the handle, that we can't sit quietly and pay attention, that we feel sad; it's a disorder, a condition, something that doctors diagnose
this is a phenomenon that has been observed in articles and entire books are devoted to our victimhood (some promoting it while others repudiate it).

So which is it - overall, do we feel in control or not?

What Is a School's Function?

I read a "letter to the editor" which says:

"While it is true that they [our  yeshiva system] do focus on middos, there is still too much emphasis on grades and intellectual aptitude.  There is a lot of pressure put on the children (especially adolescents) to score hundreds.  I am hoping  ... that our beloved yeshiva system can be improved."

I find this view peculiar.  Isn't school a place that you go to, primarily, to learn information and skills? How to read, how to write, to cover material, to understand it, to be able to answer questions, do reports? Even if we are only talking about the Jewish studies, isn't the material the focus of the curriculum and through the curriculum you also learn hashkafa, middos and love for mitzvos and Torah?

Would we all be better off if the day was spent on story telling and craft projects, plays and sing-alongs?

Looking back at the history of the cheder and yeshiva, and later girls' schools - what did the students do in school? They learned! They were tested! They were expected to know! And good teachers conveyed Torah values along with the material.  But our schools were never about "feel good" Judaism only.

You Are My Life

I listened to a powerful Chanuka shiur given by Rabbi Moshe Weinberger (Cong. Aish Kodesh of Woodmere) in which he focused on the Greeks' aim to "make them forget Your Torah." He said we don't forget that which is nogei'a (pertain, affects) our essence.

The Torah says, and it's one of the Six Remembrances, “shmor nefshecha me'od” (guard your soul very much) lest you forget the Torah - if Torah would be your soul, you wouldn't forget it.

How is it possible for there to be learned people who, when they go out to do business, steal? Don't they know the laws of stealing, gezel akum? The answer he gave is, it is because the learning is forgotten, i.e. it's not relevant to them, Torah is a subject, not lessons for life.

He told the story of a yeshiva bachur who borrowed a tape recorder and then broke it. The owner of the tape recorder wanted to be reimbursed but he said it was an accident and so he didn't have to pay. They asked their rebbi who brought them to the rosh yeshiva, R' Reuven Feinstein, who was appalled because they had been learning this topic in Gemara all zeman that if someone lends you something you are obligated to pay if something accidentally happens to it! He went to R' Moshe his father who said, you have to realize it has no relevance to them.

In our generation, he said, there is more learning than ever before and yet there is so little connection to what is learned. That's what Yavan is about, disconnecting us from the G-dly aspect of Torah and mitzvos.

The most touching part of his talk was when he gave an example of those things which affect your essence which you don't forget and he said that he and his sister felt every minute that they were the essence of their parents' lives, they weren't a “sideshow,” something that gets in the way of their parents' activities. His father said he could call any time, and one time he called because he was upset about something that happened at school. Unbeknownst to him at the time of his call, his father sent the customers out of the store and locked the store in the middle of the day and spoke to him for over an hour. His mother later said, couldn't you wait until 6:00? He apologized and his father said - What are you talking about (i.e. no apology is necessary)? Customers? Business? My leben is you.

"Just Say Yes" part 2

One year ago, I put up a post called "Just Say Yes" :

http://bikores.blogspot.com/2009/12/just-say-yes.html#links

to which this is a follow-up.  The prevalent view is that if we keep on giving we will become depleted, even burned out.  That seems like common wisdom indeed.  But is it true?

In the Artscroll biography of Rabbi Pam he was asked how to avoid burnout in chinuch.  Rabbi Pam did not relate to the question.  He so enjoyed teaching and derived tremendous satisfaction from it.  He regarded each student as a treasure.  He taught for decades and said this was the most enjoyable time of his life.  With that attitude, how could he grow tired of it?

So too with chesed, said the person I quoted in that other post.  If you do it for the right reasons, you gain in strength and don't lose out.

cont. from previous post

The third section is about schizophrenia and why people diagnosed with this illness in developing nations (i.e. third world countries) have a better prognosis than those living in the most industrialized countries of the world.

What I found fascinating in this chapter is the following - it is believed by Westerners that if the people view mental illness like any other disease (and I've seen this line repeated time and again in frum articles and comments to articles) this will remove the stigma. After all, if mental illness is not the choice of the sufferer and does not come from supernatural forces, the sufferer is not to blame. It's simply a matter of faulty genes or some "imbalance" in the brain.

"Unfortunately, as mental health professionals and advocates for the mentally ill have been winning this rhetorical and conceptual battle, they've been simultaneously losing the war against stigma. Studies of attitudes in the US between the 1950's and 1996 have demonstrated that the perception of dangerousness surrounding the mentally ill has steadily increased over this time. It turns out that those who adopted the biomedical and genetic beliefs about mental illness were most often those who wanted less contact with the mentally ill or thought of them as dangerous and unpredictable."

Why is this so? "The problem, it appears, is that the biomedical or genetic narrative about an illness such as schizophrenia carries with it the subtle assumption that a brain made ill through biomedical or genetic abnormalities is more thoroughly broken and permanently abnormal compared to one made ill through life events."

The final section is called "The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan," which is about a huge drug company wanting to develop a new market for its products and how a marketing campaign was carefully planned and executed which introduced the Japanese to this illness and most importantly, to drugs to treat it.

It's pretty scary to read that this and other illnesses and the drugs to treat it are not coming from doctors without a monetary incentive but from a company whose only goal is to increase profits. The Ritalin producers are doing soooo very well, aren't they ... It's equally as scary to read how we are manipulated, and how our ideas about very important things are shaped by people hired to shape our ideas! And then we see these ideas regurgitated in our frum publications as though they are Torah Mi'Sinai ...

Crazy Like Us

I recently finished a very interesting book called "The Globalization of the American Psyche - Crazy Like Us" by Ethan Watters.  It tells how Americans have exported their understanding of mental illness and have imposed it on cultures with very different ways of relating to those illnesses.

The first section is about how anorexia was marketed in Hong Kong, yes, marketed.  To explain what this means - in late 1995, Princess Diana gave her famous interview confirming the rumors that she had suffered from bulimia for more than four years.  The newspapers covered this widely, of course, and bulimic behaviors spread like wildfire among adolescents.  Patients themselves often said that they tried vomiting etc. because they read or heard about it.  The chapter shows how similarly, anorexia barely existed and when it manifested, it was different than the American version, i.e. they weren't on a diet and were not interested in losing weight.

The problem is, the American DSM and Western medicine in general are highly respected in other parts of the world and so even when their patients do not fit American norms, they ignore that.

One of the important points that is made is that those who argue that increased incidence of a condition is due to its previously going unrecognized or underreported do not balance their assertion with the fact that when the media promotes a new disorder/condition/illness, people latch on to it and "discover" that they too are sick.  He has a fascinating part about the hysteria diagnosis in the late 19th century.  Do you know of anyone diagnosed with hysteria nowadays? No, because that condition with all its symptoms is no longer trendy.

The second section is about bringing PTSD to Sri Lanka after the tsunami.  Lots of well-meaning Westerners went there to help the natives avoid PTSD, completing ignoring the natives' culture and ways of dealing with traumatic events while foisting their mental illness ideas on them.  Amazingly, study after study published during the 1990's showed that early interventions were either ineffective or actually harmful!  "Early interventions sometimes appeared to be priming victims to experience certain symptoms."

Who We Look At

I am reading a book of "wisdom, stories and inspiration" on the parsha which is a translation of an extremely popular book in Hebrew which is based on the writings, shiurim and conversations with a certain popular rav in Eretz Yisrael.  I won't say the name of the book because of a story that I just read that I want to discuss here.

The story is that when secular Jews (as the book refers to them) would come to visit this rav, his rebbetzin would not welcome them personally.  She would remain in her room saying, "You, the rav, are compelled by your position to meet and talk with them.  I, on the other hand, am not obligated.  In that case, I do not even wish to see their faces!"

What a shocker! Obviously this was included in the book to reflect well on the rebbetzin and to serve as a lesson for us.  But the anecdote doesn't say they were evil people, just that they were irreligious.  It is true, we should not look at evil people and it's disturbing when frum publications include pictures of evil people.  But these visitors were presumably men who did not have the benefit of a religious education, not wilfull sinners!

What a contrast to the book I am presently rereading, "Holy Woman" about Rebbetzin Chaya Sara Kramer and her husband a'h.  He was a Satmar chassid and yet he loved all the Jews he encountered (and didn't encounter).  He sought out irreligious Jews in order to have a positive influence on them and he and his wife welcomed anybody who came to their home, no matter their level of religiosity or manner of dress.

Will the real Judaism please stand up!

Dirty Laundry part 2

The author responded with:

Where does the Torah NOT say to hang out our dirty laundry? Have you ever read Sefer Devarim? Even Parashas Bereishis? There is never any attempt in Judaism to hide ourselves from the truth of our condition and, if we are in need of repair, to change.

Yes, I have, baruch Hashem, seen payoffs from the issues that my stories have raised. Read this week's ... for a very poignant letter from a reader about how healing it is for her to read ...[name of book] 

...[name of book] brought about actual social change, which is very gratifying. If you are, indeed, sincerely arguing in favor of NOT hanging out dirty laundry, how do you propose change? How do you suggest introducing healing and developing new paths?

And I'm sorry that you find the line, "If it helps just one person, it's worth it," tiring. Firstly, there's no such thing. People are so interconnected that if one person is helped, the effects can spread to thousands. Secondly, since we are so very much the same it is nearly impossible for something to resonate within one single person.

To which I said:

Let me get this straight - you are comparing a fictionalized serial to our G-d given Torah?! (insert shocked face emoticon)

You have learned from Torah that it is a worthy activity to point out our flaws. Hmmm. Yeshaya said, "And in the midst of an unclean nation I dwell," and he was punished. As the tzaddik and prophet he was, surely he wasn't ch'v gratuitously badmouthing the Jewish people, and still, he was punished.

A new chamber of zechus was created by Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev for seeking the good in the Jewish people and highlighting it. As the tzaddik he was, he was well aware of the mitzva of rebuke and surely fulfilled the mitzva, and yet, he teaches us to look with a "good eye" and be sure to speak well of our fellow Jews.

The focus of many laws associated with Shemiras Ha'Lashon is to avoid any derogatory remarks about one another. So indeed, not only is it not recommended that we "air our dirty laundry in public" (defined as publicly discussing personal affairs that could cause embarrassment or distress), we are enjoined to do the opposite.

In today's climate, society finds it laudable when people "tell all." This immodest attitude has crept into frum society so that people address audiences and write articles telling quite personal stories about themselves, their marriages, their lives. It's extremely popular because we find it fascinating to hear about other people and their adventures, especially when they share (too) personal details. And some people become so immersed in even the made-up stories that incredibly, a woman wrote to Mishpacha saying that a particular installment ruined her Shabbos because she was so distressed by the conduct of fictional characters!

The exception to all the above is l'toeles (for positive benefit) as defined by the Torah: to fulfill the mitzva of rebuke, for example.

I have noticed that people seem to think that discussing a problem is practically synonymous with having done something concrete to solve it. Reading about a problem, whether in a fictional or non-fictional article might make people feel good if they are grappling with that problem. Is that a valid t'oeles? I can hear where it would be valid if this person went to consult with someone and part of what they are told is that they are not alone. But I'm not convinced that presenting our foibles (and worse) to a general audience is beneficial. What consideration, if any, is given to the possibility that it will pull people down, that it will expose them to ways of life that they never considered?

There is the chilul Hashem aspect too. Do we need the "outside world" hearing how we "beat our chests" and admit our sins?

I am disappointed that you delegitimize another point of view by denigrating it as "burying heads in the sand" rather than being open to hearing that this view has some merit even if you don't think the merits are sufficiently weighty. It sounds like you think that R' Levi Yitzchok was ch'v a Pollyana.

As to how to make positive changes in our society, what did we see done in the past, over the millenia? We saw great people addressing audiences, in person or in writing, and exhorting them to observe mitzvos and avoid sin, inspiring them to love and fear of G-d. We see movements like Daf Yomi and Shemiras Ha'Lashon promoted by individuals who had the siyata dishmaya to succeed, changing frum society. I know of no positive social change that has resulted from frum fictional serial stories. I'm sure you're convinced they have been the catalyst for change but until I hear what those changes are and am convinced that nothing negative resulted, I view fictional serials for what I think they are: entertainment, diversions and/or kosher soap operas. Some frum writers insert some Torah messages but I believe that the ikar is the story. When the ikar is the Torah message, the writing is usually not particularly entertaining like in the "older mentor-young seeker" literary technique which has been used a number of times, because the writer is focused on the Torah message and not as much (or at all) on developing the story and characters.

P.S. As for non-fictional articles about sensitive issues that are purportedly written for the public welfare, there is reason to be exceedingly cautious. There is evidence that bringing certain issues (anorexia, depression) to the fore has increased harmful behavior, not minimized it.

See a previous post of mine on this subject called "Increase the Light" from Dec. 6
 http://bikores.blogspot.com/2009/12/increase-light.html

About "Hanging Dirty Laundry" in Public

 

I had an interaction with someone who writes popular novels in installments for a frum publication.  She decries what she calls burying heads in the sand rather than facing reality and coming up with solutions and sees nothing wrong with public discussion of frum society's ills.  On the contrary, she thinks that fictional writing is a good way to call attention to problems that ought to be addressed and that it deals with these problems.

My initial response to that was:

My question is, what evidence do you have that writing about our flaws will help remove them? Do you truly think that people with the flaws you write about will read your story and say, "Hey, I better fix that problem in myself!" Have you gotten any feedback over the years from readers who did that? Or have you gotten feedback from readers who told you that after reading about a certain problem (not in themselves) they decided to take action to correct it?

You ask, "Is it scandalous to admit that there are problems in our communities?" My question is, is there virtue in talking about our flaws? Does it say anywhere in our Torah literature that vidui of our collective sins should be broadcast to the public? Or, is it rather, as I have learned, talking about the negative strengthens it and focusing on "light" and the positive, strengthens that.

By calling attention to these issues, are you aware of specific steps that were taken to rectify them that can be credited to fiction? How about that can be credited to non-fictional articles?

If writing about abuse in a fictional story "deals with it" by actually helping anyone I'd like to know about that.

And I hope I'm not going to hear the tired line, "If it helps just one person, it's worth it," because I'm not convinced that's true.

It's One Year!

It's one year since I began posting here.  Happy anniversary to me :)

Thank you to those who have posted comments and thank you everybody else for visiting.

Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry - A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis

I read a fascinating book about psychiatry written by a practicing psychiatrist who, as the book flap says, exposes deeply disturbing problems plaguing his profession.  He writes about how psychiatry is mostly about prescribing drugs these days, with all the troubling consequences that entails, and has largely forsaken talk therapy.  This is because they will earn far less doing therapy than by prescribing drugs.  He says if he did therapy, he could see one patient an hour and he would earn about $70/hour.  He typically saw three patients an hour, for years, and he made $180 an hour (factor in expenses and he made closer to $130 an hour).

He writes about how they treat symptoms after determining that the patient exhibits an arbitrary number of signs that match a supposed disorder.  They spend fifteen minutes on a patient and don't bother finding out about the patient's life.  He shows how DSM diagnoses are not particulary scientific, and tells us that the number of possible diagnoses has increased from 182 to 263.  Unbelievably, a committee votes on deleting what is considered old-fashioned disorders and voting in newfangled disorders.

What he says backs up many things I have believed about the profession but I am no authority; he is! So when I read that a practicing psychiatrist says there is no proof to the chemical imbalance theory of depression, I say wow! I have read numerous articles over the years in frum and not Jewish media that speak about a chemical imbalance with the same confidence we reserve for the sun rising in the morning!

He says the scientific literature contains thousands of papers proposing neurobiological theories to explain PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders but these theories remain unproven! He says, "the shocking truth is that psychiatry has yet to develop a convincing explanation for the pathophysiology of any illness at all."

Even as I was amazed by the honesty of the author in showing the major flaws of his profession, I was shocked that he still goes through the motions.  How pathetic to drug someone when their problem is clearly loneliness or unhappiness with their job.  As a colleague of his put it, "Most of the people I see have misery and unhappiness rather than major depression.  They are miserable because of problems in relationships or difficulties coping with their life's circumstances."  She doesn't drug them.  She makes half of what a full-time psychiatrist in private practice makes because she does talk therapy instead.

There is a chapter on how drug companies market their drugs to psychiatrists.  Oh boy ... it's so crooked that the author, who started out innocently working as a paid drug endorser for one of these drug companies, stopped working for them despite the great pay ($30,000 - and this is aside from his private practice) and perks because he realized he was selling his soul and was no longer willing to do so.

It's a readable book for the layman and I highly recommend it.  Time that more people realized that "the emperor has no clothes."  Our health, mental and otherwise, is at stake!