Kometz Alef Uh

There was a tribute to Rabbi Meir Pilchik a'h in Mishpacha magazine.  He was a menahel and fundraiser associated with the Stoliner yeshiva but "his primary claim to fame was as an alef-beis rebbi in the Stoliner yeshiva."

The article went on to describe what a devoted and patient rebbi he was, and how he made Torah and Yiddishkeit sweet for the children.  One detail that caught my attention had me wondering.  It said that "he kept a looseleaf in which he detailed the progress of each child in his pre-1A class.  He would monitor their mastery of keria, ensuring that no one left his classroom crippled for life with an inability to read."

This was over 40 years ago and there was no "special ed," no special ed training, and no keria programs.  How did he, and Racoma Shain, author of All For the Boss, who also ensured that every child who left her class could read, manage this? Were the children different back then? Did something change? Was it the norm for all or the vast majority of children to learn how to read in an ordinary classroom, or were these particular teachers unusual?

How could we find out?

The Emotions Ruler

Within two days, I came across two versions of the "ruler idea."  I read the first one in an article by Miriam Adahan.  She writes,*  "I created a little two-sided ruler. One side shows varying degrees of happy faces and a happiness scale from 1–10. The other side shows varying degrees of pain, also from 1–10." 

She has children use them to show how happy they are or how painful something is or was.  Quantifying it can be very helpful in teaching how to prioritize and maintain a proper perspective.  It sounds like a great idea for adults too! If we had to pick a number to fit a genuine tragedy and a number for burning the onions, that could readily help us tone down our reaction to that which is more trivial.

Two days later, I read an article in Binah by Chaya Spirer Leeder, a social worker, in which she describes being in a hospital and seeing a chart with faces depicting levels of happiness to pain.  #1 was a smiling face and #10 was a crying and screaming face.  The nurse occasionally asked her what number she was. 

In her practice she uses the same idea to "allow the kids to re-evaluate their feelings and put events into perspective, prompting them to think, 'Is this really the worst thing that has ever happened to me?' The answer is usually no."

She also showed how by ranking a bad feeling, it enables us to think about what we can do to lower the number and if we can't lower the number, how to change what we think about it so we can feel better.

I like the idea of rating feelings, for the reasons mentioned above, and also because when other people tell us their assessment, it enables us to understand their perspective.

*for the full article see: here

Deaf Pride?

 

There is a movement among the deaf called "Deaf Pride."  They do not view their handicap as such.  They consider it a difference, not a disability, hence not something that needs to be fixed.

Those in the "deaf culture" are vehemently against cochlear implants in children, which they call invasive surgery in defenseless children, because (aside from health concerns), by enabling children to hear, parents are making a major decision for their children.  As one deaf person put it, "I think it is wrong for a hearing parent to deny a deaf child their cultural identity and force them to be hearing."

This view is perturbing.  What is the Torah understanding of this issue?

Socialist Chesed

In one of Mishpacha's Succos supplements, there was a piece about cost price catering in Gateshead, England.  A team of ladies does all the catering for local weddings and it can be as elegant or as simple as you are willing to pay for. 

I don't get it.

This chesed began 30 years ago when there were two caterers in the community who made a living (i.e. their service was not at cost price) from catering simchas.  A doctor in the community asked two women if they would be willing to arrange cost-price simchas to provide an option people could afford.  Once this became standard for every couple getting married in Gateshead, naturally the caterers went out of business.

So regardless as to what you can afford, you get a cost-price wedding catered by six ladies out of a list of volunteers.  Why would they want to cook for someone who can afford to pay for a caterer? I don't know.  Why was it a good thing that caterers were put out of business? I don't know.  Why is this done for everyone, no matter the need? Someone suggested it's because England is a socialist country so this is the mentality.

Toward the end of the article it says the waiters and waitresses respect the frum lifestyle but they can't always understand it.  One of these non-Jewish waitresses couldn't believe that no money is made off of catering these weddings because "as far as she's concerned, if people can't afford it, why are they having 300 guests at their wedding?" Uh, right. 

If weddings had fewer guests eating at the meal, we could bring the caterers back because weddings would be affordable.  The caterers would make a living, the volunteers could turn their attention elsewhere, and even the gentile waitress would see that Jews know to pay for what they can afford.

"Give Honor to the Torah"

As I write this, I can hear lively Chassidic music playing out in the street.  I am fortunate in that I live in a location where Hachnosas Sifrei Torah take place every now and then.  I am alerted to the possibility of one taking place when I hear loud Jewish music. 

I go out on my porch which overlooks an avenue and have a bird's eye view of a wonderful procession of dancing and strolling people accompanying a new Sefer Torah to its new home.  In the more elaborate celebrations, children in white shirts are given (safe) torches to hold and there are large circles of dancers.

In today's day and age, this is done with the help of the police who block off streets to allow the safe passage of the Torah.  What a contrast to the article I read earlier today in which a woman describes life in Frankfurt in the aftermath of Kristallnacht.  She says they watched Germans smashing their way into the beis medrash across from her house and seeing a Sefer Torah thrown out the window upon which they tore kria. 

In fact, many of the people attending the Hachnosas Sifrei Torah I get to see are themselves Holocaust survivors or the children of survivors.  The survivors probably never dreamed of the day when gentile police would help Jews give honor to the Torah.

Is it Hot in Here? Nah

One of the explanations given as to why Chushim the son of Dan took action and killed Eisav at Yaakov's funeral is that since he was deaf, he did not become immersed in the negotiations over the burial as did the rest of the children and grandchildren of Yaakov.  It happened slowly.  Eisav made a claim, the brothers made a counter-claim, Eisav responded, and it was decided that Naftali would go back to Egypt to get the document.  Chushim missed all this.  All he knew was that his grandfather's burial was delayed and this was disrespectful.

This idea, of slowly getting used to an untenable situation is referred to as the "boiling frog syndrome." Supposedly, if a frog is placed in boiling water it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.

I am reminded of all this in connection with an article that I read by Sudy Rosengarten in which she provides the history of early education.  When she was a little girl, nearly eighty years ago, children started school at age six.  That is when they learned the ABC's and numbers.  A little googling shows that twenty of 34 European countries have a starting age of six and another eight wait until seven.

Then kindergartens were started for five year olds where they heard stories, played, and painted.  What followed was America's Head Start program for poor, disadvantaged children, ages 3-4.  The age has been lowered even further with playgroups for two year olds and younger in the US and Israel.  This is not for an hour or two.  Some of these programs are until three in the afternoon.  Of course, babysitters may keep them even longer.

If a mother wants to keep her child home because she doesn't believe that sending babies out to school is beneficial to them, there will be no playmates during school hours.

Mrs. Rosengarten covers some of the problems inherent in this new system which is now considered the norm ("boiling frog syndrome).  Most importantly, very young children need their mother.  There are years to come of schooling and these early years cannot be replaced.  It's a time when they are forming their first and most significant emotional attachment which will stand by them forever.

She also refers to those children who don't do well in group settings at the age of two and how "accelerating the natural timetable just isn't good for them" and how early academics are not a good idea.

All this may be irrelevant given that today's parents are "boiled frogs" and cannot imagine keeping a child home past the age of three, never mind four and five.  More often than not, these days, mothers are working so that even Rabbi Mandel a"h of Yeshiva of Brooklyn, who held that little children belong with their mothers, was "forced" by circumstances to open a preschool.  Mothers told him that they would be sending their children out of the home regardless so could he please open a class for them. 

The water has been boiling for so long now, that I don't think even a modern-day Chushim can save the day.

Contemporary Litvishe Views on Birthdays

In the Artscroll biography The Manchester Rosh Yeshivah, about R' Yehuda Zev Segal, it says (p. 189), "He would say that a birthday is a day to express gratitude to Hashem for the years granted to carry out one's mission in life.  It was a common practice for talmidim to approach the rosh yeshiva on their birthday and request his blessing that they grow in Torah knowledge and yiras shomayim.  On at least one occasion, it was the rosh yeshiva who approached an outstanding talmid and said, 'Today is my birthday.  I wish to undertake to develop further in Torah and yiras shomayim.  Please bless me that I should succeed.'"

***********

from the new edition of the Artscroll Reb Moshe book, p. 311

"All the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren were called by Reb Moshe [Feinstein] and the Rebbetzin on their birthdays.  The family would reciprocate by calling Reb Moshe every 7 Adar to wish him well on his birthday.  Those who lived in the NY area would come to the Lower East Side to do this in person.  This was so accepted a practice in the Feinstein family that when one grandchild was once unable to get through on the phone, she received a call that night from Reb Moshe, who was concerned that something was amiss.

 

"The family emphasizes, however, that these were not simply "Happy Birthday" calls, but opportunities for them to express their fervent hopes and blessings that their father and grandfather merit another year of life in good health, and receive his blessing in return."

 

footnote: for a number of years, a group of students from Yeshiva of Staten Island would travel to the East Side on 7 Adar to present R' Moshe with a loose-leaf containing chidushei Torah written by the yeshiva's talmidim.  R' Moshe would glowingly accept this unique gift and leaf through the entire collection in the presence of the talmidim.

What We Read

In an article I read, a mechanech from upstate New York, not referred to by name, says he makes the effort to travel and speak and makes a point of denouncing certain frum publications by name.  Why? He said one of them had an article about the life of a billionaire and this is antithetical to the desire we should have for a simple life.

I don't know who the man is and I don't know which publication he is referring to.  I don't know why this information was not shared when the man thinks it's his mission to go public with his opinion.

It is possible that the magazine he castigates made a poor choice of a topic.  Let's say they did.  If we followed his recommendation, we would eliminate a magazine or magazines geared to the frum reader.  I'm not convinced this is a good idea when reading material for the frum reader is limited.  Would he prefer that we read secular reading material instead?

Perhaps.  Maybe he thinks that if it comes under the auspices of a frum imprimatur, we are not on guard.  When we read something from a secular source we might be more alert to contradictions to our values.

On a related topic, there are reading lists one can get for children, of books that are not of Jewish content but have been vetted for appropriateness.  Artscroll has published textbooks with classic English literature that they selected for appropriateness.  I've been thinking about this.  I've also been thinking about someone reading "All for the Boss" for her English class.  It's a terrific book which I've read four times, but for an English literature class?

To read or not to read, that is the question.
Or, to read and what to read, those are the questions.

Spiritual DNA

I read a terrific chinuch idea in an article by Rabbi Hillel Belsky, printed in Hamodia's Inyan magazine. 

He described a talmid of his whose achievements in general were average but who was particularly devoted to tefilla b'tzibbur.  He never missed a minyan and the disparity between his punctiliousness with this mitzvah and other areas of his spiritual life was obvious.  "Upon investigation, I learned that his grandfather, whom he had not known, used to stand on street corners trying to collect people for a minyan in a dying neighborhood."

R' Belsky is the founder and dean of a seminary in Yerushalayim and he says he tries to enlist his students to search their family backgrounds to find the specialness of their ancestors.  "Who were they? Were they known for anything special, big or small? Any area of avodas Hashem for which they were moser nefesh? It all becomes a part of their singular and collective spiritual DNA."

The idea is "to encourage students to claim their forebears' strengths as their own."  On the subject of Shabbos, the students were asked to find out about any instances of mesirus nefesh for Shabbos on the part of their parents, grandparents and so on.  He says "the stories the girls told could have filled a book!"

"Every family has stories.  I want my students to connect to these stories."

And it's true.  A family does not have to be illustrious to have inspirational stories.  A family does not even have to be religious to have mitzva-related inspiring stories.  We need to speak to family members and glean these stories so that we have personal inspiration to draw upon.

Idealism

Someone in her forties said: When we were growing up, the Holocaust was very much a part of our lives.  We were children of survivors and survivors lived all around us.  My children have no particular interest or involvement in the Holocaust. 

We were also very aware of the plight of Soviet Jewry.  We read stories about life behind the Iron Curtain in Olomeinu and sang songs like JEP's "Dear Nikolai" and "Let My People Go." Then Russian Jewry began to come out of Russia and they were all around us.  We saw them babysitting, taking ESL classes and we invited them for Pesach.

The person I quoted earlier bemoans the lack of idealism in her children.  Their concerns and involvement include doing well in school, getting married, having a family, and paying the bills.

That's not to say there is no idealism in our youth, but it is not within her children's world.  It gave me pause for thought.

"The Boys in the Boat"

I just finished reading this wonderful book, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Olympics.  I was impressed by the writing from the very start and even though competitive rowing is not something that interests me, the author wrote so beautifully that I was kept enthralled. 

It was interesting to read his descriptions of life in the 1930's such as life on a college campus.  Just the description of how teenagers dressed back then drives home how distant we are from those more moral times.  The book focuses on one of the boys in particular.  He went through a very difficult childhood and he handled it with such resiliency, working extremely hard to support himself and get himself through college. 

The story of the college rowing team is interspersed with the rise of Hitler's Germany.  The Berlin Olympics were designed to fool the world into thinking Germany was civilized at the very time that they were actively preparing for war and persecuting and murdering Jews. 

It was fascinating to read how this kind of rowing requires not only tremendous strength but great intelligence too.  They all had to keep up their grades and the crew athletes were known to have the highest GPA in the university.  When they finished college they went to work in impressive jobs and all but one married and had families. 

There are parts that describe how the boats were made and what it takes to have a perfectly coordinated team of rowers, which can serve as life lessons and as wonderful mashalim (analogies).

I highly recommend it.

Kudos to Kedem?

The founder of KosherFest was asked whether there was anyone who has been part of KosherFest since it began twenty-five years ago.  His response, printed in Mishpacha magazine, was "There are two handfuls, I would say.  Kedem is a big one, and kudos to them.  We weren't a wine drinking community, it was just a cup of sweet wine for Kiddush, but Kedem educated an entire generation.  Now there are more than 1000 different bottles of wine at Kosherfest.  It's really, 'My, how they've grown up!'"

This is a good thing? Good for the wine manufacturers and distributors who make money on it, but who else is it good for? Is that what we were missing all this time, an education in how to drink? Previously we were immature? Presumably this is why I have been reading many articles in recent years about the out of control drinking going on in within frum communities. 

I found the articles showing pictures of KosherFest unappealing.  It looked to me like KosherFress.  I understand the need for those in the kosher food and beverage industries to network, and I understand the need for new products to alleviate the situations of those with allergies and illnesses that do not allow them to eat normal foods.  But do I think our increasingly obese and struggling with limits frum community needs even more food products than we already have? No.  Was I lacking anything very important twenty-five years ago when it came to food? No.

“Every day is a new adventure,” said EF of --- which has been producing bakery items for 52 years. “It isn’t just keeping up with the times, it is staying ahead of the times that is what really has to be done, although there are classic items that are tried and true and people never get tired of those.”

I must be missing something major since I don't understand why we must constantly come up with new culinary items.  But as long as we say the words "I'm eating this l'sheim shomayim," we're okay, right?

Consider Yourselves Warned

I've been thinking intermittently about the disaster in the Philippines.  Major loss of life, misery and devastation.  How everything that happens in the world happens for the sake of the Jewish people.  The following was written by R' Mendel Weinbach a'h:

When news of an earthquake in Japan a century ago reached the Radin Yeshiva in Poland, the sainted Chofetz Chaim assembled the students and delivered an inspiring mussar lecture.
 
This lesson was delivered millennia ago by the Prophet Tzephaniah who declared in the Name of G-d:
"I have cut off nations; their pinnacles are desolate; I have made their streets waste so that none passes by; their cities are destroyed so that there is no man, there is no inhabitant. I said, surely you will fear me and will learn a lesson." (3:6-7)

The words of the Prophet are quoted in a lecture written during the Middle Ages by the great Talmudic commentator Rabbeinu Nissim who points out that when people fail to learn from the disasters which strike others, they cause such tragedy to come closer to them. One who fails to see natural disasters as a Heavenly warning and fails to make any improvements, he concludes, is comparable to one who has sinned after being warned and thus exposes himself to retribution.

I have a hard time with this, specifically with the making improvements part.  I get as far as remembering everything that transpires happens for our sake and that they are supposed to be calls to teshuva.  I wonder if others are more successful in taking this to heart.

4th Anniversary!

Just to mention that I posted my first post in November 2009, so this is my 4th anniversary of blogging!

The Incredible Shabbos Project

I am so impressed and moved by what I've been reading and seeing about the special Shabbos initiative a few weeks ago in South Africa.  It took place on Shabbos parshas Lech Lecha and Yonoson Rosenblum described it as, "An experiment that has no precedent in modern Jewish history. It was called “The Shabbos Project.”

 

"The idea was simple: Encourage every Jew in South Africa to celebrate one Shabbos. And not just a friendly Shabbos dinner where nonreligious participants would be welcomed even if they drove to their host’s doorstep. Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, 42, who has led the South African community since 2005, decided early on that the Shabbos must be observed in its entirety."

 

“Keeping Shabbos completely was crucial to the success of the Shabbos Project,” explains Rabbi Goldstein. “The kedushah, energy, and emotional power of the experience depends on doing the mitzvah exactly as Hashem instructs. When Torah is diluted, it loses its spiritual power. South Africans like a challenge, and responded to my call to keep Shabbos in all its details accordingly.”

 

To get some idea of the magnitude of this project see this: The Great Challa Bake about how thousands of women and girls gathered to bake challa.  And take a look at the website with all the information and resources that were made available to South African Jewry: here and be sure to click on "Our Stories" to read the reactions of those who participated, many experiencing Shabbos for the first time.