Ba’alei Teshuva Parents – FFB Kids (Part I)

The following post is from Rabbi Horowitz’s Chicago Community Kollel Interactive Parenting Column. Rabbi Horowitz recently updated his website, which contains a wealth of material on parenting and other issues facing us.

Rabbi Horowitz,

What is your advice for ba’alei teshuva who are raising frum-from-birth children in terms of making sure that the children are well integrated, healthy and normal frum Jews? As ba’alei teshuva sometimes it is easy to be very strict because of insecurities from our own upbringing and lack of family minhagim. If you can give a few pointers that will obviously need to be explored with our own rabbeim to tailor make it to our own families, it would be helpful.

Thank you!

Rabbi Horowitz Responds

Your excellent question practically answers itself, and leads me to believe that you already have a deep understanding of the opportunities – and challenges – that you face in raising your FFB children. You hit the nail on the head when you noted that you wanted to raise “well integrated, healthy and normal frum Jews.” For that balance is exactly what you ought to be striving to achieve.

If you are a regular reader of these lines, you may know where my suggestions will start – with you and your spouse. One of my mantras is that most of the issues that we face when raising our children are reflections of our own struggles. I maintain that in order to raise “well integrated, healthy and normal frum Jewish children,” you need to start with “well integrated, healthy and normal frum Jewish adult parents.” That means that you adhere to the timeless advice of Shlomo Hamelech (King Solomon) and remain on the ‘golden path’ of moderation. After all, if you don’t want your children to be raised in a “very strict [environment] because of [their parents’] insecurities,” the best way to achieve that goal is not to be “very strict [in your personal lives] due to your own insecurities.”

Here are some practical tips:

Grow Slowly

Many meforshim (commentaries) suggest that the dream of our patriarch Yaakov (see Bereshis 28:12) where he envisioned angels climbing up and down a ladder is a profound analogy to our spiritual pursuits. The Torah describes how the legs of the ladder were placed on the ground while its top reached the very heavens. I think that the correlation is an insightful one for everyone – but is all the more relevant for ba’alei teshuvah. We ought to keep our feet firmly planted on the ground – all the while reaching for profound spiritual heights.

I would like to suggest that the reason that the image of a ladder was used in the dream (as opposed to, say, a road leading to heaven) is that you simply cannot run up a ladder.

So, too, spiritual growth needs to be a sustained and steady process (Click here for a dvar Torah on this subject). Which leads me to …

Find a Rav Who Truly Understands Ba’alei Teshuvah Issues

Not all rabbanim have a deep understanding of the complex mix of halachic and social issues where ba’alei teshuva need individualized direction. Finding a Rav who understands them – and you – will provide your family with an invaluable resource. Similarly, it may be helpful for you to find a ba’al teshuvah couple ten years or so older than you who can mentor you as your family passes mileposts and lifecycle events, such as enrolling children in school, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, high school placements, shidduchim, etc.

Be Yourself

I strongly encourage you to read and re-read a terrific article by my dear chaver Rabbi Bentzion Kokis s’hlita (Click here). Rabbi Kokis is an outstanding talmid chacham and his advice is equally outstanding. If I may sum up his thoughts, it is to refrain from jettisoning your personality, hobbies, interests, education, career – and sense of humor – as you embrace Torah and mitzvos.

Ba’alei teshuva may be concerned that they are poor role models for their children since they are observing their less-than-perfect Torah and mitzvah observance. I think not. You are setting a wonderful example for your children by seeking to grow spiritually throughout your lives. (Click here for a stunning Torah thought by Rabbi Shimon Schwab on this subject.)

Distinguish Between Mitzvah, Minhag, Chumrah, and Culture

In your question, you noted that, “sometimes it is easy to be very strict because of insecurities from our own upbringing and lack of family minhagim.”

Well, in order to gain a better understanding of when to be firm and when to be flexible, you must distinguish between a mitzvah, minhag, chumrah, and something that is none of the three categories, but is rather a cultural practice.

  • Putting on tefilin every day is a daily mitzvah (a mandated commandment) incumbent upon all Jewish males above the age of thirteen.
  • Refraining from dipping matzoh in liquids on Pesach (commonly referred to as “gebrokts”) is a minhag (a custom – one only observed in some communities).
  • Not using an eiruv that has been approved by the vast majority of your city’s rabbonim is a chumrah (stringency) that many accept upon themselves.
  • Wearing a black fedora is a cultural practice prevalent in some communities.

It is of utmost importance that you fully understand the difference between these categories of Jewish practice – in your personal life and as you guide your children.

More on this – and other practical tips – next week.

© 2007 Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, all rights reserved

Two notes to readers:

1) I strongly recommend the BEYOND BT website www.beyondbt.com for ba’alei teshuva men and women. I serve as one of the rabbinic advisors of the website, and it has provided advice, camaraderie, and spiritual guidance for ba’alei teshuva around the world over the past twelve months.

2) In 2001, I wrote an article in The Jewish Observer on the subject of “Lifecycle Support for Ba’alei Teshuva Families” (Click here for link).

3) I also posted an article “Of Eagles and Turkey” on the Beyond BT website one year ago Click here for link) on the important subject of conformity to communal pressure.

I hope that you find these helpful.

YH

The Dilemma of the Talented ex-BT’s

My friend struggles with Judaism. He grew up in a very frum — let’s say, stifling — environment in a major frum metropolitan community. He had a learning disability, never diagnosed when he was in school. This not only preventing him from succeeding in yeshiva, despite receiving a generous endowment of creativity and intelligence, but the offbeat view of the world it provided to him caused him to focus on the flaws in contemporary orthodox society… maybe in his family and school too… and he was, and is, Off the Derech. Way off.

It’s painful to see. I really love the guy. He reads this blog — the Derech remains stubbornly stuck in his head, though he swears contempt for it. It comes through in the oddest of ways, though. Twice a year he tells me he’s working his way back.

But Hashem gave him some other gifts of which he has made dubious value. He is charming. Too charming. Women flock to him. He’s handsome, yes, if not perhaps for the cover of GQ (too Jewish?); but he has a magnetism that enables him to talk women into almost anything; talk employers into giving him jobs; talk the world into giving him an infinite number of chances. I’m not that charismatic, myself, but I cannot but see an aspect of my own underachieving life in his adventures — I’ve probably talked my way in and out of more trouble than the average bear.

But I have a wall full of degrees hanging on a wall that I pay the rent for, and my disappointment is relative to my ambition. His underachievement is pretty absolute. He must live on that charm, and oxygen and light, perhaps; he’s resolutely going nowhere. Frankly he lives a non-frum lifestyle, largely nocturnal, that is far beyond the pretty square existence I experienced in the first 22 years of my life. Maybe some BT who’s been there and done that can explain to me how bright people don’t get tired of endless “parties” and hanging around in clubs? Or maybe he couldn’t. To my way of thinking, as informed by Jewish sensibility, and my own limited exposure to that lifestyle during my high school and college years, it’s mostly about crowding out the the thoughts in your head that are hurting your mind.

In any event, that’s not my topic.

In any event, he’s not the person in the title of this essay.

The persons in the title are the ones — it could be any number of them — who write the Bitter Ex-BT Blogs.

See, I think my friend has a chance. A chance at life in a black-hat community, a wife with a sheitel, a two-hour-a-day learning seder? Well, we are taught not to ever give up hope, but not to rely on miracles. That would require a miracle. But could he have a healthy, positive, open-minded relationship with the Ribbono shel Olam, with Klal Yisroel, with the Torah, even? I think he could. I think he wants to. He’ll stamp up and down and insist I’m wrong, but the Nile’s big enough for both of us to be monarchs over it — I’m going to stick stubbornly to this belief.

But there’s something in his life now that may be worse for him than everything else that came before. Because he can’t pull himself away from the talented, glib, well-written, sometimes right Bitter Ex-BT Blogs, nor the virtual and real social world they promise him. He absorbs their complaints, their bitterness, their gall, and they put into words for him what he cannot quite express himself. No, more than that. They give him words to express complaints he didn’t even know he had. They feed his pain at the losing hand he feels — this talented, attractive, and thank God healthy person — God has dealt him.

Before, my friend ignored his Jewish side while living this dissolute lifestyle of his. He knew the contradiction. There was “being good,” and being not so good. But now he has a new “support group” who tell him what he’s doing is really a kind of “mitzvah” that has its own blog community, its alternative media, its Christmas parties and club dates. And this is something I have no idea how to counter.

We know that the Torah reserves harsh punishment, and even withdraws some of the usual judicial protections, for a meisis — someone who is not satisfied to worship avodah zarah, but who induces others to do so as well. Writing a blog is not avodah zarah, but then, we don’t have avodah zarah any more. In fact R’ Moshe Feinstein, in a responsum, says that anyone who encourages people to move away from doing the will of Hashem is comparable to a meisis ; the Chofetz Chaim compared the anti-religious Jews of his time to such people as well. In the Chofetz Chaim’s time, such people offered an alternative ideology — socialism, the brotherhood of man, an escape from the ghetto — that resonated with thoughtful, idealistic Jews on whom the weight of galus had become unbearable. What today’s anti-frum ideology offers is nihilism and hedonism, but in a time and place dominated by cynicism and narcissism it is enough to demonstrate that these can be found in ample supply on both sides of the frum / non-frum line, so why not enjoy the ride in the handbasket? And what can be more enjoyable than mocking those who don’t get the joke?

But it’s time for that car-and-driver metaphor again. Because ultimately my rather mundane point, of course, is that it is a special bitterness — I cannot say wickedness; we all are tinokos shenishbu (compared to “captured children”) — that makes a talented former BT, man or woman, do this. They do not just walk away from what they think is a car wreck of a spiritual journey but flag everyone else tooling happily along the road and swear that the bridge is out, there are monsters waiting on the next exit and that it was actually much better where they were coming from and you can’t U-turn fast enough to get back there.

What motivates them? My armchair psychology tells me that they would rather believe the journey is an eight-lane disaster than consider whether they themselves forgot to check the oil under their own hoods before setting out. But, you know, “who am I to say”?

A talented rabbinic friend came to me once and told me that after half a century or so of trying, he resolved that there are some cases — and far more of them come across his desk than mine — that he has come to realize he cannot solve, some lives that he cannot make the investment in trying to fix. His words haunt me regarding my friend. He is not asking me to solve anything; far from it. He tolerates my company because, well, maybe I am a little bit of fun myself. But whereas I once thought I offered enough gravity, mixed in with the comedy, to contribute to keeping him in orbit, I can’t compete with the Bitter Ex-BT Blogs. Well, I could; but I can’t. I’m as good an Internet polemicist as anyone; I know enough about frum life, about the Torah, and about life in the BT yeshivas to make quite a good debate of it.

But there’s no natural place for that debate — it won’t be on their blogs, and it won’t be here; and frankly, my anger and hurt cloud my judgment when I make some attempt at it. I fought in the early Internet wars for orthodoxy (largely in the ancient and venerable “Moment Magazine message board debates”) and, frankly, I’m not sure anyone’s listening.

Okay, I know one person.

How Would You Answer an Acquaintance’s “Why Bad Things Happen?” Questions?

By Charnie

This is the text of an email I received before Chanukah, shortly before I’d be leaving the office Erev Shabbos. For some reason, I didn’t feel it could be put off till the following week, so I rushed out an answer. This morning I received a response. The emails follow, and I sure hope I’ve handled this properly. What we say to another Yid can have a lasting impression. I’ve never met this woman (at least in adulthood), as we “met” several years ago via a Jewish genealogy discussion group, discovered we grew up in the same neighborhood, have mutual friends, went to the same schools, etc. I knew she wasn’t frum, but I shared my understanding of the topics.

How would you have handled it?

From: —–@aol.com
To: Charnie@…….
Subject: Sadly…
Date: Fri., Dec. 15, 2006 12:45 PM

…I do not think that Israel will survive into the century; in fact, I’m wondering if it will last another decade. I have spent a great deal of time considering this and I suspect there’s no hope. Clearly, we’re the sacrificial lamb to oil.

On the other hand, I do think that the Jewish people will survive, at least a “spark” of us. Perhaps this is our curse, to wander continuously through time and place.

As for the Satmars and the other anti-Zionists… well, they are unspeakable. I’ve heard Rabbis who’ve said that the Shoah happened because a single Jew ate a single piece of pork. Do you really think that G-d would punish millions for that?

All of these questions make me doubt the existence of G-d. Surely a loving G-d would not have permitted these things to have happened over the millennia, and to continue to happen.

Here is my response:

From: Charie@———-
To: ——@aol.com
Sent: Fri, 15 Dec 2006 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: Sadly…
Dear —-,

You’ve appropriately used “sadly” as a subject line. None of the points you bring up could in any way induce one to smile.
However, I strongly disagree with you on all points. Israel will survive, as it always has, because we have the best “general” possible, the hand of G-d. Although throughout the millennium the land of Israel has been occupied by others, Jews have always resided there. And as we light the first Chanukah light tonight, we can recall that the Greeks who sought to take us away from our Judaism are no longer in existence. Neither are the Egyptians who enslaved us – the people of modern day Egypt are Arabs, not the advanced culture of biblical times. Nor are the Romans around, they who destroyed the Beis Hamikdash (second Temple) in Jerusalem. And the same is true of each and every people who have ever tried to destroy the Jewish people. In fact, that is why it is believed that the oldest nations on earth are the Jews and the Chinese, because the latter have never sought to do any harm to us. In our own times, Germany is not now what it was 60 years ago. And the same will be true of Iran, which is not the nation of Persia in which Esther and Mordechai defeated Haman from killing all the Jews because Mordechai refused to bow down to him (this being the story of Purim).

Insofar as where was G-d during the Holocaust… that is one of the most frequently asked questions, with just cause. However, the Holocaust did not prove to be the end of us, instead, we have rebounded to heights that no one could have imagined even 50 years ago. Today, more people then ever have Jewish educations. The land of Israel is thriving. This is a very involved subject, one that can be barely touched upon in an email. My husband is very good at explaining these philosophical issues, and if you’d care to join us any Saturday for lunch (the only time I’m up to having guests), please feel free to let me know a few days before, and we’d be delighted to have you as our guest! In the meantime, I’ve attached a few links you might find interesting which touch upon these subjects:
http://www.aish.com/holocaust/issues/Understanding_the_Holocaust.asp
http://www.aish.com/spirituality/philosophy/Why_Harold_Kushner_Is_Wrong.asp
http://www.aish.com/holocaust/people/Rebbetzin_Jungreis_on_the_Holocaust.asp

Before I became aware of what being Jewish really meant, I was obsessed with the Holocaust as being the “main event” in Jewish history – one in which my father’s family perished. However, we are not a people of death, we are a people of life. Only through understanding Judaism can we come to accept that it is beyond our comprehension to understand everything that happens. Imagine a first grader sitting in a college level mathematics class. Could they understand what’s going on? Of course not, we wouldn’t question that. As little children we frequently didn’t understand (or agree) with everything our parents said to do or not do. But as we matured, we could grasp the logic of their intent. We are like those same children in our relationship to G-d.

Wishing you a Happy Chanukah!
Charnie

Here is her response back:

From: —–@aol.com
To: Charnie@…….
Sent: : Sun, Dec. 17, 2006 12:28 AM
Subject: Re: more Sadly

Dear Charnie,
Let me start by saying that I thought that you were very sweet to take so much time, to make such an effort to respond to my letter. It is clear that you’ve given my letter quite a bit of thought and gone to great lengths to address my points and to try to assist my understanding.

I did not state, however, that I do not expect the Jewish people to survive into the future, because I do think that we’ll survive, at least some “spark” of us, and I said that explicitly in my letter.

I also think, however, that it is our curse to wander, never having a homeland. And, yes, “sadly,” I do not expect the State of Israel to survive; I’ll be surprised if it lasts another decade. Again, yes, I do realize that earlier civilizations that had attempted to vanquish us as a people have long since been obliterated so, perhaps, this was their punishment. Yet we Jews seem doomed to wander, looking for a place to put down roots.

At the same time, I think that you’re being a bit patronizing, however well-intended you are, by assuming that I am ignorant of all things Jewish. Certainly, I know what Purim is; I attended the Jewish Center’s Hebrew school from Sunday school in kindergarten straight through the high school. Anyway, I think that it is safe to assume that most Jews, especially New York Jews, know the highlights of the Jewish year.

I do disagree with your statement that the land of Israel is thriving.

And I have read, at times, the explications of the learned rabbinim, as to the Shoah and other horrific slaughters. Sorry, I just don’t buy them. To me, these scholarly tracts smack of sophistry and rationalization.

Unlike you, I never saw the Shoah as the be-all and end-all of apocalyptic events regarding the Jews. I view the Shoah as a part of a continuum that goes back to Moses and Esther, continues through the Romans at the time of the early Christians, and on to the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, right through to today’s Muslim hatred. The world, in general, always has hated the Jews; the Jews, in response, have spent millennia seeking safe havens. Mankind, in general, always has had evil among us but this is the first time in history that one evil person can have the power to destroy millions of human beings with a single press of a button that unleashes a nuclear bomb. This is the first moment when evil and technology meet and I am afraid that this union is apocalyptic indeed.

Still, I will say again that I think that you are very sweet to care this much, and to make such an effort on my behalf.

Happy Hanukkah to you and your family.

best,

Family Affair

A few months ago, David the creator of the fantastic site, Simple to Remember sent us this post of his mother’s speech that she delivered at a function for the kiruv organization JAM. This is the sequel to his and his mother’s story, written by Rabbi Avi Shafran.

The speaker was a bit reluctant, unaccustomed to standing before an audience. Yet there she stood in Los Angeles, her hometown, at a dinner hosted by a Southern California Jewish campus outreach organization, the Jewish Awareness Movement. She was addressing supporters of the group and parents, like herself and her husband, whose children, as a result of JAM and their consciences, had come to Jewish religious observance.

Marsha Greenberg recounted how her grandparents had come to American shores from Romania, met in Chicago and sired nine children, the oldest of which was the speaker’s mother. And she told of her own childhood, how her father had died when she was only four and how, ten years later, her older brother and only sibling perished in a freak, fierce blizzard while on a Boy Scout trip in the San Bernardino Mountains.

“My mom never recovered from the loss,” she told the crowd. “I grew up overnight.”

When she was sixteen, she went on, she met a “nice Jewish boy” two years her senior, “from a good home.” They married and eventually had three children.

When their oldest, their daughter Shari, turned sixteen herself, “she had had enough of temple.” She and her siblings had attended Sunday school and she had been “bat-mitzvahed.” But she hadn’t been inspired to continue her Jewish education, and her parents didn’t pressure her.

Their second child, David, though, happened upon JAM, participating in some events, Shabbat dinners and eventually even a trip to New York. He became intrigued by Jewish thought, texts and traditions, and his enthusiasm proved contagious, spreading in time to his older sister.

“What was happening to my family?” the speaker confided she had wondered at the time.

Shari embarked on a three-week trip to Israel, and then called to ask if she could stay a little longer. Her parents said okay. A few weeks later they received another call from Shari, asking if she could stay for a few months more. Again she received an okay. Eight months later, Shari returned home, according to her mom, “a different person, more mature and focused.”

“She brought Shabbat into our home… In her own way, she set an example for David and Michael,” her youngest sibling.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Greenberg continued, “David was doing a lot of learning on his own. Having his older sister home, watching her in action, living what she had learned, made an impression. Now David wanted to go to a yeshiva!”

Both Shari and David left home – she for Israel, he for New York – on the very same day, an understandably emotional one for the Greenbergs. Soon enough, Shari called to say she was dating a yeshiva student. Not much later, the Greenbergs and their sons found themselves in Jerusalem at Shari’s wedding, which “made quite an impression of all of us, especially… Michael. Now he had a sister, brother and brother-in-law all frum [traditionally observant]!”

David returned to Israel to attend a yeshiva there, and Michael soon followed.

“There are very few mothers in Los Angeles,” Mrs. Greenberg told the rapt audience, “who can say that they have three children learning Torah in Israel. I take great pride in being one of those mothers.”

The speaker concluded by warmly thanking Rabbi Moshe and Bracha Zaret, the directors of JAM, and by imagining her mother, father and brother watching out for her family. “I know my children are going to live beautiful lives,” she said. “They are going to raise magnificent, intellectual, sensitive, thoughtful families. I could not be happier. This journey is only the beginning, and every step counts.”

My wife and I have gotten to know Mrs. Greenberg and her equally endearing husband quite well. We have met their children, who insist that their journeys to Jewish observance were directly due to their upbringing; their parents, they explain, always advised and encouraged them to think for themselves, to be idealists and do what they felt was right. And that is what they did.

All of the Greenbergs were at our daughter’s wedding mere weeks ago, dancing as happily and as filled with as much joy as were we. Which is entirely understandable, considering that David, we are happy and proud to say, is our newest son-in-law.

© 2006 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]