Because I Chose To Be
On a recent trip to the United States, I was invited for a leil Shabbos meal by the son of a good friend of mine. (You know that you are getting old when it does not seem strange to be invited for a meal by friend's children.)
The evening's conversation was wide-ranging, though much centered on why this particular young man felt as soon as he landed at Kennedy Airport at 18 that he would never return to live in his native Israel.
As I was putting on my overcoat to leave, he related that he had once asked his father how it was that he seemed so comfortable with all his children despite their great differences from one another – some are in full-time learning, others in business or klal work; some live in Israel; others in America. His father answered him succinctly: "Because I chose to be."
That struck me as another example of the great wisdom I have heard from my friend over the past quarter century. As parents, the temptation to live vicariously through our children is constant. If we have had successes in life, we want them to be successful in the same way. And if we have suffered disappointments, we hope for their accomplishments to erase those disappointments.
How many young men do we see harmed by their father's insistence on pushing them into prestigious yeshivos for which they are ill-suited because of the reflected glory of having a son in such a yeshiva? How many unhappy marriages are caused by parents who fail to focus on what their son and daughter need or want in a spouse, and instead concern themselves with the yichus or bank account of the mechutanim?
In an important short work on dealing with struggling teenagers, soon to appear in English, Rabbi Uri Zohar devotes a great deal of attention to the importance of creating a line of open communications with our children long before they enter their teenage years. That means, inter alia, showing an interest in what is important to them, and making sure that they feel comfortable sharing their feelings.
But there is one kind of frequent communication that should be avoided: that which centers exclusively on the child's test scores, or how highly they are evaluated by others. Constant questions about test scores or popularity or how many points they scored in a basketball game convey the message to our children that they are important to us not for themselves but only for the glory they confer on us. Rather than building a relationship such communication destroys it.
My friend happens to be a major talmid chacham. I have no idea whether any of his sons will approach his level in learning. But by accepting each of his children for what he or she is, he has made it possible for each to develop his or her own potential to the fullest.
"BECAUSE I CHOSE TO BE," however, is not just good advice on how to relate to our children. It has implications for every aspect of our lives. We live in an age where the very idea of free will is under assault. There are those who argue that all our apparent choices can be understood in terms of certain neural impulses, and that as our understanding of the brain advances, we will be able to predict how a person will react in every circumstance.
The Torah view, of course, rejects that view. Our lives are defined at every moment by the choices we make: "I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; choose life" (Devarim 30:19).
But even we Torah Jews often succumb to determinism. For as depressing as it would be to conceive oneself as lacking free will, it is often consoling to absolve ourselves of responsibility for our actions and to imagine that we could not have acted otherwise.
Literary critic Gary Saul Morrison observes acutely (in the April Commentary) of one of Tolstoy's most famous literary creations, Anna Karenina, that she told herself that she had no choice but to succumb to her passions. And that, indeed, is how most modern readers view her. But that was not Tolstoy's view. Morrison shows how the novelist subtly conveyed "her loss of will [as something] willed." Even as she feels drawn into a vortex, Tolstoy writes, "She would surrender or resist at will."
We tend to view our happiness or lack of it as something forced upon us by external circumstances over which we have no control. Yet if we think about the people we know, we will realize how little external circumstances have to do with happiness and how much it has to do with how we relate to those circumstances.
We all know those who have endured one or more tragedies that we imagine would leave us unable to function, and yet maintain a sunny, upbeat disposition and the ability to rejoice in their blessings. And we know others seemingly blessed with all that most people seek, and yet who suffer from anhedonia and seem unable to take pleasure in those blessings.
Some of these differences in disposition are innate. But to a large extent they are chosen. Happiness is quality of the soul, not something imposed upon us.
Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert writes in Stumbling Upon Happiness how most people when they hear Siamese twins or people who are disabled in some crucial way say that they are happy deny the possibility that they are telling the truth because they cannot imagine themselves being happy in those circumstances.
That is why handicapped and disabled people are always at the forefront of any campaign against legislation that would confer on doctors the power to terminate lives that are no longer "worth it." Human beings are notoriously poor predictors of what will make them happy, much less what can make others happy. And much of the reason is the failure to appreciate the element of choice involved.
"Because I choose to be happy" is not just sound advice on how to relate to our children, but on everything else is life as well.
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Shemurah for Shmirah
On the eighth day of the Gazan fighting last summer, a ceasefire was scheduled to go into effect, when Hamas launched a barrage of 120 missiles from Gaza. Those missiles it subsequently turned out were designed to divert attention from the first planned attack of terrorists via an underground tunnel dug from Gaza into Israel.
The tunnel in question opened into a wheat field that would provide cover for the terrorists as they made their way to the nearest settlement to kill as many Jews as possible and to try to capture hostages to be brought back to Gaza.
When the thirteen terrorists emerged from the tunnel, however, they did so into a plowed field which offered no coverage at all. Imagining their discomfiture at finding themselves completely exposed, without a blade of surrounding vegetation to shield them, would be almost funny were it not for their deadly intent.
The terrorists were instantly spotted by an Israeli surveillance balloon hovering overhead, and within ninety seconds an IDF instant response team was on the scene. By that time, the terrorists had already been hit by an Israeli missile; half of them were dead, and the rest were in full flight back to Gaza via the tunnel.
All the months of careful planning came to nothing. What had happened?
IDF captain (ret.) Daniel Gordon explains what happened in an interview at the United With Israel website. A group of chareidi Jews from Bnei Brak had been combing Israel in search of a large supply of wheat to harvest that would adequate to supply them with matzos for the shmittah year and the year following. Because they were insistent on the strictest interpretation of shemurah, they required wheat that had not yet been harvested. It had to be sufficiently grown to provide a large supply of wheat kernels, but still green so that it could be stored for up to two years.
Two days earlier, they had come upon acres of just the five-foot high wheat they were looking for growing approximately two miles from the Gaza border. The farmers of the wheat fields were reluctant to sell. But the would-be purchasers pointed out the advantages of selling the field to them: (1) They would save two months of work in the field; (2) They could sell all their wheat in one large transaction, not piecemeal; and (3) The purchasers were willing to pay well.
Only one thing, the sale would have to be consummated immediately, as they were eager to harvest the wheat that very day. And that is how the Hamas terrorists found themselves emerging into a completely open field.
The zrizus of the matzah bakers from Bnei Brak, both with respect to shemittah and the din of shemurah matzos resulted in saving the Jewish residents on the Gaza border from a potentially high casualty terrorist attack.
Not by accident did Chazal learn the general requirement of zrizus with respect to every mitzvah from the requirement of guarding the matzos, based on the identical orthography in lashon hakodesh of matzos and mitzvos: "U'shmartem es ha'matzos (Shemos 17:12) – from here we learn that if a mitzvah comes to your hand do not let it become chametz [i.e., do it quickly]."
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The War on Religion Heats Up – Part III
We have been tracking in these pages the growing threat to freedom of religion in America. Last week produced two more ominous warning signs.
The first came from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the Women in the World Summit. Speaking about abortion, Mrs. Clinton said "religious beliefs . . . have to be changed." Her hectoring tone strongly suggested that she had something more coercive than gentle suasion about what G-d really wants for those hopelessly stuck with the Biblical text.
And one example of what that coercion might be came up in the arguments before the Supreme Court in Obergfell v. Hodges, in which the Court has been invited to impose same gender marriage as a constitutional mandate on every state.
Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. asked Solicitor-General Donald Verrili: If the Court ruled for the petitioners, "would Christian organizations lose their tax exempt status if they failed to recognize [same gender] marriage?" Verrili could have dodged, but he didn't.
"[I]t's certainly going to be an issue. I don't deny that," he told Alito.