Admitting “I Don’t Know” is a Sign of Strength, Not Weakness

Mark Twain once said: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Nobel prize winner Dr. Daniel Kahneman put it a little differently: “We’re blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We’re not designed to know how little we know.” Indeed, when asked what he would eliminate in the world if he had a magic wand, Kahneman answered with one word – overconfidence.

Overconfidence has been blamed for the sinking of the Titanic, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the loss of Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, the great recession that followed it, and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, among other things. Overconfidence has brought personal financial disaster, imploded relationships and ruined lives.

One person who understood this was Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest of all men. In Koheles, which we read on Sukkos, he describes his efforts to explore and understand. אמרתי אחכמה והיא רחוקה ממני“I said I will be wise, but it remained elusive to me.” Shlomo confesses that he tried, analyzed, contemplated, but at the end of the day, he came up short; complete understanding was beyond his grasp.

What is Shlomo referring to and why do we specifically read his words on Sukkos, the holiday marking our greatest joy? What did he try to apply wisdom to but was unsuccessful? Most say he is talking about the quintessential chok, the parah adumah, whose law is paradoxical. The impure person is purified from its ashes, but the pure person becomes impure. Shlomo tried to understand its mechanics, how and why it worked, but in the end, he concedes, rechoka mimeni, it is too distant.

Rav Yosef Shaul Natanson, the Shoel U’Meishiv, has a different interpretation. He says the word v’hi in “v’hi rechoka mimeni” refers to the entire Torah. He understands Shlomo HaMelech as telling us: After I saw that I could not comprehend the reason for parah adumah, I realize that the reason for everything in the Torah was entirely beyond me.

Someone once challenged the Chazon Ish about the challenge of theodicy, how bad and painful things can exist in the world. He was driven to make sense and understand the suffering. The Chazon Ish showed him a Tosfos and asked him to explain it. The man tried but failed to interpret or understand the Tosfos. The Chazon Ish told him, “If you don’t understand a few line of Tosfos, how do you expect to understand the ways of Hashem, which are concealed from all mankind.”

We say in Tehilim, מה גדלו מעשיך ה׳ כולם בחכמה עשית…איש בער לא ידע וכסיל לא לבין את זאת, How great are your ways, Hashem.. A fool doesn’t understand them…” R’ Meilech Biderman wonders why Dovid singles out the fool as not understanding them, when even the wise can’t comprehend the ways of Hashem? He explains, what makes someone wise is that they know what they don’t know. The fool suffers from overconfidence, thinks they understand and know everything. The fool thinks he or she has all the answers.

We live in a world that makes us feel that if we say “I don’t know” or “I don’t have a strong opinion about that” we are uninformed, weak or unsophisticated. But we come from a tradition that says exactly the opposite. Humility, nuance and admitting that we don’t know are not signs of weakness, but strength. They don’t display ignorance; they show that we are informed enough to know that we can’t possibly know absolutely.

The Gemara (Berachos 4a) states, דאמר מר למד לשונך לומר איני יודע שמא תתבדה ותאחז “Teach your tongue to say ‘I do not know, lest you become entangled in a web of deceit.” Our greatest scholars didn’t hesitate to say “I don’t know,” causing us to think more, rather than less of them, and to place greater confidence in the things they did purport to know. Rashi, without whom the Talmud would be a closed book, is famous for the several places in which he writes, “eini yodei’ah, I don’t know” regarding the meaning, interpretation, or relevance of a particular verse or statement.

I had the privilege to sit in Mori V’Rabbi, Rav Hershel Schachter’s shiur for several years. I truly appreciated his greatness not when he quoted from the width and depth of all Torah by heart, but rather, when someone asked him a question and he humbly and simply said, I don’t know.

Perhaps this passuk is why we read Koheles on Sukkos, zman simchaseinu. Feeling entitled or capable of understanding everything only sets ourselves up for disappointment, brings about a failure of overconfidence, and leaves us feeling down, incomplete and unfulfilled.

This pandemic and Covid-19 specifically should humble us all. The greatest experts and most brilliant minds have struggled to understand, predict and even guide us. This shouldn’t make us lose confidence in others who are doing their best as much as it should make all of us more humble, modest and willing to admit the limits of our knowledge and understanding, not only regarding this, but regarding everything.

Of course, we should pursue understanding, try to gain wisdom, and obtain insight. But we must admit and concede that we can’t have the answers to everything and there are things we just can’t understand. Listen to the advice of the wisest of all men: If you want to be happier in your marriage, at work, in your relationship with your children and with Hashem, learn to say ״I don’t know״.

4 Recommendations For Raising Kinder Children

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” When we say one thing and communicate a different message through our actions, priorities, and values, we drown out our own voices. There is no instrument more finely calibrated to detect hypocrisy and duplicity than a child.

Our Parsha tells the story of the rebellious son. Our Rabbis teach us that the criteria to qualify for this label have never been and will never be met and that such a child exists only theoretically. Yet a series of pesukim are dedicated to this subject because there is so much to learn and glean about parenting and education nonetheless.

Rashi tells us the term soreir comes from sar, he has drifted from the path, he is not meeting our expectations and hopes. The Torah tells us he does not and cannot hear kol aviv u’kol imo, the voice of his father and the voice of his mother. The Torah never wastes a word and yet it could have said b’kol aviv v’imo, he doesn’t listen to the voice of his father and mother. It must be that the second use of kol, voice, is not redundant or extraneous at all. Rather, there is in fact a separate kol aviv, a message and values of the father, and a kol imo, a message and values of the mother.

When children receive mixed messages, inconsistent and contradictory values, everything becomes incoherent. They then stop paying attention and begin to be soreir, drift, until it ultimately leads to moreh, rebellion. It is not only parents that influence and raise a child but it is the grandparents, the school, the shul, and all the adults in the community to whom they turn for modeling and for inspiration. We must be on the same page and project a consistent message of what our values are, what we are all about, and what we expect from them.

The Ohr HaChaim Ha’Kadosh, Rav Chaim ben Attar, notes that the passuk does not say eino sho’meiah but einenu sho’mei. There is a big difference between the two. Eino means he doesn’t, einenu means he can’t, there is a blockage preventing the message from penetrating. Our children and grandchildren literally cannot hear what we say when our contradictory actions are much louder.

If your child or grandchild ask you – do you care more about my being happy and successful or my being kind – what would you answer? I would hope they would hear us answer being kind. And yet, though our voices may be saying that, we are clearly articulating another message. According to a recent study done by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, when asked if their parents care more about achievement and happiness or if they were kind to others, 80 percent of children said their parents care more about achievement or happiness. In the same study, children were far more likely to rank “hard work” above fairness.

The study concludes: “But when youth do not prioritize caring and fairness over these aspects of personal success — and when they view their peers as even less likely to prioritize these ethical values — they are at greater risk of many forms of harmful behavior, including being cruel, disrespectful, and dishonest. These forms of harm are far too commonplace. Half of high school students admit to cheating on a test and nearly 75% admit to copying someone else’s homework. Nearly 30% of middle and high school students reported being bullied during the 2010-2011 school year.

“At the root of this problem may be a rhetoric/reality gap, a gap between what parents and other adults say are their top priorities and the real messages they convey in their behavior day to day… And here’s the irony: the focus on happiness, and the focus on achievement in affluent communities, doesn’t appear to increase either children’s achievement or their happiness.”

Dr. Richard Weissbourd, one of the authors of the studies, states, “We should work to cultivate children’s concern for others because it’s fundamentally the right thing to do, and also because when children can empathize with and take responsibility for others, they’re likely to be happier and more successful, they’ll have better relationships their entire lives, and strong relationships are a key ingredient of happiness.”

Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch notes that the Torah describes the ben sorer u’moreh not only as a rebellious child, but as one who is zoleil v’sovei, gluttonous and indulgent in meat and wine. Rav Hirsch explains that the inappropriate emphasis in the home on food and drink, success and indulgence, leads to rebelliousness. Parents, he says, must be much more concerned with their child’s values, behavior, sensitivity, and kindness than with the quantity and quality of the food their child is eating. We focus on our children being well-fed, well-dressed, and happy, all of which are important. But we must focus even more on who they are and how they behave than on their happiness. They need to know that we care more about their concern for the happiness of others than for their own happiness.

Weissbourd provides four recommendations to raise and cultivate kinder children:

1. Children and youth need ongoing opportunities to practice caring and helpfulness, sometimes with guidance from adults. Learning to be caring is like learning to play an instrument – it needs daily repetition. Encourage your children to help a friend with homework, pitch in around the house without a connection to a reward (like allowance), and to volunteer in some capacity. When you speak to your child or grandchild at the end of the day, don’t just ask how they are doing on their grades and tests but ask them if they did anything kind that day for someone else.

2. Children and youth need to learn to zoom in and zoom out. They need to listen closely and attend to those in their immediate circle like family and friends but they also have to learn to zoom out and look for those who are too often invisible like a new kid in the class, or the school custodian who is largely ignored and feeling isolated.

3. Children and youth need strong role models. Veshinantem levanecha v’dibarta bam, b’shivtecha b’veisecha u’velechtecha baderech… The Torah obligates us to teach our children and we usually assume it is fulfilled with v’dibarta bam, by articulating and verbally communicating our values. However, the truth is they learn much more from b’shivtecha b’veisecha, how we carry ourselves at home, the type of conversations we have, and activities we engage in. They learn from b’lechtecha ba’derech, what we do on the road. We should seek opportunities to share moments in our day when we were kind to another or when we were the recipients of the kindness of another and how it made us feel. If our deeds match our words our ideals will come across loud and clear.

4. Children need to be guided in managing destructive feelings. Anger, shame, envy and other negative feelings arise and we need to teach children that those feelings are ok but must be dealt with constructively if they are to be resolved and not overwhelm their ability to care for others.

As our parsha emphasizes, Hashem cares as much – if not more – about our behaving with righteousness, justice, and kindness as He does about our observing His laws. The best gift we can give our children is not making them believe the world is about them, but helping them learn the world is about helping others.

The parsha concludes with the laws of having honest weights and measures and describes one who doesn’t as a to’eivah, an abomination. However, the verse uses two phrases – kol oseh eileh, kol oseh aveil, one who does “these,” and one who does “iniquity.” Rav Menachem Bentzion Zaks, in his Menachem Tziyon, offers a novel interpretation. The abomination, he explains, is when someone is oseh eileh, learns Torah and does mitzvos and yet, oseh aveil, is dishonest, lacks integrity, and is unkind. God has no tolerance for such a duplicitous person. To Hashem, it is repulsive and despicable to appear as a religious, observant individual and yet be rotten to the core when it comes to honesty and righteousness.

Wearing a kippa and going to Jewish school provide tremendous information, knowledge, and lessons. Nevertheless, our children are ultimately molded most by what they think that we, their parents and grandparents, value most. When our children are asked if their parents care more about achievement and happiness or being kind, let us do all we can to ensure that they know the right answer.

In and Out, Quick and Easy Judaism: Can We Do Better, Even in a Pandemic?

Shortly after BRS shut down in March, someone said to me, almost half-jokingly, “Imagine if things are still like this for Rosh Hashanah.” I vividly remember dismissing the sentiment saying there is no way, this shutdown will only last a few weeks at most, and it will most certainly be figured out by Rosh Hashanah.

Well, here we are welcoming in the month of Elul and, with it, the launch of the Yamim Noraim season. While we know more now than we did then and things are a bit more under control, this pandemic continues to grip the globe and to significantly hamper our lives, lifestyles and, in all likelihood, our High Holidays.

Planning, providing and coordinating meaningful shiurim, classes, programs, and most of all minyanim this year is extraordinarily complicated and challenging. The questions and dilemmas of what to do are not limited to decision-makers at institutions like Shuls and schools. These questions are also very real and present for the stakeholders of those institutions who have to decide comfort level, safety threshold, personal risk factors and more before determining if, what, where and how to participate.

I fear that when considering how hard it is to access inspiration in this unprecedented climate, many people will simply write off this Elul and Yamim Noraim, take the spiritual loss, and move on hoping to make it up when this all passes. Such an attitude is understandable, even enticing. After all, who doesn’t have corona fatigue, who isn’t done with Zooming? Many are lonely, most are emotionally spent, all are very tired of this.

While there has been lots of learning over Zoom and amazing chesed efforts that have been creatively coordinated, there is also a sense of spiritual apathy, a sentiment of trying to survive religiously, rather than to thrive. This complacency manifests itself in several ways, including in participation in minyanim—both outdoors and in Shul.

Even now, some people are continuing to stay home or daven in a local development minyan because of genuine health concerns, and these people are doing the absolutely correct thing. Let me be clear: Someone who davens alone or outdoors near their home out of safety considerations should not feel at all guilty, ashamed or hesitant and they should continue until they feel it is safe to do otherwise.

That said, let’s be honest. Many people are also not coming to shul or staying home entirely out of sheer convenience. That becomes evident when the level of personal comfort and concern when it comes to sharing meals, playdates, shopping and socializing is radically more permissive and lenient than it is when it comes to joining davening.

I understand the attraction of davening on the block. After all, it is more conducive to dressing in whatever is most comfortable, it is condensed, there is no Torah reading or Haftorah, no speech or announcements. One person recently commented that he is very comfortable coming back to shul from a health perspective, but he doesn’t want to because the davening on his block is in and out, quick and easy.

In and out, quick and easy. Is that what our Judaism has been reduced to? Does living through a pandemic mean we can’t have spiritual ambitions or aspirations, that we can’t push ourselves beyond our comfort zone or stretch to do what is right, not what is easy, what is virtuous, not what is most convenient, what will give the greatest nachas ruach to Hashem, not necessarily what is most expedient or convenient for me?

Some will counter that davening at shul isn’t normal either. We are making compromises in the minyanim at shul: we start at a different place in the davening, singing is reduced, the derasha is shortened, there is no socializing, no Kiddush, no place for young children. For some people, some or all of this contributes towards the desire not to come back. Honestly, I hear that, I really do. I miss those same things terribly and ache from their absence.

But let me ask you this – if your loved one were convalescing and you were told you can start visiting them again but you have to wear a mask, you cannot hold their hand or come too close, you cannot stay long and you can only talk to them from the doorway, would you say, “Well that isn’t the normal way or the ideal way to visit so I am just going to continue waving from outside the window”? Of course not. You would take what you could get, grateful for the opportunity to come just a bit closer, to feel more in their presence, to communicate how badly you want to draw close once again.

Yes, this year is dramatically different from all others. In most years, we can rely on others to generate our inspiration. We attend the talk of the speaker who motivates us, listen to the chazzan who inspires us, join the tzibbur who lifts us. This year, for those who must daven alone and even for those who can attend shul, we won’t have the same support system, the same external drivers of inspiration. But I plead with you: do not write off this season. Do not take a loss on the Yamim Noraim this year.

Inspiration, motivation, growth, and change are all readily available to us this year as much as any other when we realize that ultimately, these things must come from within ourselves. They don’t depend on others and we can experience them if only we are determined to.

Indeed, even in normal times, many who have yet to make needed changes in their emotional, physical or spiritual health say, if only I had someone to inspire me, if only I read the right book, attended the perfect seminar. If only my spouse were on the same page, if only my children were more obedient and compliant, if only my rabbi was more available, if only my boss was more supportive, if only my parents were more encouraging, if only…

But those are excuses, they are deflections and distractions. Of course, supportive surroundings help us but if we are not motivated, inspired, or driven to make changes they will never happen no matter who we are married to, how our children behave, what DNA our parents gave us or what virus is plaguing the globe.

Elul and the holidays present us with a list of questions to consider – who are we, who do we want to be, what difference are we meant to make, how are we thought of by others and by Hashem, how do we ultimately want to be remembered? The word teshuva literally means an answer or answers as in she’eilos u’teshuvos – questions and answers.

The truth is that every single year, the answers we are looking for are not found in others, they aren’t available or provided by anyone or anything other than us. The Yamim Noraim are a large mirror held up to us, covered with these questions and others. Sometimes the teshuva is easy, a minor adjustment, a tweak. Other times the teshuva, providing meaningful answers, may involve a large overhaul. If we are sincere and genuine in the process of responding to the questions, then we have done teshuva, we have provided teshuvos, meaningful answers.

The most valuable, satisfying, gratifying and meaningful things in life are never in and out, quick and easy. They take effort and struggle, they often demand sacrifice, but they are worth it.

Whether you can come back to shul, can only daven in an outdoor minyan, or need to daven alone, don’t sell yourself short, don’t underachieve or write off this time spiritually. Persevere, fight through, and push yourself. Set goals and make resolutions to achieve them. Inspire yourself and your family to not only survive but to thrive, to make choices now that will allow you later to look back and see how much you grew, how you were transformed by the lasting meaningful changes you made during the pandemic Yamim Noraim.

For the forty days from the beginning of Elul through Yom Kippur take on a challenge. Perhaps it can be to start wearing tzitzis or putting on tefillin each day, maybe a promise to turn your cell phone entirely off each time you daven, perhaps to listen to a shiur or learn on your own a little more each day. Consider pushing yourself to exercise or to eat in a more healthy way. Resolve to interact better with a specific family member or friend. You choose the challenge, but understand that no matter your environment, only you can provide the teshuva, the answer.

If you accept this challenge, these forty days likely won’t be quick and easy, but I guarantee you that the results will be well worth it.

The Most Important Thing to Never Bring Into Your Home

In 2001, Indra Nooyi was named president of PepsiCo. Five years later, she would be promoted to CEO and, in 2007, she would become chairman of the company as well. She once spoke about the day she was appointed president and put in charge of running the $166 billion company. That night her parents happened to be visiting. Here is how she described that night:

I’ll never forget coming home after being named President of PepsiCo back in 2001. My mother was visiting at the time. “I’ve got great news for you,” I shouted. She replied, “It can wait. We need you to go out and get some milk.” So I go out and get milk. And when I come back, I’m hopping mad. I say, “I had great news for you. I’ve just been named President of PepsiCo. And all you want me to do is go out and get milk.”

Then she says, “Let me explain something to you. You may be President of PepsiCo. But when you step into this house, you’re a wife and mother first. Nobody can take that place. So leave that crown in the garage.”

In our Parsha, the Torah commands us not to bring toeiva into our homes. The word toeiva, abomination, is generic and can refer to many things. The Torah describes inappropriate illicit relations as toeiva. Non-kosher food, inexact weights and measures, and dishonest business practices are also identified as toeiva. So what does it mean here? What exactly are we warned from taking into our house and into our lives?

The Rambam and Ramban understand that idols themselves are a toeiva, an abomination, and the Torah is prohibiting the deriving of any benefit from an idol or its accessories. The Sefer HaChinuch extends this prohibition to another form of idolatry, the worship of money, and says our passuk is a prohibition from earning any profit from funds that were obtained in an unethical manner.

According the Gemara in Sotah (4b), the toeiva, the abomination that we cannot and must not bring into our homes, is ga’ava—arrogance, hubris or conceit. You may have made a great business deal, given a great shiur, had a killer workout, or made world peace, but no matter what you accomplished or achieved, lo savi toeiva el beisecha, don’t bring a sense of pride or arrogance into your home. As Indra Nooyi’s mother said – leave that abomination in your garage.

When you find success, Moshe cautions his people, you will be tempted by arrogance and conceit. Your ego will entice you to feel that you and you alone are responsible for achieving and accomplishing greatness. Moshe enjoins them strongly to remember it is Hashem who gives ko’ach.

Our Parsha seeks to communicate a simple message. Success is not the result of our talents, skills, or wisdom. It reflects the will of Hashem Who grants us that success. Indeed, Unkelus interprets this pasuk in a very interesting way: “It is He who gave you the advice to purchase property.” Unkelus understands that not only does Hashem allow our success, He even plants the ideas and decisions in our heads that bring about those positive results. From Unkelus it sounds like we are essentially passive spectators and bystanders to our destiny that is in reality shaped and molded by the Almighty alone.

Yet this position feels at odds with one of our fundamental beliefs. In a few weeks we will read “u’vacharta ba’chayim, choose life.” Clearly, we are given the power to make choices in our lives and those choices matter and matter greatly. The concept of bechira chofshis, free will, is axiomatic to our faith and indeed, gives purpose and meaning to our lives. So which is it, are we responsible for our success? Is it the result of our choices, our talents, skills, wisdom and judgment? Or, did Hashem plant those ideas in our head and all of our success belongs exclusively to Him?

Rabbeinu Nissim (Derashos Ha’Ran #10) is bothered by this very question and shares a very fundamental insight:

The meaning of this is as follows: The truth is that people have different talents in different areas. For example, certain people are predisposed to receive wisdom, whereas others are predisposed to devise strategies to gather and amass wealth. On account of this, the wealthy man can truthfully say, from a certain angle, “My ability and the might of my hand made me this wealth.” Nevertheless, insofar as that ability was implanted within you, be sure to remember Who gives you the ability to make wealth.

Moshe did not say, “V’zacharta ki Hashem Elokecha nosein lecha chayil, remember that Hashem is the One Who gives you wealth,” for if he had said that, he would be minimizing the ability implanted within the person, which is an intermediate cause in the accumulation of that wealth – but this is not the case. Therefore he said “Hu Hanosein lecha koach la’asos chayil – Although your own ability is what made you this wealth, you must remember Who gives you that ability.”

In truth, says the Ran, it is our talents and skills that achieve positive results. We can be proud of our efforts, hard work, prudent judgment, and wise decisions. The Torah doesn’t demand that we deny what we are good at or that our being good matters. What it does demand of us is to always remember who gave us those skills, talents and abilities. There is nothing wrong with being proud of our intelligence, decision-making, or prodigiousness in a given field. But we must recognize that those gifts are on loan from the Almighty and never owned by us. Arrogance is thinking we control our gifts, they are part of a permanent collection. It is thinking we are autonomous and we are the sole arbiters of our destiny. Transferring the deserved credit and recognition from God to us is essentially worshipping ourselves and denying God’s involvement in our lives.

Self-confidence should not be confused with arrogance. A confident person can yet be humble as long as they know that their success or gifts are from Hashem and can be fleeting. Humility is not denying what you are good at. It is identifying it and then using it to be an instrument of Hashem. The moment we feel independent and immune that arrogance takes over and our downfall begins. We are accordingly warned: Do not bring that despicable, vile, abominable character trait into your home. Check your ego at the door. As you enter that threshold into the home you earned, with the possessions you purchased and with the family you created, you may be tempted to feel slightly arrogant, superior or proud. But you must check it at the door.

One of the many lessons to incorporate from the last few months is how much humility we must have despite whatever abilities and strengths we are blessed with. We may be smart, yet we must feel humbled by how much we have come to realize we do not know. We cannot bring arrogance to the kitchen table, we cannot be condescending to spouses or children or friends. Don’t bring arrogance to the phone and have conversations that disregard or diminish others. Don’t bring arrogance to your Shabbos table and sit in judgment of your neighbors, your family members and your community leaders. And don’t bring that arrogance to the keyboard of your computer and express definitive, authoritative opinions about issues you likely don’t know everything about.

You may not be able to throw a slider 95 mph, but we can all be like the Hall of Famer greatest closer of all time, Mariano Rivera of the Yankees, who said in an interview upon retiring: “Everything I have and everything I became is because of the strength of the Lord, and through Him I have accomplished everything. Not because of my strength. Only by His love, His mercy, and His strength.”

As you walk into your home, the boardroom, operating room, courtroom or any other room, always remember, all that we have, the things, the skills, the talents and the blessings are on loan, never part of our permanent collection. May He continue to lend them to us and give us the strength to use them well.

The Bad Habit We All Need to Eliminate

There is a good chance at various points in the hours before you read this, you have engaged in lots of judgment. You may have judged how someone looks or dresses, judged how he speaks, what he says or even how he eats. Maybe you judged someone for running late, for the position she has taken on something or for something she has failed to do.

While judgement is a daily phenomenon, this pandemic has understandably brought out even more judgment from us in ways and about things we never imagined. It is hard not to judge those in leadership on all levels and on all sides for their responses. It is difficult not to judge friends and family for their level of commitment to observe guidelines. In a way it reminds me of a comedian’s observation: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

Being judgmental is not only unfair to others, it is also terribly unfair to ourselves. Research shows that being judgmental feeds anxiety and depression, and negatively impacts overall wellbeing. When we are judged, we reflexively feel it has been unfairly with a failure to see the whole picture or understand our side of the story. If we want others to give us the benefit of the doubt, we must be willing to reciprocate.

In our Parsha, as Moshe recounts the short Jewish history up to that point, he reminds the people of the appointment of judges. “I instructed your judges at that time saying, listen among your brethren and judge righteously between a man and his brother or his litigant.” Moshe encourages those who serve as judges not to rush to conclusions or to make assumptions, but rather to listen attentively, discerningly, and thereby arrive at the truth.

The Talmud in Sanhedrin (7b) takes this verse and goes a step further – azhara l’beis din she’lo yishma divrei ba’al din kodem she’yavo ba’al din chaveiro, there is a prohibition for a judge to listen to one of the parties in a dispute when the other party is not present. (The American legal system has similar prohibitions against these “ex parte communications.”) I remember once sitting in on a din Torah where a litigant was extremely late. The other party was getting more and more aggravated and appealed to the head of the beis din to at least begin the hearings and allow him to present his side. The Dayan, in keeping with this halacha, refused to budge and insisted on waiting until both parties were present before the hearing would commence.

This rule seems to be terribly inefficient and can lead to a great waste of time. What is the great risk of meeting with the parties one by one or allowing one party to begin talking even though the other is not in the room?

The Maharal in his Nesivos Olam (Nesiv HaDin) explains that first impressions are very powerful. When we listen to one side of a story, it penetrates and leaves an impression upon us. That position becomes our default and now the burden rests on the other person to undo the assumed truth and accuracy of the first position. Of course, there is no way to avoid one person speaking at a time. Nevertheless, when both parties are present before the judge, the judge is less likely to presume the first side he hears is automatically the truth. Moreover, the parties themselves will be more careful with their words when in the presence of their adversary.

When I spent a summer in Kellogg’s Advanced Executive Program we took a class on negotiations. The most important rule of negotiations, we were taught, is anchoring. Whoever lowers the anchor controls the conversation and controls the negotiation. For example, if you are purchasing something from me and I mention a price, now you are responding to my proposal and the negotiation will revolve around the number that I set. I have laid the anchor.

Dr. Thomas Mussweiler, of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, had customers approach German mechanics—individuals expected to be knowledgeable about the true value of cars—with a used car that needed numerous repairs. After offering their own opinion of the car’s value, the customers asked the mechanics for an estimate. Half the time, the mechanics were given a low anchor, with the customer proposing 2,800. The other half were given a high anchor, with the customers proposing 5,000. Sure enough, the mechanics estimated the car to be worth 1,000 more when they were given the high-anchor value.

While anchoring may be a critical tool in negotiations, in the area of conflict it serves to pervert justice. The Maharal explains that to hear one side when the other is not present sets an anchor for the judge and the burden placed on the other side is rendered unfair and unjust. The impartiality necessary to arrive at true justice demands that no anchors are lowered and that both sides are heard as close to simultaneously as possible.

While most of us are not judges in the legal sense, we sit in judgment all the time. We judge the people we meet, the institutions, organizations and schools we are connected with, the stories we are told, and the motivations and intentions of those around us.

We may not be literal judges but our judgment must not be perverted by only hearing one side. We do a disservice to others and to ourselves when we accept as truth and as fact our first impressions, or what one side tells us, or what we assume to be true. Like true judges, we must make sure not to arrive at conclusions without both parties’ perspectives being ‘present’ in the room.

It is well known that in the disputes between Beis Hillel and Beis Shamai, we follow the opinions of Beis Hillel. The Gemara tells us that in truth, the students of Beis Shamai were sharper in their thinking and yet we embrace Beis Hillel. Why? The Gemara in Eruvin (13b) says because Beis Hillel always listened to and studied the position of Beis Shamai before announcing their own position.

In a few short days from now we will sit on the ground, unshaven, sad, melancholy and in mourning. Through our exploration of the Kinnos we will review and revisit the tragedies of Jewish history – the destruction of the two temples, the inquisition, the expulsion from Spain, the Crusades, and the most horrific atrocity known to mankind, the Holocaust.

Our rabbis, in seeking to understand why these things happened, encouraged us to examine how we treat others. Do we sit in judgment, do we draw unfair conclusions, and do we reject people who disagree with us or think differently than we do? When we are critical of community institutions like the shul or school, are we like Beis Hillel, first seeking to understand before trying to be understood? When we are told unfavorable and unflattering information about people we know, do presume the version we heard is correct, accurate and the truth? Or like the judges in our Parsha, are we careful to make sure all sides are metaphorically represented in the room before arriving at a decision?

When we see public leaders trying to balance concerns for public health, economic distress, and mental and emotional wellbeing of adults, children, and everyone in between, will we seek to understand policies and decisions before reflexively criticizing? And while we certainly must not tolerate anyone who knowingly endangers others, can we seek to be less judgmental of the guidelines people have chosen to follow for themselves while still strongly advocating for safe behavior from all?

If we truly and genuinely yearn for a Beis HaMikdash, and for a time of peace, tranquility, and prosperity, than we must work on judging fairly and accurately. We must be more like Beis Hillel listening and hearing others position before arguing our own.

The Word a Holocaust Survivor Said He Would Never Use Again

The older I get the more I have come to believe that people can essentially be divided into two categories: connectors and dividers.

Connectors look for commonalities, dividers focus on differences. Connectors give the benefit of the doubt, dividers look to find fault. Connectors let things go, dividers bear grudges. Connectors look to compliment, dividers look to criticize. Connectors feel good through (not surprisingly) connecting, and dividers thrive by fostering division.

Dividers spew hate, bully, call names, and practice discrimination, bias and injustice. Connectors share love, fight for equality, stand up to justice, protect the vulnerable, and love even those they struggle to like. Dividers often disguise their predilection for conflict as fighting for principles. This is a smokescreen. Connectors have values and ideologies and are genuinely principled, but they are committed to find a commonality with others who may not share the same values and principles without compromising what they themselves believe.

Over the last few weeks, the national conversation has focused on racism and more recently on anti-Semitism and that will hopefully bring positive progress. Our own national conversation during these weeks, not just this year but each and every year, focuses on a similar phenomenon and, unfortunately, the tragedy of how little progress we have made.

The Talmud (Yoma 9b) tells us that the second Beis HaMikdash was destroyed because of sinas chinam, baseless hatred. The people at that time observed Torah laws and performed mitzvos but grossly mistreated one another. They were Torah-observant dividers instead of connectors.

What is baseless hatred? Isn’t there hatred that is warranted, justified, that has a strong basis? When I dislike someone who believes, observes, votes, or lives differently than I do, when I hate someone who sees things differently, there is a real basis and reason for my hatred, why is that called chinam, baseless?

We are coming up on the first yahrzeit of my dear friend, Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut z”l, one of the most extraordinary human beings many of us have ever known. Earlier this week, at the bris of Brian’s first grandson, poignantly named in his memory, Brian’s father spoke. He described Brian as an amazing connector in every direction, with his wife, with parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles above, with siblings and cousins to his side, with children, nieces and nephews below, with friends, co-workers, and neighbors, those to the left and to the right of him religiously and politically, with those in front or behind him in life.

Leading up to his yahrzeit, I have spoken with several of his friends of diverse backgrounds, lifestyles, and levels of religious observance. One of the commonalities of them all is each feeling that Brian was their best friend. Brian found something in everyone to connect with. He was a talmid chacham who took Torah learning and living incredibly seriously and connected with so many who shared that passion and identity. He was an athlete who excelled in basketball, golf and running and could relate to so many teammates, competitors, friends and acquaintances who enjoyed playing and following sports. He was a brilliant physician who didn’t just provide top medical care but paired it with outstanding human care, genuinely devoted to his patients and beloved by his colleagues, nurses, and staff. His warm smile, contagious laugh and singular focus while he spoke to you could win anyone over, people with whom he had great similarities and those who on the surface he seemed to have so little in common.

I once asked Brian how he kept that positive disposition and attitude all the time, how he got along with anyone and everyone and how he managed to be the eternal optimist no matter what reality was presenting. We were walking on a golf course at the time and he stopped, paused, and said, “I have been working on it since I was young.” Living with faith, he continued, seeing good in others, feeling happy, hopeful and positive are all choices, they are not feelings. It isn’t easy but we can choose to be positive, choose to be faithful and choose to be connectors, not dividers.

The Torah endorses loving people, v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha. On the other hand, it condones hating evil, ohavei Hashem sin’u rah. How do we reconcile these two imperatives? Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad, writes in his Tanya (32): “It is a mitzvah to hate them, and it is a mitzvah to also love them. Both are true. You hate the yetzer hara, the evil inclination that’s in them, and you love the goodness that is concealed in them, which is a spark of Godliness.”

Any hatred directed towards a person is considered baseless on its face because it rejects and ignores the core and base of the person, the tzelem Elokim with which we can find connection or commonality. That doesn’t mean we don’t confront, debate and challenge the ideas and actions in people that we cannot tolerate; it means we love people, even when we reject and can’t love something they say, think, or do.

In his excellent book, Baseless Hatred, Dr. Rene Levy writes, “Hate is triggered because our primitive neural system reacts to events from the perspective of our own preexisting insecurities, because we make generalizations (which may be positive or negative) and confuse associations (additional but not necessarily relevant information) with causality.” Essentially, when we hate someone, we reveal a lot more about ourselves than we do about the subject or object of our hate.

Norman Frajman is one of very few individuals who went to hell and back not once, but twice. He survived both the Warsaw Ghetto and Majdanek. I had the honor of twice accompanying him to Poland as he took hundreds of teenagers to those places on March of the Living. As we walked through Majdanek, a concentration camp so well-preserved it is said it could be up and running again in days, Norman identified to the teenagers his former barracks, showed them where the daily lineup took place, and detailed the horrific things he witnessed. At one point, one of the teenagers asked him, “Do you hate the Poles and the Germans for what they did, do you hate those countries today?”

In a moment I will never forget, Norman stopped walking, turned to the huge group of teenagers walking with him, and without hesitating said, “No, I don’t hate them. I don’t hate anyone. I greatly dislike, I condemn, I criticize, and I will confront what I think is wrong, but I will never use the word hate. I don’t hate, because hate is what started it all.”

What should be a powerful and jarring word, hate, has lost its meaning and impact because of its overuse. “Hater” is sometimes used to describe someone who simply objects to something. In this period of the three weeks in which we are working to repair the damage from baseless hatred, let’s make a concerted effort to use the word hate more judiciously, thoughtfully, and appropriately. You don’t hate your least favorite food or the hot weather, or when your internet is slow or the person you are waiting for is running late. Above all, you can never and should never hate people, even when you reject what they are saying or doing.

Rav Avraham Yitzchak Ha’Cohen Kook (Orot HaKodesh vol. III, p. 324) famously wrote that there is only one antidote to baseless hatred. “If we were destroyed, and the world with us, due to baseless hatred, then we shall rebuild ourselves, and the world with us, with baseless love — ahavas chinam.”

For Rav Kook, ahavas chinam was not just a theoretical idea. There are countless stories of Rav Kook’s profound love for all Jews, even or especially those far removed from a Torah lifestyle. When questioned why he loved such Jews, he would respond, “Better I should err on the side of baseless love, than I should err on the side of baseless hatred.”

If we want this mourning to end, we need to be more like Brian and Rav Kook. Choose to connect instead of divide, choose to live with baseless love over baseless hatred, for these three weeks, and then hopefully the rest of the year too.

Outrage Without Rage

It seems everywhere we turn these days is anger and rage. Some are angry at those not wearing masks, others outraged mask-wearing is being legislated. There is anger provoked by the pandemic. Anger at elected leaders on both sides of the aisle for how they have governed during this unprecedented time. There is anger at the police and anger at those calling to defund the police. Anger at those supporting annexation in Israel and anger at those who could possibly object or question its wisdom or timing.

Raymond Novaco, a psychology professor at the University of California at Irvine, describes that right now, “We’re living, in effect, in a big anger incubator.” Maurice Schweitzer, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, who studies the regulation of emotions says that most of us are more comfortable being angry than anxious. When life becomes uncertain and more and more seems out of our control, we alleviate and avoid the proclivity towards anxiety by getting angry instead. That anger can be directed at a spouse and children, at a neighbor or co-worker, or moral outrage expressed online.

And now, disastrously, this angry incubator is about to be put into a literal pressure cooker. Meteorologists revealed this week that more than two-thirds of the continental U.S. is going to experience a historic heat wave in July.

But is anger really all bad? Doesn’t anger energize and spark revolutions? Didn’t anger just stimulate a national conversation on race and equality that may finally lead to positive developments?

The simple answer is anger is never good. It never builds, only destroys. It never produces, it just compromises. It never provides clarity, only cloudiness and confusion. Anger never builds bridges, it only creates schisms. The word “rage” comes from the Latin rabies, meaning madness. Giving in to rage is an act of madness because you give up so much and get nothing in return. Mark Twain said, “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

The Orchos Tzaddikim says that character traits are called middos in Hebrew, literally translated as “measurements,” because they are neither inherently good or bad, rather they must be appropriately channeled and employed in correct measures. The exceptions are arrogance and anger which are categorically wrong and don’t belong in our emotional toolbox at all. Moshe Rabbeinu, the greatest person of all time, saw his dream of entering Israel shattered in this week’s Parsha because, according to many, he gave in to anger when he hit the rock instead of speaking to it.

In a letter to his son, the Ramban writes that anger is a midah ra’ah, a wicked impulse. The Rambam in Hilchos Dei’os (2:3) writes that anger diminishes a person’s overall quality of life: “Those who frequently become angry have no quality of life; therefore, our rabbis instructed us to distance ourselves from anger to the farthest degree, until a person acts as though he does not sense even those things that would justifiably anger a person.”

Indeed, research shows that anger clouds judgment, distorts perspective, and deprives you of the ability to see another point of view or feel empathy. Anger is linked to higher blood pressure and inflammation, infections, heart disease, and cancer. One study found a tripled risk of a stroke during the two hours following an angry outburst. Mental health experts are warning about rising domestic violence during this age of anger.

What stimulates positive change, and drives people to pursue justice, equality, goodness, and truth is not anger or rage, but outrage. The Rambam writes that real anger is never healthy, warranted, or productive. But occasionally and strategically, one may exhibit anger in order to strongly communicate a message or accomplish a goal. Nevertheless, even when expressing outrage, one can never indulge the feeling of rage and let himself be overtaken by the emotion of anger.

Anger is an animalistic emotion; outrage is a call to action. There are things worth being outraged about, but there is nothing worth feeling rage over. Outrage is productive, rage is counterproductive. Outrage brings results, rage creates problems. Plato put it well: “There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.”

There are no shortage of causes that could benefit from your outrage, your social action, and efforts in measured, productive ways. Save your energy to take on racism, antisemitism, incivility, or inequality. Don’t waste energy by taking your anger out on your spouse or children, your friends or colleagues.

Address your anxiety, don’t let it manifest as anger. Keep your calm by letting out energy through regular walks, exercise, or meditation. Practice an attitude of gratitude by journaling the blessings in your life each day and staying focused on what is going right, not what is wrong, what you have, not what is missing. Expose yourself to media and social media that will help generate productive outrage but shut out news and commentary, posts and conversations that will frustrate, irritate, and aggravate. Watch for warning signs, familiarize yourself with triggers and cut off the anger before it even escalates or rises within you. Learn to self soothe, distract and put things in perspective.

As the summer is about to get hotter, don’t let yourself lose your cool.

Don’t Chirp Like a Grasshopper, Roar Like a Lion

The Torah tells us explicitly that Bnei Yisrael were forced to wander in the desert for forty years as a corresponding punishment for the forty days the spies spent in the land of Israel. The pasuk strongly implies that this was a forty-day sin, which resulted in forty years of wandering, a year for each day.

If you think about it, though, the
spies didn’t sin for forty days, but rather for one day. Their mistake was miscalculating and
processing their experience and reporting negatively about Israel. This only happened at the end of their
journey and lasted one day. Why were
they accountable and punished for forty days of indiscretion?

The late Jose Lima starred as a
pitcher for the Houston Astros for serval years in the late 1990s. Lima was an
outgoing, energetic, likable young player known for exuding a positive
attitude. But in 2000, when the Astros built their new stadium, now known as
Minute Maid Park, Lima was upset. The fence in left field was much closer than
the fence at the Astrodome. In fact, Minute Maid Park still has one of the
shortest distances from home plate to the left-field fence of any ballpark baseball.
The hitters love it, of course, but the short left-field makes it tougher on
the pitchers.

The first time Lima stepped onto the new diamond, he walked out to the pitcher’s mound, and when he looked into the outfield, he immediately noticed the close proximity of the left-field fence. “I’ll never be able to pitch in here,” he said.

Indeed, despite coming off an all-star season, and the excitement of playing in a brand new ballpark, Lima had the worst year of his career. He plummeted from being a twenty-game winner to a allowing a near-record amount of home runs.

Rav Asher Weiss explains that the meraglim’s
mistake didn’t occur at the end of their journey, but at the beginning, and it
lasted forty days. The meraglim engaged
in a self-fulfilled prophecy. They came
to the land with a poor attitude and outlook and everything they then witnessed
was seen through their negative and pessimistic filter.

The Gemara in Berachos (55b) tells us
that when a person dreams, he is shown the thoughts of his heart. The same is true while we are awake. We are shown the world around us, refracted
through the prism of our hearts. When
our heart is pure, when our attitude is positive, we see goodness in everyone
and everything around us and we create good results for ourselves. If our hearts are tainted with pride and
jealousy, we see only negativity in others and create a toxic existence for
ourselves. B’derech she adom holeich molichim oso.

The Midrash tells us that the spies “searched
for the faults of Eretz Yisroel, which Hashem called a good land.” The meraglim
weren’t punished or held accountable for reporting faults in
Israel. They were accountable for looking
for faults, and that is something they engaged in for forty days.

Referring to the spies’ encounter with the giants, the Torah says “vanehi b’eineinu k’chagavim, v’chein hayinu b’eineihem” and “and in our eyes [too] we were like grasshoppers and so we were in their eyes.” While originally described as anashim, men of great stature, the spies report they became diminished in their own eyes and that of others. How could they know how they appeared in the eyes of others? The Kotzker Rebbe explains, by thinking so little of themselves, they projected this feeling onto others as well.

The very first statement of Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish law, instructs us to see ourselves as lions – hisgabeir ka’ari, la’amod laboker, wake up like a lion to greet the day. The spies saw themselves as grasshoppers, lowly and vulnerable. Instead, we are to roar like lions, confident, capable and ready to conquer whatever comes our way.

Modern psychological research
concludes if we build up a strong belief in ourselves and what we want to achieve,
we can do almost anything with a little training and coaching. The brain is designed to help us accomplish anything
that we really want and believe we can do.
When we use words like “can’t” or “I wish I could, but” or “I would do
it if only” then we have set ourselves up for failure, just like the
meraglim. The first step to changing our
reality is to change our attitude. If we
are going to realize our own prophecies, let’s have a vision for ourselves of
success, accomplishment and achievement.

The Death of Certainty, the Birth of Accepting our Limitations

I
have not slept well during the last three months. Don’t get me wrong, I fall right asleep, but
I don’t wake up well-rested. There is a
pit in my stomach that won’t seem to go away.
Baruch Hashem, my family is healthy and well. I feel truly blessed in so many ways and I try
to be grateful each and every day. I usually feel and act genuinely happy, and
yet nevertheless, these days I live with a continuous uneasiness, a discomfort
that I can’t seem to shake.

Throughout
this time, I have tried to investigate the source of these unfamiliar, foreign
feelings, but to no avail. Finally, this
week, as we began to try to prepare for this coming Rosh Hashanah and found
ourselves left with more questions than answers, more we don’t know than we do
know, it struck me. The ache is the
absence of confidence, the agitation is the loss of certainty.

Just
three months ago, we were capable of knowing, of planning. After all, we live in the information
age. All we had to do was Google a
question and we had terabytes of answers within seconds. We searched YouTube and accessed countless “how
to” videos on how to fix, repair, build almost anything. We had answers, we had
solutions, we had control, we had the capacity to predict, to anticipate, to
prepare, and to plan.

While
three months ago we knew so much, we now know next to nothing. We can’t plan,
we have no answers, we can’t predict what will be and we can’t fix this problem
by Googling or searching. This virus has
rendered even those who haven’t contracted it various levels of impotent,
incompetent, and incapable and that hurts badly.

In
truth, the discomfort and uneasiness are feelings of grief, of loss. In a widely-read
article published shortly after the pandemic first shut down the country, David
Kessler, considered the world’s foremost expert on grief, classified this
feeling as “anticipatory grief,” saying, “Anticipatory grief is that feeling we
get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain. Usually it centers on
death. We feel it when someone gets a dire diagnosis or when we have the normal
thought that we’ll lose a parent someday.”

Many
of us feel this grief daily, if not hourly. We have lost the life and lifestyle
we once knew and luxuries like certainty we took for granted have vanished. The longer this continues, the less confidence
and less certainty we have.

When can we resume davening indoors? Will we ever have classes in person again, will we enjoy kiddush together, Shalosh Seudos as a community? Will our children have camp, will in-person school resume next year? What will our simcha look like, and God forbid if we lost a loved one, would we be able to grieve properly? Can we take a vacation, will we be able to travel? What financial impact will this have on us? When will this be over and what will life look like afterwards? What will be different, and will anything be the way it was?

We
go to sleep and don’t know what world we will wake up to. If I told you four months ago a pandemic
would shut down the world, we would lose precious people out of nowhere and it
would obliterate whole industries , you wouldn’t have believed me. And if I told you just one week ago that in
the midst of our collective quarantining, we would suddenly find ourselves in
the middle of a critically important nationwide conversation on racism and also
see a national pandemonium including rioting, looting, and the destruction of
countless businesses, you wouldn’t have believed me, and for good reason.

Pandemic
and pandemonium, what’s next? What else
can we not imagine today that will become our reality tomorrow?

We
crave certainty, we thrive off of predictability and there simply isn’t any. We rely on planning and right now we cannot
plan. We depend on being in control and we
currently have none. That realization,
that reality itself is daunting, for many, devastating, and has left us in a
daze. The structure and routines we have
come to rely on are not available to us and it leaves us feeling lost and
disoriented.

I
was recently talking with someone who described his struggle with concentration
and productivity during this period. He
related that his davening is unfocused, he isn’t sure how much he is retaining
from his learning, and his time isn’t used as efficiently as he would
like. When I asked him why, he
explained, it is hard to be fully present in anything when there is so much
uncertainty.

I
have been thinking about that conversation and about my own feelings and
wondering if we had unfair expectations and an inaccurate outlook.

We
are accustomed to davening three times a day in fulfillment of the Rabbinic
obligation, but the Rambam and Ramban have a debate about we are responsible
for on a Torah level. The Rambam counts
a daily Torah obligation to pray while the Ramban insists our biblical
obligation to pray only applies b’eis tzarah, in a time of great
distress, in a time of crisis.

In
“Reflections of the Rav,” Rav Soloveitchik suggests that perhaps they aren’t
really arguing. Both agree that the Torah only places an obligation to pray in
a crisis but whereas the Ramban assumes that to mean a catastrophe or
emergency, the Rambam says every day sees us struggle with our helplessness and
sense of dependence. To be alive, to try
to navigate this complicated, complex world is to be in a state of crisis.

We
think we have lost certainty and predictability, but perhaps they were never
really ours and we were never entitled to feel we had them. We are pained by a loss of a sense of
control, but at most all we had was an illusion of control. In reality, whether we are experiencing pandemic
or paradise, we are in a perpetual state of crisis, of dependence.

Armed
with this understanding, we need to ask ourselves, now what? We can wallow in the grief of the loss of the
age of predictability, of confidence and certainty, we can spend the day
mourning the inability to plan the future, or we can adjust, adapt, create new
paradigms, assumptions and craft new lifestyles. Maybe it will all be temporary, maybe it will
last a long time or parts will even become permanent, but at this point, three
months in, it is time to go from victims to victors, from passive to
passionate, from spectators to writing the script.

We
are not the first of our own people or of any people to live with
uncertainty. There wasn’t certainty
during the Black Plague or the Spanish Flu, during the Inquisition or the Crusades,
during the Six Day War or the days, weeks, and months after 9/11.

Those
who came before us found the capacity to not only survive but to thrive,
despite the uncertainty. They didn’t
know what would come next, but they knew they would keep going.

What
about us? Are we ready to stop grieving the loss of control and to take control
of what we have left, of what we can know?
Take time, talk to your spouse, a friend or even with yourself about how
you can live your best even when things aren’t the best. Set meaningful and realistic goals, personal and
professional, spiritual and physical during this new time and articulate a plan
to both accomplish them and to measure your progress on your way there.

We
are living through great turbulence and the wind is desperately trying to
redirect us. Now is the time to grab the wheel and be determined to be the
pilot, not a passenger of your life.

These are Defining Moments

When You & Your Children Look Back, How Will You Remember Them?

Last week, we finished streaming an episode of Behind the Bima and I was immediately gratified to receive wonderfully positive feedback in texts and emails. For the most part. One person, whom I don’t know, chose to write a highly critical email. When receiving criticism, I try to always ask myself, is there merit to what is being said, even if I don’t like how they are saying it? Is there truth to the message, even if I don’t appreciate this messenger or the messaging?

Often the answer is yes, and while I am far
from perfect, I try to learn and, when necessary, to apologize or take
responsibility. But in this particular
instance, the criticism was not only communicated grossly inappropriately, it
was simply factually incorrect and way off-base.

I quickly came to that conclusion and committed
to move on. But I couldn’t. For the next few hours, and even into the
next day, it wasn’t the compliments or positive feedback that occupied my mind
or my thoughts, it was the outrageous email from a complete stranger. As
disappointed as I was with the email, I was terribly frustrated at myself for
perseverating.

It turns out, I am not alone. Researchers summarized
dozes of studies that compared the impact of negative information and
experiences against positive ones. Their
conclusion, and the title of their paper: “Bad Is Stronger than Good.” They found
that negative information, experiences and communications pack a heavier punch
and have a more lasting impact than positive ones. It is why sports fans think more about the
games their team lost than those they won.
It is why in diaries or journals, people spend more time reflecting on
the bad things that happened than the good.
It is why runners remember the headwind they battled in one direction
much more than the helping wind they benefited from in the other.

And it is why we hold onto and think about
criticisms and negative feedback approximately ten times more than compliments
or positive comments. Social scientists
call it the negativity effect or negativity bias and almost all of us suffer
from it.

I find myself thinking about this, not
only because of that particular email and my reaction to it, but because of
what we are all going through right now and the lives we are living.

In their fantastic book, “The Power of
Moments,” Chip and Dan Heath argue that not all moments are created equal. There are some moments, events, or
experiences that we will remember for decades and others that expire and
disappear, almost as quickly as they arrive or are experienced.

In ten or twenty years, we and our children
will look back at this time. Whether we are still recovering from the trauma of
it or are nostalgic for the blessings and opportunities we made of it is being
determined right now by our attitudes and behaviors.

We will look back and say, “during this time we…” What will be the end of that sentence? We laughed, we learned, we played, we prayed and we persevered? Or, we fought, we yelled, we worried, and we despaired?

We must recognize and appreciate now that
the negative experiences and moments, the frustrations, anger, worry,
criticisms, and impatience will embed memories disproportionally to the
positive flashes of fun, laughter, compliments, optimism, hope and faith. To create the long-term feeling we want towards
what we are living through right now, our positive moments must outnumber the
negative ones at least tenfold.

The Heaths write that defining moments
shape our lives and we don’t have to wait for them to happen. We can create
them. In their research they found that
defining moments are created from one or more of the following four elements: elevation,
insight, pride and connection.

Our timeless Torah and magnificent Jewish
lifestyle promote and provide the ingredients for all four. We elevate each time we daven, each
Shabbos meal, each act of chessed, and with every encounter or imitation of the
Divine. We encounter insight each time we study, share an idea, lesson,
or learn a value or law. Is there a greater pride than being a member of
the am ha’nivchar, the people charged with leading the way to repair
Hashem’s world in His image? Lastly, there is no greater connection than
being part of a covenantal community, living as anעם ,
a nation because we feel עם, together, bound and connected through our shared destiny.

One of the true challenges of this time period is to still find elevation, insight, pride, and connection. Our usual methods appear inaccessible. We cannot elevate through minyan at shul. We may struggle to find the time or focus for insight. It can be difficult to feel pride, we feel like there is so much we can’t do anymore. And of course, the lack of connection is one of the biggest trials of this pandemic.

If we give into the negativity and
concede, we will miss the opportunity to be resourceful and create defining moments.
We can elevate our davening by connecting differently with Hashem than we would
at shul – maybe davening slower, or outside, or focusing on a different
sentence or paragraph each day. We can commit to a new area of learning, or regularly
attend one of the hundreds of Zoom shiurim being held now around the world, and
bring insight into our lives. We can take pride in our children and ourselves
for overcoming challenges, persevering, and accomplishing things big and small.
And we can and we must, still seek connection with our people – call that
family member, FaceTime that friend you haven’t seen in weeks, reach out to
someone and tell them you’re thinking about them or miss them.

Bad may be stronger than good, but we can
be stronger than bad by flooding our homes with positive defining moments.

When You & Your Children Look Back, How Will You Remember Them?

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