Be Fruitful and Multiply

June 17th, 2014

And G-d blessed them and said to them:  Be fruitful and multiply,  fill up the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea, the bird of the sky and every living thing that moves on the earth.

Bereishit 1:28

And G-d said to the serpent: …I will place enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring… To the woman He said: I will greatly increase your suffering and your child bearing, in pain shall you bear children.  Yet your craving shall be for your husband, and he will rule over you…  To Adam He said: Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate of the tree about which I commanded you saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’, cursed is the ground because of you; with suffering shall you eat of it all the days of your life.  Thorns and thistles  shall it sprout for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field.   By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread, until you return to the ground from which you were taken.

Bereishit 3:15-19

Are children one of life’s greatest blessings? Ask any new parents and they will  surely agree. But raising children also has a flip side, which is difficult to ignore. There are the physical stresses of pregnancy and childbirth. There are the taxing chores associated with child-care, and the emotionally wrenching job of patiently training contrary youngsters into caring, responsible and mature adults. Add to that the financial burden of supporting a growing family, and it is perhaps not surprising that many people choose to eschew child-raising altogether, or at least drastically limit the size of their family.

There are other arguments commonly offered to support this movement towards family planning. There is concern that the children in a large family will suffer if they are forced to share their parents’ time, attention and possessions with too many siblings. Would it not be fairer to have fewer children, and offer each of them more comforts and luxuries? Finally, there is the projected societal cost of each new soul brought into the world. Can the earth’s resources be infinitely taxed? As a safeguard to the earth’s limited resources, maybe we should exercise restraint, and avoid a potential global crisis brought about through over-population.

How did it come about that another human being, even one’s own child, may be perceived as a burden, a potential threat to our personal well-being? We need to look back to the first parents in history, Adam and Chava¹.  Originally, their bodies were created to experience parenting as nothing but joy and a blessing. Childbirth was to be effortless and pain-free.  The earth was designed to bring forth its bounty spontaneously, without any need for intense labor on the part of man.

What changed all that was their decision to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. From that moment, their bodies underwent a marked change. Childbirth would contain an element of difficulty and pain.  Raising children would no longer be an exclusively joyous, harmonious experience. Instead, it would also include moments of strife, tension, and emotional distress. Physical sustenance would cease to flow forth gratis; man would need to invest tremendous effort to provide himself and his family with the necessities of survival.

What was it about eating from the tree that provoked such a drastic transformation? The “knowledge” that Adam and Chava acquired through tasting its fruit was self-awareness. Prior to eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Chava were not aware of themselves as independent entities, distinct from G-d. The universe existed in a pristine state because it was an unequivocal reflection of its Divine Master. Each element of creation recognized its unique place in the Divine plan, and thus performed its distinct function flawlessly, in complete harmony with every other component.

Through eating of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Chava introduced a note of discord into the previously integral universe. As “they opened their eyes, and realized their nakedness²“, they simultaneously opened the eyes of every other creature³. For the first time, a created being had asserted its own will, in defiance of the Divine will. Suddenly, the formerly docile animals developed angry and predatory tendencies; the previously generous earth became contrary and unpredictable. Previously synergetic organisms would now be forced to deal with hostility and conflict. From that time on, there would be an element of tension between man and the animal kingdom, between the sexes, between man and nature, between parents and children, and perhaps most striking and most devastating of all, within the body itself⁴. Adam and Chava chose to set themselves apart from creation, to be “like G-d⁵“, independent and liberated. However, their independence came at a cost, not only to themselves but also to all of creation.

Since then we have struggled to regain that state of perfect unity that had previously reigned. Adam and Chava were the first to introduce self-consideration as a factor in determining behavior, with all the accompanying disunity that it brought in consequence. However, there is one element which remained unaffected by the sin, and it is this one element which is our inherent hope of returning the world to its original glory.

By inviting conflict into the world through ignoring the divine commandment, Adam and Chava thereby disconnected themselves from their divine source. But within them still remained a part that never lost its connection to G-d, and in fact, felt deeply ashamed and humiliated by the breach that they had caused. Every soul is a spark of G-d, and all the friction and coarseness of the universe can never completely extinguish it, or separate it from its divine source. Every additional soul born adds to the sum total of G-dly energy at work in this world; building, repairing, and creating. The damage done by Adam and Chava can yet be undone. It can be undone by devoting ourselves to the G-dly task of bringing more children into this world, and dedicating our full energies to their needs, their upbringing, and their nurturing.

Yes, raising children is often difficult, time-consuming and exasperating.  Our wills clash with theirs; our bodies cry out for respite. Yet limiting the number of children born means restricting the total G-dly energy available for rebuilding the world in the light of divine precepts. We can bring up children to overcome selfishness and cruelty. We can instill in them a desire for morality, for values, for respect of themselves and others. But we cannot do that when we place physical possessions, or personal ambitions, above the value of another life, another child born.

Can the family bear the stress of additional members, more mouths to feed, more bodies and souls and psyches in need of attention and nurturing? A truer question is, can the family bear the stress of restricting birth; of repressing the divine urge to procreate, and denying siblings the opportunity to learn sharing, caring and giving. The unity of the marriage and the family grows only stronger when all members make room in their hearts and lives for more children.

“Overpopulation” need not be a dominant concern. Human beings are tremendously resourceful, and are continually providing new solutions to maximize the earth’s productive capability. The course of human history has proven that it is not the number of people in the world that determines whether there is hunger, decay or violence. In Cain’s view, the world was not large enough for him to share with his only brother, Abel. The population of the generation of the flood was considerably smaller than today’s, yet they suffered from rampant chaos and utter anarchy. There was no family structure, no justice system, no moral laws whatsoever. The society was so irredeemably evil that there was no recourse but complete destruction. Had there been fewer individuals, would that have forestalled that society’s descent into rampant self-indulgence and narcissism? Projections regarding our future ability to sustain a growing population are based only upon the knowledge and technology available today.  Imagine scientists 500 years ago attempting to engineer a massive birth control effort based on the medical, agricultural and societal conditions that existed in the 16^th century. They could never have foreseen the earth being able to sustain even a fraction of today’s population.

Preventing births from occurring will do little to curtail the burgeoning population of broken, dispirited individuals who feel little sense of hope or purpose to their existence. But joyously welcoming a new child, or many children, into the family will be sure to increase the population of self-assured, contented adults who are secure in their divine purpose, and are actively working to attain their goal.

Each child born is a light unto himself, with the potential to illuminate the lives of many others.  Each child that we bear and nurture is a new channel of divine blessing and goodness. Far from being a drain on the world’s resources, the child is the greatest resource that the earth could possibly produce. As parents, we have the duty to instill within the child the sense of self-worth, of purposefulness and mission necessary for building and recreating a harmonious world. But it is the children, with their irrepressible enthusiasm and unspoiled optimism, who will be the ones to make it happen. They will be the first to triumphantly herald a new era of peace, perfection and unity; the era of Moshiach.

By Chaya Shuchat.

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Tags: family, children, Adam & Eve
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The Importance of Home and Family

June 17th, 2014

Your home should become a light that illuminates the entire street and community — The Rebbe

A young father worked hard and had great success, but he seemed very sad. His father noticed this and stopped by to talk to him; the young man was surprised when, instead of asking about work, his father asked how much time he was spending with his family.
“With all the demands of this job, I have very little time for that,” he replied.
“That sounds like what my father used to say,” his father said. “Every day I would wait by the window for him to come home, and every day I would fall asleep before he came. For the sake of your children, and for the sake of their children, no matter how much work you have, try to make it home every night in time to tuck them in. You cannot imagine how much you will be doing for them — and for yourself.”
After many hours of looking for food, a bird returns to its nest, taking supreme comfort in a place that is warm and safe, far removed from the dangers and distractions of the world outside.

Your home and family are your nest, the center of your life, the hub from which all your daily experiences extend. Both as children and adults, our home and family are where we should feel most comfortable in the world. They determine how you make your life decisions; they shape your attitudes, your awareness, your self-esteem. A healthy home life is obviously a vital ingredient in the pursuit of a meaningful life.

How do you build a healthy home?

There are three key elements in building a peaceful home life: the relationships between family members, the atmosphere of the home itself, and the way the home is run.

When a family shares principles and values, they grow together. The home becomes a foundation for the family’s shared sense of purpose while providing a springboard for each member to pursue his or her own goals. In such homes, families stay up late talking heart-to-heart about what’s on their minds. Children crowd around grandparents to hear stories. Teenagers debate meaningful issues with each other and with their parents. The whole family gets together — and not just on holidays — for evenings of songs, games, and reminiscing. The home becomes alive, a source of energy and hope, of urgency and love. It is not the tranquility of a home that makes it peaceful; it is the life within.

The ultimate beauty in a home is its emotional and spiritual warmth. There are many ways to beautify your home spiritually, to invite G-d into your home. Place a charity box in each room. Talk with your family about G-d and our responsibilities as good-hearted people. Invite guests into your home, and allow it to be used as a place of study and prayer, or to hold charitable functions or community meetings.

Each healthy home is a macrocosm of the entire universe, helping make the entire world a home for G-d. Harmony at home, within a family, translates into harmony between families and communities and nations. When there is no harmony between people who are related by blood, how can we expect to create harmony between strangers?

After many centuries of exhausting journeys, it is time for all of us to come home — to ourselves, to our families, to G-d. After the thousands of years of civilizing this world, after the millions of spiritual seeds that human beings have planted through acts of kindness, the time has come for this world to sprout like a garden — G-d’s garden, a universe filled with goodness and knowledge.

ACTION

Make your home truly beautiful by introducing spirituality into your home, welcoming guests, and talking with your family about our responsibilities as good-hearted people. Your children will grow up to remember their home as a place of warmth and kindness, where people felt comfortable to gather and talk about things that mattered to them. In all likelihood, these children will grow into adults who will create the same sort of home.

A beautiful home must also be free from influences that can pollute its wholesomeness and spiritual grace — television, for instance. People today recognize the damaging effects that television has on impressionable children, and, for that matter, on teenagers and adults. A television must not be allowed to rule the home.

The next time you are sitting in your living room or sharing a meal with your family, ask yourself:  Do I truly feel at home? Am I doing everything possible to build a healthy family and household?  Do guests feel welcome here? And, above all, Does G-d feel comfortable in my home?

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Spiritual Parenting

June 17th, 2014

Parents: take your job seriously. Children are the most precious gift G-d has given you — a new life, as unmarked as fresh snow, and you have been blessed with the opportunity to nurture, protect, and teach your child, so that the child becomes a productive and good human being. — The Rebbe

One night, when a rabbi was deeply engrossed in his studies, his youngest child fell out of his cradle. Even though the rabbi was only in the next room, he heard nothing. But the rabbi’s father, who was also studying in his room upstairs, heard the baby crying. He came downstairs, put the baby back in the cradle, and rocked him to sleep. The rabbi remained oblivious throughout it all. Later, the older man admonished his son: “No matter how lofty your pursuits, you must never fail to hear the cry of a child.”

What can a parent do to improve the quality of the family?

It is the parents’ responsibility to build a happy and healthy home. When every member of a family is concerned primarily with himself, the family itself is bound to suffer. When the father stays late at the office, when the mother is wrapped up in her job or community work, when the children care mainly about parties or school projects, they cannot maintain profound relationships within the family. They may sleep under the same roof and eat at the same table, yet be worlds apart.

By introducing spirituality into your home, welcoming guests, and talking with your family about our responsibilities as good-hearted people, you make your home truly beautiful. Your children will grow up to remember their home as a place of warmth and kindness, where people felt comfortable to gather and talk about things that mattered to them. In all likelihood, these children will grow into adults who will create the same sort of home.

How can parents create a healthy home environment?

Whenever a problem arises, particularly a serious one, we should examine the dynamic between parents. A husband and wife must develop a healthy way of communicating with each other. This in turn sets a good example for their children.

It is important to remember that children’s misbehavior is often the result of parental attitudes. Without changing these attitudes, we cannot hope for any serious change in our children. Parents must look beyond their own ego when dealing with their children. Only then can they truly assess the problem at hand and decide how to fix it.

It is often wise to seek the help of someone outside your family, someone who can judge the problem objectively and who understands G-d and your family’s goals and values.

Above all, love is the most powerful tool with which to battle problems. Yes, a healthy home must be run with discipline, but even that discipline must contain love. This cannot be manufactured or superficial, for children are more sensitive to honest emotions than adults. On the other hand, they will react with pure joy when they receive the genuine love of their parents, and they will reciprocate.

What are the roles of different family members?

Although a mother and father are equal partners, they each have unique qualities that complement each other in building a healthy home.

A mother and father must respect each other’s roles and be ready to help at a moment’s notice. When a mother and father treat each other with such respect and cooperation, their children will inevitably learn to act the same. Children must be encouraged to participate in every aspect of family life. Older children should help care for their younger brothers and sisters; then, not only will they feel the love of their parents, but they will get the experience of giving love to someone younger and more needy than them.

Parents must understand the magnitude of their many responsibilities. Building a true home is a job to be taken seriously — more seriously than the job we go to each day to earn a living. After all, there are many opportunities to make a living, but only one opportunity to build a healthy home.

ACTION

Learn to love your family in a new way. Love them not only because they are your flesh and blood, but because they are G-d’s flesh and blood.

Before putting your children to sleep, give them a new kind of kiss, one filled with the fire of your G-dly soul. Talk to them about love, and how to care for one another. You will see how this new awareness of love carries over into everything that you do.

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How to See Your Child in a More Meaningful Way

June 17th, 2014

The innocent faith of a child touches upon the simple essence of God

There is a beautiful lesson in childhood itself — above all, that a child is purely innocent, and that such innocence is the foundation of life. If we were born as adults, already prepared for the struggles of life, we would never experience the magic of childhood, the license to explore life with our eyes wide open. Childhood gives us the chance to soar through the sublime before we trudge through the quotidian.

So when you next spend time with your child — or any child — do not take the experience lightly. Look at the child intently and realize: God has given you this gift to nurture and care for, to teach good habits and the difference between right and wrong. Your attitude toward this child and the sensibilities you impart will be crucial to how his life develops and how he influences others. Most important of all: Allow your child to be him or herself; allow your children to teach you how to live a more meaningful life.

When was the last time you had a heart-to-heart talk with a younger person about the real issues of life? A talk about our place in the world and what we are supposed to do with our lives. A talk that honestly looked at pain and failure. We must all sit down calmly with our families, with our young people, and talk about our lives and aspirations.

But remember, without love, our influence will be at best incomplete and at worst, destructive. Love means sensitivity — not to our ideas and our standards, but to our children’s and, most important, to G-d’s.

As parents and teachers we must remember to be humble, to develop the trait of humility. We are not the source of guidance and information, but a vehicle for that which comes from a greater, higher place. How can we be arrogant in dispensing this knowledge? We should feel blessed with the opportunity to impart it to our students and children. Above all, remember this: Words that come from the heart enter into the heart. As a parent and teacher, you must mean what you say, and you must be a living example of what you teach.

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Sibling Relationships

June 17th, 2014

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Good evening. This is Simon Jacobson with Toward a Meaningful Life. Let me welcome you back after our small hiatus for two weeks due to very important programming, but now we’re back and I welcome you all.

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Thanksgiving: When Home Doesn’t Feel Like Home

June 17th, 2014

Mike Feder: Alright, here we are. This is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. I am your host, Mike Feder. We’re here every Sunday night from 6-7pm on WEVD 1050AM in New York. Tonight’s topic is “Thanksgiving: What Do You Do When Home Doesn’t Feel Like Home?”

First of all, I want to mention to people that we want your calls later in the show. This is such a personal, agitating topic for people, that I’d be fascinated to hear personal stories from people or worries or things that are happening with them this holiday season, especially on Thanksgiving. The number in the studio is 212-244-1050.

Before we start off, I want to read a little bit from the book that we depend on here, the blueprint for this show, Toward a Meaningful Life by Simon Jacobson, and I want to read from chapter 9, “Home and Family,” because the writing is so clear and perfect in a way. It says, “Why is home life so important? After many hours of looking for food, a bird returns to its nest, taking supreme comfort in a place that is warm and safe, far removed from the dangers and distractions of the world outside.

“A human should feel the same sense of warmth and security when he or she comes home. Your home and family are your nest, the center of your life, the hub from which all your daily experiences extend. Both as children and adults, our home and family are where we should feel most comfortable in the world.

“They determine how you make your life decisions, they shape your attitudes, your awareness, your self-esteem. A healthy home is obviously a vital ingredient in the pursuit of a meaningful life. Home is where we learn to cope and be productive, to work and play, to be comfortable with ourselves and with others. Most important, home is where we learn about happiness and about wholesomeness.

“Think about the warmth you feel when you come home after being away for a few months or even a few days.”

There’s a lot more, of course, in that chapter, but as I’m reading this, I am thinking aloud for a lot of the people who may be listening right now, especially around the time of Thanksgiving when home becomes more important for most Americans than any other holiday, how ironic and bitter they might feel upon hearing those words.

I do myself, and my feelings about it are clearly due to my home life. In the modern world, in the last couple of decades, you find millions of people who have experienced nothing but dread, anguish, worry, doubt and ambivalence about having to go home for Thanksgiving or having people to their home for Thanksgiving. How is this? How did this come to be? It’s a loaded question.

Jacobson: I feel and empathize very deeply with people who find it difficult to go back home or perhaps don’t even feel that that place is home, particularly in the holiday season when it’s so pronounced. In a sense, the saddest moments are on those holiday evenings when everyone is rushing home and there are people just walking the streets because they have nowhere to go.

And for many who are going to certain homes, they feel dread in their hearts. I feel very deeply for them, because precisely what you just read from the book which is very warming to hear, by contrast, when you grow up in a healthy home, you don’t always appreciate what you have.

It’s like being healthy with a healthy body. You don’t feel anything when you’re healthy. When you start feeling something, that’s when there’s a problem. Health is an invisible or a non-sensory feeling.

It’s the same thing with a healthy home. It’s like swimming in water for a fish; it’s just a natural thing. However, someone who’s deprived of that knows the consequences, and though they may feel bitter when they see a healthy home, that is from my point of view a healthy sign: at least they know there’s something they want that they’re not getting.

I’ve spoken to people who are so resigned that they don’t even believe that there’s such a thing as a healthy home because their home is so broken that they think that every home is that way. Except people play the game and put up a veneer because they also remember smiling, and photographs on Thanksgiving or the holidays and when they look at the photos they say, “Oh, everyone’s so happy.” But that’s the veneer, the surface. Look beneath the surface and there is all kinds of stuff going on, and I don’t just mean necessarily overt abuse; Maybe it’s just a lack of that comfort that you just read about; a lack of feeling like there’s a place to go to that’s not a battle zone.

You see, that’s what it’s about. I used the analogy of the nest very intentionally. Think of it this way. Imagine there are little baby birds and every time their parents bring them some worms they’re fighting with each other in the nest.

Feder: The parents or the baby birds?

Jacobson: The parents. What kind of education, what kind of message is that? The whole beauty of the nest, of a hearth, is the comfort that in those early formative years, where you have not yet been subject to the battle zone of life outside that threshold, outside your door, you have that comfort. You know you are surrounded by people who love you unconditionally. You feel the nurturing that no matter what happens out there, you have a safe place where you will always be accepted and will always be taken care of.

When that’s missing… let me equate it with a strong analogy: it’s literally as if a fetus has been ripped out if its mother’s womb prematurely, because in some ways, the home is an extension of the womb. Of course, it’s now an independent child, but in a healthy home there’s still a womblike sense of comfort, of warmth and of course this is a directly connected not just to the physical home but to the parents as well—the environment that they create. And when that becomes hostile and there’s a battle going on, when a war enters the home, the home ceases to be a home.

Feder: It seems—maybe it’s just from my perspective—that it’s almost the rule rather than the exception that there’s trouble these days, and people feel this way particularly around Thanksgiving. I mean, I don’t know how many people might call up here and express that feeling, but I wonder how many people will call up and say that they’re really looking forward to being with family unequivocally, that it’s a wonderful thing to do…

Jacobson: I’d love to hear that, but as usual, this show is geared to all people and particularly those who do have warm feelings about home. The question is, how do you share that warmth with people who don’t feel comfortable going home? Do you just criticize them or ignore them, or be oblivious to them? Or do we have a message for them?

I think our show is not just to discuss the problem, but also to share how you can recreate a home if you don’t have one: as you put it, what to do when your home doesn’t feel like home. Do you just accept it or do you take control of your life?

Feder: Or if you came from a home that didn’t feel like home, how do you build one out of thin air later on in your life.

Jacobson: I think that to analyze the reasons why there’s been such a breakdown of the home or family structure obviously requires looking at many factors, but the one that stands out most to me is the obsession with and consumption of materialism in our time.

You see, if you ask most people what a home is do you know what they’ll say? A dream house. A place where you have enough rooms….

Feder: A large screen TV.

Jacobson: You have enough room for all the different activities you want. That’s it’s a luxury in a sense. You see, a home is not a house, just like a nest is not just shelter. There is an element of home that’s shelter—shelter from the elements: it’s cold outside and you need a place to go, a place to sleep—but there’s something much more profound about a home. There are houses that I’ve seen, mansions with 20-30 bedrooms, and forgive the comparison, but it’s like a funeral parlor. And I’ve seen homes where there are kids running around and it’s a mess, and you say, even though it’s not physically comfortable to live in a place like this—the dishes haven’t been washed, and so on—but there’s a warmth there and you want to just sit there to take it in.

Now, I’m not suggesting that that’s a virtue per se, but my point is that what defines a home is not driven by physical comfort and materialism.

Feder: Maybe what you should do, and it’s in this chapter too, is to describe what the ideal home should be or what a home is.

Jacobson: And I want to connect it to the cosmic side in addition to what you’re describing because it’s interesting that in Jewish philosophy (based on the Midrash) it says, “Why did G-d create this universe?” And the answer is in order for us to create a home for G-d. The word “home” is used. And the way this is explained in Chassidic thought, Chassidic philosophy (Jewish mysticism), is that initially this world is not a home for G-d: it’s a hostile place, a selfish place, and not what one would call a sacred and holy environment on its own.

A human being can refine his or her particular area of this world and make it a home for G-d. So, in a way, that’s very much a microcosm of what each of us do when we build our homes. A home you can say captures the essence of why we’re here on this earth.

You come into a world that’s untamed, subject to the elements—and elements don’t just mean the weather and the seasons, but the elements mean people, corruption, greed, aggression, violence, general hostility that’s inherent in our type of existence—you take an area, you isolate it, an oasis, and you don’t just build walls to keep the rain and snow out, and put up locks and alarms to keep the criminals out, you also create a place where your soul can feel free.

At work, we’re in a battle zone. As soon as we walk out the door of our homes, we all put on our masks and our faces and the defense mechanisms that we need to survive with. When you come home, you should be able to feel as if you’re completely comfortable, as when you are all alone with yourself, like you can just let it all go without anyone judging you. This is the deepest type of comfort, recognizing that you matter and have value.

Feder: I think I must know far more people who are happier to leave their homes and go to work than they are to come back home and deal with what’s there. That’s the way the modern world seems to be.

Jacobson: Well, let’s take that back in time. A little child doesn’t want to leave home. For a young child, walking outside, out over the threshold, is like walking off the face of this earth. There is no reality outside of a child’s home. We adults find it hard to imagine why a child wouldn’t just leave an abusive home, why don’t you just get up and leave? But we’re talking about a very young child. The answer is that for a small child there is no leaving. This is his universe. The parents are like G-d. Leaving home is like leaving earth. Can we just leave earth? There’s no such thing as leaving earth so for a child stepping out of the door is a non option, period. And then, as that child grown into an adult he often doesn’t want to return to the abusive home.

That’s how deep the problem is because, by contrast, when a person doesn’t have that type of nurturing environment, not only do they not have the ability to grow up in a healthy way, but they are thrown into the battle zone long before they’re ready and able and they lack the proper coping mechanisms.

And then when a child comes into this world and doesn’t have someone who cradles him or her or someone to say, “I want you here,” or someone who has prepared the world, and the room, and a bed for him—if the child doesn’t get that message, either through words or through body language, then the child never cultivates the self-esteem to be able to go out to battle.

And then using the nest example, if a bird doesn’t have a nest to fly back to, then it can’t hunt properly or do what it has to do outside of the nest, because the roots are missing, there isn’t that springboard where it all begins, like the central area around which life orbits.

The home has been undermined by instant gratification, by the obsession with material gain, by thinking that if you have material possessions—large home, many homes, vacation homes—you solve the problem and you are in a sense creating security.

It’s a misplaced sense of where security comes from.

And I have to bring the story that I’m so fond of (even though it’s a sad story) which took place after the Communist takeover of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. The Communists tried to obliterate all religion, including Judaism, and there was one Chassidic Rebbe who greatly resisted and they arrested him. During their threats to him, they stuck a pistol to his head and said that if he didn’t cooperate, “this little gadget here has changed many people’s lives.”

The Rebbe said to them, “This little toy can frighten someone who has one world and many gods, but not someone who has one G-d and many worlds.”

Security, as with investments, requires diversification. If you put all your eggs in a materialistic basket, then you will only have what materialism offers which is temporary relief.

A home is really a taste of eternity, because that comfort, should it exist, that nurturing, lasts forever, even when that child leaves home. That’s the irony.

Feder: If things are worse now, and it seems to me that they may be, why are they worse? What went wrong in the last 20, 30, 40 years that people have such experiences like this? On my other show on BAI I talked to people about Thanksgiving, and people called in and it turned into kind of a support network for people who are damaged. All you have to do is say the word “Thanksgiving” and people are all upset.

There are people who aren’t even welcome in their own homes. What has changed so much? What has gone wrong?

Jacobson: Well, as I said, I’m sure there have always been issues in families and homes throughout history. But I do believe that the heightened rate of prosperity and the higher standard of living is definitely a contributing factor because it creates an illusion of control and security.

Whereas once upon a time, when life was more difficult physically—in the sense that the father went out to chop wood and the mother prepared the meal—there was a certain rustic, and by extension, holistic sense to life that was not so complicated.

There was no career competing with home life. There was no such thing as a profession competing with the center of life. There was one center, one hub. As soon as there are two hubs, it becomes: “Oh, it’s fun out there!” So it becomes fun to get out of the house and go do something, while someone else stays at home with the nagging children… When something outside the home became more fun than what was going on inside the home, it became almost like a hassle to go back home. When a parent walks into the home and feels like he or she doesn’t want to be there, they want to be elsewhere, the children get the same message and assume the same attitude—that this is not the place that I want to be as well.

So a healthy home has to be in a sense an extension of your body, of your life—not just a physical place where you rest your hat, but also an expression of your personal self.

You know, we hear about people hosting parties in their homes. However, how many times do you hear of people having a spiritual party at home? What I mean is, when they get together and commune with friends, talk about things that are very meaningful, with their children there.

I don’t mean a dinner at the Waldorf or some other social entertainment. I mean in a very natural, simple way—and that is what a home is about. Now, memories of holidays have become just memories. It’s like someone remembers that there must have once been a Thanksgiving or some holiday where it was really that way. People really loved to come see each other. There was a real spiritual reunion.

Feder: You see it on television commercials sometimes: the good old days on the farm.

Jacobson: So today it’s become an exotic experience, to the point where we also in surprise say, “Oh, there’s a wholesome family.” And they’re put up on a pedestal, highlighted in museums.

Feder: Normal Rockwell paintings.

Jacobson: And it is regarded as extra special. But Thanksgiving, I can only guess, but at the root of Thanksgiving lies that type of deep connection to home and family and faith. Who were the Pilgrims thanking? G-d. For saving them and bringing them to a new world where they could experience freedom from religious persecution. In how many homes, when they celebrate Thanksgiving, do people think about that?

Feder: So are you saying here that without danger, or conflict, without illness, poverty, struggle, that the home can’t… in order words, there has to be those things for the home to be a retreat? You can’t live in a world of comfort and ease and still have a good home? That’s a pretty harsh thing to say.

Jacobson: Well, I wouldn’t say that. I’d say you could but… Did you ever see the way a circle is drawn with a compass on a piece of paper? You take a compass and stick the needle in the center of the paper, keep it steady, and then draw the circle. The comforts of life are the circle. The center is the home. If a person doesn’t have a steady center, what kind of circle will it look like? Will it be jagged? Broken? Distorted? All of the above?

The comforts of life can definitely complement and be part of that center, but without the center, comforts become a distraction, and prosperity can lead you to another place which has nothing to do with your own personal center.

I would look at it this way. Forget about your physical home for a moment. Where do you feel most at home in your life? And I don’t mean in the physical sense—I mean in the psychological sense. Where do you feel most at home? When you’re sitting at your desk in front of your computer? When you’re traveling on a plane? When you’re in a restaurant with a certain type of people? Or when you’re physically in your living room or your bed? There are many options.

Feder: Or if you’re alone or with other people?

Jacobson: Where do you feel most at home, most comfortable?

Feder: Well, let me ask you this. Is there a right answer to this question?

Jacobson: No, there’s no real right answer, but that answer will reflect your experiences and whether you have a true home. Indeed, this question can serve like a little personal home test that everyone can do here. That answer will reflect what your life is about and how much of a home you really have.

Some people will answer that question, “I don’t have any real comfortable place. My comfort is running from one place to the next. If you stay in one place too long, you’ll get hurt.”

Feder: Flying around on a plane.

Jacobson: On a plane or just in concept. You know there are people who are runners; they’re always moving about. And they look like the adventurous type, but when you get right down to it, they’re really running out of fear. They don’t want to stay committed anywhere for too long because they’re afraid that they’ll get hurt, as they have in their past.

Some people are very comfortable with lack of comfort—crisis—always running. There’s always a fire burning somewhere.

Anyway, I think every one of our listeners should ask that question, “Where do you feel most at home?” I wouldn’t say there’s a right answer, because this is a very personal and subjective experience, but I’ll tell you this: there is a healthy answer and an unhealthy answer. The answer reflect either a healthy experience or an unhealthy experience.

Look, if a person says, “I don’t have a home. I never felt a home.” That’s a very true answer and a right answer for that person. So what that person needs to do is build a home somewhere. You have to have a comfortable place in this world or else you will remain a victim of circumstances and simply always be in that high-adrenaline mode of survival.

Feder: I hope later on you’re going to explain what you see as a comfortable and a good home. Meanwhile, we have Mike on the line.

Caller: Good evening. I have to admit that I never suffered any of the pains that you’re talking about. I grew up in a home that wasn’t threatening at all and I know that there are a lot of people who really do have a lot of conflicts in family situations. Have you ever seen the film “Avalon”? Are you familiar with that film? It’s one of my favorite films. If you talk about it on a societal level… As the Rabbi was saying, as we become more affluent, more materialistic, a lot of the things that spiritually kept people together disappeared, and I think that there is a search for that now, but we’re hooked on a lot of things, do you know what I’m saying?

Feder: Well, let me ask you. Do you feel that there has to be controversy and adversity and difficulty and lack of ownership for us to be comfortable in or homes, safe and secure? Does it have to be hard for us to be good?

Caller: Perhaps not. I don’t think there were any “good ol’ days.” There have always been tensions, and adversity has its own problems. But I think we have to go beyond where we are, in other words, we can’t look backwards to a time when people faced more physical adversity, we have to go to a new spiritual level, at least in this society. And we are the world leaders. We’re exporting our culture at a rapid rate, and if we can’t come together even on a family level, what does that say about the future of the world?

Feder: What are we exporting? We’re not exporting the ideas of home and family. We’re exporting jeans, McDonalds, burgers…

Caller: Exactly. So these are things that really dissolve traditional situations; in other words, traditional cultures come apart when assaulted by this. We have.

Feder: I agree.

Jacobson: Thanks Mike for your call. My comment echoes obviously what we’re saying here, and it’s good to see someone who does have a healthy home life…

Feder: He’s going to be the only one, I’m telling you.

Jacobson: However, I would say to Mike that it’s incumbent upon him to share his experience with those who don’t have that warmth, perhaps inviting someone who does not have a home in the same sense to his Thanksgiving dinner.

Feder: Invite a stranger into your house?

Jacobson: Well, obviously a stranger that you’re comfortable with. I wouldn’t just go out in the street unless you’re comfortable with that, but I’m sure there are people at work, associates, or others who don’t have a place to go, and maybe create that home environment, because when we warm others in our homes, our homes get warmer as well.

Feder: Okay, we have Maria on the line.

Caller: I’d like to comment about what the Rabbi said before about being on the run, and it being adventurous. You know, you have to understand that sometimes what looks like a high adrenaline level can be a lust for life. It really isn’t something that you’re running away from personally. In some situations that may be, but sometimes people just love to be on the go…

Feder: So it’s a positive thing…

Caller: So you can’t look at it like a bad thing either.

Jacobson: Oh no, Maria, I completely agree. When that experience is coming from a point of strength and not fear that is adventure. But I believe that even that adventurous type, I must say I have a sense of it myself, also needs a nest. Not just a place to rest from adventure to adventure, but that type of comfort and security. And I would think that a real exciting home, a dynamic home with parents, is adventurous as well; that it’s part of the adventure. And that experience just extends out from there—you bring the home life out into the world and the world back into the home in a very positive way. That would be the ultimate—where you have the benefits of all levels of experience, where you have both the nest and the ability to fly.

Caller: See, we don’t live in a traditional world anymore, and like things don’t happen with tradition. Tradition is very good but you know you have to let a new aspect of life come in. You know, some people don’t have the luxury of being at one with their family, and maybe they’re just totally different from their family, you know? Maybe their family doesn’t understand them or they don’t understand their family, and they need to live totally different destiny than what the traditional family is living.

Jacobson: I would agree with that. The question really is, can a person really survive without any family at all? Even if they’ve been alienated or can’t identify with their family’s life, I still think that in this world that we live in, a person like that would have to build their own home and perhaps their own family in their own image.

Caller: Oh no. Everybody should have a nest to come home to, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a traditional nest. It can just be a set address.

Feder: So where are you going to be next Thursday?

Caller: Home with my mother and father and my boyfriend. I mean, I would love to be away traveling somewhere, experiencing something else, but for financial reasons, unfortunately that’s not going to happen.

Feder: So you’re forced to go home, Maria.

Caller: No, not forced. I choose to be home. I wanted to be with my mother and father, especially since the millennium’s coming and you have to thank G-d every day because you never know when it’s going to go.

Jacobson: Well Maria, I wish you a happy holiday. I have to say, just to add one point that I think is good—because Maria’s points were really good about adventure—because another factor is that I think a lot of people see home as being boring. The same people, the same walls. It can be boring if there’s no life going on there. If no one’s around, it’s going to be very boring.

Feder: So what is the life that should be going on in a home? Let’s get down to it. I mean, aside from my wife, who happens to be an exciting person, it’s so boring.

Jacobson: The way Maria was describing the “traditional home,” doesn’t sound like anyone would want that. Allow me to define what a healthy traditional home is. I would say that a vital, dynamic home is directly connected to spiritual energy. And spiritual energy, just before anybody jumps on this, does not mean necessarily religion and tradition in the traditional and stereotypical way. Spiritual energy means people who are embracing life, celebrating life, celebrating the marrow of life. It means people who talk about things that are really meaningful, where there’s a certain level of intelligence (people are intelligent in different ways), an honesty going on, it’s a place that promotes growth, you look forward to speaking to the people in your home, whether it’s parents or children or a spouse. It’s not just a place of comfort, where you can just lay back, but a place where you can really talk about things comfortably—not where you have to measure every word because your employer or some other person may not like it. Egos are not as dominant in a healthy home as spirit, as common goals, or larger visions. Even a discussion like Maria implied where you completely disagree with your parents is welcome in a home, where there can be a dialogue, disagreements, arguments (on an intelligent level—not just out of insecurity or emotional outbursts)…

Feder: One of the recommendations in this book of yours here is to throw the TV out. I’m putting it bluntly, but it sort of says that in a polite way.

Jacobson: I had many thoughts before I put that line in; it was definitely a suggestion from the Rebbe that I quoted here, particularly in our time and age. But you know, in the 50s and 60s it was a more innocent time and people thought, “Television is a necessity in life.” Today, in many, many homes, it became so much a part of our life that it’s difficult to just amputate, but yes, I would definitely recommend not necessarily throwing it out but minimizing it, because television is a perfect symbol of what is wrong—and I’m not one of the fire and brimstone types—for example when you see the mesmerizing, hypnotic effect on children. That alone is enough reason to understand its power.

Now, television could be used in a very powerful way, a very educational way, but when the number of hours spent, the consumption of it to the point of obsession (and I know what television is, I’ve seen television, I can’t say I grew up with it to the same extent, but I’ve been exposed), besides numbing the mind, the visual images have very little to do with the soul, with your soul. And television just accelerates the process of creating an identity outside of yourself. Whreas the idea of being at home is creating a home for your spirit. In answer to the question, “So where’s your home?” ultimately you’d better have a home right here—inside your heart and soul…

Feder: The rabbi is now pointing to his heart!

Jacobson: And it’s being at home with the soul, with the spirit, with meaning, with a higher purpose and a higher calling, and in a sense the bricks and the mortar and the walls all are there to be a vehicle for that type of expression. The healthiest thing I can hear is when someone says, “I’m going home for Thanksgiving, and do you know what I’m going to talk about there? Things that really matter to me this year. And I have someone to talk to, because I have a wise father or a wise grandfather or a wise grandmother or mother, aunts, uncle, brothers or sister.”

Feder: Okay, we have Mark on the air.

Caller: Hi. It’s a very good show. What I wanted to talk about was the situation where there has been a divorce and a child is growing up in more than one home. Number one, how do you make a child comfortable, and then, if you look at it long term, the fact that children are in a separated home, or divorced homes, how can a person create an appropriate environment for their kids?

Feder: Are you speaking from personal experience?

Caller: Yes I am.

Feder: So next Thursday, what’s your situation?

Caller: This year I don’t have my son.

Feder: That must be pretty bad.

Caller: Well, I think it’s good for him to be with his mother. I think it’s a question of making the child comfortable and being comfortable with both his mother and father.

Feder: So where will you be?

Caller: I’ll be with friends.

Jacobson: Well, Mark’s point is very good because with so many broken families—broken I mean as far as parents go—it’s critical to address the idea, how do you create a home when there isn’t a home?

Feder: A traditional home?

Jacobson: Yes. Like if a person is going home and they don’t feel that there’s a home for them there. I think that’s why, to continue the thought about the spirit, that when there’s a certain comfort with your soul and an understanding of why you’re here on this Earth, then you can begin to create a home in an unconventional way. A person growing up, for instance, in a family that they just can’t go back to on the holidays, or they do go back and they’re gritting their teeth, for a person like that it’s critical that they don’t ignore that and just say, okay I’ll get over it until next year. They have to create their own environment, as Mark just suggested, being with friends, friends who are nurturing. Perhaps you can’t replace your father and your mother, or the same type of home experience, but it should be nurturing, not just superficial. A nurturing type of environment where you can talk about values that matter and the pure parts of life.

And I know people sometimes say, “Hey, let’s just party.” Yes, there’s a time to party and there’s a time to be in a nest. If you don’t have one, you must create one, because it will come back to haunt you one day. You need to have that type of comfort.

In situations where people are divorced (and often those divorces are for the best, because life was not just working: there was too much tension and hostility in the family, in the home), obviously G-d blesses in all different ways, and in Mark’s situation I give him my blessing that his son should find peace and be able to reconcile and come to peace with the fact that he may celebrate one Thanksgiving here and there. This situation is becoming more of the norm, but I still believe that there’s a lot of hope, because a child like that may learn, if he doesn’t get bitter, he may learn from the mistakes of his parents or others how to build a home one day.

The key is not to get so resigned that you say, “I don’t want to build a home and family and to my children what my parents did to me.” In other words, to find a way to build a home and family and not do what your parents did. And I go back to my initial statement about G-d wanting a home in this world. That should give us all encouragement, because G-d is also homeless, in a way.

Feder: Could you expand on that a little?

Jacobson: Well, I mentioned it earlier. The fact that G-d said, “I desire to have a home, an abode, in this universe…”

Feder: But G-d created this world.

Jacobson: Created the world, but created an agnostic world that is hostile to anything that’s G-dly. The fact is that so many people deny G-d’s existence, so many people are greedy, so many are selfish and unjust to each other, which is hardly what G-d planned.

G-d gave us free will. And that means that G-d gave us elements, He gave us the raw elements and said we can do two things with them. We can hurt each other with them or we can build a home for our souls, which by extension, is a home for Me.

So until we do that, G-d roams (so to speak) the spiritual cosmos in His own way, and does not feel comfortable in your home and my home unless you make Him comfortable. And that requires creating an environment that is G-dly, that is holy, that is sacred.

Feder: Should we feel guilty if we don’t do this? Are we responsible for G-d being homeless?

Jacobson: If guilt will help and it’s constructive guilt, great. If it’s just guilt that’s demoralizing, then don’t feel guilty. I would think of it as a gift, as an unbelievable power, that it’s not just that we build homes for each other and for ourselves… In a way, yes, we have the power to create something that’s real, even for G-d. It’s not just a game between human beings that humans play; life has real stakes.

I think that when we create that comfort for ourselves, for our purpose, for our mission, we are inviting G-d into our home. I’ll put it to you in simplest terms: Building a home is inviting G-d into your life.

When I say G-d, obviously it means different things to different people. What I mean is a higher purpose, something that’s not human, something that’s beyond, that’s Divine. And that is really what it’s about. Building a home for G-d and allowing G-d into your life, your meals, into your room, into the intimate part of your life, whatever you are doing.

It’s the difference between eating a meal and just indulging in it, and eating a meal and acknowledging that it was given to me and I’m going to use it for something constructive, something that promotes growth.

Feder: We’ve been talking about homes, traditional homes. Now, it says in the book Toward a Meaningful Life that the mother is the foundation of the home. Now, this could probably cause a little touchiness in a lot of people out there in the world these days, for reasons which could be complex. But that’s what it says here. The mother is the foundation of the home. Can you explain what’s meant by that?

Jacobson: I hope it’s not taken as sexist. It’s actually taken from a verse in the Bible, in the Torah, and in the Midrash, which talks about the foundation of the home. In many ways you find that though a healthy home requires both a mother and a father, in some ways the nurturing element, and also that sensitivity—the sixth sense—of what is right for the environment—a mother often has that gentleness and sensitivity more than a father does.

That may be as a result of the father’s perhaps being involved more in the expression and aggressive parts of life and the mother being the carrier of life…

Feder: She’s the original home…

Jacobson: But I want to make it clear, as we’ve discussed several times on the show, that there’s a masculine and a feminine side to every human being. And therefore, there’s a mother in each of us and a father in each of us. And when we talk about mother and father, we’re talking about the mothering and the feminine qualities.

Feder: And that’s what’s the foundation of a home.

Jacobson: Exactly. Obviously, if a woman is not doing it in a feminine way it will not be a true home. But obviously a woman has been blessed with that feminine nature—let’s call it the “dominant” gene, and in that sense she has that sensitivity. And often it is the woman who will be the strong spine that will keep a home together.

Feder: We have Steve on a car phone.

Caller: I think we should tell our women not to think it’s undignified or something less than a career to become a full-time mother. I refer you to Proverbs 31 which talks about the G-d-fearing woman, that raising a successful family is something to aspire to, and it shouldn’t be frowned upon.

Jacobson: Okay, thank you Steve. I appreciate that. You have Proverbs with you while you’re driving?

Feder: Steve, don’t be reading the Bible while you’re driving! Don’t be calling up either while you’re driving!

Okay, we have Jennifer on the line.

Caller: Hi Rabbi Jacobson. First of all, I want to say what a beautiful show that you have. And secondly, my question is about Thanksgiving. How does an American Jew make this secular holiday of Thanksgiving a more Jewish experience? Are there any special brachas to say or anything to do?

Jacobson: That’s a good question! Well, there are kosher turkeys.

Feder: That’s a start.

Jacobson: I didn’t mean it in the metaphorical sense. I meant it in the literal sense: a turkey that’s slaughtered in the proper way. But I must say this, and I heard it from my Rebbe: Thanksgiving is a very universal and non-denominational holiday, so therefore it’s not considered to be anything that’s not Jewish in a sense. It’s thanking G-d for miracles, for salvations, for religious freedom.

How to make it Jewish? Well, look, it’s not per se a Jewish holiday either. Chanukah’s coming just around the corner and it has a very similar message as Thanksgiving, where we acknowledge the victory and the conquest of the few over the many, of religious freedom as well. I think Thanksgiving is more of an opportunity to use the message to share with others and say, “Here’s an opportunity for us to bring G-d into our lives and recognize what it really is to build a home in a proper way.”

I’m not aware of any particular blessings that should be said on Thanksgiving. I don’t know that we need to make it into a Jewish holiday per se.

Feder: Well, it’s not.

Jacobson: No, I mean for a Jew to go out and try to make it Jewish. I just think that the message is a very G-dly one when it’s used properly, but it’s a great question.

Feder: Okay, thank you. We have Jim on the line.

Caller: Hi. It’s a great show. I’m just curious what your opinion might be. Two parents at war, three-year separation and two teen-age daughters that are pulled and pushed and all that. And every year, what it’s been is that we split them up—dinner at her house, dessert at mine. And the kids are getting sick of it. Forget about G-d—G-d’s not even in it. Do I just give in and let them stay at their mother’s and enjoy the festivity and the peace that comes with just being at one location?

Jacobson: Painful question, but I’ll say this. Since I don’t know the details and the particulars, it’s hard for me to respond because I’m not sure what you mean by giving in. Are you giving in or not giving in for something that is petty and egoistic…?

Caller: Petty. And I’m just looking for something that might be an inspiration to do the right thing.

Jacobson: Well, you have to remember, Jim, and I’ll put it to you as bluntly as I can, that your children are your legacy. Ultimately, the children are more important… Do you know the story with King Solomon and the two women? There was a child born and no one knew who the mother was, and King Solomon said, cut the child in half, and one woman said, “Great!” And the other woman said, “No. I would rather see the child be whole even if it means that I have to give it up.” And King Solomon realized that that was the real mother.

Even if giving in is difficult and hard to swallow, we have to remember that our children are our future. We pray to G-d that our children will live long and be healthy, and how they see you behave is how they will behave. The fact that there are things that sometimes we swallow, that itself is the message, and just step away from the personal side.

Now I would be happy to discuss this further. Leave your number with Steve the engineer and I’d be happy to speak to you more about it later. But that’s the general statement that I would make and I think it’s more of a personal issue that probably would better be discussed privately.

Caller: Thank you and I appreciate it. I like your word “legacy.” I think you’re right; the kids are watching us.

Feder: Good luck to you Jim.

Okay, we have one last call here before we move on. Ellen, you’re on the air.

Caller: Good evening Rabbi and gentlemen. The one word that I’ve been listening for since the beginning of this broadcast is the word “love.” Now, a home is a beautiful place, it’s the center of everybody’s life; it’s sort of like your magnet that holds you together, but the word love is so very important because if there’s love in the home, if you have love for your family, you have love for whomever is living with you, you have love for yourself, then you automatically have love for G-d and the rest of the world and then your home is a beautiful place.

Jacobson: I find it actually surprising that we didn’t use the word love. That’s very interesting. I thank you for that.

Feder: That’s because we’re men and we’re not natural nurturers, you see.

Jacobson: No, the point is very well taken. When I was talking before about nurturing and acceptance and G-d, I really obviously meant the word love, but the word love captures it all. However, people will ask, how do you bring love into a home where there is no love? Or when there was broken love or broken trust…, and I think it has a lot to do with parents disliking themselves, not loving themselves, that causes them to not allow love to arise, to emerge to the surface in the home.

But, yes, love is an extremely important word.

Feder: So where are you going to be Thursday, Ellen?

Caller: I’m going to be with my daughters and their children and a lot of love.

Feder: So you’re going to be at their house?

Caller: Yes, we’re going to their house, my son and I, and they are going to cook. And we’ll be with friends and family, but the main ingredient in our lives, and it’s always been in our lives, is love. Love for each other and love for G-d, and that is the magic circle that you spoke about before, love. It’s almost like the planets going around or us going around. The center is love and G-d and it’s such a beautiful thing.

Jacobson: Thank you so much for the call Ellen because it’s really been warming to hear.

Feder: Somebody called in earlier and asked how to get the book Toward a Meaningful Life; so let me just say that the book is still available in bookstores from William Morrow.

Jacobson: On amazon.com as well.

Feder: You can also order it by getting in touch with us. And by the way, if you want to get in touch with us to give us your comments or ask questions, you can call us at 1-800-3MEANING, which is 1-800-363-2646. You can also email us at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com and we have our website which is www.meaningfullife.com, and you can download transcripts of the radio program from past shows. Also, if you want to write to us, the address is: The Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11213.

Before we go into our final few minutes here, did you want to mention anything about who is bringing the program to us tonight?

Jacobson: People who are helping to build a home, as a matter of fact, the people who support this show are some of the pillars helping to build the Meaningful Life Center, are some who grew up in very healthy homes and some who did not, and want to help bring a home to people everywhere. And that home means human beings who have a message that makes you feel that you matter, that you have something indispensable to contribute. I just want to mention some of those people, beginning with Ivan Stux, Sharon Ganz, Robert Klein, James Garfinkel, James and Anne Altucher, Dina and David Reis, Ted Doll and all those others who know who they are and those who don’t know yet who they are yet who help us out.

Feder: Now, speaking of which, although WEVD, which should obviously be giving us free airtime out of the goodness of their hearts, they don’t. So we really do need your help as listeners, and we get a lot of people who call up and send emails and contact us in all different sorts of ways, and we really could use your help here to keep the programs going, to sponsor them. We have requests all the time how to do it, and it’s simple: you just call us up at 1-800-3MEANING, and you can pledge money. A dollar or $100,000, we’ll take whatever you want to give us.

You keep reading in the papers all the time that people are making tens of thousands of dollars week after week in the stock market. Throw a little our way so that we can help fund these programs and bring this kind of meaning and light into people’s lives, if we do.

Jacobson: If you call in, ask for our newsletter which we’ll be sending out in the next few weeks called “Meanings,” and it will have in it a lot about this issue of how to create a home and how to create that type of personal connection, a loving home… there, we used the word—and we’ll be happy to send a free copy of the newsletter to anyone who calls in.

Feder: So next Thursday is Thanksgiving, and obviously, we’ve been hearing from a lot of people who are divided and in pain and are wondering what to do; some people have the answers, some people don’t. As we go into next week and we all celebrate the holiday in a different way, how do we make the best of it? What do we look for? What do we try to create next Thursday?

Jacobson: Everyone in his or her own particular situation—we’ll have to cover several extremes—those of us who have found love in our lives, and a home in our lives, whether it’s a home within our family structure, within the building, the actual house where we grew up and where we’re going for the holidays—obviously it gives us a great opportunity to reinforce and reaffirm the contract of that type of loving home—but also recognize that it shouldn’t just suffice to have our own gifts, but we should share them with others. Invite someone to your home perhaps that has not had that opportunity, bring light to others, remembering that when it’s cold outside, there are two ways to warm up: one is to put on a fur coat and keep warm yourself in your own environment and the other is to light a fire, a flame, a hearth where others are warmed as well.

So those of us who are celebrating the holiday and have that, and appreciate that gift, should give thanksgiving for it and at the same time recognize that thanksgiving also means an obligation, a gift, a responsibility to share that with others.

Feder: Well, there are indeed shelters where people can go…

Jacobson: On the other extreme, for those of us who do not have that, who have been deprived of that type of home and wonder what kind of thanksgiving we’re giving… I’ve advised some friends of mine who really had a great difficulty going home, that maybe they shouldn’t go home this year if they really don’t feel that they’re at home there. Because perhaps they’re just perpetuating the myth, the illusion, and maybe they should go to friends and travel somewhere where they do find someone who they really feel good with, and comfortable with.

And though it’s a break of tradition—but the break has happened under the surface anyway sometimes—and it’s just carrying on a façade. For some people that’s healthier because it allows them perhaps to explore other options.

For those of us who have no choice, because we’re either stuck in the situation or we have to be in that photograph for one reason or another, or there may be a will that’s being written soon…

Feder: I can’t believe you said that!

Jacobson: Then in that type of environment I think it’s critical to recognize that you should stop being a victim of your family, a victim of circumstances. Maybe you should bring some love into that home and just say, “You know, once and for all, I’m going to do something that’s really the way the home should be lived.” And maybe start building your own home and bring your future spouse or your spouse and say, “This is what my home is like.” Not in a way of pushing it into their face, but in a way of expressing that we are in control of our own circumstances.

And on a final note, I do want to invite people to my Wednesday night class, every Wednesday night at 8pm at 346 West 89^th St., on the corner of Riverside Drive.

Feder: Okay. Thank you very much. Happy Thanksgiving.

Tags: family, abuse, home, anxiety
Posted in Personal Life, Home & Family, Thanksgiving | 1 Comment »

Abusive Relationships

June 17th, 2014

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: This is Simon Jacobson. Good evening and welcome to the show. This week we will be dealing with a sensitive and difficult topic because of its personal nature. The topic is “Abusive Relationships.”

Unfortunately, it’s one of those topics that needs to be addressed because of its prevalence—more than we would like in our lives—to the point where many people have grown up either in an abusive home or have been victims of abusive relationships. Part of the abuse is also the silence that surrounds it (they say that the silence is worse than the abuse), because the silence invalidates us and doesn’t even allow us to express our feelings in these situations. That’s part of the abusive cycle or pattern that quiets and silences us.

So I thought it would be a highly appropriate topic for this show, obviously with the disclaimer that we can hardly exhaust the issue on a show like this, yet, we can at least touch upon it and give the courage and the ability to speak about it.

I believe one of the first ways of freeing ourselves from being hostages, from the tentacles of any type of abusive situation is the ability to communicate, to speak, to ask, to challenge. One of the unfortunate symptoms of abuse is the silence that surrounds it. The cover up is worse than the actual crime.

This topic is not something that I chose to address necessarily, it’s just a reality that we live in. So reflecting that reality, I believe that this show is some type of a mirror that reflects real situations. Sometimes they’re beautiful situations but sometimes they’re painful ones. I don’t think we should hesitate or resist the need to address them.

As always, the phones are open and you can call in at 212-244-1050.

I’d like to begin with a few of the points or questions that I’ve been asked about the issue of abuse, both in the classes that I give and places I travel to and people I meet. It’s a topic that’s on many people’s minds, and once they have the courage and the strength and the wherewithal to address it, there are interesting things that come up, particularly from people who have been in that type of situation.

Here are some of the questions that I’ve heard around the topic of abusive relationships. One is, can we really get over them? Is it a situation that creates a victim forever? Can we free ourselves from a situation like that?

Others ask the question, Is childhood abuse, growing up in an abusive home a myth? Is it as common as some say? Is it really much more prevalent than we would like to believe, or, as many have recently argued, is it fabricated? Is it something that is either suggested to children in therapy, or in other situations where there’s suggestibility and people want to believe something, can the suggestion of a therapist or a psychologist create that myth, even if people don’t have direct memories of abuse in their homes, That’s what some argue.

Can a child protect him or herself from abusive adults? Clearly, a child is, in a sense, a victim in the hands of that adult. So if the child is vulnerable, how can a child protect itself?

And more importantly, there are questions about G-d. Why doesn’t G-d protect the child? That is a particularly painful question because of its nature—G-d creates life, gives life to a child, and then puts him in a situation, in a home, where he may endure abuse. Why would G-d do something so cruel to a child that would allow such a thing to a vulnerable child? It’s one thing with an adult who has the tools and the resources to protect him or herself, but a child…

Can we heal from these childhood wounds? And how can we help other children who are suffering in the hands of abusive adults or parents?

Of course when you deal with abuse, it’s not just about children and parents, it means abuse in a broader sense, but to divide it into two, one is abuse where you have someone who is not an equal, whether it’s a student, or a child, someone who’s vulnerable and is abused by someone who is a superior or in a position of authority, and then there’s abuse where there are two equals, so to speak, two adults, and so on.

I’d like to begin with the topic, is abuse as prevalent as some would like to say or is it fabricated? I’d like to throw that question out to anyone out there who would like to comment on that, particularly if there are any psychologists or social workers or therapists listening to the show. People who have been in the field obviously have experience and it’s not an issue of theory—my theory vs. someone else’s theory. Experience is really what should dictate our view on this topic: is it as prevalent as some would have us believe or is it really exaggerated?

The question is really a very important one because in truth, most of us are uncomfortable when we hear of horrible situations where some person abuses another, or someone grows up in an abusive environment. And if we could believe that it’s not all that prevalent, in a way it allows us to sleep a little more peacefully.

However, if it is a real reality and much more common than we would like to believe, the fact that we are unaware of it should not be a reason not to address it.

I should begin by saying that when you’re dealing with an issue like abuse, there are many, many levels of it, from the most overt and extreme level of abuse where somebody actually physically, emotionally, or psychologically or sexually abuses another person, and then there’s abuse on a more subtle level.

It can be verbal abuse, it can be subtle (in the sense where it’s abuse but it can be borderline abuse), or it can be an abuse where a parent abandons the child. It may not be active abuse but can be what is called passive abuse, where a parent is not available for a child. Or another form of abuse is when someone who is expected or is obligated to be in a situation to be there as a support abandons that post.

So really, when you broaden the spectrum, one can say that each of us has endured some type of abusive situation in our lives. We live now in America in a more peaceful time, but many of our parents… my parents are refugees who came over from Russia after World War II. In many ways they grew up in an abusive environment as well. When I say abusive, they may have had healthy homes and wonderful parents, however the abuses were that they were uprooted from a community, from the cities they lived in, the language they spoke, and had to transplant their lives in the United States.

That is the type of abuse that is based on circumstances. Why do I call it abuse? The truth is it shouldn’t be called abuse, it should be called the traumas of relocation, of war, and so on. But the reason I want to connect it to the level of abuse is that I want to show that all of us in some way are affected by the environment around us. Abuse doesn’t always mean that someone physically or in some immediate way abused you, but that life itself is abusive.

Interestingly, in the Kabbalah, when you talk about this in the context of Jewish mysticism where reality and life is put in the context of a larger cosmic picture, it explains there that there is a concept called tzimtzum. Some of you listeners may be aware of the concept, in Lurianic Kabbalah, which is from Reb Isaac Luria, the holy Arizal who lived in the 16^th century, who explains the concept of tzimtzum. Tzimtzum literally means contraction. But it refers to, on a cosmic level, a cosmic black hole where all existential issues that we struggle with originate.

What that means is that G-d, in some mysterious way, conceals His presence, His energy, His manifestation from existence, which allows for our independent existence to be, and for me, for you, to walk around and feel that we are self-contained individuals.

In a way, that is the first abusive state. Not that G-d abused us, G-d forbid, but rather an abusive state because it created a dichotomy where we can imagine or have an illusion of an existence independent of anything around us, which really allows the potential for any type of abuse.

So in itself it’s not an abusive situation—in fact, if we felt at all times that we’re connected to our source of sustenance, or we’re connected to our mission, none of us would be able to hurt another person.

The fact is that all human beings, and I speak again from this cosmic perspective, are all like musical notes in one large musical composition. So how is it possible that one musical note can harm another in any way? Or to use the example of the human body, we’re like one large organism. One person may be the right arm, the left arm, the heart, the liver, the mind. And we’re are all part of one large organism.

So how is it possible that one person can hurt another? Because we don’t feel and sense that we’re part of one family, to the point the we can be selfish and hurt others.

I don’t just mean strangers, I mean even our own children, our own relatives, our spouses. The fact is, we feel we are self-contained and another person is not you. I’ll go even a step beyond that—we can even abuse ourselves. We can humiliate ourselves, we can look at ourselves with low self-esteem. And all this, all different forms of abuse, is all the result of a certain dichotomy, where we are not in touch with our mission; we are not in touch with our source.

It is interesting that animals, the animal kingdom, are not abusive to each other. They follow a script. It’s true there are animals that are predators, and others are their prey. But there’s a natural balance that’s part of the script of nature. And they just follow that order.

It is the human being who has free will, who has the ability to sense that “I am not connected to some type of order, and therefore I can behave in any kind of outrageous, abusive fashion.”

So in essence, existence itself is an abusive one, and life is harsh. That doesn’t necessarily justify any of us adding to that type of situation, or exaggerating. I’m just stating it for the record to be able to put things in context.

When we know that, then we know what challenge we are faced with when we’re dealing with abusive situations.

Looking at it in a psychological way, the psychology of life is such that a newborn child, or a child in its mother’s womb, cannot be abused if the mother is healthy. Of course it can be abused if the mother is an alcoholic or in some other way ingests foods or other items that may be destructive to the child, but in a natural environment, a child in its mother’s womb is sustained by the food and by the air that the mother eats and breathes. And for that child, until there is some type of tense situation, tension, or abuse, that child is in a healthy environment.

What happens is that since human beings are human and parents aren’t perfect, parents may begin to abuse that child in different ways, either in a passive way through abandonment or not providing the proper needs, or in an aggressive way, with overt abuse: a parent who simply is not fit to be a parent and just uses the child as an object and doesn’t treat it like a human being.

Okay, we have Arty on line one.

Caller: Hi. I have a question. I’ve worked in a place for many years and over the years the people come and go. I work in a very large section, there are four different sections, and they hire certain people like temps and people who come in to work part-time or on a temporary basis, and over the years generally people come and go.

A young girl came in to work as a temp about a year and a half ago. I really didn’t pay attention to her generally and the last few weeks we became very friendly. Generally she’s very complimentary and very flattering to me. Right after I got a haircut, she put her fingers through my hair, and generally she always likes what I wear (we have a uniform that we wear, but sometimes on Fridays you wear what you want) and she’s always flattering me.

Jacobson: Is there a question?

Caller: Well, I want to ask how would you interpret something like this? Is it a friendship or a flirtation, so to speak? I never really noticed it before but last five or six weeks she’s been very, very nice. She’s from South America…

Jacobson: Is she your age?

Caller: No, she’s younger than I am.

Jacobson: Much younger?

Caller: Yeah, she’s about 20-23 years younger. She doesn’t know how old I am. As I said, I never noticed her really, I never said good morning or good night, and now it’s become a very friendly thing. I mean, she’s married and as a matter of fact her husband works in the office, not in my department, but he’s been working there for about ten years.

Jacobson: Are you married?

Caller: No, I’m divorced.

Jacobson: Well, if she’s married then obviously she has a relationship that she’s in and I would be very careful. The topic of this show is abusive relationships, and you don’t want this to turn into an abusive relationship. So I think it’s a kind gesture and I think it’s kind of her to be friendly, but I think you should be cautious and wary, I mean, she’s a married woman and you should not really be getting involved in any way that’s beyond just a friendly co-worker.

Caller: No, I know nothing will materialize from it but she’s come to the point where she’s coming on really strong. It’s not that anyone notices in the office.

Jacobson: Listen, Arty, you’re an adult and you have to be disciplined and behave in a way that’s appropriate.

Well, as a segue, when you say abusive relationships, abusive relationships can also be between adults who are at work and co-workers and people who prey upon someone who may be vulnerable and needy and stuff like that.

Obviously, this is all in the context of what we’re discussing here.

(Announcement break)

Jacobson: The first abusive relationship that I would like to address is the one which always touches me most because of the painful implications which is abuse against children, children in the hands of parents, because I believe that all abuse, even as adults, always begins at home, in what we experienced and in what we’ve seen around us.

The reason I began by discussing this on a cosmic level, is not that I wanted to create some type of abstract theory, but rather to be able to put things in context so that we should understand that we live in a world that has the potential for abuse at all times. Even if you don’t meet an abusive person, even if everything  seems healthy, there’s always that potential because once we’re out of the womb, we’re not in that type of connection, we don’t sense the intricate and intrinsic thread that connects us all, then there’s always the potential for one person to hurt another.

It may be very subtle or it may be very overt, but that’s just a question of measure. Is abuse something that can be measured by quantity? Obviously there’s no question that very physical or overt abuse is much more reprehensible, but conceptually speaking, any time you ignore another person, any time that you’re insensitive to another person, even if they can defend themselves and even if we won’t call that an abusive behavior because it may not cause any damage, that is a reflection of the intrinsic dichotomy in existence itself.

The fact that there are parents or people who can abuse someone in a much more overt way, on a much more extreme level, originates from inability of seeing that existence and all people are part of one higher truth and one higher reality.

So talking about children in vulnerable situations, I want to address one of the questions I began with earlier. I personally find that abusive homes are much more prevalent than most people would like to believe. It may be a result of our own highly materialistic, prosperous times, or it may be a result of something that exists from generations back. I can’t answer whether things are worse today than they were or not. But one thing’s for sure. Today things are spoken about more. And I think that’s what makes some people uncomfortable to the extent that they suggest there’s an exaggeration of abusive situations in homes.

From my personal experience, I lean that it’s much more prevalent than we would like to believe; however, because of the discomfort involved, many of us would just like to push it under the carpet and not address it.

The question, of course, is on G-d. What exactly is going on? How could G-d put a child into a home like that? And how does G-d help protect the child?

There’s an interesting phenomenon that occurs during extreme situations of abuse. I’ll assume that our listeners all know what hypothermia is—hypothermia is a state of being which usually occurs with young children who fall under the ice, or fall into very cold water. The body goes into a state of hypothermia where, in order to preserve the vital organs, the entire body shuts down—the blood circulation, the heartbeat—to the point that people may even think that the person is dead. There was a time when they thought children were dead, unfortunately, even though they weren’t.

However, the truth is, when the body is in a state of hypothermia, the body is protecting itself. I always found it literally a miracle that the body has that type of wisdom to know that it has to protect itself to the point of going into such a state.

I think that there’s a concept, and this is my own coinage, called psychological hypothermia. It’s been demonstrated psychologically that children who have suffered serious abuse go into an out-of-body state; that when a child endures serious abuse in the hands of a parent, the child simply cannot tolerate the fact that a parent who’s supposed to be a source of love can hurt the child. Remember for a child there’s nothing outside of the home. Walking over that threshold is like walking off the planet. So this is its sustenance. For a young child, a parent is all that exists.

A child cannot accept that a parent who is loving could hurt it, so a child goes into this state of “psychological hypothermia,” where they almost cut themselves off from that experience. I’ve always wondered where that wisdom came from.

Now in no way am I suggesting that abuse is a positive thing, but perhaps that’s G-d’s way of intervening.

It is true that G-d cannot take away free will, and each of us has the power to hurt another human being. Parents particularly are blessed with the greatest gift of all, the gift of life. But as every gift that is given to us, we’re also given the will and the gift of being able to choose to protect, nurture, and cultivate that life in our lives. However, the other side of the coin is that we also have the choice to in some way hurt or abuse that person.

So G-d cannot take away that free will. And as difficult as it is to understand, it’s part of the mystery of the Holocaust, a personal holocaust, the mystery of pain, and the mystery of loss. We will never understand why people are hurt in that way. But it is part of the mystery of existence itself that we must have free will, because if there were no free will, then basically there would be no purpose for our lives.

A writer, a cynic once said that we must believe in free will—we have no choice.

So free will is a necessity; an inherent component in existence that among other things allows for the potential for hurting and abusing someone. Yet, for every challenge that is given to us in our lives, we’re also provided with resources to protect ourselves. Children who have suffered serious abuse sometimes, in a way, lock up the real child in themselves into a “closet” or a “box,” while another personality emerges that endures the abuse. That’s why children who have suffered serious abuse have this type of personality, not a split personality, but one where they are able to create another reality in order to be able to tolerate life. In a way, the child that was really there is locked up. And as they grow up into adults, the difficulty in their lives is to be able to reintegrate, to reconnect to real life. This is what’s called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or other names that are used in psychological terms.

This is an extreme example, of course, but if we’re looking for G-d, meaning where G-d is in all this, sometimes it is G-d working in mysterious ways that helps protect the child from the abuse of its parent, so that one day, when it is able to emerge and leave home, that child within can return and reclaim its own innocence, its own beauty.

So G-d works in mysterious ways and the key is to know that there’s hope that no matter what situation you’ve ever been in, no matter how abusive, it is incumbent upon you, and it behooves you, to find a way through it. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It may be difficult, it may seem impossible, but it’s critical to find those friends, healthy friends, who will lend that supporting hand that helps you reconnect to G-d, reconnect to your soul, reconnect to the resources that allow you to get out of the difficult situation.

Unfortunately, part of abuse is the perpetuation and victimization, where we continue to be connected either directly or indirectly to those painful situations.

I find people who are literally the most refined human beings who have come through the most horrendous and unbearable situations. One could not imagine how one could have grown up under those circumstances, yet they have, and they are deeply refined human beings.

I know others who have been broken to the point of complete devastation. Of course, we’re not blaming anyone. Anyone in a situation like that is a sacred human being, has their own sacred right of choice. What we see from that is that the power of the soul is inestimable. We have the deepest resources, like a well that is perhaps deeper than we can ever imagine, and when we reach into it we find resources, if we allow ourselves to reach. That is the key challenge.

Let’s go to Sarah on the air.

Caller: Hello Rabbi. I would like to ask you a question. I have come to the conclusion that there is a gene that some people are born with that makes them completely unfeeling toward others. I come from a physically abusive home, the horrors of which I cannot describe in a short phone conversation.

I have a sibling who grew up in the same home who was far less physically abused but he’s a very cruel, unfeeling, unemotional person. It is impossible to communicate with him because he hears only his own thoughts. He’s exactly like my mother, and I have a cousin like that, too. And I began to wonder, since my brother and another member in my family are so unfeeling toward others and cruel, without being physically abusive, is there a gene that gets passed on and I wonder what you think.

On the other hand, people always turn to me for advice, and I’ve always been the recipient of people’s confidences. Parents turn to me about their children, my peers turn to me. I’m the exact opposite.

Jacobson: Well, I wouldn’t want to get them off the hook that easily by just saying that it’s a gene and just dismissing it that way because then you’re basically saying that they’re not responsible for their behavior—your brother or your mother or others that you’ve described—and that’s something that I find a little difficult.

Caller: But if you knew them you would know that they recognize no responsibility.

Jacobson: Are you willing to forgive them because it’s a gene?

Caller: No, I cannot forgive them. I would like to but I can’t.

Jacobson: Well, my view on the matter is that sometimes people’s choices or their low self-esteem or whatever fears they may be experiencing can be so profound that it may seem like a genetic flaw.

Caller: Yes, but that sounds like a cop-out to me. A lot of people have low self-esteem but they don’t take it out on others.

Jacobson: No, I’m talking about calling them on it. I’m not talking about a cop-out at all.

Caller: You can’t communicate with the kind of people I’m talking about. I’ve tried for many, many years with my brother. He doesn’t hear you.

Jacobson: I understand. Do you think it’s helpful to say it’s a gene? How does that help the situation?

Caller: No, I don’t think it’s helpful. I’ve begun to wonder, why are they like that and I am not?

Jacobson: Sarah, listen, first of all, I must say that I empathize with you entirely, and not even knowing what kind of abuse you’ve endured, I can imagine the worst.

Caller: Anything you could imagine…

Jacobson: So my empathy goes out to you and I’m sure our listeners feel the same as well. If you’d like to share more with me, if I can be of any level of support after we finish the call, I invite you to leave your number with the engineer, and I’d be happy to communicate with you further.

Caller: What number would I call?

Jacobson: Just stay on hold and give him your number. And I say that to all the listeners out there as well. Not everything has to be said on the air. Some things are more appropriate to be spoken about personally. However, I want to say this, Sarah. Despite the challenge—and I know many people who are exactly as you described, impossible to reason with, they only see it their way—I don’t like to believe that we have to give up hope.

I don’t think you should be doing it because it’s your own sibling and your own parent and it’s too close to you, but I don’t like to give up hope on the human spirit. And even though there may be a gene that’s affected, genetics is a very complicated area. It’s proven today that genes are sometimes affected by behavior. It’s not always a flaw from birth. It’s nature vs. nurture. Sometimes something in nurture affects our nature to the point that you can literally see a physiological difference.

So the point is, we both agree that your brother and your mother are absolutely behaving in an inappropriate way. The extent, whether it’s genetic or beyond genetic, or whatever it may be, is a question that may be one of semantics.

The key is what to do about it? Are you out of the range of fire? Can you protect yourself now? Are you in a situation where you have moved away from them and don’t allow yourself to be in the line of fire?

Caller: Yes.

Jacobson: Okay, that’s the main thing. I’m glad to hear that. Is there anything you would like to say to anyone who might be in a similar situation—how they should get themselves away from it or protect themselves?

Caller: Well, I would say you should try as hard as you can to penetrate the armor that these people wear, and finally, you have to step away, because you have your own life to live, too. That’s all I can say.

Jacobson: So, are you happy today?

Caller: No.

Jacobson: So you still feel the consequences of …

Caller: Oh yes. I always will.

Jacobson: Well, you sound like a very fine person and I’m sure that you bring love to others in your life.

Caller: I really do. I am a loving person.

Jacobson: And may you appreciate love in a way that some of us can never appreciate it. You know, the eclipse of the sun can sometimes teach us to appreciate sunlight more than the sun does. I give you my blessings and my prayers.

Caller: I really appreciate it.

Jacobson: We’ve been talking about children who have been in abusive situations, and that was a very moving call from Sarah.

Getting back to the issue of children protecting themselves, there are many ways to do that but let’s go to the phones since I see there are a few calls coming in. We go to Charlie on line 2.

Caller: Hi. How are you Rabbi? I think it’s a very interesting topic tonight. I was thinking about the whole hereditary addictive aspect of what you’re discussing.

Jacobson: And what are your thoughts?

Caller: That it’s its own form of abuse, and it carries on sometimes from generation to generation to generation more than a couple of times. It has a lot of its own confusion because of course people want to love their parents and so they have difficulty finding fault in them whether it be alcoholism or any other type of addiction.

Jacobson: Have you had personal experiences or know people who are abusive, without exposing too much of course?

Caller: Yes, I know of some situations such as what I’m describing.

Jacobson: The thing about the genetic issue is a very complicated one because often there can be very profound experiences that actually have an effect on our genetics. That’s been proven to be the case.

At the same time, the key here is not so much how we classify it, but what we do about it. There’s no question that a person who’s really been hurt has to get away from the line of fire. That’s what I was discussing with the previous caller. No matter how much hope you have for the spirit of the human being, criminal behavior is criminal behavior. A child has to get away.

I tell this to many people who have had abusive parents. You don’t have to feel that you need to win. You don’t need to feel that you have to go back into the situation and even forgive. Sometimes the person is just beyond reach. And it’s their problem. A parent or any adult or any individual who’s been abusive, that’s their problem: they have to find a way to mend and correct it. You, the individual, the person who’s been on the receiving end, have to move on and discover your life.

But often, abuse has a crazy vicious cycle that holds us victim—even when we get away from it and we want to get even, or we want to win, or we still hold onto it. Anyway, I appreciate your call. Thank you.

(Announcement break about the Wednesday Night Class at 8:00pm, 346 West 89^th St. corner Riverside Drive and the Delaware River Camping Shabbaton on August 11-13)

Jacobson: I would like to also say that when dealing with a topic of this nature, the key is not just the analysis of the issue, but the ability to be able to heal from it, to grow out of it. Let’s go to the phone. We have Margie on the air.

Caller: Listen, I have a big problem. I’ve got my granddaughter from child welfare and they are giving me a fit. First she had run away and she’s back into the system, but yet, I got to go to court every month and the two lawyers they gave me, neither one of them is taking messages or nothing. Just leaving in the child, and all. And I need some help. I don’t have any money but I need some help bad, so I was just wondering is there a way to get somebody to help me get this thing out and let the people know what the system is doing to people?

Jacobson: Margie, I appreciate your call. If you leave your number with the engineer, we’ll try to help you out in any way we can.

Well, there’s abuse all over the place and I really feel that it’s a gift that we can be a platform here. If anybody is in a situation where you may need help immediately, and you happen to be listening to this show, obviously my heart and the lines are open. You can call and we’ll try to help you in any way we can.

In a broader sense, the theme of the show is trying to address how each of us can in some way be less abusive in our own way. We all have the potential to be both an abuser and a victim. One of the things that’s so beautiful about charity, and the ability to help each other—and when I say “charity” I don’t just mean financially, but volunteer work and every gesture that people make—is that is such a simple way to help each other, to help each other heal.

In our community and in our society in the United States, charity is a very big thing. But it goes far beyond the ability to give to each other. That imbalance that I discussed earlier, that dichotomy, where individuals feel that they are independent organisms instead of part of one large cohesive unit, the way to challenge that is by doing those gestures, when we behave in a charitable way, when we go out of our way and go beyond the letter of the law, not by obligation, to help another person.

So the real way to counter any type of abusive situation is, what each of us can do, is by being kind to each other. Again, I’m not discussing the immediate situation of someone who’s in the line of fire and has to deal with the immediate reality of it. But if you want to know what you can do in general, next time you go on the train, or you travel, or you meet a stranger, make that kind word or gesture.

New Yorkers are known all over the United States to be abrasive, aggressive, and very impolite.

But the fact of the matter is, that’s a stereotype. Sometimes you find New Yorkers to be wonderful people. There are millions of us in this city here, and one of the beautiful things that we find is that when a person makes that gesture, in a way, it reverses the trend of the divisiveness and the separation that materialism imposes upon us.

As I say many times on this show, the formula goes this way: materialism divides, spirituality unites. When we see ourselves as purely materialistic individuals, then our bodies are separate.

You sit in your space and place—physicality occupies time and space—and I sit in my space. There’s no way that I can give you my space without standing up. The same is true with food. If I eat that food, you can’t have that food. And if I have that money, you can’t have that money.

When it comes to spirituality, when it comes to true love, two people can be sitting in different spaces, but their hearts can go out to each other and they become like one.

I know people who sometimes sit near each other at a party or at a play or in the subway, and they’re the greatest strangers. They’re sitting right near each other. And then there are others who can be thousands of miles apart, but their hearts are one.

So the way to battle any abusive situation is to be a loving person yourself and never succumb to being another victim, even if you yourself have endured abuse. Don’t perpetuate it into the next generation.

Let’s go to Carol on the air.

Caller: Hi. I was calling about my boss. He’s very abusive. A lot of people have left the department. What he’s doing is getting rid of all the people who have been there a long time and replacing them with temps so that he can give them less salary, less vacation. Isn’t that illegal? Couldn’t you get a lawsuit? Isn’t that discrimination?

Jacobson: How is he abusive, if I may ask? Is it verbally or physically or emotionally?

Caller: Verbally, yes, but my concern now is just the fact that they’re letting all the older people go who’ve been there many years and replacing them with temps. Isn’t that age discrimination? I think that’s abusive. They were dedicated for all those years and now they’re just letting them go.

Jacobson: Carol, are you suffering as well?

Caller: Yes. I mean, I’m not yet but I’m sure I’m going to be next. It hasn’t happened to me yet.

Jacobson: Well, what form of abuse?

Caller: Well, I’ve been working there for many years and I’m afraid of losing my job to a temp. My job isn’t going to be eliminated but they could just replace me and say, “You’re out of here.”

Jacobson: But how does the abuse manifest itself?

Caller: I think it’s abuse because it shows a lack of appreciation for all the many years and dedication that I’ve put in.

Jacobson: You mean, just firing people…

Caller: With no reason, no reason at all.

Jacobson: Does this boss of yours have a boss himself? Does he have a superior? Or is he the top guy?

Caller: No, he has a top person.

Jacobson: Have you ever considered speaking to that person, or do you feel that you can suffer consequences from that?

Caller: Yes. He’s a vice president, so I would have to go pretty high up to…

Jacobson: Well, based on what you’re describing briefly, I don’t know all the dynamics and details, but maybe you should pre-empt it by getting yourself out of there and finding yourself a good job. You obviously have credentials and years of experience.

If you see this coming, why not prevent it by getting away from it as quickly as possible?

Caller: Because I’ve been with this company a long time. It’s a good company. I have an excellent salary and a lot of vacation time and I really would like to stay there.

Jacobson: Yes, but it sounds like you’re getting the axe. I mean, legally speaking, it really depends whether this is a city agency, or whether it’s a private company. Certain abuse is illegal—sexual abuse or other types of harassment.

But he could always justify firing people by giving some type of cockamamie excuse.

Caller: But it’s only the older people who are leaving. He’s only firing people who have been there 30 years or so.

Jacobson: And is there something in the contract that calls for mandatory retirement?

Caller: No, nothing like that.

Jacobson: As sad as the situation is, I’m at a loss and I’m not sure what to say to you. The only thing is, I think that you have to protect yourself as much as possible. Are you coming to that age yourself?

Caller: Yes.

Jacobson: Well, unfortunately, much of society is driven by youth worship and young people. I guess you have a lot of experience, and that comes with strengths. Perhaps your experience will prevail and they will keep you on. But I don’t have a direct suggestion. If you’d like to leave your number, I can call you back and find out more information and perhaps make a suggestion or two. Okay, thank you Carol for the call.

Obviously each of us has to look into our own hearts and see if there’s a situation where we may be hurting another person, willingly or unwillingly. That’s what a true person of integrity and honesty always has to be looking at. We may be doing things inadvertently, and need to look at ourselves in that type of fashion.

At the same time, we also need to protect ourselves from those who perhaps perpetrate and treat us in an abusive way, and not allow ourselves to get caught in the trap of bitterness and pain that continues to perpetuate that type of negative energy.

(Announcement about inviting people to contribute to the show by calling 1-800-3MEANING, 1-800-363-2646, email: wisdomreb@aol.com, or writing The Meaningful Life Center, Suite 303, 788 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11225.)

At this point I’d like to thank some of the sponsors of this show, which include Ivan Stux, Ted and Lynn Doll, James and Anne Altucher. I want to thank them personally for making these shows possible, to be able to talk about issues that really matter. We’re not bound to commercial interests, which in a sense creates a certain type of objectivity. The Meaningful Life Center’s activities are funded with your help and I appreciate the sponsors of this and other shows.

Let’s go to the phones. We go to AJ.

Caller: Good evening Rabbi. In relation to these abuses, what I’d like to mention to the public is that when we had a revolution, there were a lot of abuses but there were a lot of people willing to make a fight out of it and really make big sacrifices. Some of them lost their lives, where about 40% of the people remained Loyalists. People have to be more socially conscious and charitable to the responsible, religious people in the country and make those kind of sacrifices to vote and pay attention to what’s going on in the country before the water goes over the dam, because then it’s too late.

Really, to a lot of people, unfortunately, they want you to sympathize with their situations, they want you to help them, but prior to that, until they get hit, until they suffer, they’re really not given the proper attention to the overall social issues of the country.

I notice this all the time. There’s an enormous amount of ungratefulness in society these days. That’s been the hallmark of the day: ungratefulness for the people who make the sacrifices for society, while people want to sit back and let the other guy carry the heavy load.

Jacobson: Are you suggesting that there are people who are like crybabies, who just suffer and instead of taking responsibility, just bemoan their situation?

Caller: Well, naturally, these people need help, but the thing is, as a general rule, people are not as grateful as they should be for what they’re getting, and then those who could do something when they are able, people who have money and time, will spend it on all sorts of things other than what the social fabric of the country needs.

And they hang onto their money to the last gunshot. You have to support good things if you want something good. If you want good music you have to support good music, if you give a lot of money to horrendous music, which we have today, then we have horrendous music.

Jacobson: Okay, thank you AJ for the call. We go to Norman.

Caller: Thank you Rabbi. I’d like to respond, if I could, to the young lady who called a few minutes ago who addressed the issue of people who are being fired, predominately because they are old, and she claims that her boss is firing them and hiring temps, obviously to pay less money and not pay benefits, etc.

That’s against the law, Rabbi. Those people who are being fired just for that reason should get an attorney, should come together and bring an action against that employer. That’s not permitted in this country, if she’s giving us all the facts.

Jacobson: No, I appreciate that. As a matter of fact, I was going to take her number…

Caller: But the issue is that your audience needs to know that people cannot be arbitrarily fired at the workplace for no reason whatsoever, though the world celebrates youth as you pointed out.

Jacobson: No, I completely agree. I appreciate your call and I reiterate that the audience should listen to that and people should take a stand.

If there is an abusive situation, they should not allow it to penetrate their lives. This country, thank G-d, has many rules and many laws that allow us all to protect our rights. Unfortunately, many of those laws cannot penetrate into the home where parents may be able to hurt their children. Even though that should be illegal, it’s a difficult situation because where should the government intervene? The government wants to be careful not to intervene and take away that type of autonomy because then there can be abuse on that level as well.

You’ve been listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson and I want to wish us all that we should have the power to be able to rise above an abusive situation and really hold on to the strongest foundation in our lives — our spirit, our soul, and G-d. Thank you.

Tags: marriage, dating, family, relationships, abuse, parents
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Can Children Survive Parents who Claim to Know the Absolute Truth?

June 17th, 2014

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Hi, this is Simon Jacobson and this is a special edition of Toward a Meaningful Life. I’m honored and it’s my pleasure to have on the show with me a close friend, but at the same time someone who has very independent views from my own. His name is Stephen Dubner. Stephen, welcome.

Stephen Dubner: Thank you very much Simon.

Jacobson: Stephen Dubner, for everyone’s information, worked with me on my book Toward a Meaningful Life as editor. He did extensive work in really making the book possible. Before that, Stephen and I had actually met while Stephen was working at New York Magazine doing a piece on education in New York, actually what was wrong with New York, I believe.

Dubner: How to save New York…and we fixed it. You see, everything’s fine now.

Jacobson: Right. It’s not only due to Mayor Guiliani. But most of all, which I believe he’s most renowned for, Stephen has written his own book called Turbulent Souls, which has had quite an impact all across this country. Stephen’s background is quite an interesting one. He’s the youngest of eight children, born to two parents who converted to Catholicism from Judaism, and Stephen grew up as a devout Catholic. Then he went on his own journey, and I won’t speak for him, but essentially he captures in his book his fascinating journey, a turbulent journey, and published the book which has received great acclaim.

I thought it would be quite interesting, both for myself and the listening audience, to speak to Stephen on the show—and I wish I had a lot more time than we have—but I think that with the time we have we can really touch upon some intriguing subjects.

My experience of Stephen has always been very charged. You never know what to expect. He’s an intelligent man who has worked at the New York Times, and is an excellent writer. In thinking about and preparing for what to talk about with you today, (there are so many different angles that we can discuss), one of the things that really struck me as I was reading in your email communications with me today an exchange that you had with David Klinghoffer, that appeared in Slate Magazine online.

The correspondence essentially touched upon the issue of Truth (with a capital T) vs. truths; dogma vs. independence. And for that reason I thought we would begin by addressing the issue of what happens if you grow up in a family that feels they have that type of absolute belief in “The Truth” and they educate their children that way, their lives are driven by it, and they, in their pure conscience, feel this the way to teach their children? I’ve grown up in a family like this, and so have you, so we share much, though we may have diverged in different ways.

In this type of environment, is there room for the type of freedom of expression for a child to grow into his or her own truth? So this exchange between yourself Stephen and David Klinghoffer was fascinating, because his position is of someone who grew up in the secular world and he presented himself as now embracing Orthodox Judaism. From this perspective, he makes a very absolute statement that the Torah was given to us by G-d at Sinai, that it’s the foundation of all of Judaism, and that any other approach to Judaism, his argument goes, is false, because it has no basis since it’s manmade and open to all kinds of subjectivity. His tone was quite condescending, at least his initial communications, and your response was that you felt that there are many, many different approaches to the truth.

As you stated, you have more difficulty embracing one “Truth,” as there are many different approaches. I want to quote one thing that really stood out in your communication. One quote that you had written to David was, “I am attracted to questions and you are attracted to answers. If you think that makes me a less valid Jew, then you win, but if not, you also win.”

I thought that was a powerful way of presenting the distinction between both of your approaches. In another paragraph you said, “In my own family, I have seen how the zeal of the convert plays out. It is an astonishing thing how all that longing and questioning one day explodes into surety. There exists within all these people a need to prove not only that what they have come to believe is the only truth, but that what they used to believe is the most untrue thing of all. There’s a lot to be said for this kind of zeal, but even G-d, I’m guessing here, doesn’t like a sore winner.”

These quotes very much capture at least the spirit of your communication with him, and I think it’s an excellent springboard for us here, because this is an issue that addresses both parents and children and all of us individually. We live in a world where certain people who have fundamental beliefs in G-d often feel they have the claim on what is “truth.” What do you do with that when a person does have that feeling, and what do we do if you’ve been hurt by that?

And I must say, for the record, that I did not reject my parents beliefs, who also felt the same way, of course within Judaism, and you, in a sense, did reject your parents beliefs.

Dubner: That’s an awfully big kettle of fish (is it kettle of fish or can of worms?… I guess you could use the can of worms to catch the kettle of fish). I’m most intrigued to begin with the idea of a child growing up in a home where there’s a religious truth.

My over-arching answer to your question is: I don’t know. And if I did know, and if any of us did know the answers to these questions, then obviously there wouldn’t be any need for such debates. If we knew the absolute word of G-d, if we knew for sure how our lives would play out, including the afterlife, which is obviously a question that drives so many people’s religious searches, then there wouldn’t be this debate, or this questioning and so on.

I guess the first thing I should say is that the fact that my brain and heart and mind and soul have become engaged in a constant search to find such answers, (I would say using part of the philosophy that we discussed in the book Toward a Meaningful Life), the first thing I should say is the recognition that that search is connected to G-d somehow.

In other words, the fact that I’ve been equipped with a mind and a heart and soul and eyes to undergo such a search must mean that the search itself is connected to G-d. Now, if that search itself is connected to G-d, and that search is one in which I’m trying to discover a route to or a portal to G-d, why does that search exist if it’s not necessary? In other words, if there were no need for me or for any one person to explore possibilities, to look at conventions and to accept or discard them, or to look at possibilities and try to find their way, we wouldn’t be human and we wouldn’t have that kind of G-d-given need to connect.

So the first thing I’d say to myself is, well, I wish that I were sure the way a lot of people seem to be sure, but I take the fact that I’m not to be a sign of a connection to G-d. So that’s one way that I comfort myself instead of feeling like a dummy. I feel like, “You know what? It’s not that I’m stupid, and it’s not that I’m misguided, it’s the fact that my antenna are attuned, and this is part of the price you pay for trying to find some answers that are satisfactory.”

The big question of children growing up in a home where there’s a real, almost fundamental belief is such a tricky one. As someone who hopes to be a parent soon, I say to myself, well, now that I know I’m going to raise my children within Judaism, well, what happens if a son or daughter of mine gets to be the age of sixteen, let’s say, and says, “Hey Dad, Mom, this Catholicism that Grandma and Grandpa Dubner practiced, that sounds pretty interesting. I think I’d like to explore that.”

And I wonder how I would react to something like that. Even though I tell myself that I would like to think that I would react very cooly and encouragingly, I’m sure that I would be hurt because I think that what every parent wants is to teach their children a love for the way that they’re bringing them up.

Religion is a tricky, though, because you can talk about bringing your children up to have certain morals—the way they treat other people—and you can teach your children to have certain ideas about education, about achievements of different sorts, but religion is tricky because it encompasses all those things: it encompasses morals, it encompasses ideas about education, and so on. But it also incorporates a belief in something much bigger and broader, which is G-d and why we’re here, and where we go afterwards, and so on.

Of course you want your kids to believe the same as you do. On the other hand, much of teaching religion to a young person is teaching that young person, especially a child, how to do something that they don’t really understand. You’re teaching them to begin to believe in something that they can’t yet comprehend. And that’s why when you get to be an adult and you start to have new questions that you couldn’t even have dreamed of when you were a child. I’ll give you an example.

When I was a 10-year-old boy, my father died. My mother and father had always been very active in the Catholic church and we were a very devout family. When my father died, the priest and my mother and my mother’s friends all said to me, “Oh, you must recognize how fortunate you are to have a father who was so loved by G-d that G-d would take him from you—recognizing how painful that would be—at such an early age.”

Now as a kid of ten, (a) this didn’t make sense to me, and (b) it was of no comfort to me whatsoever. Now I understand what they were trying to say, and I understand the belief that their teaching was based on.

But as a child, it was wildly ineffective. So I have to ask myself, “How do you want to talk to your children when it comes to matters of belief and religion?” That’s a topic that I’m obviously not an expert in, but what I do see right now (being an adult now and having been a child of very, very religious parents), is that children are an awful lot more attuned to spiritual matters than their parents give them credit for.

They’re a lot more, I won’t say spiritually sophisticated necessarily, but they’re a lot more spiritually curious: they have questions that they don’t know how to articulate; they have desires that they don’t know how to meet. I think a big job for us as adults, and therefore as adults when teaching children, is not just to show them the rituals, not just to show them the steps to take and the movements to make and the way to light candles and what not, but to address within them the reason why we do things, the reason for G-d’s sake, the reason for our sake, the reason for the family’s sake, the community’s sake, and so on.

And that is something that I don’t feel we’re doing a very good job at yet.

Jacobson: Well let me ask you. Do you think your parents did a good job at that?

Dubner: You know, at the risk of sounding nothing but heretical, no, because of what was given to me. But the reason I don’t want it to sound heretical is that even though I left Catholicism and my family remains Catholic, I harbor no ill will against Catholicism, so I want to speak about the strategy as opposed to the surety of it all.

What I do think is this. When you’re a child and you form an idea of what G-d is and why you’re here and what you’re meant to do in the world, that’s a very, very strong idea and image that is emblazoned on your mind and on your psyche. And when your intellectual attachment to that image, or when your intellect outgrows that image, then you’ve got to deal with it. Then you’ve got to say, “Oh, the G-d that I pictured, the cliché that we’ve all heard a million times, the image of G-d sitting up there in a chair with flowing robes and a white beard…” many of us started with that as kids, and then many of us come to have a more nuanced or a more complicated understanding of what G-d is or is not.

But when you start with that childlike image, and you have that kind of drilled into you, and then you grow up and you understand that the questions of good and evil and the questions of this life and the afterlife are not as clear as they were when you were six years old, your mind, if you have any kind of mind at all, and we all do, starts to play with that and challenge that, and then you have to do your own growing and stretching and searching.

We’re seeing this sort of thing happening in this country, now more than ever. I’m not a theologian and I’m not a historian, but I think it’s accurate to say that we’re witnessing in this country something that is utterly revolutionary in that there are more people who are exploring more religions, other than the ones they were born into, than there ever has been at any place or in any time in history.

The number of people who are investigating different faiths or deepening their own connection to the faith that they were born into, but that their own parents neglected, is extraordinary. You know there’s a Yiddish saying (I don’t know it in Yiddish, I’m sure you do) that goes something like, “That which the grandfather chooses to preserve, the father chooses to forget, and the grandson chooses to remember.”

There’s a real pattern here of reaching back past one generation and finding an attachment to something that came a generation before you. Like many, many people in the Bible, and like I did, it feels almost a natural thing to reject your parents at some point along the way.

Jacobson: The reason I asked you was obviously not to put you on the spot of having to make any statements about Catholicism, but my question was really in this context: had your parents presented and offered you religion or spirituality the way you think it should be done, the way you’re going to attempt to pass it on to your children, do you think it would have made any difference?

In other words, when you do realize that your parents could not tolerate any way but their own way of seeing the truth, does that in any way contribute to rejecting it when you come of age and you begin to question?

Dubner: Yes I think so, and here’s the reason. When you’re told that something is 100%… for example, if you’re told that 5+5=10 always, every time, and then you go to a different culture where 5+5=100 somehow, you say, wait a minute, I know that’s wrong. And then they tell you, no, look, here’s the proof of it, here’s the mathematical proof. The minute you begin to understand that there’s a chink in the truth that you grew up with, you start to question everything.

So I’m not saying I have the answer to this question, because it’s a very, very tough one. How you teach your children to believe in a way that they will want to continue within that faith and tradition, is a question that I dearly hope I will be able to answer for myself and my own children, but I’m not saying it’s an easy one. And the reason it’s not is because of the very paradox of raising children, which is that because they’re young and because their minds aren’t formed to the point where they can make their own decisions and glean their own understanding of the world, of course we instruct them. That’s what we do: we teach them, we instruct them.

But how do we teach them in a way that allows them to use their own G-d-given mental abilities, even from a very early age? That’s what I mean when I say that children are much more spiritually inclined then we tend to think, and have a greater appreciation for nuance and question.

Maybe this is my theory alone, but I think that when every child discovers that Santa Claus doesn’t really exist, he or she is a little bit relieved, you know. It’s all a little bit too perfect. It makes a little bit too much sense. And then there’s always those lingering doubts like, why do we always hear Mommy and Daddy in their bedroom at 3:00am on Xmas eve if everybody is supposed to be quiet and Santa Claus is coming down the chimney? Shouldn’t they be quiet too? Maybe they’re wrapping presents and so on.

So there’s almost a sense of relief when you find out that this “Truth” that you’ve been encouraged to believe all along turns out to be not so true in the end.

Similarly, and this is a bit of a dangerous syllogism perhaps, when you are brought up to believe in a religious truth that allows for no questioning, then when you get old enough to question it for yourself, where do you go from there? Do you reject it, do you explore it on your own and try to deepen your understanding of it? Every person is going to do a different thing. That’s the beautiful part about humankind; everyone’s got his or her own brain and are all going to react in a different way.

Jacobson: I identify with some of what you say, because I also grew up in a “fundamentalist” home, just to give it a title (I don’t know if my parents would appreciate that), but I think that maybe part of what you’re saying is, can you turn to your parents when you have those questions? Will they allow you to turn to them? Because if they don’t, they’re essentially cutting off a channel of communication, which causes you to lose the trust. And how would they handle questions like that?

Dubner: Did you ever come to your parents with fundamental, spiritual questions as a child or teenager?

Jacobson: That’s a good question. Who’s interviewing whom here?

Dubner: I don’t mean to put you on the spot!

Jacobson: Look, as I prefaced, you and I worked all those hours on the phone and our communications—before email—

Dubner: The bulletin board system (BBS).

Jacobson: Well, give and take is great. I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t feel comfortable coming to my parents with those big questions, but I’ll tell you, I didn’t feel uncomfortable to share it with them. So I didn’t really turn to them for answers. But it wasn’t like a rejection type of thing. My parents had a certain laid-back attitude, which is completely subjective to my parents, because there’s no question that, as was captured in David Klinghoffer’s exchange with you, many religious parents have a condescending attitude, which my parents did not have.

The condescension is an independent issue. Once there’s condescension, then you’re dealing with arrogance, and it repulses us to be preached to. But in my particular case condescension was not an issue. In my parents home, I really felt a certain laid-back attitude. Though there were clearly truths that were taught in my home, and the school I was sent to definitely had a very absolute approach, their particular attitude, particularly my father’s, was more of a very laid-back one. As a journalist, and with his particular personality, my father is very tolerant of opinions other than his own. And that does give, I would say, a certain confidence that you can trust somewhat.

Not that you have to accept the truth: just because he’s tolerant doesn’t mean his absolute truth is necessarily the right one, but you just trust the environment more. I think that there’s a certain sense—as you said, children are extremely spiritual and very instinctive and sensitive—that if they feel there’s a deep insecurity in their parents, and sometimes holding on to certain beliefs is just another expression of insecurity, than that insecurity is projected upon the children.

I could see that being a major contributing factor in one’s rejection of parents beliefs (I’m not speaking about you now but about people in general) because then, in addition to this Truth, you sense an insecurity on their part, so what are you left with? So it becomes an issue of, am I going to become like them? Am I going to have to close my mind? And you fear embracing any firm beliefs.

I should add that your mother just passed away a few weeks ago (I came to a shiva call) so first of all I extend my condolences to you and your family…

Dubner: Thank you.

Jacobson: And the juxtaposition of the two worlds was interesting to me when I came to you for the shiva call, because your mother passed away feeling as a Catholic, and you’re sitting shiva as a Jew, so that’s a book of its own.

It’s obviously very personal and emotional and I don’t really want to tread in an area unless you welcome or invite it, but it makes me wonder, one of the things our parents give us is nurturing, emotional balance—forget about religion now for a moment—just the basic comfort of a having a home. And as you shared with me, you had that. You had a healthy home, in the sense of functionality.

Dubner: Absolutely.

Jacobson: Some of your best memories were there; it was your dream life. So when you have that, which is extremely healthy, because that’s what parents should be giving, at the same time, this nurturing is so woven together with their religious beliefs, it sure creates a big issue as you grow into an adult and you do reject what they consider to be so much connected to their nurturing and you have to separate the two.  I can almost see it as an impossible task, frankly. What are your feelings on that?

Dubner: I agree that it does seem not impossible but very difficult. When I think about it, I grew up, as you said, the youngest of eight children, and my family and our family friends were called the “crazy eights,” because almost all the families that we were really close with had at least eight kids (some of them had ten and twelve and so on). There were all these big families: the O’Donnells, the Kennedys, the McNamaras (all these Irish Catholics) and then us, the Dubners!

Now, we talk about the divorce rate in this country, which has surpassed and maybe now has gone back below 50%, still they talk about how one in every two marriages these days ends in divorce.

And then look at the rate of children falling away from the faith in which they were brought up in this country—either falling away from or, conversely, someone who grows up in a non-believing, non-practicing home who becomes very religious. The incidence of people in this country who grow up in a home with “x” religion, whatever that religion is, and end up as adults practicing “x” religion, is not very high. The ratio is not very firm there.

So it does make you ask, and I think the question you asked is a great one (it’s a different one than the one I asked), how do we nurture our children and create a home where a child feels encouraged to be loved and to love back, to express him or herself and receive expression from other people, but also, how do you encourage open-mindedness and tolerance while imparting morals and beliefs, be they political or religious?

Again, I’m not a parent yet, so I haven’t failed at that yet. I’m sure I will in some part; I hope to succeed in some part too, but I do think it says a lot about the way we approach passing on religion in this culture—I won’t say this country necessarily—but this culture. What I’m saying is that I don’t think we do a very good job of it.

I have no number in front of me (and probably a statistic like this doesn’t exist), but if you look at the incidence of the number of people who grew up in this country who are practicing a different faith or who practice it radically differently from the way they were brought up, you have to say we’re not teaching it right; we’re not talking to our children right. But then, on the other hand, you look at a home where there’s a more orthodox version of a religion practiced, whether it’s Orthodox Judaism, whether it’s a certain form of Islam, and you see that orthodoxy does tend to do a better job for obvious reasons: it includes schooling as well, it makes the family the cornerstone of the community, a community was is not necessarily a closed one but a very insulated one, which makes a departure from that in the end all the more painful.

But looking back at these families that I grew up with, easily more than half of them are no longer practicing Catholics. Easily more than half of the kids I grew up with. And it just makes me say, first of all, thank goodness it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just me who had some kind of failing with it, and it wasn’t just my parents who had some kind of failing with it—because I’d like to consider it not a failing, what I’d like to consider it is some kind of possibility of maturation where your own soul finds a different place and a different direction and pursues it.

Jacobson: There’s no question. I’m not surprised that this show was not meant to be an easy one—you’re dealing with absolutes.

Okay, let’s take a short station break. You’re listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. We’re here every Sunday from 6-7pm, and you can contact us (and I will pass along any questions you may have for Mr. Dubner) at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com (email). You can also call us at 1-800-3MEANING (1-800-363-2646) or access our website at www. meaningfullife.com.

We’re here with Stephen Dubner, and it’s very moving to hear you speak, as always, but particularly on this topic because it touches so many personal issues. If you’re just tuning in, I’m here with Stephen Dubner, who just authored a year ago the book Turbulent Souls… Was it a year ago?

Dubner: A year ago in hardcover.

Jacobson: And just recently in paperback. And Stephen has been on an extensive book tour, and people are really moved by this book and I definitely encourage everyone here to read it. You’re hearing the “turbulent soul” live on air. Now frankly, when I finished the book, it left me in some ways with more questions than answers, but I guess you’re comfortable with that, saying that you’re more comfortable with questions than answers.

Dubner: Yes, you know it’s funny. When you do a reading or a talk somewhere, or you get mail, people want those answers. They say, “You know, I read the book and you delve deeply into your mother’s life and your father’s life and then your own life, and all three of you made radical religious changes, but I still don’t know the words to put in my pocket to describe why it is that your mother converted, or why you did what you did, for instance.”

I don’t want to say it was intentional—it certainly wasn’t intentional to leave people hanging, and I certainly told all I could tell—but the thing that you all have to remember is that when it concerns a matter of the soul in particular, these are not journeys that can be reduced to some mathematical equation.

First of all, I think every religious journey is obviously unique, and second of all… it’s funny, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I know last week you discussed the AOL/Time Warner merger (I guess it’s a merger), and there are all kinds of questions, not just based on that deal certainly, but in the culture in general about privacy, and we are concerned about people crawling into our homes through our modems, or having too much information about us based on every time we use our credit card and so on.

So privacy has become a big issue. We wonder what will happen when sometime in the future we will have a microchip in our fingerprints and from that day forth, everyone will know where everyone else has been for the preceding lifetime of that person.

That’s a scary thought, obviously, in a number of ways. And it’s understandable that we’re very, very concerned with our privacy and we’re concerned with our political feelings and our feelings about certain issues, but when it comes to religion, it seems as though we expect people to be able to describe in great detail, and in language that is perfectly universal, the emotions and feelings and so on that a person goes through in trying to attain or maintain a relationship with G-d.

The irony, or the paradox, to me is that a relationship with G-d has got to be the most intimate relationship any of us will ever experience or attain. And so while I think there’s great value in speaking about it as we’re speaking now, and I think there’s great value in speaking about it with other people, I think that in the end, what we need to most understand about ourselves and about each other (but probably about ourselves most important), is that yes, there is a great deal of mystery in our relationship with G-d. And there is a great deal of the ineffable and the inexpressible, and I think we need to learn to handle that as well as we handle the finite stuff.

When I was researching and writing my book, I read a great deal of conversion literature, and I must say, a lot of it left me very cold. A lot of the stories were like, “My life was going along terribly, I had problems of illness, poverty, etc., etc., and I woke up one morning and saw a light and everything was better.”

I’m skeptical of that kind of story because I think that things aren’t usually so black and white and I think that humans are a lot more complicated than that. But if we look at the models for that story, the image of Saul of Tarsus being blinded and hearing a voice from the heavens and falling off the horse. I guess that’s why there’s a reason for that type of tradition in our literature, but I think we need to understand, and I guess this would apply to children as well, that when it comes to matters of the soul, it’s not math, it’s not even close to math.

And that’s why I feel that, while in math, the answer is the thing that you want to arrive at: “Show your work,” as the teachers would always say, “show your work in the margins, but all I really care about is that ‘x equals what?’”

This is the opposite. It’s not the “x equals what?” it’s “what is ‘x’?” What are you dealing with? What are you trying to achieve here? It’s a very, very different endeavor.

Jacobson: So on a practical level, what would you say to parents if they came to you for advice, obviously with a disclaimer that you’re not a parent yet and all of that. The parent asks you “I do feel that I know the truth, in an absolute way,” how do I communicate it to my children, while allowing them the freedom of self discovery? The parent is not condescending about it, because if they’re condescending about it, then they are immediately invalidating themselves as models for their children. There is no place for condescension, even if you feel you have the truth. There are gentle ways of teaching: with love and confidence.

In this case we’re talking about parents that are not condescending. So the question the parent asks is: What shall I teach my children? From an Orthodox point of view, I want to take them to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Or if they’re Catholic, or whatever that means in the Catholic practice. Everyone in his or her tradition.

And there are very black and white things there. It’s not like we’re going to stay home and just discuss G-d, or discuss the mystery itself. There are traditions and rituals, and my children will clearly be impressed and affected by these rituals, because I’m also nurturing them with that. (I’m speaking as that parent.) What should I do?

Dubner: You’re right: I’m not the person to answer this question because I’m not a parent yet, but what I would say is, “Teach that truth with all your heart and soul, as my parents and your parents did, but also acknowledge, when necessary, that there are other people in the world who think very differently, and they too were created by G-d and they might be pretty good people too.”

And the reason I say that is this. In the home in which I grew up, my older sister believed that if she were to walk into a Protestant church, forget about a synagogue, forget about a mosque, but a Protestant church, the walls would crumble and the ceiling would cave in on her head and she would be killed.

Look, there was a period where I resented, or wasn’t happy about what my parents had done, that is, converting from Judaism. But you know what? I also came to realize that that was their lives. I wasn’t even born yet. Would I have even been born had they not converted? I don’t know. Not many Jewish families in the 50s and 60s had eight children, and since I’m the last, I have to ask myself that question.

Jacobson: Well, if they were devout Jews…

Dubner: If they were devout, maybe, but I don’t think they were the kind who would have had eight children as Jews. As Catholics yes. But I sometimes wish that my mother or father had sat us down and said, “Here’s the story. We were both Jewish. We both grew up in Jewish families. At a certain point in our lives I felt (let’s pretend I’m my mother) a need, a thirst, a great desire to understand the world in a way that Judaism wasn’t providing for me, or I didn’t know anything about Judaism and I had a mentor, and I began to study Catholicism. And when I studied Catholicism, it struck me as my truth, as the truth for me, and I decided that I was going to look for a man to marry who felt the same way, and that I would raise my children within that tradition.

Now you might say that that’s not that different from the story that ended up in the book that I wrote. You’re right. It’s not that different except for one thing. Because that conversation never took place, all the other people in the world, all the other thinking in the world, all the other traditions, all the other languages, were discounted. In other words, that Jewish family of mine that I’d never met, that I didn’t know about—grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—they were wiped off the face of the earth to me. It was as thorough an excommunication as the excommunication of my father’s father, an Orthodox Jew, who sat shiva for my father when my father converted.

Now, one could, and many people would argue, that that’s the way that G-d would want it; that G-d would want an Orthodox Jewish father to sit shiva for his son, and G-d would want a newly devout Catholic mother not to tell her children about any other family, about any other past. But on the other hand, if that Catholic G-d and that Jewish G-d are one and the same, as more of us are now starting to acknowledge and think, including the Pope himself, then that same G-d can’t want those two things. He can’t want my grandfather to have done what he did and my mother to have done what she did. They’re diametrically opposed.

Jacobson: So let’s say your parents had done what you described, and then would have added (I’m continuing to speak as a hypothetical parent): however, now that we’ve embraced this, we believe this to be the absolute truth, and we reject other religions. Though they may be good people, and we should always respect everyone, but this is the truth. You know, we’re touching upon the issue of them really believing that this is the truth, and therefore other truths are not as true or are completely not true.

So that line that I just added, would that be off limits? Should that not be said?

Dubner: No, I think that should be said. I think the minute you open up the conversation as you just did, you start to treat your child as a human being first of all… you know, it’s a child’s natural curiosity, or anybody’s natural curiosity, that if you see ten boxes on a table and you say, “You can open up any of the boxes except the one on the end,” the first one that we all want to look at is the one on the end of course.

So when you grow up in an environment where you’re told that this is the way it is, that nothing else exists outside of this, or anything that exists outside of this is wrong, is lesser somehow, well, of course, your mind is curious about that. That’s the way we work as humans—not as religious people, not as Catholics, not as Jews, but as humans.

So look, I’m not saying by a long shot that parents need to hold back on the way that they teach their children their religion. I think the opposite. What I do think is that we need to realize that we’re living in a world where a lot of traditions and religions exist and need to co-exist. And I like to believe in a G-d that sanctions more than one faith, because if not, then no matter what faith you belong to, the rest of the world is wrong, which means that you’re excluding the majority of the world from this kingdom that you’ve so haughtily declared “G-d’s kingdom.”

And that doesn’t feel remotely right to me.

Jacobson: So essentially, what you’re really saying, if I may sum it up, is that in your view, one type of truth that rejects other truths is a problem, and the problem is this: if someone really believes that, and there are people who believe that, and they believe it to the extent that they’ll say, “I wanted to protect you from other things. I didn’t want you to make the mistakes I made. I found that truth and now I’m teaching it to you (to the children, that is),” what you’re really saying now is that you don’t believe that there should be an education of that nature because you don’t think that there necessarily is one truth.

Dubner: Well my response to that is that if the tradition or the truth is so strong, why be afraid to have your child understand it as one of several that has been chosen or one of several that has been established within your family?

In other words, if you grow up thinking that coconut milk is the only beverage in the world…

Jacobson: Yes, but Stephen, you’re saying that as a case for many truths. If someone really believes that his or her truth is the absolute truth, remember, they don’t really feel that another approach is legitimate.

Dubner: Right, but what you said a moment ago, which I think rings true, is that “there are other people in the world who believe differently. They may be good people. There are probably good people among them, but this is what we believe and this is why, and I’d like to encourage within you a love for this tradition. And here’s how I’m going to do it. By including you in it. By nurturing it within you, and so on.” That’s a big difference from saying, “This is all there is. Let’s do it now.”

Jacobson: Okay. Let me ask you this question, even though I may be putting you on the spot. Is it possible, and as I said, I read your correspondence with David Klinghoffer and am hearing you now, that your disclaimers about truths, that there are many truths, could be the result of a certain insecurity of seeing what your parents did? That the fact that they were so absolutely sure, would really not allow you to ever embrace an absolute truth, because you don’t want to make that same mistake again?

Dubner: I don’t know if it’s so much worrying about making a mistake. But I do think you’re absolutely right in terms of having a kind of innate wariness of a certain brand or level of devotion. Having experienced within my family, both in my generation and the generation before, where my father’s father declared him dead and sat shiva for him, (I was going to say it gives me an uneasy feeling but that’s not really defined enough), it does make me want to approach things differently. I’m giving you a negative as opposed to the positive construction of that, but I can’t quite come up with a positive which is probably what the search is all about in the first place, searching for a positive way to express that wariness.

Jacobson: Because for me that’s the biggest question. Like when you say that you are more comfortable with questions, that you’d prefer questions over answers or that you’re more attracted to questions than answers, my first question when I hear that is maybe that’s a defense that protects you from being as wrong as your parents were.

Dubner: Wait, who’s saying “wrong”? When you say, “being as wrong as my parents were,” or you speaking in my mind or in your mind?

Jacobson: Your mind. In other words, to make that type of…

Dubner: But I don’t think my parents were wrong.

Jacobson: Well, they were wrong for you.

Dubner: To say they were wrong for me is kind of right, but what they did was for themselves, and obviously to some degree for their children. I don’t think it’s for me to say that what they did was wrong, you know?

Jacobson: Let’s put it this way. Their absolutism was something that you cannot accept for yourself.

Dubner: Right.

Jacobson: And therefore, one could argue that within Judaism you may never accept it as well because you don’t agree with that approach.

Dubner: One could argue that, but that’s a little bit too much of a black and white argument for me. Here’s why. Part of the reason that Judaism was attractive to me is that there’s room within Judaism for more questioning and more pluralism than there is within Catholicism, or at least Catholicism as I knew it. In other words, I could read Jewish writers and thinkers writing about Judaism and on Jewish expression of anything from cultural values to political values who claim not to believe in G-d at all. And my first reaction was, “How could you be a Jew and not believe in G-d?”

One of the many wrinkles of Judaism is that it has a tradition, unlike the church… the Talmud itself is one long argument, and there is a winner, but the proof of the winning argument is not always as satisfying as the proof of the losing argument, and in a kind of post-modern way, what it does is encourage everyone who ever takes a look at that at all to feel that they, somehow, are part of that same argument or discussion.

What that says to me on a personal level is that each of us are responsible for and invited to have a conversation with G-d about what our relationship with G-d is meant to be. That is very different from the tradition in which I grew up.

Jacobson: But that does not allow room for someone who doesn’t believe in G-d, because then they’re out of that entire context, because then they don’t believe in Judaism either.

Dubner: Say that again?

Jacobson: There’s an option when you go with that type of approach: what about the person who says, “Well, I don’t believe in G-d and I don’t accept Judaism altogether.” You may say we allow for a diversity of traditions, but is there room for someone to not believe in G-d and still remain Jewish? That’s also a form of absolutism. Do you see what I’m saying?

Dubner: Not quite. There are plenty of people who would argue that they have no belief whatsoever in G-d and yet they are as Jewish as the most Orthodox Jew in the world. It’s not the easiest argument in the world to construct but it’s certainly constructible. I can’t make the argument because I don’t feel that way.

Jacobson: You’re right. I wouldn’t phrase it that your parents were wrong, I respect that, but let’s put it this way. You may never want to be as right as they were in their own minds.

Dubner: Either I may not want to be or I may not be able to be. Right that is.

Jacobson: My question is, is there anything that is psychological or fear-driven by that because, should you be so convinced that, for instance, Orthodox Judaism is absolute Truth, how do you know that you may be doing what they did but just now you have another form or shape of it?

Dubner: Right.

Jacobson: Look, I’m not your child, but if your child ever asked you, he might say, “Maybe you never wanted to embrace something because you had that lingering doubt or the lingering fear of creating such an environment.” In other words, it’s not so much about the search for truth; it’s just the search for what you know is not good.

Dubner: Well, to me it’s a more nuanced argument than that, although you’re right, I’m not looking for an absolute truth. None of me, not my brain, my heart, my soul, none of me works that way. What I was and am searching for is a way to exist in the world where I feel that I can lead a productive and meaningful life…

Jacobson: And turbulent life.

Dubner: Turbulent life. And have within that life a relationship with G-d that perhaps dictates or is perhaps the underlayer of that life. That, to me, is the route that I feel is right for me. I would prefer to look at it as a route on a plane as opposed to a level of Orthodoxy, because I think that once you get into saying, “This person is less observant, that person is less orthodox, or more orthodox, or more devout, etc., etc, than the other,” you’re doing something that you’re not meant to do.

I think that you and I both agree that the minute you start to judge the way another person practices his or her faith, not only are you invading that person’s private, intimate, religious space, to be modern about it, but you’re doing G-d’s work. It’s not for us to judge, it’s for G-d to judge.

Jacobson: I understand. But the fact is, I know that this is still ahead of you—but these things happen faster than you think—becoming a parent, and sending your children to some type of Jewish education, at whatever level, to teach them Jewish traditions, and that definitely has a shape and form. There’s a point where you can’t just be philosophical about it, but you have to decide, “Am I going to keep the Sabbath or am I not?” “Am I going to go to synagogue on Yom Kippur and on Xmas go to a church?” I don’t think you’re going to teach your children that, based on what you told me and what I hear from you, so even though you’re avoiding the big question, like what is absolute truth, the fact is, there is a path, and the question really is that if there is absolute truth, and your resisting it is for other reasons than for just the search for truth, you may be, in a sense, doing a disservice to your own children. You may not be giving them that absolute confidence and creating an ambiguity as a result of, let’s call it, your own wounds.

And I don’t say it only to you, I say it to any one of us who struggles with this. Any thoughts on that?

Dubner: I realize that you’re saying what you’re saying now because of your belief, which is a wonderful thing and a wonderful place to be, but you know, I guess what I feel is that everyone needs to plumb their own depths, and find the place where they’re most comfortable and the place that’s most meaningful to them. And yes, where I agree with you most strongly is that those signals are most evident when there’s something physical: when it’s going to shul on Friday night…

Jacobson: Any mitzvah.

Dubner: Right, it’s not about the way we think about G-d, it’s about what we do to have that kind of connection and that kind of relationship. And you’re right, that’s something that you have to build for yourself.

The difference for me is that I’m building it from scratch and not building it from childhood tradition, so instead of doing things that I know are done because that’s the way they’ve always been done and expressing them as such, the rule of thumb that I and my wife have developed is that we do things as we fully understand them and as they fully make sense to us, which means that slowly but surely we’re embracing more of the tradition. But there’s a big difference, which is that I want to understand the tradition or the element of it before I embrace it, and that leads to a certain need for premeditation. It’s a certain going against the grain of the way I was brought up in which you do first, ask questions later, or more appropriately, don’t ask questions later.

Jacobson: So you’ve been listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. My guest is Stephen Dubner, author of Turbulent Souls, which is available in all bookstores, and on amazon.com. It’s really been very interesting and I wish I could go on with you for quite a while. I definitely welcome you to come on again.

I want to say that this show has been made possible by, underwritten by, a grant from James and Anne Altucher, in honor of James’ birthday, so we thank them for that.

Anyone wanting to make a contribution to help make the show possible should call us at 1-800-363-2646.

On a final note, I’d like to ask you if you could sum up maybe in 30 seconds any particular lesson from your own journey to tell our listeners.

Dubner: In thirty seconds or less…! Find some smart people and ask them a lot of questions. When I say that I’m more attracted to questions than answers, I don’t mean I don’t want answers, it means that I just look hard for them. But asking yourself the questions is like the dog chasing its own tail.

Find smart people like you Simon, like we all know, but you need to have some teachers in this world if for nothing else than to tell you the books you need to read and so on.

Jacobson: Well, thank you Stephen, and I really welcome and invite you to come on the show again because we have yet to cover many good subjects. Thank you.

Dubner: Thank you, Simon.

Tags: family, parenting, parents, fundamentalism
Posted in Religion, Personal Life, Home & Family, Spiritual | No Comments »

Honoring Parents Who Don’t Seem to Deserve Honor

June 17th, 2014

Last week we had a fascinating show with Stephen Dubner, a good friend of mine and author of the book Turbulent Souls, and we spoke about parental influences and how to educate children when you believe in an absolute system of religion or morality while allowing children the freedom to grow.

When I was thinking about what to talk about this evening, a friend mentioned to me that he had a question that someone had asked him about how one honors parents who don’t seem to deserve honor. Then later in the day another friend asked me the same question, completely unrelated. So I guess that’s a sign that that’s the topic that should be addressed. I know it’s a very painful one, but at the same time a very relevant one to many people.

It made me think about the discussion we had last week with Mr. Dubner, about the issue of imperfect parents. Parents really do get a real bad rap, especially in our generation with everyone baring their souls in confessionals and the healing and recovery movement, but there’s a very good reason for it: parents definitely do shape their children.

At the same time, if you look into the Torah, for Jews particularly (yesterday was the Torah reading that included the Ten Commandments), the fifth of the Ten Commandments is “Honor Your Parents, i.e., honor your father and mother.” The Torah goes even further and promises that in the merit of doing that, you will have a long life. As a matter of fact, when the Ten Commandments are repeated a second time, in the final book (Deuteronomy), it even adds another element there: that you will not just have a long life, but you will also live in peace, and have a good life.

So tonight we’re going to address this issue of honoring parents. Every one of us has been a child, continues to be a child (hopefully our parents are alive), so it’s a very relevant topic and I welcome calls on all issues related to this topic (1-212-244-2050). I must say that many of us are very angry about this issue, so anger also relates to it because people have a lot of anger against their parents, against their childhood, the way they were hurt when they were still vulnerable and impressionable.

So what exactly are our obligations to our parents and what is this whole concept of honoring them anyway—particularly in a situation where on one end of the spectrum you don’t really feel that they deserve it, and on the other end there was even severe abuse; parents who have hurt their children in very profound ways. Issues that children have with parents who continue to haunt them, the scars that we pick up on different levels of abuse, whether it’s overt or subtle. How do we address that and what exactly is this fifth of the Ten Commandments of honoring parents?

I especially would like to hear from people who are very angry with their parents and also of course people who are very loving toward their parents. It will be interesting to hear from you the different dynamics in our relationship with our parents.

Last week I asked Mr. Dubner the following question, which we all have to ask ourselves: On the one hand, you look to your parents as your source of nurturing, a source of comfort, which even unhealthy parents definitely provide somewhat (I’m not talking about extreme cases of course) and at the same time, how do you separate the two feelings of love and hurt? The same parents who love you, have, on the other hand also hurt you?

For a child, even for an adult, it’s very confusing, and it becomes a very snowball type of combination of the good and the bad. As adults, we have the intelligence, the discretion to be able to distinguish.

But as children, that distinction isn’t that obvious and that’s a big quandary, because if you got from your parents healthy nurturing, and on the other hand they may have given you certain values that you really can’t embrace, or values that you see real faults in (you know, “the lies my father told me”), it’s the first time you realize that your parents aren’t perfect.

This is a serious issue, and one that requires us to examine the very anatomy of what exactly the commandment “honor your parent” means. When we look around today, many adults are attempting to soothe those old childhood betrayals through distraction—whether by working hundred-hour weeks, isolating themselves in endless scrolling, or placing disconnected bets in unregulated no kyc casinos. But avoiding the complexity of that flawed parenting doesn’t heal the underlying spiritual rift. I’d like to begin by giving some perspective here, turning to Jewish thought to understand how we are truly meant to navigate this pain.

Now, the real question that’s asked in Jewish thought, in Jewish philosophy, is a more fundamental one. Judaism does not believe in any intermediaries. In other words, we have a direct relationship with G-d. There are no partnerships, no intermediaries, no hired guns; each of us prays to G-d. G-d gave us a soul and empowered us with the ability to overcome our challenges in life. We have a mission. As I very often say on this show (Toward a Meaningful Life), “meaningful life” implies a direct mission that we have, a meaning and purpose in our lives. And that is a direct relationship with G-d.

So the question is asked, “Where is there any room for honoring anyone besides G-d?” It’s true, parents may have provided for us. Of course, if they were healthy they gave us nurturing. Many parents are selfless in their love and in their dedication to their children. But honoring your parents seems in some way to imply that parents have some type of partnership with G-d…but we should be honoring G-d alone who gives us life.

The Talmud does say that there are three partners in the birth of a child: the mother, father and G-d. The parents provide, so to speak, the stuff of which the body is made. G-d provides the soul. That’s why you can have a relationship between a man and a woman, a potential father and mother, husband and wife, and it doesn’t bear a child. So G-d is the third partner — the Creator of life.

So seemingly, birth should be honoring G-d, not the parents. We don’t recognize any form of “partnership” with G-d in creation. And one of the fascinating answers to this is that when we honor our parents, even healthy parents, we’re not honoring our parents, we’re honoring G-d who gave us life through our parents.

So, in essence, it’s really a recognition of G-d. For instance, there is a distinct law in Judaism that if parents tell a child to do something that transgresses G-d’s law, meaning the ethical laws of how we behave with each or other or any type of Divine law, any law that G-d dictates, the child does not have to comply with that request of the parents, even though there’s a commandment to honor your parents. But the commandment to honor your parents does not supercede the commandment of G-d because you honor your parents not because they have power or because they think they’re important, or because they provided for us, you honor them because G-d gave life to us through them.

And that’s a major distinction. That’s why if one has to choose between following a parent’s request and following G-d’s law, we defer to G-d. Honoring your parents is not an end in itself: there’s a meaning there, a significance, a spirit behind it — it is a means to honor G-d.

Now the interesting distinction that I’d like to make as well is that the commandment says, “honor your parents”; it doesn’t say “love your parents.” The Torah doesn’t tell us to love our parents. That means the commandment doesn’t include that. Honor can include that, but that’s an optional thing. There is a commandment to love G-d. There is a commandment to love your fellow. Why isn’t there a commandment to love our parents? Because they don’t always deserve our love. But if we dishonor the life that G-d gave us through our parents, then it’s not that we’re dishonoring our parents, we’re dishonoring ourselves, we’re dishonoring our own personal life.

So let’s go to the phone. I have Helen here on line one.

Caller: Thank you Rabbi. This is like some sort of omen from G-d. I am of the Jewish faith, and I lost my husband about eight months ago. Since then it’s been beyond agony. The insults: why didn’t Dad do this, why didn’t Dad do that… I only have one son. Why don’t you move to Florida? I’m ashamed to be with you. I have a million friends. We only had two-three people at the funeral. You don’t have any friends. You don’t look right.

Jacobson: Who is this speaking?

Caller: My one son. Every time he talks to me he just drags me down through the mud. I don’t know how to answer.

Jacobson: This is your son speaking to you like this?

Caller: Yes. He hardly sees me. He tells me, “I’m busy, I’m working late. I have two little kids.” And then when he speaks to me on the phone, it’s such abuse. There are things I can’t even tell you over the radio. I was in the car once and he said, “Get out.” It’s unbearable abuse. I don’t think we deserved it. “Why didn’t Dad have more money? Why didn’t he invest like other men?”

Jacobson: Helen, I feel deeply for you. I’m a parent myself. No individual, particularly a child, has the right to be abusive to anyone, particularly a parent who has provided for him, and I really feel for you. I’m sure our hearts go out to you in the listening audience as well. I will address both sides of the coin, because obviously, the commandment of honoring your parents, even in a situation where someone may feel justified not to, or even if something that their parents did to them was inappropriate, honoring your parents is an unconditional commandment. And that’s why it doesn’t say “love.” Because if the commandment was to love your parents, that couldn’t be unconditional because there are situations which may not warrant love.

But honoring, as I said, is honoring the life that was given to you. Now, if a parent, in addition to that, also earns your respect, then of course the honor extends to the parent’s personality as well.

But I’m talking now about the minimum. There’s a story in the Talmud of (I believe it was) Rabbi Akiva, the great sage, whose mother at an older age became senile: she would often walk barefoot out in the street, and behaved in ways that were quite embarrassing. It says that Rabbi Akiva, the great teacher, would get down on his hands and knees and put his hands under the feet of his mother so she shouldn’t get cut and bruised with her bare feet on the ground.

He could have said, “Well, my mother is senile, my mother is incapacitated, she should be locked up.” He recognized and respected in his mother the power of G-d’s gift of life. But again, he was seeing the G-d that worked through his mother. And I’m sure in his case, his mother was also quite healthy in rearing him. But the point is that the responsibility of a child to a parent is a very profound one, and in our day and age, which is another topic altogether, you see so many children when their parents grow old really just look at it as a nuisance and try to either get them out of the way and just come for the token Father’s or Mother’s Day with a tie or a some flowers. It’s sad to see, and it’s really part of the discussion as well, but I’m trying to begin, firstly, with the approach of what is it that we are honoring exactly, and what do we do when we have all that anger?

In the case, for instance, of Helen’s call, of a son who behaves that way, it’s simply abominable and unacceptable, because even if he should have complaints to his mother, he has no right to reciprocate and no right to be unhealthy in turn.

There are ways to deal with that which I’d like to address. But first let’s go to the next call. We have Rochelle on the air.

Caller: I’m calling because I want to know what happened to Mike Feder.

Jacobson: Okay, thank you for that call. Mike Feder, for those of you who are unaware, has been co-hosting the show with me. Last week I did the show with Stephen Dubner, and in the next few weeks, I’ll be doing the show alone. Mike and I remain good friends, and we’ve been experimenting with different formats. Actually I had an interesting discussion with Mike about the show and we felt that there are certain issues, for example, that taking calls vs. having an intelligent conversation with Mike (which is always a great delight),don’t always jive, so we agreed to experiment with some different formats. As a matter of fact, I used to be a guest on his show on WBAI several times and those shows were really fascinating as well as our shows together on Toward a Meaningful Life. So you’ll be hearing from Mike. Stay tuned and I’ll let the audience know what’s going on.

So back to the topic, how to honor parents who don’t seem to deserve honor. This, of course, touches upon the responsibility of the parents, and the responsibility of the children.

Now this idea of honoring parents is really honoring the G-d that gives life, which is honoring your own life. Because what often happens (and I’m taking one scenario) in the case where parents have done serious damage (when I say damage I mean that on a psychological level they have hurt the child), and in a very legitimate way, the child is angry and has been affected by it, that’s has a serious impact on children, who were vulnerable at the time. It’s a very serious thing that when G-d gives a life as a gift to a family, instead of honoring that gift, they in some way take it for granted and don’t provide for the child a nurturing affirmation.

So one scenario would be that the child grows into an adult, and now has a mixed “love-hate” relationship with the parent or even a cut-off point where they can’t really communicate well because it always turns into some big argument, or even a loving relationship that is masking some deeper fears or some deeper pain that exists.

You know, it’s the typical family situation where people go to their token parties, the annual get-together, and take the photos, but beneath the surface is simmering a lot of anger and pain. So the question is, the challenge to us (and the commandment to honor one’s parents is a challenge to us), how do we rise to the occasion? What do we do with this situation?

I think it’s critical to understand that this is not just about your parents, it’s about yourself as well. Because part of the effect—the negative or detrimental effect—of unhealthy parenting on a child, is that the child may begin to lose his or her self-esteem, self-confidence that is cultivated in a home that is nurturing, welcoming, and makes you feel that you really belong.

I remember once seeing a moving episode where one of our contemporary healers, (I think it was John Bradshaw) was doing a seminar/workshop (I saw it on video) in a room of 50-60 people, and he had everyone close their eyes and depict and envision what it was like the moment they were born. And he says, “Remember, now, you’re being cradled by your mother at her chest, and you hear her heartbeat.” And an actual recording of a heartbeat is played in the room, which is a very soothing sound; it has a certain symmetry, a certain rhythm, like water rushing. And you hear the heartbeat beating and he begnis speaking about how you’re being welcomed into the world. The mother is saying “I hold you close to me. I’ve been waiting for you for many months. I’ve prepared a special room for you with a special bed. Whatever you’ll need in your life you can always turn to me. You always belong no matter what happens in your life. Things may be difficult, but remember there’s always someone who holds you near her chest, who holds you to her heartbeat,” and the warmth that the mother infuses the child … Literally, everyone in the room started crying because obviously the exercise was meant to show the contrast of how many of us really feel regarding that type of belonging and nurturing.

But that’s really what a healthy parent is doing. It’s an invisible message because obviously the child doesn’t understand the physical words “I love you,” or “I want you.” But there’s a sense of belonging, of knowing that there’s someone who holds you, and that there’s a rock-hard foundation that you can always depend upon. It is simply that foundation in life that gives us our sense of self-esteem and dignity; the sense that we belong, that we can do anything we wish.

Without it you can have all the tools—the intelligence, the emotions—but you don’t have that security. So a parent is supposed to provide that. Now, you grow into an adult and they didn’t provide security entirely, that leaves an insecure adult.

Even in the healthiest of homes (because we live in a very materialistic universe where parents are involved in business and at work), there’s always a level of absenteeism, some would even call it a subtle abandonment that exists, even in the best of situations. But, of course, even in the worst situations, one can’t compare it to overt abuse.

So what do you do with that? The Torah’s injunction, commandment, to honor your parents is really a challenge to us. It’s not just about your relationship with your parents, it’s about your relationship with your life. Remember, what your parents gave you was life. And if they did not provide to you the healthiest type of nurturing, it’s not just a question that now I’m going to get even or that they don’t deserve my respect, what happens to your life? Do you also dishonor your life?

So honoring your parents is like telling you to honor the life that was given to you, even if your parents were almost incidental, or they did everything possible to crush that life. In the worst scenario, the life is still there. Should you dishonor the life, you will become not only a victim of your parents, but you will continue to loathe yourself and dishonor G-d and your own soul.

So therefore, honoring your parents is really about our connection to G-d. Now it’s interesting, in the Ten Commandments, we all know that Moses came down with the two tablets. (Incidentally, the two tablets are often mistakenly drawn with oval tops. The truth is, the Talmud says that the tablets were actually rectangular—they had four corners and were not oval on top.)

So when he came down with the two tablets on which were written the Ten Commandments, five of them were inscribed on one tablet and five on the other. And in the holy books it tells us that the five on one tablet were the laws and the commandments between human beings and G-d (in other words, our relationship with G-d—as we see in the first commandments “I am the L-rd your G-d,” “Don’t create other gods,” “Don’t blaspheme G-d”) and the second tablet contains the next five commandments which are between man and man, human relations (“Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not murder,” “Thou shalt not covet”).

Where is the commandment to honor your parents? It’s the fifth of the first tablet; the fifth of the laws in our relationship with G-d. Now, one can easily argue that honoring our parents falls under the category of our relationship with other people. But if you bear in mind what I’ve been saying, you’ll realize that honoring your parents is actually one of the laws between us and G-d, it’s a relationship with G-d. It’s not between you and your parents. Obviously it spills over and in a way you can even call it an intermediary between the first five commandments and the next. Maybe that’s why it’s the fifth—because it carries G-d over into the next dimension. In other words, it’s how G-d plays itself out in human relations and then that carries over in how we treat others, but it’s ultimately about the sanctity of life.

And in that circumstance, no matter what, honoring your parents is an absolute commandment without conditions, because in the worst scenario, honoring life is the key. G-d is essentially saying that even if you had parents who did not deserve your honor or respect or love, since you were born through them, honor that element.

Now what does that mean practically? Well, we’ll get to the practical in a moment while I take a small break here.

You’re listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. We’re on every Sunday from 6-7pm on WEVD 1050AM on the dial. This show is brought to you by the Meaningful Life Center, which I am privileged to head, and you can contact us at wisdomreb@aol.com. We also have a new and developing website which offers transcripts of these radio shows plus a lot of other exciting material. We invite you to visit the website at www.meaningfullife.com. Your communication impacts and shapes the thrust and direction of these shows, because it’s all about life, meaningful life, how to find meaning in life, just as the topic of honoring parents from tonight’s show really came from grassroots questions that I received (not that I don’t have any issues with my parents, I must say, because the fact is that although they are relatively healthy, everyone has his or her issues) so I really welcome questions. You can also reach us at 1-800-363-2646 (1-800-3MEANING). I’d also like to welcome everyone in the tri-state area to join us for my Wednesday Night Class, an extension of the show, every Wednesday evening at 8pm, at 346 W. 89^th St., on the corner of Riverside Drive.

Now, we’re talking about honoring parents and we’ll go to Leslie on the line.

Caller: Hi Rabbi. About seven years ago I lost my Dad and I was saying the Kaddish prayer for him, and I also know in coming back to my Jewish roots that the son carries on for the father with tzeddakah and all of that, but I was saying Kaddish today for some relatives who were lost in the Holocaust that I really never knew (my Mom had asked me to say it). And no matter what synagogue I go to, it seems like they’re going to the track. These guys are saying Kaddish very fast. And I am just coming back to my roots and starting to read. How would you suggest, since I’m trying to honor somebody’s memory, that I go about getting them to slow it down.

Jacobson: It’s a very legitimate question, and I thank you for the call because the fact is, unfortunately, you go to a synagogue and often the services are almost done like lip-service. I would, practically speaking, go over to whoever’s saying Kaddish, or the rabbi or someone you see who is learned or respected in the minyon, or quorum, who is praying, and simply say that you’re someone new to this and you’d like to say the Kaddish, and it’s a very personal experience, and if possible could it be said in a slower way so we could all take it in.

I think if you do that in a non-challenging way, usually you’ll get a good response. There will always be some obnoxious people who look down at that, which I find extremely distasteful and antithetical to the concept of Kaddish, but that’s what I would do just to create the kind of environment where people are sensitive. And I think that your call is quite significant…

I was reading recently some reviews on a fascinating book by Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor at the New Republic, and though he’s a non-observant Jew, being a self-proclaimed agnostic, he wrote this fascinating study called Kaddish, where he talks about his whole metamorphosis, his whole catharsis, of the year that he dedicated himself to say Kaddish.

Now, just for the record, let me explain what Kaddish is. Kaddish is the traditional Jewish prayer that is said after the passing of a parent. Kaddish is said by the child three times a day, and in this case, Leon Wieseltier actually assumed that type of tradition, and he discusses in the book what it did for him and his whole growth. He had to really face his own doubts and his own questions. So Kaddish is one of the most profound traditions, because it really touches upon the issue of honoring your parents not even in this lifetime but in the life afterwards. In other words, as the Zohar says (the classical book of Jewish mysticism), honoring your parents is a command that you can fulfill even after their passing.

It’s actually a law in the Torah which is that the honoring of your parents continues on, which is why you have the tradition of Yizkor on Yom Kippur and other occasions, the idea of remembering and commemorating your parents. It’s one of the most moving things to see a child, no matter what age, even a child who’s now a grandfather, go into a synagogue and dedicate and remember his or her parents, because memory is one of the most powerful forces that we have.

So that honor continues even afterwards, and that’s something that I’d like to touch upon. But first, let’s go to Daniel in New York.

Caller: Hello Rabbi Jacobson. I have a question. I’m temporarily separated and I have contact with my children. One time, before I left home, I was very upset with my older boy. He was then 14 years old. I was angry, not directly at him, but at my partner, and I got very angry and got very physical with him.

So I want to know, how can you regain the trust that you had and get your son back to the place that you had before?

Jacobson: I’m always moved by these questions because people really bare their soul on the air and I am honored by the confidence in me, and I’ll try to respond in kind.

When a parent has abused the trust of a child: you hurt a child and the child says, “I can’t trust you anymore, I can’t turn to you,” and particularly if the parent was wrong in doing so, I think the single most important thing is accountability and recognition that “I made a mistake.” You see, young children think their parents are G-d, that they are perfect. Often, the insecurity of parents as their children grow is projected onto the children by cultivating the type of attitude that we are superman and superwoman, mother and father, which often is essentially a way of masking and compensating for the insecurity of the parent.

However, it’s extremely healthy that a parent at some point shows the child that he or she is not perfect. The parent doesn’t have to tell the child “I’m imperfect,” but at the same time doesn’t try to project some type of false image. Children learn from honesty. Remember, a child loves his parent naturally, as a parent does the child. However, we’re human beings and we make mistakes.

Accountability is the key. Trust is not built on perfection, as many people are often mistaken by thinking, but trust is built on accountability, because you can trust that if a person makes a mistake, and we all do, they will be accountable.

I think the best thing you can do, Daniel, and I say this to all of us as parents since we all make mistakes, and often bad mistakes, is be accountable. You can’t just go buy the love of a child and say, “Okay, I’ll never do it again.” You can do that a few times but then the child is disappointed enough that he or she won’t come back. And the child cries. The key is to be accountable and show that you’ve actually changed.

I often hear parents tell me, “So we weren’t such great parents when we were young. Why does my son or daughter have to take it out on me now?”

I say to them, “My friend, you know, you may have caused such damage that that child can’t forget. You forgot because you were just an adult acting out. But you’ve left an imprint. Remember, a child is like a warm ball of wax. Every imprint on that wax has an effect forever. The child remembers it forever.”

So they say, “What can we do?”

Change something. Yes, it’s hard for an adult. Change something. If you really sincerely change something, the child will see it. And that’s why you can’t just say, “Let bygones be bygones and let’s just forget the past.” No, you have to do something that actually and sincerely shows change. Remorse is not enough in most cases. It’s important that we do something. And Daniel, I think if you do something, your child will reciprocate. It may not be immediate, it may be down the line, but remember this: You have nothing to lose. What will happen is that you will have become a more honest person, and you will have grown from it, and there’s no doubt that the growth of a parent has an impact on a child, even a child who’s completely cut-off.

So we go now to Yosef on the line.

Caller: Hi Rabbi Jacobson. My name is Yossie and I have the honor of attending your class every Wednesday. Basically the reason that I’m calling is that I have not spoken to my mother for approximately four and a half years. The main reason why I haven’t and why I’m still not touching base with her is because of the abuse that she put my father through. A little bit of courage that I have is because I saw from King Solomon, from Mishlei, where he writes, it’s better to sit in a deserted place than seeing a woman who is filled with anger and bitterness.

But at the same time, as you opened the show today, I was thinking that it says at the same time, a wife who is filled with fiery wrath, but it doesn’t say if the mother is filled with anger and with bitterness.

In any event, I feel that something that blocks me from growing spiritually and physically is that, like you said, a person has to honor the element of life, and the fact that your parents, despite what they put you through, still gave you life. So if you don’t love yourself, you cannot transcend that and give love to others and then to bring it to a higher dimension.

So I just want to know how I can go about this.

Jacobson: Okay, Yosef, thank you for the call. It’s my honor to participate with you as well in the Wednesday Night Class. To respond to your question, each case is a different one and has to be dealt with on a case by case basis. It’s hard to make generalities.

However, I would say this. One of the practical things I was going to address is the question: so how do you honor that life that came through your parents and with the emphasis on “Honor your parents.”

And that’s also, by the way, the reason we say, “Honor your parents and you will live long” because the way you honor life is the way it reciprocates in your own life, that it gives you long and good years.

So how do you honor that with a parent whom you can’t really communicate with? Or that you’ve decided that for healthy reasons it may be better to stay away from them, because every time you’re with them it just infuriates you, it’s not good for you, it’s not good for them.

There are indirect ways of honoring your parents, for example, through prayer. You can pray for the soul of your mother or father. You can pray that they should see the light. That they should heal. That they should come to understand their own soul. That they should perhaps forgive themselves and their parents as well, which is often the case.

That doesn’t mean that you have to be in the proximity and in the line of fire to receive abuse—that’s why it’s often important to pull away—but to pray for their soul. And actually there are two opinions in Jewish law whether one is supposed to honor a wicked parent. Maimonides says yes and another commentator, the Tur, has the opinion that we’re not supposed to honor a wicked parent.

So, you see, the difference of opinion is not necessarily because there’s no honor there. The question is how that honor should be expressed. And honoring a wicked parent means that you are honoring not the wickedness obviously but the life that they bore. And you pray for that parent. And one would say Kaddish for that parent, G-d forbid, after that parent passes on, because you always believe that the soul remains intact. Not only your soul, but the soul of your parents as well. Because remember, that’s where their life began as well. So we’re sanctifying, we’re celebrating the sanctity of life in general.

Practically, in your case Yosef, I have to know more of the details of the situation, and I welcome you calling me after the show or at some other point, or emailing me, and I will be happy to try to respond, because I really have to understand whether there was any effect on you, or if it’s only your anger about her behavior toward your father. Is your not talking to her helping the situation or making it worse? It’s really important to evaluate it. By talking to her, will you be hurt? There are factors here that need to be addressed before I can comment.

But meanwhile, the minimum is to pray for that parent, because the interesting thing is that we don’t want to get caught up in the same trap of spiting ourselves and saying, “You know, I’m so angry that I’m cutting off a part of myself.”

You want to be able to be a good parent. There are many people who, because they had bad parenting, don’t want to become parents themselves, and this just exacerbates and magnifies the problem, because you allow the holocaust to continue in the next generation.

The key is to stop the pattern, stop the poison. So thank you for the call. We go to Bob.

Caller: Yes, this is about a compulsion to engage in sex with pay, prostitution. I feel like I’m ready for a more permanent relationship but it’s hard to do. What do you suggest?

Jacobson: I don’t really see the connection between that and our topic here, but I guess it’s a good question in any case, when a person has a compulsion in any given area that’s unhealthy, the key is to channel it in healthy ways. My suggestion is to find a person, a partner or a person that you can marry in a healthy way and have a good, healthy relationship. I mean it’s a simple ABC type of suggestion, but since I don’t know more details, I believe that the issue is channeling our energies, even when they are acted out or in some way compulsive, to channel them in healthy ways.

Okay, so let’s get back to our topic. For some reason I always gravitate toward talking about some of these abusive and negative topics, not because I take any pleasure in that, but because they happen to be real situations that I think need a forum, and need a platform to be able to communicate because so many of us have been silenced. There are so many of us as adults who don’t really address this issue, and we express our anger and our rage and our inadequacies in all kinds of unhealthy ways.

That’s why I really feel like it’s an honor to be able to address a topic like this. And what we’ve been talking about is honoring your parents and how to honor them when they don’t seem to deserve honor.

I should say, on a happy note, that there are many of us who really do have very healthy parents, and I think it’s a tribute and we should take a few moments at least to acknowledge the fact that there are many factors and many elements in parents that are very healthy. Of course, in that situation we don’t need an explanation why we should honor them, yet, I still think that even in the case where there is a healthy situation, each of us can honor our parents in a deeper way when we recognize that we are honoring the parent not because he or she was healthy, and not because we were given a lot. Those are additional (albeit excellent) reasons.

But you’re honoring your parents for a deeper absolute reason: because they are part of the chain of life. They are part of the chain that brought you where you are, that gives you the resources and allows you to make your contribution in this world.

Now if parents, as I’ve mentioned, earned that right, and have provided that nurturing, then we have of course a commandment to honor them (not just for the life that was given to us through them, but) also for providing for us. And this honor is fundamental to our relationship with ourselves, with G-d.

But I was emphasizing of course the other side because usually you don’t have to discuss honoring parents in a situation where parents are healthy and everyone’s happy. No one would have the question why we should honor them.

Yet I was discussing issues where often the eclipse of the sun teaches us more about the sunlight—situations where we don’t always seem to feel the need or see the ability to have that honor.

Okay, we have Barbara from New York on the line.

Caller: Hi Rabbi. Thank you for taking my call. I’ve been listening to your program and I wanted to ask you a question about how to handle a situation. I haven’t spoken to my parents for nearly five years. They really do not want to have anything to do with me or my family…

Jacobson: You made that choice or they made that choice?

Caller: Actually, a fight ensued and I told them that I really didn’t think I could see them anymore, that it was just too painful, and then they did some really horrible things and disconnected their phone. I don’t even know what their phone number is.

I haven’t had any communication with them at all. So I haven’t spoken to them at all, and recently it came to light that my father is very ill. My brother and my aunt told me that, and I did send him a card with a little note on it saying how sorry I was to hear that and that my thoughts and prayers are with him, but I haven’t heard anything back.

So I’m worried now about what to do and how to handle it in case he passes away soon. He is 83 and I know he’s ill and I’m really not sure how to handle this.

Jacobson: Well, let me just ask you, Barbara. What is the reason, if you can capture it in a sentence, of what created this rift? Does it go back to your childhood or is it something more recent?

Caller: I guess it’s all the way to my childhood, but basically, I had seen them and been with them for the entire day doing a lot of what I thought were wonderful things with them, and then I didn’t hear from them for like three or four months. My daughter had been ill and I called up because I needed to talk to them, and they never called me back to ask me if she was okay. Then Thanksgiving was coming up three or four months later and I still hadn’t heard from them so I called up and they didn’t want to talk to me.

So I said, “Look, let’s just drop it and we just won’t see each other anymore.”

Jacobson: What do you think is the reason for what happened?

Caller: I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

Jacobson: So you have no idea why your parents reject you.

Caller: They’ve always favored my brother over me and they made that very clear.

Jacobson: Both your father and mother, right?

Caller: Mostly my mother. My father has been swayed unfortunately over the years. And I have a lot of really good memories about my father and I guess that hurts me a great deal, but I really don’t know how to handle this in case he does pass away soon.

Jacobson: Do they live close by?

Caller: I live in Westchester and they live on Long Island, so it’s only an hour or two away.

Jacobson: Well, personally, if I were you, unless I hear another reason otherwise, I would pick myself up and go visit him. Because exactly the way you’re saying, if he’s about to pass away or if he’s really ill…

Caller: The problem is that what they did to me last time was they called the police in their town and told the police that I was harassing them which was not true and they told the police to tell me never to contact them. When the policeman called me and told me this I was in shock and then they sent back some presents that I had given them and I haven’t heard from them since and I’ve had no contact with them. And I spoke to my brother about seeing them, and he said, “I wouldn’t go over there if I were you, they may slam the door in your face, they may call the police.” So I haven’t made any contact with them.

Jacobson: Do you have a good relationship with your brother?

Caller: Yes.

Jacobson: So maybe you can say to your brother, “I really want to see Dad. So maybe I can go with you, you and I, let’s go together,” and then create the environment. And then he can tell your mother, “Come on, behave like a mensch,” or something like that. That’s what I would do. I would insist. Even if you told me that you feel so sore that you just want to cut yourself off completely… But I hear in your voice, Barbara, that you have to pick yourself up, ask your brother to go with you, go visit your Dad. Forget about the past, you just want to see your Dad who’s not well, wish him the best—both as an obligation as a child and the fact that it will do good also for him to see that.

Caller: Okay.

Jacobson: Because this may be the last opportunity to see him. And I would just tell your brother that you want him to go with you. And prepare the ground if necessary so you can preempt any situation with the police. Your brother, I guess, can intervene. Your mother won’t call the cops on him, right?

Caller: No I don’t believe so. Okay, thank you very much for your help.

Jacobson: Well, the calls keep coming in about people who either don’t speak to their parents or who can’t relate to them (we’re always going to hear more about the negative stories) which are painful to hear, but it is a reality.

I just want to say on a more mystical and Kabbalistic note, honoring your parents is really reflective also of a mystical concept, so I’ll try to capture it in a nutshell. The name of G-d, the Tetragrammaton, in the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, is made up of four Hebrew letters: the yud, the hei, the vav, and the hei, which really in a sense capture all of existence. It all begins with the yud. The yud is like a dot, a point: the point of conception, the point of departure, the beginning. Then comes the hei, which spreads out and develops into a more developed idea. Then comes the vav which is like a line, a vertical line that draws the energy downward, and then the final hei where it’s expanded in the recipient.

So in other words, any flow of energy, any type of transmission of communication from teacher to student, begins with a point of departure, expands, is transmitted, and then expands again in the recipient.

So the yud, kei, vav, kei [for purposes too detailed to go into here, the hei is written and spoken as kei, when the letters are said in sequence] is really in microcosm, in a sense the blueprint, or you can call it the building blocks of all of existence including our psyches.

The Kabbalah explains that the yud, kei, the first two letters, are compared to father and mother, and the last two are compared to son and daughter, which of course includes all children. Honoring your parents (on a mystical level it is also an internal, personal experience) is essentially the fusion and the union between the parent within your psyche and the child within your psyche, in other words, between your intellect and your emotions: intellect being compared to father and mother and emotions being like the children of our thoughts so to speak. Dishonoring your parents, or being unable to honor them, in a sense, does not allow that circle to be complete. So we see here that it’s not just a question between human beings—even internally, personally, psychologically, there’s a certain circle that needs to be completed, a certain cycle, and that cycle includes a point of departure, the expansion which is compared to father and mother (kabeid es avicha v’es imecha—honor your father and mother) and the children, meaning the results or the products, honoring that completes the circle.

Now I hope that was clear. It is somewhat mystical, but at the same time it captures an essence that all these commandments, (and actually I don’t even like to call them commandments, because commandment has a negative implication that you’re being commanded to do something. No one likes to be commanded to do anything. A better word actually is “connection”) are really connections to our psyche, our soul and to the entire cosmos.

Today, we live in a time when everyone wants to be connected, whether by telephone, email, cell phone, fax, but also psychologically, “connections” implies a type of open channel and open flow, and the connection of honoring parents is really an opportunity and a challenge to us of how to look at our own lives, how to create that type of flow between your own, so to speak, parent and child. For instance, when all our activities, in a way, are a result and the fruit of our labor, in essence, that’s a parent/child relationship in our personal lives.

Honoring the root, the source, of where the fruits and where our activities come from is not just the right thing to do, it also creates the connection, the connection to the past, the honoring of the life that was created. And it just shows us how a commandment, or the connection called honoring parents really is a very all-encompassing one that affects all of existence, both personal and interpersonal, and on many, many different levels.

And of course I was addressing this evening the issue of how we deal with the situation of honoring your parents when your parents seemingly doesn’t deserve it, to the point where you can’t even communicate with them. Even there, there’s room for honor, as I said, through prayer and through other methods that we do in our own personal lives.

But the key is never to cut ourselves off to the point where we cease to honor the life itself.

We have time for one more call. Shelley is on the line.

Caller: Hi Rabbi. I’m concerned for the first lady who called you in tears over the way her only son was treating her. I feel that your advice subsequently (during your show tonight) is for the sons or the daughters who have been hurt by parents. And you addressed them with great kindness. But what about the children who are very rude and abusive to their parents and ungrateful, like the situation of the first caller tonight? She  needed your compassion and your advice.

Jacobson: I agree. I wish I could get in touch with Helen again.

Caller: Right. I feel so concerned that the next caller directed you to the children’s problems with their parents, but I know so many parents who are in grief over the way the American children treat them rudely.

Jacobson: Shelley, that’s a very good point and I would love to dedicate another show to it, but on a personal note, I would love to get in touch with Helen, if she’s still listening, because obviously the most important thing is that a parent has to get out of the line of fire and danger of a child who is really abusive.

I’m sure that I or others can help her, wherever she may be, and just make sure that there’s protection, because children can sometimes be very abusive and violent, and I really am concerned for Helen. But overall, I agree that we really do need to dedicate a show and talk about the issue of how parents deal with “abusive” children, which can be equally painful or even worse than the first problem. Even if that abuse from the child may be justified (not the abuse but that the anger of the child may be justified—the abuse is not), it is definitely a good topic and I will address it. I appreciate the call and I give you my word that I will address this topic.

We’re winding down here. You’ve been listening to Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. We’ve been talking about honoring parents, both those who deserve it and those who seemingly don’t and what it all means.

As usual, it’s a topic that came from you, and I’d like to acknowledge that by saying that this show is supported by listeners such as yourself. This particular show was underwritten and dedicated by Mark Siden and I want to extend my thank you to him for that. I really want to welcome everyone to participate in trying to help us keep this show on, to have topics like this discussed, about children, about parents, about issues that really perhaps aren’t even discussed on other shows. So we invite you to make your pledge and contribution to our non-for-profit organization, the Meaningful Life Center. Please call 1-800-3MEANING (1-800-363-2646) so we can continue to bring programs like this to you.

It’s my honor to speak to you all and I hope you’ll join me again next week on Toward a Meaningful Life, every Sunday evening from 6:00-7:00pm on WEVD 1050AM. Thank you.

Tags: abuse, parents, abused children
Posted in Personal Life, Home & Family, Thanksgiving | 5 Comments »

Can Faith Laugh?

June 17th, 2014

Faith came as a gift from above and lay nearly dormant within me. Nearly, I say, because even as an ember, it emanated enough energy to keep the search alive. It’s hard to say whether its emanations served to push or pull, to seek or be found. Was it a source of motivation, continually driving me to find that which would set it free? Or was it rather like a magnet, constantly drawing to itself the source of its freedom?

I picture it somehow like a beautiful glowing gem covered with dirt, yet still possessing the power to shine. I picture it pulsating somehow, like a lighthouse, like a heartbeat, like the rhythmic in and out, on and off, here and there, now and then, dark and light of life.

Though I see it as a hard, solid thing, I feel it soft and timid. Though in my imaginings it is indestructible and eternal, I sense it fragile, vulnerable, needing protection. Though it seems perfect in every way, I feel the obligation, responsibility, the need to nourish it.

When I neglect my faith, when I take it for granted, eventually I feel sorrow and regret. Is that weeping I hear within? Can faith shed tears? And if it cries enough will it extinguish itself with its tears? Will its emanations cease, or is it only I who will cease to sense its emanation?

But faith, when I nurture you, when I tend to you, when I abandon myself—my mind, my heart, my will—to you, how you swell and rejoice. Is that laughter I hear within? Can faith laugh? Or is that me—or finally the lack of me—who has made room to hear the delight of life?

Posted in Faith, Beliefs & Concepts, Personal Life, Torah, Personal Stories | No Comments »