Chanukah - The Feminine Chinuch of Chanukah

2:18 So the rebbe smiled and he said, 'A person always needs to wear two watches' One that says it's shpey, it's late. And the other that says, 'But there's still time,' and it's a It's a deep mussar. I'm glad to hear that things run on time here in Mechala, and that four minutes late is called late, and that time is time. But a person also has to know that we control time, and time doesn't control us. That's the mitzvah of Kiddush Hashem. The mitzvah of Kiddush Hashem is that a Jew does not live under the dominion of time. There are people that live their life that way. That they're meshubed to time. And there's something very beautiful about that. There's a sense of responsibility and dignity that comes with living within a certain amount of time. But there's also a tension. You ever experienced that around somebody who's very When it comes, we're going to be late. We have to go.

3:11 And there are girls that just naturally are more like, it's okay. There's another bus ten minutes from them, right? But if we miss that, I see that I'm hitting certain people in a certain. I never know. Whenever I say Have the temperature in the dorms could be an issue. You always see girls go. I didn't know that what I was saying right now was going to be a deep trigger for some of you. There's a mussel of yes, we're four minutes late, and there's another mussel of it's okay. You know what I'm saying? Like, I have a boy in yeshiva who got very into Yiddishkeit. He was very careful about minyanim and zmanim, and there's something very beautiful about that. After he left Mivaseret, after a couple years He went to another place, and it's maybe a little bit more of a right-wing place. And I asked him, "How's Yeshiva going?" He said, "Good."

4:04 I learned that it's okay to come to shacharos five minutes late. I said, "I'm glad to hear that." There are people that don't know how to do something imperfectly. They don't know how to show up in a time that works for them. Not saying a person should come to shiur late. I'm saying that there's realities in life. You know what I mean. So I want to do today's shiur a little bit differently than I normally do. I don't want to talk for 45 minutes. I want to share one idea, and then I really want to open up the floor to have a conversation about it because it's an idea that I think is very important on a personal growth level. It's also important on a parenting level. I want to really talk and hear from you. I want to hear what you have to say. I want to learn from you. To think about what you think about this idea, because it's not an obvious idea. Even though to some of you, I imagine it will be obvious, and maybe even to most of you. But even if it's obvious to you, I'd like to drill down on the idea and really try to understand what it means.

5:04 So I understand that the yom today is called Neir Ishbeiso. Yes. So I can be very honest with you. I never pay attention to the titles they give me. I learned many years ago from a very chashev rab in the Five Towns that they tell him like the topic is. He goes, "Don't tell me. I'm going to prepare a shiur, and I show up. You'll tell me the topic. I'll figure out how to get it in." But in this case, it worked out very nicely. Ner ish u beso literally means candle person home. I really want to spend a little bit of time talking about the chinuch that happens in our home. Chanukah is from lashon of chinuch, as Rav Hersh points out And ner ish beso is in a certain way communicating. The parent is the ner The ish is the child that's being parented Beso is both the type of home that we have and the type of home that our children will build.

6:11 Many years ago, when my wife was in Darchevina So she had a Rebbe whose name was Rav Orloewik. You heard of Rav Orloewik? Orloewik is a tremendous Talmudachem A tremendous pikeach And she had the opportunity for two years to learn under Rav Orloewik. And I joke around with my wife that my wife is like a vending machine. If I just press certain buttons, I get certain shmuzin. If I know if I press like a four, it's like Rav Orloik says, like those toys where you pull the cow says moo, it's only when you pull the string. So over the years I've learned a tremendous amount from my wife, but I always get to hear Rav Bolman Zecher Tzaddik Levracha said this, and Rav Orloik said this. One of the things that Rav Orloik said is that he said he doesn't think that he would spend his time teaching eighteen year old women.

7:09 He said, "But I would definitely spend my time teaching future mothers and bobbies." And it's a very profound statement that the girls in this room In just a very short amount of time, you are going to be in positions of leadership in Kallah Yisrael. And when I say positions of leadership, I don't just mean people who occupy positions of responsibility and authority. Leadership happens in every moment of our life. Leadership happens right here in Sinai. It happens even within leading yourself. The type of homes that we build—that's a leadership opportunity. But really, what I want to talk about a little bit is the ner ish ubeso. It informs the homes that your children will build. And just a word about that for a second. We don't grow up on an island. We speak about. We speak about. Having a deep sense of dignity The notion that I am beloved So I do believe that on a core level, the soul is connected. That's one of the fundamental aspects of the soul that the soul has a certain level of connection within it.

8:25 But also that level of connection, that self love, must be fostered in an environment. And you don't realize this, but you are loved into being. Every one of you was loved into being. Every one of you had parents and communities, even camp counselors that gave you a sense of tapping into your own inner being, and then you went and shared that with somebody else. Do you realize that happened in your life? It's not obvious. If you think about, just take a moment for those of you who were in some sort of camp, or maybe it was an NCSY advisor, but think about somebody who's not a parent for a moment. Who and I'm not even talking about a teacher just now. Somebody who really gave you a sense that you are valid. I'm talking about you're a person. You have somebody like that in your head.

9:11 Of course, what they were drawing from was something you already had inside of yourself. If you didn't believe that you were a dignified person, then there would be nothing to tap into. And yet, we see so often that girls and guys who have a deep sense of dignity never had anybody to cultivate that sense of dignity. They live. I don't know how to say this nicely. They live meekly. Do you ever see people like this? They're too afraid to encounter the world. It. This is not so nice. I'm about to say, but it's it's deeply true. Sometimes you see a guy who's like not doesn't have a lot of confidence. I'm talking about just like a And it's hard on a date because sometimes I have to tell the girls I promise you, he's a really good guy. You just got to get through the first four dates and that's hard.

10:02 You know what I'm saying? That's a lot of dates to get through. But you see that guy ten years later, after he's married with children, responsibility, and a job, and all of a sudden he's confident. All of a sudden he's like—he's not a meek person anymore. And it happens all the time. You almost wonder what happened to that 18-year-old kid that could barely raise his hand and share. For him, it was like an avod. Because if you have a certain amount of love in your life You come out, so to speak, of your own shell, and you're able to attach deeply to what's real. Does that make sense? So when we speak about ner ishubei, the parent is the candle. And the candle is naturally designed to give off its flame to another. So that's the parent. The ish is the child that we're trying to love into being, to bring out what's in that child. And then beso is the impact of that—the home that child will one day build because of the love that you've given them.

11:02 So it happens to work very well with what I want to say. The topic of today's she'er is nairi shu beso. Rav Hirsch points out that Hanukkah is milash and chinuch. But there's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful vart from Rav Kook that I'd like to share with you today. And the var is as follows: Chinuch is masculine. Chanukah is feminine. And we see that when it comes to Chanukah There is a deeply feminine root that Chanukah has. We know that the Gemara says already, "Afen hayu ba'oso anes." Women are mechuyaves and they're as Chanukah because "Afen hayu ba'oso anes." And Rashi even says because Any time that women take an active part in the cat being the catalyst for the nase So they're included in the mitzvah. So it seems then, according to Rashi, it's an interesting conversation: what role women played in the role of Hanukkah. But even aside from that You see that there's something specifically feminine about Hanukkah, which means that there's something specifically feminine about the chenuch of Hanukkah.

12:16 So the question is, what's the difference between masculine chenoch and feminine chenoch? So we know, and I know that you know this, and I'm just going to say it quickly. We know that in Yiddishkeit, masculine and feminine are not genders. Genders are a byproduct of spiritual energies that are masculine and feminine. The masculine energy in general is more external. The feminine energy in general is more internal. But I want to really unpack it a little bit more than that. Masculine energy, by its nature, is to exert one's will upon another. It's top down. Feminine energy is to appreciate what is and to nurture from within. And I think that masculine energy gets a very bad rap in today's world, because most people, when they hear that, think, "Well, that's not good. It's not good to exert your will upon another." But the truth of the matter is that it's not true. It's important on behalf of all men. It's important to be able to exert our will upon something.

13:38 For example If you had a piece of clay And you said, "Well, I just want to nurture this clay into being. I just want to appreciate it for what it is." How does a piece of clay become a piece of pottery? There's an exertion of our will upon something Right? So it's this is my vision for it. And a lot of times today, we don't live in the politically correct world in which we live We're not allowed to say, 'Well, this is what I think something should be,' and go out and make it that. The world is something today because the masculine energy of the world has formed the world into something And it's very important when it comes to raising our children to have a very clear communication of what we believe a child ought to become. It's not popular to say today; you're not allowed to say that out loud. But it's true.

14:34 And we should say it out loud because it's important for us to recognize that Yiddishkeit is a set of values, and that communicating those set of values to our children is okay. There's this very PC thing in the world today that you're not allowed to tell children. Is it possible to repeat the difference between two energies? The masculine energy is to exert one's will upon another. Feminine energy would be to nurture from within. We're going to spend most of our time today talking about the second one, but I just want to explain why the second one is important in the context of the first. If you don't, if you don't say like. A parent says Maybe I did the wrong thing. I really pushed my child to go to daven with a minyan. What does that mean? Why is that the wrong thing? Why is it wrong to tell our children that we have a standard, that when we daven as a community, you're part of something?

15:27 Does the child want to go to minyan? Not necessarily. When we tell a child it's important to go to minyan, what we're doing is we're exerting our will upon the child. In the hopes that the child will take that will and make it their own, there's nothing wrong with setting a standard. There is, however, a danger, and that's the danger I want to talk about today. If we're constantly telling our child what we want them to become The potential negative impact of that is that we never appreciate the child for who they are. In other words, there's a difference between becoming and being. And a parent has to live at the nexus of becoming and being. Any time you say to your child, "Become this" You have to be careful because what does the child hear? The child hears I'm not that, and as I am, I'm not okay.

16:31 You hear that very subtle message? Do you know why children lie to their parents? Most people think children lie to their parents because they don't want to get in trouble. It's not the real reason. Children lie to their parents because it's a devastating feeling to see your parents disappointed in you. And as a parent, you might know this. As a parent, all it takes to tell your child that you're disappointed in them is this. You ready for? You want to see what it looks like? That's the whole thing. It's a slight eyebrow. That's all it is And a child's heart drops when they think that the people that are meant to love me in this world are disappointed in me. That is a horrific feeling. Children are okay with punishments. Children naturally understand they're frustrated by punishments, but they understand I did something wrong. I knew there was going to be a consequence. And if the consequence is really logical, as much as kids put up a fight.

17:37 Bechadre chadarim, not never to their parents, but always to their friends, they'll go like, "Look, I get it. It's just that I didn't want to have to deal with this." It's not the consequence that upsets them; it's the distance that's created between the parent and the child when the child behaves in a way that the parent doesn't approve of. Is the parent wrong for disapproving of this? Absolutely not. Because as parents, we ought to be sending messages to children that this behavior is not okay. Don't raise children that you wouldn't like. That's a good general rule of thumb. You want to raise your children to be people you would admire, people you would want to hang out with, people you'd want to surround yourself by. So it's okay to let a child know, as they're in the process of becoming, that's a boundary I don't think you're going to want to cross. Because it's not going to make you into the person that ultimately we would want you to be.

18:30 You could send that message to a child. That's masculine. It's chinuch. It's what happens most of the time. It's top down. It's exerting our will upon another. It's letting that child know this behavior. Loko kachtof. The problem is every time you say that, you're making a withdrawal. So what is Chanukah? Chanukah is an eight-day pause. It's an eight-day pause from masculine chinuch. And it informs the way we're machanich our children the rest of the year And this is called a feminine chinuch. And the feminine chinuch is like this. In the opposite direction, your children do not need to become anything other than they are. And that nurturing approach actually enables your child to develop into the person they are. Say it again. The feminine. I know this because it depends where I'm speaking. When I'm speaking in mechala, you get a lot of this writing thing.

19:36 I'm trying not to cough because I don't know who's gonna. So I know that I'm saying something, and I know the words are being written on paper. But I don't know if the words are computing. I'm not saying don't take notes. I'm saying that it's okay to take notes, but it's hard to have your head and your heart in the same place. The greatest distance in the world is between our head and our hearts. To be to give someone feminine chinuch is to say to them, 'You are okay as you are right now, and you don't need to become anything else.' And paradoxically That gives permission and space for a child to develop. So there's an irony here. The masculine chinuch is all about becoming, and it's important. The feminine chinuch is all about being And in a certain way, it gives more permission for the child to become than perhaps the masculine chinuch, which is focused on becoming.

20:40 Does that make sense? I'll spell it out a little bit. I have a friend of mine who's a very popular public speaker, and he says all the time. He says you gotta spell it out. You think you said it. You think they understood it. You have to say it ten more minutes. So I'm not gonna do ten minutes on it, but maybe we'll do ten minutes on it. But I just wanna unpack this idea. It's deeply uncomfortable to be told Become something that I'm not. It's one of the most uncomfortable things a child can hear. Like, do you know? You don't know this, so I'll share it with you. Do you know that there are boys who struggle with putting on tefillin in the morning? Has nothing to do with davening. Has nothing to do with tefillin. It's OT issues. But the child doesn't necessarily have the language at thirteen years old to say, 'They're OT issues,' and especially when a kid is little, there's this thing called bar mitzvah. Even though officially it means that the child has hit puberty, we know that not all children hit puberty at thirteen years old.

21:47 Watching a child put on tefillin for the first time is one of the cutest things you'll ever see, because their arms aren't that big. But the tefillin that they got is their tefillin for life. We give them adult tefillin. But realistically they're like tiny little boys. You ever hear bar mitzvah speeches? Now that you're a little older, you hear like a bar mitzvah speech. It's like That is a child, right? And he's reading from a script, and his voice is cracking. It's like puberty is a horrific time for a young man. And so he puts on his tefillin, and you're told your tefillin have to be on your muscle. This kid doesn't have a muscle, and his arm is like the size of his tefillin. For labavichers that wear enormous tefillin, it takes up the entirety of their arm. And then you watch them, and they're told, "the ritzuos can't touch each other."

22:45 How am I supposed to put on seven? The arm is like this big. So you see this kid. He's like, I remember very well. My father told me when I was putting on tefillin for the first time. He's like, "You got to learn to roll the fat. So I was like, "I got to do what?" Because when you put it there, it pushes your like you have a giant fat piece here at the end. You have no idea what I'm talking about. You've never had to do this. This is our lives. And then at the end, you have like a mile of extra ritzuos because they gave it to somebody who was eventually going to become nineteen. So you see, the kid has like ritzuos up to here. He's like just rolling at the end and just massive. You know what I am talking about? You've seen tefillin up close if you were standing by the mechitza in Hask, and you were right there.

23:39 Always that guy who's going to be standing by the mechitzah, just shuffling a little too hard. It's like a whole personality. I am talking about he's very into Judah. He speaks to Ezequiel. It's like a certain. He's like a certain. It's going pretty well. So you have this kid. He's putting on tefillin. His ritzuros are up to here. This kid is physically uncomfortable. He's physically uncomfortable. You know how hard it is to constantly be adjusting your tefillin, making sure it's in the right place. And then if you have to wear a black hat on top of that, you have to figure out how to do this move where you have the hat on. But it's not on your head. It rests like over here, and the hat itself doesn't fit you. You understand? You know what I'm talking about? And then, if you've ever seen the davening jacket move

24:39 So you have the guys that drape it over. Then you have the kids who are trying to put their hand in the sleeves, which means you have to get the. They should make, by the way, if you want to make a lot of money, make a jacket, a davening jacket that one arm is bigger than the other. Make the left arm just a little bit wider so that kids can get their tefillin in. But you always have that guy, and then his tefillin come off while he's in it, so he has to redo the entire thing. And then you have the button tefillin guy. He buttons his jacket over here. It's like a look. It's like a thing that kids do. It's like, yeah, I'm cool now. You have a sleeve like a cape. You know what I'm saying? Like it doesn't really work. I don't know why this kid doesn't like davening. Do you know how hard it is to be 13 years old and davening that?

25:26 And if you're constantly being told you're not a davener and you should be a davener And now we'll add an ADHD and the fact that davening, especially in yeshivas, can be really hard Because it could be very long, because the Russian yeshiva that are davening have a lot of kavana, and that's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing to role model. But there are kids that sit there in minyan, and the minyan experience for them is you are wrong. Not wrong about an answer. You're wrong as a person. Our community daven's. You don't try telling a kid. You're all good mechala girls. You're all sitting here, right? That means basically, more or less, throughout high school, you were the people that did a good job at sitting in class and taking tests, right? You were designed for that. Do you know what happens to a kid who's not?

26:13 Sorry, I didn't mean to typecast all of you in the same. But none of you were thrown out of school in fifth grade, and I was. Unless somebody in the room was going mad, none of you were thrown out of school. Do you know how hard it is? That's a whole different conversation. Do you know how hard it is to sit in class for how long every day? And then to be told you're not good because you're not the kid getting the best marks? And by the way, we know it's not true because school is not an indicator of success. The guy in my class that passed the least amount of tests is the wealthiest guy in my class by far. I just met up with a high school friend of mine. And now he's like a famous guy. He's like a famous, famous guy, and we were reminiscing about high school. He goes, "Do you remember that there was some sort of thing that any time he passed a test, we as a class got an ice cream party?"

27:15 " And it was like "Oh my God, I forgot about that. How did I forget about that?" And then he said, "He goes. Do you remember that we only had three ice cream parties in four years?" And I was like That's true. That's why I forgot about it. They didn't happen enough. I remember we got Carvel ice cream suzers. It was very choshev. I wasn't Cholvysra, and not that it happened, it was still delicious. But this kid is the wealthiest guy in my class by far. But for four years in high school, he was a mistake. Every day that he showed up to school was an unsafe day for him. Especially if you have boys, you'll see this. Boys open up a Gemara. And the Gemara tells them, "You don't know what you're talking about." Gemara makes kids feel stupid. Why? Because they don't necessarily know how to translate it. They don't know how to punctuate it. They don't know how to vowelize it. They're missing the background information because they never learned Tanakh well and they never learned Mishnah as well.

28:13 They don't know how to analyze the Rishonim and why the Rishonim are saying what they say, and they've never been trained how to analyze a dialectic before. That's six major problems. Every time you open up a Gemara, the Gemara tells you you're stupid. So you know what kids do? They close the Gemara and they go like this. It doesn't seem relevant. And then Rebbein goes, 'We have to figure out how to make it relevant. Forget relevance. Relevance is the seventh of seven important questions, but it's the seventh one.' If the kid's good at it, he's going to want to do it. Nobody wants to do things that they're not good at. There are kids who go to davening. There are kids who go to school, and the entire day, the message that they're getting—not because the teachers are bad, not because the rabbis are bad—but the entire message that they're getting is become something that you're not. And very often, these people are not going to be spending their lives in schools.

29:01 So does that mean kids shouldn't go to school? A kid has to go to school, and they have to learn, and they have to become something. But what we need to have is this, and this is what Riff Cook means: this feminine type of chinuch that says you're okay as you are, and we need to celebrate you as you are right now. And that's why we have to find creative ways to communicate to our children that who they are is good. I want to share with you two things that I had in my chinuch growing up that were very important. One of them I participated in; the other I didn't. My issue was never that I was not smart. My issue was that I couldn't sit still. So after I was thrown out of school in fifth grade, there was only two other schools in the neighborhood that were willing to take me. Anyone here from the five towns? Everyone here from the five towns. Turns out.

29:53 So So the yeshiva, the two yeshivas that were willing to take me were South Shore and Darche. South Shore was Rabbi Hertzberg of Ashdod. It was a tremendous mechanech. I know they wrote a book about him. I haven't had the opportunity to read it, but I'm told it's excellent. Hertzberg was a Talmuder of Freifeld. He had a very special place in his heart for all Jews. He was willing to take me, and Rabbi Bender of Darche, who I don't think I need to introduce to anybody here. Rabbi Bender has the biggest, maybe one of the biggest hearts in all of Klal Yisroel. And this when Darche was only five hundred kids. Even though I had gone to a much more modern school, I wasn't a black hat family at all. Rabbi Bender was willing to take me into Darche, and that's where I went. I ended up going to Darche. So the move from my co-ed school to Darche was a big move. It wasn't exactly a perfect fit hashkafically. Rabbi Bender would give anti-television shmuzin, and my father was the president of a television company. So it wasn't exactly, if you understand what I'm saying hashkafically, it didn't really work so well.

30:52 In fact, many of the shows that you've probably seen, not seen on television. But for those of you who didn't see shows like Seinfeld and Jeopardy and Everybody Loves Raymond and Oprah and Ellen and all those and many more, those shows were all my dad's shows. So it doesn't mean anything to me. I'm saying it doesn't mean anything except for paying for all of my things in my life. Aside from that. Rabbi Bender's gift to me was that for four years in Darche, I felt totally comfortable, and the school understood me deeply. So right away in fifth grade, I had a tremendous tzaddik of a rebbe whose name was Rabbi Krauss. And Rabbi Krauss again, I came into fifth grade. They do Hascholas Gemara in fifth grade in Darche, and I had never learned Mishnayis. We were just starting Rashi on Chumash in my other school.

31:46 So I came in Mamish knowing nothing, and I'm this jumpy kid. And Rabbi Krauss came over to me on like the third day of yeshiva, and he said, 'Can I sit with you? Can I talk to you?' What's a fifth grader? Ten. So he sits down with me and he goes I have a thing in this class called an emergency fire drill. An emergency fire drill means if I tell you emergency fire drill, just know that's me giving you permission to go take a twenty-minute break. Darke is quite a large campus. You go roam around the campus, do what you want. You'll come back when you're ready. So I was like, as a fifth grader, I hope I get a lot of emergency fire drills, and I did. And I loved Robert Krauss. I loved him deeply because when he saw kids who are ADHD start to lose it, it's the cutest thing in the world.

32:32 You can see when it starts to happen. It looks like this. It begins in the legs. All of a sudden, this starts happening. They start the legs coming up, and then they start drawing, and then they start bothering the person next to them, and it becomes this whole thing. So Rabbi Krauss, he knew. He was watching the whole class, twenty-five kids, but he would know. Just look at me and go. He would see me get to that point where I would like to start. I remember I had a little bit of a drill bit, and I was drilling a hole in my desk. Like an actual hole. I was just seeing it. How many times I could turn it till I got through the desk. By the end of the year, there was a giant hole in the desk. I got through. It's like Rabbi Kiva with a drop of water. I was very persistent. So he would look at me and he'd go, "Berg, emergency fire drill."

33:20 And it was the best thing. I wasn't in trouble. I wasn't considered weird. I wasn't the only kid that had an emergency fire drill. They weren't trying to medicate me to death. I have a daughter who's Levitic, and she takes antibiotics. Her teacher said, 'Her teacher said because her whole class in elementary school was psychotic. They were the best class ever.' Her teacher said, 'I need a Ritalin spray. I just want to walk around the class, spray. Walk over to a kid in the face, go, have it in the fire system that they have' Like a shower of Ritalin that comes down for the kids. What McHouse wasn't trying to do, he said, "It's okay to be you." It's if you need an emergency fire drill, you'll get an emergency fire drill. That's a gift that we can give to kids. In eighth grade, there was a kid. Darche takes in—it's very famous. Darche takes in a lot of special needs kids into the school.

34:16 And so they came to me in eighth grade and they said, "There's a boy, a special needs boy." I think what he had was called Williams palsy. I remember correctly, Williams palsy. They said he can only come to school on Sundays because he's in a special program for the rest of the year. Could you be his shadow on Sundays? So I was a shadow on Sundays as an eighth grader. Now looking back on it, I realize what Rabbi Bender was doing. That was his way of getting me out of Sunday school. Meaning, this kid couldn't sit through class, so I would take him out to the fields in Darche, and we would play ball. It was a brilliant chinuch move. It tapped into the talents of this type of kid. By the way, I don't know if I would be here speaking to you today if it wasn't for the job that Darche gave me in eighth grade. It was the first time in my life that I said, "Oh, I can take care of somebody else." I never knew that before.

35:08 It inspired me to be a camp counselor, a division head. Eventually, when I got into Yiddishkeit, I was like, maybe I could teach. Maybe I could share something. I had a rebbe many years ago. His name was Rabbi Waldman. He once saw me trying to get from In when I was in Mevasser, when I was a bacher And there was a guy in the kol who was like this, an unbelievable stark guy in the kol, and he had gone to Ramaz, and he had really long hair when he was in Ramaz, and he cut his hair, and he became like this. Huge Ben Ta'an and all I wanted to be was Adam. That's all I wanted to be, and Adam was like an idol. I'm talking about one of those guys like this. And I tried to be him. And he said, "Don't do that." You're a levitated guy. If you try to be something that you're not, it won't work. The second thing I want to share with you about Darche that's very special is, to my knowledge, they're the first program that had a vocational school for kids in high school.

36:03 They have a program for kids designed to learn how to fix cars, make kitchens, and become electricians and plumbers while they're in high school. Do you know how many kids are so good with their hands, but we're asking them to learn trigonometry? Does it really matter if they like it years from now? How many kids do you think are going to be going, "It's good that I know advanced trigonometry"? The whole system is designed to become something, but when do we ever celebrate who you are? That's a feminine type of thing And that's what our job is as parents. Our job is to tell a kid this is what we want you to become, but I don't want you to lose your being while you're in the process of becoming. What would it look like? And I'm asking the question. What would it look like if we reimagined what a minion would look like for certain types of kids?

37:02 What would that look like? We did it a little bit. It used to be that minion was more dry, and then there's this Karbach thing they had here in Eretz Yisrael, and now it's gone back to America. Some minionim are more leviding. If we really think outside of the box, maybe we would give kids space to do a lot of different things in davening. I'll tell you, there's a rebbe in Mevaseret. He has a beautiful thing. He says, I want you guys to compose your own tefillos, and they have a minion one day. They have a minion of guys davening together, all at the same pace. But all the tefillas that they composed around the same themes, so they're davening together, but they're davening from within themselves. It's a much more being rather than becoming. And I'm not saying this to one as to the exclusion of the other. You have to live within that dialectical tension of being able to hold space for both. But if we're going to communicate to our children, if we're going to pass on a legacy to our children, we need to recognize they're already people, and they can't become something that they're not.

37:56 And who they are right now is already good. So you'll say, 'What does that mean? Who they are right now is already good. What if they're doing bad things?' What if they're doing bad things? How could you say who they are right now is already good if they're doing bad things? What's the answer to that question? Why are they doing those things? Why do you think they're doing those things? What do you think they're expressing? What are they communicating? Children play charades all the time. Have you ever thought of that way? Think about a behavior that you did right now. Take a second. Think about something that you communicated to your parents without words. Think about how you said it. You didn't say it with words. You said it with your behavior. Think about what you did in order to communicate that behavior. You ever lash out at your mom to let you know you were angry at her about something else?

38:43 By the way, adults do it too. If you ever get into a fight with your spouse, you'll see exactly how it goes. Like you always when yes when you get into a fight with your spouse, it's like. Can you just pick up your socks? Why can't you just put your socks in the hamper? There's a hamper three feet away. And the guy's like, I do everything for this family. And then the wife says, I know you never liked my mother. It's like we were never talking about socks. And we're never talking about not feeling valued. And we're never talking about your mother. It's always the fight behind the fight. Everyone is playing a game of charades because we don't necessarily have the courage or the emotional language to be able to express what's really going on for ourselves. What would it look like to tell a child, "I see that you're behaving in a certain way. I want you to know this behavior doesn't define you, and I appreciate and value who you are right now in this moment."

39:44 I'll finish with this, and then I'll open it up to questions because I think we're almost out of time. On Chanukah, these neros, these precious children that we have, we just recognize their kedusha. They don't have to be anything. They're already kadosh right now as they are. The ain't lanoreshus lhistamish b'hem. On Chanukah, you have no right to play with these candles. On Chanukah, you have no right to tell them to become something. We appreciate them for who they are. Namish tamish with them. El oler osam bilvat. What does it mean to watch our children? Remember that as parents The way you look at your child communicates a tremendous amount. Do you see your children with beautiful eyes when you look at them? Do they see that's my mother who loves me? There are parents that right away when the kids walk in the door, their eyes are already squinting. They're already looking.

40:50 There's sniest police parents There's sniest police schools, but that's a different story. There are people who are just looking with a negative eye. To look with negative eyes is to destroy people. You know that there's a bird in the Torah called the ra' And this bird, the Gemara says, it has tremendous sight. This bird can see all the way from Bavel; it could see to the mountaintops of Eretz Yisrael and see the carcasses that are on the mountains. And this bird is not kosher to eat. And they ask the question, why isn't this bird kosher to eat? It has tremendous sight. So the Balik Hasid will say, and this is a stunning word: if you have the capacity to see all the way from Bavel to Eretz Yisrael, and all you can see is the carcasses That's not a kosher bird. There are people like Yafei Naim, as David Melech is described. Yafei Naim means they know how to see people in a beautiful way.

41:43 And then Lo Aleinu, there are people that have toxic eyesight. Even rebbeinu shalom to their own children. They just look and they constantly see the negative. They're so focused on that masculine chinuch of becoming that they don't know how to appreciate a child for what they are. So that's the idea. Any questions, comments, reactions? Yes. Thank you so much. I usually have to do the awkward pause thing, so I appreciate that you didn't do it. Was the point to say that Chavuk is a time to like. If a child feels First of all, it should be the entire year, but Hanukkah is the time that we're dedicated to it. And if a child feels a Hanukkah like a type of Chanukah If there's a reason that it's eight days, it goes le malam enateva. It's beyond like it doesn't fade. If a child has a Hanukkah type Chanukah, I once heard from Rav Moshe Weinberger Shlita that he said the reason we give Chanukah gifts to kids is because we're telling them right now. I just want you to know you're teaching me. I'm paying you. You're my mechanim right now.

42:49 There's a sense of like we learn from our children. We value them. We appreciate them. We communicate to them. You're awesome. When we do that, it allows us to say to our child. So. You are, and you're beautiful as you are, and now that you know that, you have that in the bank. So now, when I make the withdrawal of becoming So you don't think you're under attack. It's like we're in the process of becoming. My father gave me a good musar. My father said to me something. I think maybe that's what it means. Shema b'nai musar avicha, v'altit ashtorei mecha. A father gives musar. It's a becoming type of thing. But we don't want you to lose the Torah of the mother. The Torah of the mother is I'm okay. I'm already good. If a person knows I'm already good, it gives them permission to become. It's like a lot of people think they're doing mitzvos to earn God's love.

43:40 Do you realize how broken that is? If you're doing a mitzvah to earn God's love, that means God doesn't love you. He loves a mitzvah. It doesn't even make any sense. You're already beloved by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. So what's the next question that everyone says? If I'm already beloved by Hakadosh Baruch Hu, why should I do a mitzvah? The answer is because if somebody loves you Do what they want. How precious is it to be loved by somebody? If your parents love you and they say take out the garbage, what's the natural response? Awesome! Now I have an opportunity to do something for my parents who have done so much for me. If children aren't doing what we want them to do, it's very often because we haven't given them that Hanukkah type of space. Do me a type of just because I'd like to know I'm speaking to.

44:27 What's your name? Where are you from? Sheena Summers from Montana. What's your last name? Summers. Um, But I feel like so often, acceptance—not acceptance, but that unconditional love—comes with a fear of saying, 'Yeah, it's okay. You can do whatever you want, and I'm gonna love you anyway.' People are so scared of that they just step away from it. And they're too scared to take. They're right because that's not what we're saying. And people so often confuse this. They think that there's this methodology out there. That we're telling kids they're okay as they are, it means that we're saying, 'So do whatever you want.' First of all That's a whole separate conversation. Kids are going to do whatever they want anyway. Aside from that, Of course it's wrong, and of course we should be setting boundaries. But if you're going to be a parent setting boundaries, that means you have to feel, as a parent, that you have enough deposits in the emotional bank account with your child to set those boundaries. I'm going to tell you something. Very often, the parents that don't set boundaries know they should. They know about themselves. I don't spend enough time with this kid to set a boundary.

45:40 You have to make time for your children, and that your children know deeply. Abba and Ema love me more than anything in the world. They've dedicated their lives to me. So when they say to me no I'm never going to cross that line. And then parents always go, but what happens if they do? What's the consequence? Why are we talking about consequences? If you tell your child no, then it's no. The question is, if you tell your child no, and your kid does it anyway, what is that child communicating? A lot of times, the child is communicating, "Hey, I get a greater sense of attachment from my friends than I do from my parents." You know what I mean? And it's not meant to be that way. Our greatest attachment is meant to be to our parents. We have a fear today of kids because peers are going to impact the kids and that's where the primary attachment is. The reason the primary attachment is there is because unfortunately parents are out so much that they don't have the capacity to spend time with their kids.

46:32 If you know, I had Baruch Hashem have wonderful parents. My father worked so hard in his life, and Baruch Hashem provided for his family tremendously. Shabbos morning Every single Shabbos morning, he davened Tashkam Minyan. My father was not a person who liked the main Minyan. If you understand what that means. Baruch Hashem, we reimagined Minyan in a way that Ashkam Minyan exists, and the certain type of people that go to Ashkam Minyan. As a kid growing up, you go to Ashkam Minyan with your father. And what do you do after that? So you come home, you make a nice Kiddush in the house. You understand? Not a Kiddush with the Hamonam, a Kiddush in the house with the kids. We like Entenmann's donuts. We like the crumb topping ones; they're the best ones. So it was Entenmann's donuts, orange juice. Tropicana, the things that we leave America for and come to Eretz Yisrael, we miss Tropicana. And then my father would sit and he would play games with us for hours.

47:31 All the games that I know in my life are games that I learned. Maybe it was card games, maybe it was Stratego, maybe it was chess or checkers, depending on how old I was. I want you to know those hours that I spent with my father. I could feel them in my heart today. They're real for me. And my father was my little league coach on Sundays. You think my father wanted to be my little league coach? My father was a good baseball player growing up, and he loved baseball, but he loved me. I know for a fact my father would have much rather done other things on Sunday, but he was there for us. There's always parents that drop their kids off at little league games, and then there's parents that stay and watch or that coach. My father was involved in my life growing up. He was the chairman of our youth department in shul. He was a little league coach. He played games with us. This morning, it's true. There were days that I didn't see him because sometimes he would leave at five o'clock in the morning to catch a seven o'clock flight, and he would be home at ten o'clock that night because he would fly back every night again when he was traveling in that busy season.

48:26 But I always knew my dad would be there for us. That's what it means to love. What's your name? Where are you from? I'm Sara Lee Woods. I'm from L. A. Going to l.A. on Thursday. That was very interesting. Thank you. So like let's say you did all this and but like your child like sometimes it happens like your child is gonna do something that like you're disappointed in them for doing that because like are you really disappointed that like they decided to make like the bad decision like you really tried your best and like you do but like sometimes like there's like an error in judgment and your child does something like you didn't approve of and like that's because they're human and like they make mistakes but so then is it now so you're not disappointed? Let your child. They're like Yo, you're disappointed that was the decision.

49:17 I have a question. It's a hard question, and I'm saying it's okay. I'm saying right away, right now, I'm saying it's okay to be disappointed because we're human beings. How much of that is our own ego As part of parenting, there are two relationships that I can think of that will challenge your ego. Your spouse relationship and your husband will challenge your ego and your kids. It seems to me that our kids challenge us more than our spouses. Because when our kids do something that we don't approve of, it's like, I'm responsible for parenting that child, and right now my ego is telling me, how could I have a child that does that? But of course you have a child that does that because he's a child. Right? He's a kid. And by the way, the things that disappoint us the most are the things that we like about ourselves the least.

50:09 It's like. I don't want to be parenting myself, right? I don't want to parent my own. A lot of times when we're quote unquote disappointed, I think there's a difference between communicating to our kid This is disappointing behavior because it doesn't match the standard of what we're looking for, versus our own ego that's saying I'm disappointed in what happened because of the way that it touches me. If we're parenting that kid, let's look at the kid. And let's say to the kid in a clear way, 'Thou shall not cross this boundary.' It's not appropriate. It's not okay. There's a ma'aseh with R. Freifeld that he waited six months to talk to a talmid about a lie that he had told six months earlier. So six months later, he calls the kid into his office and he said, "Remember that you told me that thing on that day?" The kid goes, "Yeah." He goes, "You weren't telling me the truth."

50:58 And he goes, 'Yes, Rabbi, I lied to you. Why'd you wait six months to tell me?' Sir Freifeld said, 'Cause six months ago you hadn't grown ears.' Waiting to tell someone something in a time that they could hear it is the hallmark of a great mechanech. And by the way, not everything needs to be said. A lot of these behaviors the kids themselves are not going to do when they're adults. Any time you enter into a power struggle with your children, you've already lost. Because now you already told them, "Hey, if you ever want to press my button, press that one." A parent needs to be a pikeah. A parent needs to think carefully. This needs to be said. This doesn't need to be said. I want you to know, I have Baruch Hashem. Now my oldest daughter is married, and she's not a teenager anymore. But as of last year, before she was married, I had four teenage daughters living under my roof.

51:45 Do you understand what that means? Four teenage daughters. And they all use one bathroom. That happened for me. Serious business. You have to know that kids fight, and it's annoying to me as a parent when they're arguing about she's taking too long in the bathroom. Of course it's annoying, but that's That's my own. Just can we please have some peace and quiet here? You have to check yourself. And yes, when a kid is doing something wrong, say clearly, 'This is wrong. This is not okay.' Say it in a way that the child could receive it. Yelling at the child, putting the child in a proverbial corner, right? It's not our way. What's your name? Where are you from? Haley Shapland, from Virginia. Another one. So at what point does unconditional? You know what? You know what I love about that question. There's no answer to it.

52:44 Somebody once said to me, if anybody asks you where you draw the line, the answer is always somewhere. You have to be smart enough to know that child and what that child's needs are. And to be able to draw the line somewhere. Where you draw the line for one kid is going to be very different than for another. If you have a kid who's constantly being told you're not good enough. Then you have to go to the opposite extreme. Let's say you have a kid who is in school. I have this lepidek child that I have. Most of my kids are like my wife, but I have one kid that's like me. So she's, in her own way, discovered her way of being successful. She's right now halfway through 11th grade, and we always say this: we're like, just another year and a half to go.

53:31 Just know that she just has to make it another year and a half. It's not easy to make it another year and a half. Being able to know that for that child, the line is going to be drawn somewhere else because it's not as easy for them to do certain things. On the other hand, there are kids that are superstar kids doing everything right. You might be more quick to be able to say, "Let's talk a little bit more about becoming than being," because that kid's already getting all the accolades. You know what I mean? So somewhere. I think this has to be the last question. Unfortunately, I'm happy to hang around a little bit longer, but I think this has to be the last one. What's your name? Where are you from? Weissburg. Weiss. Weissburg. Weissburg. That's three for three. I think a lot of the times we hear that we're an alpha generation, and it's said a lot of times in a negative light, and it gets all this bad press. I'm like you're an alpha generation. This is something you need right now, and that's not what you're supposed to be looking for.

54:33 I guess you could say as a child, they don't feel like they're getting this necessarily, and as a generation, they don't feel like they're getting accepted to the fact that this is clearly what we're asking for, we need. What are you supposed to tell yourself? It feels like you shouldn't be wanting this. I'm not sure what you would need to tell yourself. The inner world of a person is very complex, and I imagine that there's a lot of different voices inside that need a lot of different voices. For those who are familiar with IFS, but let's say you just betrayed yourselves. The it's okay. The part of the team. I guess what I would want to say to you is that's wrong. If you could borrow that voice to know that that's wrong, I don't know what the right word is. Can I call myself a Talmuder of Weinberger? I can't say I'm a Talmud. It's too big of a title to be able to receive.

55:31 I'm a fan. I'm drinking from the well springs of whatever it is that he's putting out into the world. I think what Rav Weinberger has taught us is this is what's needed before the times of Mashiach. We're in these final moments and we have these beautiful, precious neshamas that have taken upon themselves the hardest moments in the history of the world, the moments for Mashiach. And the souls that have come down to this world that are willing to face the challenges of what's happening in today's day and age are the most precious souls. And the child has to be Like any person really who's about to have surgery. You need to be healthy to have surgery. If you're not healthy and you have surgery, the body can't hold it. There was a time when there was a mussar movement and the mussar movement was more intense. The Vardik Musser, for sure, was more intense. And the reason that the Vardik Musser didn't make it in America and Slabodka Musser did, as Rav Huttner said, is because you have to be a zich before you're a nishd. You have to be a something before you're a nothing.

56:31 And unfortunately, for many kids, they grow up feeling like an absolute nothing. And if there's a movement of Ahava to tell these kids, 'You're beautiful and you're wonderful and you're great and we love you,' that's because that's what's necessary in today's day and age. But people forget that a branch of Ahava is Yeru. So it could be that there was a time where there was more Yira and a branch of Ahava, and today there's Ahava and a branch of Yira. Ahava, if I love my child, I'm going to give them boundaries. Of course, goes without saying. But Chas v'Shalom, to denigrate the chinuch that's happening today, and for yourself to hold on to this voice, to know that it's okay for me to want to have a deep place of belonging, and in that space of belonging, a deep sense of compassion for who I am, even in my lowest moments. That's also a Hanukkah message. That the light shines brightest in the deepest darkest corners of the recesses of this world, and it illuminates and says, 'This also precious. This also kadosh.'

57:24 And I think that this sort of backlash you hear from the very adults that, by the way, created this to begin with has much more to do with the adults than it does with the children. And other Abba, I'm very often jealous of the chinuch that kids are receiving today. I had the I grew up Down the block from Daniel Kalish. He was a guy that I admired growing up. He was this tremendous talmudchachem. We never thought he was going to be in Waterbury. I thought he was going to be next to Rosh Yeshiva Rakuwai. And what he's doing today, and in bringing this voice into the world is so precious. And what Rav Weinberger has done, and so many others, this beautiful way of speaking to people. I'm jealous of this generation. I often wish that I had been born a couple of years later. And then I look at some of the other things and I say, thank God I wasn't. I don't know that I could have withstood the challenges. I think it's a big mistake. I think it's a big mistake. We'll stop here.