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It's a beautiful, beautiful piece from the Marveshemesh that I want to share with you tonight. Who were Moshe Rabbeinu's parents? Amram and Yochved. Who was Yochved to Amram? Wife. She was his aunt. Very good. So the halacha is that an uncle is allowed to marry his niece, but an aunt is not allowed to marry her nephew. Good question. But whatever the reason is, which we're going to get to in this year, obviously there's something significant about the fact that Moshe Rabenu.
Had to be in order to be the one who could take all of Israel of Mitzrayim and ultimately lead us to Kabbalah Satora, it had to be that he came from a union where his father married his aunt. So we have two questions. Number one, what's the Torah's prohibition of an aunt marrying a nephew, as opposed to an uncle marrying a niece, which is permitted? And number two, why specifically was this the union that gave birth to Moshe Rabbeinu? Those are the only two questions we're asking for tonight. It's a very big and very important question happening in the world today, and a lot of people are making fun of this question, but there's really a lot of value in the conversation. The conversation is, what's a man and what's a woman?
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Now it's easy to make fun of a conversation like this because you say, a man is a man, and a woman is a woman, period, and that's what we knew for the entirety of history. This wasn't something that people had to debate, but today it's a legitimate question. Today, when you're marking off your papers, you have male, female, other, non-binary, non-gender-specific. So we say that these are real questions that are happening today. For us as deeply believing Jews, this makes sense. Why does it make sense that we're asking this question today? The reason is as follows. This is our world. In order to bring Mashiach, in order to bring Hakadosh Baruch Hu down into this world, it's not enough that the external conditions of our world.
Are marked with godliness, but that even the very essence of the world is a godly place, which means as follows: as we get closer and closer to the coming of Mashiach, things that were always obvious to us are now becoming a question. Meaning, we're getting closer and closer to defining the essence. We have to get to the point where things that we knew to be obvious are no longer obvious. For example, in the 1900s, in the mid 1900s, there was a major debate: What level of government should we have in the world? Should we have democracy, or should we have communism? Should we have socialism? Today, we know communism failed. That was a very chitsonius type of issue. When we speak about gender, when we speak about what's appropriate and inappropriate intimacy.
These are things that are much more yisodi. They're much more foundational. So it makes sense to Jews that believe in Mashiach that we're going to need to get to the essence in order to bring Mashiach. You could have two attitudes when it comes to these questions. Number one, it's ridiculous. Why are we even discussing this? Or we could use these opportunities to bring Hakadosh Baruch Hu down into the very essence of our world. We're going to obviously go with the second approach. Everyone understand? Why do we need to get to the essence? Go back to the very purpose of creation. What was the purpose that Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the world for? The Medrash and Pashas Nasso says, "Nisave Hakadosh Baruch Hu, lios lo yisbarach dir b'tachtaynim." God wants to have a dwelling place in the world down below. How far below? The answer is all the way. I'll give you a mussel to explain this.
When you come to Tel Aviv, are you comfortable when you first get here? Most people are not comfortable. What does it mean they're not comfortable? Show up. You're homesick. What are you homesick for? Normal beds. Normal showers. Normal food. Normal washrooms. Normal washing machine, dryers. That's what everybody wants. Privacy. That would be a great one. Never gonna happen in the dorm. So now what happens? You go. It's hard to see you girls. You're hiding behind the pillar. Thanks. So you come to Torah de'Orah, and in the beginning you feel totally uncomfortable. Then what happens? A month goes by, two months go by, and you stop thinking about the mold. You stop thinking about the temperature. You stop thinking about it. But you're gonna go home for Pesach.
For those that are going home, you're gonna walk into your old room, and you're gonna realize how uncomfortable you've been for about seven months. When you first walk into, I remember after my Shana Aleph, I came home for Pesach. I walked into my room, I closed my door, and I was like, I love it. And I just felt I like on my bed. I'm like, this is the best. Cause it's my bed. You're not comfortable until it's your place. Your parents come in and they say clean up your room. But your room is fine, isn't it? Your parents want your room clean, but you know where everything is and it's comfortable. It's your room. Everything could be wherever you want it to be. You're comfortable in the mess. Your parents are not comfortable in the mess because it's not their room. It's your room. Should be a mess though. What was that? Doesn't mean there should be a mess. There should be.
There should be a mess because if that's what you. And here's a mess that I'm uncomfortable. But that's because you happen to be like that, right? But if you are, let's say you're a person who's, let's say you're a person who enjoys the mess. You're like, I don't care that everything is all over the place. When somebody comes in and they tell you to clean up your room, you don't necessarily feel better because your room is clean. What makes it your room is it's your room, right? So what would this look like? What would it mean to bring Hakadosh Baruch Hu down into the lowest places in our world? It means that you're comfortable with Hakadosh Baruch Hu and Hakadosh Baruch Hu is comfortable with you in every aspect of your life, not just all those things that are going well, but even those things that aren't going well, right? It's like I'm in a relationship with someone, right? When you're dating, everyone's faking, right? Everyone's faking. You're supposed to fake. If somebody shows up on a first date and they're themselves, run. Because think about what that's going to look like. You could again, because if you really like, imagine a guy,
Let's say he's like a regular guy. I'm not saying every guy is like this, but every guy is like this. Let's say he's a regular guy, and he comes in and he's like, I'll never forget. I ordered on one of my dates with my wife. They asked me, you want to, what do you want for your sides? I'm like, French fries and potatoes, and my wife's like, did you just order two starches? I'm like, is that a problem? She's like, you're supposed to get a vegetable. I'm like, you're supposed to. I didn't know there was a rule book that came with this menu. Honestly, I thought I was kind of being upper class because I didn't order two orders of fries. I was like, I thought I was behaving. And because again, obviously you want, but if you're a girl who lets say likes a burger, right? Call it kabob. I want you to have a burger on your date. But if you get a monster burger.
With avocados and sautéed mushrooms and sautéed onions and onion rings on the burger, and with all the toppings. You take a giant bite of burger, and the grease is running down, and the sauces are all over you. You're like, yeah. If you do that on a date, and the guy goes, I think that's awesome. That she's so comfortable with herself. That guy's crazy. Because you have to fake it in the beginning because you present your best self, which is why all the time people get married and they're like six months later they're like. I learned a lot in the last six months. And it's not like if you would have dated for a year, you would have learned those things, because we can keep it up for a long time. But when you're married, there's no more keeping up. You live together. There's no more lying. Your wife, as I say, the guys, your wife will know you better than anyone in the world, and your husband will know you better than anyone in the world. It's going to know all the small things. At the point that you're comfortable with each other, sharing who you really are, that's called dira betachtonim.
It means you've brought a kol d'baruchu all the way into your life. So if you're married to somebody and 15 years later you're still not telling them this thing about you because you think that if they would know this thing, it would be so shameful that you would be unworthy of love and connection. Then they're not in a relationship with you. What are they in? A relationship with a version of you that you've chosen to present to them. But how crazy is that? You could be married to somebody and you're not actually telling them who you are. Because you're afraid that if they would know who you are, they wouldn't want to be married to you. So what's the answer? I'm gonna present them a version of myself. When you have shalom bias issues, don't get upset because that person isn't married to you. They're married to a version of yourself that you chose to present. Does that make sense? If you keep Hakadosh Baruch Hu in the periphery of your life, like asking yourself, what's a godly government? To say there, it's an important question, girls. Is that a Yisod question? Is that a foundational question?
But when you have a question like, 'What does God say about what is masculinity and what is femininity?' and you answer that question, that's much more meaningful because then you're saying everything that I am, even my gender, has to be defined by godliness. It's not enough just to know it. I have to be able to express it. I have to be able to bring it out into words. That's the question we're dealing with today. What is gender? So now you all heard this before, but we're going to try to give it a deeper dimension today. Everybody knows that in Kabbalah, masculinity and femininity are not just particular types of bodies. In fact, we would say that the body is just a manifestation of a spiritual idea. So it goes as follows. When we speak about masculinity and femininity, we're speaking about two fundamentally different approaches to engaging the world. Masculinity would be defined by forwardness; it's aggressive, dominating.
So far so good. Everyone understands what I mean. Whereas female would be responsive, nurturing, growth-oriented. By the way, even as a man, when I write these things down, I'm embarrassed for my entire species. Because if you look at it, one naturally sounds much worse than the other. Because what is a man? He's out there, aggressively dominating society, trying to bring it all under his dominion. So naturally, when we hear this, what do women say? Men are terrifying, because what's the greatest killer of women throughout the entire history of the world? It's not animals. It's not weather. What is it? It's men. There's a reason for that. Men are warriors. There's something exceptionally amazing about doing that. They're looking to conquer the world. There's a whole different approach. This is the female approach of how to engage the world. It's much softer. It's much kinder. It's much gentler. It's also exceptionally slow. I mean that. I mean that sincerely.
A man conquers the world, and he wants it to happen fast. And by the way, when he's successful, it does. A female slowly nurtures something within herself. She's not forward; she's responsive. That means she takes in from the man. She slowly builds a nine-month gestational process through which the child grows into the entirety of the child, going from simple DNA all the way down to the toenails of the child. Everything is nurtured and grown inside of the mother, whereas for the man, the entire process is very quick. For women, it's slow, it builds, and it's methodical. And ultimately, it nurtures something from its potential to its actual. That makes sense. Does this mean to say that you don't have women that are forward and aggressive? Of course, you do. But the natural woman is different.
Than the natural man, just like you have men that are nurturing, that are kind, that are gentle, and that take something in and help it grow. But one thing I've noticed, I've had children now for a very long time. My oldest is 16 years old. No matter how kind and caring and compassionate I am, I will never be able to be a mother to my children. Can't do it. There's something about the way that a mother relates to her children that's fundamentally different than the way a father relates to their children. For example, if your daughter or your son comes home and they're having social difficulties in high school, I found out that guys will just be very obvious about their feelings, be like, 'Yeah, I have nothing to do with that guy anymore,' and 'I punch him in the face if I see him.' So it's like very clear.
Lines of where we are and are not, and it could be hurtful to be on the outside of that. But with girls, it's like a whole thing. It's like, I don't know. She seems like she's not talking to me anymore, but I'm not sure if she's talking to me. But I heard from my friend that she is talking to me, but she's just not talking to me right now. But maybe she's going to talk to me soon. But she's really going for something else. But I don't know. How do I deal with it? And so there's this exceptionally elaborate, really sick sort of social game that high school teenage girls play. That's because women are beautiful. That's true. Definitely true? There's a tremendous amount of manipulation, especially in sixteen-year-old hormonal girls. It's like, it's a horrific thing to be a man. I give you, I give your husbands a bracha that they have sons also. I have as somebody's only three, right? I give you your husbands a bracha that there should be a mix of children because I have five daughters. Do you understand what that means? Do you understand that in my life?
I never imagined that a bathroom could be this source of tension. I understood that things won't always be simple, but the time spent in a bathroom is a crisis in the morning. And if somebody chooses to take a shower, may the Lord have mercy on her soul. She's taking a shower, Ava. What would you like me to do? I'm gonna knock down the door. I don't have a response. So what happens? Your 16-year-old teenage daughter comes home and says to you and your husband, you're sitting there trying to have a nice night. She says, I'm not sure. I don't know. What does the husband say? What does the father say? He's like, okay. Let me just tell you what to do. You gotta have a conversation with her, get it out, understand it, and move on. The mom says, see, this is really hard for you.
And the sixteen-year-old daughter will look at your wife and say, 'Really is.' And the husbands are looking at this and going, 'What? What just happened?' She didn't. She didn't say anything. I told you what to do, and if you'll just listen to my advice, you'll know what to do, and the situation will be fixed. And if you just do what your mom is saying, which is nothing at all, because she's just saying, 'I see this is really hard for you.' I don't understand how this is going to get solved. Now I can tell you what it looks like when two guys have conversations in the dorms. A guy goes back in the dorms and he goes like, 'I don't know if I'm into yeshiva or not. Maybe I should get out of here.' Guy goes, 'Yeah, maybe, but maybe just give it a shot for two weeks.' Yeah, you're probably right. That's the whole conversation. That's the whole thing. The whole thing was thirty seconds. Then they went back to their phones and just grunted at each other. You see, a guy hasn't seen a guy for a long time. Excuse me, gives him that slap hug. Yo, what's up?
Pretty good. You all good? Let's go. You know the whole thing. Girls, it's a shriek. It's catching me up on everything. We spent seven hours together. What did you speak about? Nothing and everything. It was amazing. It's so good to be with her again. I don't understand. This is what it means that Tisha Kavanam's speech were given to women. It's because you just it's not only because you talk so much. It's because the way that you communicate is so different. A guy's whole being is like, you asked a question, I answered your question, and with girls, it's not like that at all. Chayav. I'm not allowed to say this, really, but really, yeah. There is a video. You must watch it to spare your husbands the indignity of being married to women that do this. You must watch a video on YouTube called "It's Not About the Nail." It's the. We were just saying. We just, I just realized. Is that not the greatest video? Because, and I'm not going to say it now. I'm giving you homework. You all have to go on YouTube and type in "It's Not About the Nail" and watch it because it's an.
It's not about the nail. It's a mini thing. It's like two and a half minutes. I don't even want to say. Just trust me. It's exactly what this is. The truth is, as much as I'm making fun of it, and I'm making fun of it because I suffer from it every day. But as much as I'm making fun of it, women are right. Why? Because when a man asks another man a question.
The response is an ego-driven response. I know the answer to your question. You don't know the answer to your question. I will tell you the answer to your question. Now there are times that that's appropriate. If somebody comes over to you and they say, 'How do I get directions to the Kotel from Sanhedrin or Chevet?' Be like, if you respond to them, be like, 'I don't know. It seems really hard. What do you think?' No. They're asking you. Actionable information, right? That's called information deficit, right? That's not an appropriate time to be like, how does it feel that you don't know? What's your? We don't say how does it feel anymore. What's the experience for you that you don't know how to get where you're going? It's really hard for me because I feel like I just don't. I feel lost. It doesn't have to be an existential crisis. Just let me tell you which bus to take and then which light rail to take and then you'll be there. But if somebody comes and they say.
I don't know how I feel about my year in seminary. I feel like I'm not gaining as much as I want, and your response to them is, 'Well, you just need to do X, Y, and Z.' There's a massive amount of ego in that response. It means they don't know, and somehow you do know. And if they'll only listen to you, then all of their problems will be solved. You realize how arrogant it is to answer somebody else's question, and you can't be makabel the Torah with arrogance. This is the key. Ready? And it's going to get much deeper now. To build a relationship with God requires humility at its core. Meaning, every relationship is defined by the space that we create for each other. So every relationship has a shared space. I'm assuming you got this by now. You don't lose your identity in a marriage, but you create a new reality within the marriage. So it goes as follows: There's the husband. We go from being male and female to husband and wife. There's the husband. There's the wife, and this is what we're going to call the shared space. Now the husband has his ego. The wife has her ego. Things that they desire, things that they don't want to be mavater on.
This shared space, if it's truly going to be shared, which is by the way, the shared space is like the three rings of the Olympics, right? Because it's a little bit in each side. This middle point is the shared space. In order to truly have a loving relationship, what do you require? A nullification of the ego. For example, it looks like this. Let's say the wife says, "I just can't make Shabbos this week. I'm exhausted. The kids have been all over me this week. I feel like I haven't had a second to breathe. We need to go to a hotel for Shabbos." The husband responds, "I'm in Kollel. We have no money. We certainly don't have money to go to a hotel for Shabbos. What just happened? It's a clash of ego, right? Because the wife wants what she wants. The husband wants what he wants. If we.
Took them apart into separate rooms, and we said to the husband, "By responding that you don't have any money, was that ego driven?" What would the husband say? Of course not. That's not ego driven. What is that? That's reality. The bank has X amount of money, and I can't spend what I don't have, right? It is ego driven. How is it ego driven? Because in a shared space, what would the husband's first response be? Not we don't have any money, but I see you are overwhelmed. In other words, the husband's initial reality of like, but we don't have the money, is being driven by his ego. He's not creating space for her to experience the frustration of I don't have any, I don't have any like bandwidth left to make Shabbos. When the wife responds to the husband by saying, I don't care if we have the money, we need to go to a hotel for Shabbos. What is she doing? She thinks she's saying, like I just need what I need, but it's ego-driven because what is your husband trying to communicate to you?
He's trying to say this feels unsafe for me, because we're going into Minos. We don't have this money in the bank. I'm reticent to take out money to go below where we are to start paying interest. He also needs that shared space. In other words, I can't love. Means love is the verb that we use to create intimacy to create wantness. You cannot love without humility. It's not possible. The intimacy of a marriage is created in this shared space. That's where the oneness occurs. Can't create intimacy without humility. In other words, you have to learn how to hold your ego in check. Or to put it a little bit differently, you ready to take the next step? That was a deep concept. You ready to take the next step? Yeah.
You can't bring somebody into your life if your ego is running the show. Meaning, you won't be able to have the real conversation with your husband of who you really are if your ego is in the driver's seat, saying, "I'm not allowing you to truly see me," because it's an ego hit to show somebody who you really are, isn't it? If you share with somebody your insecurities, your vulnerabilities, your fears, your inner negative beliefs, then they're going to know the deepest things about you. And what might they do? They might reject you. And your ego says you can't handle the rejection. But if you're humble, then you say, "I'll be okay even if I'm rejected. It'll hurt, but I'll be okay." So humility says, "In the appropriate time and with the appropriate person, I'm going to show you all of who I am." Here.
Could be. The price we pay for connection is vulnerability. But how do you be vulnerable without feeling safe? If you don't feel safe, then you can't be vulnerable. It's true, but there's never going to be one hundred percent safety, right? In other words, I said with the appropriate person in the appropriate time, when you have enough safety, because that's as much as you're going to get. That's going to be enough. That's right. That's a good question. You're going to have to look inside to find that answer. There's no mathematical equation. It's something about you that you say. Now I can show myself, but you won't be able to know for sure. And this is the pain of somebody who gets into a relationship and it goes all the way to the one-yard line. And at the one-yard line, the guy goes, "I don't think so." And then the girl is left feeling devastated because she's like, "I was totally out there." You know how many conversations I have with guys and with girls, Rebbe? It's not so much that we broke up. It's this girl knows or this guy knows everything about me, and they're just walking around now.
It's exceptionally vulnerable. They really know all this stuff about you, right? But vulnerability is the birthplace of connection. You cannot be in a relationship without vulnerability. You can fake it. Your ego can present a version of yourself for extended periods of time, and you could fake it, and she will or he will never know who you truly are. Do you think you should wait until you're married to do this, or you should do it on dates, or should it be slowly, or what's the process? There's no one answer to that question. Because there's a million different vulnerabilities that you're going to share over the course of your life. Some will happen in dating. Some will happen while you're engaged. Some will happen while you're married. And that's what people sometimes need hadaracha for, to know what to say when. This is especially relevant in today's society when I'm very often getting the question from girls. I did something in high school I'm not proud of. Do I need to tell them? If so, when? These are big questions today.
And there's no one answer to these questions, but that's why you need hadracha because it's exceptionally vulnerable. And that's just one of a million things. So to sum up, if you want to create a relationship with somebody, two things are required. Number one, a shared space, bringing somebody else into your life. What does that require? The diminution of ego. Ego is trying to kill you. What does ego stand for? I know. Gwendolyn said it. Now it's Tarmi Cini. Bird said it. My God, your ego is trying to kill you right now. I like that. I go after him, by the way. He's my opening act. And you could tell him I said that. Sir. Either way.
The ego stands for edging God out. Ego, letters E G O, stand for edging God out. If you want to be in a relationship with God, meaning if you want to create a shared space in this world where God feels comfortable, if you are ready to truly present yourself in all of your ineptitude, in all of your imperfection, in all of your failing to God, it's going to require a diminution of ego. The moment that God came down into our world was called Mayim Har Sinai. That's what happened at Har Sinai. That's why the Medrash says before Har Sinai there was a Xera. Romans couldn't go to Syria and Syrians couldn't go to Rome. Once the Torah was given, Romans could go to Syria and Syrians could go to Rome. Why are we using that martial? Because there used to be a gap.
When you did a mitzvah, when Avraham Avinu did a mitzvah, it was awesome, but it did not fundamentally change the world. After Har Sinai, the worlds began to merge, which meant that we were going to require massive levels of humility. Moshe Rabbeinu was the perfect person to bring the Torah down into this world. Why? Because he was Anav Mikol Adam, because he was the most humble of all men. Where did Moshe Rabbeinu get this from? The answer is, he got it from his mother and his father. We'll explain. If an uncle marries a niece, that makes sense. Why? Because in that case, the uncle, the older person, is masculine, forward in his position, in a dominant position. And what is the female in that case? She is receiving. So even though he's an uncle, which is by again, I'm with you. It's weird. But even though he's an uncle.
In the format of masculine-feminine, it makes sense. The roles make sense. But if somebody is an aunt and she marries her nephew, something got reversed. You have a dominant receiver. Does that make sense? In other words, the aunt in a position of dominance, is the receiver. Why would you ever want to have a dominant receiver comes along the Torah and says, "We don't want to have dominant receivers. We want to have receivers receiving. The quarterback throws the ball. The receiver receives the ball. How could you have a receiver that's throwing the ball? It doesn't make any sense. But there was one person in history more than anybody that needed to have dominant humility, and that was Moshe Rabbeinu. And that's why the Maor Hashemesh says. That it needed to be that Moshe Rabbeinu's father was going to be the nephew of his mother, because the powerful part of Moshe Rabbeinu's father of Yochaveed needed to be less powerful in the world of Moshe Rabbeinu. What does this have to do with us?
It's a big issue today. About Jewish feminism. Are there problems with Jewish feminism? What does Jewish feminism really even mean? And the truth is that it's an important conversation. And it's easy to dismiss it. But I want to use the last couple minutes that we have together tonight to try to gain an insight into what the Torah's view on the feminine looks like, and why we have objections to modern feminism. We have no problem. We have no problem with women playing important roles in our society. In fact, if you look at the history of Judaism, we have.
Female prophets, and they were historically greater than the men. Sarah Imenu was greater than Avram Avinu. Do we have female judges? Absolutely, Devorah was a shofetas. Are women allowed to testify? Is that because they're incapable of testifying? I wouldn't agree with that. The Rambam, in discussing why women are not allowed to testify, in that very same Rambam says kings are not allowed to testify. You know why? Because it's denigrating to be on the witness stand. When you go to Besdin, because the attitude of Besdin is not to convict. What we do is we basically cross-examine the witnesses in a really torturous fashion. Meaning we're looking to catch them.
And so to be on a witness stand with a lawyer who's basically knocking you down, who's out to prove that you're lying, is an exceptionally denigrating experience. Kings are not allowed to testify, and the very same Rambam says women are not allowed to testify for the very same reason. It's not because women are so emotional that they don't know the truth. I would also be offended if somebody said that to me. It's because we have always held women in such exceptional esteem that we would never subject them to something so horrific as to being cross-examined. It makes a person feel like a piece of dirt to be cross-examined. Has anyone here ever been on a witness stand? I've been on a witness stand. I was cross-examined. It is rough. It's rough. Basically, the attitude of the person that's in front of you is, "I'm going to make you look like a moron to convince the judges that you are not telling the truth."
It's a horrific place to be. Prophets, judges, we protect the dignity of women because they're royalty. If somebody knew this, would there have to be an attitude of equality? If somebody knew that, would they want equality? If there was a woman who knew that in your society you're going to be the leadership, you're going to be a shofetet, you could be a prophet, you're going to be treated with dignity. Would such a person say, 'I want equality'? They're superior. What would they want? They would not want equality. What they would want would be opportunity. See, we don't want equality, and everybody in this room knows that equality is not something we shoot for. Take, for example, two children. Would anyone here argue that children should be treated equally? No. Everybody knows that's horrific parenting. Why? Because each child needs something different. So when your child says to you, 'But that's not fair. She got it.' What's the appropriate response?
She got what she needed. You get what you need, right? So equality has never been a Jewish goal, especially not for somebody who is in a position of exceptional importance. What we want is opportunity. It's an amazing article that came out a couple years ago when they were speaking about all these women that were trying to get the title of rabbi, and that was for some reason really important to them. And this article was written by somebody who was not necessarily discussing whether or not women should be called rabbi or shouldn't be called rabbi, but the article started with the question: Why do we not find this in the Lubavitch community? You don't find the female shluchot in the Lubavitch community saying, "I want to be called rabbi." How comes? So his analysis was, and I disagree with his analysis. His analysis was because these women are too busy working on saving Jews from all over the world; they don't have time to be concerned about titles.
And his message basically was to Orthodox Judaism: you should stop writing these articles and thinking about who's called rabbi and just get to work. That was his message. I have a totally different takeaway. You want to know why Lubavitch women never worried about the title rabbi? It's because the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who has been, was, he's not anymore, but was empowering women to go out and be shulchos well before anybody was thinking about the issue of modern feminism. In other words, what he said to them was because of your tremendous dignity. Because of the tremendous influence that you can have on society, to nurture someone back to being a Jew, we need you to go out and do that, in your tznius fashion, like Sarai Imenu in the Ohel. When they came into the Ohel, she was a nurturer. That's why they came into her. She nurtured them into becoming God-fearing people. The goal is not for women to be suppressed.
The goal is for women to play the appropriate role for them, and look what's happening to modern society when we break down the traditional roles of male and female. Children are not getting what they need, and because children are not getting what they need, they're growing up with massive levels of anxiety. The New York Times just published a report that one out of every three children are being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Even if you say that that's because we're overdiagnosing, which I certainly think we are, even if you say we're overdiagnosing by 50%, that's still one out of every six children. That's a massive amount of anxiety. Why is that? If you're a kid coming home and your parents are spent because both of your parents were out working the entire day just to make ends meet, and nobody has the opportunity to be really there nurturing the children, what do you think is going to happen?
Girls, you know what the worst thing you could say to your kid is when they walk in the door? How was your day at school? Is the single worst thing you could say. The second to worst thing you could say is, what do you have for homework? We did a terrible thing. Homework has become a terrible thing, because we made home an unsafe place for children. Which child would feel safe at home if you walk in the door and you just had a crazy long day? What's the last thing you want to speak about to a parent? How much homework you now have? And by the way, it's ridiculous that schools are giving as much homework as they do. It's insane, because when are kids supposed to be kids? One of the things I love about Israel is until the age of like fifth, fourth, or fifth grade, kids get home at like one ten. They have the whole afternoon to play.
And go to different chugim, and they hang out with their friends. It's amazing. And even when they get older, the latest they come home is like three thirty or four thirty, which is awesome, because they have opportunities to be children, and there's not so much homework that the parents are sitting there going when they walk in the door, "New, how much homework do you have?" A question a mother should ask when the kid comes home from school, "How are you?" How are you is much different than how was your day at school. Which, by the way, I understand why parents are asking it. Because if I was paying twenty five thousand dollars tuition per kid, I would also ask how was your day at school, because I'm paying for a product and I want to know how's it going. But if you're paying seventy shekel a month for basic of our ma, I don't really care if you're doing so well in school. I want to know how you are. Hear the difference.
To be a Jewish mother is an exceptionally dignified position, and no matter how great your husband is, he's never going to be able to do that for your children. It's our job to raise our children in a way that doesn't create narcissistic human beings. Narcissistic personality disorder is a real thing. Judaism is the constant struggle against ego, and without Jewish mothers fighting that battle for our children, what will those children grow up to be? Anxious, narcissistic, self-centered people. And of course, in a situation like that, children like that will not be capable of building relationships with other children, let alone with other spouses. There's a reason the divorce rate skyrocketed. If you've never grown up in a way where somebody told you you're loved, and you're also not the center of the universe.
You're going to grow up thinking you're the center of the universe, and you need to grab as much love as you possibly can. I don't blame the kids for turning out that way. It makes sense. I got it. Can you teach me how to do that? The mistake of modern feminism is that it thought that women needed to be treated equally. Really. What women needed was an opportunity to be women. Everybody knows that the greatest sadikim had unbelievable tzidkanios right there with them, and we're seeing it even today. The Belzer Rebbe, Rebbe Reb.
God willing, three to four years maximum. Ninety plus percent of you in this room will be married. I do that just to get the amei. But it's true. From here, after a year, maybe a year and a half in Tomer Devorah, what's next? You go to college. You'll probably start dating within six months of being home. It's very possible that there will, Ezer Hashem, be many children born from this class within the next three to four years. I've said many times in this class, and I'll say it again. I would never teach eighteen-year-old girls. I have no interest in teaching eighteen-year-old girls. But Jewish mothers are very interesting. The question is, will you really be around for your kids? Will you have the headspace for them? Will you have the bandwidth for them? Will you be able to make choices in your life that allow you to be the mother that you know that you are? Remember that Moshe Rabbeinu and the entire Kabbalah Satora revolved around the concept of a mother who was a dominant personality.
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