Episode 2 Fire Side Chat with Rabbi Breitowitz: Jewish Family Forever

[Music] thank you uh ralph poston i'd like to thank you first uh yebona rav poston is behind the camera and i just want to thank you now for helping sponsor this yubane is a fantastic organization i encourage you to listen to their wonderful podcasts especially in these times there's so many interesting things happening politically and there are so many ties to what's happened what the torah tells us about today's events and and the rabbi brings in the most fascinating uh rebellion to speak about these topics uh so again i want to give a little plug for a rabbi for your organization yubanet we're here we're so blessed to have today uh rabbi brodic brightowitz i've known rabbi for a long time from our days in maryland um now today he's the uh rav kahilat or samayakh or samayak is a flagship yeshiva here in jerusalem especially for the in the english speaking world and is changing lives all the time so rob thank you for all you do for our people um i also want to just give a quick plug for our little organization called jewish family forever and jewish family forever we have a little facebook page so we invite you to join our group and just see what's going on and if you want to help take action we encourage you to do that today's sheer is sponsored also by michael medina and medina catering group the medina cratering group if you have to happen to be in dc it's a tough time for a caterer if you can support him it'd be great but we thank you michael for that and um and so before i i jump in i just want to mention one more thing this is the second in a series so if you have a chance to look at if you're encouraged uh by what this program tells you maybe you go back in and see the first one the first uh program that we did with rabbi bradowicz was about singles and encouraging them about marriage and and all of the issues associated with that this is more we're taking the next step now and talking about raising a family and the issues today and strengthening the jewish family which i think was what all of us i think is so important so i just want to follow up as a first question rabbi last time we talked about uh about this exact topic and um you know i've since talked to a couple of 30 plus year olds and they really enjoyed the lecture and thought it was very meaningful but they say hey we're doing everything we can and now we're in a corona time and so it's a little makes it things even a little more challenging do you have any any words any thoughts for them to just kind of give them some encouragement these times thank you thank you gary and again it's an honor for me to be working with you your organization is extremely important there is nothing as important to the future of the jewish people as a strong jewish family so all of your efforts directed to that end are very much appreciated i also want to say that we're dedicating today's sheer in today's learning to a little girl hadashira but who is undergoing some difficult medical procedures and may hashem grant her a refuse lama and the ability to return home and together with all of the israel and also those who are healthy should also have the baraka of not getting sick in these challenging times the question of dating or getting engaged or marrying during corona uh is a real hard one you know i'm not sure i have any particular magical answers in some ways uh we've become habituated to distance learning right shiorim youtube zoom and in some ways we have to get into perhaps some form of distance dating and although it is not the same as person to person but i think at least a substantial start of a relationship and more than a start you can develop a relationship pretty well and then uh hopefully uh god willing will be back to semi-normal or new normal pretty soon with the advent of the vaccine uh i guess the one thing i would say is that one certainly should not have the idea i'm putting all dating on on hold until the crisis averts i think there's so much that you can do and it would be a wasting a waste of an opportunity not to utilize the technology that's there you know god put this technology there for a purpose it spreads torah et cetera and it can also be a way of people meeting each other even when they cannot get together face to face but you know again it is it is difficult but i can tell you i know from my own personal experience in ursa math that the people have met they've gotten engaged they've gotten married so it is absolutely not impossible you just have to be a little more creative sounds great thank you thank you rabbi bizrat hashem um you know we'll see more of we'll see a healing of the situation and and things will move forward in a positive way for for our youth i want to talk about raising families and i don't want to talk about i want to ask about about parental roles there's a today there's a it's not like it was a hundred years ago and probably in in many ways for the good but uh women play a a strong role in um in in society and um and in the family and what is the uh parental roles is is the father supposed to be the ultimate decision maker is the mother what is the torah tell us about this these are these are hard questions in in these you know culturally sensitive times and then i also want to ask about you know uh what does the torah tell us about two two parents working um and um and raising a child some some uh you know families feel like they need the those those two incomes so just about you know roles in a family what you think what the what the torah tells us about uh those roles and and about the time spent uh what's the what's there certain times when when it's okay to have two parents working or not and and what what does the torah tell us yeah again these are uh these are difficult questions let me start with a verse from the book of proverbs the book of michele a very well known biblical verse listen my son to the moosa to the chastisement of your father the altitus and do not abandon the torah of your mother so there is something that is called the musar the chastisement or the guidance or the discipline of the father and there is something that is called the torah or the instruction of the mother and that implies that father and mother and again i'm generalizing here this does not apply in every particular case are there to give their children kind of distinct aspects of their relationship to god and to the jewish people rabbi yosef dev sullivancic the final of yeshua university once explained this in a very beautiful way he said the father is primarily the intellectual head of the home he gives the son or the daughter the child the halach the specific guidance as to what to do the learning the analytical intellectual appreciation of the richness of torah which of course will deepen as a child gets older but the mother provides the initial foundation of an emotional connection to god and a child who only approaches judaism intellectually will never be passionately invested we'll never really love it and at some point may even get bored may wander off to something else it is really the emotional connection that could be formed at a very young age even a child that might be one and a half or two like knows when they see the kiddush wine oh there's going to be some good wine or khala or cake and shabbos becomes special to them and those feelings continue throughout their whole life their whole life they'll have that memory so it's i know in this day and age it's very hard to stereotype because there may be men who are more emotional and women who are more intellectual so i'm not so much interested in demarcating rigid roles but to simply say that a child needs two types of inputs in their development they need intellectual stimulation and this is even true outside of torah but i'm focusing primarily on jewish aspects of life he needs knowledge data information something that's intellectually rich and interesting that's moshe a person that pulls a person but in addition they need kind of an emotional connection a connection of joy excitement passion in many cases each parent might specialize in that particular department now in terms of who's the boss so to speak well the rambam says it very well the rambam says every husband is a king but only if he treats his wife as a queen meaning the idea that i can come in and demand respect demand submission just because i demand it just because i'm a man i think it's very retrogressive and it actually is against the torah but when there's a relationship of respect of mutual honor of listening to each other then it's okay to have you know president and vice president and i have to say that generally speaking in the traditional jewish home the man was the dominant authority figure but that's valid and legitimate only if the wife herself is treated with tremendous respect if you remember very often a mother has a superior judgment to a father number one because of the intuition that women often have and number two because of the fact that she may spend many more hours with a child when sora saw that yeshmael was a negative influence on the home and she said to abram we have to send him away avram was unwilling to do so until god told him everything sarah your wife says listen to her she knows what's going on she knows the story she knows the dynamic so in that sense i can call the man the king of the home but only if he's a listening person only if he takes into account everything that his wife says that it's part of the decision-making process a man who ignores his wife is not worthy to be a king and at that point each person has to make the decisions that are best uh now i'm gonna say something that i may get in trouble for or you may get in trouble for because it's not it's not politically correct and i appreciate that it's not politically correct but i believe that if you study history and even if you study psychology and sociology you will see he wants a man that will generally be the one who makes the final decisions this is what a woman yearns for a woman yearns for kind of a benign authority figure who can take charge and make those final decisions if a man is too wishy-washy if a man does not have a discernible philosophy if a man simply tells his wife do whatever you want that's not necessarily what gives a woman security and even though hashem we have women who are phenomenally intelligent phenomenally accomplished people who have excelled in all professions whether it's medicine law accounting academia torah learning as well and by all means i am absolutely in favor of opening up all of these opportunities to women because it would be a tremendous loss not just to women it would be tremendous loss to men to the world to claudius wrap not to harvest the tremendous reservoir of talent there so there is nothing that i'm saying that is putting down women at all i recognize their sublime accomplishments in all areas of life but i do think that within the context of the home they want a husband that listens a husband that responds a husband that takes their understandings into account but in very many ways they want a husband who kind of makes decisions i know that's an older view but i think it's actually borne out so i may expect some negative mail on this but i i said what i believe uh just in terms of the uh roles of um uh not in terms of growth but in terms of time spent uh we talked a little bit about uh you know two two people working versus um is there times in life when that's okay you know well well listen listen in some sense uh having two parents working uh can be potentially detrimental obviously because uh there's less time spent with the with the kids if it would be possible for a mother to defer her working till children were in school and she would work during school hours or she could have some type of profession that could be practiced at home so she's available even if she's working that would be optimal but you know reality is reality and unfortunately diminishing incomes and raising expenses sometimes requires that we have working parents to uh working parents and also i want to point out too that there's another justification for women having some type of working because women as they say if they have talents and abilities i think it's important for their psychological well-being to be able to express it and i wouldn't just say diapers or cleaning up a a house so all in all i think there are pluses and in fact in some cases a woman working outside of the home may make her a better mother because it energizes her it gives you more enthusiasm gives her an outlet so in some ways there's a balance on one hand you know not working outside the home creates greater availability which is a huge huge plus on the other hand maybe having some type of profession some type of occupation may create greater enthusiasm i think it depends very much on the particular dynamic it depends how all the kids are it depends on whether the kids are in school or they're at home full time the one thing is that every decision that both men and women make men as well regarding jobs has to have a sense that the family is the number one priority and everything that has to be the fulcrum or the axis upon which everything else is revolving and then you make the decisions that you have to make i remember a nice little story i'll tell you a story about drivaran lichtsteinstein secretary bracha who's the great rosh yeshiva of the shiva harvest of gushetsyon harharets yonin gush in gush and he used to live near here he used to live in kathmandu and he would darwin in deshtiblah so uh everyone knows the katamanshiti bless the famous kataman multiple and one time he was learning with his son like his ten-year-old son and somebody went over to him and said i'm very impressed that a busy rush of shiva like you makes time to learn with his ten-year-old son sir listen teen said what do you mean makes time to live with myself my obligation is to learn with my son i make time to also have a yeshiva and that's a wonderful perspective right because we all of us and again this is men and women frankly we often put our own children on the back burner you know we define kresser that's what i do outside the home and i go to this share in that chair and of course that all of that is important and all of that is important but the family the children are relegated to the bottom of the list of licensing's perspective is your children your family husband wife children are number one and then you create a life where you can do other important things as well but it's against the backdrop of your children and as i said children were talking about children today but i also include the marital relationship remember the marriage i think we spoke we mentioned last time that the torah creates an independent importance to marriage apart from having children meaning to say it's not just my kids that i need to deepen my relationship with it's also my spouse and we saw cilantro says when the torah says love your neighbor as you love yourself first and foremost it's referring to your spouse and then it applies to everybody else very nice as as well so as i say you know uh it may very well be that uh working uh is a necessary evil but i think there can be some positive benefits too and uh as they say when a person is replenished refreshed more enthusiastic perhaps their time with their children could be a better quality type right assuming they're not too exhausted so that has to be balanced as well and i i just want to mention another point that certainly uh working moms and working dads uh have to preserve their energy so for example if you're able to afford it getting help for things like cleaning and laundry right is very very helpful because if you have limited time the time should be spent in a more productive way with positive interactions with your kids instead of having to do all of the drudgery that maybe you could pay somebody to help you with interesting so one should not feel that they're a failure by getting help it's the other way around and even things like uh using plastic dishes instead of having to do dishwashing yeah even on shabbos even on shabbos i know some very very khashovah people actually even golem who have many many people for shabbos and they use plastic and even though you could say well that's a little bit of a compromise in the honor of shabbos but if i'm doing it to be able to be freed up to learn with my children sing with my children do things with my children i actually think that would say that that's a more important priority [Music] rabbi that's i want to just continue down this path a little bit one of the one of the challenges you know that i hear in the united states and there's different challenges here in israel is to raise children and to get them into the schools you want uh the jew the jewish schools with the right kind of education uh that a family desires um to get them to uh you know summer camps where they can you know uh grow their yiddish kite um all of those are important and so the question is if you only you know uh families only have so many uh so much money so many resources available where do you put your energy do you put your energy in making sure that that their foundational school the kindergarten through or k through eight isn't a jewish school or if you have a choice it's gotta be high school or the gap year in israel or the or uh camp and then uh the other thing is we have people that are listening that are living here in israel and there's a whole different set of challenges from trying to get the right schools here any thoughts you have about priorities on schools and and and how to uh how to work that out as a family well uh you know your question reminds me of of asking you know uh what's more important the heart or the brain you know it's very very difficult because in some sense you're going to die unless you have both of them right and to have to make these choices can literally be a matter of spiritual life and death for example even summer camp summer camp can be enormously important to give a child a positive feeling towards judaism so i don't dismiss it as simply recreation or vacation but i tell you if i had to prioritize if if a person literally had to prioritize i actually think the elementary school years are even more important than the high school years and certainly post high school and the reason i say that is and i say that with a great deal of regret because i sincerely hope that a parent will never be forced into making that decision but during the first let us say eight years of schooling you know kindergarten and then grade one through eight a child develops a basic foundation and love for judaism now it may very well be that they didn't necessarily cover a lot of information but they've gotten the enthusiasm they've gotten their backgrounds and once that's the case then even if circumstances would force them to go to public school as bad as that is and it's absolutely no good at that point if they're enthusiastic enough you could do private learning you could go to local rabbis even boys in yeshiva might be willing to act as tutors so there's a lot of supplementary learning that you can do but if a child doesn't have that background doesn't have that enthusiasm then they're just not going to be interested and the reason i say this is i say this out of my own experience you know i attended a co-educational orthodox day school in hartford connecticut and most of my classmates were not shimmer shadows we didn't have the stratification that we have today for good or for bad i actually think there was something positive in being exposed to a lot of jews who were not the same right okay but some people disagree with that but i can tell you when i look back at what were the formative experiences in my connection to yiddish it's funny i think much more of my elementary school years than i think about my years in yeshiva afterwards right now maybe it's not typical i'm not sure but i think about how the rebellion and the teachers inspired me they made learning exciting they gave me a sense of joy and that carried through but let me ask you don't isn't there isn't it the case sometimes that that when somebody's a teenager they that's when they ask the really difficult questions in life and if they're in a public school do they do they have their resources right so my point was this i i was not i was not envisioning right that if the kid has to go to public school for high school that's the end of his jewish education that's why i was emphasizing that you've created a foundation where he's interested and excited you have superman you have to augment it you have to supplement it okay and in that supplementation he should ask the tough questions about how do you know there's a god i know the torah and in fact the truth of the matter is it may be more effective to discuss those questions in a one-to-one than in the classroom setting so the point is you want to spend those eight years of primary school giving him that desire to be jewish that excitement to be jewish and then at that point you could supplement you know you could supplement now again this is a regrettable second choice but if you have to make a choice i think this is where i would go now i do want to point out that the cost of jewish education is a major major crisis in the united states it absolutely is uh schools do offer scholarships but scholarship aid is limited and it certainly may not cover all of the expenses there are some proposals that have been around for a few years that there are just that that the jewish community ought to adopt a model that is similar to public education public education of course is funded by the total community right well there's a thought why can't we have jewish education funded by the total jewish community of course the federation does some of this but but literally do it at 100 basis in which you spread the cost of the different day schools and high schools across the entire spectrum of the jewish community now that's a very fascinating uh proposal that in fact is the way it was done uh in talmudic times today because of the different denominations orthodox delivery reform it's difficult to kind of figure out how to do it is there enough money in the orthodox community to publicly fund within the orthodox community uh day schools maybe yes maybe not of course that probably would mean there would be fewer options of schools but okay maybe that's not all bad maybe that would require that different types of jews get under the same roof so people are concerned i mean as i say the cost of jewish education is staggering now in israel that happens to be one of the things that's not such a major problem schooling here is not particularly expensive uh so the issue that i think we face although i did not raise any children in the israeli schools is the type of school because broke hashem there is a proliferation of choices uh but the philosophies even within the framework of torah mitzvot the philosophies can be very different whether it's me whether it's a government type of school mamakrita or malaria which again there are so many divisions here and at the high school level you have the mairaba different types of schools and uh it can be very very confusing for a parent um i know one parent one family that literally sent each of their children to a dif not just a different school but a different type of school and in many ways i admired that because that's exemplary of another famous verse in proverbs conocle naropi darko you must train every child according to their personality and their way but it is difficult and particularly i'll just put in another observation for north american olim uh the israeli personality is a bit of a tough personality so so a nice american kid who might be soft-spoken edel as we say in yiddish and gentle kind of gets put into an israeli school whether it's kharadi or dativi or me or anything any type of israeli school and there may be a certain toughness and aggression on the part of the kids that may be very very difficult for the american child to adjust to and one of the difficulties here is that teachers don't always take it very seriously teachers kind of say um boys will be boys girls will be girls so this kid has to toughen up and grow up you know maybe that's true to some degree but that's kind of another problem so hashem money is not the issue here for that other things money is relevant for other things but not for education but i think the issue of choosing the school and not just finding a school that has a philosophy that is consistent with your philosophy but also that emphasizes midot's refinement derek eretz bain that kind of you know monitors the recesses and not just the classroom so rabbi here this is a problem even in israel that i hear is uh it's a very sensitive culturally sensitive uh you know problems is sometimes in the schools even it can happen in like modern orthodox day schools you have uh you know children being presented with with concepts that aren't so you know well founded in torah it could have to do with relationships that are outside of torah law could have to do with the whole idea of evolution without without a designer being present behind the design with all kinds of things like that so i mean how do you pick those things up as a parent how do you address them as a parent if they're happy in your school i mean you know some how do you just deal with that with that whole topic thanks yeah well initially of course this will be a major factor in in the type of school that you choose right if you have a school that openly espouses non-torah ideas you know that's not going to be the school you're going to want to send your child to but sometimes you know think about the united states there may only be one orthodox day school in the community it may be very far to the left it may espouse various ideas uh that are inconsistent with the torah so i think the best you can do is number one parents have to realize that just because you send your kid to a school doesn't mean you've abdicated your responsibility as educators you have to set the tone you have to establish the values granted as our kids grow older and older we tend to lose influence but still uh things there has to be an hope there have to be open channels of communication uh you need to be aware of what's being discussed in the school and you need to be able to discuss it intelligently with your with your children uh if your children come home and talk about evolution then i think you know you can discuss whether evolution is compatible with the torah again this is not our subject today i think it can be compatible with the torah but uh at least there ought to be a discussion they need to know that uh the torah does have a position on all of these things and a person can be a faithful torah observant jew and still be scientifically sophisticated at the same time i think you should get involved in the school pta or whatever organization in terms of getting guest speakers in terms of hearing different opinions that might be against the mainstream political correctness and at least the children should be exposed to the more traditional views so there's a lot that you can do and that might be preferable than the censorship approach in which you demand that certain things not be discussed at all because that may make people defensive dig in their heels uh and you'll be less effectual but sometimes if you say let's have a presentation you know in the orthodox world we have very very eminent scientists i mean there's gerald schroeder nathan aviezer we're physicists there are very great physicians who are experts in medical alaha and as they say there's people in all types of realms of science and humanities who are still faithful to torah and they can address these issues and in fact in many ways i think it's better to address them than not to address them you know in some for example let's take in the kharadi world here you know the kids are going to go through school i mean he'll never hear that there's such a thing as evolution he'll never hear about age of the earth he'll never hear about dinosaurs it's not going to be addressed no one's going to talk about it so what's going to happen when the king is 14 15 16 17 and all of a sudden he encounters all of these ideas that seem to be attacking the torah and he never heard about it before and his reaction is going to be they were hiding the ball because they had nothing to say and that could take a person literally off the dare as we say so i think it is really from a position of strength to openly confront these issues at the appropriate age of course and discuss them rather than sweep them under the rug because in this world the kid is going to hear about it eventually and if he does not feel that the torah has a response and if he does not feel that or he if he feels that we were hiding the ball because we had nothing to say right then you're talking about a kid who could very likely simply abandon the other side rabbi i just want to close with one question just taking us back to people that are just starting families and i see this and i've been asked this you know this is just maybe what is the tour i have to say about young families they have two or three kids in there they're they uh it's just so physically demanding and they struggle so much in those early stages do you have any advice for them about i mean we've all gone through this who are older right who have had young kids but uh what i'm just from a torah perspective uh to give some a little co-op to to the young families i think maybe you have some thoughts for them yeah well uh raising kids is certainly quite exhausting um i believe there was a story about a famous olympic athlete jim thorpe uh who has a publicity stunt decided to follow a baby around for one day just crawl whatever the baby was doing and uh jim thorpe dropped out after half the day he just couldn't couldn't keep up with the baby and of course all children have challenges whether it's babies school age adolescence what do they say little kids little challenges big kids big challenges the challenges keep on going sometimes they're less physical more psychological but they're always going to be there number one you have to have a sense of humor number two husband and wife need to have time out with each other they have to have what you call date nights as it's sometimes called or they have to recognize that you need time away from the kids babysitters whatever it is if you have family members that's the best many people do not have family members but you have to pay for a babysitter go ahead and do it you need to be a husband and a wife in order to be a mother and a father you know you need you need that relationship number three just know and i can tell you this because i've been through this that you're going to look back at this time as the best part of your life you know now it's so hard it's so difficult but you know you're going to miss it you are going to miss it and therefore if you're going to miss it try to get the joy out of it as it's going on because there is nothing as important you will ever do in your life as raising these children you know you could be a great rabbi you could be a great politician you could be on the supreme court in fact um i'm actually paraphrasing the most recent justice on the supreme court amy coney barrett who is a mother of seven and she herself said with all of her accomplishments a young woman reaching the highest court in the united states one of the most important courts maybe the most important court in the world and she said that there is not no accomplishment in her life that isn't as important as raising her seven children and although she's a catholic i am perfectly free to plagiarize that statement and say that it equally applies to judaism so i think with sense of humor making time for themselves physical exercise is very important because that kind of gives you the energy that you need taking care of yourself and just realizing how wonderful this is how you're going to miss it and it's really the most important thing now the other thing is a very good piece of advice in raising children generally is don't make a big deal about anything that's not going to matter in 20 years by that i mean the following let me give you two examples if i have a child that is cruel that is mean that is selfish that steals i got to take care of that because those are habits that could you know become permanent habits but if a child like you know runs around or a child is a little bit wild or a child can't sit at the table i don't necessarily have to fight every battle i don't necessarily have to intervene in everything because 20 years from now he's probably not going to be dancing on the table [Music] meaning the things that kids do because they're kids and they're likely to get out of it when they become adults so let him do it what's the difference focus on the type of adult you want your child to be and that's how you determine your interventions so when it comes to me dots that's very very important the bad meadows of a child can become the bad meat out of an adult but things that kids do because they're kids let them have their childhood and so we don't have to be so super vigilant in which we're policing every aspect of what our children are doing thank you rabbi thank you so much for for your time here i have a friend who when he talks about people what he says about them is uh if he speaks favorably he says they're do he's doing wonderful things for our people um a friend harold wrote i just want to quote him as saying that i want to say you too rabbi posting behind the camera rabbi brighton you just do such wonderful things for our people thank you so much for taking the time [Music] today [Music] is