Q&A: Handling Misbehaving Teens | American Jewish Teens Meet Orthodox Rabbi in Jerusalem

Let's say you like walk in your kid on your kids's like room and you see him doing something like you wouldn't want to do them. >> Okay. Yeah. He's learning toast. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Yeah. That's too hard. You can't have a kid doing toast. You got rashi first. Um Yeah. So what's the question? >> So let's say you seem like smoking and like you have a rule that like no smoking at all, >> right? Cigarettes are a problem. >> Yeah. >> So what do you do? >> Look, this is not a generic question. It's not like you open up the and it gives you immediate parental parental guidance. A lot of this is subjective. You have to know your children. You have to know how to approach them. You do get it. The sug is um called which means rebuke. The Torah requires from us to tell people to call people out on on bad things. So much so there's a really scary rebua. Maybe you know this. It's in the Sharich Chuva. He says if you can rebuke somebody for something that they're doing wrong, I'm not talking about your son. I'm talking about anybody in general, Derek student, anybody that you know, if you could have given somebody rebuke and you neglect to do so and you were the guy who could have done it, you get his sin. That's heavy, right? So therefore, we are I mean what it really is is it makes you real what you realize after learning this is that we're all in this together. We're all interconnected. Your sins are my problems and vice versa. And your merits are, you know, and your joys are my joys and your your sorrows are my sorrows. That's to be no, you know, the expression you you carry the yoke with other with other people. So, you have to assess, you know, this is my kid. If it's an embarrassing thing, you know, how's he going to feel about his own old man talking to him? Maybe it's not going to go well because he's not going to be receptive. Maybe somebody else should talk to him. Uh, but you the the goal is to be effective, right? You have to find the words, do it in a loving way, do it in a way that's not going to embarrass him, not going to make a bad situation worse, and try to get the point across if you can. >> So, I don't think it's like ever ever fine with like scream at him at all. >> Um, screaming totally undermines you as a person, as a parent, for sure, as a teacher. Uh, how do you know somebody? We did this the other day. Remember the How do you know somebody has proper internalized? What is again? We said >> it's true. They're all good translations, but there's a much deeper, more important translation of it's the key of life. If you have proper, you'll never be angry, depressed, or frustrated. >> Yes, that's much better. Meaning you deeply internalize that Hashem runs the world. Hem really is in charge. And therefore even the worst most unmanageable situation. Yeah. But Hashem willed it and therefore all I can do is react gracefully and do my best. So if you've really internalized the says how do you know somebody has bet? You can pick it up in a mile away. You can tell somebody has proper. He has what's called nephesh. He's calm. He never loses it. Never loses control. Certainly never screams. what you're doing when you're screaming is showing and you're demonstrating a kid even if the kid is not so sophisticated he can pick up dad is out of control right he's losing it right it's undermining your credibility they don't listen to you after that um says much more so quoting asal says that a man particularly may never scream at a child but even more so his wife his wife the way you treat your wife. If you're the biggest bassid philanthropist, you give money, you do, you're on every every foundation's board of directors and you're not kind to your wife, how much credit for all the zero. It's all hypocrisy, right? You got to treat your wife, you got to treat your kids, and you can't lose and you can't scream. And if you really internalize that Hashem runs the world, what what is screaming really showing when a person screams? Think about it. Think about it. You >> don't have control over the situation. >> Yeah. And it shows your own insecurity >> because of it, right? You're out of control for sure. And you you you can't handle exactly what's going on. So, and you're so frustrated that you you you resort to Yeah. You know, it's much more effective is you actually lower your vocal range and speak in a real steady control tone and you say, "You are never going to do that again. We understand each other." They say, >> "So, you mentioned something when you're answering Ben's question about how um if you know somebody that's that's going to sin um and you don't go ahead and rebuke them, you'll get their sin on their own." >> Yeah. That's a remaining Yona. >> Yeah. So, I'm not sure where where I heard this from, but I've heard that multiple times before. If you know somebody specifically is not going to listen to your >> This is a big terribly important suggest. Uh correct. Correct. The goal of what is to always said okay rebuke the goal is effectiveness. How do you know you can give rebuke to somebody? You know Emanuel's question is very good like sometimes you know from the get from the get-go they will not listen to you. They've proven in past interactions that they're not going to listen to you. So how do you how what do you do? Rebuke is when you assess the situation. You think I have a reasonable chance of getting through. You may blow it. You may not get through. But you know we're human. Hashem doesn't expect doesn't expect us to be angels. Okay, we tried. If you come to a situation where the rebuke is not going to come across, the next phase, the next level is something called a anybody know this a you heard the term before is not a rebuke. You're not going to get through you like assess the situation. That's it's not going to not going to help. But silence is also not an answer because if you're silent in the face of something really bad, like if somebody is sinning and it's blatant, silence is complicity. You're actually aiding and abetting his sin by not saying anything. A ma is a protest. A mah says, "You're not going to listen. I'm not going to change you, but I can't just stand by idally. I have to I have to protest. I don't agree with this." Find the words there, too, to make it so it's it's uh it's somehow palatable. The yamos really plays out this sug. says and it's it's what hotly debated and it's a big topic in the in the how this comes out. How much how many times you have to go back and give a person rebuke up to a hundred times until he hits you. You have to rebuke him assuming that it's in the first category where you think you could get through. It's just you didn't. So in theory you'd go a 100 times. That ad until until he hits you is a little bit tricky there. How far do you have to go? You actually don't have to suffer physical abuse to rebuke a guy. Um but but >> uh more the Gmorra seems to indicate more. >> There's also a major difference. Go look at the Rama and the on this. It's very famous. He it's there's a big difference between Torah prohibitions and rabbitic prohibitions. On rabbitic prohibitions, you could flex a little bit. There's some leniency. And if he's doing something wrong, but he's not going to listen to you, you can let it slide. On a Torah prohibition, it may be that you have an obligation to say something no matter what. Uh but you have to consider the these are some of the variables. And this is really common sense. Sugia, one of the variables is okay, if I say something, he might hit me. Okay, that's bad. If I say something, he may be antagonized. Yeah, he may be antagonized so badly that he may actually intentionally, if you know some Hebrew Bedafa, he'll gonna he's going to sin even worse. Do you know that some of the secular Jews are so are so hostile to anything in Torah that they'll go down the streets of Tel Aviv passing out ham and cheese sandwiches, helping people uh eat non-cos food. Of course, the joke's on them because the ham part is the rice, right? Can't eat can't eat pork. You know that. But the cheese part is only durabon and why it's only a rabbitic prohibition because in order to violate you need kosher meat and kosher milk. The ham is in kosher so the the mix there is only the prohibition. So hot. But anyway, you you you create a situation and unfortunately a lot of religious Jews do this by uh with a lot of their behavior, they create such an antagonism that the secular Jews are bidfa intentionally uh they they'll do things they'll do more more serious of errors just to just to get even