Rabbi YY Rubinstein: Growing with Our Children

hello i want to speak to you today about an organization which i think i was given the enormous opportunity and schools to speak for last year it's called chickens for shabbos it's an organization based in israel it's completely profit free everything is done by volunteers who do it lachem shimane and it's an organization that supports a goodness woman's whose husband had refused to give him again very often fled the country to get away from them a garisha's woman whose husbands have divorced them and and and milandin people who are struggling in order to teach terror but very very often certain the first two categories the support that they should be getting from a father who is so sorry sorrowfully uh not often there is woefully lacking so i want to talk today about growing with your children however i'd like it to be as close for me um saying this share for you listening and hearing this share in the support that hopefully we're able to offer uh chickens or shabbos dot com and you can check them out chicken for shabbos.com and the schools that we're able to offer those children who don't have the support that they might been able to expect from both parents at this organization that we are supporting that should generate for us a tremendous because in our children and our grandchildren in our own families to help us be the best parents and grandparents that we possibly could be so that's the introduction and please check out their their website chickenforshabbos.com i was invited by the bbc the british broadcasting corporation who i still lecture for and do programs for to recently do four programs and they get they supply basically they supply the titles it was for a radio station called bbc radio 2. it's got 10 million listeners this particular program and and so they supplied the titles the first one was my favorite nobel prize winner difficult and then there was one called planting for the future and there was another one which was called light in the darkness and the last one of the four was the street where i live um light in the darkness that was i think it was because it was hanukkah and certainly the the other festival the non-jewish world has at this time of the year they thought that would be a good thing but i didn't want to talk about hanukkah twinkling likes one doesn't want to be predictable instead i wanted to talk about um the fact that the uk which is incidentally a very small country 600 miles from top to bottom and there's nowhere in the uk you're ever more than 50 miles from the sea so it's a very small country it's one thirty third the size of the continental united states of america and yeah it's got a population of nearly 70 million so that makes it uh wow um uh 70 million is 370 so a million americans so it's wow that's uh it's overcrowded despite that and that means you've got large cities and you know very little countryside in between but amazingly they won the united kingdom won recently an award for dark skies two of their national parks dark skies and you can see the milky way you can see the northern lights you can see comets planets because the sky is so dark and i thought it was really very very exciting and i remember was that um i was in a place called wales and i went out i was doing a shabbaton and i'm out to look at the night sky and again it was in the countryside no light pollution and i saw for the first time in my life shooting stars i was amazed the incredible shooting stars wow it was absolutely astonishing i don't i've never seen those before in my life and certainly my father never took me out to see the night skies where i grew up and i'm thinking about it i never took my children out to see them as well but because i'll say um rather than dublin says she might must have been called kale but the very heavens if you want to gain the proper yiddish kofi in his famous letter to his son the most important media of all of all the medias the best one is the nevis and all the blessings flow from that if you want to get a nevis in your life as dr mello says there's no better way than to look at the stars look at the universe look at everything that shine created then you realize how very very small you are and that helps you to gain enemies and everything comes from that but it's not just looking at the universe looking in the skies that allow you to gain a nevis and humility and then all the brokers that flew from that i remember my wife and i were once in a place called davos in switzerland we arrived late at night it was dark totally exhausted from the flight from england and uh we just collapsed and fell asleep straight away so the morning went out into the balcony now it was daylight and right behind the the hotel there was a mountain and the mountain just went up steeply i looked up and up and up to my neck wouldn't stretch back any anymore you couldn't see the top of the mountain it was absolutely enormous that's another thing you can get the covenant of hashem from and consequently your own neighbours and i thought to myself wow that is absolutely astonishing in fact representing phil hirsch often used to tell his congregants that when you go and stand in front one day of the bastion mana then the voice is going to say to you no did you go and see my alps because by seeing the the the one the magnificence of hashem's bria you got a taste of a shaman that gives you the nevis that really is the essential ingredient that you need but you know what you don't have to in actual fact do all of that in order to uh to get an idea of the brie of hashem last summer my wife uh invited me to join her in a pla in a a plan she had she wanted to grow up vegetables in our backyard in our back garden and i've never done that before either and so i said okay so we planted planted peas two types of peas um tomatoes cherry tomatoes a zucchini um baby cucumbers um and i think there was something else i planted anyway i i've never done that either and it's quite astonishing i'm not much of a vegetable man i don't like eating vegetables too much but these this was different when they started to pop above the surface and then grow and make little tendrils for the peas and angle until the the wires we put across and then produce food it was another whoa and i thought to myself well that's something else i didn't do with my kids i wish my father had done that with me which i've done with my kids because everything that we're learning in mishnayots about my sermon my recent master cheney and orla and and shemita would all come to life if they've actually seen it you can see the covenant the covenant of hashem's brie in the cupboard of hashem and therefore nevis that wonderful starting point uh in your backyard uh it's an astonishing thing uh and you know what uh it says in perky office and fourth peric in the 25th mission it says there that what's it like if you've got this close to teach children tara when they're very young when you can show them stars in the sky and maybe climb a mountain with them maybe you should leave that to the parents not so much the grandparents um and show them things growing in the garden when should you do that when they're young when they're young you know and that's one of the things i i was aware of when i was growing these plants that was planting and growing this fruit with my wife and i was regretting not um letting my children see things grow to get an appreciation of time and maturity but it would also probably have given me a sense of them growing and maybe made me more aware that they grow very very quickly and suddenly they become ripe and ready for plucking and ready to go off and make their own way surprisingly and shockingly quickly and the time to get them the time to mold them to grow them is when they're young um it says as i said before in office 4 alicia bellavue famously said what's it like to entire to somebody who's young it's like writing on a clean piece of paper a piece of paper it's never been touched what happens if you're letting through when you're older nah it's not so straightforward and it's like a piece of paper that's been raised from previous writing and sunday trade on top of it it's smudged it's not nearly as clear it's not nearly as good the beauty the fabulousness of bringing up children is when they're young it's that's when you really want to uh get it and of course chickens or champis deals with uh as i said before helping uh mothers who are left basically doing a single-handed job with an essential other half of the equation the father too often absent unfortunately i missed all these showing these things to my kid and my father showing them to my to me uh simply because of we never thought how important it was but the more fundamental things the more basic things these children are being denied when there's not a father there or not a father there the way that ideally the father should be there which makes this whole it's and enormousness to be involved in as we are of course but it's interesting that's it's when they're young you know because i'll famously say in the gomorrah the children are a taste of ulam children are a taste of heaven i mean after all when they're born they're the most exciting things that have ever come into any of our lives and you hold them in your heart and your arms and you just feel wow this is astonishing i remember when my first son was born and cried my eyes and after four sons my first daughter was born held her my arms cried my eyes out it was it's overwhelming and what does it mean that they're a taste of heaven but it's so obvious this holding this fragile little person who needs you so much to guide them and show them stars shooting stars in the sky and comets and plants growing in mountains and all the wonderful things that the chamber created which creates them to be the on off that they need to be in order to be a successful jew but there's another gamora talks about sarguital volume the pain of raising children pain of raising children i thought we said it was a beautiful thing it was a taste of having you hold them in your arms you get to be their guide showing them this brand new fresh world they've never seen before and all the wonderful things in this world like we mentioned before and so many others too you get to share in their excitement and re-rediscover your own excitement from when you were young and you saw these things for the first time this is all of my boss surely ah at least a taste of oliver sarguital bunny the pain of children what pain then they get to be teenagers that pain um i have as i said four sons and we fostered a little boy for a year so i've made five more misses and i've seen this so many times you know there are you see this in you know somebody stands up to lane his bar mitzvah uh he is or has been practicing this for months you've paid for this you've encouraged him you've worked with him with his draw shirt he's leaning he stands there nervously absolutely his father beside him and then he starts to lean at the end of his landing when he's achieved it and done well then he looks at you and you look at him he looks at his family because all the family is there to see this little child that's the one that you sent the pictures to when he was born through all the stages of his life of you know when he was in your arms and then when he was sitting in his high chair about to eat his first solid food oh that was a great picture usually a mashed up banana most of which he smeared into his hair but you're dancing with your wife around the kitchen wow the excitement he ate something solid and then his first steps and all those wonderful pictures wow and everybody that you sent them to are is there in the show when it's his bar mitzvah and guess what he's so proud to be part of you and your family and you're so proud to be part of him and yet six months later only six months later i've seen this that same little boy with a little voice you know ever been to a non-religious the little boy stands up and he's got his speech in his hand and he says he's wearing that suit which often is too big for him and the tie that doesn't quite fit and he starts his speech by saying today i am a man and everybody bursts out laughing because this little falsetto voice this high pitched voice is hardly a man's voice but six months later that same little boy from the bar mitzvah scene i just painted for you a few moments ago comes in and says dad can i borrow your your beer trimmer dad and he said where'd he go where'd my son go six months before he was so proud to belong to the family you were so proud of him six months later six months later he looks upon you as a fossil and you look upon him as a fully fledged paid up member of the mafia he thinks you are totally irrelevant you can't understand him anymore the simplest request is met by shoulder shrugging and eyeball raising honey could you bring your dirty laundry down to the washing machine oh that's sarcatore boning and that stage is much more difficult at that stage it takes everything you've got everything you know to be able to guide that little child when perhaps no longer listening to you so that the ideal time to catch them is the when they're growing up and when you think back of all the times that you are a good parent and you are not such a good parent remember it's important to bear in mind that keep it of the is in a specific and uh particular place on the lucas you've got of course in the ten commandments you've got five which is are they the first five about your relationship with hashem and then the next five is your relationship with other people so adultery no matter et cetera but the first five and lord your god but number five is give it up aim but moms and dads are parents what's this keyboard of him that's on the wrong side it shouldn't be the other side of the people but it's the side of hashem because is to remind you that guess what the person who chose those parents for you and that child for you was hashem it's over in hashem's side keep it out the aim is over in hashem because you have to know that the parents that you go are the perfect parents for you that doesn't mean to say their perfect parents i certainly wasn't if you were to ask any of my children did i and my late white fellow sean do a good job in bringing them up and they were to reply to you in the negative and say no i would have to accept their verdict after all they were my victims but if you were to ask those same children did your mother and father try to do a good job in bringing you up and the answer no to that then i certainly can't accept that i know we try but inevitably you make mistakes because parenting is a very very difficult business and often we get it wrong i remember very clearly when once i got a letter from my bank manager my bank manager was always sending me letters explaining i was overdrawn yet again and if i didn't get my uh balance back into the black very quickly then i would be in serious trouble uh and i have a clue where to get this money at this moment or that moment when i was looking at all my papers and pulling my hair out then came one of my sons and he had in his hand a little toy airplane and the wing had broken off and he was really really uh upset and he brought this to me but i was this was serious stuff and i i lost my temper and i said what are you doing here can i see him busy go away and now he went of course as soon as he closed the door i felt very guilty and i can almost hear his little mind thinking he's a hopeless father that one huh my friend oh my friend surely he's got a nice start surely he's done would have helped him repair the plane and i felt even more guilty and then i recalled almost exactly the same circumstance when i was a little boy and my father i had a teddy bear he was called ted no points for originality there and ted's had an arm which pivoted two arms of ticketed and one of his arms had come off but that's serious an amputation and so i came rushing into my father and again he shouted at me to get out and i remember thinking the exact same thing he is a hopeless father and my friends fathers would have helped but maybe he was looking at a letter from his bank manager about an overdraft he couldn't uh or didn't know what to do anything about how to do anything about it uh maybe in fact his bank manager was the father of my bank manager because that's how evilness runs in families so people parents inevitably make mistakes but as long as the children know they're trying to be good parents as long as the children know they're trying to be good parents there's plenty of room to forgive the parents and of course we often consider our parents to have not done quite such a a successful job until we ourselves become parents and realize that it's not as easy as we thought so it's easy for them to understand it's not so easy to understand but the father is not there when the father has run and fled the country refusing to give your mother a divorce when she's struggling and she simply and honestly genuinely can't put food on the table for shabbas and needs an organization like chickens for shabbos to step in and provide tutors and so they'll they've got private tutors tutoring 222 kids who again a father should be there ideally performing that role and that there's a big vacuum that's not there because even when parents get it wrong um you still know that they're your parents and they're there for you and hashem made them for you are parents perfect no but they're perfect for you because that means to say that the things that they get wrong indeed you can note that and say well i'm not going to do that when i'm a parent because parents make mistakes as the next generation will make mistakes but what's the parents simply not there well if the parent has um for whatever reason and of course we can't judge but a parent has absented himself from the child's life that's when other people have to stand a step in and i told you before about children who are teenagers and how everything was perfect before and then suddenly when they're teenagers and everything goes to pieces well that's the point where you need to turn it to somebody else for help because sometimes the worst possible person in the world to help you with your child is you because you don't see them objectively don't see them clearly you need somebody to be able to stand back grandparents are very good for them they love them like you do but they're able to be a little bit more objective and gives them the kids the sort of unconditional love that perhaps sometimes they need particularly when they're teenagers but but it's difficult you need somebody else to step in that's in a normal family situation well it's so much so more the case when it's when the father's not there that you need somebody to step in and of course that's what chickens for shabbos does so we need help as i said to you at the beginning i think we all need to have sushi in our own life in our own children and our own grandchildren our relationship with our children our relationship with our grandchildren and hopefully their relationships with us and the most listening we can have the more successful that's going to be i honestly can't think of any better way than to get discussing for our interactions with our children and families that help somebody who has not got the abilities that we have it's like because i'm famous let's say if you need something if you're god forbid sick and you're different for somebody else who's sick first that opens the gates of rahmeen to you to be cured as you are praying first for them to be cured we all need the gates of rahmi moment when we take on the enormous task of being a parent and what better way to do that than to help to dave and to contribute to people whose lack of family structure or the collapse of a family structure has left them literally struggling to put food on the table so i would um invite you to please go to chickensforshabbas.com have a look at the work that they do if you've got any spare pennies and dollars and twenty dollars and hundred dollars floating about wouldn't that be a really great place to send it so join me in supporting chicken socials it should generate broca and nacas for you for your children and for your grandchildren and for your great grandchildren and we should all you see a broker emerging in classroom from the world that they do and the work that we've supported that they do thank you you