Leave your son's BEARD alone! | Letter #14 of 30 Letters in 30 Days

all right bashem it is Sunday night sorry for the late start it's not so easy to uh keep this up here 30 letters in 30 days okay um so we'll first of all our opening ritual we'll give a little bit of Sedaka in accordance with the Reb's uh clarifying his his wishes that uh what is a birthday present it's Torah study and sadaka together so the toora study is the studying the 30 letters in 30 days the stucka is the it's duck we're going to give a little money I'm going to use the pushka app because it's fun to press this little button and get the noise hoay and yeah that's my what'sapp I'm going to turn that off sorry and we'll give a little shake shake fun fun fun okay and uh awesome okay this is day 14 um today with tonight is day 14 okay so that means we're completing our second week and this letter is from igis uh volume 21 it's letter 8030 it doesn't have a date it just says I guess for whatever reason there was there was no date although from the context of the letter at the very end that AB gives a for which means that it was sometime before sh because that's what we customarily say before sh so that's what I can tell you about that all right fascinating letter really really fascinating um for a lot of reasons but particularly I'll just to give you a a heads up to me this letter really showcases that E's approach to personal guidance that when you speak about human issues about personalities and people you have to take such a tailormade approach it's not one siiz fits all and I've seen that many many times in igus um but the way that EBA brings it out in this particular letter is very rich so let's with no further Ado regarding the question and it starts with dot dot dot because something was redacted so not only the date is missing but at least the first line or maybe the first paragraph or who knows how much of the letter is missing because it was personal um but it we're starting in the middle of the letter uh in in regards to your question whether or not it's possible to be a religious Jew without a beard now why does somebody ask that question why would they even ask that is it possible to be a religious Jew without a je without a beard so the ab I just love this in English I would say the way you are formulating that question it kind of fits your son's [Music] situation so it seems to me I already alluded to this in my previous letter to you in other words sounds like to me they just tried to say in an innocent way like and we were just wondering does the deba agree that a Jew could be a religious Jew without a beard and then they wanted to get the rebbit to say well of course because the simple answer is well of course of course you can and then they were going to it seems I'm reading a lot into it but it seems that they were going to then grab that line from the rebba and go to their son and say aha the rebba said you could be a without a beard okay so the Deb is like I know where you're going with this I know how you want to use this you're talking about your son so B basically what is this remember we said this is tough Shin your Dolla this is 1954 please remember in 1954 how many good God-fearing religious committed Jews Orthodox Jews there were who were terrified that their sons would have beards yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yes yes yes this is not the only letter by the way to parents who want their kid to be from they they want their kid to be from but they don't want him to have a beard because it's just too crazy too wild right all right um by the way and it wasn't just in in America I don't know where these people live um could be they lived in ER uh but I'll tell you something I heard once at a faan um schomber Gordon said that I that in vilna he didn't live in Villa he lived in duckshit but I I just remember this line that barel gbom was the only bucker with a beard in the whole Villa before the war meaning there were old men with beards but like a bucker a young guy with a beard he was the only one barl grb laer I just remember that that line okay at any rate so these parents are freaked out what's their kid doing with a beard so the Deb is like yeah I I kind of like dealt with this already in my previous letter to you but nevertheless I I'll I'll do it again all right you want to have this conversation okay fine we're let's do it again vooo and here here it is and I love this answer because I'm going to tell you right now what the rebit does not do and what the Reb and I want to be very like careful how I say this everybody knows the was a if the wanted to write a well resourced an with M that means with scholarly citations with sources was fully equipped to do so and he does not do that the deba does not answer and get pulled into the pmic into the argument about sourcing whether or not a beard is required not required how required look at the beauty of this answer okay and it's what I was saying before about it's so personal [Music] that's poetry every person is a a complete living structure that's the best I can translate it or I could translate into yish because I've seen K translated in as G so I could translate as G um I only remember the word gestal because gestal therapy because I remember hearing about that in the 70s when I was a little kid all right every person is a I'll call it a a single living organism okay meaning to say a person is is a living being yeah obviously no kidding no no no but listen listen every person is a complete Whole Living individual UB P so when you're trying to answer any question you have to think you're you're dealing with a living person who's not an automat not not an automatan not a robot Tom pist and cl masimov a general answer is not always appropriate in other words there could be an answer that on paper is the official answer for the general public and yet for this guy it is totally not the answer because you have to look at this person or as I've said many times when people have asked me about my Ami column which was just a poor imitation of IG Kish and I've spoken about this many times with that when Rabbi y Frankfurter asked me I don't know 10 11 years ago whatever it was to start writing the advice column in the Army and I said I don't even know how to write an advice column he said just do it and so I just started imitating igis so one of the things I've said many times publicly is that one of the main lessons I learned from the igis about how to answer a letter is don't answer the question answer the questioner okay so that's what the Deb is saying here is that you can't just give the pin CL the general one siiz fits all answer even though that answer is correct even though that answer is is is based in fact but it's not necessarily the answer for this guy and to explain my words more here listen to this [Music] analogy a one-story or two-story house is also a house right it doesn't have to be three four five stories to be called a house one story is a house okay so imagine you have a house that's one story it's two stories it's a beautiful house it's a house it's a good house there's nothing wrong with it okay but let's say now you build on this one story house you put on a second story or it was already second two stories so you put you put on a third story you put on another floor that is a that's an addition like literally they'll call it you know the contractor will call it building an addition um to your original house now this meaning to say seemingly it's Superfluous because when it was one story it was a house now you made it two stories okay that second story is totally super you could take away that second story and you'll be back to a one-story house and it's a it's a house it's a fine house the way it was no not so fast not so fast listen to this incredible but after you put in the building after you put in the Second Story the addition and now you want to take it out and you want to go back to a one-story house even though it was fine before when it was a one-story house but you made it from a one-story house to a two-story house now you want to take away the second story or it was a two-story house originally and you made it from a two-story house to a three-story house and now you want to take away the third story and put it back to the way it was as a two-story house no no no moving it is understood sh you're going to damage all of the floors of the house even down to the foundation because everything has now been connected with mortar and the like so much more so if you want to remove a lower floor that that's going to destroy any floor that are built on top of it okay beautiful mush you follow what the is saying saying like this I'm going to spell out the N you have a one-story house it's a house it's not not a house it's a house so you have a Jew who's keeping he's a by all definitions of beautiful great now he added something he added a Hi Something Extra he didn't have to add it but he did add it okay now you want to take it away and go back to how it was when he was perfectly fine just being a regular yeah in theory but not in practice because when you're going to start taking away you don't know the effect it's going to it's going to weaken the structure so the deba doesn't exactly say this but I might even add you didn't have to add it but once you add it it's very dangerous to take away and by taking away you will compromise the structure of the entire building even the parts that you want it to leave behind so these parents are like let the kid take off the beard and but he'll still be shabas and the Reb is basically saying it doesn't work like that you'll take off the beard and God forbid you'll also lose chabas which you're trying to keep okay let's uh let's continue here I love this this is I'm very charged from this okay without getting into the whole conversation about what level of importance a beard has among the 613 Commandments in our holy T I love it the is saying you know we're not going to even get into that discussion and in parenthesis theba even grants the point theba concedes the point it's known to everyone many God-fearing Jews specifically from um but others as well don't have a full beard okay so you're going to tell me but I know from a Eden who don't have a beard that saying yeah I know that too I know that too I'm not arguing that totally true it's totally true and on paper in theory if we're talking academically you're right but we're not talking academically we're talking about a real living human being we're talking about your son follow when we approach it dealing with the real individual human being we have to think about his situation it's not anymore theoretical you're not talking about a beard you're talking about your son's beard and what it has come to mean to him and how it is now inextricably interconnected with his entire yish kite you hear me okay your son took upon himself the beard with a his cited as pineus that means an inner arousal meaning he he he he this wasn't perfunctory for him he really felt something deeply about it okay it means something to him it is not so simple to determine whether for him for him and again for him it doesn't matter objectively how you want to rank beard no beard that doesn't matter right now because we're talking about him subjectively it's very difficult to determine whether or not for him that is a in the old in the parable that we just used or if that's an additional floor in other words you want to pull out the beard I don't know if that's floor two or three for him or if that's even become floor one meaning maybe that is an additional thing of over the things that came before it or maybe that's even become now the foundation of his whole identity as a and it is doubtful in my eyes the says well whether it's a worthwhile thing to try to to try to probe and figure it out meaning to say it's not a productive thing to go and start investigating and asking someone so how important is the beard to you how attached are you to it that I was saying don't don't go there don't go there strong language when you start probing a person's soul it does not bring blessing like leave it alone leave it alone stop trying to evaluate how important something is or not to someone they're doing it leave it alone at any rate it's pretty clear from the facts on the ground that's how I translated the mat the facts on the ground it's all become one thing for him which he's fighting a war um and and waging an in an internal struggle meaning to say he's an intense boy and he's struggling and he's fighting for his Yiddish kite and remember we're talking about the 50s you know the assimilation was so rampant he was really fighting for his yisha identity and it's like parents don't play around with this you're gonna you know you're you're going to try to do a surgery to remove the thing that's bothering you because for whatever reason the beard is triggering you and God forbid God forbid God forbid I don't even want to finish the sentence okay and as I wrote already says I wrote already it is the responsibility of his relatives and his of his friends and especially his parents that they should encourage him as much as possible and I'm hoping that they're going to do that they're going to encourage meaning only be positive only encourage because that's in the best interest of their son and by extension in their best interest so the debba saying please guys do yourself a favor I know the beard bothers you but do yourself a favor you're going to have nakas from this kid leave him alone leave him alone okay and now that spells it out and I love this what is tus bam what is the good what is what does it mean for the good of your son I I this I could cry reading this this sentence here what what does it mean for the good of your son what do I mean for the benefit of your son for the good of your son not just in the spiritual sense I'm adding the word spiritual sense that he's doing a Mitzvah he's doing a Mitzvah in a more beautiful way in the way the do mitzvas but rather this is actually giving him peace of mind and it's giving him strength to continue in the way that in which he's going and this because it's so difficult there are so many obstacles there's so many setbacks around him it really requires a lot of encouragement from all from anyone who who he cares about so theb says what does it mean the good of their son the re is making it very clear I'm not just here as the rabbi pushing yish Kai oh I want him to be more F no no that too but do you understand that we're talking about his emotional health that the beard and everything that it symbolizes and the he say it is panus at all tied to his emotional health so don't mess with your son's spiritual well-being and his emotional health it's incredible incredible incredible incredible incredible okay I said I could cry did cry all right um I will conclude with a blessing in the words of my father-in-law the um may you receive the Torah with uh joy and inner devotion and that is as I mentioned the customary bra before sh okay now I have a treat for you um I was at a this morning for the son of a very dear friend of mine um Mendy Herz here in the five towns our kazin and uh my my good friend so I have a little treat cuz he shared with me under the table an unpublished letter an English letter that his great-grandfather got from the rebbi and and it has a lot of similarities to this letter this Hebrew letter that we just learned and what's crazy is that not only um was today his son's uhin ma um but shabas Bas ad was meny's grandfather's 25th y site and of course who am I speaking of I'm speaking about the illustrious kid Reb Kos Weiss a Shalom okay now in case you don't know who K Weiss was um anyone who is a laiter owes him a great of gr of D debt of gratitude because basically the whole the debba camp you know the whole system Camp Gan exists because of him um you ever seen the pictures of the debba visiting G and he's walking next to a guy who's like super tall that's C was very very tall um anyways when the BAM wanted to create the camp so the de said you have to have a responsible guy only I'll only let it if there's someone responsible so they brought in Reb cahos oh okay now now we could have a camp we have a responsible gu now who was it up course he was I'm going to say a regular American Boy from Pittsburgh who his father of course his father to whom the letter I'm about to read to you was written was Aid and wanted his son to be Aid he just had certain like a level of comfortability what that meant to be a and what happened is he sent his son to laage and he got really into it and he ended up with the beard and all the you know the whole package he bought the he bought the full package one of the laich starter kit and became uh the you know full the full uh the full package so this is a letter that go Weiss's father wrote to the reab basically saying very similar to the letter we just read from the igis like could you tell me son like he doesn't necessarily have to do the beard thing like you know it's very nice like he's learning in Yeshiva and but you know the beard is a little little much right um just so you should understand again I mentioned G um the Reb made Reb sh with his kala his wife Tanga Yan um Miriam dubinsky and uh the was m kushan so I just want you to understand you're talking about a kid grew up in Pittsburgh um you know very you know American uh not from Gea kabad and that ever really personally was makot of him handpicked him brought him close set him up in life um sent him back on schas by the way to Pittsburgh where he continued to serve in his post until he passed away in uh was 25 years ago it was toin s was 2000 and he uh he's a an icon and a hero that you don't hear enough about you don't hear I in my humble opinion you don't hear enough about him but he was a real uh I I think a role model especially for theg okay to guy with no but you know what his is that the was M of him and built him and made him into uh a real emblem of I think of what is the of of you know all of Shalom so anyways it it was his 25th and uh yeah so I'm going to read to you from the letter uh where is it yeah okay so I think I'm G to have to take off my glasses to read this Dear Mr Weiss okay Duan Pennsylvania you guys got to Google where Duane Pennsylvania is all right um this is the 17th of Thomas 5713 so we're talking about 1953 which is interesting the letter we just read was the summer of 1954 so this is actually a year earlier than the letter we just read except it's in English I've received your letter I'm not read every line I've received your letter of June 3rd and owing to pressure of work could not reply to it sooner um your letter concerns your son Kos um for a number of years a student of the laich Yeshiva who is growing a beard despite your objections you asked me therefore to influence him not to do it C his father knew that who would his son Listen to he' listen to the debba so he wrote to them says maybe you could tell my son he doesn't know necessarily have to have a beard right okay um I want to pred my reply by an introduction which though self-evident must be emphasized nevertheless life presents certain difficulties to Jews in general and Torah true Jews in particular which non-jews do not experience however through faith and trust in God Jews have not only overcome such difficulties but have been have even derived from them extra powers to live their Li their unique life first as single and later as family men a life true to the traditions of our ancestors and true to T which God gave us at SI unfortunately owing to pressure of circumstances many people Jews as well as non-jews make compromises with their ideals a compromise is never a solution and as a result it is only in a minority of cases where the compromise compromises it is only in a minority of situations where the compromises do not create a spiritual disturbance or affect the fun fundamental principles similar argument that I is not getting into the argument about about how important is a beard or not irrelevant irrelevant what we do know is this B has a beard and for him to now not have it will be a compromise and the deba says I want to warn you about compromises they don't end where you want them to end when you start compromising you know where you began compromising you don't know where you're going to end compromising could compromise stuff that you don't want to lose remember kiss's father wanted him to be he was very happy with from so the saying please leave this alone all right um yeah so in the majority of cases compromises undermine the structural foundations of one's being similar concept structural foundations like the musle the de doesn't say the mush of a building over here but again it's so interesting how when you think about a person as a full interconnected organism it's like you start messing with any part and and you don't know the ramifications it's going to have on the other parts that was in unintended okay um yeah now this is an incredible I'm going to skip a few lines but it is has also been proven that although the road of compromise is not so dangerous in the latter part of life when one has already acquired strong Anchorage in a in in a mature life religious social Family Life Etc compromises may be quite dangerous in early year years before the person has been able to find his bearings and come to grips with their circumstances of life it is then very easy to lose one's balance altogether God forbid and find life meaningless hear what the debba just said when an older person starts compromising it's not as dangerous although the debba says it's in general it's dangerous but not as dangerous why because he's already set up in life but when a young person who's still getting established starts compromising this can undermine everything to the point it's so like it's like like almost like I don't want to say terrifying but it's terrifying yeah the says a young person who's pushed to make compromises it can cause them to actually find life meaningless in other words like you have to allow the youth to be zealots allow them to be radical that EBA was a genius and galvanizing the the the energy the the chaotic frenetic energy of Youth and just harnessing it right because if you try to make and this is very much like that time in the 50s you know that know those Eisenhower years just especially the Jewish Community just trying to be normal post post Holocaust and just the survival has to do with just being normal and the Deb is like the survival is not coming from being normal survival is coming coming from being radical you see that the persisted that this B should keep his beard and today I was at the at the fill of this B's great-grandson so yeah knows what he's talking about when he says that uh something that looks may maybe like a like a side point but that could be the whole Foundation that everything is built on um yeah there's more there's the second page here but I'll just I'll skip to this one part in view of all the above and H in view of all of the above and having observed your son and knowing that his conduct is motivated by a definite system and way of life so the is saying first of all I know him I know this kid and I see he's not just doing things like he has a he has a way of looking at life it happens to be you know based on but the point is there's a coherent worldview there's a cohesive worldview that motivates his behaviors you can't just start pulling pieces out okay and that it has strengthened him not only spiritually but also physically I don't know what that's referring to I don't know if he had health issues I don't I don't know but that's powerful that I was saying I know your son I'm watching him and his commitment and his his his belief in this worldview has strengthened him not only spiritually but physically and this is also the reason it's I don't know I just find it very moving like in the previous letter where the Reb is saying B the good of your son the good of your son doesn't just mean his spiritual growth it means plus that he should be a healthy person okay so now I dropped the phone okay but anyway that that that was the main thing and then okay the letter goes on it's it's a it's a beautiful beautiful letter um anyways um is alah like I said the 25th yard site was just yesterday and mazov to uh to his uh great grandson on the on the and kazing the first part of the m and L to all of his and um and you see here yeah that E's approach to the youth don't cool them down don't reain them in encourage them positivity all all positive positive messaging and if they're a little bit crazy good it's good it's good just just Channel it Channel it it's good okay um thank you so much for joining me and and and I'm sorry again that tonight uh is a little bit late and we'll see you again tomorrow night I'm here hasem