Thinking Talmudist Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

00:00 - Intro (Announcement)
You are listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Thinking Talmudist Podcast.

00:14 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
Okay, welcome back everybody to the Thinking Talmudist Podcast. We're coming to. You live from Torchwood, the beautiful, serene, quaint little neighborhood here in Houston, texas, where we have a Torch facility here and it's really awesome to be here. We're on page 31A in Tractate Kedushin. We're in the middle of talking about parenting, the responsibilities of a parent, the responsibilities of a child. The Talmud says something very, very interesting. It says there are three partners we mentioned previously. There are three partners in mankind there is the father, there is the mother and there is God. God is a partner and God is part and parcel in everything that goes on in that home. He's the third partner who makes sure that everything is hopefully up to snuff. So what happens if, god forbid, parents aren't raising their child in the proper way? Tani Tano Kamei de Rab Nachman, a teacher of Bryce's, taught the following Bryce in the presence of Rab Nachman. He said as follows if a person distresses his father and his mother, the Almighty says I did the right thing by not living among them, because if I would have lived among them, they would have distressed me as well. Why? What are we saying here? That when a parent isn't successfully raising their child in the path of understanding proper respect for a father and mother. God says I'm also out. I'm also out because I don't want to be distressed by the disrespect the child has for the parent. And what the commentaries say, you're very interesting. When parents are not sufficiently meritorious to raise a child to be a righteous person, the divine presence leaves their abode so as not to be present when the child subsequently distresses his parent. This is the converse of what happens when a child honors his parents properly, as related by in the Talmud earlier. So I think there's a very important discussion to be had here of the responsibility that the parents have to raising their child in a proper way, because if they're raising their child in an improper way and the child is causing distress, anguish to their parents, then God says I'm out. I don't want to be there either. I don't want to be around when the child is giving their parents a hard time. So God says I'm out. You're missing a third of your partnership. It's a hard time. So God says I'm out. You're missing a third of your partnership. It's not good. That means that there's a certain responsibility that parents have in how they raise their children.

03:14
I was asked recently by young parents, young adults. I'll just tell you that my rabbi may he live and be well. He always says that parenting advice don't take from anyone who hasn't married off two children. That's what he says. I just qualified to be a parenting advisor, right according to my rabbi. Where you know, thank God, I was blessed to marry off two children, hopefully to marry off the other six in good health, and they should all maintain very, very happy, harmonious, beautiful marriages forever and ever.

03:50
But the questions that I'm being asked by young parents what do I do with my child like this? I want to do with my child like that. Sometimes I feel that they need to zoom out. Sometimes parents are zooming in, like bedtime is such an overwhelming task. And what do I do? And how do I? You know, when I pick up my child from carpool, how do I make sure that I give them the proper attention? I have five children, six children, eight children, 12 children, however many children a person has, or only one child. How do I make sure that I give my child the proper attention and how do I make sure that they're being raised and given what they need to be successful people in life? And it's a great question how do we ensure that? So the answer is like this To me it's the easiest thing in the world.

04:37
Parenting is one job and one job alone Love your child boundlessly, endlessly, with untethered and unconditional love. We need to love our child and really love our child. That doesn't mean that you don't reprimand them ever. It doesn't mean that you don't ever give them constructive criticism. It doesn't mean that you turn a blind eye to anything that they do wrong. You give them guidance, but when it is on the backdrop of such an abundance of love for the child, you see the natural state of a child Doctor you can correct me if I'm wrong. We have an in-house psychiatrist, Psychological. We get psychological evaluation on call here at the Torch Center. Right, any class? You have an issue? Come to Dr Rosenstock, we'll make sure everything's okay. So what happens?

05:42
I think the most important thing for a child is to know, have security, that their parents love them. And if their parents don't love them, they feel it, they know it Insecurities develop, concerns and worries and all of these other mishagasin happen. But if a parent loves their child and the child feels secure in their relationship with their parent and I talk to young parents I tell them? Do you hold your child, physical contact with your child, embrace your child, give them hugs and kisses, not once a day, a hundred times a day. Show them and it's a big challenge for parents today their child. They send their child to Little League. You look at the bleachers of Little League games and you see 30 parents on their phones. Their child is at the plate. They don't even know you have an opportunity to bond with your child and instead parents are just busy with their phones. Now I know they're doing good things with their phones because they're ordering dinner and they're ordering snacks for their child and they're doing great things. But we have to realize that if we're trying to invest in our children, the number one way we can do that is by bonding with FaceTime with our child, not the Apple phone, facetime with the human, facetime, having physical contact, having visual contact with our children. And it's not a dictatorship. A home should not be a dictatorship.

07:23
I'll tell you something. You're a little younger than me, but we all grew up in an era where there was a little bit of a firm hand in education. It was acceptable. It was acceptable At least when I grew up. It was acceptable that the teachers in school were harsh, a little tough. They grew up with a Holocaust mentality. Some of them themselves were survivors, and it was very different than what we have today, very different. Today you go to schools and if a teacher even thinks of raising their hand, they'll be fired.

08:05
Today they have, you know, I don't want to call it all the training that they have. I don't want it to be that. They're, you know, dei trained. But they have certain regulations in school where teachers need to be trained in proper educational standards, in learning how to have classroom. I can guarantee you that none of my teachers ever got classroom training of how to maintain decorum in a classroom and how to keep the kids engaged and how to get together. They never had any of that, none of that training. It was an education by a stick.

08:42
Today it's very different because we're living in a TikTok society where everyone is very easy for them to get their love and to get their boost from a fake world out there. So they'll post a picture of themselves or a video of themselves and they get likes and likes and likes. You see, everyone likes me, except for my parents. My parents are always giving me harsh, critical treatment. My teachers are always no, you can't educate like that.

09:13
And I brought students of mine when I was in Israel as a rabbi and had students who came from troubled backgrounds, troubled parenting experiences that they had, and these were 16, 17, 18-year-olds who were rebellious and very, very angry people, at times very angry, and what I did was I brought them to my grandfather to get blessings and after I would talk to my grandfather privately. I said to my grandfather, how do I ensure that my children aren't rebellious like these kids? And he said it used to be that you can educate children with toughness, with a stick. Today, you can only educate with love. And it's a very, very, very big transformation that parents are not necessarily ready for. They're like no, I'm going to raise my children the way I got raised and it's a different world. So if they don't get the love in the house, they're going elsewhere. It used to be. There was no elsewhere. You weren't welcome any place.

10:18
A Jew who decided not to act like a Jew in Germany. They weren't welcome in a church. They weren't welcome in a church. They weren't welcome in a mosque. They weren't welcome on Facebook and YouTube, on Twitter, on TikTok. They weren't welcome anywhere else. Go back, you filthy Jew. Go back to your community. It was no such thing Today. The atheist world, the antagonist world, the anti-Jewish world. Go to university. You'll become anti-Jewish in a minute. They're welcoming you there. It's crazy.

10:51
We? A child's natural desire is to be with his parents. The Midrash tells us that before a child is born, they choose their parents. They're shown a whole display of organic parents. Which one do you want? You can pick them. Go to your Whole Foods and pick your parents, and the child picks their parent. Why? Because that's what they want to associate with, that's what they want to connect with.

11:21
And it's so sad for me when I see, at times, children who are disassociated from their parents. They want nothing to do with their parents, they don't want to have communication, they don't want to talk to them, they don't want anything to do with them. That's tragic. This is the parents they chose and the parents pushed them away that far Sometimes. And it's not a this is not a judgment on the parents, god forbid. We don't know. I don't know what happened and I'm not here to judge anyone but the idea that we need to create a place for our children to feel safe. We need to create a place where they feel like this is my home. You know, I'll tell you, tell you something very interesting're all patriots, we're all patriots, we're all patriotic for ourselves.

12:08
I'll give you an example. I was in England and I was in the tube, underground tube, going from London back to Heathrow, and I was getting I don't want to say accosted, but there was a drunk guy down there driving me crazy. I'm like, I'm a nice guy, so I just answered the guy by mistake, and now he didn't let go of me. As I'm trying to change the conversation a little bit, I see there's another guy standing next to me, a big, burly guy. I see his boots. This guy's got to be from Texas. So I tried to spark up conversation. I'm like hey, where are you from? He says I'm from the woodlands, right From the woodlands, you know, here in Houston. I said, oh, I'm from Houston.

12:54
Suddenly, we had this friendship, this kinship, we had this like camaraderie, we had this patriotism. We're both from Texas. We started talking about the Houston Texans, the football team oh, the quarterback and this, suddenly, we're best friends. What do we have? We're two strangers, but because we have something in common, which is we're from Houston, we like the same football team. Suddenly there's because we can find some common ground that we can relate to. We can find some common ground that we can relate to, even if they're just from Pennsylvania. We're both United States right, we're both from the same country. So we find because we love the things that we love and we love the people who love the things that we love.

13:38
When we look in the polarized world of politics today, it's like people find it very hard. Oh, you're voting for them. I can't talk to you. I don't have anything to say to you. No, no, no. Look at how much we do have in common. Look how much we do have in common. But what we're trying to get to is that we're very patriotic to the things that we like. When someone insults our football team, we're ready to stand up when someone insults our country.

14:06
I'm Jewish. I'm wearing the yellow ribbon for our hostages proudly and I walked by the way through the cities of New York with this. My wife is like you. Sure you want to do that in New York. You know they have a lot of. I'm like you. Bet I have 122 brothers and sisters hostages. I'm not taking off this pin. I don't care if people will yell, scream, I don't care. If they'll throw their Palestinian flags at me, I don't care, we don't back down. But when you see another Jew with a yellow pin, you're like, oh, we're brothers. I don't even know their name, but we feel a friendship. We feel because we're as humanity, we love ourselves and we love people who can, we can, relate to.

14:53
So when someone insults my parents, why do I get defensive? Because that's me. I come from my parents. When you insult my parents, you're insulting me. When you insult my siblings, you're insulting me. When you insult my siblings, you're insulting me. When you insult my children, you're insulting me. And when you insult my rabbi and you insult my friends, you insult.

15:17
Right, I take it personally, unless a person is able to be very mature where they're able to say you know what? They have a problem with my school, my children, they have a problem with my spouse, they have a problem. That's their problem and I don't take it personally. That's already a level of maturity. But most people are children and they act like children. Doctor, you agree so far.

15:40
And what happens is we take everything very, very personally, and that's sometimes a good thing, because it's good for us to feel close to our family. It's good for us to feel close, but it's not good for us to take it so personally where we can't function and it becomes a challenge for us to be rational people because of that. So when we have a child who's disrespectful to their parents, why are they being disrespectful to their parents? Because they're finding a clash between them and their parents. They're finding something which doesn't. It's not the same voltage.

16:24
As parents, we have to create an environment for our children that is loving, that is kind, that is forgiving, that is understanding and that is guiding. And it's not all. Oh, rabbi Wolbe said that it should be only love. We educate only with love. So we can't look at any of their flaws, we can't calculate any of their. No, no, no, no.

16:46
As parents, you know, my wife and I, almost on a daily basis, are talking about our children and trying to point out. You know what this child needs a little bit more attention. Now. They're at a stage. They're going into a new class, a new grade. They're going to lower school, middle school, high school. They need more attention now. They, you know they feel a challenge, or this one needs to be boosted.

17:14
I have a son right now who is 13 years old and he's now the big boy in the house. Till now I had my other older son, who is 18, 19 years old, and when I needed things around the house the moving a piece of furniture, building our sukkah, you know so I had another man in the house who can help me. But I'm trying to build this 13-year-old, build him up, give him a sense of responsibility where he's now proud to be the big boy in the house and I'm giving him, trying to give him a special feeling so that it's not for him a task oh daddy's going to ask me to do something but rather he feels like it's a privilege because he's the big boy in the house. He's my big boy in the house. So when I needed to move a 200-pound freezer yesterday, he's my big boy in the house and he helped me as my other son would have done, who is now in Yeshiva in Israel. So to build him up in that. So he feels like he's one of the big kids now. So now he takes the responsibility for his younger siblings as well, and I spoke to my older son in Israel. I said, when you speak to him, tell him that I told you how amazing he's doing as the big boy in the house, so now he feels even more built up. That encouragement does a lot for a child. They know how much their parent appreciates them. They know how much the family appreciates them. They feel this is their home. So for a child like that, who's being built in the home, he's being acknowledged in the home, you think such a child can now be. You know, talk with chutzpah to the parents. It's very difficult because this is they feel so loved, they feel so appreciated. This is their home. They would never want to harm that they feel. If someone were to insult one of my children, I know that they would be heavily insulted if it was something about their parents. Because they feel close to. Hopefully they feel close to their parents like I feel to them, not just because we're I'm a father and they're my child, but because we're close. We've built the relationship beyond just being a father-child. This is a technical relationship here. This is a bond and I really feel so. I feel that I'm blessed. Thank you, hashem. The most incredible children.

19:43
My son left to Israel. I feel like my best friend just left. I really do. I get sad sometimes. My best friend left, but I'm also happy because I know he's in a great place. I know he's taking the next step in his life. He's now on his own, he's independent. He left the house, the little bird now became a big bird and now flies out of the nest and they build their own. It's a big step and I'm proud, but it's a transformation and hopefully, as mature parents, we let our children fly on their own.

20:19
There's a great song from Arik Einstein, an Israeli singer. He says Uf gozal right, go, my little gozal, my little you know chick, now go fly. You're now a bird. Go fly on your own. And it's part of life. Life is that we raise our children and we build that close relationship and now they go on their own and that's the gift of parenthood. And hopefully we're always guided by our third partner, the Almighty, and hopefully his presence is always with us in our home, because there's three partners in a home. A table cannot stand on two legs, the minimum is three. You have a father, you have a mother and you have the Almighty. God is there with us to help us. We need to reach out to him and I pray for my children every single day, every single day that they be successful, that they be happy, that they be healthy. Hashem should bless us all. Let's continue.

21:26
Any questions comments? So far, I think so, and it's not 100%. There's no science that says, oh, it's 100% the parent's fault. So, and it's not 100%, there's no science that says, oh, it's 100% the parent's fault. Obviously, a child should not be disrespectful to their parent, but I think that there is a level of responsibility that every party should take. It's like in a divorce God forbid, there should never be a divorce in the world. But who's at fault? Is it his fault or her fault? Well, it's always an equal share. You're 50% partners in a relationship. So when it doesn't work, it's kind of like 50% of each of that relationship that fell apart. Now, where's that crack? Is it 60-40?, is it 70-30? I don't know. But again, we all need to take responsibility and I'm really passionate about the idea that we don't push the blame to anyone else. We don't push the blame to anyone else. We take responsibility for our shortcomings and I feel that if we do that, then we don't have to get to the point of that. Where's the break of the heart? We're able to fix it.

22:36
I've seen so many couples who've come to me and I always tell people I'm not a therapist, I can't, I can't help you with professional therapy. I recommend that you go for marriage counseling, you go for therapy, uh, or or for psychiatric help. You know, whatever it is, I really am a big believer in it. I'm a rabbi. I'll be here as a friend, I'll be here as a guide, I'll be a listening ear, but I don't have the professional credentials to assist you in the way that you may need.

23:07
And I hear sometimes that things are going. They're such beautiful couples. They're so beautiful If they just got along, just get along, just like okay, you're getting worked up about this word that he said and he's getting worked up by this thing that she did. It's like you're so beautiful, just get along. Sometimes you just want to like hit their heads against the wall, but people get sad. People are sensitive and people are delicate, sometimes a little bit, sometimes too much, and it hurts them, it hurts the relationship. You know, just figure it out. You can do this, you're great. You're great, but sometimes people don't believe.

23:47
I'll tell you something that someone once told me that they were about to get divorced and they were sitting at a park waiting to be called by the rabbi to come to the bed din to write up the divorce document, the get. And as they're sitting at the park waiting, a man walks by and says Wow, such a beautiful couple. And they looked at each other like maybe we are a beautiful couple, maybe this is worthwhile fixing, because they never looked at themselves as being a beautiful couple. They're like we have all these problems and disagreements. It's like let me just go back to we're talking already about this.

24:36
I think it's important to discuss this. You know, I can find a hundred things about each and every one of us here in the room and every one of us listening to this podcast or video recording. I can find a hundred incredible qualities that each of us possess and I guarantee you that if I looked hard enough, I can probably find a hundred flaws. Yet we know that a bride and groom walk down the chuppah, they walk to the canopy, they make a commitment for life, forever right, that till death do us part, and they're looking, gazing into each other's eyes with such an admiration, with such an anticipation of a life together. And then, three years later, they're sitting and fighting cats and dogs. What happened? What happened from the chuppah, from the canopy all the way to the marriage therapy. What happened? I'll tell you what happened.

25:37
They stopped focusing on the positive and they started focusing on the negative. If we focus on the positive, you know what? Everybody's got flaws. Everybody's got flaws except for my wife, of course, but everybody's got flaws. If we don't look at the positive, then we're going to see the flaws. If we're going to look at the negative, we're going to see the negative. Everybody's got negative, but everybody's also got positive. And if we focus on the positive, we'll see positive.

26:08
That doesn't mean we live in la-la land, it doesn't mean that they're going to be perfect in every way, but every person needs to make a conscious decision. What do I want to focus on? Do I want to focus on my spouse's positive or do I want to focus on their negative? And that's a decision that we have to make. Which one do I want to focus on? And if we focus on the positive, we'll have a blissful life. It doesn't mean that their flaws aren't there. It means I don't want to focus on it, just like I don't want someone focusing on my flaws. Oh, everything through a microscope, looking at how your driving is terrible and your attitude toward this is terrible and this is terrible and that is terrible and you're so impatient and you're so unkindkind and you're so. I prefer someone.

26:59
Because what happens when you focus on the positive, people want to be more positive. And when you focus on the negative, people fulfill that prophecy and they're more negative. And we have the ability in our relationships to just shine a light on the positive and more positivity comes to the surface. It's not, you know, it's like what was Aaron the high priest? He was ohav shalom, the road of shalom. He loved peace and pursued peace. How did he do that? He was oe vesabrios um mekarvon, la Torah. He loved every person. See, he only saw the positive in every person. And you know what that did? It only brought them closer. When you shine a light, when you put that microscope only on the positive, what happens is that only the positive comes to the surface. The same thing is with our children. You say positive things to your children. They won't want to contradict your positivity of them. Let me hear Doctor has an example. My dear friends, here, come, doctor, here, speak to the microphone. Come, sit up, sit up, sit up. Speak to the microphone.

28:18 - Dr. Harvey Rosenstock (Host)
Anyhow, some years ago a child was brought to me, about 16, 17 years of age, very rebellious, very difficult, coming from a very powerful, influential family. That kind of spoiled him. It's almost like the story of the affluenza story, you know. And he was difficult and he'd been to any number of therapists. So they brought him to see me and he sat in a chair. When I walked in he sat in a chair like smeared off vodka, you know, his hands are full of this one and he said to me this is how he'd read to me I don't have to talk to you and you can't make me. So there we are. So I said to him you know, you're absolutely right, you're absolutely right and I right, you're absolutely right. And I know your parents. I see you here. I'm in the business of helping kids like you.

29:03
I said but there's the door and I'm going to tell you something you can walk out of this door. Now the difference will be if you walk out of this door, I'm in charge of this office. I will never let you come back again. Your parents will not be able to influence me, to make an exception. So I want you to be here. You don't want to be here. You want to talk to me. You're going to make a decision. So there was a long pause. He puts back the hands here like vodka. He said I'm not leaving and you can't make me. And he turned out to be the most wonderful kid. He made all kinds of progress, but we had to turn his energy into something more positive and make him in charge of his positivity, and he did beautifully, whereas before he went from one person to another and he controlled the situation, and of course that never works.

30:00 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
I'm not a professional. Thank you, doctor, for an incredible story. I'm not a professional, but I would venture to say that he never had the ability to make his own decisions, so he needed to demonstrate I'm in control. And when you gave him that opportunity to be in control you're not going to make me get out of this room that was what he needed and I'm sure he developed very nicely. Yeah, I'm sure he did. Doctor, you're the best. You know that, we all know that. So thank you for your incredible work that you do for mankind. Thank you, it really is, but the truth is is that this is the art.

30:35
Parenting is an art. It's very easy to become parents, but it's not easy to parent right. It really is an amazing thing. Parenting is not something that we just download a file and we become good parents or great parents. It's something that we need to learn and educate ourselves.

30:53
My grandfather dedicated much of his life to teaching education to parents and to schools and to principals and to parents so that they know how to educate their children. And I'll tell you that every evening my grandfather would have, he would see people, and not professionally as a rabbi, and he would have lines out the door of the building not his apartment of the building people waiting to ask my grandfather a question about their parent, about their student, about their spouse, about their child. How do they deal with this? It really is. It's something that it's an art, just like any other skill that we have to learn and we have to grow into and we have to. You know, fine tune constantly. And my grandfather wrote a magnificent book. He actually didn't write it, he recorded a series of lectures and those lectures were then taken professionally and put into a book form. You can find them on Amazon on Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe. It's planting and building in Jewish education, raising a Jewish child, and it's become it's a very small book, not a very, you know, overwhelming. It's very small but it gives you all of the fundamentals, all the foundations that are required for quality parenting.

32:18
And this is really what our Talmud is talking about. Our Talmud is telling us the responsibility that we have as parents. I know we've gone a lot off of script, but I think it's something which is very near and dear to my heart the importance of recognizing our responsibility as parents to our children, to bring out the best in our child. And I'll tell you what, just to close with this, is that every parent, every parent, is charged with a mission by the Almighty. These are the children that I'm going to give you, and this is your job to bring out the best fruit you can from this child, and if we succeed in doing so, we'll be greatly rewarded for doing so, and if we're unfortunately not successful, we'll be held accountable.

33:08
God says I gave you a child on lease and this is what you produced. You know it's like. Imagine you lease a car and it comes back dented, scratched, with a muffler hanging off, with a front headlight smashed. They're going to say sorry, you're going to have to pay a price for this. But if we take care of it and it looks beautiful, just like we got it even better, it's improved. Now the child becomes a great person. That's due to the parents, not luck, but hard work and efforts, and Hashem should bless us all that. We should all merit that. Not only for our children should we be great, but also for ourselves. We should make the best version of ourselves available and hopefully successful in bringing our potential to the fore. Amen.

34:12 - Intro (Announcement)
All right, have a great Shabbos everybody. We need partners. Please help sponsor an episode so we can continue to produce more quality Jewish content for our listeners around the globe. Please visit torchweb.org to donate and partner with us on this incredible endeavor.