Rabbi Peretz Chen | Why look for the children this year?

00:00 Hello. When you ask a child, “Which holiday do you like best?” Purim will always, always be on the list of favorites. It’s the holiday when children dress up, there’s a happy atmosphere and mishloach manos—that’s Purim, and that’s why children love it. As parents, one of our main preoccupations before the holiday is costumes: what should the children dress up as? Today there’s such a wide variety of costumes available, from rabbis to, in a very different category, all sorts of animals and movie characters. You name it. There’s an abundance of costumes. And the children want to be the most original and the most interesting, and to win the contest at school. Sometimes that presents us with a challenge, because a child may want a particular costume that we’re not so comfortable with, educationally or in terms of our values. On the other hand, maybe we really should let go. It’s what they want. So fine—what’s the big deal about these costumes? Does it matter so much whether it’s this one or that one? The question, then, is what should we parents do? Should we get involved or not? Does it even matter? Maybe it doesn’t matter, and they should dress up as whatever they want. What effect does a costume have on a child’s inner life? In this lesson, we’ll try to answer that question and find some middle ground: how to approach costumes in the right way. We’ll begin by focusing mainly on the meaning of clothing. When I put on a particular garment, does it really have a deeper significance, or does it not matter that much? Once we understand what clothing is, we’ll understand what that means for costumes and, finally, what to do about costumes with our children. So first: what place does clothing really have in our lives? The Alter Rebbe once said something

02:17 very, very interesting. He said that the Hebrew word for a garment, beged, has the same root as the word for betrayal, begidah. And the words ba gad—“good fortune has come”—can also be found in beged. Betrayal is something negative. Ba gad means that good fortune has arrived. In other words, the Alter Rebbe says, a garment can do one of two things: it can bring about betrayal, something negative, something wrong; or it can bring about ba gad, good fortune. And that depends very much on the kind of clothing a person wears. Some clothes lead a person toward something negative, making beged a matter of begidah. Other clothes draw holiness and purity upon a person, even though, seemingly, it’s only a garment. So why should it matter? But we see from the Alter Rebbe that clothing, what we wear on the outside, also has an effect on a person’s inner life. Over the years, people have done some very interesting studies on this. In one study, for example, they took two people to a train station—a subway station somewhere abroad. One was dressed in the clothes of a poor man, and the other wore a nice businessman’s suit. They looked alike; the only difference was the clothing. They walked around the station telling passersby that their wallet had been stolen and they were stranded with nothing. They needed money to travel and reach their destination. The results showed that the person dressed respectably, in a suit and tie, managed to collect four times as much as the person dressed like a poor man. Automatically, seeing someone dressed a certain way made people treat him differently. That’s about how others see us: our clothes affect the way people look at us. But what do they do to me, to me myself, when I get dressed? They did another study,

04:46 where they put people in white coats: one person wore a doctor’s white coat, another wore the white coat of an artist, someone who works in art. There were different white coats associated with different roles. They ran various tests and found that the way these people behaved in the situations they were put in, and the way they thought through those situations, was directly affected by whether they saw themselves as a doctor or an artist. In other words, clothing has a very, very strong effect on us and on our behavior. And we don’t need studies to see that; we see it with our own children. A child puts on a soldier’s outfit and immediately starts shooting in every direction. When he puts on a doctor’s outfit, he acts accordingly: he goes straight to every member of the family, putting his toy thermometer in their mouths to check whether they have a fever. It affects their behavior in an instant. There’s a story about two righteous Jews known as the holy brothers, Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk and Rabbi Zusha of Anipoli, who were students of the holy Baal Shem Tov. Once they thought to themselves: On Shabbos, we feel something very, very special. I wonder whether that’s because of Shabbos itself, or perhaps because of the clothes we wear. They were curious, so they decided to conduct an experiment. What did they do? On a weekday, they put on their Shabbos clothes and sat together. Suddenly, they felt the holiness and purity of Shabbos come over them. But it wasn’t Shabbos; it was a weekday. They were deeply amazed. When they told the Maggid of Mezritch about it, the Maggid said to them, “Well, what did you expect? You put on your Shabbos clothes. Of course

06:56 you felt that way.” It wasn’t Shabbos, but their Shabbos clothes—the clothes they wore on Shabbos—made all the difference. The clothing I wear has a very, very direct effect on my behavior, my way of thinking and my view of the world. Clothes have power. There’s also a story in the opposite direction, about a Jew named Rabbi Yisrael Najara. Incidentally, Rabbi Yisrael Najara was the rabbi of none other than Gaza. He was the rabbi of Gaza. How many Jews today are longing for there to be a rabbi in Gaza again! So Rabbi Yisrael Najara was the rabbi there, and one Shabbos he sat and sang the sacred poems of the holy Arizal. The holy Arizal has several Shabbos poems attributed to him that we sing on Shabbos—Asader Liseudasa, Azamer Bishvachin, and others. Rabbi Yisrael Najara was sitting there on Shabbos, singing the Arizal’s poems, when suddenly he sensed a great many angels coming to listen and to join him in that holy occasion. But then he sensed them leaving again, and he didn’t understand what had happened. Why had they come and gone? Suddenly he noticed that although it was Shabbos, he was sitting there without his Shabbos hat or his Shabbos coat. He immediately went and put on his Shabbos hat and coat, and suddenly he sensed those same angels returning to him. In other words, his clothes affected what happened. How much power clothes have! They affect us. Once, in connection with Purim, the Rebbe spoke about how sometimes people put on a Purim play and one of the children dresses up as Haman. The Rebbe spoke about how important it is to pay attention to this point,

09:18 Because when a child dresses up as Haman, he wants to play the part as convincingly as he can. He immediately starts speaking and behaving in a certain way because he’s dressed as Haman. That’s something we need to pay attention to. He spoke, of course, about how careful we need to be with this. In other words, the clothes we wear have a very, very strong effect on us. When Shabbos comes and one of us arrives at shul in a new suit or new Shabbos clothes, how does he feel inside? Doesn’t he feel more confident? Why? Because of what he’s wearing. When we go on an outing in casual clothes, we feel much more laid-back, less bound by obligations. Why? Because clothing affects us. It’s no accident that the Gemara says Rabbi Yochanan called his clothes “those who honor me.” Clothes give a person dignity; clothes shape a person. Of course, anyone who wants to can look more deeply at clothing in the spiritual sense. Tanya explains that the garments of the soul are thought, speech, and action, and their effect on a person is especially powerful. The main focus of our spiritual work is these spiritual garments called thought, speech, and action. We won’t go into that now. Anyone interested can open Tanya to chapter 4, where the Alter Rebbe discusses it at length, and there’s more on the subject elsewhere. So clothing is very significant in our lives. And now Purim is coming, and the children want to dress up. Our role as parents is to try to guide them as much as possible toward costumes with meaning and substance, something that will stay with them and encourage them to behave more as we’d like, both in the period leading up to Purim, on Purim itself, and afterward. The thing is, this can sometimes lead to all kinds of discussions and disagreements at home,

11:35 and a lack of understanding—in short, a mess at home—because the children have their own wishes. So our job is to use our judgment and try to find common ground. Maybe I want my child to dress up as the Kohen Gadol, but he really doesn’t want to. He wants to dress up as some character from a movie. We don’t want him dressing up as that character, because then he may start behaving in ways we don’t want, but he doesn’t want to be the Kohen Gadol either. So we’ll sit down together—with him or with her—and think about costumes we can agree to. They’ll fit with the way we’re raising our children, while still being something the child wants. We’ll find a compromise, common ground. That can only happen through conversation: talking it over together and coming to a decision, and of course trying to persuade them. We’re parents; when we want to, we know how to persuade our children about certain things. We have that parental instinct. Sometimes we might even need to promise them certain things. Whatever it takes, the point is that we need to approach this wisely, in a way they’ll accept. They can dress up as something special, something original. Sometimes children make their own costumes, and that’s the most powerful thing of all. Then they also gain the value of creativity, and something much more than just a costume. But either way, the goal and the task are for them to wear a costume we’re comfortable with. Not simply because we’re comfortable with it, but because it also affects their inner lives. So with parental wisdom, let’s think together with them about how to find something that suits them. We still have almost a month and a half until Purim, and that’s plenty of time to sit down and plan together. If the subject hasn’t come up yet, let’s bring it up at home so we can prepare early enough to find something

13:35 that they’ll be happy with, that the children will accept and enjoy, and that won’t hurt their self-image or self-confidence. At the same time, it should be something we’re very comfortable with too. And may it be Hashem’s will: Chassidus teaches that exile—all of exile—is like a costume. What’s happening in the world today, what’s happening in the Holy Land, isn’t the truth at all; it’s a costume. The truth is that the Jewish people prevail. The Jewish people stand strong. The Jewish people are victorious. The Jewish people have no enemies—that is the truth. May this costume the world is wearing disappear already, and may we see, with Hashem’s help, only blessing and success. And just as on Purim there was a reversal, so that all the evil plans of Haman and his followers were turned to good, may we too merit, with Hashem’s help, to see the entire situation in the Holy Land and throughout the world—a state of exile—turn completely to good. May we merit, with Hashem’s help, blessing, success, and the complete Geulah. May we have nachas from our children. May the wounded recover, and may the hostages be brought home, with Hashem’s help. May we soon merit the resurrection of the dead, with Hashem’s help, and may we share and hear only good and joyful news. Thank you very much. All the best.