Rabbi Peretz Chen | The winning recipe for a calm home

00:00 In just a moment it begins: the new year, the new school year. How much we want the atmosphere in our homes to be much calmer this year, with less pressure and less irritation. How much we want people at home to speak more respectfully and more kindly to one another. How much we want the children to be more G-d-fearing, to care about saying a blessing before they eat, for going to shul to matter to my son. And how can we, with Hashem’s help, bring about a situation where these things move forward, improve, and actually happen? We’ll talk about that in this class, and we’ll see that everything, everything, everything depends on one word. If we create what that word describes, these things will happen, with Hashem’s help. Today we’ll talk about what that word is, and I’ll also try to demonstrate why it matters. I would be very grateful if you would take one small, simple step to help this class reach more parents and more homes: like it, leave a comment, share it, and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. That way, YouTube’s system will show it to more and more Jews. So the one word everything depends on is “atmosphere.” If we open a dictionary, “atmosphere” means the various gases surrounding the Earth. But the word has another meaning: the feeling in a place. What kind of atmosphere are the children growing up in? What kind of atmosphere do we have at home? Look, we’re in the midst of a war right now, in a time of threats when we don’t know whether something will happen, when it will happen, or what it will be like. People are talking about it all the time. Who is more anxious? The people who always have the radio on, never miss a news broadcast, and constantly check all sorts of websites on their phones for analyses of the situation. So because

02:29 they live in an atmosphere of war—an attack could come any moment, will it happen, what will happen, how will it happen, and what if it happens?—they’re under pressure all the time. It governs their daily routine. Should we do this or that? Let’s see. Maybe yes, maybe no. Who knows? Maybe something will happen. By contrast, people who don’t follow it so closely, who go on living their lives, don’t rush to hear every news broadcast, and are more occupied with their everyday routine are less governed by it. They’re less anxious about it. They don’t plan their day or their week around what Iran will or won’t do, because each person lives and acts according to the atmosphere they inhabit. The atmosphere around us carries tremendous weight. You know, the Frierdiker Rebbe, the previous Chabad Rebbe—if you read some of what he said in the 1940s, when he was in America, you see that the situation for Jews there was very complicated. It was difficult to be a religious, G-d-fearing Jew at that time. And the children? He speaks again and again about investing in children, in young people, in the youth, in their education. He speaks a great deal about making sure that the teachers, the melamdim and educators in the schools the children attend, are G-d-fearing Jews. And he explains why. He says: Sometimes a person may come along who isn’t particularly religious, but perhaps he knows Tanach, knows halachah, and knows how to explain them. But that won’t help, because what a teacher passes on is the atmosphere in which he himself lives. You can’t produce something that isn’t there. So if children absorb their lessons from a teacher, a melamed, who himself isn’t sufficiently grounded in it, the atmosphere they’re in won’t have enough fear of Heaven, and that

04:38 could, G-d forbid, rub off on them—that same spiritual laxity present in the teacher, in the educator. So the educational staff, too, must be people who convey Torah, holiness, love of Hashem, and Ahavas Yisroel; who convey Jewish values genuinely and fully. Then it will come through and be passed on, because the atmosphere children are in plays a decisive role in their education. Recently I learned a little about a very fascinating subject. You see, today, in what’s called the postmodern era, various things have entered society that society used to reject. This includes ideas about what the structure of a family should be, and various kinds of relationships considered permitted or forbidden. I’m speaking somewhat delicately about this, of course. Society once rejected these things. Some were even listed in books on mental illnesses or things like that. Today they’ve become established and accepted in society, because for some people this is the reality they know. And studies show that in conservative societies—meaning societies connected to their history, their values, and the way things have been for generations—the rates of those phenomena are very, very low: two percent. By and large, these things make up two percent in a conservative society. Whether we’re talking about Jews or, to distinguish, non-Jews, those are the percentages. By contrast, in societies that aren’t like that, where people are open to everything new—why not?—and embrace every new invention that appears in the world, the atmosphere accepts all sorts of ways of life. So the rate of those phenomena jumps from two percent to ten percent and above, a very, very big difference. Why? Because in the atmosphere people grow up in there, those things are accepted. In other words, if that’s the atmosphere the youth and children live in, those things are accepted,

07:22 they’re the social norms, and they rub off on the young people too, and they become that way. In other societies, those things take hold far less. Because the atmosphere you grow up in has a very, very strong influence. Just yesterday, a friend told me that his daughter was abroad with a few friends, in New York. On Shabbos they were in the neighborhood where the Rebbe’s beis midrash is, where 770 is. On Shabbos afternoon, they had davened, eaten, and gone to sleep. He told me his daughter said to him, “Dad, I said to myself, ‘Wait, why go to sleep? Sleep? I’m here, I’m here by the Rebbe. This doesn’t happen often. I’ll be going back to Israel soon. It would be a shame to spend the afternoon sleeping. I’m going to go and be there.’” She went to the beis midrash, to 770, went up to the women’s section, sat there and learned something, said Tehillim, watched the farbrengens taking place in the men’s section, and spent the rest of her Shabbos there. Now, she was there on her own. Her father wasn’t with her. Her mother wasn’t with her. There’s nothing like a good Shabbos-afternoon nap. I don’t need to explain that; there’s nothing like it. It’s a real Shabbos pleasure. But something deep inside that girl suddenly stirred, something that made it important to her to be there. Now where did that come from? Why didn’t all her friends feel the same way? Where did it come from? Probably because, in the home where she grew up, they talk a great deal about that place and how special it is. Whenever one of her parents travels there, there’s excitement around it. They tell stories of being there as teenagers and of all the experiences they had there. That’s the atmosphere. That’s the atmosphere this girl grew up in, and it simply rubbed off on her.

09:26 In it. It’s impossible. We can’t expect things to suddenly happen by a miracle, like magic. That’s not how life works. What we project—the atmosphere we create in our home—is what will come across. That’s what will be there. If we try to speak more calmly at home, even when people get on our nerves... We’re human; there’s no getting around it. Sometimes the children get on our nerves, make us angry, drive us out of our minds, and we’re human. We’re not machines. Sometimes we’ll react harshly, irritably, aggressively. All right, there’s no getting around it; that’s how it is. But if we try to temper our reactions and be calmer, it will create a calmer atmosphere at home, and then they, too, will be calmer. That’s how it works. When children see their parents’ fear of Heaven—that davening matters to us, shul matters to us, a Torah class matters to us, and so many religious things matter to us; that giving tzedakah matters to us—and they see these things, it instills that atmosphere in them. When they see that no foul language is used at home, then yes, there’s plenty of it at school, in the classroom, on the street. Unfortunately, we really are in a deep galus. But when the language at home is clean, that’s the language they’ll speak, too. So again, maybe it exists at school, but home—home is where they grow up. It’s the central place, the place that matters most to them: the home they grow up in. So we need to invest in the atmosphere we create at home, and that atmosphere depends on us. Of course, every child, every person, has their own nature, the natural tendencies they were born with. As they grow, something comes from their own soul. True, absolutely. One is drawn more in one direction, another in another direction. And some things come more

11:32 easily to me by nature, while others are more difficult by nature. All right, that’s true. But at the same time, the atmosphere has a decisive, powerful influence on how they conduct themselves. So if this year, with Hashem’s help, we want things to improve and get better—in fear of Heaven, in calmness, in clean language, in anything you parents consider important—then let’s try to make that the atmosphere at home. And who creates the atmosphere at home? I do. You do—each of you. It’s your home; only you can do it. It depends on you. And when we do that and invest in it, with Hashem’s help, we’ll suddenly see that these things are sinking in, reaching them, gradually becoming part of them, with Hashem’s help. May it be a successful school year and a successful new year, the year 5785—a year in which, with Hashem’s help, we hear only good news. May it be Hashem’s will. Let’s pray together that things will be good for the Jewish people—good in a way we can see and feel, always good. No evil descends from Above. We ask Hashem that things be good for us in a way we can see and feel, that we see the good with our own eyes. With Hashem’s help, may we very soon see the poor, suffering hostages who are being held by those villains in Gaza come home. May all the wounded return to full health, and may no soldier, male or female, and no Jew, male or female, be harmed. With Hashem’s help, may we merit the complete Geulah and the building of the Third Beis Hamikdash very soon. Amen, may it be His will. Thank you very much.