Is Your Child Suddenly Being Disrespectful? The Rebbe Taught: That's Dirt, Not Him | The Foundation of Education in Light of Chassidus

00:00 Let’s talk a little about education, a subject close to the heart of every one of us, each in one way or another. We are all involved in education, whether with our children, our teenagers, or the students we influence. Each of us, in one way or another, faces this challenge—the challenge of education. Especially in our generation, in our time, education has become a much more charged, much more sensitive, much more challenging subject than it was in earlier generations. At least, that’s how it seems. We all look at our children, at young people, and suddenly they reach a certain age and you say: Wait, what happened to this teenager? What happened to this child? I knew him as a model child, a sweet child who stayed on track, always listened to his parents, always respected us. And suddenly he talks back, shows disrespect, and sometimes behaves in a certain way, constantly trying to show how tough he is in front of his friends and his parents. What do we do? How do we handle it? We panic; we get scared. What’s going to happen to this child? What kind of person is he going to grow up to be? G-d forbid, will he become some kind of monster? All these fears exist and take root in the heart of every parent and every educator. We’ll discuss a few points, and over the coming weeks we’ll try to touch on several important, central points, based primarily, of course, on the teachings of Chassidus, on Tanya, and on the foundations of education found in the Rebbe’s letters and sichos. The first basic thing, in my opinion, that every parent and everyone involved in education in any way needs is faith. That’s the first point, the key word: faith. And when I speak about faith, I don’t mean only faith in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Of course, first and foremost, we need faith in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He created the world and each and every person, so He is with us, watches over us, cares

02:29 for us, and accompanies us on this great, demanding, and important journey of education. Of course we need to believe in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We need to believe that He is with us throughout this great and wonderful work, to pray to Him, and to trust in Him. But there is another subject that is no less important: faith in the inner strengths, faith in the teenager, in the child standing before us. Look him in the eyes and see what lies behind his behavior, behind the walls of toughness, insolence, arrogance, or whatever we call it. What lies behind all that? Behind all those walls is a pure soul, literally a part of G-d above. Look at the teenager and see his tremendous strengths, his positive energy, the holy, G-dly spark deep within him that wants to break through but sometimes cannot find the way. The behavior of teenagers, in almost every time and situation, reflects confusion that the teenager himself is going through. He doesn’t know how to express himself. His behavior does not define him, represent him, or express who he is at all. Recognizing that is the wisdom every educator needs. As we said, whether it’s a father, a mother, a teacher, a rebbi, an educator, a maggid shiur, a rosh yeshiva, or an educational director—whatever the role may be. Wherever we find ourselves, we need to see beyond what appears before our eyes. Look past the wall, past the barrier we see in front of us. There is something much deeper here. Don’t be shaken by the behavior. Know that behind it lies something entirely different. Let’s explore this a little; it will open a window for us. This faith in the tremendous inner strengths within each of our children means trusting those strengths and knowing that, once they come out, they can bring about revolutions, bring about changes—astonishing changes in behavior, as if by magic. You can be amazed at how a child changes from one moment to the next, from one extreme to the other. These things are real. They happen; they happen in practice. Our role as parents is to look deeply, focus, believe, and bring that potential into reality.

05:16 Let’s take the story of 15 Menachem Av and see this there. We know the Mishnah at the end of Tractate Taanis, which tells us that there were no festivals for the Jewish people like 15 Menachem Av. On that day, the daughters of Israel, or the daughters of Jerusalem, would go out and dance in the vineyards. And they would say, as the Mishnah puts it—what did they say as they danced? “Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you are choosing. Do not set your eyes on beauty; set your eyes on family.” A wonderful story, a festival they used to celebrate. The Gemara gives various details about why they celebrated it. Now, when we consider this story, several questions arise. What really happened on 15 Menachem Av? What exactly happened on that day to make it the greatest festival, so that the Mishnah says there were no festivals like 15 Menachem Av? What exactly happened? And why is it linked to Yom Kippur? The Mishnah says they did this not only on 15 Menachem Av, but also on Yom Kippur. What was the meaning of this dance in the vineyards? What did it symbolize? Why did they wear white garments? They all wore the same kind of clothing, borrowed white garments. What did that symbolize? Why were they borrowed? There are straightforward explanations for each detail, too, but let’s go straight to the deeper meaning. And then there’s the dance: the Mishnah tells us that as they danced, they would say, “Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you are choosing.

07:28 Do not set your eyes on beauty; set your eyes on family.” Here, too, there’s a question. We understand that the message of the upright, modest daughters of Israel was not to look at outward appearance, but to focus on what is within. That is the point of the verse that follows. The Mishnah says: “Grace is false and beauty is fleeting; a woman who fears Hashem is to be praised.” Fear of Heaven. But if so, what does “family” mean? “Set your eyes on family”? Why family? Why not “set your eyes on fear of Heaven”? What is going on here? What is the story of 15 Menachem Av? But in fact, as explained in Chassidus, the whole story of 15 Menachem Av contains the secret of the Jewish people: the secret of their eternity, their inner depth, and the G-dly spark within every Jewish soul. 15 Menachem Av comes a few days after 9 Menachem Av. On 9 Menachem Av, the Jewish people reached a low point. It was the day the first Beis Hamikdash was destroyed, the day the second Beis Hamikdash was destroyed. And even before that, we know it was the day the Jewish people cried without good reason. They cried out of a lack of faith, as it were, out of fear and anxiety. How would we enter the Land? We wouldn’t be able to fight those strong, formidable nations. It’s the story we all know, the story of the spies. That weeping led to weeping for generations. The Jewish people suffered terrible things on 9 Menachem Av. And then comes 15 Menachem Av. Only a few days have passed, and the moon—which, as we know, symbolizes the Jewish people—returns to its fullness. “The moon stands in its fullness.” The moon shines again with its full light, facing the sun, a beautiful round moon in all its splendor. And we know that all this symbolizes the Jewish people. In other words, from decline and the lowest point, from the very depths, the Jewish people get back on their feet, rise up, and reach the highest place, the greatest light. That is the symbol of 15 Menachem Av. The women of Israel, the daughters of Israel, the daughters of Jerusalem, as is known, symbolize

10:03 Knesses Yisroel, the Jewish people. We all know Shir Hashirim. In Shir Hashirim, King Shlomo speaks of the groom and calls him “a young man like the cedars.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the young man, and Knesses Yisroel is the bride. The Jewish people—the daughters of Israel: “Go out and see, daughters of Zion.” The daughters of Zion are Knesses Yisroel, the Jewish people. The Jewish people sinned. They did not behave well, both early in our history, in the story of the spies, and later on. There was the destruction of the first and second Beis Hamikdash, and “because of our sins, we were exiled from our land.” The Jewish people sank to a low point, and that is why the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed and the House of our G-d was burned. And yet—here is the message of the Fifteenth of Av—the daughters of Jerusalem, Knesses Yisroel, dress in white garments. The white garments symbolize the white garments the Kohen Gadol wore when he entered the Beis Hamikdash. White garments symbolize purity, the inner self, the Jewish soul, which remains clean and does not become soiled despite whatever has happened outwardly. There is something much deeper. The Jewish soul is always dressed in white garments. It has no dirt on it. The dirt is something external; it does not represent its essence. And that is what Knesses Yisroel says on the Fifteenth of Av. “Young man” refers to Hakadosh Boruch Hu—“a young man like the cedars.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is, so to speak, called a young man, and Knesses Yisroel says to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “Lift up your eyes and see whom you choose”: May Hakadosh Boruch Hu see the Jewish people’s inner selves, the goodness deep within them, the Divine light, the “actual part of G-d above” within a Jew’s soul. “Lift up your eyes” means raising your gaze. Yes, a superficial, shallow glance sees behavior that is not good, but that does not represent a person’s essence. There is something much deeper beyond it. Lift up your eyes—raise your gaze and look

12:21 with an inner perspective. “Do not set your eyes on beauty”—that is, on outward beauty, whether it is there or not, whether it has become soiled or damaged. “Set your eyes on family.” Every Jewish man is a son of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov; every Jewish woman is a daughter of Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah. That is their true essence. In his true essence, a Jew is Avraham Avinu. In her true essence, every Jewish woman is Sarah Imeinu. Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, or Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah—that is our true essence. “Charm is false and beauty is vain; a woman who fears Hashem”—the natural fear of Hashem that every Jew has in their essence, in their soul. That is really the deeper meaning of the holiday, and that was the true dance: they would go out and dance in the vineyards. The dance symbolizes great joy; it also symbolizes forgiveness, pardon and atonement that flow from this. And so every parent, every educator, must sometimes toil, with effort of both soul and body, to work on themselves and look at a young person with this essential, inner perspective. Once we manage to look at a child and truly believe in their inner strengths, we can reveal those strengths and bring them out. That is what will grow stronger and ultimately prevail. Because we need to understand that especially during adolescence, a child faces tremendous pressure: a great deal of social pressure, pressure from within and pressure from without. They are struggling with themselves and with many fears. They do not know what they are going through, what is happening to them. They have no explanation for all sorts of changes taking place in their body, their emotional life, their traits, their character and their social world. In a sense, they are trying to survive, and sometimes their behavior at those moments is about building walls. They build walls of survival, thinking that is how they will make it through. Those walls sometimes take the form of insolence, inappropriate behavior, disrespect, a demeaning attitude, or choosing friends who are not always exactly the ones

14:47 we would like. But once we understand that these are walls, and that behind them is a sensitive, pure, sweet young person—a pure soul, an actual part of G-d above, thirsting for G-dliness, thirsting for spirituality, thirsting for something deep, for inwardness—once we look them in the eye, see that and believe it, our whole way of looking at them changes. When our gaze is different—a gaze of love, of affection, of deep compassion for the Jewish soul within that young person—we convey that energy to the child. They feel it. We all know what King Shlomo says in Mishlei: “As water reflects a face to a face, so does the heart of one person reflect another.” People are like water that reflects a face. When we look into water—the Alter Rebbe discusses this in Tanya, explaining the verse in Mishlei—we see our face in it. The water shows us our image reflected in the water before us. It is the same with one heart and another. When I convey strength, trust and faith, when I look at a child and see through all those walls, when I look at their inner depths, I see the... the whiteness, the pure soul. “Do not set your eyes on beauty; set your eyes on family.” Lift up your eyes, raise yourself and look at them from a higher place, from a higher vantage point. We will see that it is “as water reflects a face to a face.” The child will return that love to us. The child will return that trust. The child will also begin to reveal the strength within them. We do not always need to make lofty, grand statements. Sometimes people think it means saying, “I love you, you’re a sweetheart,” and giving hugs. It is not always those outward things that do it. It is the inner trust, the genuine energy

16:58 we convey through the way we look at them... with an affectionate gaze, with a real, fitting smile that comes from within, meeting them at eye level. Nothing frightens me; nothing puts me off. I know where this behavior is coming from. I do not need to tell the child that. I need to believe it within myself. Then, when we convey that pure love, that affection, that inner trust, we will see wonders. We can see how a young man or woman, a boy or girl, responds to us in the most wonderful way. There was once a farbrengen at which the Rebbe spoke to Jewish women. It was on a particular Shabbos when there was a gathering of Jewish women in Crown Heights. As was his holy custom when such events took place on Shabbos, the Rebbe would address at the Shabbos farbrengen things that had happened that week, the events of the time. So the Rebbe also devoted a sicha to mothers—a wonderful sicha. It was Shabbos Parshas Parah, so the subject was the red heifer. The Rebbe used the message of the red heifer to convey a remarkable message about raising children. The Rebbe cited Rashi, who brings from the Midrashim an explanation of the red heifer. How does the red heifer bring purification from impurity contracted through contact with the dead? How does that work? A person becomes impure through contact with the dead, which is considered one of the most severe forms of impurity, and when water mixed with the ashes of the red heifer is sprinkled on them, they become pure. What does that symbolize? What does it mean? Rashi tells us that the cow is the mother of the calf. The calf was the sin the Jewish people committed with the golden calf—that great sin. It was a sin that caused an enormous crisis of trust between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people. We all

19:18 We know what happened with the sin of the Golden Calf: “On the day I call to account, I will call them to account.” The sin of the Golden Calf brought death into the world, as it says in the Gemara and the Midrashim, and that is where impurity from contact with the dead comes from. Rashi tells us this. What does the red heifer symbolize? “Let the mother come and clean up her child’s mess.” The mother cleans up the child’s mess. Here, the child is the calf. The calf brought a terrible stain upon the Jewish people: the awful sin of idol worship, of associating another power with Hashem, of choosing an unsuitable leader, and so on. Everyone knows the sin of the Golden Calf. There was an enormous mess here, so the mother has to come and clean it up. That, essentially, is the message of the mitzvah of the red heifer. And here the Rebbe asked a simple question: What? What is the message? What is the connection? The heifer and the calf—it sounds completely illogical to say that this is the whole story, the whole explanation of the mitzvah of the red heifer, just because the heifer is the calf’s mother. So what is the message here? There is a wonderful message here, the Rebbe said. A wonderful, profound message about the foundations of education, about how a mother raises her children. When the Jewish people sinned with the Golden Calf, the accusing Satan came along. As Rashi also says, the nations of the world taunt the Jewish people, distress them, and say, “Ah, what a sin.” You remember? Yes, the Jewish people have the accusing Satan. He wants to say that the Jewish people were stained by the sin of the Golden Calf—that it means a crisis of trust, a crisis in their relationship with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, a crisis of faith. He says: What kind of people are these? They only just received the Torah, and look what they’re doing. They abandon Hakadosh Boruch Hu and go after other gods. What’s going on here? It shows they don’t belong, they’re headed in the wrong direction, there’s no talking to them. When a child does something wrong, sometimes—here is a child who behaves well, but the child got dirty. It happened; he got dirty. So

21:34 sometimes, when a child has done something dirty, something wrong—spoken disrespectfully, done something—someone might say, “Oy, what a bad child you are! How could you do such a thing? You are…” They might humiliate him with degrading words and genuinely think this child is simply a criminal. But then there is the mother, the mother, the mother—the Yiddishe mama, the Jewish mother. When she sees her child get dirty, she says, “That isn’t him. That’s dirt.” What happens when there’s dirt? The dirt doesn’t define the child. Dirt is something that got stuck to him. “Let the mother come and clean it up.” The mother says, “There’s dirt here. So let’s take a cloth, take something damp, wipe off the dirt, clean him up, and the child will be clean and shining.” The same thing happens with sins, transgressions, negative behavior—and in spiritual matters too. The accusing Satan wants to show that something terribly serious is going on here. “Let the mother come and clean it up.” The mother comes and says, “That isn’t him. That’s his behavior. It’s something external. It’s his social circle; it’s adolescence. Understand where it’s coming from. He isn’t dirty, he isn’t wicked, he isn’t a criminal, G-d forbid. He’s a pure, clean child. He has a pure G-dly soul. Wipe away the external dirt and reach who he is deep inside.” And this is what we need. This is the first key: trust and faith in that inner point, in the tremendous strengths, the purity and holiness found in a person’s heart. When we know this, we can heal him of every illness. Today we can see this plainly: when we truly connect to that inner point, as the Alter Rebbe explains throughout the chapters of Tanya—the principle that every Jewish soul is literally a part of G-d above—even someone at a very low point, as the Alter Rebbe describes them with expressions like “the lowest of the low” and “the sinners of Israel,” harsh expressions, nevertheless

23:58 has within him a part of G-d above, literally. And so, in a single moment, he can change from one extreme to the other, because that is his truth, that is my inner self. As the Alter Rebbe says later in Tanya, even though—as he puts it there—I am dirty, and even though I am full of sins and transgressions, there is within me a part of G-d above, literally, a G-dly spark. That is what I need to focus on. How do I reveal my soul? How do I bring it into my everyday life so that it shapes my life? Then, little by little, all the negative behavior that makes me lose my sense of direction, lose my way, will fade, fall away, and be nullified. And that is really the key. This trust, this faith, is what can save us in our time. It is what can save our young people, our children. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu give us this strength. And now, as we are in these days of 15 Menachem Av and are already preparing for Rosh Hashanah—for it is known, as written in the sefarim, that 15 Menachem Av also has the numerical value of, uh, “a year”… “may you be inscribed and sealed for good,” or “a good and sweet year”—as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah, may we work on ourselves to look at our children with eyes that see their pure souls; to believe in them, give them a chance, give them strength; to look at them with trust, affection, closeness, and love. And with that strength, to encourage them, strengthen them, guide them, show them the way, and not be shaken by the setbacks along the way, but know that the light is there. With Hashem’s help, we will reach that light in the deepest and truest way. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu grant each and every one of us true nachas from our children, and may we indeed be inscribed and sealed for good, for a good and sweet year, materially and spiritually.