How to Build an Inclusive and Supportive Family - Rabbi Shraga Noson Dahan shlita

00:01 If you don’t eat all your food, you won’t grow. If you don’t give me money, I’ll take revenge on you. If you do this or that, this or that will happen to you. Our whole lives are give-and-take, a series of transactions. It’s exhausting. It wears us down. So why? Why does the weekly parsha, Parshas Bechukosai—Behar-Bechukosai—speak to us in blessings and curses? It’s tiring; it’s threatening. We know how to manage without threats. After all, we do these things because we feel they’re the right thing to do. So why are we constantly being threatened and afraid of those threats? For years, the parsha of the curses was considered frightening. But hidden within it is a treasure, a great secret that can change our entire lives. I remember that when I was young, I had the privilege of davening with Rabbi Moshe Botschko. Rabbi Moshe Botschko established a yeshiva in Switzerland and was an exceedingly humble man. He was the head of a yeshiva that moved from Montreux, Switzerland, to Israel. He taught many students here and had a very, very special trait: he never wanted to earn a living from matters of Torah and mitzvos. He wanted all his involvement in Torah and mitzvos to be without charge, to come from the heart and be completely genuine. He had another trait, too: he was very humble. He was a great man, an outstanding Torah scholar. He wrote books and headed a yeshiva—the only yeshiva, in fact, that survived the Holocaust, a yeshiva that remained active during it. Even Rabbi Steinman studied there, when Rabbi Moshe’s father was its head. Rabbi Moshe continued in his father’s path. He was a very great Torah scholar, and still he did not want to earn a single shekel from his work as a head of a yeshiva or from leading others in Torah and mitzvos. After he moved

02:27 to Israel, he had a small shop selling basic clothing, let’s call it that. He earned his living from it, so he could devote himself to the yeshiva with a clear mind and invest all his energies in it. When I say Rabbi Moshe was humble, I mean he had a very special trait. I remember that when he would come to the yeshiva and people would honor him by standing up, he would often be hurt by it. He would simply step back and wait for everyone to settle down, and then return. He did not like honor—whether genuine honor, or perhaps sometimes imagined or contrived honor. I remember once that a resident of the community of Bogarti[?] was wounded by terrorists. A terrorist shot him in the throat. Miraculously, truly miraculously, the bullet entered his mouth and came out through his throat. This man was hospitalized at the Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem, and Rabbi Moshe went up to visit him. Rabbi Moshe was an older man. I happened to meet him on the bus. He traveled by bus, not by taxi. We reached the man, and getting to Ein Kerem from central Jerusalem meant changing buses several times[?]. It was a very, very long trip. Now that we had come to visit someone, you might think we should stay, sit with him, make the trip worthwhile. But not Rabbi Moshe. Rabbi Moshe was a very focused man. He arrived, sat beside him, and said, “I wish you a complete recovery. I came to give you strength.” Then he got up and left. I asked Rabbi Moshe, “Where are you going?” He told me, “I’m going back.” I said, “Rabbi, I’ll accompany you. Aren’t you staying a little longer?” He said, “No. We came to visit the sick. It’s a great mitzvah to cheer him up, but not to burden him.” What greatness, what greatness. Why am I telling you about him? Because this parsha and the one joined to it, Parshas Behar-Bechukosai, remind me very, very much of this remarkable man. On the one hand, greatness: he was the head of a yeshiva.

04:54 He had many students. He led a yeshiva with dignity and pride, with strength—the strength of Torah and the strength of proper conduct. On the other hand, he had great humility, very great humility. Parshas Behar speaks about Mount Sinai and about Shemitah, but it also reminds us of the Giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. And we ask ourselves: if the Torah is a Torah of humility, why was it given on Mount Sinai, on a mountain? Perhaps it should have been given in a valley, for example, somewhere that symbolizes modesty and humility. The answer is that we need precisely this balance. On the one hand, we must know who we are and what our abilities are, because if we don’t, we will waste them. We have to know who we are and what we can do. On the other hand, we must not become arrogant. That is what makes Mount Sinai so special: on the one hand, a mountain; on the other, Sinai. It is written that hatred came into the world from that mountain, because everyone saw the Jewish people and their unique way of taking material things, bringing them into spiritual life, and making them holy. That brought a great deal of hatred into the world, but it also brought holiness into the world—a special, eternal holiness. In our own homes, we face this same challenge. On the one hand, I am the father of the family. I need to lead. On the other hand, I don’t want to be arrogant. I don’t want people to think I’m arrogant, and I want to instill the values of humility in my children—boundless humility—because humility is the quality of truth. So how does that fit with my sitting at the head of the table on Friday night and, together with my wife, may she live and be well, firmly leading the household? Isn’t that arrogance? Of course it isn’t. It’s taking responsibility. Giving up your place or your role does not always signify humility. No,

07:26 quite the opposite. Humility means understanding your place and asking yourself every day, every evening and every morning: Am I really fulfilling my role? I have abilities. I am a father, and I have responsibilities. I need to guide my children and educate them. I have knowledge I’ve gained over the years. Am I making use of all these things, or am I wasting them? That is humility. A soccer goalkeeper who is a world champion at stopping shots on goal and says, “I don’t know anything,” is not humble; he is lying. By contrast, if a world-champion goalkeeper says, “Yes, I’m the best goalkeeper in the world, because I was given these abilities. The question is whether I’m making use of them. The question is whether I’m using them properly”—that is humility. Humility is our ability to keep examining ourselves. That kind of self-examination leads you to learn, to be receptive, and to improve your character. It is a foundation stone, a basic principle. The Jewish world, the Torah, requires us to keep learning and improving. If we feel that what we have already learned is all there is for us to know, we will simply get stuck. We will amount to nothing. Moshe Rabbeinu tells the Jewish people, “Know this: just as I received the Torah for free, so I teach the Torah for free.” What does that mean? Moshe Rabbeinu was simply a vessel for transmitting the Torah. He never thought of asking to be paid for his leadership, and he says that Torah study is something given for free. This class that you’re sitting in right now, too—no one is getting paid for it, no royalties, no salary. It is simply to share Torah and strengthen the Jewish home. A wonderful teaching appears in tractate Nedarim, page 36.

09:57 “Just as I teach for free, so should you teach for free.” But I have a question about that “for free.” Why for free? The Gemara in Megillah says, “If someone tells you, ‘I toiled and I found,’ believe him.” What does “I toiled and I found” mean? “I toiled” means I worked hard. But normally, if I worked hard and managed to produce something, you’d say, “Believe him—he should be pleased with himself. He earned it.” He worked hard and produced results. But here he says, “I toiled,” and then suddenly, “I found”—as though he found something by chance. You walk down the street and suddenly find something. There’s no connection between the effort and the find. So why does it say, “I toiled and I found—believe him”? This is what the Kli Yakar says, and it is also quoted in the name of Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman. “I toiled”—that is the effort we need to make. But we also need bittul, the understanding that the Torah is so vast, so infinite. I can never acquire all the knowledge of Torah. I can receive it as a gift. Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave us the Torah as a gift. Shavuos is coming soon. We don’t call Shavuos the festival of taking the Torah. We call it the festival of the Giving of the Torah—or, if you like, receiving the Torah—but not taking it. Because there is no way I can simply take the Torah and know it. I may know part of it. I may know some Torah wisdom, but I don’t know the entire Torah. It is deep, it is infinite, broader than the sea; it contains secrets and secrets within secrets. So the Gemara is telling us, the Sages are telling us: “I toiled”—you make an effort, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu will help you find a treasure, the great treasure that is Torah, holiness, spirituality. So what is required of us? “What does Hashem your G-d ask of you, but to fear Him and to love Him?” We seek love and awe. We need a little bittul—not to think that everything I

12:41 know, I know because of my own wisdom. If I charge money for Torah classes I give and say, “Friends, I studied for many years. I deserve it. Look, a lawyer studied for many years, and he deserves to be paid,” then what am I really saying? Everything I know, I know because I studied. That may be true, but it is very limited. Say I studied for four years: then I can teach four years’ worth of Torah, and that’s it, because I intend to teach only what I learned through my own knowledge. Yes, if I put in more effort, I’ll have more; if I put in less, I’ll have less. But that’s all. It’s very limited, and it stops there. But if I teach with the understanding that what I’m teaching is something I received as a gift from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, then I’m not just teaching the Torah I studied. I’m teaching an infinite Torah that flows and continues. It is a gift, an infinite gift. I want to bring this point into our homes too. If I come home assuming that I’m in charge because I worked hard, I’m the one who knows, and you don’t, then my ability to impart any value is very limited—to what I know and to what I learned through my own trial and error in the past. But I’ve already stopped learning, because now I’m in the position of leader, of giver, not of learner. If, instead, I come with humility: yes, I sit at the head of the table on Shabbos, but that’s to provide order, to lead and to keep the household moving. At the same time, from a place of humility, I ask: Am I fulfilling my responsibility? Let me look more deeply at whether I’m fulfilling my responsibility. I still have so much to learn. I always have something to learn. And then, suddenly, you become someone who is constantly growing, someone who goes deeper. Your home becomes

14:58 a home open to learning, renewal and growth. A stable home. Because once I’m not afraid of being taught, I don’t shut down. I don’t feel threatened, and I don’t threaten others. I can teach my children that it’s all right to learn at forty, at fifty and at eighty. Look at Rabbi Akiva at forty. Once he decided to make use of his ability to ask questions, and realized he hadn’t made proper use of it until then, he opened his heart and mind to wisdom, to the wisdom of Torah, and became a great leader. If Rabbi Akiva had said, “That’s it, I’m forty. I’ve done my part. I’m an expert in my field,” he would not have become that leader. He didn’t say that. He was open to learning. And when you’re open to learning, you’re open to love as well. Why? Because love is giving. And how hard it is to love when the person facing you doesn’t want to receive. It’s simply discouraging; it extinguishes something and closes you off. Even in the love of Hashem: “You shall love Hashem your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.” We give Hakadosh Boruch Hu our bittul and our connection to Him. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the eternal Almighty, receives us as beloved children. He makes room for us. Even Hakadosh Boruch Hu makes room. So who are we, flesh and blood? Love is giving and receiving. If we make room to receive, people will love us, and we’ll be able to love others. We’ll be able to love others because they give to us, and because we accepted what they gave by opening our minds to learning. We opened our minds to improving—constant improvement. And that is our service of Hashem. That is our service of Hashem. So humility really is a cornerstone, a cornerstone of marriage, because pride, anger and the desire for honor—desire, anger and the desire for honor. But you could say that pride, anger and the desire for honor

17:31 drive a person out of the world. Why do you get angry? You know that when someone gets angry, all kinds of forces of Gehinnom take hold of him. Do you know why he gets angry? Because he’s afraid. Someone who gets angry is someone who is afraid. He feels threatened. He feels that someone is threatening his place. Do you know why he feels threatened? Because he no longer wants to learn; he has shut down his ability to take things in. If we want to improve, we need to open up. Open up and learn, open up and learn. And then, naturally, what is mine is yours. That’s what Rabbi Akiva says about his wife: “What is mine is hers”; what is mine and yours is ours. There’s no possessiveness here. And this connects with, and runs through, the subjects we’ll discuss in the parsha. We’ll talk about the prohibition against charging interest. And what’s the problem with interest? What’s the problem? I have money that I really, truly worked hard to earn. Why shouldn’t I make money from it? I lend it to my friend, and instead of paying me back two shekels, he pays me back ten. But I deserve it. He didn’t have those two shekels he needed just to get by, and I do. I’ll help him. Do you want to profit from those two shekels you received? That’s a question of faith. How did those two shekels come to you? Those two shekels. In the wider world, things run on interest. That’s how it works. In the Jewish world, not only do we not charge interest; it says that this is a fundamental matter of faith. It’s connected to the Exodus from Egypt, connected to faith in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Someone who lends at interest denies G-dliness, denies faith. Why? Is it just another prohibition? No, it isn’t just another prohibition. It shows that you don’t believe. It shows that you don’t believe. From whom did you receive it? You received it from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He made it happen. You only made the effort, as in “I toiled,” and then received a gift. He

19:51 “I found it.” All you did was make the effort. Now Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given you a gift. You received this gift for free. Help someone else for free, too. It costs you nothing. He’ll pay you back in the end, but without interest. Without interest. Lend. Always lend money; always give. “This is My people,” says Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What do you think? You want to make money off a gift you received from Me? says Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That strikes at the very foundation of faith. Within a marriage, sometimes we lend at interest, and this is exactly where it happens. We’re sure that the woman we’re with was lucky to get us, and therefore she should be grateful we married her. Sometimes women are sure that their husbands were lucky to get them. In my case, that’s true. Everyone has to see what’s going on in their own home. And so she feels entitled to certain rights. On the broader level, that’s true: everyone has rights. We need to respect everyone. But on a personal level, I need to know, in my own eyes, that I have the great privilege of having married my wife. A great privilege. Maybe I made an effort, but I found a treasure. A great treasure. If you say that, your world changes. If you say, “I found a treasure,” you’re saying it all, because it isn’t tied to your effort. You received a gift from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That’s why it says that finding a person’s match is as difficult as the splitting of the sea. What does that mean? Jump into the water, and then the sea will open. In other words, make the effort. But if my whole marriage comes from this place of “I deserve it because I worked for it, and this is what I’m owed,” then you know what? Maybe you do deserve it, but you’ll get only what you’re owed and nothing more. Oh, you’re going to work? Then you deserve for me to make you dinner. No problem. I’m writing that down in

22:22 the ledger, because on the day I go to work, you’ll make me dinner, and we won’t get a gram more than we’re owed. It’s measure for measure. Do we want to live our lives keeping accounts, accounts that never end? Go ahead. No problem. But that’s not the idea. If I understand that my spouse is a gift from Hakadosh Boruch Hu—“If a man and woman merit, the Shechinah dwells between them; if they do not merit, fire consumes them.” They’re consumed because everything is so very limited. Everything is so very limited. So it’s worth understanding that this is a gift from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It’s a matter of perspective. It’s a matter of perspective, because then you don’t expect anything, and you receive far more than you deserve. Far, far more than you deserve. That’s a message we see in the parsha. The same message comes up in the laws of Shemitah. What is this business of letting the land rest? The land costs me a lot of money. You don’t understand. That’s fine, but the question is how you work the land. If you work the land thinking you’re entitled to its produce because you worked it, no problem. The land will yield exactly what it should, not a millimeter more. But if you work the land only as your effort, while leaving everything else to faith in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to the blessing of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, then the land’s growth doesn’t really depend on you; it depends on Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And that is faith. That is faith. Then you won’t receive just one year’s harvest. You’ll receive a harvest for three years. “I will command My blessing.” It says that for someone who lets the land rest in the seventh year, Hakadosh Boruch Hu blesses the land in the sixth year, so the seventh and eighth will be full—full, full, full. Three years’ worth in one. And we see it. There’s

24:35 a tree in my garden. Baruch Hashem, we don’t touch it during Shemitah. We put a big sign at the entrance to the house: “Ownerless—anyone who wants may take.” I’m telling you, in the sixth year it was full of lemons. In the seventh year it was full of lemons; they were simply falling to the ground, and we called everyone to come and collect them. By the eighth year, the eighth year’s fruit was already beginning to grow. Because it isn’t my tree; it’s Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s tree. I made the effort and gave it over. Gave it over. The great difficulty is bringing spirituality into a world that is sometimes very, very rational. “When you come into the land,” says Hakadosh Boruch Hu, do you know how you can connect to G-dliness? “You shall plant any tree for food.” Plant a tree, and suddenly you’ll begin fulfilling the mitzvos that depend on the land. Look, sitting in the beis midrash and feeling that everything is miraculous and spiritual—it’s probably easier to connect with that idea there. But to be in the business world, in the material world, and understand that what you do doesn’t come from you alone—you only make the effort, you make the vessel, but the blessing comes from Hakadosh Boruch Hu—that’s harder. But once you get into the idea, you see that it works. And it works everywhere. It works in the family, with the children, with your wife, with your business, anywhere you want. This week’s parsha, Behar-Bechukosai, is a special parsha. So why are there curses? Why are there threats? Parshas Bechukosai says: If you do this, this will happen, and if you don’t—oy vey. Rabbi Moshe always wanted to be called up for the curses. Rabbi Moshe Bushkash[?], whom we’ve been talking about, always wanted to be called up for the passage of the curses. Who remembers that? And he simply said: What does it say? If you don’t do these things, there will be curses. But if you do them, all the curses turn into blessings. What a

26:35 great blessing we merit. What a great blessing we merit! To take something from the Torah and call it negative? There’s nothing negative in the Torah. It can’t be. It can’t be that something the Torah tells us is a curse. “If you walk in My statutes”—it’s a plea: Please, walk in My statutes. “I will give your rains in their season, and the tree of the field will yield its fruit, and the land will yield its produce.” We receive all the blessings. We receive all the blessings if we walk in His statutes—far beyond what we deserve. Because suddenly it’s a blessing from Heaven, like the blessing of Eretz Yisroel: “It drinks water from the rain of Heaven.” We receive everything from Heaven. Other countries depend on their reserves. We depend on Hakadosh Boruch Hu. When you have faith, you believe and you sow. And this is a memory I have of a Torah scholar from the previous generation. His grandson told me that as he was passing away, on the eve of Yom Kippur, he davened Minchah and recited Vidui, and then again and again until he passed away. That’s what I heard. But that story really completes the picture of Rabbi Moshe and his humility. I chose to weave it into today’s weekly talk, the weekly class, because he very much reminds me of Mount Sinai, of that same humility. And if we bring that humility into our homes, we will merit a great deal of holiness. Know that the passage of the curses is really a passage of blessings. It contains only blessings, no curses at all. But sometimes, when a blessing is too great and the evil eye might affect it, the blessings are wrapped up in coded language. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was with his son, and Rav Sinai[?] and, uh, Rabbi Yehuda ben Gerim came to him. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said to his son—Elazar, his son—“Know that there are very great people here.” It appears in the Gemara, in Maseches Moed Katan. He said to them,

28:48 “You should know that there are very great people here. Go and receive a blessing from them.” So he went to receive a blessing from them, and they began to curse him. “You’ll have a field; you’ll sow the seed but you won’t reap,” and more things like that. He came back to his father and said, “Father, they only cursed me.” Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai asked him, “What did they say to you?” So he told him: “They said I would sow and not reap, and…” All kinds of curses. And Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai explained how each curse actually meant something good. The idea was that you would have such abundance that you wouldn’t need to reap, and that all your children would get married—because it says… “I’ll give you a new year”… In short, “Your children will get married and never divorce, so none of them will come back home. You’ll have no worries, and you’ll never have to marry a new wife, because you’ll live many years with your wife.” What blessings! They were all hidden in the curses. So the question is: If that’s the case, why did they express the blessings that way? There are several answers. One answer is that they knew Rashbi’s blessings were more powerful. So they said, “Let’s put it in a kind of code, and when Rashbi translates it into Hebrew, the holy tongue, and says it himself, it will become many powerful blessings.” But the truth is that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai simply lived Geulah. It says that, as far as he was concerned, it was as though the Beis Hamikdash still stood. His spiritual state before Hakadosh Boruch Hu was as though the Beis Hamikdash was there and there was no evil in the world. So he understood the code in everything. He saw the good in it. And in fact,

30:35 the curses in the parsha contain only blessings. Our question is: How do we turn a curse into a blessing? How do we unlock that in our generation, the generation of Geulah? How do we open all these things up into great blessings? So I want to bless you that you should have much blessing in your homes, humility, great joy, and love in holiness and purity, with Hashem’s help.