“I’m hoping women who feel the way I do about list-making won’t make the mistake of listening to the organizational gurus over their inner voice”

Expression of Mesorah [Quick Q / Issue 889]

I was disappointed to see the poll on minhagim. While minhagim are not mitzvos, they do carry a lot of weight as mesorah. A minhag that’s been passed down from generations is not something to be sneezed at or played with. The poll left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

As far as I’ve always learned, a married woman follows the minhagim of her husband. Whether that’s in nusach tefillah, gebrochts/non-gebrochts, or anything else in between. Yes, she’s used to the minhagim she kept to from home, she may even find her husband’s minhagim strange, but out of respect for her husband she’s supposed to keep to his.

Minhagim are not a choice, but rather an expression of mesorah, carried from father to son throughout the centuries. How can someone just choose what they feel like? If a person is keeping Yiddishkeit just for the good feeling — keeping the minhagim that are fun or what they’re used to — that’s not real Yiddishkeit, which is about preserving mesorah.

So while minhagim are not mitzvos, they require a lot of respect. If a woman is unsure whose minhagim to keep, she should ask a sh’eilah. It's not a decision to be made alone.

Name Withheld

Times Change — And So Should We [Inbox / Issue 889]

I’m writing this letter in response to the To Be Honest article decrying what she sees as the plague of vulnerability that’s sweeping through her professional field. She misses the days when communication was more direct: simpler, less personal. Less vulnerable. But while the writer would love to paint all of this communication as shallow and lacking, I don’t think it’s that simple. Times have changed, as they always do, and societal norms change with them. It’s tempting to stay locked in the patterns we’re used to — and to complain about the new ones! — but communication evolves to reflect society, and we need to keep up with it. I’m not arguing that this new trend of more open communication is perfect. It can certainly be taken too far, and like all new behaviors, it may take time till we find out communal balance. But if we never try new things, we’ll never move forward. And, who knows? Try to adopt some of this more personal, open style of communication. Maybe you’ll even see some benefits.

Faigy R.

No to List-Making [Family Reflections / Issue 889]

I feel like I’m committing homemaking heresy by making this point, but I wanted to say that Sarah Chana Radcliffe’s suggestion to write a list of everything you must do to make Pesach may not work for everyone. I, for one, would experience anxiety looking at that long list and would become paralyzed. I’ve seen personal organizing gurus advise this as well about regular life responsibilities. I’m hoping women who feel the way I do about list-making won’t make the mistake of listening to the organizational gurus over their inner voice.

S.G.

Depersonalize the Topic [A Better You / Issue 889]

Thanks to Tsippi Gross and Rivky Rothenberg for raising the important conversation about spouses who have difficulty having conversations about finances. When I was a kallah, a teacher told me, “Ninety percent of all couples' fights are about money.” I smiled, smug and confident that wouldn’t be us: We had similar philosophies about money, and besides, we saw eye to eye about everything, didn’t we?

Flash forward a few years, kids, and bills, and yes, now I can relate. Discussions about money don’t usually turn into fights, baruch Hashem, but they’re tense, emotionally charged, and leave both of us feeling upset.

While Tsippi and Rivky give tips as to how you can prepare and create an environment conducive to a calm discussion of finance, which I’m sure will help, I just wish there was a way we could depersonalize the issue entirely, so that we could discuss it with no more emotion than we’d say something like, “We need more cornflakes.”

Any suggestions?

Name Withheld

I’m Sorry [War Diaries / Issue 889]

Ilana Keilson’s piece, “Living in the Dark,” about how she pitied her grandparents for their fear that the Jew hatred of the Holocaust era could rise again, until she saw the anti-Semitism of the post October 7 world and realized they were right, sent chills up my spine. I had a similar experience. When my grandparents used to take us on day trips when I was a child, they always made my brothers tuck in their tzitzis and wear baseball caps to hide their yarmulkes. I thought they were paranoid. Until now. You’re no longer in this world for me to apologize to you face to face, but I need to say it anyhow. I’m sorry, Bubby and Zeidy. Please forgive me.

Name Withheld

A Modern Chassidishe Maiseh [Tempo / Issue 889]

I was really moved by Zisi Naimark’s fiction story about Tzip, the social outcast who perplexed the whole community when she became engaged to the town’s Golden Boy. In her gorgeous writing, Zisi sent a message we all need to hear, “Al tistakel b’kankan ela b’mah sheyeish bo — don’t look at the container but what is inside it.” Her story was a modern-day, literary version of those chassidishe maasos about the town’s homeless who turned out to be a lamed vavnik, one of the 36 hidden tzaddikim whose zechuyos hold up the world.

Bruchie Oberland

We Are Neshamos [Family Reflections / Issue 888]

As a human being, therapist, parent, and grandparent, I really appreciated the article by Sarah Chana Radcliffe about bad therapy.

I once heard Rebbetzin Dina Schoonmaker say that according to the Vilna Goan, our neshamos went “shopping” before they came down into This World and actually chose every single nisayon down to the finest detail. We’re not in This World to avoid pain. We’re here to grow through it, not go through it.

Therapy is meant to be a cheshbon hanefesh, a way to connect a person to what drives them at the core. It’s about being good. Not about feeling good. It’s about living consciously. Choosing to choose in life. What are my deepest values? What does Hashem really want for me and from me right now? What supports that? What are my options? It’s about getting real, facing our biggest fears and the ugly human traits within, and then choosing to choose. It’s about letting the neshamah (freedom) drive us, not our ego (fear or force).

Emotions are energy in motion. They don’t define us. We aren’t them! They’re meant to give us information and help us experience life; just like the five senses. What we need to be concentrating on is our values. If something is important to us, we can ask ourselves, “What will that give us?” and then, again and again, “What will that give us?” until we reach real answers like, “That's what we’re in the world for" or "That’s who we are" or "That’s what Hashem wants,” which allow us to live as neshamos in a physical and emotional experience in This World.

Unfortunately it's acceptable for yeshivah guys (even in top yeshivos) to smoke. Curious, I asked my son (then 17), “Why don’t you smoke?”  He looked at me like I was nuts, and said, “That isn’t in line with my values.” Simple! The neshamah doesn’t get confused!

Values. Living consciously, intentionally, choosing to choose, seeing the other, it’s not about you, is the best therapy!

A Beautiful Neshamah Who Also Happens to Work as a Therapist

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 891)