“Michal Levi, you will forever in my eyes be the paradigm of kabeid es avicha v’es imecha”

There’s Always Hope [Real Life / Issue 974]

Reading the article about a woman whose mother was unloving due to the state of her mental health, but still tried to have a relationship with her, was very strange to me, since it sounded very similar to my upbringing. My mom wasn’t mentally ill, but nevertheless found any opportunity to criticize, yell, and hit me. My father also had his own outbursts of anger. So growing up, I, too, had a big lack of self-esteem and confidence.

My narrative is a bit different. My mother lived next to me after I got married, which meant I saw her pretty often. I went for counseling with a rav who was also a therapist to understand my obligations in terms of kibbud av v’eim and boundary setting. I learned how to stand up for myself in a respectful way.

Once, after one of the sessions, I came home, and she happened to come over. The kids were in school, so I sat her down and explained my feelings to her and how, as a child, I’d perceived her. Something clicked, and for the first time in my life (I was over 40), she genuinely apologized and said she didn’t realize all that. That really helped me to see her in a different light, forgive her, and be more understanding of her lack of knowledge of better chinuch techniques because of the way she was raised.

I can’t say we became best friends overnight, it’s a work in progress, but I can say that now, when I praise myself for doing well (she still can’t really give compliments), she tells me she agrees and that she’s proud of me, and I really believe her.

There’s always hope.

Name Withheld

It’s an Honor [Real Life / Issue 974]

I felt compelled to respond to Michal Levi’s true accounting of her complex relationship with her mother, who was suffering from mental illness. Michal, I am jealous of your Olam Haba.

Who else can say that they’ve fulfilled the commandment of kabeid es imecha on the level of Dama ben Nesina?

You described your torment, your mother’s lack of empathy, your inner conflict, and how you created a relationship out of something worse than nothing. You didn’t deny your mother her grandchildren, though it meant forfeiting your own sanity. You refused to let her be alone without family, and you handled every blow, faced every lingering self-doubt that your mother instilled in you.

This wasn’t just a beautifully written piece; it was also beautifully human.

Your parting message made my eyes fill with tears. How often do I call my parents every day? How often do I show them the respect and reverence they deserve when I feel they’re intruding on my life, my marriage, my children’s chinuch, and my decisions?

You were even told you did not have to go to such lengths to repair such a relationship, but you did, and I’m astounded by your resilience.

I feel as though my own adherence to honoring my parents has forever been reshaped.

May HaKadosh Baruch Hu grant you the kavod that you so deserve, as you have given your mother kavod. You will forever in my eyes be the paradigm of kabeid es avicha v’es imecha.

Tova Yehudis Wasserman

Is This Where We’re Holding? [Faux Real / Issue 973]

Reading the article about lab diamonds left me with a very sour taste.

Is this seriously where we’re holding? “If your wife is real, give her real”? Does that mean a woman is somehow less “real” if her husband doesn’t buy her expensive diamond jewelry? And are we truly expected to feel pity for the “poor” wealthy individuals who can no longer flaunt their status through the size of the diamonds they wear, but must now find some other way to do so?

While the article may have been informative, I feel it does a real injustice to the many young women and kallahs who are genuinely happy to receive a lab-grown diamond as their engagement ring — and who may now be left feeling uncertain or diminished because of messaging like this.

Name Withheld

Be a Kvetch, Lose Your Friends [Kvetch Culture / Issue 973]

I had a hearty chuckle when I read the feature on kvetching — been there, done that. I grew up in a home where the default setting was negative. Whenever we asked our grandmother how she was doing, she’d groan and sigh and tell us all about her achy shoulder, creaky ankles, and all the terrible things that happened to her that day. When we were joyful about something positive, my mother would get anxious and say, “Bli ayin hara, it should only continue, with Hashem’s help.”

It took me years to realize that this was residual Holocaust trauma. The post-Holocaust generation was terrified to feel joy at anything, and spent their lives waiting for the other shoe to drop. This was imbibed by their children, who in turn raised us on a diet of doomsday scenarios, catastrophic thinking, and little permission to feel happiness.

It took a LOT of work, therapy, shiurim, and reading to undo all those damaging messages and convince ourselves that we’re deserving of Hashem’s goodness and that our lives are quite rosy. Bit by bit, we had to change our way of thinking and start seeing life in a positive light and introducing actual joy into our day-to-day interactions.

Today I cringe at what a Negative Nancy and Debbie Downer I was for many years. I found myself with few friends; people got tired of listening to me, trying to help me out of the rut I was in and getting 10,000 excuses in response. I learned the hard way that no one likes a negative person. Plus, endless kvetching shows a real lack of emunah and bitachon, and isn’t the Jewish way!

Mrs. Kvetchnomore,

Brooklyn, NY

To Kvetch or Not to Kvetch? [Kvetch Culture / Issue 973]

I enjoyed the articles on the topic of kvetching very much, but feel that something important has been overlooked. Imagine the scenario: Sara says to Leah that she was sick over Chanukah and with all the kids home, she couldn’t rest.

Leah replies that she was also sick, with the kids home and her in-laws visiting and expecting home-cooked meals and family activities every night.

Sara doesn’t want to be left behind and ups her tragedy with the horror of her husband also being home sick and needing to be nourished and nurtured.

The prize for the biggest nebach goes to the highest bidder!

This kind of dialogue is quite common. Have we forgotten how to truly empathize without feeling we need to get a piece of the martyr prize?

So... the next time your friend needs to complain or share about something difficult they’re going through, please don’t feel you are in a competition. Open your heart and calm her spirit. A kind word and understanding from a friend goes a long way to really help people to cope.

Anonymous

I Love Your Mugs [Now We’re Talking / Issue 973]

I’m a morah who loves coffee mugs. I read the question from the third-grade teacher who complained she gets coffee mugs from all her students as end-of-year gifts — should she ask parents to stop? — with growing horror.

Does this mean I’m saying goodbye to coffee mugs? Noooooo. There’s nothing like drinking your morning coffee out of a mug saying “Best Morah Ever,” while waiting for a bunch of yummy yet noisy two-year-olds to arrive.

Coffee should only be drunk out of mugs, and bonus if it reminds you about why you do the job you love. (And to my teenage daughter rolling her eyes, “Ma, just buy your own mugs!” I may be a little quirky, but not enough to buy one saying “Best Morah Ever” for myself, even though we both know it’s true.) So if your toddler attends Morah Rivky’s playgroup, rest assured, I love and welcome your mugs.

Morah Rivky

It’s the Note That Counts [Now We’re Talking / Issue 973]

As a teacher, I’d like your readership to know that first off, I don’t expect any gifts. If you didn’t give me anything, you’re fine. Second, I know that a lot of parents want to give something to so many — they have a number of children and the children have multiple teachers — so if they do choose to give a gift, whatever they give is fine. Third, the personal cards are what mean the most to me, whether they’re written by the parent or the student.

This Chanukah season, I received the most adorable card from one of my students, in which she described how I teach, giving examples of what she learned and what she loved. I have to admit, I don’t remember if it was given with a $3 chocolate bar or a $50 gift card. Her beautiful note was the most memorable of all the lovely gifts I received last week.

A Morah in the Midwest

That’s Not the Jewish Way [Down the Rabbit Hole / Issue 972]

In her article, “Down the Rabbit Hole,” Chaviva Green defines dangerous thinking as questioning commonly held beliefs, distrusting institutions, relying on intuition, and perceiving patterns others dismiss. This framing is particularly jarring in a frum publication, because questioning authority isn’t foreign to us. It’s foundational. And it demands scrutiny.

Avraham Avinu rejected the most universally accepted beliefs of his time, challenged religious authority, distrusted institutions of power, relied on observation and intuition, and saw patterns others insisted weren’t there. He challenged what everyone else accepted as reality, and he did so without peer-reviewed consensus or social approval. He stood alone, viewed by others as irrational or extreme, while he insisted that the dominant narrative was wrong.

And Avraham Avinu wasn’t an outlier in our history. We take pride in a tradition that honors questioning over conformity, discernment over deference, and moral courage over social approval. Ours is a people shaped not by passive acceptance of prevailing narratives, but by the willingness to challenge them when they conflict with truth.

Chazal preserved disagreement rather than suppressing it, building a mesorah around machlokes (dispute). They preserved dissenting opinions rather than erasing them; refused to equate majority rule with absolute truth. Jewish tradition was never built on passive trust in authority or conformity to prevailing narratives.

In our mesorah, truth isn’t determined by consensus. Discernment isn’t pathology. When skepticism is reframed as cognitive deficiency and dissent as delusion, healthy debate is replaced with misplaced diagnosis. The question shifts from “Is this true?” to “What kind of person would think this?” That move doesn’t protect truth. It highlights an unwillingness to engage with views that challenge accepted narratives.

Before labeling questioning minds as dangerous, we should consider whether the traits being warned against aren’t flaws at all, but the very qualities that have sustained our people across generations.

In pursuit of truth,

H. Levin

Let’s Respect Differences [Down the Rabbit Hole / Issue 972]

After finishing reading your article on conspiracy theories, I was left thinking, “What was your purpose in writing this?”

In recent years the term conspiracy theorist has gotten a lot of negative traction, especially in the mainstream media, where it’s used to call out and shame anyone who has differing opinions, or believes things that many times turned out to be true!

In our circles, it definitely hasn’t brought people closer and has caused friction and division in families. Name-calling and othering has never done anything to get people to see reason or to bridge differences of opinion.

What I’ve found works when speaking to people who believe conspiracy theories — and it was mentioned briefly in the article (too briefly) — is finding the kernel of truth behind each of these theories and exposing what has been built from it and what has been distorted in the process. In this way, you actually get the people believing in the conspiracies to trust you; they won’t just write you off as another person who doesn’t get it, and they’ll find it easier to listen!

Just as an example, I think it was the Lubavitcher Rebbe who said, “If the gentile would know how much the Jew influences the tsunami on the other side of the world, he would stand over us with a baton and make sure we keep the commandments.” That’s where the anti-Semitic trope that “the Jews control the world” has gotten new life in contemporary times.

Let’s not make a religion of anything outside Torah, let’s focus more on respecting differences, because there’s more that unites us than divides us!

B.W.

Time Heals Most Wounds [There’s a Time and Place for Everything / Issue 963]

Reading “A Time to Dance” in the Succos magazine, about a kallah who got married right after sitting shivah for her father, evoked memories of my getting married during the shloshim for my father, nearly 58 years ago.

In both situations, there were specific practical halachic questions to consider. For example, my siblings weren’t allowed to eat in the main ballroom with the music and dancing, but my mother was; she also danced with me. While this kallah was marched down to her chuppah by her mother and siblings, I was accompanied by my mother and paternal grandfather (a chassidishe rebbe). I’ve always admired his gevurah in walking down with my mother, his daughter-in-law, in order to allow my chassan’s parents to walk their son to his chuppah, as they requested. My zeidy (who was also in aveilus) even had a mitzvah tantz with me!

The differences, emotionally, were that this kallah’s father died suddenly, and the rav’s psak was to not postpone the wedding, while my father had been obviously sick for a few years, and we didn’t know whether he would live to attend the wedding. Despite pressure from his siblings to scale down the wedding, from his hospital bed, my father gave me strict instructions not to change anything planned!

Obviously, time heals most wounds, but scars, whether physical or emotional, do remain. The challenge lies in how to handle them. I wish this kallah success.

Tirtza Jotkowitz

Yerushalayim

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 975)