Shavuot: the day we learned to see

Shavuot is the day that Hashem gave us His glasses. Two thousand four hundred forty-eight years earlier, Hashem had looked through these same lenses – the Torah – and created what He saw on the other side, as we are taught, “He looked through the Torah and created the world” (Midrash Rabbah Bereishit 1:1; Zohar Teruma 61). Hashem crafted a world with the potential to fulfill the vision He saw when he put on those glasses. To be a place that reflects the principles of truth, justice, divine service, mercy, brotherhood, peace – all of the guiding concepts that describe how things ought to be.

Looking around, it feels like the world is far from its intended state. The profound, almost unbelievable lack of justice and moral clarity we see worldwide is so pervasive that it can feel like we’re living in an alternate universe, where right and wrong have traded places. The good guys are labeled bad, murderers are celebrated as heroes, and victims are condemned as oppressors. We are living in the “upside-down world” described by Chazal (Pesachim 50a), coming to fruition in real time.

Yet we are a people that hold firm to Hashem’s glasses, to the way things should be. When Hashem gave us the Torah at Har Sinai, His message was as straightforward as it was challenging: “Despite the confusion you see in this world, I am giving you a lens through which to perceive things clearly. Train yourselves to wear these glasses and you’ll be able to discern truth, even though it will sometimes feel like you’re the only ones who do.” Not only did Hashem offer us His glasses on that day, He also instructed us to pass them on to our children, as it says, “And you will teach them to your children” (Devarim 6:7).

Giving our kids moral glasses

How do we teach our kids truth? How do we instill them with moral clarity? The first step is to know that we’re allowed to. Children naturally want to see their parents as the arbiters of what is real and good. They don’t know what to believe in this incredibly confusing world, but they trust that we do. They look to us as beacons of truth, so we must strive to be that for them. We are their first set of glasses.

Truth is a psychological anchor. Recognizing the correct from the inaccurate helps kids feel like there is a firm base on which to stand in a world where truth and morality are seen as shifting sand. Kids need the stability of knowing that good and evil don’t change just because people wish they did. When we teach our children that there are objective standards for truth and that goodness has an immutable definition regardless of what culture says, we infuse them with a solid, consistent point of reference, a north star, around which they can orient themselves and their approach to life.

Helping our kids know right from wrong pertains to current events, such as the war in Israel or antisemitism worldwide, but it goes far beyond that. They need to hear a moral perspective about the cultural issues they are likely to encounter, depending on their level of exposure (which is probably higher than you think). For example, secular-religious relations in Israel and progressive ideology in America are two complex issues that are likely to enter our children’s purview. They should see that we have something to say about it, and that our viewpoint is rooted in an authentically Jewish perspective on life. 

We also need to help them understand moral issues closer to home, such as how to think about conflict in the community, how to act towards family members whose lifestyle is antithetical to Torah values, and how to relate to a prominent Jewish figure involved in scandal. Kids hear, think, and talk about all of this anyway. Our job is to ensure that a principled yet compassionate perspective based on the Torah is part of that conversation.

Having what to say

If we’re going to help our kids develop moral clarity, we need to have an inkling of it ourselves. As parents, we must take time to grapple with the issues of our day so that we can deliver a coherent response to our children’s questions. The imperative of dah ma shetashiv, “know what to answer” (Avot 2:14), applies not only to people we encounter in the outside world, but also – and perhaps especially – to the ones in our little world at home.

Fortunately, guidance has never been more at hand. Sefarim and shiurim are available on every conceivable topic. And a Rav is never more than a phone call away. But just as importantly, we have each other, people like you and me who are trying to figure out how to make sense of this perplexing world of ours. If we can look beyond the hock, engage in real conversation, share what we’ve heard and seen, and open ourselves to listening and learning, we will enhance each other’s understanding of the issues that matter to us and our families.

Transmitting knowledge

As parents, we may struggle with how and when to tell our kids what we think. We worry about timing, what words to use, and how we will be received. Often we end up holding our tongues, later wondering what made it so hard for us to use them.

We must find the confidence to step into the role of transmitters of the truth as we understand it. We need not be experts, and it’s fine to say that we don’t know something or need to think about it (as long as we do). But as parents, we all recognize the moment of choice where we either let our kids see us or we don’t. Where we share our deeply held convictions or we hold back, hoping that they’ll figure it out along the way. This is a mistake. If we don’t help them understand right from wrong, truth from falsehood, who else will do it? Moreover, is there anything more essential to bequeath to our kids than the wisdom we’ve accumulated over a lifetime?

Seize the opportunities you have with your children. And there are plenty: While you’re learning together (you may have to go off script), standing around munching in the kitchen, walking to shul, sitting down as a family for dinner, driving to an appointment, putting your child to bed, and of course, the sacred space of the Shabbos table. Any of these venues can be turned from a scene of mundane activity into a setting for a meaningful communication of values.

Kids absorb values by watching us, but they sometimes need to hear things stated explicitly. When appropriate, we should find a way to calmly but firmly say, “What that person did was wrong,” or, “Yes, there are people who believe that, but it isn’t true, and here’s why,” or, “When that kind of thing happens, this is how the Torah teaches us to handle it.” Our aim is not to badmouth another person or launch into a lecture, but to gently mold and shape our children’s thinking so that it gradually comes into consonance with what is true and good. That way, when they look out at the world, they’ll do so with a sound, thoughtful, coherent, value-driven perspective.

Celebrating Shavuot

I’m unaware of optometry being a uniquely Jewish profession, but it seems like fitting ourselves for glasses is part of our tradition. As Moshe recalls the events of Har Sinai, he refers to it as the day when Hashem gave us “eyes to see” (Devarim 29:3). Because having eyes does not yet mean knowing how to use them. Learning to see clearly comes from inculcating G-d’s gift of the Torah into our way of life – one that we celebrate this coming week.

It’s never been more critical – and more challenging – to maintain moral lucidity. As the relentless assault on truth continues from all directions, let’s rejoice in the fact that we have a lens – the Torah – to help us see things for what they are. Let’s also give our kids the security and clarity that can only come from clinging to a standard outside ourselves, a source about which we say in our Thirteen Principles of Faith, “I believe with perfect faith that this Torah will not be exchanged and that there will not be another Torah from the Creator, Blessed by He.“

I could never have guessed that ping pong would one day be a useful metaphor for conversation in 2024. 

The verbal volley that describes much of today’s dialogue, especially among young adults, who seem disproportionately represented in this contest of wit and words, is dizzying. I’m routinely amazed (and overwhelmed) by how fast things move in contemporary speech, as if an invisible stopwatch for responding both starts and stops in less time than it would take to breathe. With one-liners whizzing back and forth at a hair-trigger rate, there’s no time to hesitate and even less time to think – a veritable talking table tennis.

The only problem with this sport of modern quick talk is that the winners ultimately lose – and they know it.

Talking with Steven

I recall working with Steven, a bright young man who always had a zinger at the ready. No matter where my remark was aimed, he batted it back with such speed and dexterity that I found myself scrambling to keep up with the discussion. Nothing I said seemed to provoke real pause or contemplation, and everything somehow landed back in my lap a moment later. Something wasn’t right, I thought. Conversation shouldn’t feel like this.

(I have since learned that the pressure I felt is typical of the social anxiety often experienced by young men, with whom I am more familiar than their female counterparts. Many fear losing their spot in the conversation and being relegated to irrelevance if they don’t come up with something to say fast enough to hold people’s interest. It’s a rough arena, this linguistic crossfire.)

I eventually realized that while Steven’s rhetoric was entertaining, the discourse was more of a jostle than a dialogue. Sure, it was fun exchanging quips, but nothing actually changed as a result of us talking. And that was why he was coming to see me.

Transitional space

Steven had not learned how to enter into what British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called transitional space, where two people’s worlds overlap so that they both evolve from the experience. For interactions to progress, said Winnicott, an area must form between individuals in which they affect and are affected by one another through the words and ideas they share. This space occurs when people absorb what they’ve heard and allow it to shape their thinking before responding. As they open their minds to one another, both change as a result.

Steven did not know how to do that. He had grown up in a family where people spoke at each other instead of with each other, and his social environment had been a mirror of the same. As a result, he had become highly adept at banter – quick on the draw, clever, and a master of deflection. But he was also lonely, without close friends, and felt like no one really knew him. He was popular, but as we know, having lots of friends doesn’t necessarily mean that you have any.

Nothing really happened in my work with Steven until I found a way to share these impressions with him. Though I liked him a great deal, it didn’t seem like he had digested anything I had offered. He eventually realized that he didn’t know how to. For him, words had become a form of protection, a safeguard against all the hurtful things that could be (and had been) hurled in his direction. Talking had become a shield against the one thing that had never felt safe – listening. Silence, therefore, was far too risky. For Steven, the idea of not speaking had become unspeakable.

Lag Ba’Omer and speaking with each other

We may not all use words as a form of protection, but many of us fear putting down our verbal armor. Fortunately, the Jewish calendar offers us a day to hone in on coming together, and how our way of speaking may be keeping us apart.

Lag Ba’Omer marks the end of a plague that wiped out Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students. Chazal teach us that these young men died because they did not show kavod, respect, to one another (Yevamot 62b). It seems that Hashem doesn’t continue giving life to people who fail to honor it in those around them.

The Midrash specifies (Bereishit Rabbah 61:3) that Rabbi Akiva’s students displayed tzarut ayin, commonly translated as envy. But tzar also means narrow, as in min hameitzar karati Kah, from the narrow straits I called out to G-d (Tehillim 118:5). These young scholars had narrowed their eyes (ayin) so that they could only see a sliver of one another. Their limited perspective did not allow them to take in each other’s viewpoint, because to do that, you must broaden your scope to include the whole person you are talking to. You must be willing to open yourself to the possibility that they may have something to add to your thinking. That they may see something that you were able to see yourself.

When your field of vision is narrow, all you can do is shoot arrows. It’s like being in a medieval castle with tapered windows, where you can fire things out, but nothing ever gets in. And when you make yourself into a fortress so that other people’s ideas don’t penetrate, they feel it.

This was my experience with Steven, who could shoot but not hear – and his shots came fast. With time, Steven learned that it’s safe to drop your bow and come out from behind your fortification. He learned that the goal of communication is not to keep us distant, but to bring us closer together. He learned how to give thought to both his responses and mine, and that hearing didn’t have to hurt. A space slowly began to develop between us, and as it did, so did he.

Hearing each other

Lag BaOmer isn’t only about how respect for each other breaks down but also how to build it back up. We live in a time when real conversation doesn’t happen often enough. People talk, but few are really listening. Much of the conversation we hear is like two simultaneous monologues emitted by people who happen to be facing each other. A dialogue it isn’t. 

The Mishna in Avot (3:6) tells us that when people sit together to learn Torah, Hashem’s presence (shechina) is between them. There must be a between – a transitional space – that opens up for Hashem to want to be with us. Otherwise, He leaves us by ourselves at the table – the one we’re sitting at alone even when we’re sitting together.

When we speak to each other, we must be open to the possibility that our views will change due to what we hear. Because it turns out that fast-talk isn’t the essential problem here – Torah learning b’chavrusa often happens at a rapid pace – but rather how much we are willing to be challenged and grow from the experience of talking with one another. To view each other as assets, not threats. To find the strength to concede a point rather than insisting on scoring one.

Ping pong is still a great game, and I challenge any reader to a fierce match. But when we’re finished leaving it all on the table, let’s also leave it on the table. Because when we walk away together, I’d like to meet the person behind the wall, not just the one swatting things away in front of it. The one who’s more interested in letting things in than making sure he doesn’t let them by. The one who has what to teach me, and me him. I hope you’d like the same.

When someone gives you a gift, you say thank you. The bigger the gift, the bigger the thanks. Bigness here is not measured by size, but by magnitude. Some gifts make you smile, others let you know you are loved. But then there are gifts that can’t be purchased, the ones that are created when a person who may not even know you gives you everything they have just so that you can hold on to everything you have. This is the gift that our soldiers and security forces have given us. And our thanks to them should be never-ending.

Nothing is more precious than life. We bring it into the world, nurture it from the first breath, and cherish it at every moment. And yet we sometimes choose to give it up. How can that be? Only because we realize that life is about service, and what’s worth serving if it isn’t bigger than we are? No one knows this better than our beloved soldiers. They put on uniforms individually, but they wear the responsibility of safety for an entire nation. Because it’s bigger than they are.

There is a unique form of grief that accompanies Yom Hazikaron, one that shows us that pride is sadder than loss. When you hear a parent talk about the loss of a child, your heart breaks. But when they talk about how proud they are of what their child died for, it bursts. On Yom Hazikaron, we get a taste of what it means to take the most valuable thing you will ever have and watch it transcend. And when something goes beyond what our hearts can contain, tears flow.

Yom Hazikaron is about what we’re willing to give in order to hold on to what we have. In Israel, family after family cries, grieves, holds each other, and deeply, deeply understands what we are fighting for. We don’t want to send our sons into battle, but if we must, let it be for the purpose of defending what we refuse to let go of: our home. On Yom Hazikaron we remember that our blood unites us all. As we stand by the graves, we are all one family. 

We don’t know why Hashem makes us suffer just so that we can live here in peace. Perhaps He wants us to gain perspective. Perhaps He wants us to remember what’s important. Perhaps He wants to witness true sacrifice and learn from it. But for some reason, there is a fee we all pay for being Jewish and for just wanting to come home. For wanting to build a family and see our grandchildren prosper in their homeland. We are destined to pay this fee. Many of us already have.

For those of us who have not served, the feeling on Yom Hazikaron is that we are small and unworthy. They sacrificed for us, and we haven’t done the same for them. What else can we do beyond feeling thanks? We must visit their families, hear their stories, and put aside how different we may look. This is what our soldiers have told us to do. If we are able to embrace one another, they will have won. They were brothers on the battlefield, and we must be brothers off of it.

Take some time to learn about a fallen soldier. Stare at their picture. Let their story seep into your bones. Carry their memory forward as they have carried you. It’s not too late to get to know a deceased soldier and tell their family that their child is a hero in your eyes. Make them part of your family, which is exactly how they viewed you when they fell.

Gratitude is a human value and Jewish trait. Giving thanks does not depend on what you wear on your head or where you daven. Our dear soldiers didn’t care about any of that. They saw more clearly than we do. But today, we can also see clearly. On this Day of Remembrance, we can learn to transcend it all and just be Jews together.

I presume, as we all do, that the purveyors of the aforementioned wisdom were prescribing rather than describing, encouraging us not to take name-calling or verbal insults too seriously. It was a helpful reminder. Though hurtful words always did sting (and still do), our parents taught us that we could brush them off – a bonafide playground superpower. This tool is one that we must give our kids as well: teaching them how to be snow globes.

The beauty of the snow globe 

Perched majestically upon the shelf (or somewhere behind an array of useless knickknacks), high above the fray of family fissures and feuds, rests the wondrous snow globe, a bastion of tranquility and peace. Peering out from behind its minuscule Eiffel windows, this little ecosystem remains entirely unruffled by the slurs with which we slug and slay one another just beyond its walls. The winds of words never upset the weather pattern inside the snow globe. Sticks can break it and stones can overturn its paradise, but no verbal storm has ever succeeded in upending the magical serenity that alights the bookcase.

What is the secret to the snow globe’s equanimity? With all the quarreling it is bound to witness from its exalted position as the lookout of the living room, how does it not lose its snowy cool?

Developing thick skin

The snow globe’s secret, of course, is the impenetrable shield that separates and protects its tiny citizens from surrounding would-be oral offenders (the anti-snow globe community). Its glass of armor does a remarkable job at rendering it impervious to insult so that it may live on undisturbed, its flakes unflurried. An extraordinary achievement indeed. Three cheers for the snow globe!

Like the snow globe, our children can develop a protective membrane with the power to fend off hurtful comments that are flung their way. We call this thick skin. Much akin to the snow globe’s outer layer, thick skin is a shield our kids can use to prevent rhetorical slights from getting to them that shouldn’t. They can strengthen themselves from the inside so that verbal arrows bounce off their secure psychological armor. They too can have superpowers.

While skin is part of the body, its thickness is determined by the mind. The mind is in charge of what we tell ourselves, which accounts for what we allow to penetrate our psyche versus what we don’t. For instance, we tend to think that other people’s put-downs are responsible for our feelings. This is only partially true. It is also the case that we can view their words as simply that – words – that probably say more about them than they do about us. We rarely need to take other people’s negativity as seriously as we do.

The snow globe theory of emotional regulation

With thick skin in hand (and on it), we are ready to maneuver within relationships while maintaining our composure in the face of hostility. Here is the essence of the snow globe theory: We control the weather inside our own globes. No matter what others say, we choose what we allow to affect us. Just because you chose to be hurtful does not mean that I must let your words disrupt my climate. I can choose to listen, but I will use my mind to acknowledge my reactivity, give myself the time I need, and set the tone for how I choose to answer. You can influence many things outside my control, but my internal environment is not one of them – my inner world will always be my domain.

Chazal (Nedarim 32b) allude to our capacity to control our internal weather in their exposition of the verses in Kohelet 9:14-15, “There was a little city, with few men in it; and to it came a great king, who surrounded it and built against it mighty fortresses. Present in the city was a poor wise man who could have saved the city with his wisdom, but nobody remembered this poor man.” The sages teach that the city here refers to the body of man, the men in it – his limbs. The city’s only chance of survival is for wisdom to step in and, through ruling the kingdom, stave off any attackers who would threaten its existence. Man’s wisdom – his mind – has the ability to operate within himself – his body – and set the temperature that will save his territory.

Helping our kids set their weather

Admittedly, controlling the weather inside our globes is very hard to do. Words leave an emotional residue that can be quite difficult to scrub away. With children, however, the work is much easier. Kids are blessed in that they are not weighed down by years of emotional baggage that so many of us carry around, the type that hollows out a well through which insults ripple and spread. With children, by contrast, we can intervene before their wells are dug and provide them with self-talk that will fortify their membrane and build resilience.

When our kids come to us with injured egos, we can patiently listen and then let them know that just because another child said something hurtful doesn’t make it true. Moreover, we can teach them that while they don’t control what others say, they do control what they say to themselves. They are the kings and queens of their own snow globes. They can determine how to look at the other child (“maybe they were just having a bad day”), what to think of themselves (“I know that I was trying my best even if they didn’t see it”), and how they want to respond (“I won’t let this get to me. I’ll continue playing that game”). All of this is possible because our kids determine the weather in their own worlds.

The same holds when our kids bicker with one another. If you have more than one child, you’ve learned by now that it’s impossible to know where fights actually begin – these facts elude all sentient beings (who don’t own surveillance cameras). But determining who started it isn’t really the point – it’s a given that siblings will occasionally say or do insensitive things to one another. What matters more is that we teach our children to access their snow globes, to know that they are responsible for their own reactions and have the power to take a step back, remind themselves that they control their internal temperature, and decide what to say (or not say) next.

Building the membrane

In the realm of therapy, many of the young people I counsel take umbrage with the idea that we could “just” tell ourselves things and then, magically, feel ok (ah, the infamous “just,” notorious underminer of many a therapeutic intervention). How could these empty mantras, they argue, be any solace at all when faced with real emotional pain from another person’s insults?

Let us be clear: nothing “just” happens. Developing a psychological membrane through laboriously changing our self-talk has little to do with quick fixes, one-liners, or miraculous incantations. Building resilience is hard work, born of repeated attempts, struggles, and ultimately triumphs. If we are willing to stay the course and not expect immediate results, we can construct an internal city, replete with metaphorical Coliseums and Empire State Buildings, that will not be easily shaken.

And so it is with our kids. Snow globes aren’t built in a day. But when we confidently and patiently guide our children to develop wise self-talk, they will learn that other people’s insensitive comments need not shake them. Because, as our parents knew, words are not the same as sticks and stones. They are nothing in the face of thick skin, which is the key to maintaining beautiful globes – sturdy, strong, and peaceful.

Though it may not sound romantic, Pesach is also the holiday when we stay up into the wee hours of the night to sing Hashem’s praises and proclaim, “I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me.” Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs, which many have the custom of chanting after the Seder and which we read in shul on Shabbat Chol Hamoed, is the official love song of Hashem and the Jewish People. It is a song of deep affection between a maiden and her suitor, which Rabbi Akiva referred to as the holiest of all scriptures (Masechet Yadaim 3:5). We recite this song on Pesach because it’s now that we rekindle a love that may have waned, or perhaps ignite it for the first time.

The couples I work with have taught me how easy it is to fall out of love, and how hard it can be to climb back into it. The same is true in our marriage to Hashem. We read every day in Shema about the love we ought to have for Him, one that includes “all your heart, all your soul, and all your resources” (Devarim 6:5). That love can feel very far away sometimes, maybe most of the time, maybe all the time. We think of it as a beautiful experience that someone else will hopefully enjoy. Pesach gives us a chance to change that by presenting a window through which we can access a degree of connection with Hashem that is out of reach the rest of the year. We can feel love in a way we never thought we could.

What happened on Pesach that engenders this love to the point that we’re ready each year to give just about everything we have to prepare for it?

Pesach: Hashem stepping in

The story of Pesach is one of Hashem deciding to pull back the curtain of nature and step onto the world stage in a way that clearly shows how much we mean to Him. For 400 years He had been watching us develop, first as a small family and then as a growing people, until the time came to make His affection for us known. He had chosen us centuries ago and was waiting for the moment to say so, the moment we would finally call out and say we were ready. He’d had His eye on us for a while.

Hashem’s intervention in Egypt was an announcement: The Jews are the people I want to be close to. I desire them as my partner forever. Together, we will build a home (Beit Hamikdash) and lead the world towards its ultimate destiny. From now on, “I will take you to be My people, and I will be your G-d” (Shemot 6:7).

This declaration of devotion came when we were but a shell of ourselves. We had lost nearly all semblance of our Jewishness and were about to collapse into historical nothingness. Hashem reached into our lives and pulled us close to Him, revealing our status as His most cherished people. Being treasured breathed life back into us – because that’s what love does. It picks you up from wherever you have sunk to and lets you know you are the center of the world.

A personal touch

Hashem’s entrance onto the scene was personal as much as it was powerful. He didn’t delegate this job to a divine emissary but instead chose to do it Himself, as we read in the Haggadah, “I and not an angel… I and not a messenger.” Because no one can love someone for you. Love only travels directly, from one being to another. It may take a circuitous route, but it can’t be delivered by an intermediary. You can’t let someone know how much they mean to you through someone else’s actions.

Hashem also performed miracles in a way that was uniquely crafted for each person’s circumstances. Each Jew watched Hashem punish the Egyptian taskmaster who had tortured them, and in the specific way it had been done, middah k’neged middah, measure for measure (Midrash Tanchuma Va’era 14:3). Hashem wanted each of us to know that He had been paying attention, and that every wrong inflicted upon us mattered to Him. Because for love to flourish it must be personal.

We feel the most seen when the details of our lives matter to someone else. Hashem’s aim was for us to feel cared for by knowing that none of the details had gone unnoticed. We each felt cradled by strong hands with the power to hold us close and protect us from further harm (yad hachazaka). He made it known that He was seeing us then, and He hasn’t stopped seeing us since.

Loving through knowing

Hashem also wanted us to know Him, which, according to the Rambam, is the primary pathway to loving G-d (Rambam Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 2:2, Hilchot Teshuva 10:6). Whereas it took Avraham Avinu 40 years to know G-d (Hilchot Avodah Zara 1:3), our introduction happened in the span of twelve months (Mishna Eduyot 2:10). In contrast to Purim, where Hashem made sure to stay hidden while orchestrating events, on Pesach He made His presence abundantly clear. The doors of reality were flung open, and His existence was unmistakable. He wanted us to know He’s here – and He still does.

Our sages teach that as you get to know Hashem, you realize, as Avraham did, that behind every divine action is a plan, and behind every plan is a loving Being Who guides everything for your benefit, even if you don’t immediately understand how. You learn that you can trust that Being entirely and that it’s ok to fall back – or forward into the desert – because He’s always there to catch you. He wants you to realize that there’s only one thing driving everything He does, from smiting Egyptians to handing you your first breath this morning: the desire for you to have everything good (even if often you don’t know what that is). A better definition of love would be hard to find.

To love someone you have to know them. And to know someone you have to think about them. Hashem wants us to understand what He’s about, much like our spouses want us to do the same for them. Without occupying our minds with each other, we can live side by side but remain disconnected because our heads will not be here even if we are. Loving someone means not only deciding to hold them in our arms but in our thoughts as well.

Loving Him back

Is all of this enough? Sure, Hashem has selected us and professed His commitment, paid attention and made Himself known – but is that sufficient to engender love? Why did four out of five Jews in Egypt decide not to leave, not to accept Hashem’s open embrace? The answer is that receiving love is not enough to feel it back. As profound as Hashem’s love is, we also must unlock our hearts and decide to give love a try.

There’s a cover over the heart called orlat halev that blocks us from feeling togetherness (Devarim 10:15-16), a state referred to as timtum halev, a closed heart (Rashi Bereishit 26:15). Not coincidentally, one of the only things asked of us before leaving Egypt was to perform a brit milah, a ritual circumcision, in which a physical orlah is removed from the human body. The commandment to do a brit milah was Hashem’s invitation for us to remove the barrier, the orlah, that obstructs connection. Having suffered through years of enslavement, it was understandable that our vulnerable side was barricaded shut. Yet, despite what living in survival mode can do to the human heart, a fifth of the Jews in Egypt decided it was high time to pry it open.

What emerged was the first of two acts involving blood – brit milah and korban pesach – that were performed just before leaving Egypt, as we read in the Hagaddah, “When I passed over you and saw you surrounded by blood, I said to you, ‘By your blood shall you live! By your blood shall you live!” (Yechezkel 16:6). In the Torah, blood represents the soul, the essence of a living thing (Devarim 12:23). The Jews who decided to open their hearts and lean into a relationship with G-d had nothing of their own to offer Him – nothing, except for everything. They put their whole selves into the connection. They gave their blood, their lives, because that’s the only way a loving relationship can work. With love, there’s no going halfway.

The hard work of love

The Jews in Egypt who made it out were those willing to give everything they had in return for a committed, loving relationship with Hashem. It really can’t be any other way. We know from ourselves that marriage thrives when both sides are two feet in, ready to roll up their sleeves and follow each other into the wilderness if that’s what it takes. And sometimes it most certainly will. “You followed Me into the desert, in a land not sown” (Yirmiyahu 2:2). We tie ourselves to each other despite where it may take us because we realize that once we commit to a life with one another, we find that one another is really all we need.

What the Jews discovered is that hard work is both the cause of love and the result of it. The more they devoted themselves to Hashem, the more they wanted to. It’s not that they weren’t scared to leave what they knew, but rather that their desire for closeness overrode all that would have held them back. They were ready to follow Hashem wherever He would take them. “Pull me after you and I will run” (Shir Hashirim 1:4). Hashem extended His outstretched arm (zeroa netuya), and they took it.

The truth is that we’re the same way. Commitment is scary, but we do it because we sense the potential for a connection that will develop and deepen over time. We do it because falling in love is not actually what we want, as if it were something we could stumble our way into. We do it because we realize that pouring ourselves into someone else’s life is the only way to bring about the type of closeness we crave, the kind we can’t experience anywhere else on earth. Some of the best moments in couples therapy happen when each partner realizes that beneath the anger, defensiveness, and hurt is someone who wants the same thing I do – a way back together.

Coming home

Our sages teach that Shlomo Hamelech wrote Shir Hashirim at the inauguration of the Beit Hamikdash. After centuries of living in temporary places (like all young couples do), we had finally arrived at our permanent home. In his introduction to Shir Hashirim, Rashi explains that this song was written as one of longing, because Shlomo knew that galus would come, and along with it, our longing for the days of young love we once had. We would need to remember the words of the maiden who hasn’t given up on having it again.

We are now living through the galus that Shlomo envisioned. For most of us, exile has never been more complicated than it is today. Hostility and hatred surround us, driving us back towards each other. We feel the need for the safety and security – the love – we once had, the kind that can only be found at home with our Beloved.

Pesach teaches us that young love doesn’t come on its own. In fact, hard work and young love are two sides of the same coin. This lesson is what too few people understand: young love only lasts if hard work is put into it. Working to clear your schedule. To remember the little things. To stretch yourself where you’re uncomfortable. To listen when you want to yell. To find patience when you’ve run out of it. To see all the good (and there’s always more). To love someone the way they need it. Young love comes from deliberate choices.

And the result? The experience of looking across the table and seeing your whole life in someone else’s eyes, seeing everything you’ve built together, and realizing that this is what home feels like. Love is therefore the ultimate paradox: We work hard in love in order to experience a love that feels like it takes no work at all. It is this love that we feel the night of the Seder. We’ve worked for weeks to prepare ourselves inside and out. We’ve given everything we have. Now, we bask. We sing and praise and connect with Him all night because there’s nowhere else we’d rather be and no one else we’d rather be there with.

Pesach doesn’t happen on its own. Love doesn’t either. But if we’re willing to open our hearts and give it all we have, we can find One another. If we do, Shir Hashirim this year may turn out not only to be something we yearn for but also something we have.

Let me be a seal upon your heart,

Like the seal upon your hand.

Vast floods cannot quench love,

Nor rivers drown it. (8:6-7)

There he stands behind our wall,

Gazing through the window, peering through the lattice. 

My Beloved spoke to me and said,

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” (2:9-10)

Yet, after years of cuisine-prep ponderance, I’ve discerned at least one more rudimentary truth: ingredients matter (as do well-working ovens, but that’s a far more expensive thought). Though a baker I am not, it’s clear that what gets put into making a meal largely determines what comes out at the end (invisible forces notwithstanding). Minor adjustments in measurements or order of additives significantly alter the finished product. In other words, a delicacy is not really more than the sum of its parts.

And so it is in the realm of emotions, where specific internal and external ingredients must be present for the stew we call feelings to emerge. According to Dr. James Gross, the combination of four elements – Situation, Attention, Cognition, and Response (SACR) – results in the experience of an emotion. We only feel things when we encounter a situation that catches our attention and causes us to think in a way that arouses a physical (and often behavioral) response. Without any one of these factors, the dough of a feeling collapses before it has the chance to rise. 

Gross’s findings are good news for those of us trying to help our children regulate their feelings because they mean that there are several points along the timeline from trigger to response where we can teach our kids to take the kettle off the stove before things emotionally overheat. As Gross explains, we can devise interventions targeting each of these four components that will set things along a more amenable course. And we can teach our kids to do so, too.

Five strategies

Let’s recall Danny, who went from mad to sad in our last article. After helping Danny through his emotional storm, you may have an opportunity to speak with him and offer methods for handling future arguments and other emotionally charged situations. The following tactics may not all apply to missed foul shots and wounded egos, but all of them will be relevant at some point in Danny’s life, as he faces a world that will sometimes seem bent on provoking him at every turn.

Strategy #1: Situation selection

We can’t have an emotion if there’s no situation to trigger it. Situation selection is the most forward-thinking of our regulation strategies (often featuring prominently in prevention programs for substance abuse treatment) because it tells us to look ahead and be mindful of the circumstances we choose to put ourselves in. For instance, we can encourage our children not to play with kids who consistently make them feel bad. We can also rethink activities in which they regularly feel like failures and try to come up with alternative pursuits that will bring out their strengths and talents. While we don’t want to incubate our kids from adversity by teaching avoidance or sterilizing their environment, it is certainly ok to be smart about the situations we expose them to and which we guide them away from.

Chazal teach us (Tamid 32b; Avot 2:9) that a wise person is roeh et hanolad, anticipates what’s coming. A hallmark of wisdom is the ability to think down the road to future probabilities and not bury our heads in the illusion that everything will be ok. While this may be true on a cosmic level, it’s not wise to set up our children for inevitable hurt and rejection. As parents, we can teach our kids to forecast what seems imminent and plan to be in situations that will promote growth and prevent harm.

Strategy #2: Situation modification

Once we find ourselves in a challenging situation, the question is how we wish to engage with it. Situation modification means changing the environment to alter the way we experience what’s happening. For instance, a child who is anxious about performing in front of people may benefit from having a parent or friend beside them whose presence helps calm their nerves. Likewise, a child about to enter an unfamiliar place may want to bring along an item from home to help them manage feelings of doubt and uncertainty. These small but useful adjustments can help our kids temper what may otherwise feel too daunting.

Parents employ situation modification all the time without realizing it. We make to-do lists to feel less overwhelmed, bring down the tone of our voice to decrease tension in a conversation, and ask a friend to sit in the front row when delivering a speech in public. The message of modification is simple yet empowering – we can’t always choose the situations we are in, but we can almost always think of a way to help them go better.

Strategy #3: Attentional deployment

If asked what choices you made today, you probably won’t say that you’ve placed your attention on one item over another. We tend to think of choice as being primarily about action – we decide to do this and not to do that. It’s important to remember, though, that we also have a say in what we pay attention to. As parents, we can teach our kids that they are in charge of what they focus on and what they decide to let go of.

Attentional deployment means selecting which aspects of a situation we want to hone in on to the exclusion of those we don’t. In Danny’s situation, we can encourage him not to dwell on Ariel and Mordy’s negative comments and instead focus on how to score on the next play. Attention is like a spotlight that shines in the direction of our choosing. We do this all the time as parents, like when we listen to one child while temporarily tuning out another (an absolute parental necessity). It’s important to teach our kids that just because something is happening doesn’t mean we need to lend our focus to it. Why get caught up with things that bring us down when there are so many better things to think about?

Strategy #4: Cognitive reappraisal

This one is our specialty. As Jews, we know that every situation can be viewed in multiple ways. Working with our cognitions, our thoughts, is a significant part of divine service and features prominently in Jewish works dedicated to character development and worldview (Mussar and Hashkafa). For instance, Hashem encourages us to train our minds so that we learn to look at people the way He does. Just as He is merciful, He wants us to view others with merciful eyes and not focus on their negative qualities (Sotah 14a; Shabbat 133b). Similarly, as the holiday of Purim recently taught us, we look at historical events not as random occurrences but as part of Hashem’s ultimate plan for humanity. The Jewish approach is to use our cognitions to shape the way we see the world and how we are meant to interact with it.

Allon Vishkin, Cultural Psychologist at the Technion in Israel, who studies emotion, motivation, and social norms, points out that religious individuals are especially adept at altering their thoughts about a situation to change its emotional impact. This sort of perspective shifting, a.k.a. cognitive reappraisal, happens, for example, when we help our children see that working with an underprivileged child is an opportunity for chessed rather than a drain on their schedule. With quarreling siblings, we may introduce the idea that occasionally letting go of something they want is an opportunity to make their parents and Hashem proud of them. These are examples of implanting a new thought into our children’s mental flow that helps them see things in a different light, which can greatly mitigate emotional reactivity.

An important caveat is in order here. Teaching our kids how to look at things does not automatically mean they will. At least not at first. Or the next time, either. But our job as parents is not to guarantee results; it is to offer our kids perspectives on life that will ultimately serve them in the long run. We may need to repeat these alternative narratives many times before they sink in. That’s ok; what matters is that we’re giving them another outlook that can curb the natural tendency to think in ways that only further their emotional distress.

Strategy #5: Response modulation

The final regulation strategy we’ll discuss is what to do when an emotion is already present and ready to take over. These are the moments when anger pushes us to yell, frustration wants us to lash out, and helplessness just hopes we’ll give up. When this happens, we can learn to look at the physiological responses that alert us to the presence of an emotion – heart rate increasing, body temperature rising, stomach sinking – and draw from strategies that help us calm down. We can teach our kids to leave the room when they’re about to hit someone or take a few deep breaths rather than explode in rage. More anxious kids may benefit from learning how to ground themselves, as we’ve explored previously. We can also suggest exercise, music, and other recreational activities to help them let out steam or calm their wound-up systems. As we sit with our kids and process what happened after an emotional explosion, we can brainstorm other things they could have done to modulate their behavior.

Here we have yet another reason why being our children’s emotion coach is such an important job. Without stepping in to teach our kids better responses, they may naturally look for quick fixes to numb the feelings they don’t like. Food, alcohol, and drugs can all be used as maladaptive response modulation tools to help them feel better temporarily, even as they are pulled into the addictive vortex of these substances. Kids who feel armed with strategies to manage their intense emotions are less prone to veering toward these unhealthy replacements.

Cooking and coping

Returning to our original metaphor, when it comes to helping our children regulate their emotions, it’s ok at first to have another cook in the kitchen. Our kids will go off one day and come up with their own coping concoctions, but whatever they create will be based upon the tips we gave them when they were young, the ones that carry the flavor of home. So as our children clank around out there trying to contend with more twists than grandma’s cinnamon rolls, we can learn to gently sit with them, pull apart whatever happened, and suggest new strategies that will give them a sense of agency and control over their emotional worlds. It may take several attempts before our suggestions finally settle, but when they do, our kids will come out with a final course that is much more appetizing to themselves and those around them.

In this article, we’ll describe three essential rules of emotional mechanics and then see how they come together in one useful intervention. These three rules are:

1. Name it to tame it
2. Emotions have motion
3. Two levels of feelings

Rule #1: Using language to regulate emotion

One of the hardest things about experience is not having words to describe it. Kids are stuck in this predicament from the very beginning of life, when flailing limbs and primal screams are all they have to communicate their distress. Even as they grow, children often feel lost in a jungle of emotions without the foothold of words to express what on earth is going on inside them. Language anchors us – we feel rooted in a reality in which we can wrap our minds around what we’re experiencing and convey that sense to others. Without a way to verbally capture what’s happening, our kids not only wrestle with the emotion itself but also have to deal with feelings of panic and uncertainty that arise from the inability to articulate what’s happening.

Dr. Dan Seigel points out that labeling an emotion has a calming effect – you must name it to tame it. It turns out that emotions enjoy classification – they relax when nuzzled into a description that fits them just right. We can take the edge off our kids’ emotional tension by expanding our vocabulary and offering them names for their feelings. We may even want to look up a list of feelings to assist us in this process. Peppering these words into everyday conversation may sound something like:

• “You seem frustrated, what’s wrong?”
• “I hear that, it’s really disappointing.” 
• “Ouch. That sounds like it hurt.”

Children who are handed a label for their emotions feel validated. A degree of comfort settles over them as they realize that what they’re dealing with is a known entity that their parents seem to understand and be familiar with. They may think, “Ah, that’s what that’s called.” They feel less in the dark, more seen, and better equipped to use their words in the future, which we can actively encourage them to do (instead of their fists or teeth). The big, scary world of emotional upheaval has become slightly more manageable.

Rule #2: The emotional pathway

A second rule of emotional physics is that, as their name indicates, emotions are constantly in motion. Emotions are not static events, but rather fluctuate up and down in their intensity, much like a wave that gradually increases in strength until it hits with full force before receding out to sea. The most intense part of an emotional pathway may happen right at the beginning, such as profound feelings of hurt and betrayal after discovering an infidelity. Sometimes the brunt of a feeling only arrives later, like when the deepest pangs of sadness appear after everyone has gone home after shivah. Whether the graph of emotional intensity looks like a bell curve or skews towards the front or back, feelings always travel along a route that passes through us from start to finish.

The fact that our emotions follow a trajectory is good news because it means that no emotion lasts forever. There is a beginning, and there will be an end. Often our job as parents is to shepherd our children along these feeling trails until the emotion runs its course and a degree of calm has been restored. The triggering event may still need addressing, but this can only happen after we’ve helped our kids find their way through the intense portion of the feeling pathway and allowed it to dissipate on its own.

By patiently escorting our children through this process, we teach them that an emotion can be felt, endured, and – perhaps most importantly – outlasted. We want our kids to know that feelings are normal events that arise within us, and that if we follow them through their natural course, we’ll come out fine on the other side. Whatever step we take after that point will undoubtedly be more right than rash.

Rule #3: Two levels of emotions

A third rule to remember is that there are two levels of emotions: primary and secondary. As Dr. Les Greenberg explains, primary emotions are the ones that live closer to our hearts, carry our wounds, and are more vulnerable to express. Examples are sadness, rejection, loneliness, worthlessness, and hurt. Sequentially, primary emotions come first in response to a triggering event. Though we may not realize it, we are initially affected in these deeper places, thus setting off a chain of internal events in which our system experiences pain before it scrambles for ways to guard ourselves against feeling it.

That’s where secondary emotions come in. Secondary emotions, such as anger, frustration, anxiety, fear, or irritability, are reactions to primary emotions and mainly try to protect us in some way. While primary feelings are generally more somber or hidden, secondary emotions are out there for all to see. They’re the bodyguards of our systems, the ones that show up to get back at those who wronged us or shield us from further emotional sting. It’s often more challenging to deal with secondary emotions, especially when they show up in our children, because they tend to carry a hostile, combative, or standoffish energy. It’s important to remember that these, too, are just emotions, there to serve some critical function – usually to alert us that something has happened that feels terribly wrong.

Putting it all together: Mad to Sad

Nine-year-old Danny walks in from school ready for a fight – his expression and demeanor say it all. You immediately notice your body tense as your system braces for impact. You feel annoyed that he doesn’t even say hello, and worse, starts barking at you for a snack. This affront sets off a slew of negative impulses in your mind, as you think to yourself that he’s so ungrateful, that you don’t have time for this (he’s not the only one that’s had a hard day), or that you’re a terrible parent if this is how he behaves. You notice defensiveness well up in your stomach and chest, and you’re just about ready to tell him in no uncertain terms that he’d better change his attitude if he knows what’s good for him. Suddenly, you remember that Danny is caught in emotional turbulence and needs your help – he’s struggling just like you are. You decide to pause, take a deep breath, and realize that your son probably needs your compassion. And this choice makes all the difference.

As you use your breath to soften and expand (see last article), you mentally scan your list of emotion words, eventually arriving at something like, “You look really upset. Is everything OK?” Well, that’s all it takes. Danny explodes in anger and yells, “NO! EVERYTHING IS NOT OK!! I’M NEVER GOING BACK TO SCHOOL!!!” You patiently nod and show concern, still without any idea of what’s going on. You decide to gently ask, “What happened?” and begin to see the tears forming. He furiously tells you about what Ariel and Mordy, his two closest friends, said to him after he missed a shot today during recess, and how he’s never going to play with them ever again. You’re mindful of the fact that Danny’s anger is a secondary emotion, which means there’s a more vulnerable feeling underneath, one that you may discover if you follow the anger down its natural pathway. As you listen, that’s exactly what happens.

As Danny talks, he slowly begins to go from mad to sad. His energy changes, his expression shifts, and his primary feelings start to emerge. You’ve made it to the end of anger and now find hurt and sadness waiting there for you. You sense a space opening up as Danny softens, and you move in a little closer. This invitation unlocks the floodgates, and the crying comes. You hold him and hear him. A surge of pain moves up and out of his body, discharging itself through words and tears. You let this emotion run its course, too, until he’s left sitting with you in wounded silence, bruised but intact. Danny has made it through the storm. He’s no longer consumed by anger, feels understood, and has more resilience for the future after having outlasted his feelings without causing harm to himself or others. Your presence is what made all of that possible.

Coming back to calm

Many parents are surprised to learn that helping kids move from mad to sad (to not so bad) is often enough. Although you haven’t said much – some gentle prodding and reflecting is all it took – they are ready to get up and go on their way. Because you’ve given them what they don’t yet have – the experience of cycling through their emotions. Danny will figure out how to handle his friends and may or may not ask you for advice. But he’s gotten the help he needed – a taste of emotional regulation.

Even if mad-to-sad leads into a conversation about how Danny might handle the situation with his friends, he’ll now receive your perspective entirely differently. Had you tried to rationalize with your son earlier about what probably happened, how he could have handled it, or why he shouldn’t be reacting like this, he would not have heard you. There’s no room for logic when our kids are hurting. They don’t care, they just feel. We are often called upon to help our kids with themselves before we can help them with others.

We’ll talk more about what we can say during those post-outburst conversations, which tend to be more rational. And we’ll think of other ways to arm our kids with ideas and methods for dealing with future triggers. But getting to the brain often means forging our way through the heart. Guiding our kids with knowledge, words, and presence is one effective way to do just that.

Then they actually showed up. Before long, it dawned on us that tending to our kid’s material needs is only half the story, if that. These tiny humans come with massive emotional rumblings that always seem on the verge of explosion. And when the earth begins to shake, we quickly realize that we’re the only ones here – to handle daily screaming storms, endless tantrums, outbursts at the drop of a hat, and many many rounds of tears (and that’s just our own). Our kids carry a minefield of emotions that we try our best to navigate, all the while not being sure if we’re doing it right, or what we’re really doing at all. It’s hard being a kid, but it can be equally hard being that kid’s parent – guiding them through their own turbulence while preventing ourselves from erupting and somehow managing to think straight so that we can remember what we read in a parenting book last week. No wonder parents go to bed much earlier the moment we have kids – it’s not that we’re getting old, but that it’s simply impossible to stay awake a second longer once our adorable little whirlwinds of energy are out for the count. Round one, gearing up for tomorrow. 

Yet underneath it all, behind the exhaustion and never-ending doubt about our competence, we are immensely motivated to help our kids manage their anarchic bundles of nerves. We understand that being our kids’ emotional coaches is one of the most important jobs we’ll ever have. We see with ourselves that regulating emotions is a key predictor of personal stability and interpersonal success. One of life’s great challenges is figuring out how to ride the waves of our feelings, for as we learn time and time again, there is always an ocean of sensitivity swimming around just below sea level, ready to throw us overboard via our reactivity, until we’re left drifting alone on the raft of regret over things we wish we hadn’t said or done. Our kids are no different. They need our help dealing with the emotional tides that feel bigger than they are. By giving them tools to tame their inner swirling currents, we’re empowering them to grow up unafraid of the prospect of governing their feelings.

Emotional regulation

Emotional regulation is another way to say managing our feelings. We all know feelings – those elusive sensations that well up in our bodies and brains to alert us that something we care about just happened. It’s like an internal switch that gets flipped on when either an outside trigger (the boss’s disapproving face) or an inside prompt (the thought of having to find a new job) crosses our perceptual field. Often, a feeling is no more than a minor flicker, a blip on our internal radar, like a worry that pops up and is then on its way, duly noted. But sometimes our emotions are consuming, making it feel like we’re inside them instead of the other way around. It can be difficult even to recognize ourselves after an emotional hijacking has commandeered the whole of our being, as we sit there and wonder who that person was that just showed up – the one that looked exactly like us.

Children experience this all the time. Which is why our first job as emotional coaches is to be their containers – the person in their lives who can hold their feelings when they cannot. Providing containment for our kids means showing them that even when their emotions feel too big to handle, they’re not too big for mom and dad. Our children need to know that they can come to us with their chaotic inner worlds and be received in whatever form they show up (runny facial fluids and all). We are our kids’ safe space, where they can deposit all the feelings they don’t know what to do with and be held by a containing presence that they’re not yet able to give themselves.

So before we outline specific regulation strategies, let’s figure out how to develop the essence of what we’re trying to give our kids: a soothing self.

Borrowing self

Parents “lend” things to their kids all the time (usually never to be seen again), but few things are more valuable than when we lend them ourselves. When we show up as our kids’ emotional containers, we give them a chance to borrow our presence so that their as-of-yet-underdeveloped selves can gradually learn to do the same thing. Parenting works by osmosis: We provide an experience from the outside that slowly shapes the child’s fledgling ability to mirror us from the inside. Their ability to self-soothe will take several years to develop, but will eventually emerge because our presence will have seeped into theirs – they will have imbibed the best of what we have to offer: a reassuring tone and comforting demeanor. Our kids absorb us by us first absorbing them.

We can see why regulating ourselves and doing the same for our kids are two sides of one coin. To help them overcome their emotional turmoil, we must first unearth our capacity to do the same. In short, we’ve got to live to give it. Here’s an exercise to help us along.

The practice of grounding

Regulating our children’s emotions is a lot like being a flagpole (bear with me). Our kids are routinely thrown by strong emotional winds that whip them around from within. In response, they naturally seek to tether themselves to a stable base strong enough to withstand the blows. In fact, this is how secure attachment develops – kids experience emotional distress and instinctively look to their caregivers for relief. When they get it, they learn it’s okay to feel difficult emotions because there is a reliable address to whom they can turn for comfort.

To become our kids’ flagpoles, we need to find our internal footing so that we can hold our ground without reacting or losing our cool. Luckily, there’s a resource right in front of us, or perhaps beneath us. It’s called grounding. To find it, take a second to bring your attention to the feeling of your body in the chair you’re sitting in (if you’re not sitting, try to do so just for this exercise). Focus on the point of contact between your hands and the armrest, and see if you can gently narrow your scope of awareness to only the point where your body and the surface are touching. Stay there mentally for just a moment. Now see if you can do the same with the feeling of your back against the seat… now your legs on the cushion… and now your feet on the floor. Pause at each juncture and try to be present with only that experience. Give yourself permission to be in full contact with the ground underneath your being, however you experience it now.

As you ground yourself, you may notice that your breathing slows (a couple of deep inhales also helps), your heart rate drops, your body calms, and your mind relaxes. It is profoundly soothing to root ourselves in the present moment via our felt experience. Our systems are built to brace for impact the moment we experience a threat, such as, say, the incoming barrage of a child’s emotional messiness. When we take a moment to ground ourselves, we reverse our body’s natural tendency to enter fight-or-flight mode. We have found an anchor that can give us the sturdiness to override the knee-jerk impulse to react.

The fantastic thing about grounding is that we can do it even while our kids are speaking to us (no one needs to know that we’re taking deep breaths or thinking about our feet on the floor or hands on the counter). Even while our children heave their feelings in our direction, we can find our center and remain strong. We may even find that the way we look at them transforms. Because when we ground, our hearts and minds also expand, so that we feel somehow bigger than we were a moment ago. We’re able to see that although the little person coming to us for solace may seem monstrous, they’re just a kid struggling to cope. We suddenly feel less scared and more available to widen our emotional flaps and let in whatever they need us to receive. We have found a pathway for emotional containment, which emanates from both the head (seeing further) and the heart (feeling bigger).

Harchavat halev

Nothing forces us to work on ourselves like being a parent. But nothing has the potential to make us better, either. Of all the things our kids squeeze out of us, perhaps the most important is the expanded capacity to love.

The Torah refers to the concept of harchavat halev, widening of the heart, to describe the human capacity to expand. The heart is a small organ with a tremendous capacity for bigness – it enables us to become people who can make room for more than just ourselves. Rashi (Beitza 16a) associates harchavat halev with tranquility, openness, and joy. It is what makes us good containers – the ability to dip into our latent potential to emotionally expand and wrap our hearts around the children who need just one place to be held within the huge world they’re trying to navigate. 

So as we step into the role of emotional coach, let’s equip ourselves with the tools we need to succeed. With ground beneath us, hearts within us, and kids in front of us, we’re off to a good start.

In future articles, we’ll describe several specific regulation strategies and explore some common attitudes and beliefs about our kids’ emotional worlds. For now, though, let’s remember the teaching of Chazal (Sanhedrin 106b), who tell us that underlying all religious service, Hashem most desires the human heart. Perhaps this is what our kids most desire from us as well.

Most of us intuitively know this. We get that background makes a difference, that no one springs into existence just before we meet them, that we are all molded to some degree by the families we grow up in, and that if you’re a therapist, hearing a person’s story will probably provide some clues as to how you might help them.

But the pioneers of family therapy went a step further (thank you, Murray Bowen). They taught that context shapes character and that a person’s place in their family system is the best way to understand them as individuals (some even claimed that there was no such thing as individuals, only interacting parts of a whole, but we won’t go there now). This outside-in approach – thinking of problems as existing between people and not only within them – flipped how we look at personal development, regarding families as the central movers of that process.

In psychotherapy, making sense of our formative relationships is often integral to knowing ourselves better. We are all products of a unique family, with a self-contained culture shared only by the members of this relatively small, idiosyncratic club. This exclusive society has its own array of quirky characters, shared rituals, and collective memory. Putting together a cohesive narrative of ourselves often includes asking: Which family bonds have shaped us? Who were the key players in our story? How were we affected by them, and how did we affect them in return? How might we still be living within those relationships?

We bring our families with us

As these questions rolled around in my head, I began to realize their relevance not only to family therapy but to individual work as well. Because there were times when even though I would sit with one person, it felt as if three or four were in the room. The tip-off was usually when a client would talk in extreme terms, often in ways that were not like them, or say something exaggerated. It felt as if they were suddenly speaking from somewhere else: “I should never have tried; I’m such a failure.” “If I do that, I know something bad will happen.” “I feel terrible that I may have hurt her, even though she insists I didn’t.” “It’s all my fault.” Hearing these abrupt shifts was like witnessing a thought invasion, in which foreign voices had infiltrated my client’s mind, making them think and speak in absolute, rigid terms. What was happening?

It turns out that our families continue to live with us even after we no longer live with them, to the point where grappling with a part of ourselves and with a particular family member often ends up being the same thing. A parallel process exists between our external and internal family (shout out to Richard Schwartz), whereby the neat bifurcation between individual and family work no longer strictly holds. Sure, therapists can sit with an individual in therapy, but the messages this person may be telling themselves are often holdovers from an earlier time. “Where did you learn that idea?” we might ask them. We often discover that our brain has imported it from the way a family member used to speak or behave (or still does). Somewhere along the way, usually at a young age, the extreme sentiment was absorbed into the person’s mental dialogue, informing how they speak to themselves and probably others.

(For a related post on this topic, see: Reflections on Shavuot: The Torah’s Voice)

There’s a saying in psychotherapy, “If it’s intense, it’s yours.” When our reactions are stronger than the situation would indicate, it pays to ask ourselves whether we’re reacting to a current stressor or really responding to something in the past. We may be stuck in a former time, still reacting to a situation we’re no longer in or to a family member that isn’t actually here, but who has just walked into the room of our minds, invited by a comment from our spouse or child that feels eerily familiar (and scary). When that happens, we may appear present, but in our psyche, we’ve been transported to another time and place entirely.

Looking for harmony

Just as internal systems and external families follow many of the same rules, so too are they ultimately trying to achieve the same thing: harmony.

Internal harmony is what we call menuchas hanefesh, the balanced state of being that emerges when we make peace among the warring parts within us. It’s tragic how much we fight with ourselves, often because we’re not sure how to conduct the ongoing symphony (or cacophony) taking place between our ears. We have wind instruments urging us to play faster, strings begging us to slow down, percussions getting louder to drown out the others, and brass feeling fed up with the noise and trying to kick everyone off the stage. Each one wants to take over, leading to our fair share of skewed judgment or impulsive behavior. We feel pulled in different directions, like a raucous family car trip unfolding inside our heads.

Menuchas hanefesh stems from acknowledging the beautiful sounds of each part of ourselves and bringing them into harmony in the way we live. It does not require the absence of external stimuli (no Tibetan monasteries needed), nor does it mean that we always strive to feel the same thing. Rather, it’s a process of learning to move with the ebb and flow of life in a way that feels synchronous with how we want to be in each moment. Instead of fighting with ourselves, we decide to dispatch our various internal instruments in ways that meet the demands of life as best we can without losing our cool or reacting in ways we later regret. We tune into ourselves to know when to take a break, when to push forward, when to play softer, and when to blast our tune. Menuchas hanefesh is about being the conductor of our internal world and remaining at the center of our orchestra of characteristics, directing each to play at the right time so that the music we produce through how we live is harmonious and pleasant.

Easier said than done, you’ll say. And you’ll be right, but we must first describe the goal of menuchas hanefesh before figuring out how to take the first step. In practice, every time we slow down and check in with our internal conductor (called Wise Mind in therapeutic literature), we have increased our chances of moving through the concert of life with a bit more presence, harmony, and grace.

Seeking family harmony

What about families? Is it true that we’re all trying to find harmony at home? The answer is emphatically yes. Though we may not think of it, the conflict we experience in our families is an ongoing struggle for equilibrium. Each of us is trying to figure out how to balance our needs with those of the people we love, how to be individuals while also feeling like part of the whole, and how to work together in a way that leaves room for different viewpoints and opinions. Family functioning is a dynamic, ever-changing, complex journey of several people under one roof trying to grow and do their best while not bumping into each other too often and hopefully even contributing to each other’s well-being. It’s incredibly hard work, and there is no perfect system. But it helps to know that each family member is a necessary part of the music we make together.

We want each person in our family to know that they have a rightful and important place in our home, and that our unit is not complete without them. In this sense, families represent our deepest yearning to belong. Rabbi Yoel Schwartz points out that in every living soul there exists a desire to connect to its root. In humans, this drive manifests through wanting to be connected to ourselves, to Hashem, and to where we come from. Because our root is the source of our sustenance, much like we see in the natural world. Each branch of a tree relies on its base to infuse it with nourishment, with which it can extend into the world, produce fruit, and provide shade for others. It thrives only inasmuch as it remains joined with the trunk, not a separate, self-contained unit. A branch can be severed and planted elsewhere, but it will never be as vibrant as when it was securely attached to its origin of strength.

Coming home

I was reminded of what it means to belong not too long ago. It turns out that once children go off and start their own families, it’s rare to have an event in which just the nuclear family is together. But it can happen.

And so we found ourselves one Friday afternoon, all making our way to my parents’ kitchen (the center of every Jewish home) for a Shabbos of just “us.” No spouses, no kids. Only the originals. Traveling from different locations, some quite far away, we gradually appeared, one at a time, each pulled by the inaudible call of family togetherness.

And then it happened. As the last person entered, everyone froze. Something clicked that was indescribable and completely right. Standing around the room in stunned silence, we all experienced the joy of the assembled whole, with all its divergent parts, where – in all our smiley giddiness – no one could say much more than, “Woah.” But we all knew it, we all belonged, and no more words were needed.

Basking in the glow of this rare event left me thinking that with all the people we meet and love in life, no one knows where we come from the way our families do. No matter how old we get, they will always be our context. We will forever be part of each other’s lives, loving each other through it all, no matter what strong emotions muddy the waters along the way. To this family we belong – we need them and they need us. Friends change, families don’t.

Sadly, most of us know of family rifts that have led to deep hurt and even estrangement. We can’t judge anyone who has made the gut-wrenching decision to cut ties with their family due to the pain it would cause to maintain contact. We pray that healing happens and harmony is restored, even for those who currently feel no hope. At the same time, we must do what we can to cherish the families we have, because we only get one. These are the people that were sent to us, and we to them, with whom we must struggle for harmony, from whom we derive our history, and because of whom we are bound to grow.

They say that the heyday of family therapy is over, but the focus on family has never been more important. 

Holes in life are located in the heart, but we feel them in the rest of the body as well. In eyes that see a void in the family picture, ears that hear the other end of an unfinished conversation, hands that reach for a touch that never comes, arms that ache for one more embrace. The brain tries to do precisely what Gestalt psychologists said it would – to connect the lines and fill in the blanks so that life can still seem somewhat recognizable. But it will never be, at least not fully. Because, as many of us tragically discover, part of being human is learning to live with unfillable holes.

People in Israel are living with such holes. So many of our loved ones have been snatched from us in the last three months – either from communities neighboring Gaza or from battles raging within it. We fear waking up each morning because we don’t know who we’ll discover is no longer here. The dreaded knock on the door arrives at someone’s house nearly every day. This is the price of war, we say, but it doesn’t make the pain any easier. Parents, spouses, siblings, and children around the country are struggling to cope with holes that have been punched into their hearts.

The mind spins in a hundred directions as we try to wrap our heads around something that just doesn’t fit. How could this have happened? What about our plans for the future? How can it be that we send off our son in uniform but the uniform comes back without him in it? Why does Hashem want it this way? Why them? Why me? We feel the need to make sense of it. Or at least try to. But as we wrestle with an impossible reality, we seem to lose every single time.

Though statistically, most of us will not have lost a family member in the Gaza war, many of us have come face to face with premature death: terminal illness, car accidents, suicide, drug overdose. These are not all the same, surely; each brings a unique form of grief and a distinct process of healing. But what they share in common is the hard truth that life sometimes takes people from us before we are ready to see them go. How do we cope with loss before its time? When a part of us is severed, how are we meant to continue living?

There is no simple answer to these questions, nor is there one path for the bereaved relatives of a young family member. Healing is an arduous journey with many dips and endless days. But there is a way forward, because there must be. Life marches on. And as it does, we look for a way to put ourselves back together after we’ve been irrevocably shattered. Here is what that sojourn may look like.

Emerging from the hole

While the nature of holes is that they live within us, we often find ourselves living within them. Especially during the first year after losing a loved one (and often for much longer), it can feel as if we’re perpetually below ground, surrounded by high walls that close us off from the outside world. People try to pull us out, but their efforts can’t possibly span the abyss between their realm and ours. We’re here alone with only our memories. We may occasionally glance up at the sun after several days of forgetting it’s still there, but we have little interest in looking beyond that. Sadness is forever encamped behind our eyes, always ready to push out more tears. Perhaps we want it to stay that way for now – we want to feel like we’re holding on as long as we can. We’re far from ready to climb out of this hole; we don’t want to let go of what we’ve lost. We’re not prepared to make peace with this new and unwanted reality; it’s just not how things should be.

Holes are strange things, because at some point we can find ourselves on the outside of one and be unsure of how we got there. One day, many months later, we make it all the way to evening and realize that we haven’t fallen apart, that our heart isn’t searing the way it normally does. And we feel terribly, terribly guilty. Have we done something wrong? Should we not be suffering less? Does this mean that we’re forgetting? We grapple with this for a long while, unsure whether it’s ok that we haven’t felt as lost today, because for the longest time we’ve been convinced that we’re never supposed to feel ok again.

“The path back to normal life is indescribably long once death has swept the feet out from under those of us who are left” (Fredrik Backman). Holes bring us all the way up to the edge of what we can handle, and often beyond. But with time, processing, and support, we gradually discover a way to live alongside holes without feeling like we’re always on the verge of sliding back into them. And we hesitantly conclude that this may be ok for now. We start to see that living with loss differs from living within it. We slowly relearn to celebrate birthdays, enjoy family get-togethers, smile at siddur parties, and laugh when our kids cartwheel across the living room, even though all happiness will be tinged with sadness from now on. While the pain of longing has found a permanent residence inside us, it also seems to resurface less. The sun doesn’t seem quite as dim, and we’re able to enjoy the parts of life that still shine. We want our loved ones to be here with us, but we start to realize that they actually still are.

Living with holes means that we can start to do what Jews do best. We can make meaning, even when it’s hard to find any.

Finding meaning

Jews are natural meaning-makers. From a young age, we are trained to look for the deeper message in things, to think about how life events fit into a larger picture, and to wonder what we’re supposed to learn from the challenges that Hashem sends our way. As Dr. Eric Garland and colleagues explain in their Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory, finding meaning starts with creating just enough space to step back, so that we can think about what we’re looking at even while we remain deeply connected to it (Victor Frankl famously taught a similar truth). It’s the experience of holding something at arm’s length instead of just a couple of inches away – we can still see it clearly, but it’s not quite as consuming. It’s the difference between living in a hole where darkness is all we can see and living alongside a hole that becomes an inseparable part of the meaning we choose to find within it.

Perhaps the greatest lesson to glean from holes is that they cause everything that’s actually important in life to suddenly stand out. We’re no longer concerned with who said what; we’re grateful to have people in our lives who are willing to say anything at all. Premature loss has a way of reminding us of everything we had been neglecting to cherish: we want to hold our dear ones closer, to hug our children tighter, to say I love you more often, to have compassion for those who are struggling, to be there for others, to be there for ourselves, to open our hearts to G-d, to find joy in so many little things. Death is the great sifter – it winnows away all that is insignificant and reminds us to focus on what matters. Because we never want to feel again that we should have done that way more often.

Finding meaning can also lead to the realization that perhaps holes don’t only mark the end. Maybe a form of continuity is still possible. Because while we can’t fill holes, we can plant things in them. We can perpetuate the legacy of the deceased by looking at what had been growing in their unique soil and thinking of ways to cultivate their sapling further. A tree cut short only continues to bear fruit if the ones who had been next to it decide that it has more to give. This may take the larger form of chessed initiatives or learning projects in the name of the deceased, or, in a more private way, of honing in on what our loved one stood for and would have wanted, and then setting out to embody just that. We carry their roots forward by letting their seeds and dreams sprout within us. And in this way, they continue to live through the fact that we still are.

The Torah gives us a small example of an individual who seems to have understood the meaning of holes, and that holes can also lead to meaning.

Miriam’s “holy” son

In the second chapter of the Book of Shemot, we learn that a man and woman from the tribe of Levi give birth to a son. After keeping him in hiding for three months, they feel they have no choice but to cast him away on the Nile River in the hopes that he’ll be spared from the impending Egyptian slaughter. In a powerful scene, we read that the boy’s sister, Miriam, stands in the reeds and watches her baby brother float away. She does not know what will become of him, or even if he’ll live at all (Though Chazal explain that Miriam prophesied a future in which this child would go on to rescue the Jewish People, here we’ll stick with the simple reading of the text). We can imagine what Miriam may have been feeling as she saw her brother drift slowly out of sight. She loved him dearly, and now had to part ways for an unknown length of time, perhaps altogether. It was a moment of grappling with the possibility of never seeing him again, along with the painful knowledge that even should her brother survive, he would grow up away from her loving embrace.

Miriam becomes an adult, marries, and has a son of her own. She names him “hole” – Chur. What an appropriate name for the son of a woman who lived through the torture of having to say goodbye to a baby sibling at such a tender age (Though the Ohr HaChaim on Shemot 31:2 explains that Chur’s name also connotes freedom, as in the word chorin, the Ktav V’kabala on Shemot 4:14 teaches that “hole” and “freedom” share the same root. The path to freedom often runs through periods of darkness and despair). Interestingly, we only hear of two episodes in the Torah where Chur plays a part, and in both, he’s supporting Moshe – filling in his holes. Chur holds up one of Moshe’s hands during the war with Amalek (Shemot 17:10), and he stands in to shepherd the Jewish People, alongside Aharon, when Moshe ascends Har Sinai to receive the Torah (Shemot 24:14). Chur becomes his name. He enters the world in the space burrowed into his mother’s heart after she says goodbye to her baby brother, and he lives a life of continuing to fill that gap. His life is an extension of his uncle Moshe, and he becomes exactly that.

When Moshe is born, his parents’ house is filled with light (Sotah 12a). Chur dedicates himself to perpetuating this light, and names his son Uri, which means “my light.” Uri’s wife gives birth to Betzalel, whom Moshe appoints to build the Mishkan, the resting place for Hashem’s light in this world. Chur carried forth the legacy of his uncle’s light, and because of him, the whole world lit up.

Continuing the legacy

Holes are complicated things. We try our best to hide them, hold them, and heal them. But they are here to stay. Dark spots on our canvas can never be washed away; our holes will never disappear. Age helps us realize that some problems in life cannot be fixed; it seems that this is how it must be. But our dear ones will forever be with us. We will always love them, and we will always miss them.

But we will also wake up tomorrow, and the day after that, with a charge to help the departed continue to make their mark through the life we choose to live. In a way, every loved one who is taken too early hands us a mission before they exit, which reads: “Please continue what I could not.” This is our responsibility, and maybe even one of our primary sources of meaning. For although life has taken them away, there will always be a hole inside where they go on living.

L’ilui Nishmat Yehuda Chaim ben Aharon a”h