Message from the Publisher

Recently I was at a Tuesday night shiur given by Rabbi Meir Gavriel Elbaz in Ohel Simcha. Before starting the shiur, Rabbi Elbaz mentioned that it was a cold evening - this was about two weeks ago when we were still in 2017. He mentioned that a certain rabbi said that when the month of Shevat falls out on a Wednesday, the weeks prior are very cold weeks. He quoted him as saying that this was a tested statement. Indeed, this year, the new month of Shevat will fall out on a Wednesday, and it has been bitterly cold for the past 10 days. In fact, some parts of our city and our country have hit record low temperatures. Where is the global warming they are all talking about? Well, we shouldn’t take it lightly; in fact, Australia has been hit with very high record temperatures, which have caused tremendous wildfires that are hard to control.

Coming back to our city, in addition to the cold weather, we were hit with some snow, which froze the whole city for a day: Schools were cancelled, businesses were closed, offices didn’t open - everything stopped. Some said that it was the worst day of their lives, because their kids and spouse were home and they did not know how to deal with all the commotion in the house. Others took this day as a day of connection, a day to reunite with their families. A day to go out and shovel the snow together. A day to build a snowman or have a snowball fight. A time to enjoy the opportunity to be with the family. We are so busy with our daily routines that when a wrench is thrown into our routine we do not know how to handle the situation. Baruch Hashem, we have days like Shabbat and snow days where we are unable to do anything other than spend quality time with our families, but unfortunately many of us do not see this as a positive thing.

My wife and I were attending a lecture the night prior to the snowstorm where most of the women were complaining about what their children were going to do with the free time. The rabbi giving the lecture said, “get on the floor and play some games with them.” Many looked at this as a strange thing, something out of the ordinary. In fact, this is out of the ordinary. Our kids are bombarded with so much school and homework that we ourselves already do not know how to spend quality time. I recently heard that the New York Board of Education wants to propose a 4-day week for public school. If the city does adopt this and the yeshivas will follow, it will be chaos. As it is, we don’t know how to handle a few days off; imagine a mandatory three days of no school on a weekly basis!

All kidding aside, we have to evaluate our priorities in life. We all run after money, real estate, cars, power, and fame; however, the real things in life, our children, we just put aside and give to other “institutions” to raise them. We give our kids to daycares with extended hours. We look for schools that have after-school programs to keep our kids busy. We sign our children up to karate, soccer, basketball, and other sorts of “entertainment” just not for us to be responsible to deal with their boredom. All too often, parents dread the phrase “I’m bored; I don’t know what to do.” This leads us to handing over our iPhones and iPads in the hope that it will keep them in a trance, as we spoke about last time.

Parents have to make a tremendous effort to be able to give their children as much time as they possibly can. We have to play with them, read with them, learn with them, laugh with them, hug them, and make them feel that they are wanted. Sometimes it is as easy as playing a quick game of tic tac toe, doing a couple of exercises together, coloring or tracing something, reading a page or two of an interesting book, or just having a five minute conversation one on one. This is the type of bond our children need in our society. Decades ago we had no choice but to be home at certain hours. Like it or not, families spent hours together. There were not many diversions outside of the home - or in the home, for that matter. Television was only in the homes of the affluent. There were no Apple gadgets; people were forced to spend time with each other. In a society like ours, where we have enumerable diversions, we have to make sure to stop ourselves and give time to our families.  

Until next time.