frumteenclassics

[frumteenclassics]

First, to answer your question "how can u ever get the disgusting pictures and feelings associated with it out of your head???" the answer is you can't do anything to get them out of your head. Trying is an exercise in futility (and worse, which I will shortly explain). Instead, you need to bury them under mountains of Torah and Mitzvos - positive acts, proper Hashkafos and good Midos. If some milk falls into your chicken soup you can't really scoop it back out, but it can be [nullified] Botul B'Shishim. The question is not how to get the milk out but how much soup is there to nullify it. So too you cannot remove those thoughts from your head, but you can bury them. Focus not on how to find those drops of bad but on increasing the amount of good in your mind and personality and body so that the effects of the bad will be as obscured as possible.

Second: Besides that, proactively trying to get rid of these thoughts just makes them stronger. You can't get rid of thoughts by thinking about them. Try this:

For the next 30 seconds, try very hard not to think of a pink elephant.

See what I mean?

The same thing applies to these kind of thoughts. The more you try not to think of them, the more they entrench themselves in your mind.

But the good news is: Don't worry so much about this. Yes, we need to stay away from things that trigger bad thoughts and images, and people profoundly underestimate the damage such exposure does (listen to this shiur about it), but the Torah was given to human beings, not angels, and nobody is perfect. Unless we were brought up in an enclave like Monroe or New Square or perhaps in certain extremely rare families, we’ve been exposed to tons of stuff that has a negative effect on us. When I was in 11th grade, which was before any of you – and perhaps even some of your parents - were born, my rebbi related to us the following fact of life that he heard back then from his son’s Rosh Yeshiva:

Your children will be exposed to more Tumah going to the corner grocery to buy a drink than your grandparents were all their lives in Europe. It is not possible anymore to rely only on sheltering our children. We must also teach them to resist the Tumah.

And this was back then. There is a certain Adam Gadol who told someone I know that when he was a boy he was a fan of the Yankees, and even when he grew up and became a big Rosh yeshiva, he found it very hard to eradicate the feeling of happiness he had when he heard that the Yankees won the world series. (But eventually he succeeded.)

So listen: Yes, you should stay away from Pritzus and, as far away as we are supposed to stay away from Pritzus, we need to stay even further than that away from bad Hashkafos. But we also need to realize that because of the world we live in, never mind because we are flesh and blood human beings, we will not always succeed. We need to accept that, and when we do absorb something detrimental to our spiritual well-being, we need to get back up on our feet and keep going. It is not spiritually healthy to dwell on our Aveiros, especially Aveiros that involve Pritzus or exposure thereto. Every now and then we have appointed times for Teshuva when we should think about our regrets, but we should not obsess about it, and we should not always keep it in the forefront of our minds.

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There was a good moshol given by the Kamarna Rebbe ZTL, about today’s Chasidim and Misnagdim:

There was once a rich man who married off his daughter, and was willing - as was the custom in those days - to support the new couple by having them move in to his house.

He told him that he would give him his own wing in his mansion, but on one condition - that he (the son in law) only eat fleishigs [meat]. The son-in-law agreed.

Some time later, the rich man married off his next daughter, and made the new son-in-law the same deal, but this time, he was only allowed to eat milchigs [dairy]. Agreed.

So he had his fleishig son-in-law on one side of the house, and his milchig one on the other side, supporting them both.

Until one day, when the wealthy man unfortunately lost all his money. Now he could no longer support his sons-in-law the way he used to. So he went to the fleishig son-in-law and said "Sorry, fleishiger son-in-law. Until now, you’ve been eating steak and lamb chop. I cant afford that anymore. Now you will have to subsist on potatoes".

Then he went to the milchig son-in-law and said "Until now you were eating ice cream and tiramisu. Now you will have to eat only potatoes."

And so it was.

One day shortly thereafter, the two sons in law went to their father in law and said when one of us was eating fleishig and the other milchigs, it made sense that we had to have separate rooms. But now that all of us are eating potatoes, we can just live together in one apartment.

The nimshal is, there used to be chasidim, and misnagdim. Fleishigs and milchigs. And there was two separate camps, that would not mix. But today, we have all gone bankrupt - our madreigah has dropped so that the chasidim are not chasidim and the misnagdim are not misnagdim.

Never mind tzimtzum, never mind supremacy of learning as opposed to other types of Avodah - halvai we should all keep the basic torah and mitzvos.

Today, we are all eating potatoes.

And so there is no longer much difference between the chasidim and the misnagdim, both are living on a bare and basics level, and so there is really no reason to have separate camps anymore.

Today, we're all eating potatoes anyway, so why have separate kitchens

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In Igeres Taimon, the Rambam demonstrates that the self-proclaimed "Moshiach" that was running around in those days was not Moshiach at all. He does this by mentioning several signs that Moshiach must display, none of which were fulfilled by the man in question.

He then says that following any such false redemption would be a violation of the Oaths, which were designed specifically to make sure that Klall Yisroel would not try to end the Golus before the proper time.

He says that this man cannot be Moshiach because, among other things, Moshiach will be suddenly and by surprise in Eretz Yisroel. Nobody will have expected this man to be Moshiach.

"At the time he is revealed, the nations will be petrified from what they hear about him; they will assemble to try to plot a defense in response to him, for they will be in awe and terrified at his open and indisputable signs and wonders".

The Rambam mentions the Kibutz Golius that Moshiach will perform, and also says that the fulfillment of world peace and the "conclusion" of the "fearful acts that will take place from east to west", "they will not happen at the beginning of his revelation in the world, but rather after the war of Gog and Magog."

Moshiach will be a prophet greater than all prophets except Moshe Rabbeinu. He will be a unique Tzadik as well, with qualities that were until then present only in Moshe Rabbeinu. He will be known as such. "Therefore, if someone who is not publicly known for his wisdom gets up and declares he is Moshiach, we may not believe him."

In other words, first Moshiach will be revealed suddenly in Eretz Yisroel, with signs that he is Moshiach, then, after Moshiach's revelation according to those signs, there will be Kibutz Golius, the war of Gog and Magog (it is clear that the war of Gog and Magog will be after the revelation of Moshiach), then other Messianic prophecies will be fulfilled.

This is supported by the Gemora at the beginning of Avodah Zorah which states that even before the war of Gog and Magog, Moshiach will be revealed, known to the nations of the world, and the nations will be so scared of him that they all want to become Jewish.

So even though we will not know for sure that this person is Moshiach, we will have a measure of evidence, such that we will be entitled to assume that he is indeed the real Moshiach. And that assumption would allow us to follow him from Kibutz Golius.

The problem is, the Rambam in Mishneh Torah says (11:3) that "Moshiach will not need to do any signs or wonders and change things in the world or nature or resurrect the dead ... rather, if someone of Dovidic lineage, and performs mitzvos like his father Dovid ... and will make all of Klall Yisroel follow the Torah, and repent, he is assumed to be Moshiach. If he succeeds..."

SO first, even here, the Rambam tells us that a prerequisite even for a person to be assumed to be Moshiach is that he will cause all of Klall Yisroel to do Teshuva. 

But besides Teshuva, the Rambam also says (11:12) that all Jews will gather around moshiach, who will determine their lineage with Ruach HaKodesh, and (see Kesef Mishna) that he will also possess the Urim V'Tumim.

In Hilchos Teshuva the Rambam writes that Moshiach will be wiser even than Shlomo HaMelech, and all the Goyim will come and listen to him.

And more: The Rambam writes that one of the requirements of a Navi in general is that he performs supernatural acts to prove his stature.

And the Rambam in Pirush HaMishnayos in Sanhedrin (ch. 11) explains that all the world, including the Goyim, will make peace with Moshiach and serve him, "because of his great righteousness and the wonders that he will do, yet reality will not be changed from what it will currently be, except for the fact that the Jews will not be under subjugation."

So clearly, there will be many wondrous acts and even miracles that the Moshiach will perform, even before the world changes, and what the Rambam says that Moshiach will not do any wonders or miracles is referring to wonders and miracles such as he lists, like the resurrection of the dead and similar things that are changes in the reality of the world, things that will indeed happen later on in the Messianic age. So all the Rambam means, as he says more clearly in Peiruch HaMishnayos, is that the Moshiach will not perform any Messianic changes in the world until later on, but even at the beginning of his revelation, he will perform several wondrous acts.

When all that happens, we can follow that man into Kibutz Golius.

And Kibutz Golius doesn’t even mean that we will go from Chutz Laaretz into Erezt Yisroel. The Raavad in his commentary on Edios writes that before we go into Eretz Yisroel, Moshiach will take all of Klall Yisroel through the desert again, like he (Moshe, the redeemer) did the first time. If that doesn't happen, then it's not the Kibutz Golius.

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It's the EFFORT that earns the Pleasure, NOT the result. So if 2 people put in the same effort and only one succeeds, THEY GET THE SAME REWARD.

Therefore, if you do your best, G-d will NEVER punish you for not succeeding. The Gemora in Kesuvos tells of a case where a woman said no to a guy but the guy persisted, all the way.

Eventually, in the middle of the act, she stopped saying no, and actually took pleasure in it. The Gemora rules that she is 100% innocent, and it is considered 100% rape, even though she eventually wanted it, because she tried her best to say no, and even if she did not 100% succeed, she 100% tried. We are judged according to our efforts, how much we try.

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Today's music is very foreign-influenced. The best we can get today is a song that helps you better feel or think about the words being sung, or the mood that is appropriate at the time (such as simcha - not holelus - at a wedding, or deveikus during kedusha). It doesn't depend so much on the artist, but on the song. It is the characteristics of a song, rather than the composer, that I feel would qualify it.

The reason I like Shlomo Carlebach's songs is that (a) the tune is always appropriate for the words, (b) he would not change the mood of a tune even if he knew that "misdirecting" the tune a bit would enhance sales (I know this as a fact), (c) none of his songs use the enhancement of grunts, or distorted, angry sounding pronunciation of words, (d) he did not put out songs because he wanted to make a record; he made a record because he had songs.

The Chasidishe melodies, and some others, share those or many of those qualities.

-- It's hard to define Jewish music today, since our music has for so so long been so so mixed up blended and influenced by and with any and all types of music that exist, and the only one criterion that determines what music is sold as "Jewish" is if the "Jewish market" is willing to buy it.

And marketing is a very messed up way to a spiritual concept, such as "Jewish music".

Music has tremendous power over us. It has the power to make us happy, sad, angry, optimistic, or hopeless. It can get a lazy guy moving, make our hearts beat faster, and make us shed tears. The Vilna Gaon writes that if someone could theoretically harness the power in music they would be able to actually “revive the dead” with it.

Music sits in your head even when you don’t know it’s there – how often do you find yourself absent-mindedly humming a tune without even deciding which tune to hum? Or to hum it at all? That doesn’t happen with non-musical information. You don’t absent-mindedly recite the Gettysburg Address. Tosfos in Megilla says that if you learn with a melody you will remember what you learn better.

Music comes from a person’s soul, says the Kuzari. The tune can have an effect even on the soul of a little baby that hears it, says the Shelah. So music is really a form of communication, soul-to-soul, that comes from somewhere deeper than the place where we make conscious decisions, and penetrates to there as well.

So I guess that Jewish Music would be music that comes from a Jewish place within a person’s soul, or at the very least, music that contains a Jewish feeling, meaning, a feeling that the Torah would encourage or at least approve of.

Now even Jews, because of the impact that their deeds and thoughts have on their souls, may have non-Jewish influences within their own souls that can be expressed in their music. And so, too, a non-Jewish melody can be “repossessed” by the Jewish soul, using the melody as a medium for the expression of exclusively Jewish sentiment.

Recognizing music as possessing Jewish sentiments is a matter of sensitivity. To be sure, to a certain extent, we do possess the sensitivity to recognize some musical sensations as thoroughly not Jewish (such as the veneration for death in many metal tunes).

But for the most part, as we can see from the above examples, we no longer possess the sensitivity to recognize music that’s coming from a Jewish place within someone, from music that is coming from elsewhere. And it’s no wonder. Since we have mixed and matched both our music and our souls with foreign influences for so long, it becomes almost impossible to sense the Jewishness and non-Jewishness in our music altogether.

We have for the longest time commercialized the creation of song, cranking out melodies while being concerned more on the sale than the soul, that it’s unclear to me that today’s music is an expression of anything except market trends.

Music, really, is a lost art. Lost because we are not sensitive enough to recognize the message of Jewishness – and to discern an undesirable message of non Jewishness – but also because there is very little left in our big business music industry that actually has a message anyway.

What we have are nice, catchy tunes, melodies to dance to, and songs to sing. But all that isn’t “music” in the religious sense. There may be an exception or two, but in general, we’re talking about a business rather than a religious experience. Or at the very best, something somewhere in between.

Our music today is a lot like us: mixed up and confused.

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Why can’t we say Kadidsh without a Minyan?

Why can’t we say Kaddish outside of Davening?

Whatever "helps" about Kaddish is obviously not merely saying the words - but rather saying them in the exact way and manner, time and place, that the initiators of this custom (it is a Minhag, Kadish) understood according to their Kabbalistic understanding.

So we know that saying Kaddish outside of Davening, or without a Minyan doesn’t help. One of the things we know about Kaddish is that it is supposed to come from a man.

There is no way for us to understand on the surface how Kaddish even helps the deceased soul. Kaddish mentions nothing about death, souls, or deceased people. In fact, the halachah is that if there is no mourner to say the mourner's Kaddish in shul (after Aleinu) a non-mourner should say it, even if he has parents!

There is absolutely no reason why parents should object to their children saying Kaddish for someone (although if they do, and the Kaddish is not obligatory on the child, he should obey his parents' unreasonable demands). No damage can happen to someone if their children say Kaddish.

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(To someone with a friend in unkosher relationship)

 You need to be that person in this boy’s life that fills the gap he has at home, not the girl. You will not be able to replace the girl – she offers what you cannot - but you can perhaps displace her.

His relationship with her will probably not last. They are likely to get into a fight, and if we’re lucky, break up. At that point, you want to have already developed with this boy a very close friend/mentor relationship. He may ask you advice about whether to continue the relationship with her, or he may look to you for the emotional security that will allow him to make the move and dump her. Or he may get dumped and then there will be an “ais ratzon” for someone beneficial to get connected to him. This will only work if:

1) You will be a close, reliable, loyal and caring friend all during the time that he does NOT respond to your guidance, meaning when he is still with the girl. You cannot be a friend in order to help him.

This is a tragic flaw in many of the so-called “at-risk youth mentoring programs that abound today. The mentor is only a friend because they want to “save” the youth. Perhaps they even got paid to do so. This is no good. Here’s the rule: DO NOT BE A FRIEND BECAUSE YOU WANT TO HELP; HELP BECAUSE YOU ARE A FRIEND. So even if you see you are getting nowhere, it should not matter. Care about him for real, for what he is, not because he’s your Mitzvah project.

2) You will not hassle him about this girl. If he’s not going to listen you, you have zero obligation to hassle him or even mention anything negative about his relationship with the girl. Fact: he’s with her, whether you like it or not. Get used to it, live with it, and treat it as any part of his life.

If he wants to complain about something that happened with her, listen to him. Ignore the fact that what he is doing is wrong, and concentrate on the fact that he is doing it and you would prefer that he seek guidance from you rather than some loser kid on the street.

Of course, you are not permitted to say anything to indicate that you APPROVE or ENCOURAGE him to have to do with girls, but recognizing the reality of an unfortunate situation and dealing with it is not the same as approving of it.

From that point, your best friend is time. There will be a time – probably many times – when this kid’s connection with this girl will be on the rocks. But you will only be able to do something then if you were there for him, honestly and sincerely, all this time.

For now, your focus should be on the other, non-girl aspects of the relationship, such as helping him with his parents, his Rebbeim, and whatever other issues where he is open to suggestions.

And care about him, a lot.

Time is on your side. It may take months, or even a year. But in the end he will thank you.

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WHAT WE SHOULD THINK IN RESPONSE TO THE TERROR PART I

It’s true – and this everyone knows already – that when suffering befalls us, we are obligated to take stock in our actions and do teshuva, because, as Chazal say, “There is no suffering without sin, and no pain without transgression”. The Rambam writes that it is cruelty (achzorius) to allow suffering to happen without attributing it to our sins. It’s like when a father slaps a kid in the face, and the kid says, “I trust my father that her must have had a reason to slap me, but I am not capable of figuring out why”. The purpose of the slap is to teach a lesson, and if the kid refuses to learn, then I guess another punishment is necessary, r”l.

OUR RESPONSE: IMPROVEMENT VS. CHANGE

So the first, most basic response is Teshuva, but it has to be accompanied by ruthless objectivity. Meaning, I am certain that everyone will say in response to this, “We have to speak less loshon horah, respect each other more, do more chesed and learn more Torah”. People love to look at themselves and say, “We can improve”. But they do not like to say, “We have to CHANGE”. There is a big difference. Improvement means you have a certain value that you are striving toward, but you have to strive harder, more, better. Of course, regardless of how hard you strive there is always room for improvement. People are willing to commit to improve, but of course since there’s always room for improvement and always will be, the determination of whether they actually did as much as they could do to improve is impossible to make.

Then there is “change”. As opposed to improvement, where you have to try harder to do what you already are doing, or at least want to do, change, in this context, means to wake up and to realize that there are many aveiros that people are not trying to work on at all, but merely live our life accepting them as part of our lifestyle. People don’t want to think about these aveiros because responding to them means not only some vague commitment to “try harder” but to measurably and visibly make changes in your lifestyle.

That is why if someone says, “Jews are being killed in Israel. It’s because we talk loshon horah, we don’t respect each other enough, and don’t pray with enough kavanah”, people will accept that. But if someone says, “Jews are being killed in Israel. It’s because married women do not cover their hair, because people go mixed swimming, because boys and girls mix in ways they should not, because people read and watch and log on to places they should not”, people will get mad and offended. Why would we accept only certain aveiros as capable of causing death and not others? Is it because we are reluctant to admit that our very lifestyle needs to be changed? Or that we only want to accept responsibility for something that we can always say, “We’re trying”, or “There’s ALWAYS room for improvement?”

Whatever. Our first response to tragedy is to ruthlessly audit our actions and admit to ourselves that our sins – not only loshon horah and disrespect for each other – is causing Jews to die all over the world. When Achan sinned by talking from the spoils of Yericho, Jews were killed, and that was one person, one sin. Everyone knows what their own sins are, and Hashem is showing us the possible consequences of them. And better he should show us in Olam hazeh…. At least now we are getting a warning. Sins are the most destructive thing in the universe.

THE CHURBAN OF OUR SINS

The World Trade Centers were probably the most monumental structures in the whole world. I’ve been in many countries, and I have never seen anything like them in terms of overwhelming hugeness. Watching them being blown away shakes us up, and we are shocked at the sight of something so big being obliterated like that.

The reality is, though, that destruction is nothing compared to what our sins do in Shamayim. This world is nothing. It’s a puny, little speck compared to the universe at large. And the universe itself is less than a puny speck compared to the Olamos HaElyonim, the majestic upper worlds that are closer to Hashem. This entire universe is a little joke compared to the universe upstairs.

And the damage that a few planes can do down here is nothing compared to the utter destruction what sins can do up there. Up there is a world that lasts forever, is built of the goodness of our Mitzvos, and is beautiful and majestic beyond our comprehension.

When we do a sin, it is like atom bombing the most majestic city in the world. All the suffering, the screaming, the destruction, the horror and the ugliness, happens in Shamayim. It’s hard to envision what such a thing looks like, but the destruction of something so big and majestic that horrified and shocked so, is a small minuscule Moshol of what we do to Hashem’s world, to our own eternal Gan Eden world, and to this small world too, when we sin.

After 120 years, we will live forever and ever, for millions and millions of years until eternity, in a world that we make. Our Mitzvos build towers. Our aveiros tear them down. The horror and the shock of seeing the WTC torn down is nothing compared to our shock and horror of seeing the towers built by our Mitzvos torn down by our own actions. We are all going to have to relive the experience of the world trade center destruction in the next world. It will be not the death of others, but our own death over and over being experienced then, the pain and anguish will not be watched but intimately felt.

It won't be some business offices that will be destroyed but our own homes, built by the sweat of our brows. That we will see crashing down around us, where we will be trapped between vaporizing heat waves and jumping to a crashing death. Our deaths, our homes, our horror, and our tragedy – it will all be so personal and up close. Taking place in the deepest part of our souls. We will see it happen, experience it, feel it in the most painful way. And we will think about those beautiful towers and the city that we built with our mitzvos and get sickened by what was and what could have been if not for the destruction taking place before our eyes. And we will wonder at the evil of the terrorists and what kind of animal would destroy such an infinitely beautiful city created out of the stuff of Mitzvos, and torture such beautiful peaceful souls created in the Image of G-d. We will watch, helplessly as the most beautiful and majestic structures go down in smoke and ashes, destroyed by suicide hijackers. We will watch and not be able to stop them, and we will wonder how Hashem could allow such beauty to be destroyed – beauty that was created by a Jewish soul – a chelek elokah mima’al – a part of Hashem Himself. Infinite beauty and majesty. How could Hashem allow it? We will scream out at the injustice and the evil of the perpetrators, the death and destruction they are causing. The sorrow, the horror. The lives snuffed out at their hands, and we will demand justice. We will scream to Hashem to reveal the identities of the cowardly pilots and bring the criminals to justice. And we will demand to know, how such pain and horror could exist in the Olam HaEmes.

And Hashem will then answer us. And all the horror and pain that we saw until then will pale in comparison to the horror and pain and shock that we will realize that we didn’t grow much from when we lived in the Olam HaSheker, that just like we had eyes but refused to see Hashem’s justice in this world, we still are blind in the next world, too blind and deaf and dumb to understand the justice and ways of Hashem, because at that moment, when we scream in pain and horror at the destruction of the infinite beauty created by our mitzvos, Hashem will allow us to see the entire picture. And when see that whole picture, we will then know the horror and pain of Gehennom itself, worse then experiencing our own deaths thousands and thousands of times over, and being helpless to stop it.

Because we will then see that the pilots, the terrorists, the masterminds behind this destruction…

… is us.

We did the aveiros, we knew what they would do, we were warned, and we destroyed our own world. And one avairah is like dropping ten thousand suicide planes on G-d’s world. On our world, that we created with our mitzvos.

But it will be too late, then.

“Today is the time to do them [the Mitzvos], tomorrow is the time to reap their reward.”

We have a choice. Let’s make it before it’s too late.

Let’s learn from the terrible destruction that we just saw.

Rosh HaShanah is coming. Let’s do teshuva.

PART II - HASHGOCHA

Ari Schonbrun is one of the heads of Tomchei Shabbos in the Five Towns area of New York. I know him personally. His office was on the 101st floor in World Trade Center #1. He told Arutz-7 how his life was saved by "miracle after miracle after miracle:" "I was on the 78th floor, about to enter an elevator for the 101st floor (I happened to have stayed home an extra ten minutes in order to help my son with some schoolwork...), when I heard a tremendous explosion. All the electricity went out. I entered an office where I saw some light, and someone was on the radio, I tried to get her to get some help, but she couldn't do it because there were too many people. Then I told the floor's fire warden that we have to get out… he said OK, we can go down the emergency steps, but we couldn't find them, there was only smoke all around. I kept walking and I found a man saying, "Here, here," so about 15 people went down the steps there. A co-worker of mine named Virginia was hurt, and she kept saying, "Don't leave me, don't leave me." I went with her and we started going down. My cell phone was dead, but after we went about three floors, all of a sudden the phone started ringing. It was my wife, and I told her, "Joyce, I'm OK, I'm OK," over and over. Then someone asked me if he could use the phone and I said sure, and again - the phone was totally dead. I felt that it was just a miracle that my wife got through. "Virginia kept saying, 'Don't leave me,' and I said to everyone, 'Make way, there is someone wounded here,' and they let us through. At one point she said she couldn't go any further, and I said, " Virginia, you just have to!" We finally got down to the bottom, and the police directed us where to go outside, and I looked around and finally found someone to help [Virginia] - only then did I look around outside and see the second building on fire. I couldn't understand, and I said, "I know that there was some bomb in the first building, but why is there a fire in the second building?" - because the whole time until then I didn't hear or know anything else... So then they told me that two planes had crashed, one into each building. We had had absolutely no idea. At that point Virginia still didn't let me go, she said I have to go with her even to the hospital. I said I don't know if they'll let me, etc. But she said I had to, and they let me in the ambulance, and we were apparently the first ambulance that left from there… When we got there, I found out that the second building fell. And I know that if I hadn't gone with Virginia, I would have stayed there walking around, and who knows what would have happened to me. I'm telling you, it was just miracle after miracle after miracle that saved my life… Just like in the story of Purim…"

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sandythedog

Posted 14 November 2011 - 11:34 PM

We wonder: why are we shomer? why do we separate ourselves from the goyim and act all 'archaic'? Well, here's a few reasons:

1) Every time we connect physically via a handshake, a hug etc, we release chemicals from our brains that connect us to that person. Now, what if this person is nice, kind, loving, caring etc, you don't stay shomer, and now ur connected to him/her. What if, two months into dating, you realize he isn't the person you thought he was? Or that he is totally not for you for one reason or another? You now have to deal with the feelings of connectivity which were reinforced by physical contact. [check out: The Magic Touch by Gila Manolson]

2) When touch comes to play in a pre-marital relationship, since there isn't a commitment, it is mostly physical or at least, mostly selfish. How many people say 'I make physical contact with my boyfriend/girlfriend bc he/she wants that.'? Usually, it's probably initiated by the person himself/herself, for themselves, NOT for the other party. In a marriage, one is supposed to give. If one is only in the marriage for self-gratification, that's gonna be a major problem.

3) Obviously, if you had physical contact with someone, you're gonna remember it as either the first time person a and yourself did xyz, especially if first time doing whatever action it was. What about your husband/wife one day? When you have any kind of PG/PG 13 contact with your spouse, do you really want to be thinking 'I remember this action with person a.?' There's a certain, innocence, in it. IF YOU'VE DONE THINGS B4, IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO TURN AROUND. A U turn in life, starts with U.

4) Physical acts are draining after a while. They aren't fulfilling on their own, without the substance. Think of it this way: you have a table of junk food in front of you. You can really only eat soo much without an upset stomach or whatever. IF there was something fulfilling there, you'd eat your share and feel satisfied; but if not, you are only left with the feeling of emptiness bc of lack of substance. That's what it's like when one does sexual things out of marriage (or endulgies in those things, whether via inappropriate reading/viewing material or physical actions one does to himself/herself).

5) In the context of a marriage, what are marital relations about anyway? If it's ONLY about having children, then the husband of a wife who is expecting would have no requirement to provide for her physical needs in this way while she's pregnant. Or, if someone isn't able to have children etc. Both of these cases aren't accurate-a husband would still have an obligation to his wife, I believe (Rav Moderator, please correct if wrong). So what's the deal? As we said, physical contact is about connection. You are connecting to one's spouse, and one's Creator, by taking the physical and elevating it to the spiritual. (Also, we are referred to as Hashem's wife. That is one expression used to show our relationship with Him. So maybe that's also why connected to Hashem when together physically with spouse. ) When physical contact occurs outside a marriage, we are then trying to connect to something that can't be connected to. There's no commitment, no 'real deal.'

Aish.com has some great articles on this.

About individuals (when too involved in the secular world) who may be too lax in their behavior: http://www.aish.com/sp/lal/Intimacy_Whats_Sacred.html

About the meaning of marital relations in the marriage context: http://www.aish.com/sp/pg/48883722.html

It may be tough to hang in there but you know what? It saves you heartache, trouble, pain and -yourself. Would you give any part of yourself to someone you've only known a short time?? Very few of us are organ donors, even just for kidneys...maybe there's a reason....maybe we have a sense of self that we just can't let go of. Marriage is about letting YOU blend with SPOUSE. Not, GIVING AWAY yourself.

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Daas Torah means that the Torah trains a person to think a certain way - with logic, with accuracy, with wisdom. And - and this is the main point here - it is not possible to attain this type of thinking unless you are a Torah scholar. This is because Torah is the way Hashem thinks. Hashem's thoughts are not only wise, they are "perfection." You can only train your mind to approach G-d's way of thinking by studying it. It is not duplicated anywhere.

The Halachic source for Daas Torah is a SMA is Choshen Mishpat #3, where he writes that the Halachic rulings of the layman tend to be the opposite of those of the Torah.

Rav Chaim Brisker gave numerous examples. Here's one:

He asked educated, clever laymen what they think the Halachah ought to be in a case where your cat drinks up your neighbor's milk (do you have to pay for the milk)? And, what is the Halachah where your son accidentally throws his baseball through your neighbor’s window (do you have to pay for the window)?

He gave a hint: In one case you have to pay, in the other, you don’t.

The laymen said that of course if your son breaks the window you have to pay - you can control your son, but not your cat! Parents have an obligation to make sure their children do not break windows, but there is no obligation to train cats.

The Halachah is exactly the opposite. Your cat is considered your possession, your property, and therefore an extension of yourself. You property damages something, it’s as if you damaged it.

But your son, although there is a moral obligation to teach him right from wrong, legally, he is still not your possession. Therefore, you cannot bring the father to court for the deed of the child. They are two totally different entities.

There are more like this, but the point was, the Torah teaches people to think clearly, properly, and wisely. It also teaches values that are integral in making decisions.

Therefore, the greater a Talmid Chacham you are, the more you understand Torah, that is, the way G-d thinks, the more you are trained in that way of thinking.

Of course, this is all relative. Who has reached that level where his thinking mimics that of the Torah? Obviously, no human being can reach that level completely, since nobody can be perfect like G-d. The gauge to measure how much "Daas Torah" an individual has does not exist. Today, we have no Neviim, no Chazal, no Rishonim, and no Talmidei Chachamim on the levels that existed not long ago.

The question, "What level of Daas Torah exists today"? Is not one that can be objectively answered, since there is no units of measurement for Daas Torah. What we do understand is, that the Torah thinks differently than we do, and that those who are more connected to the Torah think closer to the Torah's way than those who are less.

And it takes more than just knowing Torah. Outside influences also affect a person's Daas. If his mind is influenced by secular thinking, that effects his Daas. If his righteousness is not proportionate to his Torah knowledge, that also effects his Daas. A person's Midos affect his Daas - if someone is not fearless and independent, then he will be influenced by the masses, the way Shaul HaMelech did not kill Agag because he was afraid of what people would say.

If a person has a vested interest in something (a Negiyus), that also effects his thinking. Nobody is immune to Negiyus. The Sanhedrin Hagadol was vulnerable to Negiyus. The leaders of the Sanhedrin, even in the days of Korach, rebelled against Moshe Rabbeinu, because they benefited from financial favors of Korach.

Even the greatest Tzadik can be misinformed. With lack of information, or false information, even the greatest Daas Torah can be terribly mistaken.

And even after all that, nobody is infallible. One of the reasons for the Halachah of "ain onshin min hadin" - that we do not punish people based on a Kal Vachomer - is because a Kal Vachomer is not a tradition but rather logic. And you never know for sure that your logic is not mistaken. You have no right to punish someone else because your logic says he is "chayav." That applies to the Daas Torah even of Chazal.

In addition, there are other factors that can cause great Tzadikim and Talmidei Chachamim to make mistakes. Sometimes, as a punishment for the generation, Hashem will blind the eyes of its leaders, and make the greatest Talmidei Chachamim say the wrong things. This, according to the Maharsha, is why Rav Yochanan ben Zakai "forgot" to ask Aspasyonus to spare Jerusalem. Because the generation was not worthy, Hashem hid the obvious and logical from their leader.

The Torah leaders are spiritually connected to their flock. If the flock is not worthy, the leader is blinded. Even the prophecy of Moshe Rabbeinu, Chazal say, was only for the sake of the people, and when the people were not worthy, Moshe lost his Nevuah.

The Ohr Hachaim says that the reason the Meraglim[spies sent by Moses] got so messed up is because even though their (the Meraglim) intentions were pure, but - listen to this! - because those who elected them to the job had the wrong intentions, the character and the imperfections of the people infected their appointed representatives - the Meraglim.

In other words, if you are a Tzadik but elected to your position by non-Tzadikim, then you are in trouble of getting messed up yourself.

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The idea that someone goes either to heaven or hell exclusively is a Christian idea. The truth is that all of us (with few exceptions, as explained below) go to gehinnom for whatever sins we do, in order to cleanse us of those sins, after which we go to gan eden to enjoy the reward for our good deeds.

There are those who do not get olam habah. A whole list of those - 22 of them in fact - are posted elsewhere on the site. [Note: I couldn't find the list, but I know it is elaborated upon in the Mishnah Torah and Shaarei Teshuvah.] ---

Gehinnom is not the hell that the Christians believe in. "Gehinnom" is what happens to a sinner when he dies. That is, his soul is as yet unfit to attach itself to G-d, and it feels the excruciating pain of not being able to find its fulfillment by connecting to G-d. This pain is the punishment for its sins, and also its purification. Eventually, the soul is purified and can connect to G-d to whatever degree it has earned the ability to do so. (There are exceptions: Some souls are so corrupt that they can never attach to G-d and flounder unattached forever. Still other souls are commanded to return to this world in a reincarnated state to fulfill themselves. The pain a soul experiences in returning to this world is worse that the pain of Gehinnom).

Distance from G-d is called "heck"; connection to G-d is called "heaven".

---

You need to focus both on the reward for Mitzvos, and punishment for aveiros.. Yiras HaOnesh, fear of punishment, is important for Sur Mearah (staying away from bad acts), and reward is necessary for Aseh Tov (doing good acts). A person can rationalize and say "Hey I do lots of good, what’s so bad if now I do a sin?" The answer to that is that it IS bad if you do a sin. It's not enough merely to do good; you have to refrain from the bad. Yiras HaOnesh is a vital deterrent.

But it is true that we must emphasize the greatness of the Jewish soul, not merely the punishment for sin, and that especially ex post facto - regarding sins that you already committed - it is important not to focus too much on them, but rather to go further and focus on the opportunities of today.

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The reason why we learn is not because it is an obligation - if that were so, you'd be right. We could discharge our obligation with a bit of learning in the day and another bit in the night. We learn because it is an opportunity, because becoming a Talmid Chacham - and by that I mean the biggest Talmid Chacham you can possibly be - is the best thing you can do for yourself, your family, and the world. There is no obligation for a person to make a billion dollars. But if he could, he would. Learning more is is spiritually making more. A lot more. This is something I wrote about about this topic many years ago:

The overwhelmingly most important advantage of learning full time is that you are learning more than if you learn not to full time. Simple as that. Torah learning is the highest, greatest, most glorious form of avodas Hashem, which will get for you the greatest share in Olam Habah possible, much much more and much much greater than any other thing you can do for Hashem, including any other type of Mitzvos. Learning Torah brings by far the greatest Nachas to Hashem, the greatest benefits to Klall yisroel, and the greatest benefits to those who do the learning, than anything else you can possibly do.

Hands down, no contest.

That's why we learn.

As an example: A man once came to the Chazon Ish asking him advice. he got 2 job offers, and he wants to know which to take. The first is Kashrus administrator of the rabbanut, a position in which he is confident that he would be able to chnage the kashrus standards in all of eretz yisroel, causing the public to eat only kosher food. If he does not take this job, they will hire someone who does not have his standards and the public who rely on this hesher will not eat kosher (note: I do not know what the issues with the hechsher were, or how severe). His other choice is to be a rebbi in a yeshiva. If he does not take that job, the Yeshiva will hire a different ben torah, on the same level as him, so its not as if the kids are going to be less frum. Which job should he take, he asked.

The Chazon Ish asked him, "Do you think, if you take the job as a Rebbi, that you could perhaps convince 2 of your students to learn during a Bain Hazemanim?"

"Yes," he said. "Ithink I can do that."

"Then you should know," said the Chazon Ish, "that two kids learning Torah bain hazemanim as if it were the zman, is much more valuable to Hashem than making the entire Eretz Yisroel eat kosher!"

This is the kind of material that boys are taught in yeshiva. This is the main motivation for learning in Kollel.

The situation these days in Eretz Yisroel is terrible. We need to help our brothers there. What can we do - spiritually, I am talking about now - to help?

Well, the Chazon Ish said that learning one single Tosfos has the power to nullify many evil decrees on Klall Yisroel."

It can take any where from a few minutes to much longer to learn a Tosfos. One single Tosfos -- perhaps a few minutes of Torah learning - can nullify many Gezeiros against Klall Yisroel.

We say it every day: Talmud Torah Kneged Kulam. This means, say Chazal, that learning one word of Torah - one! word! - imparts more holiness than a lifetime of doing Mitzvos!

The Vilna Gaon comments: So when somoene learns just one page of gemora, he covers hundreds of words, each of which gives him more Kedusha than a lifetime of doing Mitzvos.

In Yeshiva, they teach this, that Torah learning - as opposed to any othe form of Avodas Hashem - is by far, by very, very far, the highest and greatest act of Avodah that a person can be invovled in, and through it, one merits by far, by very very far, the greatest measure of Olam Habah; and through it, one releases, by far, by very very far, the very greatest measure of Hashem's influence and Goodness into this world.

Nothing compares. Nothing comes close. Not Kiruv, not Tzedakah, not Hatzalah, nothing.

[frumteenclassics]

First, you have to realize that Hashem wants you to be you and not somebody else. And that He gave you the tools you need to succeed, that includes your personality not someone else's. 

Second, you need to establish priorities for yourself. You have to remember that your job in this world is to become a Tzadik, and everything else is just distractions. The question you need to ask yourself regularly is: What do I need to change in order to become a bigger Tzadik? Or: About every part of you want to change, ask yourself: Will changing this make me a bigger Tzadik? If the answer is no, forget it.

The Gerrer Rebbe once asked, when the Torah tells us not to be jealous, it lists a whole list of things possible to be jealous of: Do not desire the wife of your friend, the house, the ox, the donkey, everything of your friend, the posuk says.

Why does the posuk make a whole list and then end with "everything"? Isn’t this redundant?

The Gerrer Rebbe answered: The Torah is giving us advice on how not to be jealous. It's telling us that whatever we have is a package deal. If you’re jealous of any individual thing your friend has, look at "everything" he has - maybe he has someone in his family who's sick; maybe he has a bad wife; everybody has their "baggage." Life is a package deal. You don’t want the other guy's package, and you cant pick and choose a little from every package.

You need to focus on YOUR job, YOUR capabilities and what Hashem has in mind for you. Everything else is just distractions.

[frumteenclassics]

Hashem gives you a Yetzer Tov[good inclination], which he would just remove if He wanted you to choose bad. The strength of the Yetzer Tov and Yetzer Horah[bad inclination] are always balanced by Hashem so that you are able to choose good if you so choose.

Here's news: Your Yetzer Horah itself wants you to beat it.

Look at your Yetzer Horah not as an unbeatable opponent whose purpose is to beat you but a sparring partner whose purpose is to make you as strong and skilled as possible. It will fight just hard enough to make you put in a good effort, but never too hard for you to win.

And Hashem makes sure that each individual gets the particular sparring partner best suited for his individual needs. In whatever areas you need more training, or have greater potential, that's where your Yetzer Horah will spar with you.

And the stronger you get, the more effort your sparring partner is going to have to exert in order to get you to an even higher level of skill and strength.

That's why Tzadikim have a "greater" Yetzer Horah. It means that if they want to get even stronger, they have to fight a stronger opponent.

And the strength and skill that you get from the spiritual exercise with the Yetzer Horah is what is gives you never-ending, infinite happiness forever in Olam Habah.

The reason we have "so many problems" today (and not only today) is because people have a choice. They can choose to get up, put in the effort and earn their muscles. Or they can sit back and have their Neshoma get beaten up. It's a lot easier, but less rewarding in the long term.

Most of us get trounced a lot. But that doesn't matter. What counts is that we get back up and fight again. And again. And again. And whereas with a physical trainer, you are never guaranteed of reaching your goals, in the fight with the Yetzer, Hashem guarantees that if we keep trying, we'll slam him down so hard that he'll never get up again.

Forever.

[frumteenclassics]

Hashem is perfect, but humans are not. To attribute Hashem's characteristics to a human is messed up, but because it is also unhealthy for your soul, your mind, and locks you into an unrealistic perspective of things and sets you up for disappointment, it is called a sickness. It also, ironically, gives us an excuse NOT to learn from our role models, even as we worship them - that is, since they are perfect, we surely cannot emulate them! We can’t reach their level!

And we convince ourselves that our "admiration" for the role model somehow redeems us, because if we can’t be good, at least we admire those who are. Like the people who think that putting a sticker of the Chofetz Chaim on their telephone somehow reduces the severity of their speaking loshon horah. "At least I talk about not talking loshon horah all day" they think.

We end up vicariously living righteous lives through our worship (that’s what it is) of our role models, which alleviates to some extent the emptiness we feel for not living righteous lives ourselves.

Our role models are to be used not as distant objects of worship but as examples of what we can become. That only works if we admit their being like us in our struggle to attain what they have attained already. And what they constantly struggle to hold on to.

[frumteenclassics]

The Halachah defines what's moral.

Example: Before the Torah was given, if someone needed a loan and you loaned him money at 1% interest, which was way below the prime rate then, you did him a big chesed.

But after the Torah was given, if you lent someone money on interest you committed a terrible sin, since the Torah prohibited it. After the Halachah says not to do it, it is no longer a chesed but a misdeed.

This is because Hashem  knows what’s good or bad for us, and if the Halachah says do NOT give this guy money, its because Hashem knows the best thing for this guy is not to have the money, despite what it may look like to you.

Morals are the creation of society. Each society decides what they consider "moral". In ancient China, at a man's funeral, they would kill his wife and bury her with her husband. They considered that moral, then. It's like loyalty to the husband even after death.

But now we consider that insane. In a thousand years from now they could saying that today's morals are barbaric.

The only thing consistent is the Torah. If the Torah says do not do such and such because it is "ervah" - that means it is immoral. The Torah has its own rules of morality, just like, l'havdil, man-made rules, but the Torah's rules were made by G-d, Who really knew what is moral and not.

[frumteenclassics]

In order to be accepted nowadays you have to be thin -- it's just a fact of life. Not only guys but women also respect thin people much more than overweight.

Being overweight is like a handicap nowadays and its worth a lot to get rid of it. How much would you pay to get rid of a handicap if you were blind or deaf? Being overweight today is the same.

The problem with anorexics is that they don’t know when to stop, they just overdo it. I read the book "wasted" by marya hornbacher who had ED for like 14 years, all the time she was winning awards for creative writing and she was doing work in Washington and everything was fine except she didn’t know when to stop. That’s what got her into trouble. and she recovered anyway, she's married and leading a normal life, even though she was overdoing it for 14 years.

The idea is to not eat until you get to your target weight and then maintain it. you can't overdo it. so I don’t eat almost anything but only until I am thin. then you have to slowly maintain your thinness. but you can always recover; you just have to be careful not to overdo it.

I'm torn.

Part of me wants to try to convince you that you're wrong, that you're sliding down a slippery slope and the brakes you see at your feet are an illusion. I want to tell you about girls I know who wasted away thinking that they could stop when they want only to later find out that they can't. Or they never want. That thin is never thin enough. Until it's too late.

Part of me wants to tell you that.

But I know from experience that whatever I say will not convince you that you are on a one way road to oblivion. The hardest thing in the world to convince someone to do is to get out of a destructive relationship. Destructive relationships mess with your head and your heart, and words are pathetically inadequate against a head and heart so utterly messed up. So, I know I cannot convince you to get out of the perverted, sadomasochistic relationship you have with your own body. You two are too close for me to get in and break you up, too dependent on each other for me to convince you to carry on in a healthy manner.

I know when I'm licked.

So I'm going for help. Reading your post, I feel there may be a way. I will be back. Don't go away.

Oh, and by the way, the word is "anoretics." "Anorexic" is an adjective, as in, "Anoretics are anorexic". Perhaps you should educate yourself a bit about the game you're getting yourself into.

MODERATOR Posted - 25 July 2000 0:20

OK, I'm back. I did research on Marya Hornbacher, the award-winning journalist, who you write "recovered" after 14 years of anorexia. Here's an article she wrote in USA Today.

(You can see it at http://www.usaweekend.com/98_issues/980222/980222_anorexia.html)

First Person

Issue date: February 20-22, 1998

I starved myself for 14 years. Eventually, at 52 pounds ...I faced a scary choice: Eat or die By Marya Hornbacher

[Hornbacher has struggled with bulimia and anorexia for 14 years. She is the winner of a White Award for Best Freelance Story of 1993 -- a story that grew into a new book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia. Now 23, she doesn't discuss her weight, as part of her ongoing recovery. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband.]

"I struggle daily with food," says author Marya Hornbacher. became bulimic at age 9, anorexic at 15. At 16, I walked into the revolving door of hospitalizations that "career" eating-disordered people get stuck in. I still manage to get out only for brief periods. In 1993, I hit bottom at 52 pounds and was given a week to live. Faced with a choice -- eat or die -- I ate. It was not as easy a choice as one might expect. In fact, it was the most difficult one I've ever made.

I keep having to make it, every day.

Today I appear, to our skewed cultural eye, relatively "healthy." My body doesn't know that. What it knows is that I've been starving it for nearly 15 years, careening from bulimia to anorexia and back again. In the back of my mind, I understood "thinness" as a synonym for "control," "control" for "respect" -- respect I thought would finally let me feel worthwhile. As I wasted my life in search of something that doesn't exist -- that "perfect" body, "perfect" self -- my body ate itself away. And now it doesn't work.

MY LIFELONG STRUGGLE

I battle this illness both in the hospital and out ... and in again. I've been hospitalized seven times.

I am 23; my body thinks it's far older than that. My bones are brittle, my heart weak and erratic, my esophagus and stomach riddled with ulcers, my reproductive system shot, my immune system useless. But I'm alive.

I'm alive. That, for me, is a daily surprise and delight. Having lived so long in the dark, cold place that is profound obsession, the small pleasures of living have incredible meaning for me. And though this is a constant struggle, though my eating disorder is still at my back, I am better able now to sense it and fend it off.

An eating disorder, while also an addiction, is in some ways a simple way of avoiding the pain of regular life. Every emotion, every struggle, is reduced to a war between you and food.

To bring myself back from the edge, I had to question the belief that self and image are one and the same. I had to decide whether I would continue my frantic quest for "thinness," or find something more important to do with my time.

This is an ongoing process. I struggle daily with food, with my image in the mirror. But four years ago, I didn't even put up a fight. Now, more often than not, I win: I eat, I work, I live my life.

I began to get well, I think, when I realized that I had been living a lie. I was living for "thinness," as so many millions of people -- so many of them women -- are. It's no way to live.

Though I sometimes fall back, and though I am constantly reminded of just how powerful the forces of this disease can be, I am nevertheless learning, finally, to live.

One more thing: In her book she writes that she knows she will not live long; her life expectancy has been dramatically shortened by her ED.

Other posters:

My sister and I have struggled with ed since we were 10 and 8 years old, respectively.

Even before then we had a distorted body image and a distorted view of what a healthy body should look like. Part of it was having an anorectic for a mother. Part of it was the influence from our dance and gymnastics instructors (though things have gotten better since we were young). And there was always that desire to be in control. I always felt that with everything in my life that wasn't going my way there was always one thing I could control...my weight.

Getting thin--I wish there were some way I could convince you not to do this to yourself. But the moderator is right: nothing I say will help to change your mind.

I have to tell you though I feel very strange writing this. Because I still struggle with anorexic tendencies. I feel like a hypocrite telling you how miserable the life is because I still haven't completely recovered from it. And I wonder if I ever will. I have been at a healthy weight for several years now but my eating habits are still unhealthy, and my thinking can be extremely illogical at times.

For example, I know that at a weight under 120 lbs. I would look pretty nasty...skin and bones. But I still have this ridiculous goal in my mind...I want to hop on the scale and read 99 lbs. But you know what? When I did weigh 99 lbs. my goal suddenly became 50. And when I was hospitalized at 48 lbs. (I was still fairly young...this wasn't at my adult height) I still didn't feel I was thin enough. I used silly personifications to describe my weight (e.g. "99 pounds is a 'happy' weight...113 pounds is a 'disappointed' weight).

It makes no sense at all but this is the way I think sometimes. I'd hate for someone else to go through the same things I have. And that's not all. Ed caused even more problems. I struggled with everything from self mutilation to alcohol abuse due to the emotional suffering I was dealing with. Just thought I'd share my personal story...probably wont affect you much.

It's like an addiction - nobody wants to stop an addiction. But the problem is, it's not really "you" that doesn't want to stop. You're not controlling that decision - the ED is. Addictions - and ED's - take a hold of you and control you like a virus. You gotta fight the ED. It lies to you, it tricks you, it makes false promises and in the end, it’s like a parasite, it intends to eat you up till there’s nothing left.

Don’t let anorexia fool you. Don’t let it make believe it’s your friend till it eats you alive. Get help and fight it. Your life could be at stake!