Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
Today we’ll start with a Dvar Torah and connect it to an important concept that relates to our emotional side.
The beginning of Parashat Kedoshim, which we read last week, tells us that a person should respect his parents, honor and fear his parents, and keep the Shabbat. From there we learn an important lesson-that although respecting our parents is important, Shabbat is more important. Therefore, if a parent asks a child to make him a cup of coffee on Shabbat, the child does not listen because he has to respect the Shabbat more than his parents.
The Meshech Chochma, Rav Meir Simha of Dvinsk, asks why we need a pasuk to tell us this. He cites a Gemara that says a kohen who’s walking by a cemetery is not obliged to walk in to return a lost object, because he is not permitted to transgress God’s will for the will of a mortal. So, if the kohen can’t go into the cemetery, and has to leave a gold watch where it is, and have a man suffer the loss, why would I think that I can listen to my father or mother when they ask me to make a cup of coffee on Shabbat?
He answers that it’s because respecting one's parents is not just a man-to-man concept, but rather, our whole religion is based on this father-son, mother- daughter, parent-child connection. And if we break that connection, and there's a lack of respect for a parent from a child, we've lost our tradition and we’ve lost everything.
This is an interesting concept to consider- that our job as parents is not necessarily about what we tell our children, but rather the strong family bonds that we forge.
So, because one might have thought it would be worth it to make that cup of coffee on Shabbat, because not making it might break the strong family bond, we are told not to.
A psychologist named Verg Bengston once conducted the largest ever study of religion and family across generations. He followed more than 350 families composed of thousands of individuals whose lives spanned more than a century. The oldest subject was born in 1881 and the youngest in 1988. The goal was to find out how religion is or is not passed down from one generation to the next. He found that despite enormous change in American society, a child is actually more likely to remain within the religious fold of his family, then to leave it.
And they found that while outside forces do play a role, the crucial factor in whether a child keeps the faith is the presence of a strong family bond.
Parents who take their faith seriously and interact with their children during their formative years, in a warm, affirming and respectful manner are more likely to pass on their religious traditions, belief, and practices. We don't need studies to back up what the Meshech Chochma says, but it's always interesting to see it, after the fact. Look at that- they studied it, but we knew it all along. That’s the wisdom of the Torah, handed down rather than something that we have to study to figure out.
An important takeaway for us is that we must use our emotional side in order to keep our religion alive in our families. That's the strong family bond. This is especially important post- Passover, where there's a lot of stress and a lot of hard work on the part of many mothers and maybe some fathers.
You might look back on the holiday and say that it was tough- it was a tough week with grandchildren and sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, and who knows what!
But you know what? You were investing in your family's religious future, because you were creating that strong family bond. And for those of you that might have regretted Passover and want a chance to fix that feeling of regret, the summer is coming, when again, everyone is on top of each other. Again you have the chance to appreciate and realize what you're doing when you're keeping that family bond alive, you are keeping our religion alive.
Have a wonderful day.