Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s was a time similar to the time of Hanukkah. During Hanukkah, the Jewish people were being swept up by the influence of Hellenism, which was getting people not to really believe in Hashem anymore. In Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s, people were being swept up by something called the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment meant that boys or girls studying in yeshiva were being told, “Do you want to live this wretched Jewish life? Let me take you out. Let me take you to the world. I’m going to educate you in a way that lets you know you can leave your religion behind and live out your dreams.” Tens of thousands, maybe millions, of Jewish people followed that path.
The story we’re telling you here today is about a great rabbi. His name is Yitzchak Hutner. He was the late Rosh Yeshiva of Chaim Berlin Yeshiva. He was in Slabodka, at one of the premier Yeshivot (yeshivas) in Europe. One day—a day after day—the Enlightenment approached him and said, “You’ve got to leave this place, and we’re going to give you a ticket to your future.” They talked to him and talked to him. Finally, they made their final offer. They said, “Tomorrow morning, 7.30, the train will be leaving the station. If you get on that train, it’s a train that will take you to your dreams. If you don’t get on the train, your opportunity is gone.”
He said, “All night, I tossed and turned. Should I get on the train? Should I not? Should I leave Yeshiva or should I stay? Should I get on the train or should I not?” In the middle of the night, he made a decision: “I’m staying in Yeshiva.” That decision enabled him to become the great rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva, and the Gadol HaDor (greatest of the generation) here in America. That one decision.
They asked him why. “What made the decision? What made you decide that you’re going to stay in Yeshiva and that this is where you belong?” He said, “I’ll tell you why. I remembered, from when I was a kid, a little bit—when I was a little boy, I came home from school and told my mother that tomorrow at school we’re having a siyum because I finished one Perek (chapter) in Masechet (tractate) Bava Kamma.”
He said, “The next morning, I woke up and my mother was dressed in holiday clothing, and so were all my sisters. I asked my mother, ‘Why are you dressed this way?’ She said, ‘What do you mean, Yitzchak? You’re making a siyum on a Perek. This is a holiday.’ I said, ‘But how about my sisters? You’re my mother. But how about my sisters?’ My mother said, ‘If you were getting married tonight, how would your sisters be dressed?’ ‘Of course they’d be dressed beautifully.’ ‘So you’re making a siyum. You think they should be dressed any less?’”
He went off to Yeshiva. He had a little siyum in Yeshiva. He came home, and the table was set as if it were a holiday. His mother made this beautiful meal to celebrate his finishing of Masechet. That one night, he felt unbelievably special. He said, “In my bed, in my room, in Slabodka, I thought about how much my mother appreciates my love for Torah and how much she loves that I am this person. There’s no way I could do that to what my mother dreamed for me.” And he stayed in Yeshiva, and the rest is history.
You have a tremendous amount of power in your hands. Sometimes it means treating a kid uniquely because of their needs, because of their strengths; they may need to be treated uniquely. If you do it right, whether it’s in private or by explaining it to the other kids to a level they can understand, it can be done. It’s what Yaakov Avinu thought he was doing. It was what he did with Binyamin.
But if you get to the point where it feels uneven in your home, where it feels like you like this one and you don’t like that one, I want to tell you what happens: even the kid you favor doesn’t appreciate it, because they don’t want to be treated differently. They don’t want to feel like they’re better than everybody else. They like feeling like they’re equal. It’s safer that way, even for them.
So I don’t care what age you are. I don’t care how old your kids are. Because Yaakov, the servant of Hashem, said, “No, Yaakov Avinu, you still need to focus on your children.” As we’re raising our children and celebrating a holiday, kids might be coming to our house and maybe they’ll be getting gifts, and we may have to treat one differently from the other. We have to make sure that the air is always absolutely fair. It’s in a home like that that the lights shine bright. It’s a home like that where the Torah has the most fertile ground to become incredibly strong. Make your home a healthy place, because if it’s a healthy place, it creates incredible children.