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Everything is so out in the open these days. From organizations for agunahs and kids at risk, to justice bloggers and forums and support groups for all colors and types, nary an issue goes under the cover. It all seems so impressive, mi keamcha yisrael, to care for all types. It’s new meaning for No Jew Left Behind.
But like every well intentioned initiative, these progressions carry their own faults too. As we’ve created so much openness and awareness, our privacy and individuality has eroded. A girls experimentation with the colors of life will label her at risk. The concerns no longer become the best education for the child but rather the family reputation. Can yeshiva boys become marine biologists or is that taboo, he must do accounting or the like. After all, aside from the concerned comments, who would marry a marine biologist – we must have jobs that bring salaries commensurate with societal norms.
It isn’t that I’ve got nostalgia for the romanticism of yesteryear when the criteria for a potential couple was each being a shomer shabbos. We have become so complicated that categories exist for a “learner earner left wing yeshivish with hat on shabbos only and DVD’s but no TV and willing to consider the possibility of potentially considering to think of living out of town but not too out of town out of town.” There’s got to be something wrong that.
Can I send my younger kid to a different school than his older brother, or does my family now have a chinuch problem. Can I rollerblade down the street or am I now outside the box? Can I ask questions about creation or am now to be considered to lack emunah. Why can’t it be that that I really raise each kid kidarco, have a fun side, and am just a shoel eitzah?
We have become pigeonholed. Everything we do has a label and carries a stigma. True, boundaries and ideals may keep us in check, but all too often they make us act as illogical and blind as an ancient french king. But to embrace the ideals of a timeless torah, we must be willing to fly the coop.
This is the same reason why the Mussar movement, the frum Kabbalah movement, the Baal Shem Tov all succeeded. They all realized that diversity in a Torah format is important.
Chanoch Lenar Al Pi Darko is not a patented slogan, it is an ideal that every parent must strive to reach. This means that every child is their own person and should go to school’s that are mat’im for them regardless of what society thinks.
Parnassah is completely dependent on hashem’s bracha, so why not enjoy yourself while you are at it. Education alone is not a guarantee of success in the business world. A person who does his/her work passionately often times succeed financially in life and have the perk of loving every minute of it. In my opinion if your son chooses to get a degree in personal fitness and become a personal trainer, GREAT!
WellInformedYid will get a kick out of this one: Tracht Gut un Vet Zein Gut!! Rabbi Finkel here in Chicago tells people to live life for themself and not for what the neighbors think. After all your neighbors are worrying about what you are thinking about them. So it’s really one vicious cycle. Just be happy and let the chatterboxes talk, who cares?
Here’s a sweet secret:
Many of the biggest yentas who chatter about people’s dress, actions, thoughts, etc., etc. do the exact behaviors or worse in more discreet settings. This way they look holy in the eyes of society and can pass definitive judgment on others while ducking under the radar themselves.
Art: chazal have already told us “kul haposel, posel es atzmo” which is essentially what you wrote in your last paragraph.
My Rav must have gone to the same Yeshiva as “Rabbi finkel here in Chicago” (I never heard of him, but he sounds like a wise man), he always tells us, there should be one yeardstick with which you measure everything you do. Would it be a nachas ruach to hashem.
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