It isn’t news that the Jewish home is under assault. The frum home is always supposed to be an ir miklat, a city of refuge from the craziness of the world, a place where one can come home and be enveloped by warmth and a sense of harmony, a place where things slow down and one can breathe deeply and just feel taken care of.
Unfortunately, in today’s world, things are a lot more fast-paced. In the era of the two-income family, with parents and children being so busy with hectic schedules and so many pressures, families often don’t even have the wherewithal to eat together during the week. Many children come home to find their parents still at work. Parents are often juggling parnossah, child care, and, at times, elderly parents as well.
Another assault on the Jewish home is the fact that technology has made previously impenetrable walls very porousQ. Once upon a time, the primary nisyonos were outside the home. Today, the opposite is frequently true.
Now, let’s take a minute to discuss the home. If you ask any ehrliche man or woman, bochur or girl, “How do you want your future home or your present home to look?” what do you think the answer will be?
Yes, some very superficial people might answer, “I want it to be gleaming, spotless, baalebatish…” But anyone who has even a bit of a Yiddishe kishke, anyone who actually uses their brain to think, will probably say, “I want my home to be one where the Shechinah resides. I want my home to be a place of kedusha, of avodas Hashem, of innocence. I deeply want to build a home of kedusha.”
The question is: How does one achieve that?
There is an eye-opening posuk at the end of this week’s parsha. The posuk (Vayikra 27:14) states, “V’ish ki yakdish es baiso kadosh l’Hashem v’he’erichu hakohein bein tov ubein ra…”
The simple explanation of this posuk is that when a person decides that he wants to donate the value of his home to the Bais Hamikdosh, the kohein should evaluate how much the house is worth on the open market, and that amount should be given to the Bais Hamikdosh.
When No Person Sees…
The Kotzker Rebbe explained that there are deeper meanings to this posuk as well. “V’ish ki yakdish es bais kadosh l’Hashem” can also be translated as “when a person sanctifies his home as a house to be holy for Hashem.”
How does a person infuse his home with kedusha so that even the gashmiyusdige walls of the house become suffused with kedusha? In order to understand this concept, the Kotzker Rebbe quotes the Gemara in Taanis that teaches that when an entire tzibbur is in pain, even a member of the tzibbur who is not in pain should join in to feel the tzibbur’s collective tzaar. The Gemara continues that when the entire tzibbur is fasting because of a tzarah, nobody should quietly go into his house and assume that in the privacy of his home he can eat and drink because no one will see him anyway. Every person, even at home, when no one is looking, should still fast.
Let us say that Ploni went home, where he ate and drank, thinking, “No one is looking anyway! No one can see that I am not fasting…” Would one think that there is a problem with that, or would you agree that no one will know?
In truth, it makes no difference what you think, because the Gemara tells us straight out that even if no people will know, the walls of his home will say eidus on him. The walls of a person’s home will give testimony against him in the Bais Din Shel Maalah. He might think that no one sees what he is doing when he is closeted in his home, but it is not true. The walls see.
According to the Kotzker Rebbe, from here we learn that it is not enough to behave properly and with kedusha when you are among others who can see you. Not at all. A person must conduct himself with kedusha in his home when no one sees, because the walls see and give testimony.
The Gerer Rebbe, the Bais Yisroel, would often cite these words of the Kotzker Rebbe, but he would add a profound, chizuk-giving thought. He would say that if the walls of a person’s home give testimony when a person does the wrong thing, we can apply the rule of middah tovah merubah and say, “How much more so will the walls of a person’s home give testimony to the way a person conducted himself with kedusha in his home even when no one was looking!”
Certainly, doing something purely lesheim Shomayim, when no one can see, is something that the walls will testify about, because the very walls will be saturated with kedusha.
An “Orthodox” Request, An “Orthodox” Approval
In fact, this idea picks up on the concept I raised in last week’s column regarding the mitzvah of kiddush Hashem. Last week, we spoke about making a kiddush Hashem in a way that people who see a frum person, a Torah-observant Jew, will be impressed by his conduct.
Before we actually discuss this different aspect of kiddush Hashem, I must share with our readers a remarkable story told to me this past Shabbos by someone who read last week’s article. It is a story that clearly illustrates this point.
There was a rabbi in the Canadian city of Hamilton (about thirty miles from Toronto) named Rabbi Mordechai Green. He was a pioneering rabbi who did much to keep the flame of Yiddishkeit burning in Hamilton.
In the 1960s, Rabbi Green wanted to build a beautiful shul for his kehillah, but was having a hard time coming up with the funds. Everyone told him that if he stubbornly insisted on his shul remaining Orthodox, there would be no future for his shul. Only if his shul would become a Conservative congregation would he see success.
Being a G-d-fearing Jew, he did not even entertain the thought. He decided to try to get a loan of half a million dollars from the local bank. Half a million dollars in those days is equal to many millions today. He went to the bank, and the local bank manager, a Canadian non-Jew named Mr. O’Reilly*, asked him, “Rabbi, what kind of synagogue do you want to build?”
Rabbi Green knew that if he said Orthodox, he would be doomed, and he would never get the loan, so he said, “Traditional.”
Mr. O’Reilly said, “Traditional? I have never heard of that. I only know Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox.”
Left with no choice, Rabbi Green said, “Orthodox.”
Mr. O’Reilly put down his head for a minute. When he picked up his head, there were tears in his eyes.
“Rabbi,” he exclaimed emotionally, “you got it!”
He then composed himself and explained: “I grew up in the northern Ontario town of Timmins (more than 300 miles north of Toronto). My father died when I was just eight years old, and I had a few siblings as well. We had a neighbor, Mr. Goldstein, who owned a store that sold both clothing and basic groceries. The day after my father died, Mr. Goldstein came to my mother and said, ‘Mrs. O’Reilly, I want you to know that as long as I own this store, you can come and get clothes and food for your family for free.’”
Taking a deep breath, Mr. O’Reilly continued: “Mr. Goldstein was an Orthodox Jew. For years, I have been looking for a way to pay him back for his benevolence and his caring heart. Now I am paying him back!”
Mr. Goldstein would never know that due to his kiddush Hashem, generations of Hamilton Jews were spiritually enriched by the shul and the school that were built due to him.
Saturating Our Homes with Kedusha…When No One Is Looking
Getting back to the subject of kiddush Hashem in the Jewish home: The Rambam writes that kiddush Hashem is when a Yid does the right thing, a mitzvah, or refrains from an aveirah, when no one is looking. His only motivation is to do what Hashem wants. That is a way to fulfill the mitzvah de’Oraisa of kiddush Hashem.
Yes, deep down, we all want a home where the walls are saturated with kedusha, but how do we achieve that? We know that we live in a world where so much around us, even in the ostensibly Yiddishe world, is the exact opposite of kedusha.
Let me share with you something that I heard on a recording of a drasha given by Rav Pinchos Menachem Alter (later known as the Pnei Menachem) at the shloshim of his brother, the Bais Yisroel. He said, “If the sefer Reishis Chochmah (a fiery mussar sefer that talks about the terrible punishment awaiting one in gehennom for aveiros) was in the street and the yeitzer hara was sitting in the seforim shrank, that would be great. However, the yeitzer hara is in the street with free reign and the Reishis Chochmah is sitting all alone in the seforim shrank. Gevald! What is a person to do?”
The Pnei Menachem concluded that a person must have a rebbi, a moreh derech, whom he can ask his questions to and consult.
Today, there are so many questions: How do I keep my home clean when I need certain things for parnossah? How much should I shelter my children? Sometimes too much is not good and sometimes too little is catastrophic…
There is no sefer that can answer these questions. A person needs a live moreh derech, rebbi, rov, rosh yeshiva or rebbe.
Only then do we really have a chance of being mekadeish Sheim Shomayim from within the privacy of the walls of our homes.
Only then will we not be haunted by the fact that “the walls have eyes.” On the contrary, we will be proud.
