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14 Adar I 5765 - February 23, 2005 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family

Petach Habayit
by Yated Ne'eman Staff

When I ask her how Petach Habayit first started, Rebbetzin Esther Levi smiles:

"For twenty-five years, I answered telephone calls asking for help. People, especially women, needed help and advice for sholom bayit, voiced their deep uncertainties on the broad issue of chinuch (raising children) and needed assistance and support in correcting the mistakes they had already made in both of these realms."

Fielding those calls on an ongoing basis, most of them directed to her husband, R' Dovid Levi shlita, a well- known, dynamic personality who has done tremendous work in this area, she realized that people were sad and disappointed. Jewish homes were in trouble; wonderful young husbands and wives were feeling challenged and confused. Small problems that needed just a small dose of wise advice to solve them, were brushed under the carpet and kept quiet and hidden — and thus the wounds festered . . .

Instead of the light of the Shechina and the glow of happiness being the dominant experience in the Jewish home, there was much sadness and bitterness and lack of understanding on the parts of the two lead characters in the family — the parents.

These small misunderstandings almost always tended to evolve into major disagreements and much tension. Children grew up and were adversely affected, sometimes even turning their backs on everything their parents held dear, in order to escape that friction-filled atmosphere at home. Thus, new problems piled onto the family's strained records.

There was something awry here, Rebbetzin Levi realized. This was just not the way things were meant to be. Small problems should be solved, not be allowed to grow and balloon into emotional explosions. Disagreements are a natural and normal part of life and need not escalate into virtual bombshells that break up a home. There was something missing and nobody seemed to know what . . .

The Hirsch* (names have been changed to protect privacy) family, with their seven children, were caught in the web of the parents' constant disagreements. After years of bickering and subsequent embarrassing accusations hurled from one parent to another, Mrs. Hirsch finally picked herself up and, with all seven children in tow, left the house for calmer pastures.

It took months of intensive back-and-forth discussion until R' Levi, along with other Torah personalities, managed to find some common ground between the warring parties. It turned out that the disagreements had really been pretty minor; the problems had begun when those small misunderstandings were followed by a series of damaging and hurtful responses that had set the ball rolling towards a break-up. If the two parties, or perhaps even one of them, had made more educated and more diplomatically acceptable responses, the outcome would have been different.

Boruch Hashem, years have passed and the family is together again and growing happily. They recently married off their first child to a wonderful yeshiva boy — and nobody would believe there was ever a shadow of a problem in the family's unity.

"So we realized," Rebbetzin Levi says with a sigh, "that people lacked the education and know-how to make informed choices about their responses. There is usually a provocation and then a gut response that makes things worse — and from there, the road to unhappiness isn't long in coming. After things are so bad, the correction can take months of intensive involvement to implement. It takes understanding and investment to build a home and then so much heartache and misery can be avoided."

Part of the problem is that understanding and discussing these topics is difficult to carry out practically. Teaching and understanding the topic of sholom bayit, is not appropriate in a school or yeshiva setting, though it is precisely our young people who need to hear and absorb its lessons.

Our children today are raised with everything going for them. Throughout their childhood, parents typically provide everything they need on a silver platter. It is only after marriage that challenges creep up and things may not always be exactly the way they'd planned. With each little disappointment, either with their spouse or with their new life, the Little Voice that whispers: 'I fell into a bad deal', gets ever louder and they feel unable to cope with the situation.

Worse, they have nobody to discuss the situation with. They haven't a clue as to whom they can approach about such an issue. So things are kept quiet and hidden, while ill feelings bubble beneath the surface like live volcanoes, ready to erupt at the slightest provocation.

When we feel physically ill, we head for the doctor's office, secure in the knowledge of his expertise. The same should apply for interpersonal issues; at the smallest aberration of happiness and unity, couples should have access to the right individuals who are capable of advising and encouraging them towards growth and domestic joy.

"Why is there so much trouble and misunderstanding in the area of sholom bayit? Where does it all begin?" I ask Rebbetzin Levi.

In reply, she relates a wonderful parable that her husband uses constantly in his lectures:

There was a medical freshman just starting out in university and, as a fitting introduction to his upcoming years of study, he was taken on a short tour of a hospital. To his surprise and chagrin, he noticed that the hospital was overflowing with patients, every bed filled with a sick person. He couldn't understand: how could it be that in today's sophisticated world of medicine and great scientific breakthroughs, there were still so many sick and ailing people?

He subsequently spent several years in intense medical studies, slowly gaining familiarity with the amazing intricacies and complexities of the human body. He saw how, in order to specialize in any one area of medicine, one had to devote several additional years in studying only one's areas of choice alone — like the ear, nose and throat area. His horizons now broadened, he now posed an entirely different question: how was it that so many people were walking around in perfect health, when there were innumerable ways in which any single part of their bodies could actually malfunction?

A husband and wife come from diverse backgrounds and harbor greatly contrasting expectations — and yet they are expected to build their new home with mutual understanding and harmony. It is a miracle when all goes right! At Petach Habayit, we believe that marriage is an art that can and should be studied in order to succeed. Petach Habayit has a dream. Its dream is to set up organized courses of study and lectures that will accompany every chosson and kallah as they prepare and enter marriage. In this way, our young people will have the opportunity to hone their knowledge and skills in the fine art of sholom bayit, making the right choices and giving the best responses in their individual lives.

To date, Petach Habayit has centers running in Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh, Beitar and Kiryat Sefer. Each of these learning centers is inundated with requests for further lectures and courses on these topics. It is Petach Habayit's dream to set up additional centers in every major community around the globe, to help address the prevalent problems in these areas.

Leah lives in Beitar. She comes from a wonderful, stable family and never encountered any major turbulence in her marriage. And yet, she attests to having taken the same course three times consecutively and wants to keep going in the future. "These lectures have improved my life immeasurably in every way and I simply don't want to stop this wonderful influence in my life!"

Petach Habayit is under the direct auspices of Rabbi Moshe Halberstam shlita. Petach Habayit's long-term dream is that every young couple, the world over, will be accompanied through their transition into marriage, by trained, competent Torah personalities for both personal advice and telephone access. With Hashem's help and with the aid of the wider public, may this dream become a reality, the sooner the better — there's simply no time to lose.

[Esther Levi can be contacted at 02-5381073.]

 

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