On the succa porch outside our kitchen we have a rather long,
fairly deep planter bed. For reasons which have totally
slipped my mind after all these years, the gardener who
landscaped for us elected to put shallow window boxes -- the
kind you fill with geraniums and hang on your porch railing --
inside the planter bed, raised up on bricks to reach a
visible height, and to plant flowering bushes in the
boxes.
For the first few years, the bushes actually did well. They
grew both in height and width and bloomed nicely. Then one
year, the size of the bushes stayed about the same and the
number of flowers decreased. This year, alas, the bushes did
not flourish at all. They look sickly and will probably not
last another season.
I consulted a friend who knows more about these things than I
do and she said that they need more space for their roots
than the flower boxes would allow. Without deep roots, you
can't expect plants to survive. Even though the bushes
appeared to the casual viewer to be growing in a large, lush
environment of soil -- the quantity of dirt the planter bed
could have contained -- they were actually rooted in only
half a dozen inches of planter mix.
There is an analogy here to human life as well.
For the past three and a half decades, I have lived in
communities, first abroad and now here in Israel, where there
are a sizable number of baalei tshuva. I have seen
some families [Note: only `some' -- and this article is also
addressed to FFB families slacking down, seeking the `good
life' and turning too modern. The lesson is a universal one
that is important to everyone. - Ed.] become frum,
look for all the world to be deeply rooted in Yiddishkeit,
and then, after a decade or more, things unravel and either
the children or whole segments of the family just sort of
wander off the Torah path.
When some of these people made their decision to become more
observant, they changed many superficial things in their
lives. They traded in their living room wall full of
authentic African tribal masks or colorful pre- Colombian
Aztec gods for a wall full of costly Judaic lithographs: here
a lovely picture of a rabbi dancing with a Torah scroll and
there a muted scene of a woman lighting candles on Erev
Shabbos, or a chuppa scene.
Then they had another child or two, bought a top-of-the- line
van instead of a new luxury sedan, and became active in the
parents' organization of the local day school instead of the
public school PTA.
They ate at the finest glatt kosher restaurants instead of
the trendy eateries where their old friends were dining.
Instead of a spring cruise to the Bahamas, they spent Pesach
at a plush resort.
Yes, their lives were Torah lives, but only to someone
looking from a distance, the way our bushes looked very
authentic to someone gazing at them through the kitchen
window.
When Torah leadership came down very hard on television,
videos and Internet, they moved the t.v./computer out of the
family room and into the `parent's retreat' of the master
bedroom, atop a nice little stand with ample room for the
video player and whole shelf of movies on cassettes.
Yes, they enrolled their children in Jewish schools, but
discouraged them from spending most of their efforts on their
Jewish studies. "Can't take time away from secular subjects,
or you won't get good grades on your College Boards and then
you won't be accepted at the best universities ("You know,
Torah im derech eretz and all that").
And then, "No, Yossi, I don't want you to go away to yeshiva
at age 14. We did some research into it and found that there
is a top high school run by Rabbi X that offers Advanced
Placement classes in all subjects. Yes, they are co-
educational but separate and the two campuses are a whole
block apart. I know that you heard rumors that the kids from
both schools hang out at the pizza joint after classes, but
you are a very frum boy and it won't rub off on you at
all. Take my word for it. When you are accepted at Harvard,
you will thank me."
My husband and I were once changing buses in the city center
about eight o'clock on a winter Motzoei Shabbos, after having
spent Shabbos at the other end of the city. As we walked to
our bus stop, we passed a young man from our former
community. He was here in Israel for his token "year at
yeshiva" before college. I don't know what did or did not rub
off on him at his high school, but I can tell you that he
was wearing dark slacks and a solid color shirt, but
he was also sporting a backpack, a suede yarmulka measuring
about three inches across, and he was headed in the direction
of Ben Yehuda street.
In order for a family -- be it newly observant or FFB -- to
have the kind of healthy growth that produces Torah oriented
offspring, it is advisable to sink roots down deep in our
traditions. Attach yourself to a Rov and to an odom
godol. Instead of taking one more chol hamoed trip
or bein haz'manim excursion to an amusement park, take
your children to visit your Rosh Yeshiva.
When one of my sons went off to yeshiva gedola, he
took along a plastic box that had once contained candies. It
had been emptied out and carefully taped shut. Clearly
visible inside it was one walnut and a cardboard card with a
few lines of neat childish handwriting saying that this nut
had been presented to my son by the previous Gerrer Rebbe
zt'l, after he had stood in line with his friends for
a good two hours one chol hamoed Pesach during his
cheder years.
Along with warm greetings and blessing, the Rebbe gave each
boy a nut, and a decade later, that is one of my son's prized
possessions.
Nuts that are planted in the ground can grow into mighty
trees. This nut is firmly planted in my son's soul, and is
nurturing his Yiddishkeit.
Isn't that the kind of deep-rooted growth we want the most
for our children?
