It was on that day, at the same time, in completely different destinations: one at the IDF base in IDF 1 in Mitzpe Ramon, and one at the nation’s buildings. Two events that have nothing between them, nothing. In BD 1, combat officers gathered for them last Thursday to complete a course, and thousands of Chabad women gathered in the nation’s buildings.
In front of the excited officers, the Prime Minister of the transition, Yair Lapid, made his debut. During his speech he expressed his appreciation to the officers and asked to convey a message to them. “It is customary in such speeches to say that ‘a person is the pattern of his birth landscape,'” he said, “but this is not true. A person is much more than that. Your birth landscape is important, but it is only the starting point from which to set out. “When you enlisted, you created it when you chose to be the best in the department or company, you created it in the last few months here in the course.”
Lapid wanted to sharpen the message: “The background and the moment you were born is not the only thing that will define you until the day you die. The ranks you wear today are proof – the thing that determines your fate is the choices you make.”
And all this introduction was just for the punch of Lapid, who turned to the officers’ parents and said: “It is customary to say in these ceremonies that it is all thanks to you. Not this time. They did it themselves. You just educated them and raised them and turned them into wonderful young people.” .
Thus the new prime minister, who sought to lecture his progressive doctrine with inconceivable arrogance, already in his first public speech: Parents are a kind of ornament, nice babysitters who have raised you. Admittedly they “only” raised and educated, but it really is nothing.
The surprising discovery
In those minutes when these “educational” messages were heard, which sought to cut off parents’ share of their children’s success, a kind of correction was made, in the form of the resounding speech of the Hassidic emotional therapist Rabbi Dovi Brod, at the Chabad Women’s Conference in Jerusalem. His unusual speech, a full transcript of which is published in the new ‘Female’ supplement, “The clinics are divided between those who come to them to tell how guilty the father is, and those who tell them how guilty the mother is. Everyone is complaining and everyone is not happy. “
Rabbi Brod recounted what he saw with his own eyes. For long minutes it unfolds the growing madness in the field, in which every morning a new professional invents more conditions for parenting. Some even contradict each other. “We’re done with the defeat!” He declared pathetically, saying that he remembered one mother telling him: “I know it does not matter what I do, in a few years my daughter will sit on the psychological couch and tell her what a bad mother I am and how much I ruined her life” …
In a brave move, R. Dubi said that he was in this place, when he walked with “a pile of complaints and accusations, also towards my parents.” He recounts what he was taught as part of his degree studies. “There was a competition over who was hurting more than his parents,” he recalled.
After a decade in which he closely encounters this rotten phenomenon, R. Dubi was summoned and told about his devoted parents, and about the parents of the boys he meets. “Where did this good teaspoon come from?” He asked, “It’s a social message that started far away from us and our culture and slowly penetrated us as well.”
His personal gaze, both towards himself and in his encounters with the boys, led him to the realization that he was on the wrong track. “I found that I did not become happier thanks to these insights, quite the opposite!” He stated, “I have become a bitterer, more complaining, more frustrated person. Were it not for some good people who inspired me to study in depth the Rebbe’s attitude on the matter, I might still have stayed in the same place.”
In his speech, which did not leave a dry eye in the audience, he spoke of the Rebbe’s teaching on a Jewish child, which, although “it is a small leaf that has now begun to sprout and grow,” is connected to a thick tree branch with very deep roots in generations. “Once you ignore your roots,” he concluded, “you really become a volcanic leaf that every light breeze blows. You just cut the branch on which you sit with your own hands.”
R. Dubi addressed the happy mothers with their tears: “Everything is directed and everything is accurate, and you parents have the strength to grow and nurture the soul you received for the shift.” In his poignant speech he described the moment of change he went through and how he began to look at his parents with a different perspective, a perspective of appreciation and gratitude. “Suddenly I saw all my childhood in a different light,” he admitted, “for the first time I began to notice their enormous investment in me, their enormous devotion to me. Suddenly everything changed, and was replaced by gratitude and endless appreciation.”
With rare courage, R. Dubi looked directly at his mother, who was sitting in the audience, and said: “I never told them that. I just started behaving. But now is a great opportunity to apologize. Sorry for the impudence, arrogance, arrogance and contempt, For the feeling that I understand better and know better. Sorry I felt I was the one to fix everything you did not provide.
“From an accusing place I have become empowering, and all the parents will testify that I was privileged to accompany their children. Today I start the treatment from a place of honoring parents, because in my opinion this is a generational problem!
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Between differentiation and empowerment
There is a huge chasm between these two speeches, of a prime minister in the service of the left and of a young Hasidic student. While the first sought to differentiate the parents from their children – to reduce their place and put them in a corner, the second sought to elevate them, bring them to the forefront of the stage and connect them in the most positive way to shaping their children.
While the prime minister sought to align with the diminution of the term “parents,” it was the Hassidic heir who was privileged to empower the parents and give them the respect they deserve.
R. Dubi, unlike the prime minister, does not have a battery of speechwriters who will polish every word, every letter, every tag. He sat on his own, shrouded in experience and educational insights, and reinvented the concept of honoring parents in the age of shallowness.
And the result accordingly: in front of the speech from BAD 1 that is full of hollow clichés and nothing will be left of it, the speech in the nation’s buildings will be well engraved not only in the hearts of thousands of women present, but among tens of thousands from all over the country and the world exposed to it. And with the dedication of the parents, R. Dubi’s speech was able to connect parents and their children and give each party the right and educational perspective, according to the pure Hassidic view from generation to generation.
Congratulations on winning R. Dubi. The Prime Minister has a lot to learn from you.
1 comment
Where can I find a full transcript of this speech by Rabbi Dovi Brod?