My Family Background

My parents fled the war so they could raise their family in freedom. They came to America just like it says in the books -- penniless and alone -- to start a new life. Having fled an environment hostile to Yiddishkeit, they went on to build a family of 6 children -- all devoted to perpetuating and spreading Yiddishkeit. We were raised in a Lubavitch Chassidic family.

I married a son of a Polish family that had similarly fled the war, and although not Lubavitch, my husband became a Lubavitcher through his own inclination. As newlyweds we had the great honor of being selected from a group of hundreds to be the Rebbe's emissaries to the holy city of Tsfas, Israel. We've been living in Eretz Yisroel since then raising our children and trying to share Yiddishkeit with Israelis and Americans who live in Israel.

I realize that it must be the very first time for you to be having the opportunity to meet a real, live, female Chassid, and I welcome all questions. Don't be afraid to ask. I'm not very inventive so if I don't know the answer I'll have to admit it.

Introduction

About 13 years ago I occupied this very same platform on this very same topic -- "Women in Yiddishkeit," but then I appeared with two other married women. After the speaker introduced the other two women as Mrs. So-and-So with so many children, I was introduced as Nechoma Schusterman who is single... Now I'm married, Baruch Hashem and I have children, Baruch Hashem.

Don't be depressed if you've "missed the boat." One of the tenets of Chassidic philosophy as expressed by the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidus, is that "even a leaf doesn't turn from side to side if it wasn't predestined at the beginning of creation." It certainly wasn't a mistake that so many people are all having difficulty marrying and settling down.

First and foremost, I would like to discuss the mitzvah of "pru u'rvu" -- "be fruitful and multiply." Although the current "professional" attitude toward having children is, well, not to have them, let me tell you that when women get to be a little bit older, they begin to realize their mistake. One Israeli woman who decided not to have children (she was far too busy) told me that now she cannot stand the silence. Linda, an American woman I once met, told me that she was jealous of me because I had everything she needed, referring to my large, happy family (see Essay "Hard or busy" in this section -- ed.). Another American woman, Chava Rochel, told me that every time she came to our house, alive with children, she felt like she had come into a garden.

What a false and foolish world we live in! We call someone "successful" when we mean that the person has acquired some money! That's success? Is it a success when your children are estranged, when your marriage is on the rocks, when you're living on pills, and suffering from constant stress and anxiety in the rat race of today's corporate world, and you're too busy to take time out for family and friends, or for Hashem?

What then is success? It's hard to play a game if you don't know the rules. Success means knowing who you are and what you're supposed to be doing and then doing it!

There is a story, a parable, that I love to tell: Dan Mizrachi finally got his license to drive a bus for the Egged bus company. He was overjoyed, and he could hardly wait for the orders of the director of transport (sadran, as he is known in Israel), who would tell him which route he would have to travel. He was a little disappointed, however, when he discovered that he had been given a very quiet suburban route which had very few passengers.

Dan's first day passed uneventfully, but he was bitterly disappointed. There were too few people, and his route was too quiet. He had always imagined himself driving a crowded bus, where he would have to give orders to his passengers: "Here, you! Give your place to this old woman." "No spitting sunflower seeds on the bus!" "Move to the back!" And here he was driving a quiet route with a few old people getting on and off quietly. This wasn't what he was capable of! Not only that. In addition to everything else, the amount of bus fare he accumulated was paltry.

The following day, as he was crossing a main road along his route, he saw another bus driving down the main road. It was packed! Dan had an idea. "Tomorrow, I will change my route. No one will ever know. I'll simply follow the route of that other bus. And I'll also earn a lot of money for the company!"

Dan was a man of action, and the following day he set out on his new route, along the main road. He simply changed the route-number in the little windows at the front and back of the bus, and off he went. Ah! This was exactly what he had been cut out for. He had many passengers, and he could laugh and joke with his young clientele.

At the end of the day, Dan swaggered triumphantly into the office of the director of transport and plonked down his earnings for the day on the director's desk. He said nothing, however. The following morning, when he came to the central bus station to begin work, a note awaited him: Please come immediately to the director's office! When he stood in front of the director, the latter asked him, "Dan, we have been running your route for twenty years now, but we have never come anywhere close to the amount of money you made yesterday. What happened?"

Dan was forced to reveal his secret, but he was hardly prepared for the response he received from the director. "Dan! Who makes the decisions around here? Are you a driver or a director? Is it your job to worry about how much the company earns? This is the duty of a special board of transport officials. Your job is to follow orders you receive from them. If you find this boring, change your job! A driver does not choose a route in order to entertain himself. Moreover, doing something without asking expert advice displays a total lack of responsibility! Success, Dan, is not measured by the amount of money you bring in. Success as a bus-driver for Egged, and in life generally, is measured according to the faithfulness with which we do what we have to do, even if we don't see it as wonderfully successful. Remember this well!"

Today, the make-up industry and plastic surgeons are making millions trying to make people look younger, hide flaws etc. etc. Not that Torah is against cosmetics -- it's just that in our society people are trying to play games that are not natural for them. The number of people in therapy and in need of psychological help is proof that there is only a certain amount a person can take of this without cracking.

The very first portion of the Torah tells explicitly about the creation of man and woman, and what their roles are. Within the definition of their roles lies tremendous flexibility. Who will balance the checkbook, who will take out the garbage, and who will make the major decisions is undefined. However, what is of major importance is that a man knows he is a man, and a woman knows she's a woman. Both know that their purpose cannot be accomplished without the other.

Having lived in the world for over thirty years, I would not be so rash as to promise that Torah-living equals happily ever after. There are still stresses, strains, and problems, but they are within the realm of normalcy and you have the ability to overcome them.

Having children in the outside world is a novelty -- an act of boldness, and for some, perhaps, rashness. In the society I grew up in, it was the natural next step after marriage, and the difficulties and problems engendered by having children were anticipated and prepared for years ahead.

Pregnancy and birth are what the woman's body was created for, and they are far more natural than birth control, and certainly far healthier and more natural than abortions. Many of the deep-rooted problems of our generation are caused by people tampering with the delicate mechanism of the natural life cycles. There are teenagers who should be adults, adults who should be marrying off their own children, but they are still wondering whether to get married themselves, and people who are frustrated because the fulfillment of grandparent-hood is eluding them.

Torah thinks of all stages and ages of a person. The woman who is so preoccupied with her life and career at 32 that she has no time for trivialities like a husband or babies -- I'd like to see her at 62. The Rebbe Shlita once explained that the posuk hakar raglecha mibeis rei'echa (Mishlei 25:17) -- which could be paraphrased as "Do not visit your dear ones too often" -- also applies to parents visiting their children. If a family limits the amount of children they have, when those children grow up and leave home to establish their own families, it is natural that the parents will want to visit them. But they cannot remain constant guests there, for no matter how close the parents are to their children, the advice of Mishlei applies to some degree. The children have their own affairs to attend to, and will not appreciate constant visits by their parents. The end result will be that parents who limited their families will experience loneliness and frustration, with no one to visit or to talk to. If parents have many children, however, there is no problem, for they are able to divide their visits among them.

One of the Psalms we read often, Shir Hama'alot, psalm 126, states that when G-d returns the Jews from exile, with the coming of Mashiach, we will realize that we were like dreamers. We will suddenly become aware of how foolish we were, how sleepy and dreary our lives were, that we thought fantasy was reality. We believed movies and T.V. and thought that what they said was fact!

Mashiach is coming soon -- wake up now and rewrite your life script. It's not too late!

"Everything is in the hands of Heaven other than the fear of Heaven," our Sages state. You have little control over your looks, intelligence, family members, temperament, etc. But you can change your outlook, your habits, your goals. It is your life, and the decision is in your hands. It is a tremendous job, but luckily G-d does not make excessive and unreasonable demands from His creatures. On the contrary, we have help from Above. One of the reasons we are instructed to light Shabbos candles is so that no one will trip over anything in the dark. Our Sages explain that this is important for Shalom Bayis, family peace and harmony! Now which professor, psychologist, or social worker could have thought of that? Our Sages further assure us that just wanting to go in a certain direction, earns a person Divine assistance!

I'd like to wish you all some clear thinking, and success in shifting the gears.