As parents,
our son experienced bullying and it raises a difficult lesson. Certainly there is no excuse for bullying to occur
in a school. Every child should be able to walk into a school building and feel
safe. However I am also a realist. There
will always be bullies and I want all my children to have the tools to deal
with bullies. Among the more difficult concepts for our son to grasp, in large
part because he is only 8, falls in the realm of verbal bullying. We teach all
of our children that one can only fall victim to verbal bullying if one actually
pays attention to the verbal bullying and if the listener cares what is being
said and who is saying it. As a result,
we spend a lot of time on self image and self respect with our children. For
our son, this is not so easy. Since he is so physically oriented, like most
boys his age, our son always feels bullied by kids who are physically larger
and in fact the boys that tend to bully him are the bigger kids in the class.
Of course when our son comes home from school, he laments that he is the
shortest and smallest boy in the class. He laments that because of his small
physical stature, he thinks he is a target. When he sits with us and does this
it reminds me of how I felt exactly the same way when I was his age. As parents we want to make the problem go
away and ease his life. On the other hand, we know that he must learn how to
fight his own battles if he ever hopes to grow up into a mentsch. As he
complains about his stature I ask how he puts on his pants. “One leg at a time”, he says. I ask if one
leg must remain on the floor while he puts on his pants. Astutely, he responds,
“yes”. I ask him if the big kid who bully’s him needs to keep a foot on the
ground while he puts on his pants. Again, our wise son responds with “yes”. I ask him to look in the mirror and describe
what he sees. Interestingly enough, the
first words out of his mouth are not “short” or “weak”. Those negative words come later.
This week’s torah portion is Parsha
Shelach Lecha. The Torah portion begins with the narrative of Moshe gathering
up twelve spies, one corresponding to each of the twelve tribes, and giving
them the mission. The spies are told to investigate the quality of the land –
fertile or barren, its inhabitants - warlike or peaceful, the nature of cities –fortified
or open? The spies go and investigate and return. Ten spies offer a negative
report and two, Caleb and Joshua, offer a positive report. Bnai Yisroel listen
to the ten spies with the negative report and fell utterly overwhelmed at the
prospect of entering into the land that Hashem promised them. Hysterical, the people beg to return to
Egypt. Hashem wants to wipe them all out immediately but Moshe defends the
people just like he did after the Golden Calf. So rather than wiping out an
entire people Hashem punishes Bnai Yisroel by prohibiting this generation from
entering into the land. Eventually, when the slave generation has died out, the
generations born in freedom will enter Eretz Canaan. The people hear the punishment and decide they
are ready to enter the land. Moshe explains that it is too late since entry
into Canaan is ultimately premised upon faith.
Then Moshe begin teaching Bnai Yisroel laws specific and premised upon
settlement in the Canaan. First Moshe
teaches the Libation Offering as well as Challah. Next, Moshe teaches the laws
of public atonement of unintentional idolatry, individual unintentional
idolatry, intentional idolatry, a reminder about violating Shabbat and finally
the laws of Tzitzit.
The
ten spies whom Bnai Yisroel chose to believe did not really bring such a
negative report. They explained that the land was fruitful and fertile, there
were trees and that it was really quite beautiful. The problem with the report was that it
revealed more about the spies and Bnai Yisroel than the land itself. When
seeing some of the inhabitants and the physical size of some of those
inhabitants. The Ten spies said Vanhi V’Eineinu Ka’CHaGaVim V’Chain Hayinu
B’Eineihem – we were like
grasshoppers in our eyes and so we were in their eyes. (Num. 13:33) How do
the ten spies know how the Nefilim (the Giants) perceive them? Did they ask the
Nefilim? The answer to both questions is “No”. No they don’t know how the
Nefilim perceive the Ten Spies and “No”, the Ten Spies did not ask the Nefilim.
The spies feel small because from their own perspective and self image, they
are small. When they look in a mirror, they see slaves. They don’t see people
who stood at Sinai and received the Torah. They don’t see a people who carry a
Mishkan with Hashem protecting them and scattering their enemies. They don’t
see a people worthy of Hashem’s daily miracles of Manna, and water. Instead they carry with them the burden of
two centuries of slavery and being slightly less than human rather than being
slightly less than angels. Rabbi
Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (The Kotzker
Rebbe ) explained that this was the root of the spies as well as Bnai Yisroel’s
sin. They had no right to consider how others viewed them, nor should they have
been at all concerned. They should have
all been spiritually strong enough to realize and accept that they were “priests
to the nations” and “chosen by God”. The fact that such spiritual awareness was
still lacking even after all the miracles and promises that God made; meant
that problem lay with Bnai Yisroel. These former slaves were not ready for the
responsibility of land and people hood.
As our son has grown both physical
and spiritually this year, he has started to learn the valuable lesson that the
generation of slaves could not learn in the Wilderness. He realizes that the first thing he sees in
the mirror is not something small and insignificant. Yes he is short, now he realizes that at his
age, it does not exclude him from being competitive. Yes he's slight, but he looks at pictures of
his father at the same age and sees himself.
He has started to understand that he needn’t worry about what bullies
say since the comments have no bearing on his reality and his self image.
Rather he should worry about what he can control, his schoolwork, his progress
in Karate, baseball, his reading, piano
playing, and growing up to be a mentsch. As a result, he has started to learn that the
first step in dealing with bullying is dealing with oneself.
Peace,
Rav Yitz
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