Israel- One Of The Happiest Places On Earth!

Israel is one of the happiest countries in the world! The World Happiness report just came out on March 14  published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, in advance of World Happiness Day. Among the 155 countries surveyed, Israel is number 11!  The United States was number 15.   Interestingly enough, some of the top countries were Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Netherlands.  As  Rabbi Joshua Hammerman pointed out, the closest these Scandinavian countries “ have come to war lately was Prince Hans Westergaard’s royal coup in Disney’s Frozen.”  Humorous, but true.

As we approach the celebration of Yom Haatzmaut this Monday evening, how does Israel do it? How is a country surrounded by threat, with a mandatory draft and war after war since the state’s founding, become the 11th happiest country on earth?  How does is rank far ahead others in the region, (Jordan- 74, Lebanon- 97 and Egypt- 130),  and even ahead of the United States?  What lessons can the growth of the State of Israel teach our children about their own growth?

And, then there’s the United States.  The U.S. was ranked third happiest in 2007. By 2016, it ranked 19th. Why?  This year’s report attributes the decline to “declining social support and increased corruption.”

Some characteristics noted in the top countries were caring, freedom, generosity, honesty (Yes, Israelis never hold back what’s on their minds!), health, income, and good governance.  Some other characteristics noted were “having someone to count on in times of trouble, generosity, trust.”  All good qualities to reinforce with our children.  

Some other lessons this survey can  we relay are:  Money does not buy happiness.  As Polly Mosendz wrote in her article “Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness (in America)” “Even as the country pulled off an economic turnaround, with increases in income and unemployment falling to historic lows, Americans are becoming less happy”  Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the SDSN, points out, “This is a very strong message to my country, the United States, which is very rich,has gotten a lot richer over the last 50 years, but has gotten no happier… The message for the United States is clear. For a society that just chases money, we are chasing the wrong things.  Our social fabric is deteriorating, social trust is deteriorating, faith in government is deteriorating.”  Money does not buy happiness- an essential lesson for our children. Need I say more?

Next lesson: Learn from Israel. How do Israelis, living in a constant state of potential war, intifada, rockets etc. achieve happiness?  Professor Zahava Solomon of Tel Aviv University highlights this psychological paradox.  This “culture of conflict” which makes Israelis constantly aware of the dangers they face makes them fearless and willing to take on risks that lead to self-growth.  If each day might be your last, you would enjoy that day. This leads to a more fulfilling life.  We need to demonstrate to and teach our children that each day can be life- changing, so don’t waste a moment.

Israelis have much to fear, so they fear nothing, points out Tifanie Wen in her article, “Why Are Israelis So Happy?”  She quotes a study from the Journal of the American Medical Association which demonstrates that Israelis recover from PTSD faster than other Western nations. Israelis have continuously shown to be able to habituate to new conflicts. The level of anxiety may be higher in Israel, but the level of clinical anxiety is very low.  “By experiencing more anxiety on a daily basis, they’ve become inoculated against bad things when they do occur and habituate to them rapidly. They are able to function in spite of them.”  If one can be resilient in the face of potential war, then economic and social issues are easy to deal with by comparison.  It is okay and important to express stress, and it helps us develop resilience. Thus, the importance of allowing our children to fail, brush themselves off and get up again.

Israeli psychologist Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar,  (whose work I have mentioned before in this column), author of the books Happier  and Being Happy, and former professor of a popular course in Harvard, “The Science Of Happiness,” returned to Israel after being abroad for 15 years. He found himself happier when he returned.  Ben-Shahar believes it is the Israeli’s focus on family and friends which is one cause of the happiness that Israelis feel.  Time spent with those we care about is the number one predictor of happiness.  Creating those close ties with family is essential for growth- more family time!

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to think that something about this happiness has to do with God.  Geulio Meotti, in her article, “Why Are Israelis So Happy” notes, “While Israel’s social fabric is deeply divided between ultra-Orthodox Jews and ‘Hellenistic’ Israelis, nationalists and leftists, two-thirds of Israelis believe in God, therefore maintaining the hope and feeling that there is higher meaning and purpose to their lives. There is also the attachment to the Jewish land, while love for one’s land is a nationalistic taboo in the West.”

Here, in America, we try to relay to our students and children that intense connection to the land, the people and to God that one feels in Eretz Yisrael. “It is a Land that the Lord your God seeks out; the eyes of the Lord your God, are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.” (Devarim, 11:12)  It is a country of miracles. A country of resilience, meaning and mission.  A country of family.   It is one of the happiest countries on earth! Yom Haatzmaut Sameach!

Advisory Update:

Sixth Grade:  Students continued their Friendship Unit focusing on- What does it mean to be popular? Are those qualities admirable? Who determines what’s considered “cool?”

Seventh Grade: Students began a new unit on “Do Not Stand Idly By” - the power of the upstander. They are beginning this unit focusing on  political action for Israel in defense of a united Yerushalayim.

Eighth Grade:  Students began to investigate the topics of peer pressure and bigotry by watching the movie The Wave.

A Teachable Moment -Harassment Prevention

The New York Time’s revelation that Bill O’Reilly paid five women $13 million in response to sexual harassment charges against him has been in the news all week. This following Roger Ailes’ being let go last year due to his own sexual harassment.  Regardless of one’s political leanings, this follows the 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which President Trump admitted his own sexual harassment.  A 2015 survey shared that 71% of women who are harassed at work do not come forward, fearing retribution.

Each year we focus on sexual harassment with both our 7th grade boys and girls in their Adolescent Life classes.  Additionally, right before the summer, we cover potential harassment/abuse issues that can happen at camp.  The goal of these classes is to educate both our boys and girls as to what sexual harassment is, and how to react when they feel they are victims of it. Additionally, it may be difficult for teens to differentiate between flirting and harassment- and we want them to understand the importance of not perpetrating “unwanted flirting,” and not tolerating being the receiver of it, as it is considered sexual harassment.  The students are shown the New Jersey law regarding sexual harassment.  Perpetrators are often peers, but we also highlight the potential for teachers, coaches, counselors, who are in positions of power, to harass.  We discuss why is it that teens often don’t come forward, and the fear of retaliation. Whether the harasser is a peer- and they are afraid of the social repercussions.  Or, if the perpetrator is an adult, there is the fear of the impact on their grades, their status on the team, being threatened, and even that no one will believe them since the teacher/coach etc. is so beloved.

Students learn that sexual harassment can be physical or verbal. In the age of smartphones, texting and social media, the potential for harassment via technology is even stronger.  It becomes a form of cyberbullying. This includes unwanted sexual comments directly towards the person, inappropriate photos or even a sexually suggestive joke passed on.  Sending sexual messages or images is called “sexting,” and teens need to understand why their sending these inappropriate messages, even while in what they think is a relationship with another, can be forever damaging. Things you meant to be private, can find their way into the wrong hands.  As with all of our messages regarding cyber safety, no matter how many times we relay this message to our children, there are those who still  take those risks.  That is why, the message needs to come often, from both school and home.  

The key is - anything that makes your child uncomfortable should lead him/her to talk to a trusted adult.  And, no one ever deserves being a harassed. We also stress the important role that the bystander plays.  If a child is worried about a friend, he/she needs to come forward to an adult.  

We invite you, as parents, to take this O’Reilly current event and use it as a “teachable moment” to review with your children and to reinforce the above messages. It is hard for us to bring up sensitive topics such as these “out of the blue.”  Having a current event as a springboard for discussion makes the discussion much more natural.

As we discuss the issues with our students, we also stress the Torah’s view when it comes to sexual harassment and abuse. Our middle schoolers all learn the story of Amnon and Tamar in their Navi classes. When we learn that story we explain, (Avodah Zarah, 36b),  that as a result of Amnon’s rape of Tamar,  Dovid Hamelech instituted the laws of Yichud for an unmarried woman (expanding the biblical law, which did not include single women).  I ask my students why they think Dovid felt the need to do so- to protect women from being abused, and to protect us from being overcome by our evil inclinations which often lead to sexual misconduct.  The Torah clearly feels that no one should ever be forced into any behavior which makes him/her feel uncomfortable.  This is a Torah value, and in some ways centuries ahead of the rest of society.   (Interestingly enough, all of today's curricula on the topic of harassment and abuse stress not being alone in an isolated location with even someone you know well).

Margaret Sullivan, in her article, “O’Reilly’s Downfall Teaches A Wonderful Lesson To Working Women” states another issue important to discuss with our girls, as noted by Micheline Maynard.  “As Women, we are taught not to speak out, not to ruffle feathers, to just be good and work harder.”   In a lesson we did in seventh grade girls’ Advisory we discussed gender stereotypes- and what are the gender roles that are assigned to us by society? From where do we learn these gender roles?  Is there pressure to not act a certain way due to these stereotypes? By age 6 gender stereotypes affect girls. How did gender stereotypes affect the presidential election this year?  When sharing those “teachable” moments with our daughters, we need to constantly reinforce that there is nothing wrong with women speaking out- especially when experiencing harassment.

Free At Last!

As we approach Pesach, זמן חרותנו,  the season of our freedom, I recently finished reading a book that provided me with a meaningful view of freedom. (Plus a dvar Torah at the Seder table!)

The book, Unbroken Spirit- A Heroic Story of Faith, Courage, and Survival, is the autobiography of Rabbi Yosef Mendelevich.  Rabbi Mendelevich was the famous refusenik who spend twelve years in the  Soviet gulag imprisoned. Released in 1981, he now lives in Israel.

What can more clearly depict a modern slavery to freedom story than that of Mendelevich and his oppression and then freedom? His story begins with a plot he hatched with some fellow Zionists to hijack a plane to fly to Israel.  They clearly knew that there was a chance their scheme would fail.  Mendelevich writes (p. 335), “Before our fateful arrest at the airport, I told my friends, ‘There is no meaning in the life of a slave who cannot be true to himself.”   In essence, he shared that even though they were “free” they were truly slaves if they could not practice their Judaism and yearn for Israel under Russian rule.  

   

The irony of Mendelevich’s story is that it is when he was in prison, he felt more free.  “I must confess that my eleven years in prison were not at all grey and wearying.  Each day brought a new discovery, a new joy.  Appearances were to the contrary: an onlooker who saw me would have pronounced me miserable. Indeed, what joy could be left to a starving slave laborer in the freezing expanses of Siberia?  And yet, I experienced it differently...Even in prison, I knew how not to be a slave.  I knew that a slave is not one who is physically hemmed in by bars, but one who is controlled by external forces that consume him and rob him of his life and from which he cannot escape...I consciously aimed not to indulge in self-pity, not to falter, but to carry on normally: prayer, exercise...One day I was in solitary confinement, doing nothing. I no longer felt like I had to do anything in order to sense His closeness...That is the secret of inner fortitude.”  As it notes in the introduction to the book, “The refuseniks were determined to live life as free men even in a totalitarian country.”

As long as Mendelevich was able to be true to himself and connect with God, he was free. He then continues that, ironically again, “Thirty years later, I am living the life a free man in Israel. As everyone knows, the life of a free man possesses at least as many difficult challenges as the life of a prisoner or a slave.”  Why is that?  How can one say that a free man lives a life more difficult than that of a slave?

In order to answer this question, we need to better understand what freedom is.  In his article, “What Is Freedom?” Rabbi Tauber explains that typically we define freedom as the absence of slavery.  So, too, we define “rest” - that we are to do on Shabbat, as the absence of work. But, in reality these definitions are not correct. There is a positive, active definition of freedom.

Let’s start with “rest.” God created rest on the 7th day.  What is rest? “ ‘Rest’ is the endeavor to focus inward, to withdraw to the quintessential core of one's being...So Shabbat is not a day of inactivity, but a day devoted to the activity of rest.” That is why Shabbat is a day of increased spirituality and connection to God.  

So, too, Pesach’s freedom is not just the absence of slavery, but the presence of an active freedom. Moshe did not simply say, “Let My people go.”  Rather, he said, “Let My people go so that they can serve me.”  How does a human achieve freedom?  “That to attain true freedom he must therefore transcend his humanity - his emotional, intellectual, even spiritual self - and access the ‘spark of G‑dliness’ that is his infinite, supra-human self.”

Yosef Mendelevich accessed the spark of Godliness within him. He was therefore free.  On Pesach, our challenge to access that inner spark as well.

Dr. Alex Pattakos, author of Prisoners of Our Thoughts, wrote in his article, “Escaping Your Inner Mental Prison” of the conversations and interviews he has had with prison inmates.  Dr. Pattakos quotes Dr. Viktor Frankl’s  “Will to Meaning.” “This principle asks you to “commit authentically to meaningful values and goals that only you can actualize and fulfill.” With physical freedom being taken away from them, these prisoners have time for self-reflection and self- discovery on the path to finding meaning in their lives.  

Thus, Dr. Pattakos asks us, “Now let me ask you: if inmates in a real prison are able and willing to search for meaning in their lives, as well as exploring ways to change and grow, are you? Remember, we don’t really create meaning; we find it. And we can’t find it unless we look for it.”  He then quotes a country music song, by Rodney Crowell, “It’s time to go inward, take a look at myself. Time to make the most of the time that I’ve got left. Prison bars imagined are no less solid steel.”

As parents how can we relay this message of true freedom to our children- the ability to look inward and access that spark? Mrs. Slovie Jungreis Wolf writes in her book, Raising A Child With Soul,  that when it comes to raising our children, “We worry that they receive the proper nutrition, cultural experiences and an excellent education.  What is most painful to me is the fact that rarely have I heard parents discussing their plan to develop their child’s soul… We have become so consumed with thoughts of our child being in the right place, with the right crowd, in the right clothing, but what have we done to to help this child become a spiritual being? The problem becomes more acute as our world becomes more obsessed with materialism.”

          This would explain why Mendelevich felt that the life of a free man has as many challenges as a life of a slave/prisoner.  A free man is surrounded by a world of materialism and temptations which are antithetical to a life of introspection.  I often think about all the time I used to spend in doctors’ waiting rooms just thinking.  Now, I am constantly on my phone (answering work e-mails!)  In this age of constant connection we are never really free from distraction to truly connect with God and develop our souls.  The world we live in is not set up for introspective thought or spiritual reflection. We are never free.

As parents, just as we carefully plan their paths to the Ivy Leagues, or to the right high school, so too we need to carefully plan our children’s soul development, or their freedom.  Do we want them to be enslaved or free?  This inability to achieve introspection and self- analysis is not only harming their spiritual development, but also impacts on their overall contentment in life and their ability to achieve fulfillment (connected to spirituality).  

Dr. Lisa Miller, director of Columbia University’s Clinical Psychology program, wrote a book called The Spiritual Child: The New Science On Parenting For Health And Lifelong Thriving. Children, for example, who have positive and active relationships to spirituality are 40% less likely to abuse substances and 60% less likely to suffer from depression. She writes, similar to Mrs. Jungreis- Wolf, describing the various conversations we have as parents regarding teams, studying for tests, camp etc., “And, yet all of those conversations, elaborate schedules of extracurricular activities, and high aspirations often miss the single most crucial ingredient of all, the only thing that science has show to reliably predict fulfillment, success and thriving:a child’s spiritual development.”  The child needs to feel part of something larger and an experience an “interactive two-way relationship with a guiding, and ultimately loving being.” Children are born with this capacity and yearning. We are biologically hardwired for spirituality, as research of functional MRIs has shown. Interestingly enough, Mendelevich shares that when his atheist father was imprisoned, he, with his atheist upbringing, still prayed to God- as if it was inborn. But, Dr.  Miller points out, that this ability for spirituality is a use it or lose it type of thing- it needs to be developed.

So, back to our question, how do we help our children develop this spirituality? Some of you might be wondering, we are Orthodox Jews. We send our children to Yeshiva. We go to shul every Shabbat and even every day- of course our children are spiritual!  Not so.  Spirituality may not exist despite religious practice, we must shamefully say.

Dr. Miller points out that a child’s spirituality is developed by encouragement and show of support from us. Every time they have conversations with us about big life issues or life’s little events, we should model for them a spiritual lifestyle.  We show them that we need not fill a quiet moment with diversions.  We talk to them about how and when we see hashgacha pratit- the involvement of Hashem in our individual and daily lives.  Adolescence is the time of life where there is a “developmental surge period for spiritual development.”  Ask them to reflect on where they have seen the hand of Hashem in their lives.  It can be simply something like, “I couldn’t find my math homework, but at the last minute the teacher gave the class  more time”- that was God intervening!  

At the Pesach seder we discuss how we see the hand of God through the various miracles He performed. As parents, let us point out that we too need to see ourselves as if we have left Mitzrayim. We too experience miracles.  We too connect to Hashem.  As parents, we can help our children see that same hand of God in our daily lives. This leads to a more free life- free from the pressures and distractions of the world around us, and free to connect with God, leading to more content and successful lives as well.

Advisory Update:

Sixth Grade: Students focused on common difficulties one might have with a friend and how to problem solve.

Seventh Grade:  Seventh graders had an wonderful presentation by Mrs. Shifra Srolovitz, a child life specialist, who spoke about how she goes about encouraging ill children with whom she works. Students then decorated stuffed dogs with encouraging messages to be given to ill children.  Girls also focused on a lesson on gender roles and how that impacts girls.

Eighth Grade: Students debriefed their Holocaust play experience to discuss what it meant to them and what they gained.  They also experienced a lesson on bigotry and racism- does it exist in the U.S. today? What would they do if they witnessed it? Does it exist without our knowing among us as well?