Highly Recommended! Toras Imecha Daily Chizuk

Posted by JewishMom on Jul 23, 2020 in Inspiration, Jewish Moms, Motherhood, My life | 4 comments

I recently joined the whatsapp group of Baltimore JewishMOM Rebecca Masinter, and I’m loving it. She sends out daily 2-3 minute recordings of inspirational thoughts on the Torah portion and how it can upgrade our lives as moms. Here’s yesterday’s post, to give you a taste:) Click here to sign up.

Good Chodesh everyone! In Parshas Devarim, Moshe recounts the story of the meraglim, the spies. Let’s see what Moshe highlights in his retelling, as it is especially appropriate for today, Rosh Chodesh Av. Of course, the first Tisha B’Av was the night after the spies returned from Eretz Yisrael with their terrifying report and the Jewish people cried. “You cried for nothing”, said Hashem, “I will give you what to cry about for generations.” That’s Tisha B’Av.
What exactly does Moshe highlight in his retelling of this story, which is always read before Tisha B’Av every year? What was the failing that caused Tisha B’Av? Listen to some of his words:
וּבַדָּבָ֖ר הַזֶּ֑ה אֵֽינְכֶם֙ מַאֲמִינִ֔ם בַּיהוָ֖ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם׃

Moshe points out our lack of faith in Hashem as the root cause of Tisha B’Av. Hashem treated us like a father, כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר יִשָׂא־אִ֖ישׁ אֶת־בְּנ֑וֹ, always attentive, always responsive, always caring for us, and we had no faith in Him. A wonderful friend who I met through this Toras Imecha group sent me a message, “Prayer is bringing your worries to God. Faith is leaving them there.” Although Bnai Yisrael had witnessed countless miracles and knew with certainty that Hashem was taking care of them, they didn’t fully feel it deep in their inner beings. They weren’t able to leave their worries with God. Their faith was lacking.
Moshe points out this lack and shows us what type of faith we were supposed to have in Hashem, “kaasher yisa ish es bno”, the same emunah that a child has in his parents. Emunah is inextricably bound up with caring for a child. Even the term for an infant’s caregiver is an “Omein”. Rabbi Myer Schwab once told me that the reason the word for mother starts with an “m” sound in all languages is because that is the first sound in Emunah. One of the first things an infant with a healthy mother learns is to trust her mother. The baby cries because it trusts its mother will be there to soothe it. The faith a baby has in its mother isn’t cerebral or logical. It isn’t something the baby needs to be talked into feeling, she just knows that her mother is there taking care of her and that trust is what allows her to relax and grow.
But the truth goes even deeper. A child’s early experiences trusting its parents is also what paves the way for a trusting relationship with Hashem later on. There are stages of maturation in a person’s life, and from the age of birth to 1 ½ years, a baby learns to either trust or mistrust, not just its parents, but its world, and the Ruler of the world, Hashem, too. Our faith in Hashem is directly tied to our faith in our parents. And the trust we are supposed to have in Hashem is the instinctive trust of an infant whose parent has consistently been there caring for him. And we failed.
Today begins the month of Av, the month whose name in Hebrew means, “Father”. This is our time to reconnect to Hashem with the faith a child puts in her father. This is a time for us to not just think or know that we have faith in Hashem, but to work on feeling it deep, deep down.
And it’s a time for us to recognize the tremendous significance of what we, mothers, give to our children. Sometimes we may wonder what on earth we’re accomplishing each day. It can feel like we’re scrambling all the time and not getting anything done. But that’s a lie. Just by being there with our children, just by tending to them, caring for them, being responsive to them, we are giving them everything; the ability to have healthy relationships with other people and with Hashem. That isn’t a small thing, it’s huge and it’s time we recognize it. May this month bring the ultimate reunion between us and our Av, Hashem.