As a frum society, we are excellent at self-flagellation. At the drop of a magazine, we can muster up long lists of all the problems in our communities. But sometimes I wonder if we know how to appreciate what we do have. Are we aware, for example, that as we speak, Western society is grappling with a serious masculinity crisis?

The New York Times, in a recent article titled “It’s Not Just a Feeling,” assures us that this is not just hype. The actual data on the ground shows how dramatically boys and young men are falling behind. For example, only 41% of college degrees now go to men. Atlantic magazine has dubbed this “the new marriage of unequals,” as more-educated women marry less-educated men. Men in the workforce are in decline – in fact, one in ten men aged 20 to 24 is doing neither school nor work. Mental health crises among young men are climbing, as is addiction and suicide – at four times the rate of young women.

And all this is just the backdrop to the most tragic part – the way this crisis is affecting family life. A whopping two-thirds of American children are born to single mothers, even as research shows that the single most important marker for success in life is being raised by two parents. As one commentator put it, women are advancing in every area – while men are becoming really excellent at video games.

Taken together, it’s clear that referring to this as a “crisis of masculinity” is not hyperbole. In fact, it might be an understatement.

Ever hear that you are not supposed to cry over spilt milk? So why do the Jews sit on the floor every year on the ninth of Av, mourning the destruction of the Temple, which happened eons ago? And while “they lived happily ever after” is a great ending for a children’s story, we cynical adults smirk at the thought. We’ve been around long enough to know there are no happy endings. So what is this naïve hoping for Mashiach?

And it’s not like this hoping is a take-it-or-leave-it footnote to Judaism, either. Maimonides lists belief in the coming of the Messiah as one of the Thirteen Principles of Faith. Why is it so fundamental?

How are men and women really different?

With all the talk about “woman’s role” in Judaism, most people would be hard put to answer that question. For lack of alternatives, our community often uses societal roles to pinpoint the differences: She takes care of the children/cooks chicken soup/ sings lullabies. He earns a living/learns Torah/puts oil in the car.

But societal roles, particularly in our rapidly changing society, are a weak and fickle reed on which to hang an entire philosophy about gender. In fact, different periods in history had paradigms for gender roles that look quite different from ours. For example, aristocratic Jewish families throughout the ages often had nannies who took care of their children. It would have been completely not in consonance with the mother’s stature to have her flipping pancakes or giving baths. And while today we tend to assign great significance to nursing one’s baby – seeing it as the ultimate in mother-baby bonding – there were periods in history when Jewish mothers would not have dreamt of nursing their own babies; they hired wet nurses.

“You’re beautiful, but you’re empty...One couldn’t die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than you hundreds of other roses; because it is she that I have watered… she that I have sheltered behind the screen…Because she is my rose.” (The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

I couldn’t help thinking of this passage from the beautiful classic, The Little Prince, as I stood in my kitchen a week before Pesach, a toothpick in my hand and a bucket of one-third bleach and two-thirds cleanser at my feet.

Life is so interesting, so full of adventures waiting to happen, and here I am, aching and tired, racing towards the deadline of bedikas chametz night. Hashem, is this really what You want me to be doing? Is my destiny really meant to be about obsessing over a breadcrumb that has escaped under the vegetable bin?