The Value of the Family Services You Didn’t Think You Needed

If you’re familiar with K’nafayim, you may be aware that we provide family services for the frum community, like marriage counseling, parenting help, and the like.  And you may be happy that these services exist but feel you don’t need them yourself.  If your shalom bayis is where you want it to be, we’re more than happy to hear it!  At the same time, perhaps there is something we can offer you nonetheless.  In fact, we’d like to suggest that our services have much value to offer you, even if you thought they don’t.  How so?

Once a Pikesville country club, now a yeshiva campus, the Bais HaMedrash and Mesivta  of Baltimore is a jewel of Torah learning – and the pride and joy of its founder and Rosh Yeshiva, Harav Zvi Dov Slanger. I recently visited the yeshiva on a weeknight and witnessed over 135 bachurim packing the beis medrash and learning with tremendous enthusiasm. This room filled with a chorus of Torah learning is the fulfillment of Rav Slanger’s dream and the crescendo of his Torah life.

The journey to this accomplishment starts with a young Hungarian Holocaust survivor who, this year, celebrates the momentous

Chaiya Drabkin was a cancer survivor. Although it was decreed that she be taken in the end, emotionally she never succumbed to her illness. Instead, she took it on as a challenge, one that she passed with flying colors – yellow and blue, to be exact. These were the colors of her unique business cards, which she handed out freely in the chemo ward where she received treatment. Listed on this “business card,” against a backdrop of light blue with a cheerful yellow sun on the side, were her phone number and email address, inviting other patients – regardless of ethnicity or religion – to contact her for support. And that, concur all who knew and loved her, was typical Chaiya.

As the stories and memories emerge, I begin to realize how pathetic it is to try and encapsulate such a tremendous person in a short magazine article. Yet for Chaiya, a”h, there was nothing too small and nothing too large: every challenge, every situation, was an opportunity to give and grow. And it is with that approach in mind that I attempt to provide a glimpse of this one-of-a-kind woman.

Imagine you had access to a secret that showed you the best decisions to make in every area of your life. This secret would help you decide if you should remain at your current job, if you should continue seeing the person you are dating, and if you should move to a different city. It would keep you away from potentially unsafe situations. It would help you discover if you needed to change something in the way you parent or conduct relationships. It would give you the answers to questions you’ve been struggling with for a long time.

Everyone can access this secret. The problem is that most people don’t know how to do it.

This secret is called intuition.

The song “Oh, My Papa” was popularized by singer Eddie Fisher more than a few years ago! In the beautiful melody and words, Eddie praised his “wonderful” father. Recently, I heard the tune again on the radio. It begins like this:

Oh, my papa, to me he was so wonderful,

Oh, my papa, to me he was so good.

No one could be so gentle and so lovable,

Oh, my papa, he always understood.

To the Shadchan:

I have a close friend who will soon be entering the shidduch parsha. This guy has a great head for learning, wonderful aspirations for a future in Torah and chinuch (education), and is handsome too. There’s only one problem: He has emotional issues that will very likely hamper him when it comes to this parsha. During different stages of my relationship with this bachur, I’ve seen him beat himself up verbally on one end of the spectrum, and be manipulative towards others (including me) on the other end of the spectrum.

I care too much about this friend not to say anything, but I don’t know what to say or how to say it! It’s quite possible that he might even need the help of a professional, but again, how could I broach this subject. Any advice would be appreciated!

It seems there are two groups of people in this world: those who are easily insulted and those who are not. Personally, I feel that I fall into the latter group, so I’ve decided to work on this. Having little prior experience in this area made me realize that I have to tread carefully so as not to destroy any friendships or relationships, at least not yet. This is why, instead of focusing on people I meet, I decided to focus on the voices I hear. Shall I explain?

If you’ve ever called a business, school, or doctor’s office, you are often greeted with the following message, “Hi, you’ve reached ___. Please listen carefully because our menu options have recently changed. If you are trying to reach ___, please press 1, etc., etc., etc.” Now, here is where the situation gets murky for someone like me: Is this a compliment or an insult? After all, if she (and it’s usually a she) is telling me to listen carefully, she’s assuming that I am smart enough to have memorized the previous options. I mean, why else would I have to listen carefully? On the other hand, this could be perceived as an insult, because let’s face it, does she think I didn’t notice that this is the same message that’s been playing for the past five years? The menu options have not changed recently, and quite frankly, I’m tired of having to hear about it every time I call. However, I figured that before I made my decision about whether or not to be insulted, I would give the company the benefit of the doubt. So I continued with my call and listened for the option that would allow me to speak to a customer representative. Well, apparently they weren’t lying when then said I should listen carefully. After following the directions and pressing a never-ending sequence of numbers, I was finally booted out of the system with a message saying, “We are unable to process your request. Please call back when you are able to listen carefully.” I think – I could be wrong – that this was an insult.

Have you ever wanted to perform a chesed but decided not to because you couldn’t accomplish the entire feat yourself? Perhaps you were able to cook dinner for someone who just gave birth but had no way to deliver it. Or you wanted to visit someone in the hospital but had no way to get there. Thanks to a relatively new organization in town, the impossible has become possible. Stretch acts as a shadchan, pairing over 120 volunteers with the requests of potential recipients, so such concerns no longer stand in the way of doing chesed.

Joining Forces

Ahuva, a special ed graduate student, moved to Baltimore from Georgia to attend Maalot three years ago. She has been involved with Stretch since its inception a year-and-a-half ago. Last winter, Ahuva was part of a group of four women who wanted to raise funds for a single mother of two young children who was in school and couldn’t support herself. “We got a psak to help her and wanted to send out a tzedaka mailing,” says Ahuva. “We needed help for the manual labor of stuffing the envelopes, typing, and sticking on the address labels. I had a brainstorm and called Stretch. They were amazing. A diverse group of volunteers of all ages and stages came out for a few winter evenings to help. Baruch Hashem, the job got done. The mailing raised between eight and nine thousand dollars, which supported this single mother for several months until she was able to finish school, get her degree, and find a full-time job.”

“It ain’t over until the fat lady sings” is a well-known expression. Every adult I asked had heard the expression, and I assumed that it had been around forever. However, according to Wikipedia, it was first coined in 1976 by Ralph Carpenter, the sports information director of Texas Tech, referring to a sports competition. The “fat lady” is thought to refer to the often overweight sopranos of the opera, particularly Richard Wagner’s operas, in which the soprano sings herself to death at the end of the opera.

In trying to rein in my eating, I have been thinking that more care with brachos acharonos (blessings after eating) should be a big help in curtailing or controlling compulsive overeating. How does one make brachos properly in a situation when one eats, tries (and intends) to stop but then continues? If you wait after eating something and don’t say a bracha acharona, you are implying that you are not done eating yet, that you anticipate that you will eat more. If you make a perfunctory bracha acharona, not meaning it, and then resume eating, and continue to repeat this behavior, you could be making tens of brachos a night. (This is not a halachic discussion; consult your rabbi for his guidance.) But, if you could bring yourself to make the bracha acharona with kavana (intention, concentration), you are saying that you are determined to end your eating session. If this idea could be internalized, it is possible that, even if only for a short time, “It is over when the fat lady bentches.” We could work on keeping that commitment of ending a food session. Even if this “holds” for only a short time and then eating is resumed, at least some interruption in the compulsive eating has been effected.

Although I was not living in Baltimore when the world-renowned Torah giant, Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, visited, 50 years ago in January, 1968, I can picture the scene. It was a rare and gala event, one that lives in the memories of those fortunate to have experienced it and who graciously shared them with me.

“It seems like just yesterday that our family was preparing for the historic visit by the gadol hador, Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l,” reminisces Frank Storch, who was 10 years old, at the time. “I remember the preparations and the tremendous excitement that was building throughout Baltimore. Everyone was grateful that we would be zoche to have the gadol hador in our city.”