One of my grandchildren’s favorite books is the Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper. It is a story about a group of toys that need to have their train pulled over the mountain to reach “the good little boys and girls on the other side.” Most of the engines they ask refuse to help, until a little engine comes along and does the job while saying, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can….”

Internal and External Motivation

My son Shloime, who is a therapist, shared something about motivation that connects with the month of Elul and Rosh Hashanah. Growing up in yeshiva, he remembers that many of the speeches he heard were rooted in what psychologists call extrinsic motivation. That’s the kind of motivation that comes from desire for reward, fear of punishment, or concern about being judged and what G-d thinks of you. 

There’s nothing wrong with that. For a lot of people, that awareness of being seen is exactly what wakes them up and pulls them toward doing better. Fear is an essential tool for improving human behavior. 

But there’s another kind of motivation, intrinsic motivation, where the doing itself is the reward. A person who learns Torah because the learning itself lights up something in them or someone who does a mitzvah because it feels like an extension of who they are is intrinsically motivated. Nothing outside the act needs to happen for them to want to keep doing it.

Recently, I was leafing through Mishpacha magazine. Among the articles was one entitled “Guardians of the City.” It summarized the lives of rabbis who arrived in America when it was still a spiritual wasteland. The article suggests that, during our vacation time, we take a road trip to visit the kevarim of almost forgotten Torah leaders in quaint locations around North America.

The first “hidden giant” was Rav Michoel Eliezer Forshlager,1884-1958, who is buried right here in Baltimore’s B’nai Israel Cemetery. I have seen how, over the years, his grave has been turned into a shrine, with place for candles to be lit by those who go there to pray. Rav Forshlager is buried in the same row as my wife Feigi’s father, Chester Siegel, in a section of this large cemetery reserved for shomrei Shabbos.

I was reminiscing today about the weather this past spring. We’d had some lovely days of summer-like weather, and it felt like an extra bonus since it was still the middle of April. It was shortly after those wonderful blue-sky days that I woke up to a splattering sound on my bedroom window and saw it was going to be a rainy day – and a cold one to boot.

That day was a Sunday, so my plans to go for a hike went by the wayside. Instead, I decided to take care of various household chores that are best done when I’m not drawn to the outdoors. I needed some time to think, and mundane tasks like folding and sorting the laundry seemed like the perfect way to do just that.

These heavy thoughts that kept swirling around in my mind didn’t have anything to do with pursuing shidduchim for my children. I wasn’t pondering what the future would be with my parents as they continue to age. No, this time, I contemplated how I was going to change a specific midda of mine. I know many people who do not have this specific flaw. I’ve tried emulating these dear friends and acquaintances of mine, and I’ve looked up to a tzadekes I know, hoping that their goodness would somehow rub off on me, to no avail. Perhaps being faced with my own mortality, I began thinking that it’s about time to make a serious change.

One morning, leaving shul after Shacharis, I noticed the familiar tableau: a small plastic container of herring, a few crackers, and a napkin serving as the “signage.” On it, in hurried pen scratches, was a single first name ben another first name. No last name. No context. No relationship. No explanation. Just a lone name, as though the act itself required nothing more.

We all know the scene. It is a minhag, and therefore – by communal reflex – holy, untouchable. And yet, the more one thinks about it, the more absurd it can feel. If a stranger scribbles a name and leaves herring under it in memory of another stranger, what exactly am I participating in? Am I meant to compare this to “today’s learning is l’zechus so-and-so,” where the person is equally unknown to me? As Rabbi Moshe Heineman once asked with admirable clarity: “What’s the zechus?”

After talking with adolescents for many years, I’ve noticed that one of the biggest differences between children isn’t simply what they struggle with, it’s where they instinctively turn when they need guidance.

With younger children, usually through about age 10 or 11, the default is simple: Mom and Dad. If something comes up, they tell their parents. They ask their teacher. They trust the principal. Adults are the experts, and these young children are generally very open to guidance and advice.

On the other end of the spectrum are high school students. By then, they’re developing a much stronger sense of independence. They feel capable of making many decisions on their own. Friends often become their primary sounding board, and many topics never make it to their parents. They still need adult guidance, but they’re far more selective about when they’ll seek it.

What has become increasingly striking to me over the years is how unique the middle school years are. The span from sixth, seventh, and eighth grade – roughly ages 12 to 14 – is a remarkable developmental window. Children are beginning to think independently. They’re asking bigger questions, forming their own opinions, and realizing they don’t have to simply accept everything they’ve been told. Some psychologists refer to this shift as the “Santa Claus moment,” the moment when children realize that the Santa they believed came down the chimney doesn’t exist.

by Shmuel Joab

In light of the recent back-and-forth in the letters to the editor page in the Where What When about being dan lekaf zechut, giving the benefit of the doubt, I would like to clarify the concept and when it applies.

*  *  *

“That’s it! This is the last time I’m going to put up with this type of behavior!” Mr. Rosenfeld was outraged at the sight of more wrappers and snack bags littering his carefully tended flowerbeds. The trouble began a few months earlier, soon after his neighbor, Mrs. Hasenfeld, passed away. The house was put on the market and, several busy Sunday open houses later, was purchased for a respectable sum by the Feldstein family. Even before they moved in, Mr. Rosenfeld noticed changes. The landscaping team had been replaced by a neighborhood kid with an old lawnmower. Between the dull blades and the halfhearted effort, large areas of the yard were overgrown, and he could almost feel his property value descending. After the move, things only got worse. Despite a few bearable introductions around moving day, Mr. Rosenfeld felt that very little attention came his way from next door. The only things coming his way were bits of trash and debris left in the yard by the neighbors. This morning, upon discovering evidence of the entire Shabbos party in his garden, he could take it no longer. He stormed inside and informed his wife that he intended to reach out to the authorities. Mrs. Rosenfeld knew that it would be difficult to talk him out of it just then and suggested that he wait until after breakfast and his daily Wordle before taking action.

“Maybe they just don’t realize what’s happening?” she suggested a bit later, when things were calmer. “They’ve really got their hands full.”

Mr. Rosenfeld was not buying it. “How could they possibly not notice? The stuff is everywhere! They just don’t know how to treat neighbors, and I’ve had enough of it!”

“I’m not sure,” his wife responded, “I feel like we should give them the benefit of the doubt.”

“What doubt?!” he retorted, “I don’t have any doubt!”

Is Mr. Rosenfeld required to give the Feldsteins any benefit of the doubt?

by Sarah Levy

 In county jails, psychiatric wards, and rehabs across Maryland, Rabbi Sholom and Mrs. Mushki Reindorp, founders of Neshama, are proving that no Jewish soul is ever truly lost.

* * *

The list came in with the morning intake report, as it did every week – a page of names from the county facility, flagging the inmates who had defined themselves as Jewish on their booking forms. Most weeks, Rabbi Sholom scanned it quickly. Most of the men weren’t looking for a rabbi. They were looking for the kosher tray because someone told them it’s the better meal. He doesn’t mind. He goes anyway. But one week, a name near the bottom made him stop: Samuel Cohen.* Unmistakably Jewish.

“Tell the rabbi I said no thanks,” Samuel told the guard. It took three more attempts before Samuel finally agreed to see Rabbi Reindorp. He sat down across the plexiglass with his arms crossed, jaw tight, eyes daring the rabbi to say something he could roll his eyes at. But Rabbi Sholom didn’t ask about what he’d done or why he was there. He asked how he was sleeping.

Samuel blinked. Nobody had asked him that.

It came out slowly, over time: a bar mitzvah decades ago that meant nothing to him at the time, a Jewish grandmother he barely remembered, a life that had drifted far from anything Jewish. “I’m not really one of yours anymore,” he said. Rabbi Sholom didn’t argue. He just kept coming.

by Rabbi Irwin Katsof

 What happens when a Jew who is a slave to creature comforts finds himself on Rosh Hashanah in Uman, Ukraine, with 30,000 chasidim and no hot running water?

I didn’t want to go, let me make that perfectly clear. I was pushed into it – albeit gently – by my wife Judy who thought that now was the time to honor a promise I had made to my son to go someday.

We have been blessed with eight wonderful children (ages 5 to 23), the elder of whom have all found their own niches in the Jewish world. My middle son, Simcha, 19, who extracted this promise from me, is a brilliant musician whose extemporaneous compositions on the piano can bring tears to your eyes with their power and intensity. He is deeply connected to his soul, which somehow led him onto the spiritual path of a Breslover chasid. We supported him in his choice – as we have the very different choices of his elder brothers and sister – but supporting your child in his journey and joining him are two wildly different things.

Simcha spent Rosh Hashanah twice before in Uman, where Breslov chasidim and a whole array of colorful people gather every year at the graveside of Rebbe Nachman, the founder of the Breslov sect. He urged me to come with him.

I had heard about the intensity of the Uman experience from various acquaintances who had gone in past years. I had also heard they brought all their own food and water, and that scared me to no end. I had never been away from my family for any holiday in our 24 years of marriage, and it was to my wife’s credit that she was willing to spend Rosh Hashanah alone with five of our younger children. And if she was willing to make the sacrifice, why not I?

I was trapped.